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thunderjolt · 4 years ago

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pokémon black and white

this post might be a little bit different from my usual fare. this is, by my count, my seventh playthrough of this game. it's a yearly tradition for me. and this game means so much to me that i almost can't do that much design analysis; my brain doesn't let me think about it that hard, i just play it and get serotonin dumped directly into my brain. so this time, i think i'll be sharing my history with this game and talking about why it means so much to me. more of a sentimental sienna this time.

i bought pokémon white version on launch in 2011. i actually recently found pictures on my old dsi of me waiting outside gamestop in the morning to pick it up. i had recently gotten back into pokémon after a brief "pokémon is for babies" phase, which ended with me getting heartgold/soulsilver. after that, when i first heard about black and white, my excitement was through the roof. while like many, my first time keeping up with news for a game was super smash bros. brawl, my first time going into unofficial territory and consuming everything i could possibly find was black and white. bulbanews, serebii, gcpm11 videos every single day, absorbing everything so i could excitedly talk about it with friends.

it's important to note that my life situation was pretty fraught at the time. i won't get too deep into my personal trauma, but i never really had stable or consistent schooling. i had trouble functioning and was prone to outbursts, so the district would try to send me to special ed programs that i could also never really function in, and i'd often end up in a limbo of just not being in school for months upon months at a time. this was one of those periods, and it was especially rough for me, as the year before was pretty much the first time in my life i'd had a stable healthy school situation and social life. i think that caused me to be even more absorbed into the whole hype cycle, as i desperately needed some kind of out for how bad i was doing mentally.

in february, i was able to convince my parents to take me to the pokémon black and white mall tour, an event with a special early demo of the game, activities to do, prizes to win, special merch on sale, etc. it was in indianapolis, which is about a 3 hour drive from here, which makes it all the more amazing i actually convinced them to do that. i used my camcorder and filmed everything, then edited it together into a video - i think that might be lost media now. i can tell you it had this starship amazing song in the background, though. the trip was ended somewhat prematurely unfortunately, as my mom suffered an injury while we were there. despite the trip ending on a sour note, i was satisfied - i got to play the game - if briefly - before it released, after all. on the car ride home i found a shiny slowpoke on my heartgold.

now back to launch day. i picked white largely for its exclusive pokémon - i had no strong preference between reshiram and zekrom, but i really wanted reuniclus. as i still wasn't in school, i marathoned the game. it was all i did, all day. i recall playing it while i was out getting my blood drawn for something. i beat it in about 3 days. this started a trend for me, and i'm now always the first person i know to complete a new pokémon game. i enjoyed it a lot. it was probably the first game i'd ever played where i felt truly engaged in the story. things felt like they had real weight and depth. i loved all the new pokémon, all the human characters, all the music... the fire for pokémon i had that had once diminished came back stronger than ever. i started playing on pokémon online, and then, pokémon showdown. i wasn't very good at building teams, but i was pretty decent at the game for an 11 year old who didn't even bother to read anything on smogon. i started getting deeply into the TCG - again, not great at deckbuilding (though not really like i had a choice - my parents were still araid of buying things on the internet, so i couldn't get singles) but still did decently at my weekly league and at prerelease tournaments. i can confidently say that pokémon black and white, and the things surrounding it, changed my life, and got me through some really rough times.

i can't confidently say when i first replayed the game, but it must've been whenever i first got a copy of black. my love deepened on that playthrough, as it did again on my third. every time, there'd be something new for me to appreciate about the story or the world. i continued to replay the game fairly regularly, even after the release of its sequel. speaking of said sequel, about a month after its release, i stumbled onto a certain crack roleplay group that changed my life in numerous ways, and deepened my pokémon fandom. but that's a story for another day.

around 2014 i started feeling a certain way about the female protagonist, hilda, and also started heavily questioning my gender. this certain feeling would later be diagnosed as "kinning." i used it as a weird coping mechanism for constant dysphoria in my middle teen years, and hilda continues to be a character i heavily associate myself with and project onto, as you can plainly see by looking at literally any of my social media profiles.

it was... 2016 i wanna say? when i formally decided i'd play through the game every year. that number, seven playthroughs, is really inexact. i recall playing through each of my three cartridges once, and then i started formally playing through it once a year in 2016, so i just added that up. there's a good chance it's more, and that i've been playing it yearly for longer than i realize. regardless, each time i've appreciated the game more and more. i still cry at all the big moments, and i feel a general sense of comfort just playing it now. my connection to all of the characters, the region, everything strengthens every time.

i thought i had more analysis for you than i do, but i really don't. my sentimental attachment to this game is too strong. i had some stray thoughts, like how the boss battles are better than i remember, and how i desperately wish it had L=A, but ultimately, i don't have much interesting to say about the game itself. i've played it so many times and thought about it so hard that everything about it is just so obvious to me, i don't even know how to pick out what i think is so great. even just talking about the characters and themes is a bit difficult for me.

i can't say that you'll love pokémon black and white if you play it. i can't say you'll feel as strongly as i do about it. it has a lot of notable flaws, and they continue to be apparent or become more apparent as time goes on. but, at least for me, it's a truly special adventure, and one of my favorite games of all time.

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years ago

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(REVIEW) All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone, by Joe Dunthorne

Is it fiction, is it poetry, is it truth — what are the rules here? Kirsty Dunlop tackles the difficult, yet illustrious art of the poet bio in this review of Joe Dunthorne’s All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone (Rough Trade Editions, 2018).

Whenever I read a poetry anthology - I hope I’m not the only one - I go to the bios at the back before I read the poems…it’s also a really strange thing when you publish a poem…you brag about yourself in a text that is supposed to sound distant and academic but is actually you carefully calculating how you’ll present yourself.

> It’s the middle of a night in 2019 and I’m listening to a podcast recording from Rough Trade Editions’ first birthday party at the London Review Bookshop, and this is Dunthorne’s intro to the reading from his pamphlet All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone (2018). As I lie there in that strange limbo space of my own insomnia, Dunthorne’s side-note to his work feels comfortingly intimate because it rings so true (the kind of thing you might admit to a friend over a drink after a poetry reading rather than in the performative space of the reading itself). Like Joe, and yes surely many others, I am also fascinated by bios - particularly because I find them so awkward to write/it makes me cringe writing my own/this is definitely the kind of thing you overthink late at night. Bios also function as this alternative narrative on the margins of the central creative work and they do tell a story: take any bio out of context and it can be read as a piece of flash fiction. When we are asked to write bios, there is this unspoken expectation that we follow certain rules in our use of language, tone and content. Side note: how weird would it be if we actually spoke about ourselves in this pompous third person perspective irl?! Bios themselves are limbo spaces (another kind of side note!) where there is much left unsaid and often the unsaid and the little that is said reveals a lot. Of course, some bios are also very, very long. Dunthorne’s pamphlet plays with this limbo space as a site of narrative and poetic potential: prior to All The Poems, I had never read a short story actually written through the framework of a list of poet bios. The result is an incredibly funny, honest and playful piece of meta poetic prose that teases out all the subtle aspects of the poet bio-sphere and ever since that first listen, I can’t stop myself re-reading.

> This work is an exciting example of how formal constraints in writing can actually create an exhilarating sense of narrative liberation. I see this really playful, fluid Oulipo quality to the writing, where the process of using the bio as constraint is what makes the rollercoaster reading experience so satisfying as well as revealing a theatrical stage for language to have its fun, where the reality of our own calculated self performance can be teased out bio by bio. The re-reading opens up a new level of comedy each time often at the level of wordplay. I’ll maybe reveal some more of that in a wee bit.

> It’s a winding road that Dunthorne takes us on in his narrative journey where the micro and the macro continually fall inside each other. So perhaps this review will also be quite winding. Here is another entry into the text: we begin reading about the protagonist Adam Lorral from the opening sentence, who we realise fairly quickly is struggling to put together a ground-breaking landmark poetry anthology. His bio crops up repeatedly in varying forms:

‘Adam Lorral, born 1985 is a playwright, translator and the editor-publisher of this anthology.’

‘Adam Lorral is a playwright, translator and the man who, morning after morning, stood barefoot on his front doorstep […]’

‘Adam Lorral is a playwright, translator and someone for whom the date Monday, October 14th, 2017 has enormous meaning. Firstly Adam’s son started smiling.’

The driving circularity of this repetition pushes the narrative onwards, whilst the language is never bogged down: it hopscotches along and we can’t help but join in the game. Amidst a growing list of other characters/poets- that Adam may or may not include in this collection he seems to be pouring/ draining his energy into, with just a little help from his wife’s family money- tension begins to build.

> Although Adam is overtly the protagonist in the story, to my mind it is, in fact, Adam’s four-week-old son who is the real heroic figure. Of course this baby doesn’t have a bio of his own but he does continually creep into Adam’s (he’s another side note!). He comes off as the only genuine character: there is no performance, no judgement, he just is. Adam is continually amazed by his son’s mental and physical development which is far more impressive than the growth of this questionable anthology. The baby is this god-like figure, continually present during Adam’s struggles, with the seemingly small moments of its development taking on monumental significance. Adam might try to immerse himself fully in this creative work but the reality of his family surroundings will constantly interrupt. This self-deprecating, reflective tone led me to think about how Dunthorne expansively explores the idea of the contemporary poet and artist identity through metanarrative. In Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016), he writes ‘There is embarrassment for the poet – couldn’t you get a real job and put your childish ways behind you?’ In a recent online interview with the poet Will Harris[1], when asked about his own development as a writer, he spoke about how the career trajectory of a poet is a confusing phenomenon and I’ve heard many other poets speak of this too: there are perhaps milestones to pass but they are not rigid or obvious and, of course, they are set apart from the milestones of more ‘adult’, professional pursuits. I think Dunthorne’s short story accurately captures this confusion around artistic, personal and intellectual growth and the navigation of the poetry community, through these minute, telling observations and the rejection of a simplistic narrative linearity. The story doesn’t make any hard or fast judgements: like the character of the baby, the observations just are. Sometimes, it feels like this project could be one of the most important aspects of Adam’s life (it might even make or break it) and we are there with him and at other moments it seems quite irrelevant to the bigger picture, particularly as the bios get more ridiculous. Here, I just have to highlight one of the bios which perfectly evokes this heightened sense of a poet’s importance:

Peter Daniels’ seventh collection The Animatronic Tyrannosaurus of Guadalajara, is forthcoming with Welt Press. He will not let anyone forget that he edited Unpersoned, a prize-winning book of creative transcriptions of immigration interviews obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, even though it was published nearly two decades ago. His poetry has been overlooked for all previous generational anthologies and it is only thanks to the fine-tuned sensibilities of this book’s editor that has he finally become one of the chosen. You would expect him to be grateful.

> Okay…so I said above that there weren’t hard or fast judgements; maybe I should retract that slightly. The text definitely doesn’t feel like a cruel critique of poets generally (its comedy is too clever for that) but, yes, there are a fair few judgements from Adam creeping into those bios. I am so impressed with the way in which Dunthorne is able to expertly navigate Adam’s perspective through all these fragments to create this growing humour, as the character can’t help inserting his own opinions into other poets’ bios. Of course, we are also able to make our own judgements about Adam and his endearing naivety: shout out here to my fave character in the story, Joy Goold (‘exhilaratingly Scottish’) who has submitted the poem, Fake Lake, to the anthology. Hopefully if you’re Scottish, you can appreciate the comedy of this title. Adam Googles her and cannot find any trace of her, which feels perfect…almost too good to be true.

> Dunthorne plays with cliché overtly throughout the text. You could say all the poets in this story are exaggerated clichés but that certainly doesn’t make them boring: it just adds to the knowing intimacy that, yes, feels slightly gossipy (which I can’t help but enjoy). For example, there is the poet who has:

[…] won every major UK poetry prize and long ago dispensed with modesty […] Though he does not need the money he teaches on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His latest collection is Internal Flight (Faber/FSG). He divides his time between London and New York because they are both lovely.

I am leaving out a fair bit of this bio because I don’t want to take away some of the joy of simply reading this text in its entirety but it is one of many tongue-in-cheek observations that feels very accurate and over-the-top at the same time (I feel like everyone in the poetry community knows this person). It is also even more knowing when you consider that Dunthorne actually has published a collection with Faber, O Positive (2019), a totally immersive read that also doesn’t shy away from poking fun at its speaker throughout. I always like seeing the ideas that repeatedly crop up in a writer’s work and explorations of calculation and cliché are at the forefront of this collection. I keep thinking of this line from the poem ‘Workshop Dream’:

We stepped onto the beach. The water made the sound: cliché, cliché, cliché.

Interestingly, there is this hypnotising dream-like quality to O Positive - with shape shifting figures, balloonists, owls-in-law – in contrast to the hyper realism I experienced in the Rough Trade pamphlet. However, like All the Poems, in O Positive, we’re always one step inside the writing, one step outside, watching the poem/short story being written. It’s this continual sensation of being very close to failure and embarrassment/cringe. (I can also draw parallels here between Dunthorne’s exploration of this theme and the poet Colin Herd who speaks so brilliantly about the relation between poetry and embarrassment- see our SPAM interview.) Failure is just inevitable in this narrative set up. It makes the turning point of the narrative- when it arrives- all the funnier:

As Adam typed, he hummed the chorus to the Avril Lavigne song–why d’you have to go and make things so complicated?–and smiled to himself because he was keeping things simple. Avril Lavigne. Adam Lorral. Their names were a bit similar. He was looking for a sign and here one was.

> If it isn’t clear already, this is a story that I could continually quote from but to truly appreciate the work, you should read it in its beautiful slim pamphlet format created by Rough Trade Editions. For me, the presentation of this work is as important as the form: this story would have a different effect and tone if it was nestled inside a short story collection. I think a lot of the most exciting creative writing right now is being published by the innovative small indie presses springing up around the UK. Recently I listened to a great podcast by Influx Press, featuring the writer Isabel Waidner: they spoke about both the value of small presses taking risks with writers and the importance of recognising prose as an experimental field, rightly recognising that experimental work often seems to begin with, or be connected to, the poetry community. Waidner’s observation felt like something I had been waiting to hear…and a change that I had noticed in writing being published in the last few years in the UK. I could mention so many examples alongside the work of Rough Trade Books: Waidners’s We are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019), published by Manchester-based Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Eley William’s brilliant Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press, 2017), the many exciting hybrid works put out by Prototype Publishing, to name just a few. There is also a growing interest in multimedia work, for example Visual Editions, who publish texts designed to be read on your phone through their series Editions at Play (Joe Dunthorne did a brilliant digital-born collaborative text with Sam Riviere in 2016, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, I would highly recommend!). But this concept of combining the short story with a pamphlet format, created by Rough Trade Books as part of their Rough Trade Editions’ twelve pamphlet series, feels particularly exciting to me and is a reminder of why I love the expansive possibilities of shorter prose pieces. Through its physical format, we are reminded that this is a prose work you can read like a series of poems without losing the narrative tension that is so central to fiction. The expansiveness of the reading possibilities of Dunthorne’s short story also reminds me of Lydia Davis’s short-short stories. Here’s one I love taken from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Penguin Books, 2009):

They take turns using a word they like

“It’s extraordinary,” says one woman. “It is extraordinary,” says the other.

You could read this as a sound bite, an extract from an article, a writing exercise or a short story, the possibilities go on; there is a space created for the reader and consequently it encourages the unravelling of re-reading (which feels like a very poetic mode to me). Like Davis, Dunthorne’s work also highlights how seemingly simple language can be very powerful and take on many subtle faces and tones. I think short forms are so difficult to get right but when you encounter all the elements of language, tone, pacing, style, space, tension brought together effectively (or calculatingly as Dunthorne might say), it can create this immersive, highly intimate back-and-forth play with the reader.

> All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything to Everyone. The title tells us there is a collection of poems here that are hidden: the central work has disappeared leaving behind the shadowy remains of the editor’s frustration and the marginalia of the bios. We feel the presence of the poems despite not actually reading them. The pamphlet’s blurb states that this: ‘is the story of the epiphanies that come with extreme tiredness; that maybe, just maybe the greatest poetry book of all is one that contains no poems.’ The narrative, as well as making fun of itself, also recognises that poetry exists beyond the containment of the poems themselves: it can be found in the readings, the performances, the politics, the drafts, the difficulties, the funding, the collaboration, the collectivity, the bios.

> A friend of mine recently asked me: Where are all the prose parties?…And what might a prose party look like? We were chatting about how a poetry party sounds much cooler (that’s maybe why there’s more of them). I think prose is often aligned with more conventional literary forms, maybe closed off in a way that poetry is seen to be able to liberate, but I think Dunthorne breaks down these preconceptions and binaries around form and modes of reading in All The Poems. I want to be at whatever prose party he’s throwing.

[1] University of Glasgow’s Creative Conversations, Sophie Collins interviewing Will Harris, Monday 4th May 2020 (via Zoom)

Text: Kirsty Dunlop Published: 10/7/20

#review #reviews #Rough Trade Books #Joe Dunthorne #Kirsty Dunlop #poetry #poet bios

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delcat177 · 5 years ago

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Text in captions, if that won’t read on text to voice please let me know <3

This is a half-year old, but I only paid Blobs Magician to help me out once and I’m fresh out of delicately painted acorns and he gave me commission rights so I’ll be tipping him a ziploc bag of goldfish later

I feel awkward writing about all of this--there was a bit of jealousy when I got my hyst (not projecting, I was told flat by a trans friend), and I worry that I may be making other people feel alone, anxious, or less-than in their gender by talking about it. If you feel that at all, please, stop right now. Don’t look in the mirror, because mirrors are scary. Like, really scary, they have ghosts or stuff probably, but also in the genders sense, so instead, look in your head. Look at your self. It’s in there, because it is you. What is happening to me now is a shell upgrade, a hermit crab moving domiciles. I was a boy once, then a young man, then a oldman, and now I’m a oldman with a society man shell. Never mistake the shell for the crab, go “hey crab, I like your shell, I hope you find the perfect shell, because you are the perfect inhabitant” and celebrate that crab. Because we are all crabs, and we are all beautiful, and we all deserve the shells that reflect us as individuals, and anyone who says otherwise can fuck off into a spiny urchin bush and not have a shell. Or. Something. Did I say I felt awkward? I AM awkward. But anyway, drive-in movie totals and such after cut, potential TMI, and protect yourself love yourself, you lovely crabs <333

(with cut ‘cause longtext is looong)

(ORIGINAL POST)

Alt-text: I'm always the last one to know

so uh

I'm a blithe idiot and somehow never processed or dared to dream that this was possible

which makes the timeline look SPECTACULARLY dumb but I was going through SO MANY LIFESTYLE CHANGES

HYST DATE: SEPTEMBER 28, 2016

2017: Me: Man, living in the townhouse has really amped up my leg game, all that up and down stairs.

