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keiichikuzuryuwu · 3 years ago

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Place Your Bets

Implied (Future) Keiichi Kuzuryuu x Reader

Summary: This is a reimagining of the manga’s version of the Four of Clubs game, featuring a very stubborn, very smart mother hen Y/N instead of a gentle girl.

A/N: I have literally never seen anyone write for Kuzuryuu and that made me sad, because I love him. Also I know very little about how to actually take care of a baby so please be forgiving.

TW: Blood, leg injury, a crying baby

Walking along a deserted street, a man in a hat was making his way toward tonight’s game. Based on his body language, you would think he didn’t want to go, but in honesty, he was tentatively looking forward to it.

“Oh my god, another person!!” The voice of a woman caught his attention, pulling his gaze away from the lights in the distance. As he looked over, he took note of how clean she was, all glow and innocence compared to the world around her- a new arrival, clearly. But what truly surprised him was the fact that she was carrying a sleeping baby in her arms. It was rare to come across a child here, much less a baby. Perhaps it was her’s, which was why she hadn’t abandoned it yet, “You wouldn’t happen to be this baby’s father, would you? Or at the very least have seen anyone who could possibly be their parents?”

So it wasn’t her’s. The man wondered how long it would be until she gave up on it.

“No, sorry. I’m on my way to a game, so if you’ll excuse me,” He tipped his hat and took a step, only to feel his arm grabbed.

“Wait, what game? Should I be heading there too?”

“You… don’t know about the games? Are you new here?” He already knew the answer, but no point in signaling that to her. She may end up a Heart Specialist and get into his head, after all.

“Yes, actually! One moment, I was going to meet up with my friends, and the next, the entirety of Shibuya was powered down and empty except me and this little one here,” So she’d walked all this way from Shibuya in just a few hours? Maybe a Spades Specialist, then.

“Well then you should come with me. We need to get you registered for a game so you don’t end up a day one victim.”

“Woah, what?? Day one victim??” The color drained from her face, before she grabbed his hand and began walking, “What and where is this game? Is it Trivial Pursuit? Because I’m really good at Trivial Pursuit! Wait, but that’s a one winner game and this is looking more and more like the set up for a death game manga but in real life,” She looked back at him, “Did I get stuck in a death game manga but in real life?”

“Um…” He didn’t really know how to respond to this woman. Regaining his wits, he caught up to her brisk pace and pointed in the direction of the lights, “See those lights? That’s where the closest game is. And, yes, you unfortunately did…”

“Brilliant, let’s go,” She still held onto his hand as they walked, confusing the man. They were complete strangers and he’d just told her that she was walking towards her probable death, yet she continued to hold his hand as though they were allies.

Walking up to the glowing tunnel, the man spotted the registration phones on a table, three of them already missing. The already registered participants were scattered nearby, looking at them strangely. Did they perhaps think he, this woman, and the baby were a family? The thought almost flustered him.

“So what do I do?” The woman asked him when they got over to the table, “Just take one of these phones?”

“Yes, here,” Handing her one, he watched as she tapped to turn it on.

“I don’t like the fact that this facial recognition already had me registered with an ID number,” She scoffed, putting the phone in her skirt’s pocket before hesitating, “Wait, do I need to register this baby too? I mean, obviously I’m not gonna abandon it, but… they’re a baby, they can’t really play a game.”

“No, unfortunately they need to be registered… Here,” Picking up another phone, he held it up to the face of the babe, the ping of the completed registration sounding a moment later, “You keep hold of this one too, since you’re holding the baby.”

“Alright, sounds good to me,” Placing the other phone in her pocket, she cooed at the baby, “You better hope this isn’t Trivial Pursuit or I’m gonna have to kick your butt, baby~ That’s right, that’s right~”

“Please don’t taunt the baby like that. It’s… unnerving…” Nervously pulling on his collar, the man was surprised when she just laughed.

“Sorry, I cope with stress by joking around…” She placed a hand on the back of her neck as they walked over to the others, “The only way this baby isn’t surviving is if it’d be better to do a mercy killing. Other than that, I’m fighting tooth and nail to make sure they get through this with me.”

“You for real??” One of the men closest to them, with spiked, pitch dark hair, scoffed, “You really think you can keep a baby alive here? Put yourself first if you wanna live, lady!”

“Come on, don’t say that!” The woman snapped back, before taking a breath and calming down, “Here, how about we start over and introduce ourselves?”

“This could be a Hearts game, or the rules could state we need to kill each other,” The only other woman there, a stark, gothic contrast to the Mori girl aesthetic of the woman with the baby, stated coldly, “I’ll pass.”

“One minute until registration closes,” A calm, female voice suddenly came from all of their phones, startling the woman with the baby.

“Huh?” Taking out her phone, she looked it over, “Guess it speaks too… These are my least favorite part of this nightmare so far,” Then, she took note of the camera app, “Ooh! Hey, wanna take a selfie?”

“You want to… take a selfie with me?” The man she’d arrived with questioned her, utterly befuddled by this woman.

“Yeah, come on! This might be the last chance we ever get to take a good picture!” Moving in close, she held up the phone, making sure to get both them and the still sleeping baby in the shot, “Awesome! Thanks for indulging my possibly last request!”

“You are way too chipper, lady,” A new man spoke as he walked up. Short cropped hair with designs buzzed into it and a mean face, this man screamed gangster. In reaction, the woman held the baby tighter.

“Entry has now closed,” The phones spoke again, “There are a total of seven participants. Please proceed into the tunnel.”

“I just hope it’s not Spades… I’m not very good at physical games…” The man in the hat grumbled, causing the woman to raise an eyebrow as they walked into the tunnel. About 100 feet in, the woman suddenly stopped, “What’s the matter?”

“I hear something…” Straining her ears for a moment, she suddenly looked up at the top of the tunnel’s entrance.

“Wha?! What the hell?!” Just as the words left spiky haired man’s lips, a barrier fell from the ceiling, creating debris and, more importantly, blocking them in.

“UWAAAHHH!!!!” The baby had woken up due to the world shaking from the force of the barrier’s impact with the ground, only for the woman to pull out a pacifier from her purse and stick it in the infant’s mouth.

“Thank goodness I thought to grab that…”

“W-We’re trapped in??” Goth woman shouted, panic taking over, “But that isn’t the standard!!”

“Guess they really don’t want us to be able to choose the coward’s way out this game…” Gangster guy placed his hand on the wall.

“ARGHH!!” Everyone’s attention was directed to the man in the hat, who was sitting on the ground, blood gushing from his leg, “Some rubble… it went into my leg!!”

“On no!!” The woman with the baby was the first to react, rushing over to him, “Hold the baby, we need to wrap this up and restrict the blood flow!”

“O-Okay…!” Carefully, he took the baby, doing his best not to shake as she took an extra baby blanket out of her bag and used it to create a makeshift cotton bandage.

As she worked, their phones chimed again- “The game will now commence. Difficulty: Four of Clubs. Game: Runaway. Rule: Endure the four trials and reach the goal within the time limit. Clear condition: Reach the goal safely.”

“Trials? Goal? What’s it talking about?” The goth woman mumbled.

“It looks like these are the trials it’s referring to…” At a man in glasses words, everyone turned around and saw what he meant.

In the floor, walls, and ceiling were various doors and hatches. The first door was in a wall, marked ‘Trial One,’ with a timer stating the lock released in fifteen minutes. Next to that, several round hatches labeled ‘Trial Two’ were going to release in thirty minutes. Trial Three’s vents in the ceiling were releasing in forty five, and Four’s hatch on the floor was set to release in an hour.

Spiky haired man noticed a placard on the wall by Door One, and walked over to inspect it.

“The distance to the goal is written here… But I can’t read the most important part. Damnit…” Sure enough, where the number should be, instead was worn down metal.

Looking down at the ground somberly, Glasses stated, “A conjecture… ‘Runaway’ means to flee… Something will come out of each of these four doors after a delay. Perhaps it means we should run towards the goal while running away? If the fourth lock opens after an hour, and we were to run for that amount of time, then the distance to the goal is around ten kilometers…”

“Ten??”

“Game… start.”

At that moment, the timers started counting down, and their phones switched to an hour long timer as well.

“Ten kilometers in an hour is cutting it too close! We can’t afford to waste a second!” With that, everyone save the woman with the baby and the man in the hat started running.

“Can you stand?” The woman asked him as she took the baby back, genuinely concerned about this stranger.

“With help, I think I should be able to…”

“Hey, you lot! Care to help a lady out??”

“I make no promises that I’ll hold on to you till the end…” The gangster helped lift the man to allow the woman to continue carrying the baby safely.

“Thank you in the meantime…” The man got out through labored breaths as they walked.

Within the first five minutes, everyone reached a bus covered in graffiti, the first car they had seen since the game began. By the time the man, woman, and gangster got there, it seemed their fellow players had exhausted it.

“There’s nothing here except junk, and it’s not going no matter how hard I hit the gas!!!” Spiky hair complained as glasses looked underneath the bus.

“The belt is cut, that’s why. Looks like this isn’t meant to be our method of transportation…” Getting up, he began running, “Looks like we have to run! We lost time here, so let’s hurry!”

“Gaaah!! I’m at my limit… There’s no way I could run…” The man in the hat groaned, “Don’t worry about me anymore, you all should hurry on ahead…”

“But-!”

“It’s like he says,” Goth woman cut off the other, “The first trial is about to start… In order to survive in these Borderlands, sometimes we have to do callous things. If you don’t learn that quick, you won’t be long for this world,” With that, she began running as well.

For a moment, the man, woman, and gangster didn’t move, until the gangster helped the man over to the first step of the bus and set him down before walking away.

“You too??” The woman angrily called out after him, “You’re going to desert us??”

“I tried helping… But now, things have changed…” He picked up speed, quickly catching up to the others.

“Selfish cowards!!” She yelled, shaking her fist at them. Sighing, she turned to the man, “Guess it’s just you and me, huh?”

“Are you sure? You should go run-”

“Nuh uh. I’ve decided I’m staying here, so I’m staying here,” Scooting around him, the woman gently placed the baby into the dip of the driver’s seat before helping the man up and to a seat so he could prop up his leg, “Let’s see…”

“What are you doing?” He raised an eyebrow as he watched her go up and down the bus.

“In order to slow the flow of blood more until we can get you help, we need to raise your leg. By doing that, the blood will- Here-” She took the baby and handed them to him again before looking around more, “The blood won’t be able to pump up there as fast, and it should give us some wiggle room.”

“You seem awfully knowledgeable about this. Are you perhaps a doctor?”

“Hah, no, I just remember a lot. Picked this up from a medical book I read when I was sixteen for fun. I’m actually a Masters student working towards simultaneous degrees in Psychology and Religion with a focus in cults,” Before the man could comment on how impressive that was, the woman sighed, “I’ve found a Japanese to English dictionary, a space heater, a set of keys that turn on this motionless bus, and a gum wrapper, but nothing to prop up your leg,” Sitting in the chair across the row from him, the woman took the baby back and gently bounced it, “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens…”

“I’m sorry I’ve dragged you down with me…”

“Nonsense!” She waved her hand dismissively, “I’m not much of a runner, and I��ve got this little angel to look after. There’s no way I could run to some mysterious goal even if I wanted to. Besides…” Her eyes shifted back and forth before leaning in and dropping her voice as though they were being watched, “Something about this game is striking me as odd.”

“What do you mean?” The man leaned in as best as he could, voice dropping as well.

“Before I tell you my theory, could you explain what exactly the card level of this game means? You said you hoped this game wasn’t Spades because you weren’t good at physical games, while the woman stated we shouldn’t tell each other our names in case it was a Hearts game. That means the different suits represent different types of games, while the number represents how hard it is, right?”

