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the-wild-wolves-around-you · 3 years ago

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hear those bells ring deep in the soul (a katsuki bakugo/reader fic)

Summary: Pro Hero Dynamight was Japan’s Number Two Hero. He'd worked hard to achieve his position, his fame. And now it was all going down the damn drain, along with his hearing.

~*~*

Bakugo is suffering from hearing loss as a side effect of his quirk, and he struggles with how to face this new challenge. Enter Reader with a healing quirk.

Pairings: Katsuki Bakugo/Reader; Katsuki Bakugo/You

Rating: M(ature)

Warnings: Blood & violence.

A/N: No spoilers or anything. This is just a self-indulgent AU fic with aged up characters. Everyone’s in their mid-20s. Fic title is from a song called “Achilles Come Down.”

Ao3 Link: Here

*****A/N Part 2: This post has now been updated to include the links to Ch 2

Ch 2 Tumblr Link: Here

Pro Hero Dynamight was Japan’s Number Two Hero. Actually, he’d argue he was tied for first place with the current Symbol of Peace, Shitty Deku. Their victory statistics were basically the fucking same, the only difference was the freckled idiot was made of smiles and sunshine and stupid fucking sugar or something. The whole world ate out of his scarred, fucked up hand, and Darling Deku ate up all the media’s attention in return.

In contrast, Bakugo wasn’t a “people person,” as Deku loved to put it, but… he also wasn’t the same fifteen-year-old brat who got muzzled on live national television. Pro Hero Dynamight was known for his crass, blunt language, his vicious streak of justice when it came to villains, but people also looked up to him. Extras cheered for him in the streets as he exploded past mid-battle. Children ran up to him on patrol and asked him to sign their books, their photos, their Dynamight merch. On one memorable occasion, that he may or may not have saved on his computer, a national news channel ran a live clip from a disaster site, a villain attack turned rescue mission after a building collapsed. The soundbite was only thirty seconds, a close up of a pale, dusty woman with a shallow cut on her brow. The splash of crimson and her bloodshot blue eyes were the only spots of color on her, everything else washed out in white plaster and cement dust, tear tracks carving grooves down her cheeks.

But the smile on her face could have lit up goddamn Tokyo.

“Dynamight saved us,” the woman had said to the news reporter, her voice full of awe and tears. “I-I got stuck under some debris, but I heard the moment Dynamight arrived, and I just knew we were safe. The battle was over a minute later, and then he just… pulled me out of the wreckage. He pulled us all out. He’s… the greatest hero I’ve ever seen.”

That was a nice stroke to his ego. And the dazed woman had been right. He had pulled everyone out of that building, and not a single person died that day, which only confirmed what he already knew:

Katsuki Bakugo was the best of the best. Deku might have been the better show pony, but Dynamight was an undefeated hero, fierce, fearless, ferocious.

Except right now… he was fucking scared out of his mind.

This couldn’t be happening.

“What?” he snarled at the extra in the white coat standing before him.

The man flinched and visibly recoiled, shuffling back a step and partially ducking behind his tablet device. When he spoke again, he’d raised his voice an entire fucking octave.

“I-I’m sorry, sir,” the doctor stammered, but then he seemed to regain his composure and lowered his voice a little. “I… I wish I had better news for you, Dynamight, but…”

He trailed off and swallowed, the jut of his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the thin skin of his throat.

“But what?” Bakugo spat, something like magma roiling in his veins, pops of heat crackling against his palms like splatters of hot oil from a stove.

“B-But this… can’t come as a complete shock to you,” the doctor said as he glanced back at his tablet. “Other physicians before myself must have warned you of the risks.”

The risks. Bakugo bared his teeth in a silent snarl. What did this fucking extra, with his soft hands and softer body, know about risks? The heat in his palms grew until he could see their red-hot glow out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, who and how much do I gotta pay to fix it?” Bakugo demanded as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“That depends,” the doctor hedged and adjusted the square black glasses perched on his stupid face. “There are a variety of aid types—”

“I don’t want fuckin’ support gear or aids,” Bakugo sneered. “I want mine fixed.”

Now, the doctor’s face grew pitying. “I’m afraid that’s just not possible, given a number of factors, most importantly your current occupation.”

“My current occupation?” the hero seethed, teeth bared again like a wounded dog, a cornered wolf, snapping at the world. “Are you fucking KIDDING—”

A hint of fear sparked in the doctor’s eyes, but he suddenly raised a hand, palm out in the universal symbol for stop. “Dynamight, sir, I know this is distressing, but there are other sick patients in these walls, so please refrain from using your quirk.”

“I’m not usin’ shit,” Bakugo snapped, but then the doctor’s eyes flicked downward, and Bakugo followed them to his hands, wreathed in sparks and flares of flames, lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.

The breath stuttered in Bakugo’s lungs.

He hadn’t even felt himself call upon his quirk.

Even worse… he hadn’t heard it when he did.

He dropped his hands quickly, shoving them back in his pockets. Bile rose in his throat, but he washed it down with blood as he bit through his tongue.

“There has to be… something,” he gritted out, curling his hands into fists in their confines. “A healer—”

“Healers are rarer than you think,” the doctor sighed and shook his head. “And what’s more, they’re usually specific and limited. Their abilities are tied to blood types or restricted to relatives or even limbs. One nurse here can only heal femur bones.”

“Bullshit they’re rare, I’ve met at least two goddamn healers just this month,” Bakugo spat. “These paramedics—”

“And how strong where they?” the doctor cut him off again, raising an eyebrow. “You said paramedics, so I’m going to assume their talents mostly lie in the superficial and basic: triage, stopping the bleeding, knitting skin back together, etc.”

“What’s your fucking point?” He was this close to punching the asshole right in the glasses.

“My point is the inner workings of your ear are much more delicate than a broken rib or lacerated arm,” the doctor said in a really condescending tone that Bakugo did not appreciate. “But let’s say you do find a healer specific enough and skilled enough to restore the hearing you have already lost without damaging anything else in the process. What then? I don’t imagine Japan’s Number Two Hero retiring less than ten years after his debut and hanging up his quirk.”

Bakugo scowled, heart kick-starting in his chest, his gut tying itself in a knot.

No. No, that wasn’t possible. Katsuki Bakugo was a hero, the best of the best. It was all he’d ever wanted, and he would be damned if it was taken from him.

The doctor must have seen as much on the blond’s face because he sighed and adjusted his glasses again. “Exactly. Which means you’re just going to keep destroying your ears again and again, and even if say Recovery Girl was still alive, the repetitive healing sessions would destroy your own body’s healing factor, and after a while, you would still lose you’re hearing.”

“Tch.” Bakugo looked away and gritted his teeth so hard they ached.

The doctor sighed. “You’re already at moderate hearing loss, Dynamight, so while we do still have some options, they are limited. Honestly… I’m surprised you didn’t come in sooner.”

He should have. He fucking should have. He’d been noticing little things for years, but he just brushed it off, yelled at Deku to speak the fuck up and stop mumbling, told himself his phone must be a piece of shit and that’s why he didn’t hear a call or message. The low persistent ringing he’d been experiencing since UA was harder to write off, but after a while, it was also easier to ignore.

Then, on his last mission, Bakugo was shoving some weak ass villain at a couple of cops. The battle had lasted less than five minutes, and he was still itching for a fight, his quirk burning just beneath the surface of his skin, like embers waiting to explode back into flame. In the next moment, a hand had suddenly clamped down on his shoulder from behind, and he’d reacted out of reflex, flipping his attacker over his shoulder and nearly blasting them in the gut for good measure.

“Whoa! Fuck, dude, it’s me!” Kirishima had yelped, his skin rippling and hardening in an instant. Wide, red eyes gaped up at him, and Japan’s Number Three Hero even looked a little worried. “Didn’t you hear me? I called your name like five times.”

Bakugo had dropped Red Riot like he was on fire. No. No, Dynamight hadn’t heard his patrol partner. In fact, all he could hear in the moment was the muted wailing of sirens, the low murmur of shouting extras, and the blood roaring in his head.

Now, two days later he was standing in front of a doctor who was telling him there was nothing more they could do.

But that was fucking unacceptable. He couldn’t lose his hearing. What kind of shitty hero would he be if he couldn’t hear where the villains were in battle or where stupid extras in need of saving were in rescue situations?

He wouldn’t be a hero at all, just a fucking liability.

Bakugo tried to imagine having to retire, to hang up his hero costume, to leave Shitty Hair in charge of their joint agency. What would he do? He’d wanted, and planned, to be a hero since he was five years old. He had no other skills, not really. It wasn’t like he could work a damn desk job. Well, UA might throw him a bone, offer him a pity faculty position.

The thought left a sour taste in his mouth.

“What… are my options?” he asked haltingly as he snapped his eyes up and locked gazes with the doctor. “You said I still had some.”

The man in the white coat blinked in surprise, but then he straightened up and tapped at his tablet. “Currently, you have a few options, but you’d receive the best outcome if we did them all together. First, we can get you fitted for some hearing aids for you to wear while you are off duty. They would significantly increase your hearing capacity in your normal day-to-day life.”

Bakugo felt his face pull into a scowl. “Off duty? I need them while I’m on duty!”

“If you wear them while using your quirk, you’ll ruin the rest of your hearing in one blow,” the doctor said with a straight face. “Hearing aids amplify sounds. Amplifying your explosions is the last thing we want.”

“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do then?” the hero snapped, heat flaring through his body with a supernova.

“Since I assume you’re going to continue your hero work, I would recommend contacting a support gear company.” The doctor made a note on his tablet. “We’ll email you the contact information for several companies the hospital has connections with, and once you chose one, we can send them your file. There are numerous noise-cancelling devices out there, but given your situation, you will probably need to collaborate with them for something custom. The goal is to having something to protect your ears-- a helmet, headphones, anything really—while you are using your quirk. Between such a device and the hearing aids, I hope we can preserve what’s left of your hearing and maybe give you a little bit back. But I will warn you… you’re hearing will never be as it was. You should know that now.”

You’re hearing will never be as it was.

The words cycloned through Bakugo’s head, round and round and round, destroying every other thought in their path. He felt detached from himself, the doctor’s voice fizzling out into a muffled drone. His vision seemed to narrow and darken, like he was viewing the world at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. One minute, he was standing there in that examine room, and then he blinked and was on the street, people rushing past him like a river unbothered by the boulder in its current.

He glanced down at his hand, at the paperwork for his follow up appointment and his fitting for the hearing aids. Heat squirmed under his skin, in his veins, like something living, something that wanted to get out.

Bakugo bared his teeth, crumpled the paper in his fist, and let the heat rush through his body, down through his arm, and into his hand. He didn’t hear the crackle, but he saw the flares of light, trapped between his palm and the paperwork like fireflies.

Then he opened his hand, and he watched the wind catch the ash and carry if off down the street, out of sight.

He needed a fucking drink.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Several hours later, Bakugo stumbled out of his usual dive bar, the taste of whisky still burning a hole through the back of his throat. The night was colder than he anticipated, colder than it should be for the beginning of autumn, and he grumbled and cursed as he hunched against the wind. He squinted at his phone, debating on whether to call a car, but in the end it was too much trouble. He was less than a half an hour’s walk from his apartment, and it was late, so he wouldn’t have to worry about extras coming up to him for photos or goddamn autographs.

Besides, the whisky hadn’t helped to quench the heat writhing through his veins, in fact the alcohol only made it worse. Bakugo felt restless, all pins and needles and ants, so maybe the brisk walk would burn off some of that energy.

Decided, Bakugo turned in the direction of home and began the long, stumbling journey through the midnight streets.

Time passed as sluggishly as his feet, which he made sure to stare down at so he didn’t trip over them. Like he anticipated, he passed no one on the sidewalks, and few cars rumbled past him. It wasn’t surprising, this neighborhood was mostly shops that closed by sundown and a few residences. The dive bar he’d left was a holdover from past decades when this side of town was rougher, but Bakugo suspected the old man who owned the joint would live on for at least another decade, if only to spite the development companies that kept trying to buy him out. The ornery bastard was half the reason Bakugo loved that bar, the other half being their decent whisky and usually empty stools.

“Shit,” he mumbled as he suddenly slipped, tittering on the edge of the curb.

He shook his head and managed to regain his balance, but when he took another step, he wobbled again.

“Come on, you drunk idiot,” he hissed at himself as he stumbled once more.

Except… he’d been standing still that time.

“Hah?” Bakugo squinted down at his feet.

The pebbles around his shoes rattled and jumped. He didn’t think he was that drunk, but he slapped his cheek with a bit of heat to his palm. The snap of warmth and pain woke him up a little, but when he glanced back down at the ground, everything was still moving.

“What the fu—”

Then the road undulated under his feet like a living thing, and the shockwave hit him a moment later.

Bakugo barked a curse as he was bucked several feet into the air, twin explosions blooming from his palms so he could right himself and land on his feet. He snapped his head up as he skidded to a stop, and the breath stilled in his lungs.

Up ahead, a man stood in the middle of the intersection, staring down the road to Bakugo’s left. Black rubble and goo floated around him like asteroids trapped in a planet’s orbit, and even from a distance, Bakugo could see the crazed smile on the man’s pale, black-streaked face.

A moment later, several heroes lunged out from around the corner and barreled straight for the villain, only to be blasted backwards as the villain flung out his hands and commanded the black debris and goo to slam into the idiots.

The villain threw back his head and seemed to laugh maniacally. Bakugo couldn’t hear it, but that didn’t matter. Lava was starting to boil in his veins, burning off the last of the whisky, and Dynamight felt an equally crazed smile stretch across his mouth.

This idiot had chosen the wrong road to fuck up tonight.

Heat condensed in his palms like collapsing stars, and then he was exploding forward, the taste of ozone and nitroglycerin on his tongue.

Within moments, Bakugo was able to determine the villain’s quirk revolved around asphalt. The bastard was able to pull large chunks of it out of the road and then liquify parts of them until they were scalding and sticky.

The other heroes—whoever they were, Bakugo didn’t even care to check—struggled to evade the villain’s attacks, but evasion wasn’t Dynamight’s style. He came at the bastard head on, exploding every rock and tar puddle in his way.

Of course, asphalt was flammable, so flames were flaring up all around the street now, but Bakugo wasn’t stupid enough to get burned. If the other heroes were, that was on them.

Dynamight was here to get the job done.

“Come here, ya sonvabitch,” Bakugo snarled as he blasted apart a chunk of asphalt aimed for his head.

The villain shrieked out something high-pitched that Bakugo didn’t catch, and then the fucker was swinging out his arm, a blob of black tar following the arc.

Bakugo let out a controlled burst toward his feet and backflipped through the air, crunching down on the roof of a parked car. He could see some of the other heroes waving at him from the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying over the wailing of the car alarm below him.

The villain’s sneer was a white slash on his black, goo-streaked face, and Bakugo bared his teeth back in an expression halfway between a feral grin and a beast’s snarl. He could feel the heat crackling along his palms as he contemplated his next move, but then the villain shouted something, and all the asphalt floating in the air rocketed back towards him like the fucker was a magnet.

As Bakugo watched, the debris and goo coalesced into a singular shape, liquifying and hardening in turns until a giant black arm the size of a semi was hovering over the road. The fingers wiggled in a jaunty little wave as the villain shouted something again that was lost to the car’s still wailing alarm, and then the giant hand curled into a fist and dropped down on Bakugo like the hammer of some god.

He exploded out of the way and up into the air right before the fist smashed into the car he’d been standing on, and the siren cut out with a muffled crunch.