Me: I'm down ten pounds since the hyst! Megan: That's probably your natural weight. Me: That or getting there. Not surprising, I'm not feeding the beast constantly.

Me: *punches Megan playfully in the arm* Megan: OW goddammit Del that hurt like SHIT! Me: oh my God I'm sorry I didn't mean to! Megan: It's okay, just be careful! Me: That's so weird I'm sorry D8

Me: man is it just me or am I good in bed lately? oh right I'm the only one here...I guess it's because I'm more confident?

Me: ghghjh my hair's thinning out at the temples, well been expecting that one for awhile, at least it waited for 30

2018:

Me: Holy shit, the stairs plus the shopping is paying off! My thighs are HUGE! I wonder if cracking a watermelon with these bad boys is hyperbole. I bet I could though. I BET.

Me: Down to 162 and holding, fuck you past doctors! I just needed ENERGY goddammit!

Me: Wow, I've lost a lot of weight from my face especially. That makes me super happy. Anyway better pluck these stray hairs. ...have I been yanking these more lately? Getting old is weird.

Me: (struggling with shorts) Megan: Do you need a belt? Me: I'M WEARING A BELT (lifts shirt to reveal belt double wrapped around hips) Megan: Well then Me: I just need to buy new shorts, my ass is just GONE Megan: In the meantime maybe pay attention to what underwear you have on Me: yeah thank God for boxers

Me: My acne scars are heck of acting up. I wish I hadn't picked at my face so much as a kid, I guess the pores are just kinda fucked, I've read about that happening.

2019:

Megan: New shorts look good Me: I am so bad at shopping Megan: At least you have them now Me: I'm an assless chap is all Megan: Go to bed Del Me: It's four in the afternoon

Me: My throat feels so *thick* lately. I haven't been hitting the vape that often, why does it feel weird? And why am I noticing my own voice more? I NEVER notice my own voice, I make a point of it. Am I subconsciously pitching it lower like I used to do talking on Skype because I'm more socially active? What is my brain I'm so AWKWARD Me: UGH I'm falling back into derma habits, I haven't picked in my face in years, I think I need to change cleansers. But...my face looks...good? I guess I had this hiding under that baby fat all these years. ...I guess? Me: Am I getting a hump from my bad computer posture? Shit. Me: Oh no, it's not a hump, my shoulders are starting to put on muscle! That's a relief. That must be from the...laundry? Carrying...laundry?

AUGUST 5, 2019: Me: (lying in bed) 2 + 2

Me: wait why am I putting on shoulder muscle now? I've been doing laundry for years, and it's never done that. And my legs didn't get this buff with a routine job where I was walking three hours a d--

Me:

AUGUST 14, 2019:

New Endocrinologist: We'll test your levels to make sure it isn't a pituitary gland issue or (some syndrome I've already forgotten the name of), and it could be because there's some small element of testosterone in the estrogen replacement, but the brain does produce androgens. We can definitely look into switching you to T if you want, but if it's facial hair you're worried about...well, once the follicle is there, it's there. These are irreversible changes.

Me: No on that then but irreversible,, like,, what I have now,, is forever,,,,,,,?

New Endocrinologist: Forever, and I would expect to continue to see muscle gains if you work out.

Me:

welcome to my second puberty please be aware it apparently involves as many mood swings as the first one but i'm tryin'

Since then, it’s been continuing confirm, confirm, confirm.

My acne turned out to be little follicles growing in odd places--not fullblown hair, just enough to irritate the skin while it was developing. Tiny tufts of 1-3 entirely white, downy hairs have popped up in a few places on my breasts. The real fuzz proliferation has been in the southern quarters--with all delicacy, there is no itch like the itch of hair beginning to grow anywhere sweat can proliferate, and I now understand why cis men scratch privates in public. Having NOT gone through a unified social experience with a peer group accepting of such measures, I am sure there is footage on grocery store cams of someone with an agonized expression walking like he has a weasel down his pants and worrying that 30 is early for hemorrhoids. Both have settled in for the most part, leaving me with a very fluffy, barely-there peach fuzz mustache that’s only noticeable in the right light, some spare hairs across my chin and neck that I keep in order, and a profound relief that I prefer boy shorts and swim trunks.

I went through a few weeks of being especially rank despite all the showering and was worried that was my new normal, but apparently T sweats be like that, and I’m back to smelling like...whatever I smell like, probably lavender with our fabric softener. I experienced what I believed was a relapse a month later that turned out to be a false positive--specifically, our thermostat was slowly dying and frog-boiling us until it got hot enough that my sister also went “dear God it is a sauna in here”, leading to replacement of the faulty element and another notch in the “my life is dumb” bedpost.

My face bonebs, which I frankly expected the least out of (when I wasn’t expecting at all), have slowly but surely been rearranging, a visual effect doubled by the much faster redistribution of fat. I honestly have no idea how this one works. I know more about dead bonebs than live ones. I would doubt it if I didn’t have pictures to back it up. I would say it’s easier to look in the mirror now, but I already stated my opinion on mirrors, do it too much and a skeleton will pop out. It WILL. My brain tells me this and it is never wrong about fears and or phobias. Don’t do it kids.

If there’s been a single most beautiful moment so far, it’s been getting back into Steven Universe after a long hiatus, opening my mouth to sing the opening like I did years ago, and realizing all at once that I was singing falsetto. I ran it back, dropped a register, and the first names I sang became those who would believe in me most. There were tears, and later, showing it off, there were fierce hugs. (Yes, the first ep I watched once I realized was Stevonnie, and YES GARNET GOING “GO HAVE FUN” wah)

I can’t begin to express the validation--I am no gender essentialist’s data point, this is MY experience and no one else’s, but I keep going “my aunt had a hyst and didn’t transition and I had one and I am because my brain makes androgens my brain makes androgens MY BRAIN MAKES ANDROGENS IT HAS BEEN MAKING ANDROGENS ALL THIS TIME IT HAS BEEN TRYING” and living in that, living in “not even SCIENCE is against me”, which is a tremendous thing as a scientist. (As a scientist, I would be a blithering dullard to claim this is the only thing that affects or proves my gender, and I do not. Again, TERFs fuck off. This is simply a very validating thing to me, personally, in my experience. I’m not thrilled that I have to underline that this hard dammit internet.)

What lies ahead is...I don’t know! I thought I was done changing, but the post I saw that nudged me to finally do this on here went “you may stop being able to cry for awhile” and this is Important because I have been trying to figure out if I have Sjogren’s but apparently I have androgens which is slightly easier to pronounce. I’m not sure how I feel about that, because transitioning is a lot of “I’m not sure how I feel about this” and then things being okay. I would definitely say that the more I learn, the easier it is to feel steady and normal, which is important because the mood swings have been REAL. This is more than I asked for or bargained for, but I still only have one regret, and that’s that my hyst scars are just slightly asymmetrical and it Bothers Me, but even that is growing on me.

I don’t know how to end this post. I love you all to death, and I hope if you’re seeking transition, you find it and twenty dollars, and if you’re not seeking transition, you still find twenty dollars. Thank you so much for you and all you do and are. Remember--you are great!

Unless you’re truscum. Then this post isn’t for you (dammit Internet) and you can fall off a boardwalk onto a dead fish. Have fun with that!

hekk

#trans #trans mtf #trans timeline #del is a trans guy #gender #gender*#blobs magician #i'm sorry this wasn't sooner i was shy aaaaa #you are all tock to me #and you are all wonderful crabs #let us go for a scuttle #longpost #long post #scrolling

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ahopefuldoubt · 6 years ago

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Notes: “Memory and Reunion”

I decided to go through my “PoE Drafts” folder on my laptop, and while doing so I rediscovered these old and previously unposted notes from all the way back in May 2016. None of the points below are honestly really new (my “Deliver Us” scene analysis from September 2016 borrowed a lot from these old notes, for example). But I’m posting them partly because I’ve been worried that I’ve hit a creative block, and because it’s nice to see/affirm some of my earliest thoughts and feelings about the biological family (...and how things came full circle well yes “full circle,” but also evolved and expanded — wow it really did take a long time for me to figure things out and “open the box,” as it were).

In the official art book, writer Charles Solomon observes that “by making childhood experiences a significant force in The Prince of Egypt, the filmmakers enrich the characters and their changing relationships.” This statement has stayed with me; it makes sense from a real reunion standpoint because adoptees and their families are confronted with the past as they work with the shifting realities and demands of the present.

In the film, the day that Yocheved relinquishes Moses drives the way in which the siblings individually process the adoption and reunion as well as interact with one another. Although Yocheved is physically present in just the beginning scene, by honoring her memory, she remains an integral part of the entire story. In order to understand the personalities and perspectives held by Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, it is important to first identify each character’s memories of that day.

Moses’ memory is subconscious; after all, he was a small infant when he was relinquished. Yet the movie shows that he has an imprint of his mother’s lullaby, since he is able to whistle a bit of the melody. I know that the source material sees Yocheved in a more active role in her son’s life after she surrenders him — she becomes his wet-nurse — but in The Prince of Egypt there’s no indication of this.

Moses’ subconscious impression of the song represents his entire origins: They too are unknown to him. Secrecy is a common and complex issue in adoption, even for adoptees who know they were adopted. This is because adoptees’ histories, and the people who can tell them about their histories, are largely unavailable or inaccessible. As a result, anything and everything can feel like a secret. The lack of information can create a sense of rootlessness and unreality; frustration at simply not knowing certain kinds of personal information, such as medical history; and a negative self-perception. While identity struggles are universal, some of the issues and questions that arise for Moses reflect a distinct lived-reality for adoptees. Moses’ arc involves confronting the secret that was withheld from him, resolving issues of guilt and self-worth, and negotiating his relationships with his families. His character and journey are directly influenced by his subconscious memory of that day.

By contrast, Aaron’s lasting memory is a painful, incomplete one. Even if not sharply remembered, his sense of that day includes running urgently through Goshen amid shouts and violence, and then watching his mother cry and his baby brother disappear. Throughout the opening scene, his expression and actions reflect confusion and insecurity: At various moments, he stays close to his mother, looks to Miriam and reaches for her hand, for answers and reassurance. The scene focuses more on Miriam’s face, actions, and reactions, which are of course vital to our understanding of the plot, but this also makes it difficult to discern how these events are affecting Aaron. Yet, it is also necessary to depict Miriam in the “lead” in this scene because it hints at the two characters’ dynamic as adults. Aaron’s position as a protective, but younger, brother to Miriam is essential to understanding him, his motivations, and his attitude towards the reunion.

Many of the official materials for The Prince of Egypt note that Aaron represents the skeptical and mistrustful side of the Hebrews. This idea is carried through on multiple levels: the broad, collective scale and the intimate, character-specific sense. Aaron symbolizes and verbalizes the frustrations and concerns of an entire people, and it is this skeptical and guarded nature that guides how he himself approaches and processes his reunion with Moses. Assigned this role by the filmmakers, Aaron naturally becomes the character who feels all the bumps along the road and is made to break in some ways. He bears the traumas of slavery and of that day by the river, which are shown in the way he responds to potential threats and the actions he takes to survive. However, these very challenges also allow Aaron to display the depths of his devotion to his family and ultimately deliver the message that “though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill.” Though perhaps more subtly depicted in the film, the effects of the day Moses was relinquished are no less impactful for Aaron: His character and arc are deeply shaped by the chaos of that day.

Finally, Miriam’s memory is a hopeful one because she pursues her baby brother as he is carried on the Nile and then watches the queen pick him up. Her memories of that day, so different from Moses’ subconscious memory and Aaron’s painful memory, provide a solid foundation for her faith and hope. While Aaron represents his people’s doubts and he is initially resistant to Moses as a result, Miriam expresses her people’s prayers and she has accepted and trusts Moses even before they reunite by the well. Their differences work on both a film-wide, thematic scale and a more intimate, character-based level. [Italics added - but I would delete “as a result.”] Truly, it is Miriam’s complete picture of the day’s events that allows her not only to retain hope, but to plan and incite action, provide a balance to and safeguard for Aaron, and help Moses become aware of himself and achieve a whole sense of self. Though she too experiences setbacks, Miriam’s lasting memory and knowledge are indispensable to the story and her family’s reunion because she is able to be the natural leader and guide for her brothers (and people).

The well scene marks the first major moment in the reunion. As the siblings interact for the first time since the day Moses was relinquished, the impact of their individual memories becomes apparent. Each character is acting according to what they remember, and do not remember, which creates conflict and confusion, as the past is dragged into the light. One of the major themes of this part of the movie is “changing realities.” Realities that were taken for granted change and are challenged amid and as a result of this scene. Reunion forces people to confront the adoption and acknowledge that it occurred. [Italics added — This sentence is probably out of place because, like I wrote at the top of this post, this is just a draft.]

At this point in the movie, Aaron still perceives Moses as a threat. He is Prince Moses. This is reflected in the way he [Aaron] acts: that intake of breath, his panic, his dialogue.

Miriam is the only one with the knowledge, but even then, she is missing a critical piece of information, which is that Moses wasn’t told he was adopted. Miriam, however, presses on, ignoring the unexpected new reality in favor of the one she knows is right: the truth; the bit of the past that once bound them together as a family, the piece of information that Moses has the right to know. And Miriam, armed with her childhood memory, is the only sibling who can provide that information to Moses. [I’ll clean this annotation up later: I’m thinking about the word ignore and hope that it comes across the way I intended. Because I don’t think that Miriam is being naive, or anything along those lines that the word may connote, but I do feel that she is distraught and upset enough that she can’t accept what’s happening. She can’t, perhaps doesn’t want to, believe it. *worries incessantly and needlessly*]

All three characters have their “normal” disrupted in this scene. They are presented with a different reality than the one they had known. It dredges up the past: that untrustworthy memory (Aaron), that hopeful memory (Miriam), that subconscious memory (Moses).

[The end of an incomplete — but still really long — draft!]

#the prince of egypt #miriam #aaron #moses #adoption #reunion #new stuff #but it's actually really old stuff!!#poe analysis #my writing #this is... healing ngl #a few annotations added in brackets

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adoringdo · 7 years ago

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EXO Theory Pt. 8 - Time to find the spy!

Hoooboy, I did not expect this mv out so soon, but bless it for coming because I was really struggling with coming up with a solid theory just from the Countdown teasers themselves. (Like, honestly, there was just too much going on, and no real story so I just got a bit overwhelmed tbh!) But anyway, this song is a certified bop, MV is amazing and my boys are gorgeous.

Let’s get into this!

<<– First Part | <- Previous Part | * Theory Masterpost

Sequence of MVs:

MAMA/History/What Is Love - Miracles in December - Romantic Universe - KoKoBop - MAMA 2016 VCR - (Parallel Universe) - Lucky One - Overdose - Love Me Right - Wolf/Growl - Lotto - Coming Over - Pathcodes/Call Me Baby - Monster - Electric Kiss - Sing For You - For Life - (Parallel Universe) - Lightsaber - RF_05 - Power - The Eclipse - MAMA 2016 Performance

So for this one, I’m gonna focus on Xiumin to start. IMO, Xiumin’s the most interesting character initially. The first real thing we see of him is him using a video camera, clearly watching (or even recording) someone.

Later in the MV we see that this person is Sehun.

I’ve spoken a bit before about my theory about Xiumin and Suho (x); Xiu specifically is a character known for archiving the experiences of the members as they fight against the Red Forces in this dream plane. As such, I’ve often linked him with D.O, who’s omniscience allows him to monitor the members closely. Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen Soo and cameras linked often.

However, this is the first time we’ve ever seen Xiu in the monitoring position. In fact, you could even claim their roles in this MV are a little reversed, as we actually see Soo very stagnant in the film room - mostly laying down, or propped up only by TV screens that aren’t displaying actual picture.

I’ll come back to this in a moment, but I do think this will link back with the events of Monster nicely.

Anyway, Xiumin is filming Sehun who is opposite him in the apartment building complex area the members seem to be stationed at.

We see both Sehun and Chanyeol have parts like this where they are very personal with the cameras. However, where Chanyeol’s is quite energetic and crazy, Sehun’s is a little less extreme; he’s quite lazily rolling his neck around, and the whole effect is a little more trippy.

Sehun’s IMO resembles some scenes from the KoKoBop MV... and guess who those scenes belong to?

Good old XiuSoo. Of course, it’s not a direct parallel, but I do think the scene is very reminiscent. And I do remember saying in my KKB post that Xiumin is seen interacting with the KKB pills often in the MV, and one of the members Xiu and the pills are seen with is Sehun.

There’s definitely a connection being made between Xiumin and Sehun. I think I’ll have to look more closely at that on a rewatch because I’m a bit lost to what they’re trying to communicate here.

However, I did place this MV just after the Monster and before the Sing For You MV, the second of which Sehun had a very main role.

Sing For You is not an MV I’ve necessarily spoken about before, because it’s a bit self explanatory imo. But it does link in with Sehun. I’m sure you’ve all read the theories about the loneliest astronaut (represented here by Sehun) and the loneliest whale, and how the two are meeting in this MV. IMO, there’s a little more to Sehun’s role overall in this particular story.

Loneliness is a key theme of the whole video, but Sehun is the loneliest because he literally is alone in this story. Originally Tao was Sehun’s counterpart, but he’s now gone from the story. And then in Lucky One we saw Chen and Sehun put together, but tbh... that doesn’t seem to have stuck at all. So... now he’s all alone.

But SFY is a video of dichotomy; members disappearing and reappearing, fighting and celebrating, anguish and joy. The reason I’ve always had it after Monster is because of the revelation of Baekhyun’s traitor double-spy ending, and it shows the members in SFY coming to terms with that betrayal they thought they were witnessing.

And that’s why it’s such an interesting MV, because it’s showing that even though the members fight and get lonely, they can always depend on each other to fight against the RF. And this is echoed in For Life.

Now I might be in the minority, but For Life is one of my favourite EXO songs I just think it’s so beautiful. And the MV is honestly so good, even though there’s only 3 members in it. But think about those 3 members, and their roles in SFY and Electric Kiss.

It’s no coincidence that Kai is echoing ChanHo’s fight in SFY, and it’s even less of a coincidence that these are the 3 members in FL. Kai is the key to getting the Heart of the ToL, Chanyeol has been often partnered up with Baekhyun (even if that slightly changed in EK) and Suho.. well Suho we know is well and truly secured by the Red Forces, so why is he in the FL MV?

Well, because the whole MV is about Kai giving himself up to the RF. Like a few of the EXO MVs this one ends as it starts, with Kai getting the bracelet and driving off into the red mist. The whole journey the girl goes through with Chanyeol and Suho is cyclical, meaning it keeps repeating until the end event of Kai for real leaving the dream state and being captured IRL is completed.

And this never ending cycle is representative of their entire situation. No matter how hard they fight against the Red Forces as they are, it’s hopeless. Most likely because of the spy.