“You picked that up quickly. Most people don’t realize that their first game, it generally takes someone explaining it to them their second or third game for them to get it,” Thinking for a moment, he nodded, “Very well, since we’re going to be here for at least an hour, I’ll tell you. Yes, the number on the card connotes how hard the game will be, with Ace being the easiest, while King is the hardest. As for the suits- Spades represent physical games, lots of moving around and exertion. Diamond games are intelligence and wit based games, and are the least physically demanding. If you were to find a game of Trivial Pursuit here, it would fall into that suit.”

“I see,” She sounded enraptured.

“Hearts,” He paused, considering his words, “They’re psychological games… They mess with your mind and your morals, and are widely regarded as the most brutal of the four suits. If possible, you do not want to join a Hearts game.”

“And Clubs?”

“Clubs games like this one refer to team battles and a mix of the other’s elements. It’s an unofficial rule that there is always a total win scenario, that it’s possible for all participants to make it out alive.”

“Then that puts us at an advantage!” She nodded decisively, “If Clubs are a team battle, then by sticking together, we have a better chance at survival!”

“But we’re just sitting in a bus?”

“Look mister, I’m trying to remain positive here, so if you could work with me a little?”

“Alright, alright,” The man put his hands up, chuckling. From the sound of it, it was an unfamiliar noise to come from his mouth, “We’re at an advantage because we stuck together while the others are only thinking of themselves.”

“That’s the spirit!” She held out her hand for a fist bump, which the man would have returned, had it not been for the bus suddenly lurching forward, “The hell??”

“UWAAHHH!!!” The motion woke up the baby again, but neither the man or the woman had time to calm them down again, as water was quickly rising around their enclosure and leaking in through some gaps in the windows.

“Oh no, you take Yuuji, I’ll stop the water!” Handing the baby to the man, the woman began to shed layers of clothes, using her jacket, cardigan, tights to plug the gaps. In the end, she was left in just a camisole and her torn up skirt, having even used parts of that to slow the water, “There, that should keep us relatively dry as long as the water goes down soon.”

“You called the child ‘Yuuji,’” The man commented, a bit surprised.

“Huh? I did, didn’t I?” Laughing sheepishly, the woman sat back down, “Don’t know why, they’re not my kid. I don’t even know if they’re male or female.”

“Well, I suppose they do look like a Yuuji,” He looked down at where he was bouncing the slightly calmer baby on his shoulder, “Can I ask why you chose to take this baby with you? You even grabbed their diaper bag.”

“Guess I felt bad about them being abandoned by their parents,” She shrugged, “Something just told me I needed to hold onto them and protect them; which makes no sense, given that it’s not like I grew up with great parental role models.”

“Maybe you just possess a natural maternal instinct, bad parents or not.”

“Who knows? Maybe you’re right.”

For several minutes, neither of them said anything as the man calmed down the baby, lulling them back to sleep.

“It seems as though the water is going down,” The man finally commented, the woman looking out the window to see that they were no longer surrounded.

“Yeah, but now it seems like the temperature is dropping fast!” The woman was right, the air was indeed getting colder, “I’ll go turn on that space heater before Yuuji wakes up again!”

“Sounds good to me.”

With the space heater on, the bus quickly warmed back up, keeping the baby asleep in the man’s arms.

“This cold must be the… how much time has passed?” Looking at her phone’s timer, the woman's brow furrowed, “Forty five minutes?? When the heck did the first trial happen??”

“We must have missed it somehow while we were talking.”

“Weird. Maybe it just passed right by us,” The woman didn’t let it bother her too much, just grateful to have not had to deal with it. Silence passed for a few more minutes as the woman held the baby, before she spoke again, “Okay, something’s been on my mind for the last half an hour, and I gotta know before we die… You were totally faking your personality when we got here, right?”

“H-Huh??” The man’s eyes widened, and he could feel his pulse quicken.

“Acting timid and stuff. Fake, right?”

“I… I…” Sighing, he looked her in the eyes, “How’d you know?”

“I sorta guessed around the time you told me about the suits. Your speech pattern started getting more eloquent, your sentences became longer, and you didn’t bat an eye at the fact that I’m working towards two Masters degrees at the same time. That last thing doesn’t really have to do with the timid thing, but it did tell me that you’re smarter than you seemed. That accident with your leg was very real, something you didn’t account for that truly did leave you near helpless; but before that, it was all strategy so we’d underestimate you in case this turned out to be a single winner game.”

“That’s… phenomenally impressive,” He stared at her in awe, “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“Because I’ve been having fun talking with you and didn’t want to make it awkward,” Laughing, she shrugged, “But my natural curiosity got the better of me. I want to die with as few regrets as possible, and I’d regret not getting to see your actual personality,” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she kissed the top of the baby’s head, “I hope however this ends is clean and painless. I doubt it would happen, but if my family were to ever find my body, I wouldn’t want their last image of me to be tainted by something like decapitation, y’know?”

“Yes, I… I understand,” Moving closer, the man took the woman’s hand and squeezed it gently, “I promise you, if we survive this, I’ll do whatever I can to help you survive long enough to reunite with your family.”

“Aww, thanks,” She smiled sadly at him, “That means a lot. You’re a really nice guy, even if you are a crafty strategist.”

“I-”

KABOOM!!!!

An explosion violently shook the bus, causing the baby to once again wake up and cry.

“Quickly, on the ground!” The man pulled the woman and baby into his arms and got on the ground, shielding them with his body as the bus continued to shake. It seemed to go on forever, the shaking, as the bus grew warmer and warmer, far warmer than the heat the space heater would have been able to produce. But, finally, the shaking did stop, and the world became quiet outside of the baby’s cries, “Are you two alright?”

“Y-Yeah, I think so,” After she was helped up by the man, the woman grabbed the baby’s pacifier and returned it to their mouth, “That was the fourth trial, right?”

“I believe so,” He nodded, looking out the window, “All I can see are scorch marks, so I can’t tell, though.”

A little fanfare like tune emitting from their phones answered them, however.

“Game clear. Congratulations! To the survivors of the game, we will now supply you with a Visa.”

“G-Game clear?” The woman’s eyes widened in surprise, “You mean… we won? But that would mean…” Handing the baby to the man, she threw open the door to the bus and hopped out, running around the bus, almost immediately spotting the confirmation she sought, “The goal… It was the bus…”

“It was the bus??” The man limped out of the bus, handing the woman the baby due to feeling shaky as he saw what she’d found, “The graffiti… G-O-A-L… Dear lord…”

“Your injury saved us,” Tears flowed down the woman’s cheeks as she suddenly hugged the man, laughing almost manically, “It saved us! I don’t normally believe in luck, but tonight I think I’ll make an exception!”

“I can’t believe it, though! You were right!” The man laughed as well, “We stuck together as a team instead of only thinking of ourselves, and we survived!”

“Wait- oh no!” Pulling away, the woman frowned, “Those poor people that ran on ahead!! They… If the trials didn’t kill them, then… what did?”

“Anyone who breaks a rule like leaving an arena before the game is over or doesn’t achieve game clear… They’re struck down by a laser from the sky…” His words cause the woman to gasp, a hand covering her mouth, “I hope for their sake, their deaths were as clean and painless as the one you had wished for…”

Taking his hand, she squeezed it gently, “I’ll carry their memories with me, and push forward. As ill as they treated us, I can only hope that wherever they are, they find peace.”

“You’re an incredibly kind woman, Miss…?”

“Oh wow, we never did introduce ourselves, huh? If we’re gonna be sticking together, we should probably at least know the other’s name,” Wiping away her tears, she laughed, “My name is Y/N L/N, Y/A years old, Masters student, and guardian of this little angel until further notice. It’s nice to meet you, Mister…?”

“Kuzuryuu. Keiichi Kuzuryuu, 37 years old, attorney at law, and Diamond Specialist here in the Borderlands. It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Miss L/N.”

“Please, we just nearly died together! You can call me Y/N. Mind if I call you Kuzu?” She looked at him so hopefully that he couldn’t find it in himself to refuse her.

“Alright, you may call me ‘Kuzu’… Y/N.”

“Excellent! Now let’s get out of this place! I’m tired and we need to get you off that leg.”

“I believe I saw a furniture store near here that we could use as shelter before finding something better tomorrow,” He offered as she helped him limp out of the tunnel, the barrier to the outside having been blown off in the explosion.

“Perfect, let’s go there. There’s some supplies to take care of Yuuji in this diaper bag I grabbed, but we’ll need to find some more tomorrow as well.”

“Sounds good to me.”

An hour later, as Y/N and Yuuji slept soundly in one of the spacious beds on display in the furniture store, Kuzuryuu stood outside and pulled out a walkie talkie.

“HQ, please respond. This is Four of Club’s observer, Kuzuryuu,” Taking off his hat, he pushed back his hair and slipped on his glasses, “Surviving players- two of six. Dispatch the cleanup squad to deal with the disposal of tools and materials.”

“Copy that, sir. Anything else?”

“Yes… Tell the others I won’t be back for a while,” He looked back through the doors to where Y/N and Yuuji slept, a small smile on his lips, “I have a player I’d like to place my bets on.”

Y/N L/N

Clubs Specialist

End of Day One of Sojourn

#alice in borderland x reader #aib x reader #kuzuryuu keiichi #keiichi kuzuryu x reader #alice in borderland #aib #imawa no kuni no arisu #fanfic #headcanon #scenario #aib scenarios

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come-on-shitty-boys · 4 years ago

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//general dating headcannons//

Characters: Bokuto Koutarou/Kuroo Tetsurou/Akaashi Keiji

Warnings: none :)

Word Count: 2K (~630 a piece)

Notes: kdhfesdkfje catch me getting carried away on Kuroo’s ope 0-0

Bokuto Koutarou

My literal husband ;-;

He’s such a sweet boyf oml hi yes, where do I order one?

Bokuto 100% dates to marry. He’s not here for flings or anything like that, so your relationship will turn serious pretty fast.

Bo is a simp and no one can tell me otherwise, so when it comes to PDA? Oh, he’s C L I N G Y

He always wants to hold your hand or sometimes he’ll walk behind you and cling to your waist. It’s definitely super hard for both of you to walk, but it’s adorable and makes him happy, so you’re not really going to complain.

If you hug onto his arm? He’s going to melt, especially if you trail your fingers up and down his bicep

It’s the same when the two of you are in private. He likes to have contact with you whenever possible. He’ll lay your head in his lap if you’re both laying on the couch or he’ll sit you in his lap and place little kisses at the base of your neck, right above the collar of your shirt.

His clothes are your clothes. At this point, you wear his training jacket more than he does. Sweatshirts? Flannels? Shorts? That’s shared territory right there.

And my G O D does he love it. He already has to buy bigger clothes because he’s got those wide shoulders, so his clothes tend to either fit you perfectly or completely swallow you, there is no in between.

If you’re thicc too? He has 100% stolen your leggings, just to see the appeal of them. Please hide them, because oH he understands now.

He gets jealous jealous. As in, he will place himself between you and the guy trying to talk to you and he’ll act all big and tough. But the minute the other dude backs off? Baby boy is back, wanting hugs. He’ll kiss you all over your face and be really pouty, asking if you’re okay and telling you that he loves you ;-;

Bokuto hoots bye i don’t make the rules. Okay yeah i kinda do, but still.

It’s not like HOOOOOT, but like a really soft h o o and he probably kinda wiggles in his spot, real happy

Bo has N O control over how he sleeps. He’ll always start out really normal, like you’ll be tucked into his side or something, but by the time you guys wake up? S T A R F I S H he is on his face, limbs covering the whole bed, just snoring away

When he’s away for games, he’s always on the phone with you. Like, the guys will try to hang out or something and he’ll definitely go off to his room with a “Oh, I want to call Y/N before she goes to bed, but I’ll come by later!”