Bakugo had barely landed before the arm was shooting out again, but this time it wasn’t aimed for him.

A stupid fucking extra had stumbled out of one of the buildings and stood gaping like a goddamn moron on the sidewalk. Several of the on-scene heroes rushed forward, but the hand swatted them aside like annoying flies. The idiot civilian was still just standing there, though, and Bakugo found himself airborne before he could even process the thought.

“Run!” he roared as he reached the extra and shoved him out of the way, but an instant later, he felt stony fingers wrap around his torso and squeeze.

Bakugo wheezed out a curse as the giant hand lifted him into the sky, the pressure around his ribs increasing with every second. The asphalt was hot in some places, too, scalding the skin of his left arm where it was pinned against his hip. He wrenched his right arm around and tried to aim at the wrist of the asphalt appendage, but the angle was off, and the few chunks he was able to blast were quickly replaced by more rubble and boiling tar.

“Fuck!” Bakugo screamed as the fist clenched down around him. His ribs strained, his lungs unable to expand, pain licking at him like the flames flickering in his peripherals.

Distantly, he heard the villain’s laughter below him, and as the arm swayed to the side, Bakugo realized he was right above the bastard. His vision swam, his ribs screaming, his arm burning, but Bakugo gritted his teeth as he aimed his right palm down. He concentrated every ounce of his quirk into his hand until it glowed white-hot, and the asphalt around him began to liquefy again.

The villain’s eyes widened as he realized what the hero was doing, and the fucker wildly swung out his arm in a last-ditch effort. The giant asphalt limb responded in kind, but Bakugo unleashed his quirk right before the arm flung him through the air.

A massive explosion rocked the street an instant later, and the subsequent shockwave slammed into his back and propelled him through a window.

He felt the impact and pain as he struck the glass, and then…

Nothing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Ouch, fuck!” you cursed as your pricked yourself for the millionth time.

A red drop of blood beaded up on the pad of your index finger, and you scowled before you sucked the smarting appendage into your mouth. It was more of a reflex than anything, since by the time you pulled your finger out, the pinprick of a wound was already healed. Healing such a small injury would usually barely even register to you, but the clock above your desk was inching closer and closer to midnight, and you’d been up since 6am. You also skipped dinner so you could finish altering the dress you were currently working on, which didn’t help your energy levels, but you were just a few stitches away from completing your task, so you hunched back over and powered through the next five minutes.

When you were finally done, you sat back in your chair with a sigh and threw down your needle and thread. The sewing table before you swam and doubled as your vision struggled to focus on something, and you rubbed at your tired, burning eyes. You always tried to work reasonable hours, have a healthy work-life balance, but somehow you always found yourself slaving away into the dark hours of the night. You tried to tell yourself it wasn’t your fault. You’d lived here less than a year, so you didn’t know many people beyond your few neighbors and the old ladies who frequented your alterations shop.

You were also trying very hard to keep your grandparents’ business afloat.

Your grandfather had been a tailor, your grandmother a seamstress. They’d opened a shop together over fifty years ago, and if your parents hadn’t moved to America before you were born, you were sure you father would have taken over the family business. In the end, though, after your grandparents passed, you were the one to take up the needle and pull up your roots. You’d always loved making your own clothes, and you’d always felt… disconnected in America. Nothing had ever felt… right, no matter how many jobs you hopped around to. The US had been the only home you’d ever known, but when you and your parents spoke Japanese together, it had made something ache deep in the center of you, something you couldn’t name or place.

So, when your father said he was taking a trip to the homeland to sell his parents’ shop, you’d gone with him and somehow convinced him to sign everything over to you. Which was more than just a little insane. Your prior work history had been in food service and clothing retail, and your degree was in linguistics for fuck’s sake. You had no idea how to run a business, let alone in another country. Thankfully, you spoke Japanese fluently, so that had been one less hurtle to overcome, but everything else had been a dramatic learning curve. Getting to know the new city, figuring out the currency, hell even navigating the vastly different social norms of Japanese culture was daunting, and you would be lying if you said you didn’t have numerous fumbles along the way.

It, everything, had definitely taken some getting used to.

Now, a year later, things were just starting to really look up. You had used most of the money your grandparents left you to renovate the shop, get new equipment, and fix the upstairs apartment you lived in. About two dozen loyal customers helped to pay your bills and keep you afloat, and one-to-two new customers walked into your shop each month just on word of mouth. You weren’t rich by any means, but you weren’t struggling like you did in America. You felt… happy here, if a little tired. Fulfilled.

That might also have had something to do with your little… side business.

You bit your lip as your eyes shot to your window guiltily, like someone was watching you. You weren’t doing anything wrong—right now, anyways—but for the last six months, it’s been hard to shake off your paranoia.

And your guilt. Which was ridiculous. You weren’t hurting anyone. In fact, you were doing the exact opposite.

But it was still against the law. Here in Japan, at least.

That was another thing that took some getting used to. The Japanese government had strict laws on quirk usage, unlike in America where everything was about individualistic rights. In Japan, only heroes were given almost free reign, but even they had some restrictions on when and how they could use their powers.

For the rest of the Japanese populace, using quirks in day-to-day life, without official permission, was frowned upon at best and illegal at worst.

Because of your specific quirk, you leaned more toward the illegal side of things.

Healing quirks were rare. That’s what you’d been told all your life. Your mother’s quirk was the ability to lower fevers by somehow using her own body to regulate the temperature. Nothing super special or powerful, but she’d gone on to become a pediatric nurse, so she had used her quirk to its fullest and made a long, happy career for herself.

When you were young and your quirk manifested, you thought you would follow in your mother’s footsteps.

But as a teenager, you’d come to some hard realizations about yourself.

One, you weren’t strong enough to be a hero. You’d tried to get into a hero course in the States, several in fact. One course rejected you solely on your application, and then you failed two entrance exams. It had been a devastating blow to your youthful dreams and self-esteem, but your mother encouraged you, said being a hero wasn’t the only way to use your quirk for good.

So, you turned your focus to medicine… and quickly discovered that wasn’t right for you, either. Your mother hated when you said this but… you just weren’t smart enough. You had tried, really did, but everything was such a struggle, like Sisyphus slogging uphill through the mud. It just didn’t click for you like it did for your mom. You also hated to admit it, but you were a little squeamish. You were fine with small stuff, cuts and bruises, broken fingers, but once you had to dissect a large pig in an anatomy class, and the smell and weight of the pig’s slippery organs in your hands made your lunch rise up into the back of your throat. You somehow managed to make it through the class, but directly after you ran to the bathroom and emptied your own guts into the toilet.

With your dreams of being a hero and doctor dashed, you’d been a little aimless in college, taking random courses to fill your time and see if anything spoke to you. Then, during an 8am linguistics lecture you signed up for on a whim, something ignited inside you. Languages spoke to you like science and medicine never did. So, you’d changed your major to linguistics, minored in Japanese to feel closer to your parents, and took ever other language credit you could get your hands on. In between classes, you’d taken up sewing again while you listened to your audio assignments. It was just something to keep your hands busy at first, a skill your father taught you as a child until you abandoned it, but then your roommates complimented your work and started asking you to hem their jeans or take in their skirts. They offered to pay you, but you always declined, saying it was no trouble, you liked the work, and you liked being able to help.

At some point, you realized that was all you had ever wanted to do. Help people. And if you couldn’t save them as a hero, you would find some other way to make yourself useful.

So, you studied languages in the hopes of being able to help others communicate. You altered your friends’ clothes and made them small things like a monogrammed scarf or mittens. And, occasionally, you healed your roommates’ hangovers or food poisoning, stopped the bleeding when they cut their fingers making dinner, pushing through their pain to make them whole again. It wasn’t a lot, nothing really, but it was something, and it made you feel purposeful.

When you moved to Japan, you mourned the loss of being able to use your quirk on others, but you shoved the thought aside and focused on your work and the shop and figuring out how to settle down in your first home on your own.

Then, six months after you took over the shop, Mrs. Kojima, a little old lady in her seventies, had brought in her grandchildren’s uniforms to be patched and altered. She’d known your grandparents for many years, so she was always kind and had a story to share with you about your father in his youth or the gorgeous dresses your grandmother used to make. You always looked forward to Mrs. Kojima’s visits, and she always had a way of making you feel younger than you were, but not in a bad way. She just made you feel… nostalgic and safe, like you were listening to your late grandma talk over the phone.

This was probably why, when Mrs. Kojima slipped and fell in front of your counter, you reacted without thinking. The old lady barely had time to hit the floor and cry out before you were hovering over her, a green aura illuminating your hands. Her pain hit you a moment later, like a heated slap to the face, a bone-deep ache in your leg, but you gritted your teeth and pushed through the discomfort. Then you moved your fingers over to the hip Mrs. Kojima was clutching, and a moment later you felt the drain as your energy siphoned into the elderly woman’s body. Thankfully, it had only been a fracture, not a full break, so you barely even felt the difference in your strength, but as Mrs. Kojima gaped up at you, realization struck you like a freight train.

You had used your quirk, without a license, without permission, hell without the consent of Mrs. Kojima. Healing quirks were illegal for a reason, so many things could go wrong, and you weren’t properly trained. Your breathing hitched as panic seized your heart, squeezing like a vise, and your entire world had just begun to crash down around your ears when Mrs. Kojima sat up and threw her arms around you.

“Thank you,” she’d sniffled into your hair in Japanese. “Thank you so much.”

After the initial shock wore off, you had helped Mrs. Kojima into a chair, and she’d continued to thank you over and over again, saying how money was tight and she would have hated to be a burden to her children with hospital bills and a long recovery. She talked about how a lot of her elderly friends were in similar positions, dealing with perpetual aches and pains but having no way to pay for treatment or seek relief.

The sadness in her face had twisted something in your chest, an ache you were all too familiar with. It was the one you felt after you failed the hero course entrance exams. The ache you felt when you realized you could never be a doctor. The ache of being helpless in the face of suffering.

Your mouth had opened without your permission, and you told Mrs. Kojima that you would help her, and her friends, whenever they needed it. The elderly Japanese woman tried to wave you off, saying she didn’t want to get you in any trouble, but you had just smiled and said, “I’m fine with making a little good trouble.”

You didn’t know where your courage had come from, but you let it carry you past your fears and doubts.

So, for the last six months, Mrs. Kojima had brought all of her friends, and sometimes their children and grandchildren, to you when they were in need of healing. They always brought dresses or pants or blouses for you to fix as a cover, and you did do alterations work for them, but you also eased flaring arthritis, cataracts, fevers, and scrapped knees in the backroom. You refused to take payment for these secret services, it just felt wrong, but the little old ladies somehow always snuck large “tips” into your register when you weren’t looking.

Mrs. Kojima and every one of her friends and family members swore to their ancestors to keep your secret, and you trusted them, but you still couldn’t help proverbially looking over your shoulder, holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the police to barge in and take you away.

It hadn’t happened yet, but the worry of it kept you up most nights, which was maybe another reason why you threw yourself into your work until you were so tired you just passed out.

You sighed again as you stretched and felt your back pop, releasing some of the tension in your spine. Glancing at the clock, you saw it was just past midnight, and you winced. You had to be up at five tomorrow—today, now—because Mr. Akane wanted to come in early before you opened the shop. His bad knee was giving him trouble again, an old injury he’d obtained as a boy. You were unable to fully reconstruct the joint—that took more strength and stamina than you currently possessed—but you were able to soothe his pain for weeks at a time, which he was immensely grateful for. He always brought you fresh fish when he came by, “gifts” he’d emphasized when you reminded him you didn’t take payment, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t appreciate the gesture. You weren’t exactly hurting for money, but you also didn’t normally splurge on fish caught just that morning, and you told yourself you deserved the small treat. Besides, the protein helped boost your energy and stamina levels, which meant you could heal more people, so really Mr. Akane was merely investing in his future treatments.

Your stomach grumbled at the thought of food, and you dragged yourself out of your chair before picking your way across your messy apartment to the kitchen. The apartment wasn’t very large, one large space for kitchen, dining, and living room, with one small bedroom and one bathroom down a hallway to the right when you walked in the front door. But it had been your grandparent’s home for many years before they bought a larger house after having your father, and it sat right above the shop, so you never had to worry about running late for work.

Bolts of fabric, some client pieces, and a few of your own personal sewing projects were strewn over every available surface of the main room, but you had the cleared path through the chaos memorized, so you were tossing leftovers in the microwave barely thirty seconds later. The warmed-up curry and rice—another “gift” from Mrs. Kojima—tasted as good as it had the last several days, and you hummed as the spiced meat slid down your throat and settled in your belly. After the first bite, your hunger seemed to hit you in full force, and you scarfed down every last bite in a matter of minutes. When you were done, the minor headache that had been pulsing behind your eyes abated, and you yawned as you rinsed off the dishes.

You set the damp plate on the edge of the counter as you reached for a towel, but then a sudden tremor, followed by a loud boom, seemed to shake the building, and the plate tittered on the counter’s edge for a moment before it crashed to the floor.

“Fuck!” you gasped as you jumped back and away from the ceramic shards, but another tremor-boom combo had you stumbling, and you scrambled to grab the back of the couch so you didn’t fall on your ass.

Your wide eyes took in the broken plate scattered at your feet before they jumped to the window on the opposite side of the room. The night sky was dark beyond, cut only by the dim street light just beyond the window’s view. You held your breath as your heart hammered in your ears, the hair on the back of your neck prickling, sweat slicking your palms.

What the fuck was that? Your first thought was earthquake—you hadn’t experienced one yet, but you knew they were common in Japan—but then you remembered the booms.

Maybe… maybe an electrical box blew? But no, the lights were still working. A car crash?

Then another boom vibrated you down to your very bones, and you fell to one knee as the breath hitched in your lungs.

That sounded… closer.

With your heart in your throat, you half scrambled, half crawled the last few feet to your window, and you peeked your head over the sill just as a flash off white-hot light lit up the night sky.

“Shit!” You squinted your eyes against the glare as you leaned back from the window, but then you saw a shadow streak through the air before it crashed into a car just at the edge of your peripherals.

You had the distant thought that Mr. Takeyoshi’s vehicle was very obviously totaled before you realized the thing that had crashed into the car was a person.

Your jaw gaped open as a hero pulled himself from the wreckage and shook his head groggily. The shadows—only broken by more flares of light as more explosions and fire seemed to erupt along the street—made it difficult to tell how injured the hero was. You didn’t recognize their yellow and teal costume, but you saw patches of blood along the hero’s bulky frame, and bile burned at the back of your teeth.

Holy shit. This wasn’t an accident. It was a villain attack.

Just as you had the thought, another explosion rattled your windows, making your ears ring, and you snapped your head to the side to see a man standing in the middle of the road about half a block down.

The man—villain, you realized quickly—swung his arms around like a conductor of an orchestra, but his instruments seemed to be the black rocks and liquid swirling around him. The debris glistened like an oil slick in the light of the flames, and as you watched, the villain shouted something and slashed his arm through the air.

Then a figure suddenly exploded onto the scene, lunging out from the shadows in a flare of white-hot light. It moved too fast for you to track, but the villain swung his arm again, and rocks and viscous black goo shot toward the figure still in mid-air.

A futile scream of warning caught in your throat, but then the figure seemed to explode and backflip through the air, landing on his feet but crushing the roof of a car beneath his boots. The wailing of the car’s alarm split the air, and you clenched your teeth until they ached.