Now we all know that EXO themselves have told us there’s a spy in the Monster vid, and that this spy is the reason that Baekhyun doesn’t have an orb at the beginning of Power. Electric Kiss is them coming to terms with the likelihood of having an actual spy in their midst, and trying to decide who it is. Baekhyun was cleared at the end of Monster, as he was found to be a double-spy on the side of EXO, so it has to be someone else.

And this is why we have Xiumin watching Sehun, because who’s more likely to be a spy than someone who doesn’t have a partnership with any other of the Guardians?

And let’s be honest, Sehun’s probably the only one who’s not had a real role to play in the overall story, so I’d wager he’s at least a little suspicious to some of the others.

Let’s not forget also the time he almost shot D.O in the Power MV, and just who is he talking to on that radio? And in Coming Over being the only member sans BaekSoo who doesn’t destroy one of the Red Forces controlled cameras.

It’s a little suspect, sure, but I don’t think Xiumin comes to this conclusion of Sehun being the spy, ultimately because of Monster. There’s absolutely nothing in that music video to even cast a doubt on Sehun. So, instead, we should be looking at who is strange in Monster.

IMO there are only two possible candidates once we eliminate Baekhyun: D.O and Chen. First I’ll talk about Soo.

Now I actually made a post about why I thought Soo was the spy from the Monster MV alone (x) so I’ll mainly talk about him in Electric Kiss. In Monster we see Soo clearly watching the members through the use of the security cameras that can be construed to also being the Red Forces eyes through a lot of the MV sequence. In Electric Kiss, we don’t get this. What we get, as I mentioned earlier, is Soo relying on Xiumin to be his eyes instead.

We have a history of seeing Soo and Xiumin in particular in connection to monitors, but this is different as the monitors in question aren’t displaying a picture. And in fact, Soo throughout the whole MV seems to be sort of absent? Like he’s not really doing anything, he’s just by himself (with the exception of a small visit from Xiumin) and he’s lying down covered in tapes. It’s as though he’s kind of been consumed by all his watching and it lead him to the wrong conclusion (Baek) and he’s dejected and given up? Either that or he’s lying low trying to distance himself from the confusion of the spy hunt.

The only other really interesting thing here is the scene with Soo facing off with the woman in the other car who’s pointing a gun at him? Now I have no idea who this person is (I really thought it was Chanyeol cos of the hair colour and the transition into this scene but when I froze it turns out nope haha) but this is a weird scene. It could be insinuating something, but I think we need the full version to really figure this out?

So let’s move on to Chen. Boy do I have a lot to talk about with Chen. When I first watched Monster with the intent of making a theory I was kind of convinced Chen was some sort of traitor or something, but as time went on I started to doubt it and decided he was actually meant to be the good character for some reason. But with Electric Kiss now I’m not so sure.

Throughout a lot of the Countdown teasers there was a particular set of glitchy images that was in almost every teaser. In fact, I think it’s only absent in Suho’s?

The images contain a lot of words in various languages, love, paper, personal, the earth, cloud, so on. One word that’s repeated a lot in these teasers is Flower. I’ll come back to that. The images are important too, we get a lot of nature imagery, the sun, teeth, flowers and most importantly this eye motif is so, so prominent.

See, it’s very in line with the Eye of the Red Forces that we’ve heard referenced a billion times. With this eye, pictured in Kai’s teaser, it’s opening from within a sun which represents Baekhyun, but there’s also lightning striking around it. Now, the lightning can be explained by the title of the song Electric Kiss afterall, but then there’s Chen’s teaser, right?

We have extreme closeups of his eye which transform into weird skull imagery, the sun and a lot of red stuff.

That’s not to say it’s definitive, right, because there’s been Soo imagery throughout the story too. Most significantly in the Pathcodes.

Chen acts very odd in Electric Kiss though. We see him running through a corridor and coming across a weird mannequin.

Many of the images in this sequence above seem eerie. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s appearance of the doll thing, but whatever. Especially the 2nd and 3rd images from above seem to be signifying there’s an importance in these actions. The 5th reminds me of the scene from Monster.

And the first reminds me of Soo from pretty much every MV haha.

Let’s jump back to Monster and Chen for a second though.

This was the first thing that really alerted me to a possible traitor Chen. The way he’s defiantly looking at who’s locking them into the car (Baek) as though he knows exactly what’s going on. Lay looks as well, but I kind of expect Lay to look as he was frantic during the whole MV, probably because the MVs centred on his counterpart being the traitor, right? But why does Chen look like that? And the scene where he’s turning amongst the crowd seems to be signalling a similar kind of look too.

Here, too, when the members sans Baek are sitting at this table, only Chen is standing in the centre with his arms resting on two other members in a kind of controlling kind of way. His overall disposition in this MV is just very strange. It’s kind of similar in Lotto too when he’s not reacting to the police coming at him with guns.

Tbh the only real issue I have with believing Chen is the spy is the motive. Like, he and Soo are meant to be protecting the Tree of Life together; they’re the main guardians. And tbh Chen hasn’t seemed to have any indication of even knowing that Baek is the Heart, so how can he be responsible for the orb being missing at the beginning of Power? At least my thoughts about Soo being the non-intentional spy had the backup of that ‘The War’ poster with Soo shooting at Baek’s orb.

But there’s one last thing I can think of that might incriminate Chen.

Well it might incriminate both Chen and Soo tbh. At the end of Electric Kiss we get this montage with all the members in the room, with the image of the eclipse in the background. Baek’s in the middle, and he seems to have been paired with Kai now... which kind of makes sense, as they’re both integral to escaping or trapping themselves with the RF. XiuHo as always OTP 5ever apparently, and Sehun and Chanyeol are all alone why couldn’t they just be together? But importantly, we have the return of ChenSoo who were the OG main Guardians. Now, in this MV and Monster we’ve kind of seen D.O lose his footing a bit, and Chen acting strange. So why have they decided to pair up again?

Well, if you notice, in the room there are two trees. This again points back to the two halves of the ToL from the beginning that I guess ChenSoo were charged with hiding. Now, while Baek is the heart, there’s probably still some significance to the half of the tree that Chen was looking after, but maybe he resents being left with the less important half? More likely IMO is that if Chen is the spy, it’s similar to Soo’s case, with him not really meaning to be a spy in the first place.

Tbh I dunno. It’s one of those two, or both of them. Either way, this MV is about trying to find out who the spy is, and the RF manipulating them by causing such a dissent.. at least that’s what I got from it. Also there seems to be a race going on judging by Suho with the flag but we need the full version. I’ve watched this MV about 100 times over the past 24 hours and like 10 times in 0.25 speed, the Countdown teasers probably more and I’m still confused so like...yeah. I’ll probably do another post about the others at some point, there’s just so much info haha.

I petition for more EXO in black tracksuits, thanks.

-> Next Part

#EXO #Electric Kiss #EXO Theory #Kpop #EXO Text #MyText #Long Post

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exhuastedpigeon · 7 years ago

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Like a Bob Ross Painting Dex/Nursey Teen 2,863 words

“I can’t believe you still don’t drive,” Will said, trying and failing to keep the fondness from his voice, slowing as they hit traffic on the Whitestone Bridge, “You’re a 28 year old adult.”

“I’ve lived in New York most of my life, I don’t need to drive,” Derek kicked his feet onto the dashboard. If it had been Will’s actual car he might have been annoyed, but it was a rental and Derek was paying for it, so he didn’t say anything.

“Except for times like these,” Will pointed out, “I won’t always be around to drive your ass to our friends weddings.”

“Yeah you will, you’d never leave me, Poindexter,” Derek bat his eyelashes and blew him a kiss, “You’d be lost without me.”

“And you’d be stranded without me,” Will chirped, a smile tugging at his lips.

“It’s been years and you still chirp me,” Derek grinned, “And they say romance is dead.”

Will turned up the music. It had taken a few years of road trips for them to get on the same page, but they discovered that they were both fond of Vance Joy, Shakey Graves, and Blue October. Derek sang softly under his breath as Will drove them out of the city and to Providence for what felt like the 100th time since they graduated 5 years prior.

Read on ao3

He wasn’t sure why they’d car pooled the first time, he hadn’t owned a car and was planning on taking the train, Derek couldn’t drive and was planning on flying, then someone had asked if they were driving together and next thing Will knew Derek was renting them a car and Will was driving them north.

They hadn’t bothered to change it up since then, and honestly, they didn’t need to, it worked well.

Things had changed a lot since they graduated from Samwell, Dex wasn’t shit broke anymore, Chowder played for the Rangers, Nurse was the top copy editor at a small publishing company, they were all doing well. They all tried to get together a couple times a month, but with his NHL schedule Chris couldn’t make it as often as he liked, but Derek and Will never missed a week, and honestly, they rarely missed a day.

The drive from Derek’s Brooklyn apartment to Providence was just under three and a half hours and with the way Will drove they usually got there in about three hours and fifteen minutes. This drive though, Will took his time.

They didn’t technically need to be at the hotel until dinner with the guys at 6 and the drive through New England was beautiful this time of year, he didn't mind taking a little longer to enjoy the view. Plus, the earlier they got there, the longer they'd have to help with wedding stuff and it wasn't that Dex didn't love Bitty and Jack, but he definitely didn't love arts and crafts.

“Yo Will, can we stop here?” Derek asked suddenly, jolting Will from his thoughts.

“I told you to pee before we left,” Will rolled his eyes, but pulled off at a scenic overlook. They were the only ones at the overlook and Will bit back a smile at the way Derek’s eyes lit up.

“The trees match your hair.”

“Oh fuck you,” Will snorted, “The leaves don’t match my hair.”

“They do,” Derek picked up a leaf off the ground and held it up to Will’s hair, “I’m in a forest of beautiful Poindexter hair.”

“You paint such a vivid picture,” Will leaned against the little wooden fence, “Such a wordsmith. Are you, by chance, a poet?”

“Oh fuck you Poindexter, I could write sonnets about your hair,” Derek jumped onto the picnic table, “Odes to your eyes, an epic about my love.”

Will laughed, fighting the flush the threatened to spread across his cheeks, “You, have absolutely no chill.”

“For some reason I lose all my chill around you, William Poindexter,” Derek laughed, “There once was a man named Dex, who dreamed of lot’s of -”

“We’re going to stop there, you’ve rhymed my name with sex enough times to know how that one ends,” Will pushed off the fence and walked back toward the car, “Come one, let’s go. I bet if we get there early Bitty will feed us. You know he’s stress baking as we speak.”

“Think Chow will propose to Cait now that the wedding is almost over,” Derek asked a little while later when they crossed into Rhode Island.

“I’ll be surprised if he makes it back to New York before asking,” Will snorted, “He’s got no chill .”

Derek grinned at him and Will’s stomach swooped, “ You’ve got no chill Poindexter.”

“I never said I did,” Will turned up the music. He was going to spend the entire weekend with Derek at his very best, surrounded by their friends who knew him better than anyone in New York and who brought out Derek's charm, he needed a little time to prepare himself. Every time Derek opened his mouth Will wanted to either kiss him or fight him. Or both. That was something that would probably never change.

It was just that most of their former teammates had settled down or were well on their way to settling down. It was weird seeing Shitty and Lardo with a baby, Ransom married, Holster engaged, hell, even the tadpoles were mostly in serious relationships these days. Everyone but himself and Nursey.

Will dated occasionally, mostly when his coworkers set him up, and it never lasted longer than a few months. He was busy with working at a small but profitable startup, and he’d never say it out loud, but there was also Nursey. He’d probably always harbor a little something for Derek Nurse.

And Nurse would joke that he didn’t need a partner because he already had Dex. So, yeah, they were both single.

“Over/under on Bitty and mama Bittle getting into the Great Jam Fight of 2016 all over again,” Nurse asked as they pulled into Eric and Jack’s driveway.

“She wouldn’t right before the wedding, would she?”

“Only one way to find out,” Derek opened the trunk and grabbed the boxes that they’d brought from New York at Bitty’s request.

The door opened before Will could knock and Jack stood in the doorway, “Oh thank god.”

“Everything okay?” Will asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer. The last time he talked to Bitty on the phone had been three days ago and he’d seemed okay then, but a lot can change in three days.

“Bits was convinced you two would forget to bring the champagne. I told him even if you did, we could buy it here,” Jack waved his hand as if to say, ‘you know Bitty’.

Will and Derek nodded, they did know Bitty.

------

Will took a sip of his beer, smiling at the busser who took his plate away. Bitty had managed to transform the barn where the reception was so that it was barely recognizable. To his right Derek was talking loudly about the rec league hockey team that he and Will played on, to his left Ransom was talking to Holster, loud enough that the table could hear.

“We’re thinking about adoption,” Rans’ smile was soft, the kind of soft that made Will’s heart clench.

“By thinking, Justin means we already have baby coming,” Tater’s smile was so bright Will had to look away. The rest of the table was grinning at Ransom and Tater, “Little Sam get here next week! We even have room done already”

“Bro!” Holster hugged Ransom so hard that Will was sure his head might pop off, “You’re having a baby!”

Before anyone else could jump in, the first dance was announced and they all turned to face the dance floor. Derek leaned his head against Will’s shoulder, “Do you ever feel like everyone else is growing up and starting their lives and we’re just here, two bros who haven’t done any of that yet.”

Will looked at Chowder and Cait, an engagement ring now on her finger, at Ransom and Tater who were adopting a freaking kid, at Holster and Halle, at Shitty and Lardo, little Ella on Shitty lap, “At least we’ve got each other.”

Derek huffed out a laugh, “Sap.”

“Shut up and watch the dancing, asshole,” Dex flicked his arm and Derek grabbed his hand, squeezing it and not letting go. Will felt his heartbeat in his throat, but he didn’t let go of Derek’s hand, he never wanted to.

Bitty and Jack looked so happy, completely wrapped up in each other as they danced to Drunk in Love . It was actually pretty well choreographed, not that anyone was surprised.

The two days that lead up to the wedding had been surprisingly calm on the wedding front. There had, of course, been the usual whirlwind that came with the former Samwell men’s hockey players, but that was familiar, even comfortable.

There hadn’t been any disasters with the centerpieces, with the venue, or with Bitty’s family. Will was pretty sure that had a lot to do with Bob and Alicia Zimmermann keeping things under control, for which he was grateful. It had meant that the team and their respective partners had a chance to just hang out. It felt like the old days between Rans and Holster completing each other’s sentences and Shitty ditching his pants.

Once the dance ended the DJ invited everyone onto the dance floor. Dex allowed himself to be pulled up from his chair by Derek, willing his stomach to stop flipping. He and Nursey were in such a good place now, really good friends, probably best friends if Dex was honest with himself, he didn’t want to ruin that with his unrequited feelings.

“Put a smile on Poindexter,” Derek spun Will around with a laugh, “This is a wedding, it’s a celebration, of love .”

“I’m celebrating plenty,” Will rolled his eyes, but spun Derek around, his heart feeling light.

“Well, now you are,” Nurse grabbed Will’s hand and they danced. Will let himself enjoy it, let himself think that maybe this could be real, that one day maybe this could be them.

Three songs later Dex managed to duck off the dance floor when Derek got pulled into a dance off with Holster and Shitty. He tucked himself against a wall with a drink, watching everyone dancing and laughing.

He was happy being with all his friends, seeing everyone so happy, but he was also a little sad. Well, maybe sad was the wrong word. He was a little melancholy and he didn’t know why. Well, that was wrong too; he knew why. He was glad that everyone else was so happy, he was happy, but he wanted something more. He was tired of pining.

“You’re looking awfully lonely over here Poindexter,” Derek leaned against the wall next to Will, gently bumping their shoulders together. Will barely managed not to jump out of his skin.

“They really managed to capture ‘autumn’ as the theme,” Will looked around the barn, it looked like something off of Pinterest, “Bitty outdid himself.”

“Of course he did,” Nurse leaned against the wall, watching as everyone danced and mingled. Will watched him instead of the other people, “Fall is the most beautiful season after all.”

“You just love it because you love leaves,” Will grinned, bumping his shoulder against Derek’s, feeling a little warm under the collar at the way Derek looked at him, “Fall was always destined to be your favorite.”

“It must be the autumn in your hair, the sunshine that’s somehow been trapped in your eyes, the way you’ve managed to become the embodiment of my favorite season,” Derek’s voice was quiet, his eyes steady as he looked at Will, “Maybe it’s that you’re both the chill in the air and the fire that warms me up, maybe you were always destined to be my favorite.”

There wasn’t anything that Will could say to top that or at all really, but he tried, “So you’re a poet after all.”

“I told you, I could write odes about you,” Derek gave a helpless shrug, like he was starting to regret saying anything at all.

“Well, I’m no poet,” Will stepped a little closer to him, wishing he wasn’t holding a drink, “My feelings tend to manifest in more physical ways.”

“That so?” Derek offered him a smile, but he still looked a little helpless.

“Yeah, like this one time,” Will took a breath to steady himself, “I was so into a guy that I built him an entire bedroom set.”

The smile that spread across Derek’s face lit Will’s heart on fire, “Oh yeah?”

“And this other time, I made him weekly dinners for three years because he’d eat takeout every night if I didn’t,” Will put a hand on Derek’s hip, “But see, he does stuff for me too.”

“Does he now?” Derek put his hand on Will’s shoulder, stepping a little closer to him, invading Will’s space, like he had been for years.

Will squeezed Derek’s hip, “Sure, he drags me out of my comfort, he tells me stories, he makes me smile.”

“You make him smile too,” Derek’s lips quirked up, “So, I’m gonna kiss you now, if that’s chill.”

Will rolled his eyes on instinct, but he was smiling, “Yeah Derek, that’s chill .”

Derek closed the gap between them, his lips soft against Will’s. It was gentle, but it only took Will slipping his hand under Derek’s button down to deepen it. He pinned Derek against the wall, grateful that they were the same height, it made kissing easy.

“Will, fuck Will,” Derek said into the kiss, “God, I’ve wanted to do this forever.”

“Me too,” Will grinned into Derek’s neck, “Only took three weddings for us to get here.”

“Yoooo,” Holster’s voice was too close for comfort, Will looked behind him to see Holster and Random high fiving, “Foiiine.”

“Fines ended when we left the Haus,” Derek laughed, “Go back to your partners, I want to spend some time with mine.”

“Partner huh?” Will’s heart flipped.

“Figure we did it on the ice for four years at Samwell,” Derek shrugged, “It’s a good title.”

“Yeah, yeah it is,” Will wanted to take Derek back to the hotel and solidify the next step of their partnership right now, but Chowder grabbed both of them in a tight hug before he could suggest it quietly to Derek.

“Guys!! You’re together!! Guys!!” Chowder’s smile was as bright as the fucking sun, “I can’t believe you’re finally together!”

“Yeah, who had Jack and Bitty’s wedding in the pool?” Lardo asked with a smirk.