And then he just doesn’t because he’s the one who fell asleep, not you.

Compliments the shit out of you. You’re his hype man and he is yours. He’s constantly telling you that you look beautiful or if you send him a selfie, he’s absolutely sending back the simp emoji, asking how he got so lucky.

He calls you ‘babe’ but usually only when he wants your attention or if he’s in another room and needs something, so expects lots of “Baaaaaaaaaaabe”s to be headed your way.

Other times? He calls you by name. Because there’s a million people who get called babe or sweetheart, but your name is yours, so it feels special and kinda intimate to him? So, if he’s feeling a little extra sentimental, he’s going to bury his face in your neck and just whisper lots of quiet, “I love you, Y/N”s over and over again.

Kuroo Tetsurou

R O O S T E R H E A D A S S that I love very very much

He’s a complete dork and I know the fandom makes him to be some kind of smooth talking God I’m guilty of it too but-

He’s literally not. He fumbles over his words so much when he’s around you. You guys can be dating for years and he’ll still have his moments where he’s a stuttering mess in front of you.

Asking you out? You suffered second-hand embarrassment. His face was about as red as his jersey and the boy was so nervous, rubbing the back of his neck, refusing to look at you, but then just shyly raising his eyes to look at you and muttering,

“Do you maybe wanna go out sometime?”

INSTANTLY STARTS APOLOGIZING

“But- but only if you want, of course! Don’t feel like you have to say yes, I can take rejection! I’m so sorry. I probably made you really uncomfortable. You know what? You don’t have to answer. I’m just going to go.”

He’s so shook when you say yes, but then immediately puts his cool guy act back on, like “psshh of course you do.”

I don’t see him being super into PDA or physical contact period? There’s something really special about just being near each other to him. Just accidentally bumping shoulders or brushing hands while the two of you stroll, talking about anything and everything.

Even in private, there’s not a ton of physical contact. Maybe tangling legs together as you sit on opposite ends of the couch, but that’s really it. He likes being in close proximity with you, but he doesn’t need to be touching you at all times.

But he’s down to cuddle if you ask. He’ll let you lay on top of him and hide your face in his neck or his chest. Sometimes you guys will talk, but most of the time? Cuddle time = nap time

He doesn’t get super jealous, but he won’t hesitate to come stand behind you if some guy is trying to hit on you. Kuroo will probably just play with your hair or make some kind of comment about how that bracelet he bought you looks really nice on you. Just dropping subtle hints that you’re taken.

Afterwards, though, he just drops it. It doesn’t really bother him. He knows well enough that if you didn’t want to be with him, you would’ve broken up with him. He just wants to be there in case someone tries to make you uncomfortable.

Gamenightgamenightgamenight

I’m talking like board games. Hours and hours of just sitting at the kitchen table with a bunch of your guys’ friends, slowly ruining relationships, but overall having a good time.

Kuroo plays Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve said this SO many times and no one is going to tell me otherwise. So, if you show any interest in maybe wanting to play, or, better yet, if you already know how to play? He’s bringing you to A L L of the future sessions.

He’s probably going to write your character into his character’s backstory, so when Dungeon Master!Kenma scolds him for playing reckless in order to protect you, Kuroo can retort with, “Well, actually, if you paid attention when I was telling my backstory, you would know- *insert long-winded backstory of how your characters know each other and how his character vowed to your character’s dying father that he would protect you etc etc*”

Kuroo is super into domestic life with you, so you guys probably moved in together as soon as possible. As in, if you started dating in high school, you were sharing an apartment your first year of college.

He just has a lot of fun doing little household things with you, like cooking, cleaning, or just enjoying quiet evenings together after all of the work is done for the day.

Kuroo said “I love you” first, but it took you both forever to say it, because you were both kind of new to this dating thing and you had always been told that it was a really big deal, so you didn’t want to rush that.

;-; please take care of my dorky rooster

Akaashi Keiji

Akaashi is pretty easy-going in relationships, but he’s also super romantic.

As in, he has hand-written you love letters. He’s got really neat writing too, so that just adds to their appeal. Akaashi probably has a wax seal that he seals all of the envelopes with? I don’t know why, but he seems like the type of guy to have one.

You guys have a book club, just the two of you. Oh, it’s so cute. It started as the two of you forcing each other to read your favorite books, but then, you guys ran out of books to share? So, once a month, you guys will go to the local bookstore and just spend a good hour or two trying to decide what book to give the other next.

Akaashi 100% always recommends classic novels. Things like Sense & Sensibility, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, and Brave New World am i saying that because that’s my favorite book? more likely than you’d think.

He’s a lot more prepared for these shopping escapades that you are. He usually knows exactly what he wants to get you. If they don’t have it? That’s fine. He has a list.

You on the other hand? You’re asking the clerks what they recommend, reading the back of every book that seems like something he might enjoy, but you usually resort to dystopian novels (Never Let Me Go, Gone, The Handmaid’s Tale, etc), because he likes analyzing the politics and seeing how they could be metaphors for today’s world.

Damn this really turned into me just recommending books huh

After you two pick out the selections for the month, you two coffee hop. So, each month, you try a new cafe and you will spend hours just sipping coffee and reading.

He gave you a first edition copy of the first book that you recommended to him for your anniversary one year. Akaashi wrote you a letter, telling you how happy he was to have spent so much time with you and that he can’t wait to share more books with you and probably some really poetic stuff, because he’s a good writer, but he hid it in your favorite part, so you don’t get to read it right away.

Okay, now that I got that out of my head. Like Kuroo, Akaashi isn’t super into PDA, but he does like to hold your hand. He also always offers to carry your bag.

Akaashi likes to fidget with your fingers. The two of you could be out or just hanging at home, but he’s playing with your fingers. It’s just a habit for him. He used to fidget with his own hands a lot, but now he’s got yours, so not only does he get to keep his hands busy, he gets to hold onto your hand

He doesn’t get jealous. Or at least, you don’t think so. He’s really good at hiding any sense of envy he might feel. He doesn’t say anything. He knows that you can take care of yourself, but he’s likely right there next to you, possibly playing with your fingers behind your back.

It’s a really chill relationship dynamic for the most part. You two could be dating for a week and it’ll already feel like you’ve been together for years. You guys just vibe really well, so there was never that awkward stage at the beginning of the relationship. Likely because the two of you started off as friends, so slipping into dating wasn’t a very hard transition.

Akaashi isn’t one to say “I love you” a lot, but he really does love you more than anything. He likes to take care of you and he tries to give you the best life possible and that says I love you more than any words ever could.

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leaveharmony · 6 years ago

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It’s so hard to type on the tablet so I did only the briefest of summaries at the time. An account of random Tana encounters in NYC over supercard weekend, cut for length.

Anyway - I’d promised @lone-gunwoman-of-the-week a new york postcard, which with one thing and another I had forgotten entirely about until Saturday, when we passed a big rack of them outside a touristy place down the street and I stopped dead and pointed, “POSTCARD!”

We were on a trek to Macy’s at the time, looking to get mum an emergency replacement purse because hers had blown out its zipper with all the stuff she was carrying in it - the last straw was after Wrestlecon when she couldn’t find her Metrocard, and then it just gave up the ghost.

(Macy’s was way too expensive as an aside - we ended up going to K mart lol. Those all closed here like two decades ago!)

So we got the postcard, and then a stamp at the other gift shop in the hotel...only I was in pretty rough shape so we decided to go back up to the room so I could actually write the postcard & address and such. So we went back down to mail it, conveniently at the letterbox at the other end of the lobby.

Like I say, @joshi-hashi by total coincidence booked us at the same hotel where the whole roster was staying, so over the course of three days I ran into / saw, including but probably not limited to: Kazu, Ishii, Sho & Yoh, Yano, Tacos, Goto, Shingo, Naito, EVIL, Will, Shibata & his lions, Juice, Zack (we kept riding the elevator with him lol), Jay, Tama, Haku, Yujiro, Gedo, Jado, Taguchi, Rocky, Ren, Shota, Red Shoes, Sato, Marty, MiSu, Taka, Kota, Kagatsu & a few of the other Stardom girls, Sumie...

Again, I was in rough shape and mum was faring no better, so in the window of time between waking up and the show, we could have gone and done more tourist stuff but after the subway disaster on Friday, we elected just to stay around home base, Saturday. And I needed to sit down, so we picked a spot on one of the long padded couches in the lobby to recoup a little. Not a minute later, Tacos, Goto & Yano rounded the bend from the elevator - we’d somehow managed to time it so that we were sitting there as literally everybody was making their way across to MSG for the show. Hand on heart, total coincidence...I just wanted to mail a postcard lol. As obviously times when you can just sit there comfortably and watch the whole NJPW roster walk past are fairly limited in number, we elected to stay a while. Kazu actually came from the direction of the doors but he did have a suitcase, so I have no idea where he’d been - he grinned at us when we waved though. Shota smiled too, Kota managed somehow to smile, wave and bow without even slowing down because that’s just the kinda guy he is. MiSu looked at us like we were nuts every time we waved lol but we kept doing it anyway. Most didn’t notice - I always feel like being to forward is rude so we just kept to our seat & waved rather than trying to get selfies or start a conversation - everybody was obviously all over everywhere and busy.

I couldn’t help myself on a very specific occasion, though. “We’ll wait til 3:30,” I said casually, fooling no one. We had the end bench right by the little dividing wall that obscures the elevators; he emerged nearly right next to me and I sprang up like a jack in the box. My hair was pigtailed and I had my hat on rather than the feathered headband & ponytail, and I was dressed like a normal human being rather than wrestling Cinderella, but he remembered me ^_^ I didn’t want to detain him or anything so we just clasped hands again & I wished him luck - though I guess it didn’t help much. But I was so happy just to see him again, for what I figured would be the last (probably only) time casually. Two really sweet Japanese ladies also spotted him on the way out and physically chased him down the lobby to say hi lol. The pillars were a little in the way but we could see him beaming while they gushed over him, and then they took a selfie. I guess they must have complimented his hair (which looked fucking amazing) because he told them getting it done for the show cost $300 lol. It absolutely looked it. We were still sitting there when they came back and of course they noticed my Tana shirt - they both had his shirts on too (I think he might have signed them on the spot cos they were both proudly showing me the autographs). So we had a really lovely chat in what they could manage in english (much much better than my broken Japanese). Rachel appeared not long after, summoned by my mention of Kota going past, and so we all talked a while. I just. I love wrestling lol and the kinship of wrestling fans.

Later, after Supercard (which was on whole at least live very good, apart from some really, really stupid decisions on ROH’s part) it was past midnight when we got back to the room; our airport shuttle was due to arrive at 3:05 last we’d heard, but mum had a text message waiting RE: a slight bump up to 3:15, something schedule or logistics related I guess. So we figured that there was no point going to bed as we’d maybe get two hours’ sleep before the wake up call and it’d be better to use the time packing and getting everything arranged. When more or less everything was, I went up to floor 12 to sit up at the common table with Elle & Rachel (admittedly I broke into a bit of a sprint when Elle texted to say Tana’d gone past lol). By another total coincidence as we were sitting there loudly discussing the show, an absolutely lovely gentleman who works in what sounded like a v. important position with NJPW World happened to walk past and overhear. He’s obviously got a vested interest, so he u-turned as I was saying “If someone had only just casually seen this as a first introduction they’d probably come away concluding New Japan is amazing and ROH is terrible.”