The flames illuminated this new man’s face, a snarl of white teeth against the flames and smoke, but only the barest hint of recognition flared through you before everything exploded into chaos again. Another shout from the villain had all the rocks and black slime streaking back towards him, and you watched in horror as a stony black arm fifty feet long formed above the ruined street.

You knew you should be running, trying to find cover, calling the police, but you were glued there, on your knees before the window, you fingers digging grooves into the sill.

The next fifteen seconds seemed to simultaneously happen in slow motion and at hyper speed.

The giant rocky hand wiggled its fingers before it curled into a fist and slammed down on the wailing car and the man atop it.

The man—hero, you distantly thought, although your chaotic thoughts still couldn’t place him—launched up into the air with another explosion that rattled your windows, the car alarm cutting off as the vehicle was crushed an instant later.

The blond skidded into a landing half a dozen yards away, but then you suddenly saw Mr. Takeyoshi standing on the street, a ghostly apparition framed by smoke and flames.

You blinked, and the giant hand shot toward Mr. Takeyoshi, batting away several more heroes who tried to intervene.

Then the explosive hero was just there, pushing Mr. Takeyoshi out of the way, right before the hand wrapped around him.

You could hear the hero’s anguished scream through your window as he was crushed in the fist’s grip, and the sound hit you right in the solar plexus, knocking the breath out of you, bruising your insides, the pain settling into the familiar ache of being helpless in the face of suffering.

You watched uselessly as the hero was lifted up into the sky, struggling, setting off explosions left and right. Then the massive arm seemed to pause in the middle of the road, right above the villain, and your eyes locked onto the hero, his pale hair and skin stark against the black, rocky hand that held him trapped.

In the next instant, a white light, like a star going supernova, bloomed to life around the hero, illuminating the white slash of his snarling teeth before it became too bright for you to take. You slammed your eyes shut against the burning light, and the hair on the back of your neck stood on end, like the moment before lightning struck, as you dropped to the floor below your window.

Then the world exploded, the building shaking to its foundations, right before the window burst into a million shards of glass.

#bakugo katsuki #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo katuski x reader #bakugo katsuki/reader #bakugo/reader #bakugo katsuki/you #bakugo katsuki x you #my hero academia #mha spoilers #boku no hero academia #bnha #anime #fanfic #my writings #katsuki bakugo

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sunflowerim · 4 years ago

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I LOVE YOU 3000!

-PART 40

Weekend 7

Harry reached sharply at 8 and was warmly greeted by Lux who couldn't stop smiling. Theo was playing with Cliff and upon seeing Harry, both of them ran to him at once.

"Will Cliff be joining us?" Harry asked, scratching Clifford behind the ears.

"No," replied Theo sadly, "he is not allowed, so we're dropping him at the dog sitters place."

"Aww Cliffy we'll miss you,'' Harry patted Clifford before looking around for Louis.

Louis emerged right then from the room wearing an unbuttoned sap green shirt over a plain white tee, sunglasses hooked in the t-shirt, chocolate brown fringe falling over his eyes. He looked beautiful.

Louis caught him staring but was awestruck himself to do anything about it. Harry stood in front of him wearing a pink shirt with white polka dots, buttons half undone (as always) and sunglasses atop his head, tangled in his curls.

They stared at each other without even moving a muscle when Theo and Lux started aggressively tugging Louis, breaking the moment.

"C'mon uncle Lou, let's goooooo."

"We're getting LATE!"

Within fifteen minutes, all of them were seated in Louis' car driving to the dog sitters house. The car speaker was playing 'Do you wanna build a snowman' on Theo's insistence and after dropping Clifford, they were driving off to the wonders that awaited them.

Harry waited with the kids as Louis went ahead to buy the tickets. Once they got the tickets, they stood with a group and a tour guide greeted them.

"Hello and welcome to the Warner Bros Studios- the making of Harry Potter. I'm gonna walk you through the sets and--"

Harry was distracted by Louis practically bobbing with excitement next to him. Soon the guide led them into the studio and they stood in a wide hall, at the centre of which a statue of the Gringott's dragon was suspended.

People around them were buzzing around and clicking pictures. Even Louis took out his phone and with great concentration took a picture if the dragon. From there, they were led to a set up of the inside of privet drive and the cupboard under the stairs.

"Oh my god, Theo look Harry's room," Lux pulled Theo out of the crowd to show him what she'd seen.

Next they went inside the great hall where and it was magnificent. Harry had seen the Harry Potter movies, but wasn't that deeply invested in them. But Louis. Let's just say Harry had come to visit the place with three kids and not two. Louis couldn't contain his excitement at all. He took in everything with eager eyes, took pictures randomly and every now and then Harry could hear him murmur "wish I was a wizard."

Slowly they walked through a lot more sets each as exciting as the last one. From the Gryffindor common room, boys dorm, Hagrid's hut, potions & herbology classroom, leaky cauldron, to the various shops of Diagon Alley, each captured the attention of the crowd and made everyone's jaw drop. They had a difficult time in the forbidden forest, where huge spiders kept appearing every now and then, scaring Theo and Lux, and Louis had to keep explaining that those weren't real.

There was a particular emotional moment when Louis was brought to tears by a stuffed werewolf because it reminded him of Remus Lupin. Both Lux and Theo, along with Harry had to console him afterwards. He had barely recovered when they were faced with a abstract statue of Sirius Black and Louis was sad again.

Soon it was time for lunch and they found some nice seats in the in-studio restaurant and ate to their fullest. Louis and Harry even tried butterbeer and Louis declared this should be available at all regular clubs too.

After lunch, they were led towards the Hogwarts Express and Harry took pictures of Lux, Theo and Louis one by one in front of the 9¾ platform. In another section, tourists could dress up in Hogwarts robes and sit on a broomstick and record videos and of course all three of them did.

All of them were amazed at the props section. Each and every prop used in the movies was placed in glass boxes and they looked so realistic, it'd make one think that they were actually in the wizarding world.

Walking around the wizarding world set up they didn't even notice the time and soon it was almost evening.

The tour was almost over and their last stop was the merch shop. Upon entering the merch shop, nobody moved for a few seconds. They were taken aback by the variety of items that had been stacked up for sale. Louis bought Lux and Theo a wand each and they couldn't stop waving it around even for a second. He himself wanted to buy a Gryffindor quidditch costume, which earned a tease from Harry,

"Fancy seeing you go to work in these."

"Don't be silly Harry, it's for Halloween."

At the end he settled for a Gryffindor t-shirt and bought robes for the twins instead. Hufflepuff for Theo and Gryffindor for Lux.

Louis even made Harry take the Sorting Hat quiz right there, so he could buy him something. Hufflepuff.

"Yay, Harry you're with me," said Theo running to hug him.

Harry wouldn't buy a robe so Louis got him a t-shirt too.

They also bought a Hogwarts poster for the twins' bedroom at Louis' (because their mum wouldn't let them put up so many posters in the room in their own house and well Louis is the cool uncle so he'll obviously buy it for them).

On their way out they bought loads of chocolates and in his excitement, Louis didn't notice that Harry was lingering a little longer at the payment desk.

It was a wholesome day and it left them exhausted but happy.

After exiting the studio, Louis drove them to his favourite restaurant for dinner. The twins were staying with them tonight and had insisted Harry stay back too. Harry readily agreed and Louis was the happiest.

Theo had fallen asleep in Harry's lap and Lux in Louis' and the two of them slowly climbed the stairs to the apartment carrying the kids in their arms.

After reaching the apartment, Louis woke them up for a while to brush their teeth while Harry got them ready for bed. As Harry and Louis tucked them in their bed, they both said their goodnights in sleepy murmurs.

Harry was feeling tired too and went to the guest room (which had begun to look like his room) after wishing Louis goodnight.

As Harry settled in the bed, he took out his phone, deciding to post some pictures.

As he finished posting some pictures, he noticed that Louis had put up some stories on Instagram too. He was amused by the excitement which was radiating off of Louis' stories. He really was a kid at heart.

Harry was about to keep his phone down and go to sleep when he noticed that Louis had posted a picture. He quickly scrolled up and when he saw what Louis had posted, his breath hitched.

Harry will never know what possessed him at that moment that he jumped out of bed and pulled the blue wrapped packet from under the bed, deciding to go to Louis' room at once. He grabbed a clean t-shirt (which belonged to Louis) from the bedside drawer and at once made his way across to Louis' door. Clutching the packet tightly in one hand, he softly knocked.

Harry waited for about 2 seconds before the door was opened by Louis, still shirtless.

"What happened Harry? Did you need something?" Louis asked, a hint of worry in his voice.

"No, --um yeah, I mean- I wanted to give you something," Harry replied waving the packet slightly.

"Oh come in."

They made their way to the bed when Louis seemed to remember he wasn't wearing a shirt and quickly dived into the drawers for one. Harry's brows furrowed in frustration when he saw Louis putting on a black tank top and coming over to sit next to him.

"What did you get me?"

"See for yourself," Harry said handing the packet to Louis.

"You didn't have to," Louis continued, carefully opening the packet, "When did you even--"

Louis paused midway, opening the box in the packet, gaping at the content inside. "Harry, you-- I-- you- thanks wow, I mean- how did you-", he tried forming a coherent sentence while picking up the carved wooden wand from the box.

Harry chuckled quietly, "I saw how intently you were learning the wand choreography. It's only fair that you have one too."

Louis flung himself on Harry, knocking the breath out of his lungs, "thank you so much, I love this."

Harry hugged him back tightly, trying to steal as much warmth as he could before he had to let go.

Louis let go after a few seconds, face flushed and went back to examining the wand. Harry watched Louis' eyes sparkle as he held out his wand and tried out some moves. Louis couldn't stopped smiling and that made Harry's insides flutter.

After a while, Harry decided it best to leave, "So I'll leave you to your devices. Goodnight."

Harry got up to leave but was stopped by Louis tugging the hem of his t-shirt.

"You could stay if you want," Louis said, ducking his head down.

"Here?" Harry asked, unsure, not letting his hopes get the better of him.

"Here," Louis replied looking up, holding Harry's gaze.

"Um okay."

Harry sat back on the bed as Louis shifted around to remove his clothes from the bed. Harry moved back in the bed and leaned against the headboard. Louis joined him soon and for a few moments both were quiet, not knowing what to say. The silence wasn't uncomfortable though.

Louis had kept the windows open which let in the cool summer breeze and Harry felt at peace listening to the sound of crickets with Louis beside him.

Louis started first-

"I saw that you posted a picture of me from your main."

"Yes."

"Wouldn't that be a problem?"

"Why? I can hang out with my friends."

Friends

Harry quickly tried to correct himself after seeing the look on Louis' face, "Not that I consider you one-- I mean-- yes I do, but not in that way, you know-- I mean-"

"It's okay Harry. I know," Louis replied, relaxing once again and slowly sliding down the bed, lying flat on his back.

Harry watched him as the moonlight settled on the curves of his face, and watched as his eyelids fluttered slowly, the moonlight dancing in the shadows of his eyelashes.

Harry tangled his fingers with Louis' half afraid that Louis would remove his hand but Louis just tightened the grip.

"Thanks for today," Harry hummed so slowly, that Louis missed him.

"Hmm?"

"Thanks for today," Harry said, a little louder this time, "for everything actually."

Louis craned his neck upward to look at Harry's face and said, "Someone's being sappy today."

Harry smiled and slid down himself, propped himself on his left elbow, head resting on his hand and looked down at Louis. "Well you make me one."

"You make me one too."

If Harry could choose one moment to relive over and over again, it would probably be this, him lying beside Louis, their fingers intertwined and his face hovering inches above Louis'.

They gazed at each and even in the dim moonlight that had filtered in the room, they could see every inch of each others face clearly and suddenly without a warning Harry leaned in and kissed Louis.

Louis' brain short circuited and he froze for a second before giving in. Harry astounded by his own courage didn't waste time in climbing on top of Louis and taking his breath away.

Harry could feel the butterfly convention in his stomach going feral.

Louis let out a nervous laugh when they stopped to catch their breaths. Harry's curls were all over his face and Louis brought his hand up tuck the wild curls behind his ears.

"Harry are you sure?" he managed between ragged breaths.

"Yes," Harry replied, his voice strained.

"But-" Louis stopped, not knowing how to say it.

"Oh god," Harry groaned, "you're gonna make me say it aren't you? Yes Louis Tomlinson, I want this, if it wasn't clear enough. Just that-" he paused, "you're the first-"

"-bloke you're snogging?" Louis completed with an all knowing smile.

"I would have framed it better, but I guess that works too."

With that Harry closed the gap between them again, hands fiddling with the fabric of Louis' shirt which he managed to pull off in a few minutes.

"Shouldn't have put it on," Harry murmured in between their kisses.

Louis tangled his hands in Harry's hair and tugged at it in response.

"I love seeing you in my shirt," Louis said, rolling them over, settling on top of Harry, legs straddling Harry's hips, "but right now, I'd like for it to disappear."

Louis grabbed his wand from the bedside table and pointing it down at Harry, said "Evanesco!"

Harry watched in amusement as the boy above him, held a wand out and incanted a vanishing spell in the middle of a heated moment. Trust Louis to be dramatic. Louis' eyes glistened in the dim light and Harry obliged instantly. Louis leaned in on Harry and they got into their rhythm again, slowly discovering every inch of each other's skin, neither willing to let go.

When Harry woke next morning, he pleased to find himself on top of Louis' chest, listening to his heartbeat and feeling the rhythmic rise and fall of Louis' belly underneath his hand. He slowly got up, careful not to wake Louis up and got off the bed, planting a kiss on Louis' forehead and made for the bathroom. He quickly freshened up, and returned to the room, to find Louis sitting up, with his back facing the window, sunlight slipping in through the curtains and illuminating his back. Louis smiled sleepily and beckoned Harry to come over. Harry started making his way over to him but suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"Stay here, don't move, I'll be back."

He dashed out of Louis' room and into the guest room and returned a minute later with his phone.

"Can I take a picture?"

"What?" Louis laughed in disbelief. "You can't be serious, I'm in my boxers."

"That won't matter. You look beautiful."

A slow blush spread across Louis' face and Harry took that as a cue to move forward. He stood at the end of the bed on Louis' right side and with great concentration took a picture.

"Let me have a look" Louis asked.

"Nuh, uh. You'll see when it's time."

Louis pouted his lips in faux sadness which earned a kiss from Harry.

"Now freshen up, the twins will be up anytime soon."

Inside the shower, Louis couldn't stop thinking about last night. He could feel a stupid grin spread on his face everytime he thought about Harry.

God. He might be in love.

Louis emerged into the drawing room and an amazing smell of pancakes wafted into his nose.

"Hey how'd you know?" Louis asked, making his way over to the kitchen and climbing on top of the kitchen counter.

"Huh? --oh this? Lux told me. Pancakes. Household favourite."

"You're spoiling them."

"You're one to talk," Harry raised an eyebrow at Louis and had to force his thoughts from wanting to kiss Harry again to the delicious pancakes being cooked.

The twins absolutely adored Harry and wouldn't let him leave even after breakfast. Lot's of negotiations and promises later, they finally agreed to let Harry leave. Louis walked him to the door and as Harry was leaving, he reached out and held his hand.

"Um, you do realise that we've watched 21 out of 22 movies and it's just week 7?"

"So what? If you thought you'll get rid of me after a few calculated weeks, you're wrong mister. I think we established that already."

"Yeah, I was just checking if it stands," Louis replied sheepishly.

"After yesterday, you don't have to worry," Harry said, moving closer and pressing a chaste kiss on Louis' lips.

And he was off.

Louis would have stood in the doorway for a little longer if the sound of giggles behind him didn't break his train of thoughts.