Shitty pulled out a little notebook, “That would be, Jack.”

“Jack?” Ransom and Holster said at the same time. Some things never change.

“Wait, you guys bet on if we’d get together?” Will asked, feeling Derek’s hand in his and squeezing it.

No one looked ashamed of themselves, which wasn’t surprising at all if he was honest with himself. Bitty and Jack walked over to their little corner of the barn, “Actually, we bet on when y’alled get together, not if.”

“When, not if,” Derek smiled, “Like fate.”

“Well, Dex does make you dinner twice a week, and you play hockey together one night a week, and you go out together at least once a week,” Chowder said like he was explaining something to a kindergartener, “It just seemed kind of inevitable.”

“Yeah, that seems fair,” Derek nodded and they all laughed. Will felt like that last piece of himself was finally clicking into place.

------

“It feels like we’re driving through a Bob Ross painting,” Derek grinned lacing his fingers through Will’s as they drove back to New York the afternoon after the wedding. They’d gotten a bit of a late start, it had been hard to pull themselves out of the hotel room.

“It’s really beautiful,” Dex kissed Nurse’s knuckles, pulling into the next rest stop. He’d been planning on stopping soon anyway, he wanted to see Nurse’s smile at the leaves again, it lit up his entire face.

“You beautiful fucker,” Nurse got out of the car and took a deep breath. There was the smile that Will had been hoping for, it made him feel lighter just looking at it.

“You sound like Shitty,” Will laughed, “Don’t make me feel like stopping was a mistake.”

“There are no mistakes, Poindexter, just happy accidents,” Derek grabbed a handful of leaves and threw them in the air with a grin.

“Are you a happy tree?” Dex asked, not even trying to hide his smile.

“Of course I am, I’m with you,” Nurse picked up more leaves and dropped them on Dex’s head before running away yelling, “They matched your hair, I couldn’t resist.”

“I’m not a fucking Bob Ross painting Nursey,” Dex ran after him with a laugh, tackling him into a pile of leaves with a dull thud.

“Coulda fooled me,” Nurse leaned up and kissed him, “Meeting you was the happiest accident of my life.”

Dex smiled into the kiss. Yeah, it was a pretty happy accident.

#dexnursey #nurseydex #check please #omg check please #omgcp fic #omg cp #william poindexter #Derek Nurse #nursey/dex #nursey x dex #nurseydex fic #check please fic

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caveartfair · 7 years ago

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This Photographer Envisioned a Fierce Army of Girls, Forging Their Own Paths

Justine Kurland, The Wall, 2000. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Throughout her career, photographer Justine Kurland has trained her lens on divergent subjects both documentary and staged: young girls, nude mothers, men at auto body shops. Across her work, there’s a muted sense of romance, of both gritty desire and desperation. Kurland relishes gravel, fences, dead animals, cell phone towers, broken windows, and car engines. Now a mother herself, she’s ultimately outgrown the label that once reductively described her young, female cohort who captured even younger women on rolls of film: “girl photographers.”

Just over 20 years ago, Kurland began photographing young women both in tough, urban settings and more idyllic, secluded locales. The subjects in this series, simply titled “Girls,” rest against one another outside a bleak Toys ‘R’ Us, sit beneath an underpass, roast an animal over an open flame, and gather along rivers or in wooded clearings. They torture boys, eat ice cream, and play cards. The 69 career-launching images, made between 1997 and 2002, are now on view all together for the first time (as vintage prints)at Mitchell Innes & Nash—they’re only for sale as a complete set, transforming the individual images into a larger event.

Justine Kurland, Bathroom, 1997. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Kurland began the series when she was a graduate student at Yale, where she studied under Gregory Crewdson and Laurie Simmons. Her relationship with Simmons extended beyond the classroom: “I remember how thrilling it was to share cigarettes with her on the back staircase, to hear her talk about her work and break the no-smoking rule together,” Kurland tells Artsy via email. “Her attention repaired some of the confidence that had broken during my time in the program.”

Simmons also introduced her to her babysitter, Lily. Kurland began photographing Lily and her friends in staged scenarios around what she calls “interstitial sections of Brooklyn.” Kurland gave them minimal direction, though her shots suggest that they’re runaways, both fierce and independent. Of all the stereotypical roles a teenage girl could occupy, Kurland believed that this was the most hopeful—“there’s a potential to find a world in which they belong,” she explains.

In 1999, a year after Kurland graduated from Yale, Crewdson included her work in a group show at Van Doren Waxter, entitled “Another Girl, Another Planet.” All but one of the 12 exhibited artists were women, and most of the included work featured adolescent girls, simultaneously tough and vulnerable. Along with a few of her co-exhibitors, including Katy Grannan, Dana Hoey, and Malerie Marder (all fellow Yale grads), Kurland earned a reputation as a “girl photographer.”

Justine Kurland, Making Happy, 1998. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

In one of the “Girls” photographs, Making Happy (1998), Kurland captures a rusty, beat-up car parked near barren trees and a graffiti-laden underpass. A Budweiser billboard looms in the background, while trash and leaves litter the nearby brush. Upon closer inspection, we see two entangled bodies in the back of the vehicle, ostensibly in the middle of “making happy.”

Indeed, a steady undercurrent of sex runs throughout the entire series. Shortly after completing the series, Kurland began dating women as well as men. “For the last three years I’ve been madly in love with a woman I feel lucky to call my partner,” she tells Artsy. “Looking back at the ‘Girl’ pictures it’s hard not to read the homoerotic subtext of these pictures as my optical unconscious.”

Kurland hopped continents in 2001, photographing girls again, but this time, across the New Zealand landscape. The settings there were more lush, the girls often clothed in school uniforms. She returned to the United States and spent the next 12 years on the road, traveling in a green Chevy Astro minivan. Her models were naked women or members of communes. The resulting images often depicted strange feminist utopias.

Justine Kurland, Kung Fu Fighters, 1999. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Then, in 2004, Kurland gave birth to a son. She named him Casper, inspired by the painter Caspar David Friedrich, who rendered one of art history’s most famous wanderers, staring out at the fog. Reluctant to abandon her itinerant life, Kurland took her son on the road; sometimes, he even became her subject matter. She captured him in their van, lying on a picnic table, climbing a dusty ledge. Kurland recalls him telling her: “Mama, you’re a photographer so you can go on road trips.” Indeed, her work required a certain bohemian vagrancy, constant movement in order to capture—paradoxically—“stills.” While the photographer’s themes evolved beyond adventure-seeking youth, a certain wildness was still pervasive.

As Kurland adjusted to life as a new mother, she turned her lens on women undergoing the same life-altering experiences. In her series “Mama Baby” (2004–07), pregnant women and young mothers cavort nude in idyllic landscapes: on a misty beach, in a sunlit forest, in snowy mountains.

If Kurland’s van had been integral to her art practice, her son developed an affection for another kind of vehicle: trains. She recalls how, at two years old, his obsession led the pair to visit railroad museums and trespass on railroad property. Her series “This Train is Bound for Glory” (2007–11) captured boxcars and the vagrants who hitched rides on them across the open American landscape. Many of the photographs were shot from a long range, making them more about the scenic environment than the locomotives themselves.

Road Bunnies, 2012, . Justine Kurland Aperture Foundation

280 Coup, 2012. Justine Kurland Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Justine Kurland, Flashlight, 1999. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Untitled, Spoon, 2016. Justine Kurland Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Justine Kurland, Girls in Sand, 2002. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Justine Kurland, Clothes make the man, Desert scene, 2001. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Beginning in 2011, Kurland zoomed in. Her next series, “Sincere Auto Care” (2011–15), focused on cars and the mechanics who fixed them. Many of these shots offer granular detail. She highlights the musculature and tattoos that define a man’s body, or the precise inner workings of an engine. After all those years depicting women, Kurland’s son, in part, inspired her to turn her artistic vision toward American masculinity. She even titled one of these photographs What Casper Might Look Like if He Grew Up to be a Junkie in Tacoma (2013). Her concerns about children’s opportunities and expectations had become deeply personal.

An era, however, was ending. Around 2010, Kurland’s van was totalled. She enrolled Casper in elementary school. Even if her work isn’t autobiographical in the traditional sense, the story she’s written for herself has become a dreamy, though fraught, adventure tale. It ends—as many such narratives do—in her own backyard. Within the past few years, Kurland has turned toward her past. Now, she’s shooting around her hometown of Fulton, New York. “The town’s economic depression underscored a psychological depression I felt growing up there,” she says. “In many ways, my road trips were about putting as much distance between Fulton and myself as I could. I decided to go back to see what I was running from.”

In recent work, Kurland returns to more intimate sites, as well. She photographed her mother à la Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde; her dead father’s artwork (he was a painter); and a series that involves strap-ons (including a self-portrait that shows her wearing one at an ex’s house).

Justine Kurland, Broadway (Joy), 2001. © Justine Kurland. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

These later pictures meditate on many of the same themes evident, if more quietly, in “Girls”: sexuality; the intersection of mood and place; childhood. The series, though slightly tinged with a late-1990s grunge sensibility, is still haunting. Kurland confides that Lily—whom she photographed decades ago—died 10 years after she took her picture. Kurland found out while she was driving, her son sitting next to her in his carseat. She withholds the particulars of the tragedy, but tells Artsy that “for months afterward I would have panic flashes imagining the horrific last moments of her death. Had she been scared? Had she been in pain? I imagined her fighting to live. Out of pure narcissism I blamed myself for not saving her, that had after all been my mission with these pictures.”

Kurland stresses the importance of revisiting this work in our contemporary political climate. “I pictured a standing army of girls united in solidarity, outside the margins of home or institution, working together to build a community that foregrounded their experience as primary and irrefutable,” she says. “These photographs were a call to action, then as now.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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jennifuryz · 4 years ago

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Dear Beverly Cleary,

I had been meaning to write to you for 41 years. Now it is too late.

You would have been 105 today, had you survived another 18 days.

I am not sure why I put off writing to you. As a child I was rather forgetful and disorganized. As an adult, I suppose I was waiting to get my own books published so I could tell you how much of an influence you and your books had been on me and how, even as a child, they gave the desire to be a writer myself. Unfortunately, I have yet to be published. But you were still an influence on my life. Like you, I started out as a librarian.

Forty-five years ago I was introduced to Ramona Quimby when my mother read “Ramona and the Three Wise Persons” in the Stories for Free Children section of Ms. Magazine. My mother told me about how she read about Ramona when she was a little girl. About a year later I met Ramona, Beezus, and Henry Huggins again in a story in my reading book. By fourth grade, I was already a huge fan of your books. I knew by then I wanted to be a writer myself.

One of my absolute favorites was Socks. It was hard to find good cat stories in those days. I loved Socks so much I read the entire book out loud to my cat. Twenty-three years later, my son was born and my own cat, Prince Beast, was put out by having a baby take over his home. Our other cat and dog were fascinated by the baby, but Princie refused to look at him and put his ears back when I talked to the baby in the voice I used to use for my cat. But when my son was nearly a year old, he started to notice the pets. Our other cat now avoided the baby because he did not like being grabbed, but Princie, who enjoyed roughhousing, was delighted. Suddenly this baby went from being a rival for attention to a source of attention. From then on they were best friends. Princie slept in my son’s room, joined him in playing in his play tent, and supervised him when he played with his friends. When his baby brother arrived, Princie immediately accepted him into the family. When my son was in third grade, he read Socks as a reading assignment and I told him about how he and Prince once had a relationship similar to that of Socks and Charles William.

I read and loved all the Ramona books. When I would laugh out loud, my little brother would ask me what was so funny and I would just say, “Ramona.” I was always thrilled when a new book came out. I was in fifth grade when Ramona and her Mother was published. When I found it on the shelf in the book store, I started reading the first chapter. I got so caught up in reading that I forgot myself until it was 5:00 and the store started turning the lights out. A few days later I returned to the store with the five dollars I got for my birthday so I could buy the book. I was disappointed to learn that the book cost seven dollars and I did not have enough money. But the store clerk said I could put it on layaway. The next week I demanded that my parents give me my allowance (which they often forgot to do.) Then I raced back down to the bookstore and I bought and read my book.

In middle school, I still loved reading your books, even though my mother pointed out that I was getting too old for them. So I bought paperback copies of all the Henry Huggins and the Ramona books and read them out loud to my little brother. He loved them just as much as I did.

Ramona and her friends and family became real to my family. We often made references to your books. When driving, we felt the need to point out “big, hairy men on motorcycles.” We referred to anyone who took things literally as “a Howie.”

When I was in eighth grade, my father lost his job. I went back and read Ramona and her Father as bibliotherapy. In high school, I was secretly reading children’s books behind my mother’s back. My mother was worried. But she told me several years later, when I was devoted to my job as a school librarian, that she realized she really had not had anything to worry about.

I realized in high school that I wanted to write children’s books, but I also learned that few authors are able to write for a living and most authors have other jobs and write for a hobby. So I decided to become an elementary school teacher. At the University I took a class on children’s literature and loved it so much that I decided to get my Master’s Degree in Library Science. I got my first school library job in 1996. I made sure that our library had all of your books (with the exception of the young adult books) and also ordered the set of videos from the Ramona TV series.

In 2000 I found out you had written one more Ramona book. I drove to the nearest children’s book store and asked for a copy but was disappointed to find out they didn’t have it in yet. They did order me a copy. As I drive home feeling disappointed at having to wait to read it, I felt a sense of deja vu. Exactly 20 years earlier, I had walked home from the book store feeling disappointed that I had to wait to save up money to buy Ramona and her Mother. Now I was feeling disappointed that I had to wait longer to read Ramona’s World.

One thing I always wanted to do as a child was travel to Portland so I could see all the places mentioned in your books. I finally had the opportunity in 2001, just before I turned 32. During Spring Break I visited a friend in Seattle and one day my husband and I rented a car and drove to Portland. I found the real Klickitat Street. It did not look the way I had pictured it when I read the books, although 37th Street did. I took pictures of your house. We went to Grant Park and took pictures of the Beverly Cleary sculpture garden and my husband took a picture of me with Ramona. We also drove to Yamhill so I could see the town and farm where you lived as a young child. When I got home, I put the pictures in an album and showed it to all my students. One boy told me I was lucky that I got to go there and see those places. I reminded him that I had to wait a couple decades before I was able to do so.

I did everything I could to encourage my own children to be readers. But they did not share my love of books, especially the younger one, who struggled with ADHD and Dyslexia. He was a fan of motorized dirt bikes. When I told him that your son did not like to read and was interested in motorcycles, he did not believe me at first.

Sadly, I lost my beloved school library job in 2012, thanks to State budget cuts. I really missed my job on April 12, 2016, when I would have loved to plan a big event to celebrate your hundredth birthday. I did go to the public library to see if they had anything planned, but sadly, they did not.

I still want to write children’s books. I have written several and have been trying for 22 years to find a publisher, but still have had no luck. But whether I get published or not, I want to thank you for the influence you have had on my life. Thank you for the books and characters that seemed so real to me that they became my friends. Thank you for giving me a love for children’s literature that led to my career as a teacher and a librarian, and I am hoping to be able to rekindle that career someday soon.

Your devoted fan always,

Jennifury Z.

April 12, 2021

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1dreality · 7 years ago

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It must have been well over a year ago now, when Liam Payne realised he had absolutely nothing interesting to say. The singer, known to most as ‘Liam from One Direction’ until the group’s indefinite hiatus in January 2016, had returned to the studio, settled into the idea of being a solo artist for the rest of his days, and promptly drawn a blank. He was, he says, just too darned happy to think of anything.

Everything in his life had fallen into place. He’d found love, moving in with Cheryl (formerly Cole), a fellow junior royal of the Top 40. Their first child, a son named Bear, was well on the way. He had signed a huge record deal with Capitol. He felt fitter and healthier than he had in years. And, yes, there’s no denying it: he was pretty pleased that he no longer had to be in the biggest boyband in the world.

‘I had a bit of a problem formulating what was going on in my brain into the music at first,’ he says, ‘because I was so content with everything in my personal life. It’s easy to spill your guts out on a ballad. But I was thinking, “Oh God, I’m really happy – what am I going to write about?!”’

More than 12 months on, the answer to that question still isn’t entirely clear. Payne’s debut album, as yet untitled, won’t be released until early 2018. There have been two singles, though, with a third, the unsubtly titled Bedroom Floor, arriving next month.

Of those we’ve heard, the first, Strip That Down, a R&B-inflected club hit released in May and co-written with Ed Sheeran, marked a departure from One Direction’s stadium pop-rock. It was also chock-full of hoary by-the-way-I’m-an-adult-now signposts: there are references to nightclubs, drinking rum and coke, driving Ferraris and having girls ‘grind’ on him. And mixed in with all that were lyrics that caused a minor stir among his acolytes: ‘You know I used to be in 1D, now I’m out, free / people want me for one thing, that’s not me’. Payne, it seems, is keen to reintroduce himself.

‘When I left the band, I felt a bit stranded,’ he says, when we meet in an enormous boardroom at his management’s offices. ‘It took time, but I know as an artist I am starting fresh now.’ He slaps the table with melodrama. ‘This is Moment One. It’s the start line.’

Liam Payne is 24 years old. He is athletically built, as anyone who has seen his shirtless Instagram posts will know, and kind of everyday handsome, in a Love Island, former-youth-footballer way. Both his arms and hands are almost entirely upholstered in tattoos, highlights of which include some thick black arrows on one forearm that look like road markings; the number ‘4’, in reference to One Direction’s 2014 album of the same name, on his ring finger; and, on his left arm, a scale depiction of Cheryl’s eye, that appears to follow you around the room as he gesticulates. ‘It’s so my missus can always keep an eye on me,’ he likes to say about that one.

He is impossibly nice. Before we meet, he plods through the office, saying hello to everybody in the building individually, and in most cases remembering something about them: that they beat him at Fifa last time he dropped by, so they must have a rematch before he leaves (‘I’ll whoop ya with West Brom!’), or they’ve surely had a haircut, haven’t they? (‘It looks really great anyway, man!’). It is the manner of somebody both impeccably raised and intensely keen for people to like him, and it appears genuine and successful.

To an extent, Payne says, the five members of One Direction – or four, after Zayn Malik left the band in 2015 – ended up playing characters over the six years they were together. Whereas the Beatles (arguably the only other group with a comparable scale and speed of world domination), grew increasingly cantankerous towards the end of the 1960s, One Direction stuck resolutely to the caricatures that fans and management assigned them right to the end.

Malik was brooding and mercurial, Harry Styles was a cool, flamboyant ladies’ man, Niall Horan was charming and laid-back, and Louis Tomlinson, who has since admitted to feeling a little redundant, was fun and energetic. And Payne? Well, Payne was The Responsible One.