“New japan is amazing?” he echoed, to a chorus of Yes’s. So we had a chat for about twenty minutes giving him general feedback, telling him how we all met cos of NJPW, how we first heard about it, watch every show live, showed him all our costumes for the show, etc. He got a handle on Elle and Rachel’s names but kept calling me “Hiroshi” because he’d seen me the day before at Wrestlecon in my Tana dress lmao. He was a real sweetheart - a fan turned employee, living the dream. He thanked us for paying his salary, essentially lol. I should have thought to ask him about putting out an english subtitled version of Shinsuke’s Wonderland interview XD

But I had to run not long after he left, cos I’d cut it a bit fine with 20 minutes or so before the shuttle was scheduled. We weren’t sure if the driver would come looking or if we had to be outside, so mum checked the keycards while I ran to see if I could ask the doorman, figuring he/they would keep a better watch and know what to look for, or just know which way it would be. That early in the morning there wasn’t a doorman, though. So to play it safe we stayed by the doors just inside, keeping watch, figuring at about five min before the appointed time we’d go outside. “The lobby seems so empty without all the wrestlers in it,” mum remarked. I figured that late, everyone must have gone to bed already.

Not long after though, TAKA came in with uh...let’s just say ‘some lady friends’ and hope they were fully informed lady friends. “There, happy?” I said to mum, looking back towards the door in time to see Kota heading for it with a few of the accompanying entourage I figure must have been staff, translators and officials - they were everywhere too, this weekend. I thought for a split second, ‘Oh good, I’ll be able to congratulate him!’ before he faded to a gentle haze in the background, as the sun himself said something on the way past and walked on by the door, towards Macy’s. I don’t even think I said anything to mum but she probably understood when I took off at a dead sprint, not even bothering to drop my suitcase handle, just towing it behind me like a little red wagon. I blew past Kota without even looking at him (I’m so sorry dude!!!!) and went as fast as my poor abused knee could carry me the way he’d gone - he hadn’t gotten far, just tucked around a little corner by the entrance - I think he was gonna do another selfie or panoramic lol.

Again, the man is fucking unflappable, as he didn’t even raise an eyebrow when confronted with a disheveled, panting nutcase in a trenchcoat and newsboy cap being smacked in the back of her legs w/ her own suitcase at the abrupt stop. “We’re just waiting for our airport shuttle!” I blurted. “So I get to say goodbye!”

He actually managed to look happy to see me, bless his heart lol. He thanked me for the third time, for the doll I made him, and I just said thank you for everything. Again - I don’t like to be too forward, I don’t even think I could bring myself to ask for a hug, I’m too shy & too much of a headcase wrt fear of being a burden or an annoyance. But he came at me first, and when the Ace has his arms open to you, there is but one possible course, and that course is to throw yourself into them lol. He is a wonderful hugger :’) It’s like being wrapped in the embrace of everything that is good and pure in this world & that’s not even hyperbole, that was really how it felt.

I’m so glad I got to say goodbye. I mean...it would’t have broken my heart, you know? There’s always that “Oh maybe I’ll see him again at random” thought in the back of the mind but it’s utterly without expectation. But I was blessed enough to have the chance to speak to him twice, by chance.

It really was like a lil fairytale; my lil wrestling Cinderella dream come true in a way I never would have actually believed.

#Tanariffic #Rasslin'#Supercard Fairytale #Actual shining god of love & beauty

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zimmerdouche · 7 years ago

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This is something I’ve had saved on my computer since like June but I still have a lot of thoughts about the Poindexter family.

I forget where it was I read this, and whether it was actually canon or not, but effectively it said that the entire Samwell Hockey Team came from a place of privilege because hockey is an expensive sport.

Consider: Dex is a multiple. More specifically, a triplet. Three kids going to college at once? And that money related stress, piled on since birth? Save your money, Poindexter, because even though you aren’t that bad off you aren’t the only one that needs tuition and equipment.

I know Ngozi tweeted about Dex only having an older brother but let me have this.

Let’s talk more about the Poindexter triplets.

Wyatt Joseph Poindexter

The youngest triplet. Laid back, big thinker, just wants everyone to get along.

He grew a beard after high school because he was so. Fucking. Tired. Of being mistaken for his older brother. He’s only an inch shorter and everyone called them the Weasley twins, there needed to be a change.

Poster Boy for the rustic hipster aesthetic. Plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up, ripped jeans, knit beanie, Timbs, occasionally suspenders? Plus a beard? Actual Lumberjack Wyatt Poindexter.

At the University of Maine majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders with a minor in music. He’d like to focus on music education for the hard of hearing.

Fluent in American Sign Language. (He is the Number One Fan of Holly Maniatty, interpreter at hip hop concerts.) Can also stumble his way through casual conversation in French.

L o v e s music and will listen to any genre. Literally any, but he especially loves stuff that he can play on his guitar, and artists like John Mayer, Jack Johnson, Brett Dennen, Counting Crows, so on and so forth. He loves listening to lyrics and dissecting meaning and context, and will write his own lyrics on occasion.

He was a sprinter in high school and was pretty good but chose not to continue in college even though a few schools showed interest.

Gay and demisexual. He came out after his freshman year, after a lot of soul searching, meditation, and GSA meetings, to his siblings, whose collective response was “oh shit me too, thank God.”

Drives a truck older than he is with a bench seat and a paint job that’s mostly rust. He hot boxes it regularly and honestly? A big Triplet Bonding Event, especially after the Poindexters start college, is driving out to the middle of nowhere at midnight with snacks and drinks and weed and smoking in the bed of the truck, looking at the stars, and talking about life.

Group chat: has it on Do Not Disturb because his siblings never shut up. Will occasionally interject with one liners. Sends Snapchat screenshots of himself looking Bored as Fuck in any lecture that isn’t directly related to his career path and also plaid related memes.

Winona Jane “Ryder” Poindexter

The second oldest/middle triplet and the only girl. Fiercely protective and stubborn. Will kick your ass. Will kick everyone’s ass. Will kick her own ass.

Everyone calls her Ryder (like, Winona Ryder, the actress) because she absolutely despises the name Winona. The number one way to piss her off is to call her Winona, or God forbid, Winnie (Will does it when he wants her attention. She threatens murder).

Also at UMaine, studying bioengineering. Her ultimate goal is to lead a research team focused on artificial organs, but she has also considered becoming a professor. She’d be a great lecturer because she tends to ramble.

A thrift store fiend with a need to look like she came straight from the nineties. She likes mom jeans, denim in general, crop tops, Chuck Taylors, and UMaine athletic wear. She also steals her brothers’ flannel shirts.

She was on the color guard in high school and continues to be on the color guard in college. She’s damn good at it too. Can do some basic gymnastics/tumbling, but the back handspring is about as fancy as she can go. Damn good at dancing in general. She also loves to swing dance, and while she couldn’t get Wyatt into it she managed to get Will to dance with her and he enjoys it much more than he’ll ever let on.

Her freshman spring semester she took a video editing class and part of the class was start a YouTube channel so that she could upload assignments to it. She chose to do a vlog channel and she titled it “Ryder Die,” and she just kinda stuck with it after the class ended. Will and Wyatt make regular guest appearances.

Lives for Spongebob related memes. It’s a problem. Wyatt had to ban her from showing Spongebob memes in the car because she would try to show him like one every three minutes while he was driving.

Bisexual as fuck and... uncomfortably open about her sex life. Ryder, your brothers do not want to know about that. Stahp.

Group chat: Ryder’s contact names from both of her brothers are just various Winona Ryder characters. She’ll purposely call Wyatt Will and Will Wyatt. “Guys how does this outfit look?” (30 seconds later) “Why am I asking you two I look fantastic”

William Jacob “Will” “Dex” Poindexter

The oldest triplet. High strung, reserved, very loyal and very protective, even more so than his sister.

His siblings call him Will, Samwell Men’s Hockey calls him Dex. His siblings will probably never call him Dex, it’s just weird. Do you call your brother by his last name? Why would you? You have the same last name!

Studying computer science/engineering at Samwell University.

Does the guy own anything that ISN’T plaid? Yes, he does, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. God, does he look like his brother.

Can stumble his way through a few songs on the guitar and can carry a tune better than his brother, (“Fuck you, Will! You’re not even going into music!”) but refuses to sing in public. He may hum, if you’re lucky.

Defensemen on the Samwell Men’s Hockey team.

Left handed so, basically, if Wyatt didn’t have a beard, they’d be completely mirrored. They are identical, after all.

Bisexual with a pretty strong male preference.

Group chat: Bickers with Ryder a lot, usually if he instigates conversation it’s to complain about his defense partner Derek Nurse. He does this often enough that Ryder suspects they’re dating. Once, when they were actually getting along, he sent a selfie and Ryder’s response was, of course, a Spongebob meme – “OH NO HE’S HOT!”

These three together? Oh boy

This bit is more about their parents but is required for context: Papa Marcus Poindexter is a Baptist worship pastor. Mama Cara Poindexter was Irish Catholic but converted after she started dating Marcus. They are�� extremely conservative, more so than the rest of their extended family, and it’s not exactly a healthy environment for the triplets. They’ve all set off firecrackers in the baptismal pool though.

All three of them have like, three different personalities, depending on who is around them. There’s the “I’m with my parents” personality, which will always prevail in any situation and is very submissive and agreeable, the “I’m with my siblings but not my parents” personality, which will prevail provided their parents are not around and is very loud and laughter filled, and then “I’m with anyone else but not my siblings” personality, which is at any other time and shifts based on who they’re talking to.

Their group chat is. A mess. The name changes constantly and most of the time it’s just them bitching about everyone they know.

Favorite GC Names include:

Those Damn Poindexter Kids

Poindexter Meme Team

Will/Ryder/Wyatt is the Hot One

Which one are you again?

Fluent in American Sex Language

God Nerfed Us

Our Hair is Red because the Devil is Our Father

Mad 4 Plaid

Summer after their freshman year of college, some guy named Jake Nichols made a bet with his buddy that he could hook up with all three of them at least once. He did it, the madman, and they don’t figure it out until MONTHS later and it’s the best story to tell at parties, but only when all three of them are there together.

Wyatt and Will run in the mornings when they’re together, Will and Ryder will do dexterity training together, and Ryder and Wyatt will do your Everyday Gym Trip together (where Ryder does strength training and Wyatt general Fitness Upkeep).

Ryder and Wyatt visit The Haus when the Frogs are juniors:

So damn polite, oh my god, Bitty LOVES them because they all want to help in the kitchen like Dex does, and they brought even MORE food, bless their hearts.

Wyatt gets along with Nursey like a house on fire. Ryder won’t stop doing eyebrow waggles at Dex every time he and Nursey say anything to each other.

Graduates are visiting bc plot and Ryder is well on her way to hook up with Ransom when he realizes that he doesn’t live there anymore and there’s no room to go to, whoops. He tried to ask Dex if he could flirt with his sister and Dex r e f u s e d to broach the topic with him. “If she wants to it’s fine.” “But-” “IF SHE WANTS TO IT IS F I N E.”

Wyatt brings his guitar and there’s a jam session in the front yard, somehow he convinces Will to sing. It’s an exciting time, Nursey brings out a ukulele and everyone’s humming along and somehow there’s a firepit is this even legal? The music is great though, even though it’s 3 AM and the Lax bros are pissed.

IDK how but they’d get Nursey and Dex together. They conspire with Chowder and maybe Bitty and just. Make it happen. Witchcraft.

Fin.