Lux and Theo were peering around from the couch and had apparently witnessed the display of affection.

"Are you going to marry him uncle Lou?" Theo asked, his expressions a mix of glee and confusion.

"No Theo, put your mind to rest," Louis ruffled Theo's hair.

"Do you love him? Like mommy and daddy?"

Louis smiled at that, "I don't know Lux, maybe ask Harry, next time you see him."

Lux beamed at that and soon Louis was getting the twins ready to be picked up by their mum.

Louis' sister actually stayed for an hour and they talked about all sorts if stuff, catching up on things they'd missed in each other's lives. Louis thought for a moment of he should tell her about Harry but then decided against it. It was too soon.

No sooner had all of them left, when Louis got a notification of a new post from Harry's private instagram. He quickly opened it and what he saw took his breath away again. Harry seemed to be doing that quite often.

Harry Styles was going to be the death of him.

-----

Note : first of all I'm so sorry for the late update, my college schedule is all packed up ugh -_- Secondly I've never been to Warner Bros Studios myself, so excuse the narration!

PREVIOUS / NEXT

INTRO

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 4 years ago

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tuesday again

writing this one the day of which is a little terrifying. laid low by seasonal allergies yet again

listening the band Jungle’s song Pray, the last one off their 2018 album For Ever. i listen to vanishingly few albums all the way through and this is one that’s very nice to have on while i do boring busywork. this song feels like walking into a sunken garden. i started to try to tell the story of a particular garden that i love but it’s hard to convey that sensory memory and the knowledge (as you are experiencing something!) that you’re going to look back on it and wish you’d retained more. spooky/beautiful/melancholy

youtube

reading when i haven’t been reading any published books i want to talk about i look at what i’ve recently clicked on at wlw American news & culture site Autostraddle. i have mixed feelings about them but am hopeful that their new road map will make the site less rich-white-married-cis-astrology-cat-lesbian focused. i will continue to whitelist them in my adblocker and buy their very cute merch when i can bc i feel that a wide variety of queer news sites is important even if i personally find the depth to which astrology is baked into other articles not specifically about astrology fucking insufferable. something something lasting change and representation is a battle of inches and not black-and-white morality.

ANYWAY.

they put out a good roundup about queer labor activism (mostly US-centric, bc it’s an american holiday) for labor day.

playing bioshock is not a good game for my particular brain at this particular time, so i’m back in new vegas poking around freeside to verify some shit. current mod loadout thoughts: i cannot get the seamless freeside mod to work which is somewhat disappointing, bc while having it divvied up into a bunch of little chunks you have to pass through on the way to the strip proper is cool from a worldbuilding standpoint, it would also be cool to not have to sit through a bunch of loading screens.

like the clint companion mod, lee’s barks are broken as fuck. he spits out a random line every two minutes or so, there are no specific combat or idle barks, personally i would have picked different lines but i refuse to make mods. the nine or whatever lessons in Death Rides a Horse are all delivered out of order which is extremely funny to me. this is a fairly decent likeness for the pretty awful fo3 & fnv character creator

watching a bunch of daniel craig’s bond movies this week and was going to talk a little bit about 1) my nostalgia for bond movies and 2) my theory that if a government agent plays a major role in a movie it’s copaganda but, predictably, i want to dunk on a cowboy movie instead. while trying to source the lines in the lee van cleef mod mentioned above, i found that almost none of them are from the dollars trilogy and are instead from Death Rides a Horse (which you can watch for free in 720p with subtitles here and marvel with me about how many plot points it shares with For A Few Dollars More). this explains why lee is wearing an absymal vest as the default armor, bc here is the vest in the film.

what the whole fuck. was lee allergic to stereotypical cowboy wear? what the fuck is going ON with this garment??? why the bias??? tape??? why those buckled fasteners??? WHATS THE FUCKIN DEAL WITH THIS VEST AND WHY IS IT LIKE THAT. the contrasting collar/cuffs/lapel trim on the coat proper are also kind of a lot but this ensemble is wretched, if all that contrast edging is leatherette i’m going to Riot. du pont’s corfam was undergoing heavy marketing around the time of filming, so it’s probably not the fun 1920s du pont leatherette, coated in nitrocellulose!

the movie was fine i’m just. really stuck on this vest. might as well turn the “watching” category into a “let’s talk about costumes” category at this point tbqh

making whenever i move somewhere new it’s weirdly hard to start new projects, which is not a problem i have in any other phase of my life. finished this adorable drippy “got the morbs” patch which is technically the first new thing i’ve made in this house that i’m happy with- pattern from @crapstitch/on a scrap of white 14ct DMC aida/an entire skein of DMC #730. really got down the the bare end of the skein there, did not have enough to backstitch around the MORBS. may or may not actually stitch it down in this spot on my nerd jacket bc it does take up quite a lot of real estate (jacket previously featured on this blog)

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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composereggwrites · 5 years ago

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Imprint Zine: New Creators’ Spotlight

This is my full article for the twewy @imprintzine!!! There’s still digital copies available of the full zine, and some merch left too!!! It was a blast to write and work with the other participants!

If you like this and wanna chat with me about it hit me up here or in my twewy discord!!!

Ao3

NEW CREATORS SPOTLIGHT

Hello again readers, and welcome to this month’s New Creator Spotlight! We find up-and-coming artists of all types to highlight! From fashion, music, and art, we know how to find the hidden talent in Shibuya and illuminate them all for you to see!

Mr. Mew Creations

First up is Mr. Mew Creations, a new fashion brand led by the fabulous Eri and Shiki Misaki. This duo has taken the fashion scene by storm with their innovative ideas and inspiring designs. From dresses to bright three-piece suits, these two push the boundaries of how we define outfits.

The star of their debut collection is a marvelous dress suit! It’s a dress, and a suit, combined into one! The top half is styled as a silken tuxedo jacket in bold fuchsia, with a pale lavender undershirt and iridescent pearl buttons. The bottom half, however, is a skirt designed to evoke the image of an elegant ball gown. The slip is comfortable enough to wear all day, while providing a backing to the outermost layer, which is a cascade of feathers dyed a stunning cobalt blue.

They have a myriad of other pieces in this lineup, going beyond the binary while staying fashionable and comfortable. From a simple purple shirt with embroidered orange foxes along the hem, to a yellow sweater with a detailed pink squirrel on the front, there’s a wide variety to choose from!

We sat down with the girls for an interview in their studio to talk about their threads, and they had a lot to say!

Thank you for interviewing with us. Could you both introduce yourselves for our readers?

Eri: Yeah sure! Thank you for interviewing us! I’m Eri, the lead designer of our two-person team, Mr. Mew Creations! I do most of the conceptual work, putting ideas down on paper and seeing where that gets us. Shiki definitely helps with that, but her talent shines in, well-- She can tell you!

Shiki: Hah, yeah! I’m Shiki Misaki! I’m the seamstress, so I made all the outfits you can see here in our workspace! Taking what Eri gives me, I bring our ideas to life! We’re both good in each other’s field, but together it feels like we’re unstoppable. She’s handed me some amazing designs to work with, and some I never thought I’d be able to turn into reality. The star of our show, the dress, was one of those. It almost ended up in the trash on more than one occasion, actually. We had to completely redesign it multiple times because we’re both perfectionists, and because someone sees the laws of physics as a challenge to beat. Eri likes to see how far we can push things past their limits, but we work best together because I can reel her back in if it goes too far.

We’re glad you two make such a good team! What led you to make the half-dress, half-suit outfit?

Eri: We wanted to design something that ignored gender norms. Something that defied them, without defaulting to a vaguely-masculine, androgynous look. The fact that clothing is gendered is ridiculous, and there’s this idea that men’s clothing is the default when you want a “gender neutral” item. We decided to go in the opposite direction, and add as much gender as we could, without being limited to one gender.

Shiki: It, like most of our line, is inspired by one of our friends. This dress was originally designed for him, before we decided to use it as part of our lineup. Gender is weird, and the society we live in makes navigating it more confusing than it needs to be. To be able to wear what you want, without worrying about the perception others have of you, without worrying about the way you’ll be labeled? That’s the ideal we strive for, and we hope our work can make a difference.

You said your friends inspired your line. What can you tell us about your creative choices?

Eri: Our friends are unique individuals, and we are too, so we know how to take a look at what people want, and what they need. Not everyone has the perfect model body. Not everyone wants to wear the high-fashion bling, or keep up with all the latest trends. The trick is to find what people want to wear, and design that, instead of chasing what’s trendy. If it’s stylish, people will want it, but it has to look nice and fit right.

Shiki: Just because something is comfortable, doesn’t mean it can’t have style. People are going to notice if you’re not at ease in the clothes you wear, and that unease ruins otherwise perfect appearances. We custom make everything here, and as the seamstress it’s my job to take what Eri gives me for the design and bring it to life. Doing that, while taking sensory issues into account, and ensuring nothing irritates the person who will be wearing it, is of the utmost importance.

Can you tell us a bit about yourselves and your brand? How you got started, or where your mascot came from?

Shiki: Oh! Our mascot, Mr. Mew, was the first thing I ever made. I still have the original, and I carry him around with me. My quality of work has improved a lot, but he’s a big comfort item. He helps me face all the big scary monsters of the world, and I want him to be there to help others too.

Eri: We met when we were younger, back in middle school. I’ve always been good at making friends, but Shiki was a lot more shy then. Actually, we got in an argument, once when we were 15. I was so worried, I thought I was going to lose my best friend forever over a misunderstanding. Thankfully, we worked it all out, and here we are now! She’s a wonderful seamstress, and all of our friends are so supportive, so it’s nice. I don’t think we’d be where we are today without each other, and the help of everyone in our lives.

It’s clear that these girls put lots of effort and dedication into what they do!

These girls offer more than some great threads! The namesake of their brand, Mr. Mew, is an adorable cat, and you can get merchandise of him too! Show off your love by picking up one of their plushies, cat ear headbands, and more!

Check out their full line at https://MrMewCreations.Com

Neku Sakuraba

The artist of the month is none other than Neku Sakuraba! If you’ve taken a walk around Shibuya, you’ve already seen his stuff! This graffiti expert has been gaining a name for himself with stunning displays of color and intricate designs. If you frequent 104 or Molco, you’ll have seen his stylish bold lines on ads for some of the stores!

He first started making waves in the art world last December, when he put up a mural in the Miyashita Park Underpass. Dubbed Hachiko’s Guardian Angel by the public, it features a glowing figure standing over Hachiko, with white feathery wings stretched out over Shibuya’s night-time skyline. There are people at the base of the statue, and musical notes fill the outer space. We reached out to Sakuraba himself for commentary, and managed to secure an interview in his studio!

The space was big, half-finished paintings and sketches scattered across the room. Cans of spray-paint, colored pencils, and charcoal were everywhere. Interestingly, we also spotted a couple Mr. Mew plushies laying around. A second guest, a friend of Sakuraba’s who insisted on being called Joshua, was also in the studio.

But without further ado, the interview:

Thanks for welcoming us to your studio! Can you give us an introduction?

Neku: Right, hi, thanks for interviewing me. I’m Neku Sakuraba. Music geek, CAT fanboy, unwilling follower of fashion trends. That one over there [he gestures toward his friend] is Joshua. Please ignore everything he says. He decided to be here for “moral support,” but I think he just wants to tease me.

[Joshua, at this, gasped, and said, “I would never!” but as requested, his further commentary has been cut from the interview.]

Got it! What inspired you to start making art?

Neku: I’ve always been a doodler. My mom has artwork from back when I was six. The big moment of inspiration for me, when I went, I want to do this, was when I saw CATs art. Looking up at the mural in Udagawa for the first time, back when I was ten, I felt a spark, and I haven’t let go of that feeling since. It’s been rough, I’ve struggled with mental health issues, but art has always been a solace in the dark. I never thought I’d make it this far, or get as much recognition as I have. It’s amazing, and wonderful, and terrifying all at once.

You first got popular because of the mural you put up last December, in the Miyashita Park Underpass. Can you tell us anything about it?

Neku: Oh, yeah! It was the first mural I’d ever done, and I drew a lot of inspiration from Shibuya. In my head, I’ve nicknamed it Shibuya’s Composition. The piece is loosely based off a dream, if I’m being honest. The glowing white figure in the center, with the wings, is meant to be a guardian of Shibuya. Someone who helps the city grow. Meanwhile, the people at Hachiko are waiting for their friend to show, but he can’t, because he’s watching from above, protecting them from afar.

Fascinating! Do you feel like there’s a story you can make from that, one you might tell in the future?

Neku: I don’t think this is ever going to be a story or comic, unfortunately. It’s more of a personal piece. A few years ago, I only had one friend, my first friend, but I lost him. When he died, I isolated myself, and it took a lot from some special people to draw me out of that shell. Even now, I wish I could see him again, and the idea of him still being out there, watching over me and my new friends, comforts me when I miss him the most. I guess I’m like Hachiko, waiting for a dead person to come home.

I’m sorry for your loss. Can you tell us anything about your other artwork?

Neku: I do a lot of graffiti-style works. There’s no other big murals out there by me yet, but I’m working on a few designs right now. People have commissioned me to do stuff ranging from tattoo designs to album covers and store promotions. One of my favorite things to do when I make art, though, is to take the mundane and re-imagine it as something mystical. Why can’t you make foxes purple? Who says there isn’t danger lurking in the shadows? What’s stopping me from adding fire and lightning as weapons, from creating fantastical fights?

Another big source of inspiration is Shibuya. I’ve grown up in this city, it’s my home. If I can look around and see things others don’t? Then I can put that down on paper. Whether it’s as simple as catching the neon lights illuminating the Scramble, or the leaves falling around Hachiko, I can see that, pull it apart, and let my imagination run wild.

That’s pretty cool. You mentioned doing album artwork earlier, so can you tell us what it was like to design the cover for the latest album by The Albatross?

Neku: It was fun! I can’t tell you anything about them, obviously, but it came as a shock when they asked me if I could take on this project. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. But what I can say, without getting myself vaporized on the spot, is that it was enjoyable, and they’re fun to work with. Even if they’re kinda a priss. The amount of artistic freedom I had was nice, and I think we collaborate well together. So there might be more partnership between us in the future, but nothing’s certain yet.

Wonderful! With that, one last question: what motivates you to create?

Neku: Art has always been an escape for me. It can be pretty, or loud. It can shout your thoughts from the rooftops or disguise them under the rustling of leaves in the wind. You can influence others with it, if you’re lucky. I create art for myself, first and foremost. But if I can provide a glimpse into my own secret garden, and let others see pieces of who I am in my work? Then I’m glad. I want to share it. I want to make my mark on the world, and provide others with the escape I once sought.

This up-and-coming young artist is going to be a big name someday! With his talent, dedication, and heart, Neku Sakuraba might just be the next CAT!

If you want to support him, you can find information about him, his store, and his commission prices at https://nekusakuraba.com

The Albatross

Our final creator of the month, someone a bit less new, but never interviewed, is The Albatross! Their first album, Noise, featured CAT artwork on the cover: an albatross in flight, with TV static cutting through the image. These two are a mysterious duo, but The Albatross takes the title of most elusive. Despite gaining fame from fans latching onto CAT art, The Albatross has never given the public a single word.

Until now, that is! With their second album, Pulse, set to release in a couple of weeks, they have consented to an interview for the first time!

The album artwork was done by Neku Sakuraba, and it features a feathered white wing, sprouting from the right-hand side of the image. Some of the lower feathers have been replaced with graffiti-like designs.