‘I’ve always been a bit of an older soul,’ he says, mulling over his place. ‘It’s funny: there’s a thing on the net where the fans put what they think are our mental ages. All the boys were around their real ones, but then they put me at about 37.’

Payne admits to feeling a little daunted in 2010, when Simon Cowell thrust the band together on X Factor after they’d auditioned as solo artists. Keeping up with the other personalities in the gang was exhausting, so his coping mechanism was to attempt to rein them in as best he could, and work with management in doing so. Like the popular schoolboy teachers identify as mature enough to be a trusted emissary for his recalcitrant friends, Payne carved himself a valuable niche.

‘I was put with a group of rowdy teenagers, and when I was a teenager, I had mates, but I was always with my dad. I’d go out to the pub and chat with him. So when I was stuck with these boys I was thinking, “F— me, I don’t know how to do it.”

‘When something was going wrong, I’d get a phone call. If there was an apology needed, it was me. I was the spokesperson for the band, as it were, with the press and the label.’

Along with Tomlinson, Payne shares comfortably the most writing credits of the band on One Direction songs. Over their five albums, dozens of songwriting collaborators contributed to the group’s success, but it seems nobody worked harder than the two least-heralded members. Neither was the showiest or best singer; but they kept things ticking over.

One Direction’s hordes of fans around the world noticed the assumed roles, and nicknamed Payne ‘Daddy Directioner’. He lived up to it with them, too. In 2013, on tour in Australia, Payne tweeted a message to warn girls waiting outside the band’s hotel of snakes living in the surrounding fields. ‘It’s just not worth it someone’s gunna get hurt [sic],’ he pleaded.

Two years later, he gave an interview lamenting the fact he and the other boys were being sent sexually explicit pictures of themselves drawn by underage admirers. While the rest of the band seemed to find that funny, Payne called it ‘the sad and sorry side of what we’ve done.’ Yeah, all right, Dad.

Becoming a real-life father has at least given the nickname some purchase. Rumours swirled at the end of 2015 that he had started dating Cheryl – formerly Fernandez-Versini and Cole, née Tweedy – after her second marriage ended in divorce. By the next summer, she was pregnant with the second One Direction baby (Tomlinson, the eldest of the bunch, had one first).

The couple live in a mansion near Woking, Surrey, and aren’t married, but he considers them ‘basically at that stage’. Bear, with whom Payne is besotted, was born in March, and named for the growling noises he was making during his first sleeps. So far, no photographs have been released, but he instantly shows me one on his phone. And here, I can exclusively reveal that the heir Bear is – as you’d expect of a baby with that name, born of two professionally good-looking parents – very cute.

‘We’ve only shown him in glimpses,’ Payne says, explaining their decision to shield him. ‘We don’t want him to have the pressure that me and Cheryl have, as household names. We want him to enjoy himself first and then figure it out.’

Born and raised in Wolverhampton, Payne has an unexpectedly thick Midlands accent that gets thicker the longer he talks – which is a lot. His preferred conversational feature is the anecdote, resulting in a version of the phrase, ‘I remember, there was this one time…’ prefixing the majority of his utterances, which are in turn regularly punctuated with singular handclaps of self-incredulity. It can be mildly alarming, like interviewing a young, heavily-tattooed Ronnie Corbett, but I suppose it speaks to the amount of life experience he has already accrued.

Growing up, Payne’s father, Geoff, worked as a fitter, while his mother, Karen, was a nursery nurse. Money was tight and the house small, but he remembers it as a happy one.

‘My place was on the floor with the dog, there was no space on the sofa. It was great, though we didn’t have much. Dad was in debt, but they did the best they could. It makes you dream a bit, you know?’

As a child, he had two routes to possible stardom, both of which Geoff pushed hard for. One was singing, the other was long-distance running. For a time in his teens, Payne was one of the fastest 1500m runners in the country, getting up to train before school and seconds from qualifying for the London 2012 squad. It was before that, as a 14-year-old in 2008, that he first applied for X Factor.

Auditioning with Fly Me To The Moon, since it was one of the few songs he could manage while his voice was breaking, that year he got as far as the ‘judge’s houses’, before Simon Cowell told him to come back in two years and try again. He became a mini-celebrity back home in that between-period, and carried on performing around town. The adulation was short-lived, though.

Once, performing a Justin Timberlake cover at an under-18s gig in Oceana Wolverhampton, somebody lobbed a coin at his face and managed to draw blood. He laughs about it now. These days – admittedly a largely cashless society – it’s only bras and knickers they fling.

‘I had become less and less famous. One time, I was in McDonald’s with a girlfriend and someone shouted ‘X Factor reject!’ at me. The whole restaurant turned. It was like coming out of fame. So I knew what it was like at 15, and it helped me.’

Following Cowell’s advice, he returned to X Factor in 2010 and found himself shoved into One Direction with the four other boys, eventually finishing the competition in third place, but with easily the brightest future. Within weeks, he had moved out of his Wolverhampton bedroom and into a penthouse apartment in Canary Wharf.

And six years later, One Direction had sold more than 20 million records, become the first band in history to have their first four albums go to number one in the US, touring the world numerous times, and earned a preposterous amount of money in the process. Payne is now estimated to be worth £40 million. He hasn’t been back to Wolverhampton in a long time, but he paid off his father’s debts years ago, and bought his parents a new house in addition to funding the renovation of their family home. He refers to his time spent in One Direction as ‘like uni’.

When they were in the thick of things, all the boys used to obey Cowell’s omertà – relentless enthusiasm at all times, please – and never discussed any negative aspects of their experience. Now safely out the other side, Payne is frank on matters of burnout and claustrophobia.

‘Cabin fever. It sent me a bit AWOL at one point, if I’m honest. I can remember when there were 10,000 people outside our hotel. We couldn’t go anywhere. It was just gig to hotel, gig to hotel. And you couldn’t sleep, because they’d still be outside,’ he says, before telling several stories of how he and Tomlinson would sneak out of hotels just to feel freedom, only to find themselves bored once they got out.

‘People were speaking to me about mental health in music the other day, and that’s a big issue. Sometimes you just need some sun, or a walk.’

Every stop on tour became the same. Earlier this year, Payne was asked which was his favourite city of those he visited with One Direction. ‘One in Italy with a big white cathedral,’ he responded.(The band performed in Milan at least five times.)

‘One of the problems was that we never stopped to celebrate what we’d done. I remember us winning loads of American Music Awards and then having to get on a plane straight away. It got to the point where success was so fluid. I don’t even know what happened to our songs, we just sang them, then sang some more. It was like a proper, hard job. Non-stop. I can concentrate a lot more now.’

The paparazzi and fan attention sounds just as draining. It must feel weird having a Twitter following larger than the population of Australia, as he does, but especially odd to have fans so obsessed that they’ve set up multiple fake profiles pretending to be your mother, for some reason.

Moreover, footage of One Direction out and about makes A Hard Day’s Night look tame: thousands of screaming fans all over them, police escorts everywhere they went, an unending run of selfie requests... It came to a head in New York in 2012, when Payne was walking to a restaurant with his parents and a paparazzo accidentally pushed his mother over. He was incensed.

‘I was like, “Oh, f— this. F— this s—t.” There was a swarm of them and I just wanted a burger with my parents,’ he says, unsmiling for a moment. ‘I cried my eyes out. I thought, “I can’t do this”, and really hated my life.’

He soldiered on, but it wasn’t a healthy lifestyle; none of them seems to miss it now the ‘break’ is on.

‘It’s great that people can see what we’re really like away from each other,’ Payne says. ‘It got to a point in the band where we were just playing characters, and I was tired of my character. Apart from the daddy thing, I was really loud and bubbly. There were a lot of personalities in the band to keep up with, so I had to be all, ‘Ey!’, the rowdy lad, and I don’t have to now.’

There were times when the band would celebrate hard, and in that, Payne had catching up to do: as a child, he was diagnosed with a scarred kidney, meaning he didn’t taste alcohol until he was given the all-clear at 19. Tell a teenage millionaire they can now safely drink, and they’ll go for it. He admits ‘the floodgates opened’ that year.

‘I wasn’t happy. I went through a real drinking stage, and sometimes you take things too far. Everyone’s been that guy at the party where you’re the only one having fun, and there were points when that was me. I got to 13 stone, just eating crap. I got fat jibes, and it affects your head. I have nothing to hide about it…

‘As I say, it was like a musical university. We were pretty reckless, but I got it out of my system. I had my fun.’

The hiatus seems to have come at just the right time. But before he could take a breath, Payne lurched on in life, becoming involved with Cheryl almost at once.

Nobody asks how they met; their introduction is on YouTube for all to see. Ten years his senior, she was an X Factor judge in 2008 when the 14-year-old Payne shuffled in, all mop-hair and waistcoat, to perform his Sinatra number. He winked at her, she called him ‘cute’, they bumped into one another over the years, ended up working on a remix of one of her songs in 2014, and the rest is recent pop history.

Not everybody was happy when the relationship was initially confirmed. That Cheryl was in a quasi-pastoral role when they met raised eyebrows in the usual eyebrow-raising camps, as did the couple’s decade-wide age gap. Liam doesn’t care. In fact, he can still barely get over the fact she’s his girlfriend.

‘It’s a ridiculous place to be in,’ he says. ‘She’s even more amazing than I thought. I was watching her do Fight For This Love [her debut solo single, from 2009] when I was a kid, and now we’re together with a kid. I feel like I’m X Factor’s biggest winner.’

It helps having Cheryl around to ask about business matters. Like Payne, she was scouted on a TV pop contest (2002’s Popstars: The Rivals), had massive success in a group (Girls Aloud), and then went solo with a more urban sound. She is also the unlikely possessor of the record for number-one singles by a British woman.

‘We think about the same things. She understands what my life is like. She knows what it’s like to sit on the Graham Norton couch [or] we can talk about her L’Oréal work. It’s not that we’re “a brand” as a family, but we can help each other.’

In Who We Are, one of One Direction’s seven books, published in 2014, Payne writes in his chapter that he’s ‘worried about the idea of failing outside of this band’ and declared he’d become a low-key songwriter, because ‘there would be less attention on my life’.

The opposite of that is what’s happening, I inform him.

‘Yeah, that was a point when I was scared of our success, and we didn’t want to take a step back from it,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to be a songwriter and not be famous, but happy. Then Simon and Cheryl told me this is where I am supposed to be, and I’d miss the stage. The pressure of what was coming next was scary, but they talked me down.’

The solo product he’s come up with is the sort of music he’d always wanted to make: radio-friendly R&B in the style of his heroes, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Pharrell Williams, and more informed by the rap music he listens to than the pop he’s famous for. Who knows if he can shake the ‘embarrassing dad’ brand to pull it off, but the signs point to success. Strip That Down has been streamed more than 300 million times on Spotify alone.

‘I wanted this to be for people my age. The themes are a bit older, but you have to grow up with your fans. I can’t make bubblegum pop any more,’ he says.

One Direction fans needn’t despair. They might have dispersed and almost all signed elsewhere, but Payne is excited about the idea of a comeback gig in years to come. As, I’m sure, are the band’s accountants.

But that won’t be for a little while, if Payne has it his way, because – as he keeps on telling me – he is just far too happy with his lot at the moment to take a step backwards. When it reaches our time to wrap up, he’s still at it.

‘I feel great about what’s going on in my life,’ he says, giving it one last handclap and springing to his feet. ‘I’m extremely lucky. I feel like I’m in a comatose dream. I’m like, “when did I last bump my head?” because I can’t believe this…’

Liam Payne’s next single, Bedroom Floor, is out on 20 October

#liam payne #liam's solo project #liam's promo #liam for the telegraph #liam & cheryl #dad liam #baby payno #1d hiatus or split?#liam about 1d #liam about simon #liam's album #Wow Liam could have been an Olympian... That's pretty impressive #That was a great interview where he finally let go and was honest. The guy must have had so much pressure while in the band #reading this once again reaffirms that what Zayn said first and was hated for has been corroborated by other members now that they are solo #I hope that fans realize now that people see what you write about them or hear about it.. Poor guy he must have felt like shit when people #were making fun of his weight.. Or every single time fans tweeted at him in outrage for something problematic. Like these boys are human #Also him kind of letting you know listen what you saw onstage while there was a bit of us in there it was mostly characters that we had to #keep on playing....Also him talking about the lack of recognition even though him and Louis had the most songwriting credits #Him confirming that the 4 his for their album FOUR which I guess holds a special place in his heart #And he reiterates that he is in a period of his life where he is blissfully happy. He has a child with a partner that understands & support #him and it looks like he has found what he wants to do career wise and is getting his footing as a soloist #Interestingly enough in this interview he is letting you know that the reunion if it overcomes it's not going to be anytime soon

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never-not-ever · 7 years ago

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2017/1 year anniversary with my girlfriend

How We Met

So I actually met my girlfriend on OkCupid when I was down here at my Aunts house last January. I love visiting my Aunt and we do hang out and go places but there’s also a lot of down time. So last year when I was down here I was bored and made an online dating account. At first it was just guys but I got pretty bored of that and started thinking how a lot of the guys weren’t my type and then I was questioning what my type even was and what gender too! So I decided to switch my “looking for” to women and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I started talking to Andrea and I remember it all so clear and it’s so crazy to be back in this bedroom where it all began. Laying on this very bed where I stayed up late talking to this amazing woman. It sounds cliche and I don’t know how but I stumbled across Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko and that was literally my anthem for that month. I mean come on the song was perfect for me. It was like my own little cheerleader in the background telling me that what I was doing was okay except I didn’t need anyone to tell me it was okay because I knew in my heart that it was perfectly okay and perfectly normal. We started talking on January 13th. I left WV and took the Amtrak train home to Boston on January 16th and that day I heard her voice for the first time. I remember it like it was yesterday! I was on the train and getting closer and closer to Boston. We were so giddy and nervous to talk on the phone but looking back it was the cutest thing. That night we talked on the phone for 2 hours. I met her the next day on January 17th and almost a week later we made it official. January 23rd, 2017.

2017

January

So the rest of the month is a blur. Lots of dates and hanging out. Meeting her family etc. Her meeting my gm. This month should have been filled with pure joy but there was also heartache. This also happened to be the month I had a fall out with my two ex-best friends. Not going to go into specifics, just that it was very painful and very toxic.

February

Our first Valentine’s Day! I bought her flowers and she stuck post it notes around her room with little reasons why she loved me or little fun facts about us. I think it was after Valentine’s Day where I started working more and more in the Florist. I’ve been at my job for almost 8 years now and I’d always help out in the florist around the holidays but this year I moved to that department permanently. February is also the month her parents go away so I basically stayed at her house all the time! They have a 16 year old dog and Andrea works a lot and couldn't take her out all the time so her sister moved home for the month and since I was always there I grew closer to her sister during this month.

March

Nothing too grand and exciting.

April

We went on our first vacation to Virginia Beach and it was so much fun. Our hotel room was amazing and right on the beach! The weather was perfect and we did so much. I’d love to go back again because it was just a great time filled with lots of memories! I started talking to one of my ex-friends around this time too.

May

Birthday month! My first birthday in years were I didn’t wish to be dead when I blew out the candles. Sounds dramatic but I’m not joking. We spent the day together and I saved a baby squirrel from a rest stop parking lot. Ruined my “Normal People Scare Me” hoodie by wrapping the little guy up in it who was covered in fleas and bugs. I also started talking to the other ex-friend again but it just wasn’t the same. I think by this month I was officially a florist clerk! Besides meeting Andrea, switching departments at my job made my year. I became so much more happier and cheerful at work. I also went to my first wedding (since I was a kid which I don’t even remember!). It was a waterfront wedding and amazing. I’ll always remember that night! I wore a dress for the first time since prom!

June

I went to London!! It wasn’t as long as I would have liked but it was amazing!! I could honestly see myself living there. I went with my cousin and my uncle who was on a business trip. It was the highlight of my Summer. Went to another wedding. It wasn’t as nice as the first one but it was still a great time! It was out in western Mass and we slept overnight at a nearby hotel. The next morning me and Andrea decided to take a drive down to NYC. It was spontaneous and I loved it even though we got there around suppertime and didn’t get to do much. It was still a good time!

July

Andrea’s family has a huge 4th of July BBQ and that was a pretty great day! I wore another dress lol! My old friends came and we all hung out and played games and then watched the fireworks on a dock in the water. It was so nice to have everyone together but that was the first and last time it ever happened. A strange and mysterious thing happened this month. A baby kitten was found in my front entrance. You see, to get in my house you have to go up a flight of stairs and open not only a storm door but a regular door as well. That brings you to a little square hallway where we keep the mail and theres two more doors-one leads to the second floor where I live with my gm and the other is for the first floor where my uncle lives. We keep the mail on a little set of shelves in that hallways and one morning my gm was taking my dog out and there was a kitten sitting on the bottom shelf! We named her Delilah and kept her and she’s been a part of the family ever since.

August

This month was a blur. Nothing big and exciting happened. Met my new psychiatrist and started preparing to say goodbye to my therapist whom I would be terminating with in the next month.

September

Went on our second vacation together to D.C. My body image was crap and it kind of sorta ruined the trip cause I was always so self conscious being in public and stuff. In the end it was still nice just being able to get away and spend time alone. It was Andrea’s birthday and I made her a collage of our pictures that said “I like me best when I’m with you”. It was cute. When we got back from our trip I started up EMT classes again. I took the course in 2014 and passed all but one test (the state written) and I let too much time go by so I decided to retake the course. At the end of the month I had to say goodbye to my therapist. Someone I worked with since April of 2016 when I was inpatient. It was so hard to say goodbye because for over a year I saw this woman almost every single week and she helped me thru times when I thought I was going to end up back in the hospital. I also stopped going to my DBT group as well. Stopping with therapy wasn’t my choice, stopping with group was. This also was the month I stopped talking to my ex-best friend whom I was friends with for over 10 years. We didn’t have a big fight or anything we just drifted apart. “You didn’t text me” “But you didn’t text me” so typically but it was bound to happen. People change and there’s nothing wrong with that. I feel like for the most of 2017 I kept trying to prove that I didn’t change like it was some bad thing when in reality it’s okay to change, it’s part of life.

October

And to follow along with that last month I also stopped talking to my other ex-friend. I have nothing against them. They were there for me when I was at rock bottom in 2016 and for that I will be forever grateful. In 2017 however things were very rocky. Things felt forced, like I was walking on eggshells afraid to do something wrong. A never-ending rollercoaster that finally came to a stop in the end of October. I’m not going to lie and say that my life has been great ever since. Because it hasn’t. I mean yes it’s been okay and I’ve been happy but I’ve also been so down because of all that’s happened with them, second guessing myself and wondering “what if”. But in the end we all moved on and that’s all that matters because in the end life moves on.