#omgcp #omg check please #will poindexter #william dex poindexter #nurseydex #omgcp hc #ok 2 reblog #in fact please do!#and add on if you want!#lynny text

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tf2humbug · 7 years ago

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My TF2 Comic Series

This is a rough idea as to how I'd plan out a new on-going TF2 series if I were given the chance, based on what I know of established plot and my major assumptions about what some of the final developments are likely to be. When (if?) part 7 of the current TF2 comics storyline gets released, a lot of this may get rendered moot. I'm just spit-balling, anyway. It's fun! So! Here we go. Picking back up in the spring of 1974. Everything is different yet also pretty much exactly the same. Demo gets saddled with Merasmus, first as a roommate, then as a magical mentor. Merasmus knows he must eventually train a successor to carry his arcane knowledge into the future, and while this guy may be drunk half the time, he actually has a lot of potential. And besides, he did Merasmus a solid when he took him in. So Demo embarks on a wondrous-yet-annoying quest to unlock his magical potential and claim his alchemical heritage. Merasmus and Mrs. DeGroot get along like they've been friends their whole lives, of course. Demo's home life becomes a wacky supernatural sitcom starring himself, Merasmus, his mum, and his three familiars Eyelander, Bombnomicon, and Mini Monoculous. (Those three have their own weird dynamic. None of them actually like each other very much.) And hey, magic powers!!!! Zhanna and Soldier have the biggest, stupidest, most elaborate Hawaiian wedding ever because it's the furthest thing from that frozen Siberian hellscape she could imagine. (Soldier grumbles a bit that it's barely even America, but finally relents.) Literally everyone is invited, including any and all NPCs, old enemies, the ghost of Tom Jones, a clan of raccoons, and close family of the mercs. We get to meet Soldier's weirdly normal family and catch up with Zhanna's family. Soldier turns into a drama-bomb groomzilla while Zhanna is just overwhelmed with happiness. She falls into a coma from the mental shock and is roused out of it when magical intervention annoys her into returning to reality. Once married, they immediately begin furiously attempting to conceive a child. Like, more than they were before. Heavy himself is adjusting to his new family situation and being a little overbearing (unintentionally.) His mother is happy to be taken care of, so he moves her to America and builds her a beautiful cottage not too far from where he lives. It has all the amenities, including a high-powered laser mounted on the roof. Zhanna is starting her own family, and he's secretly giddy at the idea of being an uncle. Yana and Bronislava are both off on their own world-trotting adventures, but they don't write him as often as he would like. He's collecting the selfies they mail him from all the exotic locations they visit into a photo album, which he likes to flip through and feel that big brother combination of pride and worry. Medic has to deal with his past, such as his parents. He's finally gotten around to going through the box of keepsakes and documents left to him by his mother, where he makes some interesting discoveries, and his elderly father comes sniffing around, presumably to take advantage of his estranged son's advances in rejuvenatory medicine. Meanwhile, occasional bids from Mephisto, Perdition Representative and current minority shareholder of his souls, to tempt him into trading for more favors are casually swatted away. (I mean, until he actually wants something he can't accomplish himself.) Medic really shouldn't underestimate a sufficiently pissed-off devil, though. They have ways. Throughout every story, hints are occasionally dropped that Pyro is an alien. Some are subtle, some... less so. Someone important apparently takes notice when Pyro begins to be followed around by 70s-era X-Files style FBI agents. Balloonicorn delights in terrorizing them, but Pyro is looking forward to making real good friends! Ultimately, nothing is ever revealed one way or another about Pyro's nature, so everyone just ends up kind of confused. Saxton Hale has stepped down as the big boss of Mann Co (handed over to Miss Pauling, who will sometimes call for advice) but remains an investor. He and Mags are now a power couple, but he's going through a mid-life crisis in which he's seeking out and wrestling the most legendary, dangerous monsters in the world, which is getting dangerous even for him. Mags has her own complicated feelings about the rekindled relationship, including the baggage from her past marriages, brief as they were. Eventually Saxton must face the fact that the most challenging foe he must wrestle into submission is... HIS DUTY TO MANKIND (and Mags.) They return to Australia to help rebuild after the loss of all the world's Australium and oppose Charles Darling's growing post-apocalyptic Thunderdome-esque zoo-based empire. Sniper has manned a disastrous submarine expedition to the sunken ruins of New Zealand (because he built it himself and refused to ask for help) and barely survived. He reluctantly asks his fellow mercs and Miss Pauling for help in a second expedition, recovering artifacts of his lost heritage in return for sharing it with Mann Co. He also gets roped into Mad Max-esque adventures with Saxton Hale and Mags. And of course, his birth parents are still at-large, which he doesn't know how to deal with AT ALL. Miss Pauling is juggling several explosives at once. First, she's just getting the hang of being Mann Co. boss (including having people do things FOR HER, her assistants Bidwell and Reddy), dealing with the terrorist cult Rise & Shine that's out to ruin the company, hiring new staff (Driver to help with the cult situation and a new merc liaison to fill her old role, Chicken Girl), forging her vision for the future of Mann Co., and deciding how to deal with the company's inconvenient ward Olivia Mann. She has her fair share of frazzled moments and sudden urges to dump all her responsibilities and run far, far away, but she never does. That's not who she is. Oh, and she gets a girlfriend, so that's nice. The new liaison Chicken Girl (as everyone insists on calling her after Scout recognizes her) doesn't actually remember Scout and finds him very aggravating, but not enough to quit her new super-legit job, which she's actually very good at, once she gets the hang of it. She just wishes they'd stop calling her Chicken Girl. Just "Chick" isn't an acceptable substitute. Engie is increasingly called on by Miss Pauling to consult on developing exciting new tech for Mann Co, which is especially important in a world without Australium to fuel effortless scientific discovery. The McMANN is his first such success, and he's so excited and proud! He collaborated with Driver, the new blood, on its final design, but it was 95% his project. (He's pretty sure that goes without saying.) Engie spends a lot of his time quietly tinkering away at ideas to make the McMANN even better, but he cooking up some other stuff that he knows Miss Pauling will be interested in. Even though some of it's a little... weird. Scout, Spy, and Scout's ma are awkwardly trying to form a conventional family unit. This is extremely complicated because Scout is still convinced his father is Tom Jones and there are all those older brothers to deal with. The most successful moments happen when Scout's ma tricks the two of them into spending time with her for a nice outing like a picnic at an outdoor concert, a baseball game, a demolition derby, etc. (Of course, there are shenanigans.) We also learn about the history behind Scout's parentage. The Mann brothers are all still hanging around as increasingly irrelevant ghosts, doing silly ghost stuff. Since they're triplets, none of them can move on unless they all do, and it's a constant source of arguments. Redmond & Blutarch just want to pull spooky pranks on people, but Gray takes as much time as he can to try to influence and even possess his daughter Olivia, which she eventually starts fighting. I would include Driver in this new set-up, as previously mentioned. As the new recruit, she'd be the one to ask questions about stuff the audience might want answers to, which is a useful function in fiction where a bunch of crazy shit happens all the time. She'd have her own little character arcs, too, but I've gone on enough about all that. And do keep an eye on that weird new cult that has it out for Mann Co. Rise & Shine? Yeah, I've mentioned them a few times. To the public, they seem so cute and harmless, with their chubby smiling mascot of a guru, talk show coverage, novelty songs, and funny comic book series. But we know better.

#text #tf2 #tf2 mercs #tf2 headcanon #tf2 driver #tf2 oc #mercs #headcanon #driver #oc #concept #mcmann #long post

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ts1989fanatic · 7 years ago

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The Business Lessons We Can Learn From Taylor Swift

ts1989fanatic if your a fan of Taylor Swift Business Super Woman read this Forbes article.

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs… and Taylor Swift? Before you dismiss the idea of adding the pop princess to the pantheon of modern-day disruptive business gurus, consider some of the stats.

In just over two weeks since its release, her new hit single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” has broken virtually every record on its way to becoming the number one song in the country. It was the most-streamed song ever on Spotify, with 10,129,087 plays in its first day alone, and it was also the most-streamed song during its debut week, logging a total of 84.4 million plays. This last feat broke the previous record held by Adele by a little over 20 million plays. The video for the song also broke records with 43.2 million plays on YouTube during its first day of release.

Swift executed all of this through a multi-platform strategy that incorporated deft use of social media, power-play dealswith major streaming services, timely deployment of “old media,” a new strategy for out-smarting ticket resellers, a partnership with UPS for shipping CDs, a deal with AT&T and DirectTV to create a Taylor Swift Now on-demand video service, song teasers during college football games, and even proactive trademark applications to protect the keywords and catch-phrases she thinks will rise out of the new album.

Did I mention she can sing?

It certainly helps that Swift is a gifted musician who can string together hit songs seemingly at will, and carry them off with the swagger and sweetness to make young girls pledge their allegiance to the nation of #swifties (a name Swift has trademarked) and young male actors and models line up to be her next ex- fling. But there’s a lot more to Swift’s success than the music.

And that’s why she belongs on the list of modern-day disruptive business geniuses. Swift could have a great career just singing hit songs, playing a few tours, and living on royalties for the rest of her life. Instead, she’s constantly re-inventing herself, her music, and her distribution channels to set the pace for the industry to follow.

It’s working, too.

After more than a decade of struggling to stanch the loss of revenue to online piracy, declining CD sales, and clumsy online streaming business models, the music industry reached a major milestone last year when digital streaming became the biggest source of recorded music revenue, accounting for just over half of total industry revenue. Swift’s historic stand-offs with Apple and Spotify have played a key role in making the streaming business model work.

The pop star recognizes – perhaps better than most business people – the one universal truth of today’s warp speed business cycle: It’s not enough to be the best at your core discipline. To truly break-out, you also need to be the best marketer, supply chain manager, intellectual property attorney, media planner, deal-maker, and tireless self-advocate.

Take Swift’s approach to social media as an example. Before the launch of her new album, Swift was already the 4th-most followed person on Twitter with 85 million followers and another 100 million followers on Instagram, a position she’s meticulously cultivated through a combination of frequent posting, constant – and sometimes direct – fan engagement, and an endless stream of selfies. So, what does someone in that position do before releasing a new album? She staged a complete social media blackout, wiping out all of her social media accounts to build intrigue and to set the stage for the release of her new, tougher persona and sound. She even declared her old self dead with the closing lyric of “Look What You Made Me Do,” in which she declares: “I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now/Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead.” How many brands do you know of would have the courage to do that? Imagine building up one of the largest social media followings in the world then scrapping it as part of a publicity stunt. The move took some confidence.

The strategy rivaled the best product launch stagecraft from the likes of Apple and Tesla, and it produced instant, record-breaking demand. Contrast Swift’s launch with this week’s Apple iPhone X launch – a similarly long-awaited unveiling – and the differences are even more stark. Whereas Swift instantly sparked demand and met it with a bevy of distribution channels, Apple’s stock actually dropped when investors learned the company wouldn’t even start taking orders for its new phone until October.

But that’s just the beginning. She also put on a master class in brand protection by famously fighting back when Apple wanted to give her music away for free as part of a trial offer for Apple Music, trademarking a number of phrases from her new album, such as, “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now,” and “Look what you made me do,” as a set-up for future merchandise sales, and even going to war with ticket resellers. Her “verified fan” program utilizes a so-called boost activities, which reward fans for watching videos on YouTube or purchasing her album and merchandise. Fans with higher boost scores will have a better shot at getting tickets, a strategy designed to drive more fan engagement and address the problem of ticket scalpers and re-sellers buying up all of the capacity for live events and driving up ticket prices.

Swift even went so far as to get her hands dirty with supply chain logistics, through a deal with UPS whereby the carrier is the exclusive distributor of Swift’s CDs to consumers and retailers and – for the first time ever – its iconic brown trucks will be emblazoned with Swift’s face on the side. To tie it all together with Swift’s social media empire, fans are being encouraged to snap photos of the truck and post them with the tag #TaylorSwiftDelivery for a chance to win concert tickets.

Brand synergy, anyone? ts1989fanatic below is one of the best parts of the article.