As for the music itself, their first album featured orchestral tracks, heavy on the violin, alongside electro-punk tunes! Some were instrumental, while others had lyrics. Pulse is looking to be the same style, but rather than the dark themes of Noise, it contains brighter, more hopeful songs.

We went through a lot of paperwork, involving multiple non-disclosure agreements, and the interview took place over a call while they utilized a voice changer, but it was worth it! And we’re happy to share what we’ve learned with you!

Thank you for choosing to have your first interview ever be with us! Can you give us an introduction? Nothing too personal is required!

Albatross: You were the only ones I felt were trustworthy, and the only ones completely willing to honor my anonymity. Also, a friend may have bribed me into it with promises of ramen. As for introductions… I am The Albatross, composer of music, avid Tin Pin fan, and a nerd when it comes to all things Shibuyan. History, culture, the trends. I thrive off her, it’s like the city’s got a pulse that matches my heartbeat.

Shibuya is amazing, we agree. Can you tell us why you chose your alias?

Albatross: There’s a lot of symbolism in the albatross. The bird can be a sign of good luck for sailors, historically. In the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, though, one of the sailors kills an albatross, and thus it becomes a curse. He bears the burden as the other sailors hang the bird around his neck, reminding him of how he’s doomed them all. I’ll let fans keep speculating on why I picked it, though. I can’t give away all my secrets here.

Of course. We wouldn’t want you to spoil all the fun! How do you make your music?

Albatross: It’s amazing what you can do with technology! I know how to play the violin and piano, so any parts in my songs with those are actually me playing, but for the rest I use a few different music programs! For vocals, I outsource it to Shibuyan singers, but all lyrics are still written by me. In the end, I weave everything together, and finagle it so it fits.

Sounds like a lot of work. Where do you get your inspiration for it all?

Albatross: From Shibuya! This city has a life of her own. Feet tapping against pavement, voices reaching through the air, all the beeps and honks and the myriad of noises that resound in every corner; it all creates a rhythm, it creates music. Sometimes I’ll sit and let it all wash over me. The city holds so much, a million stories fighting for attention. They echo in my head, begging to be told, so I write them. I turn them into music in the hopes of expressing their messages for everyone to hear.

The tone between your first and second album has changed a lot, from what the previews are showing. Is there a reason for this?

Albatross: Yeah. I’m going to be blunt. When I wrote and released my first album, I was suicidal. Completely isolated from the rest of humanity, with no friends or good experiences to fall back on for comfort. My only outlet was music, and because I was so depressed and misanthropic, my work reflected this. I saw the world as poisoned, felt like people would never change, and thought my existence contributed to the negativity.

But now? I have friends. Someone entered my life, not quite of their own free will, but they stuck around. They dragged me into the sun, undoing all my self-sabotaging attempts, and they helped me grow. Helped me learn to see the good in humanity again. Shibuya is full of life, full of creativity, of people trying to do their best and help others. I wasn’t able to see it before, vision clouded with my own preconceived notions, but they… Removed the tinted glasses from my face, so to speak. And this is why my new album is more hopeful and lighthearted.

You mentioned mental health, just now. Are you able to elaborate on any of that?

Albatross: Mhm, I can. It’s not pleasant, but… Mental health isn’t talked about enough, even though it impacts so many people. I’ve had depression for years now. I still do. Some friends and a few bonding experiences doesn’t magically cure everything. There is no magic cure. What helps is finding people you can rely on when things get tough. If I lock myself in my apartment, I used to hide away for weeks. Now, though? One of them comes knocking after a few days, with ramen and orders to shower. Sometimes it can feel like you’re going to shatter into a million pieces. But instead of falling apart in secret and cutting myself on the shards of glass, I have people who hold me as I break, minimize the damage, and help me piece myself back together.

Recovery is not a straight line, and there’s no end to the winding trail you take. What’s important is having friends there with you. People who help you stand up when you stumble, who help you make camp when you need to rest. Find someone who makes you feel safe enough to fall apart. Someone who can be there to pick up the broken shards, and help you create something new and beautiful with the pieces.

The Albatross is still a mystery to us all, but hopefully their words and music have reached those of you who need to hear them!

They don’t have an official website, but you can find The Albatross on your preferred music streaming service, or head to a local music shop to pick up their stuff! Don’t forget to pre-order their newest album, Pulse, and if you haven’t grabbed Noise yet, be sure to snag that too!

And that’s all for our New Creators Spotlight this month! Be sure to get next month’s issue for all our latest stories, and to discover the up-and-coming talents of Shibuya!

#twewy #the world ends with you #Subarashiki Kono Sekai #Joshua Kiryu #Neku Sakuraba #shiki misaki #eri #eri twewy #yoshiya kiryu #imprint zine

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skuiidigger-blog · 6 years ago

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Exactly How to Obtain Famous and also Generate Income On YouTube

YouTube started very small; at first, it was not a big target market who visited YouTube and also shared video clips. Today, http://samuellozano.es/como-ser-youtuber/ you can find every little thing on YouTube, from super star music videos and celeb gossip to video clips showing you precisely just how to set up your brand-new stereo.

Imaginative people of all kinds-- soon to be dubbed influencers-- found YouTube to be a brand-new tool to get to a globally target market. YouTube continues to be a thriving media mecca where everyone, consisting of influencers, can share ideas, produce art of all kinds and, naturally, earn money.

While the variety of customers varies and each influencer has his or her very own widely different story, it is possible to make lots of money on YouTube. Obviously, there are also larger possibilities, such as being an influencer of a certain brand name and suggesting its product.

To get his take on how you can come to be a YouTube influencer, I spoke to Bart Baker: entertainer, web-based comic, video manufacturer, singer and apology artist. Best understood for making parody videos of significant songs for his 9.6 million clients, Baker's channel is the best example of what is feasible on YouTube.

Just how did you become famous as well as develop a brand on YouTube?

I started my network in my backyard with an easy environment-friendly screen. I went to film college, so I understood how and what I was doing, and created and also recorded every little thing by myself. I was wearing latex bodysuits in my backyard, and also my moms and dads thought that I was crazy. Remarkably, it started to work. I got views of my video clips and figured out that apology video clips are a fantastic means to amass a crazy quantity of sights via Search Engine Optimization.

Individuals currently love music and also comedy video clips-- they are the two greatest points on YouTube-- and also my videos are a mix of both. Place that together with Search Engine Optimization, as well as when you are searching for the brand-new Taylor Swift video clip, you locate mine, which was the winning mix.

I began doing it in a different way: I dressed up 90-year-old males in the videos due to the fact that I required something that would stand out. Once that started to do well, I placed myself in the video clips and developed my face as the brand, and it actually removed. The video clips turned into almost musicals with a beginning, center as well as end, as well as they're twisty, so people remain.

Exactly how did you turn that from enjoyable individuals to generating income?

Well, obviously, the No. 1 point on YouTube is that you earn money from the ads; you need to have a crap lots of sights to make a good quantity of loan on YouTube, especially today, with the brand-new advertisement armageddon thing still taking place. However, AdSense is the first thing you're going to start making money from on YouTube. Brand offers are big, however that comes when you get more well-known, I would certainly say.

Likewise, there are a lots of income outlets I use, like Merch by Amazon, and also I market all of the tracks on iTunes. There are many methods you can deal with it, so it just depends upon just how insane you wish to obtain.

youtube

If somebody was starting, what ideas would certainly you provide to get going?

First, identify specifically what you want to do and adhere to it. You need to follow that or else people will not know what the channel is about.

After that, as soon as you have that determined, locate every internet site and also blog site that would include your material, possibly. When you do not have any subscribers, It is near impossible for individuals to find you, particularly now. At that time it was a bit less complicated, and now every single individual wishes to get on YouTube.

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freddy-fazbears-wonderland · 3 years ago

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In my dream Party Time Pizza Zone universe, the characters had A LOT of merch. Plushies by Dakin [who made the saddest-looking Puff The Magic Dragon plush ever, seriously, he looks so sad. Fitting for the song though. 🙁], PVC figures and fashion dolls by Hasbro [You know how Sherry is a poodle? Ironically Hasbro made a poodle fashion doll in the 60s, but it looked pretty creepy with the red eyes], and a ton of stuff by Mattel. I always was kind of irked that Chuck E had so little merchandise, there were the plushies [I still have a few Avenger era Chuck E plushies from when I was little], and some figures, but not much else. Also, speaking of Dakin, the designs of the Party Time Pizza Zone characters are a mix of Dream Pets [current obsession of mine, they look so cool], 50s/60s Valentines with animal characters, 60s Hanna Barbera talking animals, and hints of Looney Tunes and Muppets in the designs. Basically, Fang and The Party Time Band look exactly like 50s/60s cartoons while actually being 80s mascots in my dream universe.

It's kinda jarring because I think even before, Chuck E. Cheese's did have a wide variety of merch? Like, I distinctly remember seeing stuff like music boxes, sippy cups, plastic purses etc. And when I do search for merch, I find the widest variety from the PTT era, the 90s and the mid 2010s going forward. Idk what's going on with that since I never got to experience Chuck E. Cheese firsthand growing up. I could be wrong.

Anyways, it's a really fitting aesthetic for them to have since they primarily perform music from that era. Sounds really cool! Wish a place like this actually existed. Would be tons of fun to experience.

#ask answered #asks open #ask me anything #kidcore #nostalgiacore #chuck e cheese #chuck e cheese's #pizza time theater #pizza time theatre #party time pizza zone #animatronic ocs #animatronic oc #animatronics

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maxthommusic · 4 years ago

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Daisuki Baby -- one month later

I can barely believe it, but I released my newest album, "Daisuki Baby" an entire month ago. A month and some change, at this point. Today I felt like reflecting on it, sharing a few stories about its modern legacy and to shed a little light on where I'm headed.

The biggest part about "Daisuki Baby" was the learning experience. From writing, to recording, to mixing, releasing and promoting, the entire thing was a massive education for me. Even though I've been making music since 2003 and have actively been in studios since 2008, "Daisuki Baby" was different in that it's the first time I've really, truly cared about the music being made.

That's not to say "At Last" doesn't have some bangers. Or even that I'm denying the slick production of "The Ghosts I've Touched." People still tell me how much they love "Seraph" and "Hairpin Trigger" from "Translating the Veil." While I'm proud of all these achievements, none of them ever felt like "Daisuki Baby." "DB" is where I really knew I had something special; I had tapped into the "secret sauce" and it made the journey from concept to physical product a completely novel joyride.

When you have a piece of art you know is worth flaunting around town, it changes the entire game. How I approached advertising, marketing, merch and more was completely different. It allowed me to learn how people interact with me online, what makes waves, what doesn't, and even what type of PR firms to look into. With "Daisuki Baby" I actually experimented with a pretty wide variety of marketing firms to help get it off the ground. Not all of them were successful (if any?), but sometimes you just have to put your dollar down to see what's going to be useful. Sometimes learning what not to do is just as important as how to move forward.

With "Daisuki Baby" in my possession, it gave me power when talking to promoters, firms, labels, etc. because I could say, "Yes, here's the SoundCloud link." And what separated "DB" from say, "At Last," is that I really believed in the product. Yes, I think "Go Home Sailor" is a bitchin' tune. It's some of my best work. But the production is super DIY. It's a very layered, nuanced, hi-fi song still stuck in someone's basement, if that metaphor makes sense. It doesn't quite translate to the rest of the world the way I'd want it to. "Scattered," though from "Daisuki Baby"? Sounds exactly the way I dreamt it could. There's no qualifying it's quality. I don't have to say, "Please consider this is done by one person in his home-studio with independent resources." I get to say, "Check out this track 'Scattered.' It's a 'fan-favorite' right now." That change in the conversation was everything and it's going to make promoting future releases that much more rewarding and impactful.

What's more is that I learned a lot about how my engineer handled my tracks. I learned where I need to improve in terms of what tracks I send him and how to really get my message across. For years I've been searching for that relationship where we work together and evolve my sound in unison. Jumping from engineer to engineer has never been ideal, but necessary as I seek out the right person who really understands my vision. I've been lucky enough to find, meet, and work with Michael Hynes out of Nomatic Studios in Asheville, NC. While "Daisuki Baby" blows my socks off most of the time, I can promise you the future will deliver even sexier alt-rock jams simply because my mix engineer and I understand each other better now.

This is also the first time drummer James and I have made original content together. That, too, was an entire learning, growing process. And if songs like "Scattered" and "Hollywood" are tracks we made during our fist outing, can you imagine what we'll be capable of going forward? I promise you that what's in the chamber will really entice and excite if you even remotely enjoyed "Daisuki Baby."

Everything about "Daisuki Baby" was a learning experience. It's Day 1. Which is bizarre to say because it's also my crowning achievement. But the rest is downhill. The seal has been broken. The spell is cast. Now we just need to forge ahead and see what treasures lie in wait. Which is a tough pill to swallow -- I'm 31 and am now just figuring out this music thing? I wished I'd gotten here sooner. But that's not really relevant, now is it? You get to things when you get to them. Maybe it's my fatalist attitude, wishing I had more time in my life to enjoy this glow of "understanding" I've finally achieved. Looking back on the amount of hours spent mixing the first edition of "At Last" (unreleased, tracks you'll probably never even hear) or the multiple iterations of "Fever Dream." How necessary were those hours? Was that time wasted?

Honestly, I only got to this point because I became so frustrated with mixing "Daisuki Baby" on my own I simply had to hand the project off. And when I got a different mix engineer, everything seemed clear. And I suppose I only became comfortable parting ways with that amount of income because I looked at my life and saw that my precious time was simply evaporating into nothing. Hours and hours of my life were disappearing with nothing to show for it. And now that I've accepted certain limitations, certain terms and conditions, time is on my side again. And I just regret not coming to the conclusion sooner. But I guess the silver lining is at least I got here... right?

All good things in good time. It was a tough road to get to "Daisuki Baby." But as I said earlier, it's all downhill from here. Or at least it seems that way. And as I keep making moves, keep working in the background, the road has been pretty smooth for a while now...

Here's to the future. Don't ever be afraid to re-assess what you're doing and how you're getting there. For me, admitting defeat was one of the most liberating things I ever did. Admitting defeat allowed me to claim success.

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enchantedswift13 · 7 years ago

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My LA Secret Session Story!