November

This Thanksgiving me, my uncle and my gm went over to Andrea’s and it was so much fun. After my people went home I stayed and played games with her brothers and sister and their significant others. We listened to Christmas music and just had a blast. Me and Andrea started Christmas shopping and listening to Christmas music and it was the start to a wonderful holiday. In the end of the month I took my class written exam and in some surprising turn of events I passed! Like I was so shocked because I didn’t study at all and went into that exam knowing that I could retake it and thinking that thats what was going to happen. But I didn’t have to because I passed!!

December

More Christmas shopping and snuggling under fuzzy blankets with my babe. All up until Christmas the only music I listened to was Christmas music! Ever since my Aunt passed away I always hated the holidays. It was so sad and depressing. But this year was different. I was looking forward to spending Christmas with Andrea and her family and starting new traditions. This month I had two practical exams. One for the class and one for the state and I passed them both!! I went to Andrea’s family’s Christmas party on the 23rd and it was so nice and festive. I slept over that night and on Christmas Eve we all woke up and celebrated Christmas morning a day early cause not everyone could be there for Christmas Day. We went over to a friends house for New Years Eve and ordered Chinese food and played Cards Against Humanity. I can’t remember the last time I kissed someone on New Years. But this time I got to ring in the New Year with my babe.

#personal #2017 #so long #omg sorry #lol

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stephhannes · 4 years ago

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i love you so much: a goodbye to the city i keep coming back to

things looked a lot different a year ago.

a year ago, i was scared. i spent all my time from august 2018 to june 2019 trying to run away from myself- i was straight up feral. i didn’t go into public by myself, i didn’t interact with anyone that i hadn’t already known for at least 5 years, i was a real-life mountain troll. toward the end of my 9 month break, i was finally feeling restless. here’s the thing, abilene is an alright place to be if you don’t have the mental capacity to be a human, but as soon as i started regaining consciousness i knew i needed to get out.

and what do you know? my roommate from college stayed in our same apartment after i left, just got a new roommate- and at the time i was trying to leave abilene, her roommate was moving out. so i literally just moved right back into the room that i was in during undergrad.

it was the logical best next move for me, austin was familiar, i already had a support system, and i wouldn’t have to be living alone, or with a random roommate. i was moving back in with my best friend, thank god.

when i moved back in, i felt like a ghost haunting my own home. i put in so much care to make sure the room looked and felt different, but it was impossible to forget everything that happened there.

i moved into that apartment the first time in 2015, a month after my dad died. i bought furniture for the first time- literally just two bookshelves and a nightstand from ikea. i brought my twin sized mattress from abilene, complete with a broken frame that i never bothered to fix. i slept on a sagging mattress for two years straight and honestly i think i have irreparable neck problems because of it.

i filled my walmart picture collage frame with pictures from high school and freshman year of undergrad. nothing really matched, but it was my first time really living on my own- for the first time, not in a dorm, or sharing a tiny space with four other roommates.

a few months after moving into that apartment was when nathan came back into my life in a more consistent way. we’d reconnected in march of 2015, and after not talking to each other for 9 months after that, we finally started talking regularly in november.

november 2015 through march 2016 was a markedly terrible time in my life. i was finally allowing myself to feel the grief i’d been bottling for months over my father’s death. i remember crying in front of my mirror in the dim glow of my $5 target lamp at 4am every night, hoping my roommate wouldn’t hear me from across the apartment.

february 2016, i remember the night i realized that nathan had a girlfriend that i hadn’t necessarily been told about yet- i remember getting taco bell, drinking a bottle of peach moscato, throwing up on my balcony, and then laying in bed and crying to the new 1975 album that had just come out. that album really hit every emotional achilles i had at the time.

like, ‘somebody else’ hit me right in the “it’s been seven years and i am still playing a game that i can never get first place in” achilles.

every time i start to believe in anything you’re saying i’m reminded that i should be gettin’ over it. i’m looking through you while you’re looking through your phone and leaving with somebody else.

and nana hit me right in the “your dad just died” achilles.

but i’m bereft you see, i think you can tell- i haven’t been doing too well.

my first spring break in my apartment was a wild time. it was march 2016 and i’d invited my best friend to stay with me for the week- we were heavily participating in sxsw. by that, i mean, i was experiencing open bars for the first time in my life and was fully taking advantage. it was nice to have a home to return to at the end of the night though, because the last time i’d tried to participate in sxsw and stay in austin during spring break, i was living in a dorm that some nights straight up wouldn’t let me in, so i had to sleep in my car sometimes.

this was also the time when things with nathan were taking a different turn than i’d expected. after i found out he had a girlfriend, and my friends saw how heartbroken i was, we were all on our “help steph move on” bullshit. but at this point, nathan was was aggressively pursuing me, and we ended up growing a lot closer by the end of spring break.

at the end of march, nathan made a playlist for me, and that was all i listened to for a couple of weeks. when i play it nowadays all i can think of are the nights i’d spent laying in my bed and staring at my ceiling listening to it, wishing things would work out for us.

i remember laying in bed, unable to sleep, and getting a text at 4am on april 8th that said “hopefully you’re asleep, don’t like freak out because i don’t expect anything back. i really am in love with you, and i’m really happy about it. i just needed to tell you that, holding it in was killing me.” and i remember laying in bed for 5 hours after that wrestling with the fact that i was definitely catching feelings again, and knowing that pursuing anything would put me back in that position i’d been in so many times before- us being in love with each other but him having a girlfriend and not making any real attempts to be with me.

and finally, sending the “i love you too,” text and going to sleep at 9am.

and then we start getting into the events that, when i eventually moved back into my apartment in 2019, i was unable to shake, that i was constantly reminded of.

nathan came to see me for the first time in that apartment toward the end of april 2016. he was getting over a cold, so instead of going out, we mostly stayed in- which was fine. it’s so strange to look back and see how quickly things progressed between us, considering the instance in mid-march when i was at his apartment in abilene, and he got sick, and all i wanted to do was comfort him, but i didn’t, because i was like “oh that would be weird, wouldn’t it? that’s too intimate.” and i went home instead. compared to this visit in mid-april where we were sharing my twin-sized bed and i was like “oh i’m in love with this person,” as he was snoring next to me.

and what had once been a home that held all of my heartbreak and anguish became the place where the foundation of our relationship was built.

we got together at a very hectic time in our lives, it was finals for both of us, and also his undergrad graduation. so while we did spend a little bit of time together then, we didn’t really get to spend quality time with each other until june 2016, when he came to stay with me in austin for a couple weeks.

this was the first time he met all of my friends, at the apartment. this was the first time that we cooked dinner together. this was when i taught him about my favorite pastime, the wine bath. this was the first time we talked about getting married. this was when we got into one of our first, and only fights. this was the first time we spent a lot of time together, consistently. something we were both a little nervous about- considering both of our introvert tendencies. but this was the first time that we realized that we loved being around each other constantly.

when nathan moved to new york, i mentally moved out of my apartment. physically, my body was there, but i was constantly daydreaming about where i knew i’d be in a few months. every time nathan and i talked, it was about our plans for the future in nyc. sometimes when i look through old texts, i can remember exactly where i was standing in the apartment when i received them.

january 2017. (stephanie, sitting on bedroom floor, surrounded by papers, studying for a spanish quiz) nathan: can i just marry you now? i’m reading through old letters again and it was so hard not to ask for two weeks. i don’t know how i’m going to be able to wait until what i have planned.

september 2016. (stephanie, laying in bed, listening to the rain fall through her half-cracked window) nathan: i love you and i miss you and i can’t wait until we’re asleep together again. even when i’m stressed out from moving and completely on my own you make it all better. stephanie, i am so very lucky to be yours and i can’t wait to propose to you and have a wedding and do all those things i never wanted to do because i love doing stuff like that with you. at the end of the day, knowing that i’m coming home to you and getting to go to bed together at the end of a bad day is the best thing in the world because you’re all i need.

october 2016. (stephanie, after spending the hours between 1am and 8am having a nervous breakdown while nathan was asleep, finally passes out) 9am. nathan: i know you had a bad night, so here’s a bodega cat to cheer you up

may 2017. (stephanie, sitting in front of full-length mirror, begrudgingly putting on makeup to get ready for a class trip to the roller derby) nathan: can i see? i miss your face. you’re pretty enough that i would go to roller derby with you

jan 2017. (stephanie, very drunk on balcony with sarah) nathan: i’m so lucky you fell in love with me again baby, i was talking to anu about you tonight and it makes me happier than anything to think about spending every day with you. i love you so much and can’t wait until you’re here.

march 2017. 5am. (stephanie, very asleep) nathan: baby, i miss you so much. i just don’t feel okay being apart from you because it feels like i’m never whole. it was a big mistake to watch les mis tonight because every song just reminds me of driving away from austin and it makes me so sad that we’re so perfect for each other but keep getting separated for so long. i love you so much and i never want to be apart again.

i was so excited to get out, to leave that apartment, to move on with my life, and leave austin. i never thought i would think about that room again. but of course, after nathan died, i thought about it again.

when i was living in abilene after nathan died, i’d come to austin to visit sarah and i’d sleep on the couch in the apartment that i used to live in. i was a visitor in the home i used to love, taking an ambien force myself asleep on the same couch that i used to accidentally fall asleep on, only for nathan to wake me up a respectable amount of time later because i cannot be trusted to responsibly nap.

when i moved back in officially, one year ago, it felt empty. i filled the room with new furniture, but i could never sleep, because i was plagued with the memory of everything that room used to hold. a space that nathan used to occupy, but now only exists in in the pile of his shirts i kept in the closet. instead of waking up and seeing his face next to mine, i had my walmart picture collage frame that i had updated with pictures from undergrad and nyc.

here’s the thing- it was tough, emotionally, to be living there again. but looking back now, it’s definitely been tougher to pack everything up and distance myself from yet another thing that kept me tied to nathan. at this point, i have very few things left that were ours, and every time i lose another tie, it takes a toll on me.

everyone that used to know us seems concerned- but if they knew that when you went through my mind i’m full of your love that illuminated our house for all those years.

+++

so, one year ago i was finally out on my own again. i was employed for the first time since nathan died, and i was so nervous to have to interact with new people for the first time. i’ve never been a social butterfly, but after becoming a recluse, i knew i was even more inept. i didn’t realize how much i’d changed after nathan died until i was forced to learn how to be a human again.

my worst qualities were right back at the forefront. my reluctance to be a decision-maker, my anxiety, my quietness. these were all traits that i had distanced myself from in nyc- in nyc i was bold, annoying, independent, sometimes even the life of the party. in austin, i was timid, unfocused, and unsure of myself.

however, i think the biggest culture shock was realizing what it feels like to not absolutely loathe your job. at my core, i enjoy being a house manager- but oh my god the DRT sucked the soul straight out of my body in a way i didn’t even recognize until i was gone. it was a strange adjustment to be somewhere where i didn’t feel like i had to be on defense at all times.

it was wild to be in a workplace where all i had to do was come to work and go home and not hate my life. when i was in nyc, i would spend an hour just being miserable while getting ready for work, and then suffer through a 40 minute subway commute to land in union square and surround myself with people that didn’t give a shit about me, work in unsafe conditions, and get harassed by patrons- only to come home unable to shake whatever bullshit i dealt with at work. nathan and i had a block of time in our schedule that was dedicated to me passionately complaining about my day while he played video games and vaguely ignored me, because i wasn’t looking for any logical solutions, i just wanted to vent for awhile.

so yeah, i showed up to work in austin a little broken and weird- but no one ever made me feel that way. everyone just adapted to the weird energy i brought to the table and accepted it. which is exactly what i needed.

i can’t pinpoint specifically when it happened, but at one point, everything clicked and i was finally becoming a functional human again. i stopped having days where i felt foggy at work, i stopped stumbling over my words so much, i got comfortable with decision-making. i’d like to go on record to say that i only cried at work two times- once when the bar played a song that was played at nathan’s funeral and once when a patron smelled like the shampoo nathan used in high school. which for me, is pretty impressive.

i was just re-reading the blog i wrote when i first moved back to austin, and it’s hilarious how deeply committed to “faking it until you make it” i was. i wrote about how i was “finally becoming myself again,” and in retrospect, i definitely wasn’t going back to myself. when i first started back to work, i was on a high- finally socializing again, actually using my brain and body to problem-solve and contribute to society. but as soon as i came off of that high, i was left feeling guilty for moving forward with my life, and feeling unsure of who i was and what i was capable of.

i think the most important lesson i’ve learned this year is that it’s okay to just feel the way i’m feeling. i don’t always have to glean some deeper meaning from every emotion, i don’t have to question myself and wonder if i’m wrong, or if i’m progressing normally. i spent so much time hypothesizing how to get out of uncomfortable situations that i never even ended up experiencing. my biggest issue is the way i overthink everything, and lately i’ve been trying to not do that as much.

i’ve pretty consistently felt lonely since nathan died. i still feel that emptiness, no matter where i am, or what i’m doing. i still haven’t found the right thing, or combination of things to fill that void. sometimes i feel a little closer than others, but it’s always there.

after nathan died, if i needed something to immediately make me cry, i’d listen to the song we planned to use for our first dance. and then i decided that wasn’t healthy, so i didn’t listen to it for like 6 months. the other night, i was drunk and it came up on shuffle, and did i maybe slow dance with myself and cry for the whole three minutes and fifty seconds? yeah, maybe.

remember when i lived in tennessee, and you came to visit- slept next to me. we shared a wooden bed not meant for two, and i told you i loved you- and i still do. but i’m tired of talking, let’s go to bed- cause i just need to get out of my head. i’ve been trying to keep our burdens light- i just wasn’t made for these times. i’ll stay as long as you will have me, and i’ll follow if you want to lead. and i’ll share the load that gets so heavy- wherever you take me, home i will be. i think that maybe i lost myself on a year of trying to be someone else. now i’m scared, and sad, and feeling stuck- but i ain’t ever gonna give you up. wherever you take me, home i will be.

+++

the other day, i made a joke about how i was going to write a linkedin article called “what tortellini taught me about professional development”

because for the first time in my life, i was able to delegate tasks to minimize my own workload.

i’ve made it pretty clear that i suffer from an inability to accept help from anyone, no matter what the situation is. but, while cooking dinner for jose and dan, i actually allowed jose to be in the kitchen with me, and help me cook dinner.

i’m gonna be honest, i don’t like giving up the control, but i guess it was nice to not have to do everything by myself for once.

i never thought of myself as a control freak, and maybe i was less of one in the past, but after nathan’s death, the thought of not being in charge of every situation is incredibly stressful to me, so it’s a miracle that my anxiety allowed me to at least try to accept help.

+++

now that theatre is cancelled for the foreseeable future, i’ve been trying to figure out what i’m going to do with my life and my very niche set of skills. i never thought i’d be someone that missed their job, but my job was my only stepping stone to the outside world and i’ve definitely been verging on becoming feral again.

with no structure, i can’t manage a sleep schedule. last month, i looked at myself in the mirror and was straight up disgusted- i hadn’t been outside in so long that i was looking sickly.

after that, i’ve been trying to make a genuine effort to like…go outside once a day and wake up before 9pm which has been working out alright, but who knows how long i can manage that.

i’m back in abilene for the moment, while i figure out what my next move is going to be. it might be saving up for a couple of months and moving back to austin but i’m gonna be honest with y’all, every time i have a singular alcohol in my system all i can think about is moving back to NYC so…..who knows…anything is possible considering nothing is real anymore.

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megacircuit9universe · 5 years ago

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Shades of 2008

FRI MAR 13 2020

So, today Trump declared a national emergency... which is quite warranted under the circumstances, but also kinda scary... as that’s a technical step closer to martial law, god forbid.*

Meanwhile, today was another historical first for the markets... the first time ever that all US bonds, regardless of their length, fell below 1%. It makes that inverted yield curve from last year look like a little walk in the park.**

At his press conference today, Trump had on hand, not only health officials, but leaders of different corporations... attempting to convince them, and get them to convince us, that the economy’s gonna be just fine.

But it also broke today that the reason why Covid19 testing is so scarce and so impossible to get is... by Presidential order. No testing... no rise in the number of infections. And while this is still hearsay... it’s perfectly in character for this callous criminal President, and we all know it’s true.

...which is why the markets aren’t gonna rally back, no matter how many speeches he makes, or what governmental levers he pulls to try and stimulate the markets.

I normally go shopping for groceries every two weeks, and I go after work, which is midnight, to a 24 hour grocery store which is normally nearly empty except for stockers hard at work in the aisles.

I’d been hearing about people making runs on the supermarkets this week, hoarding toilet paper, and other paper products, thanks to a rumor that we may run out of such stuff because it all comes from China.

But I didn’t think I’d actually see it here, where I live. That kinda stuff only happens in big cities far away, but not around these parts.

Yet, lo and behold, when I got to my store tonight, at midnight, the parking lot was full, and a long train of people were rolling out the front doors with shopping carts overfilled with food and... bulk paper products.

They were being forced out of the store and nobody else, including me, was being allowed in. This 24 hour supermarket, that I’ve been shopping at for twelve years, was closed.

The guy at the door told me they still had plenty of product in the stock room but had to close in order to actually restock the shelves overnight.

I asked him if it tomorrow night would be better.

With a bit of a laugh, he said, “Tomorrow night? Right now, we’re just taking it hour by hour.”

I drove to the only other 24 hour store in town... the big chain drug store on the main strip. They have a small section for groceries. They were open, thank goodness, but their toilet paper section was stripped bare. Nothing at all... just like all the pictures I’d seen online today from other parts of the country.

Thankfully, I wasn’t here for toilet paper... my main concern was cat food... and thankfully they did have a 12 pack of Fancy feast, cat litter, and milk. As far as paper products, they still had facial tissue, so I bought three boxes of that, just in case there’s still no toilet paper next week.

I said a few entries ago that the panic was worse than the virus, and this was firsthand evidence of how true that is.

I’ve only seen this kind of thing a couple other times, when a big blizzard is approaching... the old bread and milk thing... when people panic about being stuck at home for several days. But that’s always a local thing.

This is a nationwide panic, that isn’t just clearing the supermarket shelves of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, but crashing the stock and bond markets.

It’s difficult to imagine how such a visceral experience, for every citizen on the ground this week... does not affect the voting on Tuesday.

Last Tuesday, the fear of the virus was there, but daily life was going on as usual. There were groceries on the shelves. The President hadn’t declared a state of emergency. Schools were in session. TV shows had studio audiences. Sports were doing their normal thing.

Last Tuesday it was, “wash your hands, everybody, and... by the way, Biden’s the guy for the job, so vote Biden.”

It’s only three days later (!) and the fucking world is ending because of a public health crisis.

Now it’s two days until the debate between, “Good Time’s Joe,” and “FDR of Health Care.” What do you think the focus of that debate is gonna be about on Sunday night? And who do you think is gonna have better answers about how to deal with a global pandemic?