Though it may pain some of you to admit it, a great swath of the business world has just been taken to school by a 27-year-old pop star who continues to put on a clinic in multi-platform branding, product launch, and distribution strategy. The fact is, in another life, Swift probably could have run GE or P&G. But just because her lessons manifest themselves in catchy refrains and selfies instead of balance sheets and M&A doesn’t make them any less insightful for more traditional business leaders.

She’s checked literally every box in the business growth playbook, and created some new ones of her own. She’s had the courage to reinvent, disrupt her own business, and walk away from the past, all while building steady customer engagement throughout the journey, cultivating a fan base, and partnering for success. She’s also made a ton of money in the process. Last year, Forbes named her the world’s top-earning celebrity having earned $170 million in 2016. We all have a lot to learn.

ts1989fanatic Honestly one of the best articles on Taylor and her business brilliance I have ever read.

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uterusclub · 5 years ago

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The very moment we discovered Moulin Rouge was being made into a stage production, we KNEW we had to see it! Unfortunately, the debut occurred in Boston, which well, was expensive to fly to, but we were also, unsure of the ‘reviews’ for the show. It was decided, thereafter that whence it went to Broadway in NYC, we would make the trek. Thus, our adventure begins . . .

Our kick-off to NYC was not without it’s complications. My parents, fortunately, informed us that ‘work’ was being done on the blue line and therefore, offered a ride to an open station with which to catch the ‘el to the blue, then orange line (damn you Southwest for being so damn far). Rousing at 2:30 a.m. was fairly delirious due to Christmas Eve-ed sleep but we rallied as best we could and eventually arrived at Midway Airport with approximately 1/2 hour until boarding. It is at this point; we thanked the transportation Gods or rather, ourselves, for being pre-check TSA members as we quite literally waltzed through security in a matter of minutes. Booyah! Chicago to New York travel time is not terrible – approximately 2 hours. We amused ourselves by using the on-flight, Wi-Fi entertainment to watch Crazy Rich Asians, which was good enough to pass the time.

Off the plane and on our way to public transportation, I left all the work to Sharon who had watched a video about catching buses from the airport to travel into the city. First step, get a ticket to catch a bus to a connecting bus/train. Next – get on appropriate bus to take us to . . . oh wait – is this the correct bus? Yep, immediate confusion. Sharon’s phone kept re-routing which caused her ultimate reaction to be ‘let’s just go one more stop’ as we could see our pinpoint on a map begin to divert from our destination. Long story short, we got off in, who knows where, and caught an Uber already housing a very nice couple who bid us well in our travels once they departed.

We were dropped off at our first, essential stop – a gift and luggage store in Times Square to relieve ourselves of our burdensome baggage. Sketch-tastic to say the least but the concern grew less worrisome as we noticed a multitude of said shops along the streets of Times Square. Luggage-free, we headed to our first endeavor: Madame Tussauds Wax Museum! There was quite a line outside but surprisingly, it moved along quickly and we entered without a hitch (thanks Groupon). Naturally, we grabbed a bunch of awesome pictures – despite the fact that I was unfamiliar with a good portion of the figures we observed. It was delightful surprise to see a commemoration of Cats since we’d seen the production recently (refer to previous blog), however the best part of the entire exhibit was most definitely the Phantom of the Opera shtick where you could pretend you were singing as Christine and also stand/sit on a fake chandelier! Let me not forget the mirror maze as well which, at one point, I lost Sharon and careened into glass with my phone on several occasions.

Following our wax museum adventure, we walked next door to the conveniently situated Ripley’s exhibit (again, thanks Groupon). Now I’ve never, personally been a huge fan of these since I don’t care to reach much but I guess this is a Sharon nostalgia thing. In any case, it was pseudo interesting. We took a few pictures and Sharon disappointingly found a Zoltare machine that provided no physical fortune. There was a cool, trippy, tunnel in the middle of the exhibit, which was cool for a minute but nothing to write home about (irony). Towards the end of our walk through, it became pretty apparently that we were both STARVING. We had made reservations at a little French restaurant down the street; however, we were a bit early but proceeded there anyway.

Le Rivage was our first food stop for our trip! I did minimal research on this place but based on location, reviews, and the fact that they did a show pre-fix meal option, was pretty much sold. We were both pleasantly surprised that the restaurant appeared casual and ‘classic’ – if that makes sense. This place was definitely not ‘hopping’ and had a more ‘old-school’ feel to it that we both dig. Upon being seated at our table, I noticed a can-can picture in an adjoining seating area and made my way over there to grab some pictures. We pre-faced our meals with mimosas and indulged in a French Onion Soup Burger and Boeuf Bourguignon – both DELICIOUS! Swooning in culinary satisfaction, it was now time to get MORE physical uncomfortable. Up to this point, I have failed to mention our ingenious plan on packing our Moulin Rouge-designated outfits in our purses. A much-debated discussion, it made much more sense to dress sensibly for the plane ride and then change into said outfits right before the show – especially since mine involved a tulle skirt and corset! Post-meal, we both took turns walking downstairs to the restroom to change. I’m not sure how Sharon’s transition went but it was quite the production getting in a corset and tulle shirt in a tiny, bathroom stall. Once I excited the stall and begin adding my accessories at the sink, an older lady entered and quite literally gawked at me. She complimented me and just continued to stare before mentioning that she’d heard the producer of the movie Moulin Rouge raved that the stage production was ‘spectacular.’ Transition complete, I headed upstairs to rejoin Sharon and was met with silenced stares all around the dining room. Quite honestly, I did NOT think the outfit was THAT unusual. It probably didn’t help that I was filming the entire area for the duration of the stare-down. Almost felt like I should have choreographed something as part of my exit! Next time.

Get-ups secured, we were now set and ready for Moulin Rouge situated just about a block or two down the street. It was about an hour til show time but upon arriving at the Al Hirschfield Theatre, there was already a line down the block. For the next 40ish minutes, we stood in line with beaming hot sun and bellowing scalpers antagonizing our wills to live. At one point, I peered into the restaurant we stood outside of and saw a girl conveniently dressed in what I’d consider Moulin Rouge attire. She would eventually be seated nearby us like some groupie conspiracy. Once inside the theatre, complete chaos ensued. Sharon immediately went to grab some very expensive sippy-cupped drinks while I perused the gift-shop area – convinced I would pay anything for something Moulin Rouge-inspired. But a $100 hoodie was not in my budget. So I opted for a magnet. When we finally entered the seating area, our minds and eyes were BLOWN! The stage was BEYOND gorgeous! I was most impressed and grateful that everyone was allowed to take as much video and pictures as they liked – although that eventually became annoying when we attempted to take a selfie with no one in the background (impossible)! We received MANY compliments on our outfits and ended up sitting towards some like-minded Moulin Rouge fans who raved about it being their favorite movie. As the minutes neared show time, performers began slowly slinking about the stage in scantily clad outfits – staring Legolasy at the audience.

Once the show was underway, it was magic – but with some drawbacks. Sharon and I would later have a full-blown, extended conversation about the show but to summarize our feelings on it, it could have been better or perhaps, different. As purists, we honestly just wanted a replication of the movie on stage. This, was not as such. The main story line was there, sure, but the adaptation felt a bit forced – almost TOO much freedom was taken with it, I fear. To be more specific and assuming you’re familiar with the movie, the original does throw-backs to a few contemporary songs. This show took that concept and multiplied it by a thousand ie there were a lot MORE snippets of a lot more RECENT songs which, again, I feel lost any sense of integrity. Every time a throw-back clip was initiated, audience members laughed in recognition, which to me, makes a mockery of the movie. Sharon internally lost her shit when Satine began singing Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ and I couldn’t agree more. I wont knock it and say there weren’t SOME good additions – for instance, Christian singing Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ but all in all, it didn’t work for either of us and I’m fairly sure we were the only ones in the theatre feeling that way.

With a slightest defeatist attitude, we made our way back to the gift and luggage store to re-burden ourselves with our belongings. It was at this point, Sharon realized one of the wheels on her luggage bag was defective and not moving. Scraping her back down the street, she ultimately began carrying her entire case in her arms like a massive, dumb baby. While we were, fortunately, not going too far, the walk, still in our uncomfortable outsides, felt long. We eventually arrived at our next stop: Bibble & Sip which is an ADORABLE coffee/tea/pastry shop that is Alpaca themed! With the combination of luggage frustration and scrunchiness, Sharon remained in the distance while I got in line to grab some goods to go. I opted for a Good Luck Hazelnut Alpaca dessert and Black and White Mouse cake which were, oh my god, AMAZING!!

Our desserts weren’t consumed until we arrived at our Airbnb which again, was trekked to under blistering heat, faulty luggage and air-constricting clothing. But we made it! Sharon had found this joint situated at 50th and 3rd Avenue in East Manhattan. The ‘renter’ was a Japanese man who, based off of the amount of signage and locks on things, appeared to be a bit OCD but it tolerable. We had a bed and couch, ability to access a/c and well, minimal tv capabilities. All in all, not a bad set-up and for the price and location, no complaints! After arriving, we changed and ‘regrouped’ for a minute before deciding NOT to venture out for a late-night, rooftop silent-disco we had acquired tickets for. Instead, we decided to slum it for the remainder of the evening – and by ‘slumming,’ I mean grabbing drinks and getting some dinner.

During the course of our very, extensive research, one of us had come across a place called Ophelia Lounge that was conveniently located a few blocks from our Airbnb. We headed there for a celebratory, evening drink and were very impressed with the elevated view, delicious cocktails and unpretentious hospitality! We had only wished it had been later in the evening for an even more spectacular, night view. Following our drinks, we attempted to pre-order our food for pick-up but the restaurant we called was busy so we walked over to Hide-Chan for ramen that I’d read wonderful things about. The restaurant was confusingly situated next to another Asian restaurant that we accidentally venture into first. We then headed next door to the ascending stairway at which time, the hostess informed us they didn’t do ‘take away’ requests. Huh. Odd. We then asked if the adjoining restaurant was there was well but couldn’t exactly make out the response but upon going next door, the men was most definitely, NOT ramen. We then decided it was in our best interest to hike back UP the stairs and just eat there and I’m very glad we did. This was the first time I’d ever seen/ordered garlic butter edameme and it was AMAZING! This was also the first time I’d been asked about the firmness level and shape of my noodles. In any case, food was STELLAR. My only complaint would be the SUPER boisterous, young Asian men seated next to us who were having the time of their LIVES! Ramen in bellies, we headed home and passed the eff out. Day one = complete!

The next morning, we roused fairly early with plans of walking to Central Park, which was about 30 minutes away. After heading out, we grabbed coffee at a Dunkin Donuts and made our away to Central Park Zoo to see their red pandas and penguin feeding. The zoo, while quaint, was comfortable and their employees, very helpful. While in line for our tickets, Sharon inquired if there were any bats and were told yes! Making our rounds once inside, we up the bats first which was nothing short of a glassed, dark room with flittering figures. At one point, I asked Sharon to use her phone flashlight to see if the bats were hanging on the ceiling and sure enough, they were! Walking clock-wise, we hit up the red pandas next but sadly, saw nothing. We continued on our way to came across the seals that were super adorable and rambunctious. We then circled back to the red pandas and were pointed out one, hidden and barely moving, shrouded in foliage. Our last stop off was the children’s petting zoo, which contained guess what – an Alpaca – and some sheep’s that were cool. Sharon was offended the Alpaca walked away from her after supplying some food.

After our fill of animals, we now headed through Central Park in order to see Belvedere Castle. On the way, Sharon bought a hot dog from a vendor who attempted to up-charge her. She was offended with both the hot dog and the altercation. Once we reached the castle, we were both pretty underwhelmed. The joint was swarming with people and it was a clusterfuck attempting to ascend the narrow, winding staircase to get to the view-top. Continuing on our way through the park, we were now headed towards Astro West Fine Minerals, Fossils and Meteorites shop, however finding an exit out of the park became problematic. We kept walking, soaked in our own, hot juices, for what felt like forever. On several occasions I suggested scaling the walls in order to reach actual ‘street.’ And of course, once we asked where an exit was, it was a few feet ahead of us.