So Thursday morning, October 19th, i was checking my tumblr messages because I had been talking to some friends and i had fallen asleep early without saying goodbye, so i was just checking back in with them. As i opened my messages, I had found a message from taylor nation and i don’t think i’ve ever cried harder in my life. I ran downstairs, missed the last step and actually fell to the floor while my mom rushed over to make sure i was okay. I screamed at her that i was meeting taylor and started actually hyperventilating before my mom brought me some water. I quickly replied and they called me the next night and said they were having an event in LA on sunday and asked if i could make it and luckily I could because San Diego is only a 2 hour drive. So I told her yes and after we got off the phone, I started crying again and then had to get ready for an event and pretend like i wasn’t about to cry again. The next day, I went shopping with my mom to find a nice suit to meet her in, but since the weather was so heavy, i ended up only wearing the dress shirt. I drove to LA early sunday to see one of my friends and then got to the meeting spot around 4pm. I was one of the first fans there so i sat by myself for awhile before some very sweet girls like @talk-turned-2-screams @sizzlinswiftie13 @wildesttdreamerr @polaroid-taylor and @teardropsonsmyguitar began approaching me. We all started talking about how excited we were and how unreal it was that we were chosen by taylor to be there that day. When we got to her house, we entered from the side yard and were escorted down to the pool area. Meeting us, there was a vast variety of food like hummus, pizza, sushi, Rep m&m’s, Rep cookies, smart water, diet coke, everything. Everyone was in line for the bathroom, including me, assuming so we could all say “I peed in taylor swift’s house”. We all got to mingle for a bit with each other and then i noticed a familiar song playing in the background. she was playing her spotify playlist and Crowded Places had just came on. That song means a lot to me because it reminds me so much of someone i used to date so i started tearing up and tried to just shake it off because i had been there in taylor swift’s home. I ended up putting my drink on the ground near the pool because everyone had taken the seats around the area, and as we were leaving, my friend accidentally kicks my drink and it flew into taylor’s pool. I didn’t know what to do since we were getting rushed out, so i just walked away and i felt so bad. We got into taylor’s house, and entered this room that seemed like a hang out room and had a bar at the back. I immediately saw Tree in the room and i started freaking out and then we only waited for about 5 minutes before taylor came in from the back of the room followed by Jack, Ashley, Alana, And Ruby Rose. She walked over to the cabinet near me and I just couldn’t believe what i was seeing. She put her hand on the cabinet and i touched it and went “Taylor, your nails look amazing” before her looking directly at me and saying “Thanks, I did them today!” I started crying because I just couldn’t believe she had just talked to me. she was wearing camo pants, a black shirt, and boots with her hair curls everywhere. She was absolutely stunning in person, like so naturally beautiful, and her smile was so kind and warm. As we were listening to the album, she looked at me frequently and smiled and every time, i cried harder. When it got to LWYMMD, she got up and danced with us and i accidentally ending up stepping on her foot because people were pushing from all around but it was still nonetheless fun. I got to snuggle up with her blankets and her pillow and they smelled SO GOOD. After we got through the songs, she went away for a few minutes because it was super sweaty in there, and then came back to meet us. I was towards the front of the line, and i stood there staring at her for a good fifteen minutes just saying to myself “this is fake, this is fucking fake”. she looks unbelievably beautiful in person, like it’s unreal. When it got to my turn, i turned to her and she opened her arms super wide and i ran as fast as i could to give her a hug. After we hugged, I stepped back and said “you’re real, like you’re actually real” and she giggled and smiled and said “you’re nicole, right?” and i was like dyingggg because like THE taylor swift knew my name. I looked up, she’s so tall, and she saw my make up and instantly complimented me. She was like “i love your sparkles! and you do too obviously, that’s why we’re here”. I was like thank you, my friend did it! And she stood there, just smiling at me. I asked to hold her hands before saying how much I loved her and how much it hurt me to see her so hurt the prior year. and before i could finish, she says “it hurts me to see you guys hurt too” and i just like paused before saying that i would never stop believing in her or defending her in her absence and even told her that she wasn’t the opinion of those who didn’t know her like she always had told us. i also told her i would never stop defending her no matter what the tabloids said and she squeezed my hands so tight, before pulling me in for a hug. I told her i meant it and then proceeded to tell her how much clean meant to me because it was getting me through a really toxic relationship and she goes “oh i know those” and i thanked her and she smiled so softly. I also told her it was my birthday in a few hours (i didn’t even know what time it was because time is fucked when you’re in taylor swift’s house) and she wished me a happy birthday. I then just told her i couldn’t believe i was there because she hasn’t liked anything of mine in ages and she goes “You were on the list for the longest time” and apologized for her management taking so long to contact me, i lost it. She started saying how she loves my “18 (now 19) and insane” bio and that she loves seeing my funny posts online and i just couldn’t believe she had remembered small details like that. I told her how red deserved a grammy and this girl is so kind, her immediate reaction was “you deserve a grammy” and i was like “no taylor, red deserved a grammy” and she giggled and thanked me and then asked me what pose i wanted to do so i asked if i could hold the grammy and sit in the chair and have her next to me so she of course said yes. So we took the picture, she hugged me one last time, and said “Bye nicole! it was nice meeting you!” and i got handed a merch bag and then we went back to the meeting place and i cried in my car for an hour before driving home. It felt like a dream and I’m so thankful to taylor nation and taylor herself for making this happen.

#LA SS #Taylor Swift

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templified · 5 years ago

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Coffee Shop WordPress Themes | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/coffee-shop-wordpress-themes/

Coffee Shop WordPress Themes

Where I come from, coffee shops are big business. It’s the rainy Pacific Northwest and we love our coffee. New shops and roasters are popping up all over the place and if you want to run a really successful cafe, roasting house or coffee shop, your website can go a long way to giving you a professional and accessible site to help grow your business. You want an attractive layout that offers all the information you need right up front, so folks can find all the information they want without searching blindly for your hours or locations. If you want the best WordPress coffee shop theme you can find, this is the place to be. This collection is the best of the best.

We’ve searched the web and gathered up all of the finest WordPress coffee shop themes around, we hope you love each and every one of them. But of course, it’s not just about coffee, you can use these themes for an amazing café site or tea shop too.

Nitro

This breathtaking WooCommerce enabled WP theme is a fantastic approach to start up a coffee shop business, even if you’re not really a skilled professional in programming, because it may be effortlessly altered to suit your needs. That’s what the developer of Nitro had in mind and I think they really hit the mark. This sleek and style-conscious theme looks marvelous on any size device since it’s totally responsive. If you are building an online portal for your coffee shop or tea business, your customers are plainly essential and letting them have access to your website anyplace at all times is crucial.

WooCommerce guarantees all the options you need to start a business easily and successfully and this amazing, well put together and sleek eCommerce theme is the first step on a route to creating your own business. With a stunning WooCommerce design like Nitro, it is possible to set up a website to market tea, coffee, coffee roasting products, mugs, merch and more. There are numerous advantages that can assist you sell your services in style, such as menus, galleries and a wide variety of design layouts to select from that give your web site an awesome design. The assistance you can get with this WordPress theme is unmatched, so that you can feel assured when you encounter problems you will have guidance if you need it.

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Espresso

A great WordPress theme is a polished and incredibly custom-made selection for many styles of dining places, from regional or ethnic foods like Portuguese or Ethiopian, burger joints, sandwich shops, pubs or fast food, fine dining or fast casual. Managing a restaurant can be a tough challenge, so you will certainly require a WordPress theme that allows you to invest much more time running your business and much less energy running your website. You need a theme that’s built with a beautiful, graceful style, very adaptable so it’s possible to use it on any kind of site, one that delivers many helpful, popular functions, practical with a lot of fantastic documentation and help and professionally designed and responsive so that it looks incredible on any kind of device.

Should you wish to use a powerful plugin to generate an exceptional web site, consider the convenient, user friendly drag and drop page builder WordPress plugin, which is called Visual Composer. The Visual Composer plugin works perfectly with the leading add-on plugins like both Gravity and Ninja Forms, sliders like Layer or Revolution Sliders, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce and Essential Grid. That helps make this powerful WordPress theme very, very flexible. What I love is that it’s compatible with everything, that it’s easy to use, the freedom to create any style of site, the many helpful features and the low price. Popular features include the fantastic support, responsive, professional design, well appointed front end editor, dozens of content elements and massive template library, and a bunch more.

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Verdure

Ha, it’s Tea o’clock, that’s the catch phrase for this theme. Created with a modern style, Verdure is created to be perfect for a café, a tea shop or a coffee shop. There are several built in features that make this perfect for a tea shop. There are food and beverage menus, an online eCommerce setup for selling tea with WooCommerce. Verdure is highly customizable, it’s got an extensive administration interface, responsive design with Retina ready images. Verdure uses Visual Composer to allow for flexibility in design and layout. Some businesses would probably like to help promote their products and services with image galleries, so those portfolios that are included are helpful for doing that. Social media accounts can be linked quickly and effectively, there are tons of shortcodes and widgetized areas to help promote your products.

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Parallax Pro

While we were looking for more outstanding themes for a coffee shop or tea house, I discovered a really unique use of a theme that I really love, Parallax Pro. Now, the demo doesn’t say anything about this being a great theme for a tea house, but we found a site that uses it as just that. (Check out the full site here, thaoteaco.com, it’s really a great example of a company selling loose leaf, organic tea and telling a story about the history of tea. Nice work!) Parallax Pro turns out to be a great way to sell tea or coffee, the wonderfully well built parallax site makes for a perfect way to share your content and tell your story in a new and different way. With WooCommerce, ThaoTeaCo can even sell their products. If you want a site that’s similar, you can absolutely achieve it, just add your own high quality images and written content. Maybe a history of coffee? How about coffee culture? It’s all there for you to explore and I think Parallax Pro is a wonderful site to build your business around.

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Café Pro

Café Pro is a sort of combination of two of StudioPress’ most popular themes, Parallax and Foodie and it’s an ideal theme for coffee shops and any sort of restaurant, really. Café Pro looks amazing and it gives you a professional site that helps you create new customers and more. There are some simple widgets included to help get all the information out there that you need to, like contact info, hours of operation, your business address and more. Café Pro also offers imple customization through the theme options panel, custom page templates to build your blog, landing page, archives and the default page. Café Pro’s homepage is highly widgetized with four separate widget areas to customize your site to fit your café’s brand. Even customize your site’s header. This responsive theme looks great on all devices too and it’s perfectly SEO optimized to help your site rank where it belongs.

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Create

Create is a full featured, premium WordPress theme with several demo sites to show what your site might look like. One such demo is a coffee shop style design and it shows what’s possible with the right images and some fine attention to the details that go into making a successful page. Create it a great theme for nearly any purpose and it shows why with this nice looking design. Create is a multipurpose theme with page builder, so you can arrange anything how you’d like it to be arranged, there are loads of features you can adjust to make the site work for your business, since you’ll have maximum control over your layout, you can display content the way you want to. In addition to the page builder, this theme is responsive, offers one click demo data import, google fonts, video backgrounds and it’s bundled with Slider Revolution.

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Barista

Barista offers you several basic layouts to choose from, has outstanding typography, clear navigation, WooCommerce compatibility and more, Barista is certainly one of the leading choices for folks who want a coffee shop site. Whether you’re just getting started or you’re rebranding, the Barista theme is a wonderful choice. You can connect with Open table, easily allowing your visitors to book reservations, if that’s something that’s important to you. You’ll be able to customize colors and fonts, create a cafe menu and even add products using WooCommerce. Pretty slick, eh? With great documentation and strong support, Barista is a nice looking theme with the features you need to create the perfect site for your cafe or coffee house.

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Coffee Luck

A coffee shop needs a great website and CoffeeLuck is designed to do just that. With the flexibility and range of options offered by Visual Composer, WooCommerce compatibility, tons of short codes, SEO optimized code, one-click demo data installation, great documentation and a bright, eye-catching design, I think Coffee Luck is a wonderful choice for a coffee shop or any other food and beverage related site. Your customers will agree with that assessment too, since your website will be incredibly easy to navigate and it’s going to look amazing too. If you’d like to see more restaurant themes, check out this collection.

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Aperitive

While Aperitive’s demo site is for a standard restaurant, I think it would make a great coffee shop site too, with the right images. I love the modern split frame design with a big, attractive image on the left and text on the right. There’s a built in food and beverage menu for showing customers what to expect when they come to your shop and if you need to take reservations, which isn’t really very likely for a coffee shop, there’s a reservations plugin available. Aperitive is very easy to navigate and combines a lot of visual impact with excellent and stylish typography. That’s a wonderful combo for creating a strong first impression that will make people want to check out your coffee shop, tea house, bar or cafe. Aperitive is easy to set up, very easy to customize and since the style is so professional and attractive out of the box, it doesn’t need much tweaking to create a great looking site.

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Downtown

Whether you’re a restaurateur, a chef, a bar owner, or simply a fan of food and cooking, you’ll want something stylish, modern, organized, and responsive to serve as a home for your posts. Downtown is aptly named because it gives both your future diners and loyal customers a virtual place that they’d love to hang out in. Use the custom widgets, Google fonts, and shortcodes to make a website that fully represents you and your brand. Downtown was designed to make your texts and images look good across a broad range of gadgets and screen solutions. Connect with your followers. Don’t just introduce the establishment. Instead, proudly reveal the faces behind the brand, the heart within the business. Use the social media integrated About page to share the rich history of your business. The Custom Posts feature allows you to display people’s testimonials and to introduce your staff to the world.

Are you after profit or popularity? Downtown can help you achieve both. This theme enables you to easily categorize food items and recipes according to breakfast, lunch, dinner, or meat, vegetable, pasta, and more. If you prefer, all this can come complete with price information. Downtown also allows you to showcase your restaurant’s promos, best-sellers, and the featured meal or recipe for the day. And if you own a business, you’ll want clients to know where to find it. Downtown includes Google maps and social media integration. Make advance booking more convenient for future clients with Downtown’s reservation form. The Contact Page is highly informative with an easy mailing system to show your future diners that their inquiries are welcome. The AJAX form lets your blog visitors send in their questions and feedback instantly without having to reload the page. Ultimately, Downtown is all about making your brand look fantastic and extremely accessible. All this helps to increase your site visits and consequently, your restaurant visits and your revenues.

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Carbone

For restaurants, for cafés, for coffee shops and patisserie’s, as well as nearly any sort of food and beverage business, Carbone is an excellent WordPress template that will help promote your business with a professional, stylish look. Carbone, it’s modern, elegant and beautiful and it’s going to help present your coffee shop in the best light possible. Carbone is incredibly flexible, supporting all of the most popular page builder plugins around. That lets you create a page that looks exactly like you want it to look, from layout to features, everything is at your command. A page builder plugin always provides incredible flexibility, so if you need a very specific layout, a theme with that page builder capability is a great choice. Carbone is also SEO optimized, there’s a reservation form (which might not be necessary for a coffee shop, but hey…) as well as a dedicated food menu management system. What that does for you, it provides the information your customers need, and Carbone makes it simple for readers to find the information that they want to be able to find regarding your coffee shop and what you have to offer. Carbone could be just what you need to make a wonderful website for your coffee shop.

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Brunch Pro

With Brunch Pro, it’s all about a clean, professional presentation and amazing user experience. This theme, which is powered by the Genesis framework, looks great on all devices, since it’s perfectly responsive. It does an amazing job of presenting your content in an attractive way and I think it could be a great choice for all kinds of websites, but particularly coffee shops, coffee review sites or even suppliers of whole beans, coffee makers and other products related to the field. That’s because Brunch Pro is incredibly simple to use, easy to update and change any of a number of settings and it’s so well designed, it almost doesn’t matter what kind of content you add to it, it’s going to look great.

Brunch Pro includes eight layout options, a custom header, featured images and it also has all the normal things you’d expect in a premium theme, the theme customizer and theme options panel for example. Multiple widgets, eCommerce support and more make this one a really solid choice if you want a simple, clean look for your coffee shop’s website.

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Espresso

Espresso is a modern, feature filled restaurant theme for WordPress. Let’s take a look at the features, shall we? It’s almost a given that this theme is responsive, since it’s imperative for a restaurant site to be responsive. That means that if a potential diner is looking at your site on their phone or tablet, they’ll be able to see a well designed site, no matter what. Just like the designer intended. Responsive designs are such a key right now, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Espresso has an exclusive menu builer to allow you to craft your menu with ease. No more linking to a PDF! The menu builder is easy to adjust and update too, so if you change your menu daily, seasonally or only once in a while, it’s still simple to switch up. You can use Visual Composer to create the layout you want, but that’s not a requirement. If you’d like, you can use one of the well crafted pre-built designs, which look great right out of the box. Just add your content and go.