My guess is that Bernie is gonna crush Joe in such a debate, no matter how early in the morning they do it, and no matter how many uppers they give Biden beforehand to keep him lucid enough to speak in full, connected sentences.

The asshole already said if a Medicare for All bill ever came across his desk as President, he’d veto it. How’s he gonna backpedal on that when half the viewers at home are down to their last roll of toilet paper, terrified to go out in public for fear of Covid19?

Then it’s gonna be two more long days of pandemic hysteria before we actually go to the polls... so... as I said in the last entry... if this does not turn the tide to Bernie... nothing ever will.

That said, It’s worth reviewing that all of this panic not only stems from Trump’s fundamental inability to deal with a global pandemic... but also the terrifying realization that Biden may be even LESS competent to deal with it, or any other existential threat that may be waiting in the wings for us.

The latter, as evidenced by the market’s downturn beginning immediately after Super Tuesday... when the media was attempting to coronate Biden as the Democratic nominee.

Rich people and Corporations may not like the idea of having to pay their fair share of taxes, but they are a little bit more allergic to the specter of a global economic collapse... which last reared it’s ghoulish face into the skies back in 2008.

This does, to me... now feel more like 2008, than any other Presidential election in modern history.

That time around, it began with the housing bust in early 2007, which brought on a recession, and inevitably lead to the near banking collapse of 2008.

That year, Hillary Clinton was, around this time in March, presumed to be the Democratic nominee, with her only opponent, Barack Obama, starting to be treated as an, “also ran,” in the mainstream media.

But the scarier things got, the better Obama did... not only winning the nomination... but then going on to win the Presidency... taking over from GWB in one of the darkest hours this country has seen since 1929.

Rich people and Corporations knew then, what they must still know now... Republican governments are great for letting everybody have fun on the playground, amassing mountains of wealth at the expense of the lower classes...

...but, when they break the game... as they always do... Democrats must be called in to fix it, before all of civilization collapses. And in such a case, the more progressive the better... hence, Barack over Hillary.

And fix things, Obama did, over his eight years.

Fixed the economy so good, it was now a self driving money machine that could not be crashed even if you had the worst, most drunken driver at the wheel.

That meant a big green light for Republican government! And this time... permanently! No more Democrats necessary ever again! Trump 2016. Trump 2020. Trump 2024, 28, 32, 36... impeachment means nothing. Senators can be bought. DOJ can be fixed. No more regulations. Hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

And then a pandemic plague came out of China... like they always do. Like they’ve been doing since the Black Plague of old.

And this one just happens to be hitting the upper class the hardest... because it’s hardest on the elderly, in this historical moment of peak elderly power. And it’s hardest on those who travel the world, and love to hang out in huge crowds... as the powerful elderly love to do...

...cruise ships... jet setting... political rallies... awards events... back room meetings... shaking hands with every motherfucker they see all day long.

For them, Covid19 doesn’t just threaten their lives directly... but their huge piles of money, if it triggers the collapse of the dreaded, “everything bubble,” economists have been warning us about for a few years now... in the few venues where their voices have not been stifled completely.

This week, they are beginning to realize... they’ve crashed the self driving economy. And they did it in only four years of Republican government.

Only an FDR can save this.

Only an FDR can halt the collapse of the everything bubble, and save them from dying of a pandemic disease for which there is currently no cure.

I’m sure they’re not happy about that.

But... as the TikTok meme goes... “it is what it is.”

I’m going to bed.

* I’ve learned the day after writing that marital law is not on the table here because it can only happen in a time of war.. and only when the judicial branch no longer exists?

Neither of those scenarios are coming down as the result of this current pandemic... which is no threat to babies, children, teens, or young adults at all.

Yes, it may be a threat to the boomer voter base... but they do not have the power to enforce anything close to martial law.

**Let us not forget the Pronunciation Book warning about Dalton (Donal T):

“...He is rich. He is strong. And he is going to crash the stock market. Sidewalks crack, and streets go dark. Ten Thousand bankers shake and scream for Dalton’s pyramid.”

The last video on the channel, published on September 24th, 2013... six years prior to the date that Pelosi would announce formal impeachment hearings.

And even though he made it through that... boasting about the great economy the whole time... here we are.

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Japanese basketball’s ‘Chosen One’ is playing in the G League

Yuta Watanabe may be toiling in the G League, but “Yuta-mania” and hope for the future of Japanese basketball are still alive.

Unlike most G League players, Memphis Hustle rookie swingman Yuta Watanabe has multiple media commitments after practice.

After most games, even away games, he’s surrounded by reporters. During a Grizzlies preseason scrimmage before the 2018-19 season, Yuta needed a separate press conference area to accommodate a group of approximately 20 credentialed Japanese media members. His whole world — the mob of reporters, the Japanese fans who comment on his YouTube G League highlights, the Linsanity-lite excitement in Japan that seems to follow his every move — already has a name: Yuta-mania.

In Japan, headlines refer to Yuta as “The Special One” or “The Chosen One.” He started playing with Japan’s senior national team when he was 16 and he was the first Japanese player to ever receive a Division-I basketball scholarship. He is the second-ever Japanese-born player to play in the NBA. The first, Yuta Tabuse, played four games with the Phoenix Suns during the 2004-2005 season.

Thousands of people packed tiny gyms to catch a glimpse of him during George Washington’s preseason summer trip to Japan in 2016. After each game, his teammates waited on the bus for nearly an hour as Yuta signed autographs and took pictures with swarms of adoring fans.

This past June, Japan added another star to the NBA ranks: former Gonzaga star Rui Hachimura, who went No. 9 overall to the Washington Wizards. Rui may have a brighter future, but Yuta ignited the nation first. Together, they’ve been thrust into ambassador roles for Japanese basketball.

But unlike Rui, Yuta’s life this upcoming season is unlikely to reflect the grandeur of their expectations. On a colorless, rainy February day in downtown Memphis, he is running late to our interview inside the Starbucks facing the FedExForum where the Hustle, the Grizzlies’ G League affiliate, have just finished practice. Two Hustle players push through the doors and head outside, still dressed for practice in team-issue hoodies and basketball shorts. They shield themselves from the weather and hop into the back of an old four-door sedan. Yuta, meanwhile, is being held up by a photoshoot for Dabudouri, a Japanese magazine.

Playing in the G League typically does not come with magazine photoshoots. The league is unglamorous, almost by design. Players earn five-figure salaries and travel by long bus rides around Middle America, giving them a sense of “The Grind”. The Hustle play their home games not in the 18,000-seat FedExForum, but in the 8,000-seat Landers Center in nearby Southaven, Mississippi. Even the G League’s team names — the Hustle, the Drive, the Wolves, the Charge — evoke hunger and hard work. Making it in the NBA must seem even more enticing during the second night of a back-to-back in White Plains, New York, and Portland, Maine.

Once he finishes his shoot, Yuta leaves FedExForum through the front door, jogging 100 yards or so through the rain to Starbucks alongside Geoff Langham, the Grizzlies’ communications coordinator. It’s a smaller Starbucks, and Yuta is 6’9 and dressed in obvious NBA player attire — a black Grizzlies puffer jacket, grey sweats, white Jordans. Still, the other patrons — an older man reading the comics in the Commercial Appeal, a pair of teachers lesson planning, even the baristas behind the counter — don’t look up. Geoff orders Yuta an iced vanilla latte, his favorite since he can remember.

In Japan, Yuta — along with Rui and their generation of up-and-comers — carries the hopes of an entire sport on his shoulders. In Memphis, he divides most of his time between three locations: FedExForum, his apartment, and the Landers Center. On a typical day, he goes to practice, gets a ride home, takes a nap, eats, and rides back to the arena to put up shots. Rinse, repeat. Every choice he makes revolves around the dream that all G-Leaguers share: making it in the NBA.

Professionally, Yuta is in a state of limbo. He has a two-way contract with the Grizzlies, meaning that he can move freely between the Grizzlies and the Hustle without having to clear waivers. He earns roughly the same salary as a mid-career accountant ($77,250). He regularly drops 20-plus points in G League games, displaying a Joe Ingles-esque lefty 3-and-D skill set. But when he is called up to the Grizzlies, he struggles for playing time, averaging 2.6 points and 12 minutes per game this past season.

Yuta’s career is in an awkward place, sandwiched between two opposing forces: Japanese adulation and American indifference. Japanese basketball fans — still a niche group, to be sure — gobble up content about him, hoping he’ll lead the national team to prominence. Looming over the sport’s future are the Olympics, which will take place in Tokyo in 2020. Supporters hope Yuta — along with a cadre of younger, up-and-coming stars — can use that platform to put Japanese basketball on the map. In the meantime, he’s trying to make it in the United States, competing for just one of roughly 360 full-time jobs in the most competitive professional sports league in the world, all while adapting to a new language and culture.

Yuta reconciles these two forces by taking refuge in what he can control. He responds with poise, grace, and a dogged belief in putting in the work and trusting the process. There’s a sense among the Japanese media that Yuta has it, whatever it is. He has the personality, the drive, the pedigree, and the talent to make it at the highest levels.

And if he does make it, he might change Japanese basketball forever.

”The Chosen One” refers not only to Yuta’s skills, but also his upbringing. His father, Hideyuki, played professionally in Japan. His mother, Kumi played for the national team. His sister, Yuki, played for the Aisin AW Wings of the Women’s Japan Basketball League. His parents coached him when he was young, explaining exactly what it took to make it in the pros. Yuta has known he wanted to play in America ever since he was seven or eight, when he watched Kobe Bryant lead the Lakers to multiple NBA titles.

As Yuta grew up, Japanese basketball received largely apathetic attention from the nation’s media and sports fans. As baseball flourished, and imports like Ichiro and Daisuke Matsuzaka took the Major Leagues by storm, basketball floundered. Games were barely available on television. Even Today, Bang Lee, a Japanese journalist for Space Ball Magazine and Tokyo pickup player — describes basketball as “probably the fifth-most popular” sport nationwide, trailing baseball, soccer, tennis, sumo, and perhaps martial arts. Japan lacks organized leagues and urban courts for pickup games. Until recently, it lacked a respectable top league.

Yuta injected excitement into Japanese basketball where there was none. His origin story plays into his popularity. The basketball talent coursing through his genes, his roots in the countryside, and his lanky 6’9 frame combine to make him the perfect folk hero for Japanese basketball.

He grew up in Miki, a small town in Kagawa Prefecture often beset by droughts. He garnered national attention when he played with the senior national team at age 16. He led Jinsei Gakuen High School to the finals at nationals during the equivalent of his junior and senior seasons, and realized that he could play Division I basketball in the U.S. His father knew Don Beck, a basketball coach in Japan since who had connections to American prep schools. Beck helped arrange a postgraduate year for Yuta at St. Thomas More in Connecticut.

During his prep school year, Yuta flashed enough 3-and-D potential to earn a three-star ranking from various recruiting services and an offer from George Washington. He stared down all of the expected challenges an immigrant might face: learning a new language, making new friends, creating a new life from scratch. He found a home in the gym.

”Basketball definitely helped,” Yuta says, “because even though I couldn’t speak English, I was able to spend a lot of time with my teammates, which helped me learning English a lot.”

During his time at GW, Yuta evolved from sixth man who provided energy and defense off the bench as a freshman, to the team’s go-to scorer and the Atlantic 10 Defensive Player of the Year during his senior season.

GW teammate Tyler Cavanaugh — one of Yuta’s best friends, and a power forward currently playing for the G League’s Salt Lake City Stars — remembers a shy Japanese kid who barely spoke any English. He says it’s important to acknowledge the leap of faith that Yuta took as an 18-year-old.

”Something people need to understand is how far he’s come and how hard it’s been for him to leave his home and come over to the States and not know any English,” Cavanaugh says. “I think Yuta gets misinterpreted sometimes. I think it’s the Japanese culture, but he’s very, very shy, very humble. Now you look at him and he’s in the NBA, and that’s a huge accomplishment.”

Yuta’s profile grew in Japan as he got better. Maurice Joseph, GW’s former head coach, remembers the exact moment when he understood how much Yuta meant to Japan. Joseph says after a game, a woman was trying to get Yuta to take a picture with her baby, but she couldn’t make her way through the throng that surrounded him. Eventually, she got tired of waiting and was close enough to toss her baby to Yuta. Yuta was startled, but he caught the baby. She snuck in next to him, and her husband took the picture. She grabbed the baby, bowed, thanked Yuta, and left.

”It was,” Joseph says, “the wildest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Yuta laughs when he recalls that moment.

”Yeah, I mean, my coach told the media that, but obviously over-exaggerated a bit,” he says. “She didn’t throw (the baby), but she kind of forced me to take it, and I didn’t want to drop the baby. There were actually a lot of fans around me and she knew that I’d have to take the baby and take a picture with it, so …”

According to Cavanaugh, Yuta has always been well-aware of his ambassadorial role.

”Yuta is like LeBron James in Japan,” he says. “After one game, we were all on the bus and there was a line of people waiting for him outside the gym to get his autograph and get a picture with him. We were waiting for like 45 minutes because he wanted to stay and he took a picture with all the people.”

After he graduated from GW in 2018, Yuta signed with the Brooklyn Nets’ summer league squad as an undrafted free agent. After a solid performance in Vegas, Yuta signed his two-way deal with the Grizzlies in July.

Across the Pacific, Japanese fans devour coverage of Yuta, whether that’s articles about him in the U.S.-based Kyodo News or Youtube videos of his G League highlights. Pull up any G League video of Yuta — such as this one, which chronicles a 32-point performance against the Fort Wayne Mad Ants — and scroll down. You’ll find that almost all of the comments are written in Japanese.

Yuta may be in professional limbo, but his success at GW and in the G League have done nothing to quell the excitement bubbling among his Japanese fanbase. He has no choice but to live with the hype.

When Yuta speaks, it’s clear he’s media savvy. He’s dealt with great expectations and national attention since he was 16, so he’s polished in an interview setting. With so much noise around him, so much pressure, he seems to focus only on what he can control. He’s quick to shoot down most of the easy narratives that apply to someone like him.

Does he miss Japanese food?

”I found a Japanese restaurant in Memphis. Sekisui. I get sushi. It’s really good, really authentic. I don’t really miss Japanese food here because I can eat it (when I want).”

Does he miss his family?

”Obviously, I’ve missed my family, friends, and everybody, but I can talk with them on the phone all the time. I feel comfortable here.”

”Yuta is like LeBron James in Japan ... there was a line of people waiting for him outside the gym to get his autograph.” - Tyler Cavanaugh, former George Washington teammate

Does he feel the pressure of being “The Chosen One?” Yuta is far too polite to roll his eyes, but it’s clear he’s fielded this question several times before.

”I don’t really feel any pressure. I can control only what I can control. I know they are calling me ‘Chosen One.’ (That’s a) big nickname. But there’s nothing that I can do with it.”

Yuta combats pressure by losing himself in his craft. His daily routine is simple and consistent. Just basketball, all the time. He never needed to drive at prep school or in Washington D.C., and he’s supposedly currently working on his drivers’ license. For now, he gets rides between the arena and his apartment from Austin, a Grizzlies intern. He’s living in a simple apartment, nice and clean. He’s not really into fashion or video games.

”I just love basketball,” he says. He’s almost apologetic, perhaps sensing that I’m mining for interesting off-the-court nuggets.

But basketball is what he wants to talk about. He’s a hoops nerd and he lights up when talking about old teams or current players. Yuta grew up a Lakers fan and credits Bryant for making him fall in love with the game, but he spends more time now watching Ingles film.

”I like his game and I watch him because I found similarities,” he says. “We’re both lefty, he’s a great defender, a great shooter. I try to, you know, steal.”

He also admires Tayshaun Prince, arguably the patron saint of lefty 3-and-D players and a current member of the Grizzlies’ front office. He lists that title-winning Pistons team — Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Prince, and the Wallaces — among his favorites, despite their victory over Bryant and the Lakers in the Finals.

After playing his college ball in Washington D.C., Yuta’s happy to live in a smaller, slower-paced environment where he can focus exclusively on basketball. He’s found a home in Memphis.

”I love Memphis,” he says. “This kind of reminds me of where I grew up in the countryside. It was a really small town, so this is actually good for me. This is where I feel more comfortable.”

He’s also found a good fit from a basketball perspective.

”That’s who I am, I think,” he says. “You know, I wanted to play with that Grit and Grind. I love how the team values that. I love how the Grizzlies value the defensive end. I just, I love it.”

During the preseason, Yuta further endeared himself to Memphis by displaying just how much American culture he’s embraced since he moved here. When all rookies were forced to participate in some light hazing by dancing to “In My Feelings”, Yuta hit the Shoot dance and shut down the gym as his teammates rushed the floor and mobbed him. You might know the dance from Fortnite, but it originated in Memphis (and its creator, BlocBoy JB, is taking legal action to make sure everybody knows).

I feel like Yuta Watanabe (@wacchi1013) won his team over with this one. The Memphis Grizzlies rookie was swarmed by teammates after putting a Memphis spin on the "In My Feelings' Challenge. Full video of the Grizz rookies dancing here: https://t.co/Fevr4bQqzT pic.twitter.com/cDICGzyBQy

— Sudu Upadhyay (@SuduUpadhyay) September 29, 2018

”First of all, I’m not a dancer. I’m so bad,” Yuta says, laughing at the memory. “I’ve never done that in front of a lot of people.

”I guess I had to do it. I didn’t even think about it, I just let my body move.”

When Yuta finishes watching film, he’ll sometimes watch Japanese comedies, or The Office, which is his favorite show. He started watching it after he’d reached a certain level of English. He has seen the whole series all the way through at least three times. He lights up when I ask him who his favorite character is.

”Dwight,” he says without hesitation. “Love him.”

Why Dwight? Yuta empathizes with underdogs.

”You know, usually, Jim’s always on top of Dwight, he always does something to Dwight. He’s the guy who always wins the battle. But that one time, the snowball fight? Dwight wins, and Jim was really scared.

”That kind of satisfied me.”

On the surface, Yuta seems like a typical favorite. He was raised for success, almost in a Steph Curry-esque manner, in a basketball family. He’s well spoken. He’s intelligent. He’s good looking. He feels like a Jim.

But the fact that he prefers Dwight may shed some light on his situation in Memphis. He enjoys the simplicity of his life in Memphis, his role as the G Leaguer who has to grind out minutes, the squad player who has to prove himself at the highest level. He’s found a way to shrink the pressure that surrounds him by simply enjoying the space he’s in.

A small but rabid generation of Japanese fans who grew up watching Michael Jordan now has disposable incomes. E-commerce site Rakuten has partnered with the NBA in Japan and sponsors the Golden State Warriors’ jerseys. Recently, The Athletic’s Jared Weiss attended a Rakuten event in which 600 Japanese fans watched Game 1 of the Finals on tape delay in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Basketball may be ready to take root in Japan. Yuta and Rui playing in the 2020 Olympics on home soil is a good opportunity to nurture the seeds of the sport.