Making our way to the streets, we eventually found Astro West Fine Minerals, Fossils and Meteorites, which, our sole purpose was to split a geode for a souvenir. I had called the shop a few days prior to inquire if they had an ‘abundant’ available since I’d read complaints about them being out of stock. When we arrived, there were maybe 15 available – all ugly blobs situated inside a marked barrel. I selected one based off solely based on its symmetry and we watched the machine in action that was really just a glorified saw. Once split, the attendant showed us the inside which he described as a ‘light blue.’ I’d describe it as a bunch of bullshit, personally. Definitely NOT worth $25. But I guess you win some, you lose some.

Next on the agenda was Grand Central Station. Arriving in style via Uber, we immediately made our way upstairs to the Campbell Bar, which is allegedly haunted. Our bartender was pretty awesome and gave us some free shots. The decor was outstanding. To keep on schedule, we then headed back downstairs to find the Jacque Torres Chocolate shop on ground level. On our way, I caught an amazing ceiling in my peripheral view and followed it to an outstanding, horoscopial view! We then continued on our original journey, found the chocolate shop and nibbled on some free samples before grabbing another Uber for our next venture!

Remember Stomp? Yes, I know, it’s definitely been a minute. I haven’t thought or heard of it in a very long time but it is most definitely alive and kicking! I should know. We bought tickets. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect with this show – not that I wasn’t familiar with the basis for the show – but the longevity of its existence made me a bit leery. When we arrived, we were told no photos or videos were allowed. Ok, fine. We took our seats at the far, back end of the theatre but were eventually upgraded for ‘good behavior’ to the second row! Once the show began, I was in COMPLETE awe. I think that a good portion of the show, I was imagining myself a part of it – like, I actually started considering trying to audition for it! I was blown away by the talent and attitudes of all the performers. Everyone appeared to be having such a good time with each other but also as solo performers. Talk about an inspiration! Next time you’re in NYC, definitely make a point to see the show!

Just around the corner from Stomp was our highly anticipated dinner reservation at Beetle House! Which reminds me, I dressed for the occasion – ie I bought and wore green, light-up suspenders for a good portion of the day. In any case, we were far too early upon arrival and as such, loitered outside the restaurant a bit. Eventually we were let in and seated. The restaurant was cool, yes, but very tiny and a bit understated for what I had anticipated. We had both seen video clips promoted the restaurant that entailed costumed performers. We saw none of this, which sure, it was still relatively ‘early’ but nonetheless, the emo-inspired work staff didn’t really convey much of a Burton feel to me. Our meal option was a pre-fix appetizer and main course that we were both pretty underwhelmed with. We did order some cocktails, which apparently all come with dry ice for major points for smokey drinks! All in all, disappointed. I’d go back – but only for the drinks.

Following our dissatisfied meal, we then took a transit-commute from hell in hopes of reaching Brooklyn. After being given opposing directions from pedestrians and Sharon’s wonky, ever-changing GPS assistance, we eventually ended up at a witch store and then eventually at Urban Jungle – a thrift store. Again, unimpressed with this underwhelming Ragstock wanna-be, we continued onto Brooklyn Cider House. This place, well, seemingly pleasant, left us wanting in terms of customer service AND cider. Our waiter was less than helpful with recommendations and most of the drink options appeared to be ‘dry.’ As our spirits continued to dwindle, we then headed to the bookend for the evening – Theatre XIV for burlesque! And if you haven’t yet caught the trend, we were again, far too early to be admitted so we walked down the street to a bar called the Johnson for some $6 ‘Painkillers’ ie. frozen, pina colorado concoction. Four drinks later and claw-machine defeated, we were buzzed back to a state of satisfaction. Making our way back to the theatre, we entered and marveled at the Fifty Shaded Wonderland surrounding us.

Adorned to the nines, this show, Queen of Hearts, was eccentric, to say the least! I have NEVER seen such a mind-boggling burlesque show in my LIFE! There were obvious, classically trained dancers involved, not to mention, MANY male performers. Dancing, singing, hooping – there was no end to the extravagances our eyes beheld. Speaking of, we spent a good portion of the show staring at the couple seated in front of us which entailed a very uncomfortably, molesty dude who we could only assume, was sloppy rich. We discussed trying to corner his companion in the bathroom to find out what the deal was but we were both far too lazy. Sharon bought me an expensive, gingery cocktail that was god-awful. We followed up the rest of the night’s consumption with canned ciders from which we both got pretty blitzed! While we awaited our Uber, we saw the aforementioned creepoid with his girl being photographed by police officers. We can only begin to wonder whatever came of them but I’d be very confident picking him out of a lineup. For the duration of our Uber ride home and still beaming from booze, we spent the entire ride arguing over the virtual trivia game situated in the backseat area. Sharon doesn’t recall giving me bad/wrong answers and/or giving me crap for being incorrect but it was boisterous and most likely, very annoying, fun.

Ah, good o’ hungover Monday. Yikes! With a slightly rough-start to the morning, we took our time getting ride in order to avoid the hectic, rush-hour commuter traffic. After pre-GPSing our route, we successfully public transited to Supermoon Bakehouse for some blueberry and Pomegranate croissants! Sharon was mind-blown by this place – simply based on not only the aesthetic peel of their goods but also, the deliciousness! High recommendations for this joint – although, I’d suggest taking your food items to go since the tables and chairs were that of children.

Continuing our route, we now headed towards what would appear to be Chinatown for a confusing stop-off at a gorgeous, Jewish Temple museum called Eldridge Street. I’d literally come across this place during research and noted that Mondays were their pay-what-you-can. Being non-religious and certainly non-Jewish, my interest was all about the glorified ambience and were were NOT disappointed. There was a calm, safe, feel to the temple. Definitely one of the more beautiful things I’d high recommend when visiting NYC.

Next on the roster? Catacombs! Oh but wait, this isn’t what it sounds like, unfortunately. The description was giving us Catacombs by Candlelight, which we both assumed, would somehow involve ghosts. This was not as such. We were met with quasi-interesting, New York history involving politicians and rich families that were memorialized in the underground passageways. The highlight of the tour was the Australian couple we spoke with briefly about koalas – duh. I’m sure under different circumstances (not tired, hung-over, bored, hot, wanting ghost stories), one would find this tour highly interesting (my mother) but ‘twas not as such. The tour even ran a bit over-time so we bounced early to catch an Uber to our lunch at Thai Villa.

I researched this restaurant and loved it solely based on its gorgeousness. Unfortunately, we caught this place during the boisterous, lunch rush and weren’t entirely able to enjoy any sense of calm. We could barely speak due to the deafening sound – including the pretentious, vapid couple next to us. I did not enjoy my pai thai but was also suffering from post-laxative discomfort, to be fair. We ate as quickly as possible and headed out towards the next item of our agenda: Rose Wine Mansion.

Once again, with reservations at 2pm and us far too early, we killed a minute or two buying an I Love New York, pink onesie for Bear (yeah, yeah, he loves it) from a souvenir shop before standing restlessly in line for admittance.

When we were finally hustled in, accompanied by an ear-drum throbbing, security alarm, we took an elevator to the entrance of the exhibit. As we were basically the first people in ‘line,’ we got first dibs on every single room. We also didn’t care too much about the ‘interactive elements’ of most rooms, which killed a lot of time. We pressed on fairly quickly as we are want to do, indulging in our favorite, Cleopatra-endorsed red wine, Banfi Rosa Regale. Case in point, we drank some last night (8/2/2019) as you can buy it at Binny’s (SO good)! Other than that and taking a bunch of free photo-booth pictures post-exhibit, it was a quick in and out for us.

Making our way down the street, we stopped off at the free Houdini Museum situated, strangely, inside a high-rise building. The ‘museum’ was quite small, though we were told it was the second largest in the world. We took a once-around stroll while some magic nerds exchanged card tricks in the center of the room. Disinterest in tact, we caught another Uber with a delightful, Asian man who almost got pulled over for running a light but played off his foreignness to get out of it and eventually showed me his uncompleted dragon tattoo. He dropped us off near Enchantments – an occult store we’ve previously ordered, personalized candles. The store was awesome – cute, black kitties sleeping and hilarious, witchy employees who seems very down to earth. We requested personalized, carved candles and hung out for the duration of their creation. Once obtained, we headed over to one of the many bars on our roster for the afternoon: Mother of Pearl. Hawaiian-themed, this joint, wasn’t, again, open when we arrived so we pre-drank at a hookah lounge down the street. Once we re-attempted Mother of Pearl, was ordered their well-known ‘Shark attack’ drinks which I found unimpressive. I also can’t recall what type of alcohol they entailed but definitely, not my jam. Our bartender though, was pretty awesome.

The evening continued with an Uber back to where we had been for the Rose Mansion for two more bars: The Magic House Rooftop Bar & Lounge and The Fleur Room. Now the Magic House Rooftop Bar & Lounge sounded and looked very impressed from the videos I’d watched. There’s rotating carousal seats, mini-golf and an awesome view. But in all reality, the in-person was not up to snuff. All the carousal seats were ‘reserved,’ the ‘mini golf’ consisted of maybe four rounds revolving around sexified animal statues and the drinks were, well, at least mine, expensive and just terrible. Waste of time and money – not to mention all the effort to actually get UP to the joint! Security is completely elaborate and unnecessary – I felt like the goddamn FBI was running the entire thing! Not a fan. Next up – The Fleur Room. To be fair, we were both kind of at our wit’s end at this point in time. Once we made our way up to the bar, again, beautiful, poshy views and the decor was GORGEOUS but after looking at the drink menu, I just couldn’t do it. I was super over the expensive, elaborate drinks that sounded and inevitably, tasted like garbage. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to get the appear or maybe these places are just trying too hard. Either way, we refused to spend more money on drinks we’d end up hating and just took our necessary pictures and videos to supply to ya’ll.

As our final stop-off and NOT on our original agenda (we cut a bunch of stuff), Sharon researched a pizza joint nearby our Airbnb for an easy, chill dinner at the home front. She came across Patsy’s Pizzeria. I called in a large, garlic and cheese pizza for pick-up during which time; a lovely Jamaican woman named Diana who complimented my tattoos and pants accosted me. This woman kept on talking about her brother being a dance choreographer and professional in Milwaukee and eventually tried to network us. I gave minimal interesting and effort in the exchange on account of exhaustion and hunger. Eventually, pizza was on hand and we made it back home to consume said pizza that was actually pretty decent.

Our final day in NYC was quite a doozy. We woke up fairly early and again, killed time to avoid the rush hour, commute traffic. Luggage in tow, we caught some pre-GPS-ed public transit to NYC’s Magic Jewelry to get aura photographs. After once again, standing in line, waiting for the place to open, a little crowd began to form behind us. Eventually, one snap and a brief explanation later, we were done! Side note: Sharon is now obsessed with purchasing the equipment to start her own business. We then walked over to the nearby Ghostbusters Fire Station that became a clusterfuck due to the gapping tour crowd and the fact that the firehouse is ACTIVE. We stood and waited for a truck to pull into it before snapping a few pictures and heading immediately away.