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Augustan

This theme is called Augustan, it’s a traditional restaurant theme that’s also a perfect coffee shop theme. I love the elegance, the amazing typography that Augustan offers. High class, easy to use, that’s a blend a lot of webmasters can get behind and one thing I really adore about the Theme of the Crop design, the address of your coffee shop or restaurant is prominently placed, which some themes seem to ignore. With Augustan, you get a theme that’s very simple to set up, very simple to customize, you’ll be able to change up fonts and colors to match your branding. With Augustan, you can take restaurant reservations, there’s the much needed food and beverage menu, your business profile which can help with SEO and if you want to talk about reaching out to customers, you can add reviews, manage social media networking, plan and organize events and more. Augustan has what it takes to be a fantastic coffee shop template.

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Luigi

Luigi is, at it’s heart, a restaurant theme, though I believe it could work great for a small café or coffee roaster, even a bistro or tea house. The reason, Luigi is very flexible in terms of it’s design and features. Created by Theme of the Crop, Luigi has a very unique, professional style. The food menu is attractive and easy to set up, since Theme of the Crop specializes in restaurant themes, they really know what it takes to make an amazing website for food and drink related sites. Luigi is easy to set up and the custom options that are available to you are very user friendly, so you won’ be left tearing your hear out trying to set up your website. There’s lovely business profile page, events organizer, Luigi works well with Yoast SEO which helps draw in local web traffic, which is the lifeblood of your online marketing efforts. This theme definitely has what it takes to make your website look as good as possible.

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The Spot

Another great coffee shop theme from Theme of the Crop is this one, called The Spot. The Spot is a really nicely designed theme that could be ideal for café or coffee shop websites, bars and pubs too. The user guide is extensive, so even if you’re not an expert with WordPress, it’s possibly to create a great looking website by yourself. For local businesses like restaurants and coffee shops, Google’s local search results are critical to bringing in traffic and customers and Theme of the Crop has done an outstanding job ensuring that their themes really do help out with SEO.

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Salmon, Multipurpose WordPress Theme for Coffee Shops

This theme is called Salmon, it’s a well made restaurant theme that has the flexibility you’d need to make any kind of food and beverage related website work, and work properly. Fast loading, SEO optimized, feature filled and easy to use, it give your potential customers a great experience on all devices, even handheld devices.

Pub style.

Salmon is a modern WordPress theme suitable for any restaurant, pub, winery, pizzeria, cafe, bar and-and any other food-related business.

Restaurant style.

Salmon has what it takes to move your restaurant business to the top of the food chain. Get it? Food chain?

Winery style.

With a plethora of features, Salmon is a great looking theme for wineries or wine shops too. I’ll drink to that!

The Salmon theme developer, FORQY, says this about Salmon.

The design is fully customizable and highly optimized for mobile, so will adapt itself to any mobile or tablet device. The theme is ready-to-use, no needed coding or design skills. The theme offers all essential restaurant features such as menu management, event promotions, gallery management, blogging, contact form and also online reservation form with backend reservations management.

With Salmon, the customization possibilities are limitless. Use Salmon as a coffee shop template, add some different images and it’s a perfect theme for a wine bar and, of course, it’s a premium quality restaurant web template. With WordPress and Salmon, anything is possible.

By purchasing a premium theme like Salmon, you can save more time to create delicious dishes, not struggling to make your site look good. That’s a big benefit for any restauranteur who knows what they need in a website.

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Plate Up

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#Coffee Shop

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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How a rooster at the Sanderson Farms Championship became one of golf’s best trophies

It’s indisputable: Reveille the rooster is one of the great trophies in sports. We had to find out more on how it came into existence and developed a cult following at the PGA Tour’s Jackson-area stop.

“It’s like going out in the yard and finding a badass rooster scuffling along and kicking up dirt” is not the first thing that may come to mind when conjuring up the image of a golf trophy. But that’s how Malcolm DeMille, the artist responsible for creating one of the PGA Tour’s most distinct (and I’d argue iconic!) trophies, characterizes “Reveille the Rooster.”

The Sanderson Farms Championship may not be the most prestigious event on the PGA Tour circuit, but in a few years, it has carved out a niche identity during the season’s wraparound fall schedule. It’s a smaller tournament with a cult following among the PGA Tour diehards and with a more important community-wide embrace in Jackson, Mississippi. And the emblem of it all is its trophy, Reveille the Rooster.

I’ll come out and say it early — I’m in the tank for Reveille, a grand specimen. When you win the Sanderson Farms Championship, you’re not going to mistake the trophy for any of those blasé cups, vases, plaques or other participation awards you might have back home. You’re getting the proud cock, strutting into your house with its chest out and flashy colored patinas owning the trophy case.

I needed to know more about what’s become one of golf’s most unmistakable trophies and should, in my humble opinion, occupy a place next to the Claret Jug, green jacket, Ryder Cup, and the other iconic and cool awards in the game’s history.

Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

A Reveille origin story

A rooster is obviously a nod to Sanderson Farms’ chicken business and Reveille is the finished product of a process that melded the idea of Joe Sanderson, the company’s CEO, and DeMille, the sculptor in California who has created several trophies for worldwide golf events. Sanderson knew he wanted a rooster trophy from the start.

“Joe Sanderson had it right off the bat, from the moment we signed the first agreement,” said Steve Jent, Tournament Director of the championship. “We really didn’t look at anything else. I know tournaments have crystal, silver. But he really honed in on a bronze, full scale life-size rooster, right out of the get-go.”

But this is not just any chump variety or random rooster off the street. It’s a specific kind of rooster, modeled after Chauntecleer from The Nun's Priest's Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. “Sanderson had an idea in his mind of a chanticleer rooster, which in his mind is a very colorful, large breed of rooster,” added Jent.

Making Reveille

DeMille went to work to bring Sanderson’s idea to life. He’s been in the business for more than 25 years, but has evolved with the technology and now begins the process working exclusively with digital tools. He’s been using software for what he estimates is 10 years.

“It will allow me to sculpt in the computer in what we call ‘digital clay,’” said DeMille. “So I can actually feel and create with clay inside the computer and see it in a form.” He analogized it to how animated characters are now created for movies.

But like a golfer who may think he’s found his patterns on the range only to come undone once the shots start counting on the course, the digital sculpting can take DeMille only so far. He prints out mini renderings of the digital sculpture on a 3D printer.

“In the computer there’s still that other dimension — you can’t see or feel or sense the backside. You can’t envision it in the whole round. So I can’t totally trust making it in the computer and popping it up in the printer and printing it out. You still gotta have it, and hold it, and work it.”

The 3D test prints allow him to check proportions and the “attitude of the piece” and then get approval from Sanderson. It also allows him to add sculpting clay to the 3D printings and work it with his hands.

The process of creating the first Reveille took three to four months, DeMille estimates. The model is actually made up of six pieces, six different molds that are cast into bronze, polished, ground, and then welded together. Chemicals are applied to create the colors, which he said is a permanent change that takes just seconds to discolor bronze that has been heated by a torch.

Here's how @Sanderson_Champ 's own Reveille looks before his plumage gains its color. #SFCHAMP @PGATOUR http://pic.twitter.com/iUgkLy1MVL

— Malcolm DeMille (@MDSculpt) October 25, 2017

“As soon as that chemical hits the metal at a temperature, it begins to color it right away. It’s an artistic thing to apply the patinas properly to where you get the colors that you want.” The multi-colored bronze trophy is then sealed in wax, which can be burnished.

When he got to the finished Reveille product, DeMille said he was most proud of the “attitude” it displayed. “Obviously a rooster is kind of cocky, so I had a little fun with that,” the veteran sculptor beamed. “It’s got a bit of a cocky attitude. It’s kind of looking you in your face with a ‘Yeah!? What do you want?’ kinda attitude. I like that.”

Who wouldn’t?

Cost of a bronze bird

There’s what DeMille calls a perpetual trophy, the original creation that stays with the championship, and then the slightly smaller individual champions trophies that go home with the winner each year.

DeMille would not say exactly how much his creations cost, but that the perpetual trophies run from “$7-8,000 on the very low side, and they can go up to $25-30,000.” The annual champions trophies that are made “might run $5-10,000 each.”

Artwork used as a trophy

DeMille has been at this a long time, and will note that he’s an artist and not a trophy maker. Ultimately, he tries to best represent what the client wants and the artistic touch demanded for Reveille is what makes this job for the Sanderson Farms Championship so appealing.

“The last thing I want to do is a spun cup, a simple cup with engraving and little handles on it,” he said. “So it’s really fun for us to try to create something unique and different.”

His company does 15 to 17 events on different worldwide tours each year, including two of the other distinct trophies on the PGA Tour, the John Deere Classic’s leaping deer and the Hero World Challenge’s homage to its feline-named host.

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

The Hero World Challenge trophy, which is also now a DeMille creation.

“I create artwork that is used for trophies. I’m not a trophy maker. I create art that people appreciate and will use as a trophy. If somebody wins it, they put it up in their office or showroom or pool table room or what have you. It’s a cool piece that has more going on than just a trophy with their name on it.”

Naming rights

When your trophy is some “badass” rooster, it needs more than just a default moniker like [blank] Championship/Open/Invitational Trophy. It needs its own name, and Joe Sanderson knew what he wanted to call it from the beginning.

Again, it’s pretty intuitive, in the way that a chicken company would have a big ass rooster for a trophy.

“A rooster calls for the beginning of the day; Reveille is the call to start the day,” said Jent. “So [Sanderson] wanted the rooster to be called Reveille. So the rooster calls, you get up for work.”

Simple enough, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to say.

Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

Cody Gribble, last year’s winner of the Sanderson Farms Championship .

A community emblem

I’ll slow down to make a point beyond the idol worship. The Tournament Director, Jent, said that the Reveille silhouette is now in demand in the community.

“It’s actually turned out to be pretty cool because now we have a secondary logo, which has actually become very popular.”

It’s all over the grounds and the Sanderson Farms Championship attendees and the fans from the Jackson area want merch with the Reveille silhouette. A PGA Tour official said he saw hats, shirts, bags, etc. with the logo spread across the course.

The PGA Tour’s growth over the past two decades, largely thanks to Tiger Woods, is a well-worn story. The Tour has evolved and become a cash game that probably even the most optimistic could not have envisioned. The days of the best pros driving from stop to stop and grinding to get by, even while at the top of the game, have been gone for decades. There’s a FedExCup that doles out $70 million over four weeks at four of the biggest markets in the country, markets where the PGA Tour may not exactly be in the center of the radar screen. Just this week, opposite the Sanderson, was the final WGC of the year, a four-event series with no cuts, a closed off world-rankings points party, and hefty guaranteed paychecks for all involved.

There were 47 events on the PGA Tour last year, and all but five had total purses of at least $6 million. The Sanderson Farms Championship checked in at $4.2 million, only the Barbasol Championship (opposite the British Open) was lower at $3.5 million. This year’s Sanderson purse jumped slightly to $4.3 million, which was $5.45 million less than the PGA Tour’s WGC event on the other side of the world.

This is not to say that the growth is bad or those big-money events, however needlessly extravagant and forced they may feel at times, are not the “real” PGA Tour. It’s just to illuminate that the stop in Jackson is not that. The contrast between the Sanderson and a WGC could not be more stark. Both are good to have on the PGA Tour schedule, but it’s not crazy to wish that there were more like the small-market rally and enthusiasm that comes through in Jackson.

“This is a huge point of community pride.”

“This is a huge point of community pride,” Dr. Mary Taylor told me. She’s the Interim Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Batson Children’s Hospital, the only children’s hospital in Mississippi and a major beneficiary of the charitable money raised.

The Sanderson Farms is more than just the distinct trophy and the hipster preference of diehard PGA Tour fans. It’s an annual highlight for one of the Tour’s smaller markets. Hearing Dr. Taylor and other locals talk about their pride in having the event felt organic and not run through the PR machine, like you often feel like you’re getting from sponsors, venues, and the Tour at many other tournaments.

“It’s an honor to be a stop on the PGA Tour. It’s a very big deal and our whole community gets involved and engaged and excited to have it here. Everyone in the community gets very excited about having such a large, national stage for Jackson, Mississippi and it’s a big boost to our entire community, but especially the children’s hospital...We are really indebted to this tournament for helping us secure funds to be able to build a children’s hospital expansion.”

Reveille may be the star but the children’s hospital patients get in on the chicken art, too, painting the tee markers for the week.

Ryan Armour’s win on Sunday was the latest in what is still the early stages of a 10-year contract that Sanderson signed in 2015 to be the title sponsor of the Jackson-area stop. So while it may not be the biggest cash game on Tour, it does have a committed title sponsor and a community that’s all in, rallied around an unmistakable identity and trophy, the badass bird that’s become its symbol.

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onestowatch · 8 years ago

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The 7 Best Emerging Bands From Bottlerock Napa Valley Festival [POLAROIDS + Q&A’s]

There are so many music festivals these days that your eyes are bound roll back into your head when you read a lineup flyer announcement. As a lover of rock music, Bottlerock had a particularly great mixture of bands from emerging to headliners and everything in between. If you are a fan of all the off-shoot genres of rock--from folk rock, to alt rock, to pop rock--then Bottlerock was the place to be.

Other festival highlights included: The JamPad, a sponsored tent for all attendees where artists like Gavin Degraw and Judah and the Lion played short acoustic sets for smaller groups of fans; a culinary stage where band members like Green Day’s Mike Dirnt discussed his Oakland Coffee Company; and even a limited edition Foo Fighters wine by Blackbird Vineyards. The VIP area featured acoustic sets by Fitz and The Tantrums, and the main stage included emerging acts like The Helmets--a rock band of 12-year-olds whose bass player is the son of Metallica bass player, Robert Trujillo.

Bottlerock is one of the most exciting places to find emerging bands, hear your faves like Maroon 5, and keep your mouth full of delicious Napa area restaurants and wines all at once. According to Dave Graham, CEO of Latitude 38 Entertainment who helps to choose the line-up, “Our challenge is to create a lineup that appeals to a large demographic and spans a variety of genres. From our headliners to our emerging acts, we are proud that people of all ages can attend together and not only hear long time favorites, but can discover new bands that have a wide appeal. It makes for one of the most diverse lineups in the festival industry."

Besides the one major scheduling fail--the fact that The Roots’ set time was at the exact same time as The Foo Fighters--the festival lineup was one of the best this year. Below, we’ve interviewed some of the best of the emerging acts that appeared at Bottlerock: Saint Mesa, Corey Harper, SWMRS, The Heydaze, James Hersey, Hippo Campus, and A R I Z O N A.

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Saint Mesa

Saint Mesa’s sound, at least on paper, is described as “alt pop”--but just one listen to “Jungle” and “Beads” will have you questioning if there is an actual genre that Danny McCook, A.K.A. Saint Mesa, fits into. With influences all the way from Childish Gambino to the Backstreet Boys, Danny’s sound is anything but generic. His fashion is just as much part of his performance as his music, as you may confuse him with a young Johnny Depp who rolled around in a whole bunch of Gucci and then showed up to sing you songs. With a new single called “Maderas” dropping today, Saint Mesa is a live performer you don’t want to miss should you have the chance to see him.

Describe your genre.

Danny: The stuff that I'm writing leans more toward experimental pop—it’s got pop roots, but then the writing and production is more experimental-inspired. I’m just trying to establish who I am sonically, but maintain an identity lyrically and tonally.

Name your musical Influences.