The current hope is that Yuta, Rui, and naturalized citizen Nick Fazekas can lead the national team to uncharted success at the tournament. There are also some young guns in the system. Chikara Tanaka — a 6’2 point guard and a current sophomore at IMG Academy, a basketball factory in Florida — broke Yuta’s record when he joined the national team at 15.

Yuta doesn’t have time to keep up with all of the games back home, but he usually takes the time to look through box scores, checking the statlines that his friends on the national team put up.

According to Los Angeles-based basketball journalist Yoko Miyaji, Japan has been planning for basketball at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games for several years now. Japan’s top professional league, The B.League — created in September 2016 as a merger between two other leagues that “used to hate each other,” according to Lee — exists solely for the purpose of the 2020 Olympics. Japan needed a respectable league because FIBA had suspended the country’s membership in 2014.

”Yuta and Rui playing in the NBA will be just as big (as the Olympics). Them playing in the NBA will affect Japanese basketball in years to come.” - Yoko Miyaji, basketball journalist

”The 2020 Olympics are really big,” Miyaji says via email. “It isn’t just the actual games. It already has been a turning point since the basketball world in Japan has been focusing on getting an Olympic berth as a host country.”

(Japan received that berth from FIBA at the end of March).

According to Miyaji, Yuta and Rui in particular hold the keys to Japan’s basketball future.

”Yuta and Rui playing in the NBA will be just as big (as the Olympics),” she says. “Them playing in the NBA will affect Japanese basketball in years to come. Not just playing in the NBA, but also them helping the Japan national team be relevant in Asia — and maybe the world — is going to be huge.”

Daisuke Sugiura — a New York-based journalist who covered Japanese baseball stars Hideki Matsui and Boston’s Daisuke Matsuzaka in their primes — agrees.

”Even my mom, who has no interest in basketball whatsoever, knows who Yuta is,” he says. “Still, I don’t think he is as famous as some Japanese MLB superstars just yet. Although that could change next year if he plays well in the Olympic Games in Tokyo.”

The Olympics feel like a sort of litmus test for Yuta and the state of basketball in Japan. Which seems to ride mostly on Yuta and Rui’s shoulders. The situation feels terribly complex, and yet Yuta doesn’t see it that way. He’s focused on the controllable, and living out the dream he’s had since he was seven.

”It’s gonna be great,” Yuta says. “I’m really excited.”

Whether Yuta ever fulfills his “Chosen One” billing on the court, he has already won off of it. His approval rating in Japan — among both fans and media members — has to be close to 100 percent.

”I’ve been working as a sportswriter for a while,” Sugiura says. “I’ve covered a lot of athletes, and I’d like to tell you that Yuta is probably the nicest and most cerebral athlete I’ve ever seen. The guy is smart, polite, and humble. He knows himself and his place. His parents did a tremendous job.

”I know that we have to be objective and neutral as a member of the media, but it’s very, very hard not to root for him. You’d understand if you cover and talk to him even once.”

Given the current direction of the league, it seems like there should be a spot somewhere for a 6’9 multipositional defender with an improving three-point stroke. Miyaji says shooting was always his strength, his pride, the element of his game he worked the hardest before he started grabbing attention for his defense at GW. Yuta shot 33 percent from three for the Hustle this past season. If he can bump that up even a few percentage points, he should have more opportunities in the NBA.

Even his name seems conducive to success. The league has plenty of mononym stars: Dirk, Luka, LeBron, Steph, Klay, Kobe, Dame, Giannis. On the Hustle broadcasts, whenever Yuta makes a play, you’ll hear the play-by-play man scream, “YUTA!” When he dunks, the color man will often yell, “SURAMUUU DANKUU!!!” — the Katakana pronunciation of “slam dunk” — perhaps in reference to the manga series that Yuta enjoys.

Although Rui may enter the league to more fanfare in the States and is projected to be the better player, Lee says that Yuta is the one whom the kids look up to.

”He gives all the young ballers the hope.”

Rui’s entrance into the NBA as a lottery pick could, in theory, dim Yuta’s glow. So far, it hasn’t.

“If anything, (Rui entering the league) will increase Yuta’s popularity,” Miyaji says. “I haven’t seen his popularity diminish yet. Rui gets more coverage than Yuta, for sure, but Yuta’s [popularity] hasn’t decreased.”

However, Miyaji warns, “he might see less media coverage during the upcoming NBA season, especially if Yuta stays on a two-way contract.”

But success for Yuta and Rui doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. The two are only direct competitors when the Wizards face the Grizzlies, and there is plenty of overlap between both fanbases. As Miyaji emphasizes, “hope” for Japanese basketball refers to both Yuta and Rui, as well as a group of younger stars like Tanaka. Yuta created the hope, and Rui can amplify it.

Still, journalists — and Yuta himself — try to inject doses of realism into the discourse.

”I have seen a few misleading headlines (in Japan), like ‘People in the U.S. are crazy about Yuta!’ which is simply not true,” Sugiura says. “But we mostly report the truth. Yuta is trying to get his minutes in the NBA. It’s not always easy, but he definitely has future potential.”

”Even becoming a two-way player is a big deal for Japanese fans,” Miyaji adds. “He’s only the third player from Japan to play in the G League, and it is a big deal (for Japanese fans) for him to play any NBA minutes.”

Miyaji emphasizes that Yuta understands his situation. He’s gracious with the media, and about what he’s accomplished so far. But he also gets that he hasn’t made it just yet. While Rui is guaranteed minutes and a chance to prove himself, Yuta is not. His position in the league is more tenuous.

Still, Miyaji says most people in Japan believe Yuta will be a full-time NBA player in the next season or two, especially given his size and versatility.

”There are media trying to follow and cover him, but it’s still mostly wait-and-see mode,” she says. “I feel like full blown ‘Yuta Mania’ has yet to happen.”

As you might expect, Yuta does his best to ignore the noise.

”I don’t know when I felt like I could make it,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if was gonna make it, but I’m sure I’m gonna keep working hard. I’m sure that my passion, my work ethic, everything was there.

“I just knew that eventually I’m gonna make it.”

At the end of his career, Yuta wants to know he did everything in his power to succeed.

”No regrets,” he says. “I don’t want it to be 10 years or 15 years (later) and look back on what I could have done. So I just want to do everything I can do every day so when I retire, I can say I did everything I wanted to do.”

Yuta can already look back without regrets for two reasons: first, he’s already accomplished everything he ever dreamed of, willing himself to a two-way contract in the NBA. He clearly enjoys the hell out of playing basketball for a living. Second, he’s already left an indelible impact on Japanese basketball, paving a path for younger Japanese talent. A path that didn’t exist pre-Yuta.

To that end, he’s mindful of his role as an ambassador for Japanese basketball. He hasn’t thought much about his post-basketball career, but when he retires, he wants to mentor the next generation of great Japanese players. He wants to help Japanese players challenge themselves in the States.

”When I was in high school, when I said I wanted to go to the U.S., I didn’t have any connections or any people to talk with,” he says. “It was really hard to find a school that I could go to. Fortunately, my dad knew somebody and that guy helped me a lot.

So I guess I want to help those kids who want to come to the U.S. Give them advice.”

Yuta’s college career didn’t get the storybook ending it deserved. In his final college game, GW lost to St. Louis in the second round of the Atlantic 10 tournament in a mostly empty Capital One Arena in his adopted hometown of Washington D.C.

With eight minutes left in the game and GW down by two, Yuta stole the ball and raced toward St. Louis’s basket. A Billikens player tried to block the shot, initiating contact. Yuta rolled his ankle and needed help hobbling off the floor. GW’s trainer wrapped his ankle and escorted him to a nearby tunnel.

”Prove to me you can run and jump,” he says. Yuta couldn’t. He spent the rest of the game on the bench, his chin bandaged, his ankle sprained as his team’s season came to an end.

”I’m really frustrated, but after I got injured, I was watching my teammates from the bench,” he says. “And they never gave up.”

After the game, he hobbled out of the locker room on a crutch, his ankle swathed in ice. He answered questions in English for the American media and in Japanese for the Japanese media. As he spoke, tears filled his eyes.

Later, after everyone had left the arena, he sent a message to Miyaji, saying he would answer additional questions. He felt he didn’t talk as much as he should have earlier because he was too emotional after the end of his college career.

This is Yuta in a nutshell. Even during a low point in his career, he inherently understood his role as an ambassador for the sport and a representative of his country. And he relished the chance to make a difference and to live within the world of basketball. Even if he plays the rest of his career in the G League, his current life — practice, games, an episode of The Office — is a good one for the kid who always dreamed of playing basketball in the States, “Chosen One” pressure be damned.

”I’m really glad that basketball is my job now,” he says. Then, he gets up to catch a ride back to his apartment, where he’ll eat and nap before returning to the Forum to get up more shots.

This article was reported in collaboration with Dat Winning.

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mirkwoodshewolf · 7 years ago

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A Brother’s promise pt. 2

I told you guys I would post this up as soon as the first one got posted, now some intense feels are in this chapter. I hope you guys enjoyed this mini-series and look forward to the next two 2 parter fics that I’m gonna be posting up here in a few :) Now I wrote this before Civil war came out so just imagine a bit of an AU Civil War where they didn’t go into hiding but did have the fight at the airport.

Taglist:

@evyiione

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*2016*

I have indeed lived a full life. Ever since I was told about my brother's death that day, Peggy and Mr. Stark offered me a full nursing scholarship to help them build an organization known as SHIELD. I worked with them my entire life right up to Howard's sudden death, Peggy and I still kept in touch every now and then to talk about our lives and about Steve and Bucky, but it wasn't until 2011 that they found Steve in the ice and when he woke up, I was actually there shortly after he woke up to greet him. We embraced and caught up on everything.

I told him about my life with a wonderful man named Joseph and how we married in 63 and had two beautiful daughters. I told him about my four grandchildren and recently at that time my oldest Grandson had just had a boy with his wife my first great-grandchild. He was so proud of how I managed to live my life in the present even after losing him and my brother at the same time.

Now that it's 2016, I've been moved to a retirement home the same one as Peggy and just lay there on my bed looking at all the pictures of my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Steve comes to visit me every once in awhile after he sees Peggy because I knew how Peg felt about him during our time in SHIELD *even when she has a hard-core bad ass shell around her, I knew she loved my other big brother VERY much*.

But lately Steve hasn't been visiting either me or Peggy and that began to worry me a bit, but I found out the reason why when I heard on the news that HYDRA, the organization I had found out was responsible for my brother Bucky's death when I first joined SHIELD, had been working within SHIELD ever since the beginning when we hired Zola as one of the scientists to help build the technology for SHIELD, and now the whole secret of both organizations has gone to the public for over a couple of years now. I try to keep up on the news of everything that happens with the Avengers mainly with Steve since I can't bare to lose him a second time for he truly is the only real family I've got left from my childhood.

I just couldn't.

But I guess this old girl's getting ahead of herself discussing matters not really concerning her since all she does is just lay in bed all day because of my elderly legs now barely able to keep me standing up right.

It was late one night and my grandchild Bethany and her children came by to visit me and the nurse then had to shoo them out since visiting hours were over. I kissed my grand-daughter and my great grandchildren Ross and Monica *A/N see the hint reference there?* and waved goodbye to them as they left. My nurse helped me take my final pill for the day and turned off my light before shutting the door softly leaving me to sleep.

It was then my window began to open as a shadow came inside my room. The figure walked close to me and gently reached out their hand to stroke my pure snow white hair away from my face. I moaned quietly and began to open my eyes and nearly had a heart attack there seeing someone just standing over me but when my lamp came on I saw Steve standing over me.

"(Y/n) it's okay, it's okay!"

"Goddamn it Steve you could've killed me doing that! I'm not as young as I use to be yah know!"

"Kinda glad to see that fiery temper of yours hasn't gone away with your age". He muttered.

"Boy if I still had my strength I would kick you right now". We smiled at each other and he hugged me gently. "It is good to see you though Stevie, but what are you doing here so late?"

"Well it's not really me that wanted to come and see you, and I wasn't the one you saw just now in the dark" Steve said as he separated from me as I looked at him confused. He was the only one outside my family that knows where I am, and there was no other man I knew outside my family that could climb up four stories other than Steve and get up to my room successfully. That was when Steve stepped aside and coming into the light of my lamp was my brother.

James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.

Still as young as the day he left for war, but his hair was longer and he had grown a bit of a scruffy looking beard, and he also had a metal arm.

My eyes widened in shock at the sight of my brother standing before me. I couldn't believe that he was here right now.

"(Y/n)....... hehe look at you baby sis," he knelt down by my bedside and i slowly reached up to touch his cheek but I paused in fear thinking that this is was all some sick hallucination made by my elderly mind. There was no way he could be here. Could he? Bucky taking notice of my fear smiled warmly and took my elderly hand gently in his metal one and placed it on his cheek. I felt warmth and he didn't disappear at my touch.

He was real.

Tears formed in my eyes as he leaned up against me with an arm gently wrapped around me as I cried into his neck just like that night before he left for Europe back in 43. My BBBFF was alive and he was here with me. I smiled as I wrapped my arms around him as tight almost as if I didn't hold onto him with all my strength, he would disappear. Steve smiled in the background at the sight of the Barnes siblings back together again after over 70 years of being apart then he snuck out leaving the two of us to catch up.

After awhile we separated from our hug and I said.

"Oh Bucky, I--I never thought I would see you again. When Peggy, Howard, and the other Howling Commandos came at my door just as the war was over and they told me what happened I--"

"Shhhh, don't think about that anymore. I'm here now. Let's just focus on that".

"But--but how is this possible? How are you alive?" It was then Bucky began to regretfully explain everything that happened to him. When he fell down from the train after saving Steve, the Russians found him and HYDRA began experimenting on him giving him his metal arm. His time in cryo-freeze only coming out as a ruthless assassin known as the Winter Soldier, killing Howard and his wife, along with other SHIELD agents that HYDRA gave him. His abuse and memory erase after every mission or when he began to remember who he was, always his first memory before being wiped were of me. He told me how he and Steve fought against each other until Steve managed to make him remember and how he went into hiding after both secrets from SHIELD and HYDRA were exposed to the public before being found by Steve and Sam Wilson aka Falcon on the Avengers.

Now that he was starting to freely remember who he once was, though he doesn't have all his memories back yet, he did however remembered who I was and had all his memories of me back. It became so much for him that he just had to find out where I was and that's when Steve told him where I was and that it was my brother's idea to sneak into the nursing home just so he could see me.

After his whole story, I couldn't help but feel my heart break at all that my poor brother had to go through, all the torture and blood he had to spill and the fact that he wasn't in control of what he was doing probably made him feel so guilty and depressed knowing it was still him who had done it. I reached out for his metal hand but Bucky being so ashamed of how many people he had killed with this arm flinched away from me but I looked at him with a determined look and he relaxed and allowed my to take his metal arm and I held it with both my hands and kissed it, even though I knew he probably couldn't feel it, I had a feeling it still gave him warmth knowing that I still loved him as my Big brother even with this war injury.

"Never be ashamed Buck, I still love you my BBBFF, you'll always be the jerk-face I've always loved".

"And you will always be the hot-headed, tempered baby sister I've always loved, and speaking of which,". He removed my blanket and gently picked me up bridal style. Scared, I wrapped my arms around his neck and said.

"James, what are you doing!?"

"I believe I made a promise to you, and as I remember I never break a Big Brother's promise". He then went to the window and looked down. "Close your eyes," I buried my face into his neck and felt my stomach drop as he jumped from my window down to the ground below four stories. Bucky then placed me on a motorcycle and got in front of me and wrapped my arms around his waist.

"Bucky where are we going?"

"It's a surprise, now hang onto me baby sis". He revved the cycle and took off riding into the streets. It was several hours later, the retirement home probably knows I'm missing and is probably going frantic about finding me, but just being with Bucky seemed to make all those thoughts just disappear. It was then I began to notice we were finally out of the city and were now driving through country terrain. It must be my old mind but something was telling me that this trail was familiar from somewhere.

After a couple of more hours of driving we came to a hidden trail that went up a hill. Bucky parked the bike in the woods and said.

"Okay, you're gonna have to close your eyes again,"

"Bucky where are we?"

"I told you it's a surprise, now come on just close your eyes for me please?" He then pulled the bunny face on with with additional nose twitch.

"Okay, okay". As he picked me up bridal style I closed my eyes and I could feel Bucky beginning to walk the trail. As he walked, every now and then I would ask him if I could open my eyes yet but he would say no. This game continued on for a couple more minutes and then Bucky placed me down but helped me stand straight by keeping hold of my hand and said.

"Okay, now you can open them". I opened my eyes and to my surprise I saw the one thing I thought I would never see again.

It was our vacation cabin in the woods.

But this time it was rebuilt all the way from the ground up. But last I ever heard of this cabin it was destroyed back in 93 for being a waste of space and with it being so old and the wood rotting the rangers decided to tear it down and just leave it as an empty space for campers.

"But--How......Buck this was......."

"I know Steve told me. but he, Sam, Clint and I rebuilt the cabin from the ground up just a few months ago after our last big deal with Stark and the government. Everything inside is the same furniture, same texture, same design, everything. It's almost as if it never left". I looked up at him and he smiled at me and continued as he stroked my cheek gingerly, "I made you a promise to take you here when I returned from war. Well even if it's over 70 years overdue, I think you deserve one last camping trip with your awesome Big bro". I smiled with tears spilling down my face. I kissed his cheek as I hugged him crying happily.

Bucky then helped me walk towards the cabin by allowing me to hold his metal hand for balance and his human arm wrapped around my waist to keep me from falling over. And true to his word as we stepped inside, everything was the same, from the design itself to the furniture and the carpets, they even built the same fireplace where Bucky and I would once roast marshmallows when it would rain and we couldn't do it outside. So many memories came back to me as Bucky placed me down on the rocking chair by the fireplace and knelt down beside me. He smiled up at me and took my hand in his and gently kissed it and I stroked his scruffy cheek making me softly giggle cause it slightly tickled my hand.

"Thank you Buck"

"You deserved it sis, after everything you've been through. What we've both been through," it was then he took me from the living room up to the bedroom where the large see-through window was and as we laid together on the bed Bucky then began to make shapes of the stars and even make up stories about what they're doing.

This moment right here felt like a beautiful dream but I knew it wasn't. My brother was here alive, we were finally doing our cabin in the woods camping trip now that he was back from war. Even 70 years couldn't change the fact that my brother had managed to come back to me and even though he is still as young as he was back in 43, he still saw me as his precious wittle baby-waby sister.

I leaned against his chest listening to his heartbeat as my eyes closed and I exhaled a soft breath and a smile came across my face.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x teen reader #major feels #fluff #brotherly fluff #brother feels #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x sister reader

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