Danny: I've been listening to really random references, Backstreet Boys—the Millennium album or whatever. It goes hard. What's really cool about it is they were starting to discover the extent you can go with digital recording, so everything is isolated and made perfect. It's fun to pull influences from things that are not within my genre.

What is your ultimate music festival lineup?

Danny: I would've loved to have seen Coldplay like five years ago. I've also never seen Radiohead live.

What’s next?

Danny: I've written like 30 songs, so probably an album. I have a single coming out on June 2nd, “Maderas,” a song that I wrote when I took a writing trip out to Nicaragua for a couple weeks. The area was called Maderas.”

For more on Saint Mesa:

www.saintmesa.com

www.facebook.com/saintmesamusic

www.instagram.com/saintmesamusic

www.twitter.com/saintmesamusic

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0e2fMEJlAuBo3iYh118cKI

Corey Harper

At first listen, you may actually confuse Corey Harper’s perfect tone and pitch for a young John Mayer. When you see him, you may question if he’s actually John Mayer’s younger brother and then after talking to him, you’ll realize that Corey is the more charming, hilarious, sarcastic, better-looking rock star that John Mayer probably wishes he was. Though Corey gives off those California surfer vibes with both his music and his sun-kissed hair, Corey is originally from Portland, Oregon—claiming that all the references about California in his music are due to being in Portland and wishing it would stop raining. Also, the simple fact that “California is a great word. It has great cadence.” He adds, “Have you ever said it like a lot of times?” After hearing a sneak peak of an unreleased song called “No Good Alone” via Corey’s iPhone, rest assured that more of those California vibe-y acoustics are on their way.

Describe your genre.

Corey: It's like going to a house party, and your friend hands you the AUX chord in the Uber on the way, and there's a girl there that you kind of kissed once and you're kind of excited to see her but you only kissed weirdly once. That's the genre.

What are your thoughts on being called “John Mayer’s younger brother?”

Corey: I'm alright with it because I know he felt the same way about Stevie Ray, and so it's kind of a natural thing to be idolizing someone and to want to do their music so bad that you want to get on the same kind of wavelengths as them. And then you fail, because you can't be them. You can't do what they do, but you can try to put yourself together in a way that's going to represent the style that they were inspired by, and then your failure at trying to sound like that becomes your own style.

What’s an interesting fact about you and your music?

Corey: I was too scared to play in front of anyone, so I didn't play for anyone until I was 19. No one knew I played guitar. I played soccer and I surfed. Everyone thought I was going to be a pro surfer, even though I suck at surfing. I've put in a lot of work, hit the grindstone and been humbled a lot of times [with music]. Having moments like playing the main stage at BottleRock and then moments like, sometimes I go home and play by myself and I can't even figure out a simple chord progression.

What is your fave music festival memory?

Corey: I think seeing my mom in the crowd yesterday [at Sasquatch]. I was pretty emotional about it. But seeing her in the audience wearing a Corey Harper merch t-shirt with my brother jumping up and down. [At Bottlerock], it was a bunch of different kind of moments for me. For that 45 minute moment, it all comes together and exists as a frequency out to the crowd. It's like your mind and your instrument are all kind of working together, and it creates a really cool memory for people.

What’s next?

Corey: I’m doing another tour in the south with New Belgium. Florida, New Orleans, St. Petersburg, Atlanta, Dallas, Austin and Bonnaroo.

For more on Corey Harper:

http://www.coreyharpermusic.com/

Instagram| Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | SoundCloud

https://open.spotify.com/artist/24Bq9F6DJfzTaqgmoxT5vm

SWMRS

Being a rock star who is the child of a rock star may always carry the comparison between kin and parent--but luckily for SWMRS, it works in their favor. If you happen to have been a pop-punk fan in the Blink 182 and Green Day heyday, then SWMRS will definitely be your jam. Drummer Joey Armstrong is the son of Green Day frontman Billie Joe, and lead singer Cole Becker, guitarist Max Becker, and bassist Sebastian Mueller have known Billie for years, and will even be joining Green Day on tour later this summer. But these guys aren’t riding on anyone’s coat tails, that’s for sure--just check out their LP, Drive North, recently re-released on the Fueled By Ramen label.

Why did you decide to re-release Drive North instead of releasing new music?

Seb: There was still life on that album.

Cole: I think we'd only been touring it like six months before we got talking to Fueled By [Ramen] and decided to re-release. People put so many albums out, and it's not like all that music just has a life of a year and it should be forgotten and overshadowed by something else.

Describe what it’s like to see you play live?

Seb: We like to hit people with a wall of power and fucking energy; the thing that makes it interesting for us is the crowd. It's so much about the symbiosis and the energy flow between the stage and the crowd for us. It's all about getting to know the crowd and getting them to fucking react.

What are the rules for a SWMRS mosh pit?

Seb: No need to be overly aggressive. Mosh pits are about pushing around and having fun and jumping. It's almost like being a little community. But then you get people that just take their aggression out in the mosh pits.

Cole: The problem is we're middle ground between hardcore kids and pop punk.

Seb: What people have to realize is you can't just crowd kill at a show like that because it's diminishing the experience for everyone else.

What other bands would you have at your own festival?

Cole: We do have our own festival, it's called Uncool Fest. And we do two different iterations of it; we do the festival, and we have Uncool Halloween, which is a Halloween party. I would really like to have some young bands headline, to get our friends’ bands, that's what it's all about: PartyBaby, No Parents, Bleached, Bully would be sick. White Reaper. Twin Peaks.”

Who would be the ultimate festival pop-in collab with SWMRS?

Cole: Kendrick Lamar. Like realistically if we could get to a point where we could co-headline with Kendrick Lamar, that would be sick.

What’s next?

Cole: A long time ago [we played as] Emily's Army and opened for Blink 182, for their ten year anniversary. This tour [will be the] first time since then. I'm hyped! It will be cool [opening for Green Day at Hyde Park]; we waited a really long time because we already have a lot of people who draw the comparison. We've always wanted to play with Billie, and we love playing music with him. We've been waiting a long time until we have our own lane of success that we've carved out for ourselves.

For more on SWMRS:

https://www.facebook.com/SWMRS/

https://twitter.com/swmrs

https://www.instagram.com/swmrs/

https://www.youtube.com/swmrs

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/drive-north/id1162309921

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7dLkuQHF2ijbK6jiLFyIWM

The Heydaze

The Heydaze started as a group of friends playing together in college, as most bands do--but these guys take comradery to the next level. Just try to have a conversation with them, and you’ll realize these dudes are more like brothers-- but just as the level of understood sarcasm is high, so is the talent. While their two current singles, “Hurt Like Hell” and “New Religion,” sound vibe-y on the recording, expect a more amped up rock show at a live performance. Lead singer Jesse Fink will bring you the younger Adam Levine and Gavin Degraw vibes with his performance and vocals, but he isn’t afraid to share the spotlight with bassist Alexander Glantz--dubbed the “king of mashups” amongst the band--who will take over lead vocals for a song or two.

Describe your genre.

Jesse: We go back and forth between rocky and poppy and acoustic--we are kind of a mix between all of those so you're going to see things all over the board.

Tyler: Soulful, anthemic rock music, with a poppy flair.

Alexander: It'll fuck you right up, and it'll fuck you right back down.

Describe what seeing you live is like?

Andrew: I think just end of the day we want to get everyone moving. You only get 40 minutes--and we're gonna give it everything we got. It's a little heavier than the recorded version, so even the way we play “Hurt Like Hell” live is rockier, because we want to bring that energy.

What made you decide to do live mashups and have other band mates sing?

Alexander: We like to catch people off guard and keep them on their toes--just get them going a little bit. We like to throw a few curve balls in the set just to throw people off. We change up what song it is.

Jesse: Stay tuned for Tyler hopping on the mic.

Tyler: Today was a drum solo — next time, an opera solo.

What is your favorite music festival memory?

Alexander: Best festival memory was at Hangout Fest. We got locked in a tent because there was a storm--I can't tell you what happened next but we might tell you when you're all grown up.

Jessie: It's unforgivable.

Tyler: We did unspeakable things, but we survived.

What’s next?

Jesse: We have been spending time in the studio writing for the last year and a half or so--our plan is to record all summer, and be back on the road this fall.

For more on The Heydaze:

Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5UWH3rIlO4qbXk6PMFZEbP

James Hersey

Multi-talented singer, musician, songwriter, and producer James Hersey hails from Vienna, Austria, and his influences range all the way from jazz guitar to punk band Flogging Molly. In fact, he used to hang out with Flogging Molly at the age of sixteen when he accidentally ran into them at one of his favorite hang outs. “I pulled out my journal. I was like, ‘Look, this is the cover I'm working on right now of you guys.’ They fell in love and they invited me to every show they did in Vienna.”

Perhaps that was his first foray into collabs--since he’s now known for his 129 million streams with “Coming Over,” a collab alongside EDM musician Dillon Francis, with other versions by Kygo and Filous. His live performance features a combination of live musicians and live looping, but you can always expect stellar lyrics no matter what the production is--as his songs often start as poems. With his new EP Pages out, James jokes that his future EP may be called Chapters, and a subsequent album may be called Book of James. For now, you’ll have to spin Pages on repeat until later this year, when James plans to release his second EP.

Describe your genre.

James: It's like a progressive singer-songwriter--like modern folk because it's really folk songs. It's folk songs in the way that I structure everything; I love to produce as well and keep it up-to-date.

What were your thoughts on hearing the Dillon Francis version of “Coming Over?”

James: I like how those guys approach the track. They added a whole new part to it that sounded really big, and that opened a lot of doors for me. I come from Vienna, Austria. There's no real industry there, and yet I've played Coachella twice with that song. Closing the stage with Dillon Francis and with Kygo two years before. When I'm at a party, I don't put on my original.”

How does it feel to have millions of spins with one of your first singles?

James: What it means to me is just that people love to listen to the song. When Spotify hits us up they're like, "It's unbelievable how low your click through rate is. They can see all the statistics, people skipping the song. Nobody skips that song, because they want to hear it--it's great that people love my writing.”

How do you go about writing your songs?

James: I studied jazz guitar for two years, and I learned really to improvise. The first instances don't have lyrics. I'm just sitting there like looking for what fits in--bopping and scatting. First, I find out what's the vibe of the song, what's the vibe of the instrumental, and then start writing lyrics. The song “Pages” from the EP was a poem, that I turned into a song.

What’s next?

James: I just was working on some songs today, testing them out [at BottleRock] and seeing how people react. I wrote another EP that I'm going to release this year. Instead of doing one album, I wanted to do two EPs this year. I'm doing an album next year. I've written eight new songs, and something like five or six will go on the next EP. It’s all about lyrical aesthetic for me.

For more on James Hersey:

https://www.facebook.com/jamesherseymusic/

https://twitter.com/JamesHersey

www.jamesherseymusic.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jameshersey/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0lzV2CiahHRiGd6qpADtPS

Hippo Campus

The very essence of Hippo Campus is like seeing the music video for Green Day’s “Walking Contradiction:” on the surface, they seem like a group of stoner kids who can barely hold in their sarcastic jokes, but really they’re highly trained jazz musicians who draw from deep metaphors and scientific theories like ��the halocline.” Their music is mellow and vibe-y on a sonic level, but punk rock lyrically--as many of their songs are often about not wanting to “grow up” in the ways society says it should be done. Their biggest hit currently is “Suicide Saturday,” a song which lead guitarist Nathan Stocker says is about “doing your own thing, not worrying about feeling obligated to hang out with people.”

While most of their antics during conversations come off like the friendship of a group of frat boys, their live performance includes heavily melodic guitars and vocals that will make you wonder just how these four made it through music conservatory school without getting kicked out.

How do you describe your sound?

Nathan: Personally, I would describe it as a “floundering about” of sound. An exploration in the way that we do things, in the way that we operate. Both as individuals and in a relationship to each other in a band.

How would you describe your live performance?

Zach: I know I have fun and all of these guys have fun. I've heard the people in the audience have fun. No substantial proof that this is in any way true…

If there was a Hippo Campus wine or drink at a festival, what would it be?

Jake: Mezcal. But we don't drink before shows.

Nathan: Tequila. After the show, we drink copious amounts of alcohol.

Jake: Playing drunk is not that great for anybody.

What would be your ultimate music festival line-up?

Nathan: Elephant Revival would be fun. The New Pornographers, Star Fucker, Stars, they're great.

Whistler: We wouldn't collectively have the same choices.

Since the fest has them scheduled at the same time, who would you choose: Foo Fighters or The Roots?

Zach: A thousand times, The Roots.

What’s next?

Nathan: I'm trying to buy a car.

Zach: I'm trying to buy a house.

Jake: I'm going to Disneyland.

We're playing some festivals this summer, then in October we're going over to Europe and we're gonna play a bunch of shows over there.

Nathan:“We're currently writing, trying to experiment with where we want to be at when the time comes for recording.

For more on Hippo Campus:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram

Tour dates: http://hippocampusband.com/shows/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1btWGBz4Uu1HozTwb2Lm8A

A R I Z O N A

Originally a group of three producer friends from New Jersey, A R I Z O N A joked about becoming their own band--but the jokes on them, because according to their 9.5 million monthly visitors on Spotify, they’re apparently a really good band. Their debut album GALLERY was released earlier this year, and is literally a hook-filled jam fest with songs like “Electric Touch” and “Where I Want To Be”--just try to listen to one of their singles and NOT sing along. Though their album sounds pretty heavily produced with some cool synths and sounds, you can rely on their live show to be more of a loud, rock n’ roll, face-melting experience where sometimes the fans even start a mosh pit. These guys can go anywhere from acoustic to electric and everywhere in between, and they are no doubt a band you should experience both streaming and live to enjoy the extent of their talents.

Tell us a funny story about being on tour.

Zac: New York's like a hometown for us, and we were going into that show with zero merch. We were completely out of shirts, and we were like, "How are we gonna go to a show with no merch?" So we went to Chinatown that morning and had a [bunch] embroidered.

Who were you most excited about seeing at BottleRock?

Nate: I went to go check out Modest Mouse. It was cool seeing Modest Mouse play the stage we played on. Modest Mouse is a band I've been listening to forever.

Zac: There's no way I'm leaving before Foo Fighters.

Since The Roots and The Foo Fighters are set to play at the same time on different stages, who are you gonna go see?

Zac: It's a sick joke. I'm torn, I might bounce back and forth…

Describe what seeing you live is like.

Zac: It starts with unicorns, and it ends with fireworks and rainbows. It's interesting--a lot of people know us just from the studio records. I think most flattering things that people have come up to us and said after the show has be like, “Man, you guys sound better than your studio records." We want to make sure that live, when we play it, it feels like you're at a concert, that you're seeing a band. So, lots of headbanging.

Who would be your ultimate festival surprise pop-up collab to perform a song with you?

David: Kenny Loggins on the first song.

Zac: Because we're from New Jersey, we love Jersey artists, so one of the jokes we always make is to have a Jersey show with us and Bleachers and Fetty Wap and all the Jersey cats.

What’s next?

Zac: We're finishing up a tour with Coin right now, then we'll be opening for Andrew McMahon in The Wilderness in July, and in September, we're hitting up our own headliners. As tour starts to wind down, I don't think we're going to be wasting any time with getting back into creating cool visuals because we do all of our own visuals. Also jumping right back into the writing process; album two's got to get done.

For More on A R I Z O N A:

thisisarizonamusic.com

twitter.com/arizona_music

facebook.com/thisisarizonamusic

instagram.com/thisisarizonamusic

https://atlantic.lnk.to/galleryPR

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7hOGhpa8RMSuDOWntGIAJt

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