After once again, catching pre-GPS-ed public transit, we now headed towards of lunch-stop: Cafe Colette. This place got awesome reviews and also had beautiful pictures of the inside. When we arrived, the staff obligingly took our luggage from us for storage. I was once again, underwhelmed by the atmosphere, however, the food was definitely on point! Sharon apparently ate some orgasmic chicken sandwich while I consumed some delicious, fish tacos. We were both quite satisfied. Trudging along with our luggage we continued on our way to the Williamsburg Hotel for their Hightea Teapot cocktails we’d seen advertised videos for. When we arrived at the bar, our bartender, Angelo, advised that it was not available during weekdays. After a polite plea by Sharon, he agreed to make us a cocktail anyway which we shared and was MOST delicious! With time to kill and dessert on my brain, I suggested we find a place for dessert. Sharon quickly googled a nearby French pastry shop by the name of Caprices by Sophie. We shared a delightful, chocolate éclair before ultimately deciding that we should forgo any additional, scheduled plans and head straight to the airport.

One very long Uber ride later, we were at LaGuardia several hours early for our flight. Once we again, fast-tracked through security via Pre-check TSA and began to get settled, Sharon noticed our flight had been canceled! And queue confusion and anxiety. Never have I had this happen to me before. As we had already checked into our flight, I was unable to attempt a reschedule on my phone. We ended up lining up at the Southwest desk in order to speak with an attendant. Throughout the chaos, we realized there was an earlier flight boarding for Chicago. With attempts and determining if the flight was booked, Sharon called Southwest and was told, they could not advise as such. We were, safe-net, booked into a later flight that would eventually connect in St. Louis with an arrival in Chicago at midnight; however, we were still hoping to hope on this flight about to leave. Eventually, amidst the chaos and confusion and annoying and anxiety, we were allowed onto the earlier flight home which, with it’s own delays; brought us home at approximately the same time we were originally scheduled to arrival. The hellish commute involved sitting on the runway for takeoff for god knows how long and my discomfort with a very antsy, obnoxious, Alabamian seated next to me. Despite the very, very long commute, the dadness grabbed us at the Montrose blue-line, accompanied with Bear whose distress meowing ironically comforted me. When we reached our wonderful, sweet, home, we showered to rid ourselves of the New York stink, downed some food and barely absorbed some background television.

It’s crazy to think about how fast-paced Chicago is and yet, New York feels even faster! Or perhaps it’s the abundance of things and people and the distance between places that makes it feel so much more arduous. It could also have to do with our inclinations of packing in as much funness as possible into every single trip. Regardless, Chicago was most definitely missed. We were a part of you, New York, New York, but you can keep your hot, street garbage.

Where the Streets Have Hot Garbage The very moment we discovered Moulin Rouge was being made into a stage production, we KNEW we had to see it!

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borntoslay · 8 years ago

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I MEANT TO WRITE + POST THIS IN SEPTEMBER 2016 SO IT WOULD BE A YEARLY CHECK-IN, SINCE THE LAST ONE I DID WAS SEPTEMBER 2015, AND THE ONE BEFORE THAT WAS SEPTEMBER 2014... BUT I WAS REALLY BUSY SO HEAr we go:

When we last left off (September 2015), I had JUST starting my 4th album, “Better,” written in the wake of realizing I had fallen into depression again! I was scared and confused, but above all else, I was MAD that this was happening AGAIN. It seemed like literally every single year around the same time, I would always just accidentally slip into a minor-moderate depression, and have to spend the rest of the year clawing my way out... (it was only in late 2016 that I realized it is probably SEASONAL depression... like... DUH...)

Enter “Better,” an album literally written to pull me out!

(disclaimer: again, not a singer, just someone who writes songs as a hobby + likes to sInG LOL! Bolded lyrics are the ones that are featured in the following video)

youtube

00:00 – BETTER

00:53 – BLOOM

01:53 – MASC 4 MASC

/ / / / – BRAVO

03:51 – Y.A.S. (YOU AIN'T SHIT)

05:02 – WITH YOU

/ / / / – #TOOMUCH

05:59 – I'M OVER IT

07:50 – GET OFF YOUR PHONE, BITCH!

10:58 – I'M NOT THE ONE

BETTER

The first track, Better, was done in like, 20 minutes, the very first night I realized what was happening back in August 2015. I already posted the full thing that week, but I’ve included the best bits in the above video.

Based off of Bleachers’ I Wanna Get Better, obviously

It’s been day-in, day-out, another drama I’ve been hiding out under the covers Let it go, professional, you’re flexible, incredible, and unforgettable I haven’t been on the weather lately As people go, and the times are changing And I don’t feel like a winner (I wanna get better!) / But it’s such a pain, when it’s all been stuck the same And my fears are rising, but still, I try not to let them get to me / Guess when depression’s in question I just invest in expression Turn heartache into a lesson It’s your discretion to say: I WANNA GET BETTER!

BLOOM

This song was written the same week in August 2015 after having recently reconnected with several people I had met back in 2011; 3 of which had all, separately, told me things along the lines of “I can see you are BLOSSOMING!” and “You really are BLOOMING!”

I’ve always known that I do take a little more time than others to do most things, but it was during that month that I really started to realize that I am a late-bloomer—and that’s ok!

BLOOM was based off of a K-pop song some of y’all may know. I don’t listen to K-pop because I don’t understand any of it, so I tried my hand at writing over this fun instrumental. What I like to do is pull instrumentals of moderately popular songs I’ve never heard before, write my own lyrics + melody over it, and then when I’m finally done with mine, I give the “real” version a listen. In some cases, I feel I have outdone the original, but in this case, I think the original was way better, even without being able to understand it! LOL But I also like what I did with it, too.

My roots have always been a little too sheltered, It didn’t matter if the rain ever came. Not always Great, but I was born Alexander, Wondering how I would live up to my name

And though it took a little while, people compliment my smile and the things that’d get me labeled as “strange” So now I’m planted and a little self-centered with barely any room to re-renovate

Cuz when I do, all of you will direct me to Some other thing I’m not winning Say what you may, but I’m Born To Slay Impossibly From beginning, to the end, But I guess that I missed why You dismissed my assistance’swhy Deep inside me wants to try be Something shiny and now I’m ready to bloom

Don’t assume I’m too stubborn for this cuz I’m Not a prude, I just Never Been Kissed and I never knew what the hell I was missing

Combined with why I wanna try To find a guy To enterprise A YOLO mentality So I can gro-ow substatially I know my show’s been a tragedy Cuz I was just a little late to bloom

Don’t get stressed about it, just aim to try Plant the seeds and weed Parasites And set your sights higher Remain inspired Let the spotlight ignite your desires

And rise from the soil Cuz you’re in control Just follow your dreams And reap what you sow

I just tried it A little too slowly And I’ll be The first to admit I’m still growing

Nobody can take what you’re taking the time to Outwardly reshape what’s mistaken inside you So don’t hesitate when your greatness is valued And don’t let a date, or a lack thereof undo your bloom

Some things are better faster And others take longer to master In which case it’s better late than never So do whatever it takes to be Better

MASC 4 MASC

This is one of the only songs I have ever publicly posted in full, during the week I wrote it. This song literally just CAME to me the week I joined Tinder/Grindr, as I hopelessly scrolled through all of the depressingly bleak profiles and saw the amount of self-hate everyone seemed to have while still managing to like themselves enough to be looking for hookups with strangers. I laid down to take a nap and within the first 15 seconds of lying down, I just heard a lingering voice in my head say “Looking.... Are you looking...?” Shot my ass up, wrote + recorded the whole song in about an hour, and posted it.

Based on C2C, O B V I O U S L Y !

I’ve changed some of it since that post, and most of those changes are in the above video.

Looking Are you looking Looking out to find a dick to fill your ass? While excluding any asians, fems, or fats Cuz you’re limited to looking Masc4masc

Looking I am looking But I never seem to get a second glance Every gay man never seems to take a chance Cuz they’re limited to looking Masc4masc

Oh, I love my Lady Gaga You could say that I’m a stan But that always seems to stop ‘em when they’re looking masc4masc

And I’m not into straight-acting Cuz I’m proud of who I am But my sisters know that cis-men only look for masc for masc

I’m a catch Too bad you won’t ever see What it’s like to be With someone like me

Cuz you’re Looking Yeah, you’re looking Only looking cuz you’re tired of your hand But you’ll never find “The One” in “one night stand” Cuz you’re limited to looking Masc 4 Masc

Picky You’re so picky Use your preferences to mask your prejudice You want a guy to come around And you get mad when you don’t find ‘im

But we all know That you were never really looking for anything other than a reflection fitting your narrow mind

It’s a shame You’re gay but you’ll never try Try dating outside of muscled and white

Cuz you’re looking Yeah, you’re looking Looking out to find a dick to fill your ass But you’ll never really find your happiness

Cuz you’re hypocritical and Self-hating and fuckin’ Limited to looking Masc 4 Masc

You’re the bottom I’m not into Fucking around with the Shallow ass that you got #Thot

BRAVO

Thanks to Tinder, I had my VERY first date EVER (at age 23!) back in November 2015 with a very nice gentleman who was ALSO an artist, and mutually supportive of ALL of my art forms—my digital painting, my traditional painting, even painting my face! We had a sweet dinner, and then... I never heard from him again!

Bravo was, in some ways, referencing Applause, in the idea that although I would have loved to be with him, I did not need his support (or, “bravo”) if he didn’t want to be with me. (His name also rhymed with the word “bravo” lol). I Will Survive is also referenced because... duh!

I didn’t include a snippet in the video because it’s obviously a really personal song, so the personal meaning is MUCH stronger than the execution LOL

Guess I’m never certain who wants to curtain-pull As my bravo [meaning, who wants to be there for me at the end] My ******o [his name]

At first I was afraid, it took all of me To realize I would still survive without your artistry I could Paint The Night Away, standing tall without a change And I grew strong, ‘cause you won’t get to me today!

Yeah, you’re an actor; you made me believe That you would want a girl who keeps her heart on her sleeve But I’m a master of making them leave; The only thing you got away with’s carrying out my routine

I’m lonely, but like a flower bouquet I’d rather not be picked at all if I’ll just wither away

One second I’ll be waiting, suddenly the weight is me I don’t need you in my heart, And I do not need ****i [his nickname]

Y.A.S. (You Ain’t Shit)

(Created on one of my go-to beat-maker’s beats!)

Post-2013, my goal with writing my music has never been to write a “hit” or anything super commercial or anything for anyone else to consume (especially since I stopped posting + sharing my music altogether, so anything I write is literally JUST for me!)... however, after I came up with this title, this song was to be my MOMENT.

The first verse plays off the mythology of the “YAS,” with Gaga being clamored by the paparazzi and her screaming fans, being a metaphor for all my photos and the attention I was getting on social media from a guy I was talking to and had plans to date almost weekly between September 2015 and December 2015, but never did. As the song goes, I didn’t feel like he was reciprocating the thoughts + feelings I had for him, (“so there goes that potential date”) but whenever I would post something on Instagram, he would like it IMMEDIATELY, and then literally go all the way back YEARS into my posts, and start liking all of my old selfies, my old artwork, EVERYTHING. “When I’m Instagramming, you spam me, and we never even met yet.”

The line about “receipts” is about me screencapping every piece of dialogue I have and sending it to my hunties to help me figure out if this guy even liked me! The line “On to the next one” was told to me when one of those friends saw the receipts and really didn’t think that this guy was interested (and he was right! We’ll get to this part of the story later...)

Cameras are flashin’ And I can’t imagine It any other way I’m not into fashion But I’m so obsessed with You looking in my way

And I’m like, Buzz-buzz, ho! [I used to say this as I was waiting for Grindr messages] Hey, don’t you know I’m tired of getting old alone And I just wanna find a man Who really understands

And I don’t feel that reciprocation So there goes that potential date but When I’m Instagramming You spam me And we’ve never even met yet (YAS)

You Ain’t Shit You’ll never get with this You’re such a tragedy, And the gravity of the sit. is in The way your basic ass Is making me swipe left You ain’t shit On to the next one

You Ain’t Shit You’ll never be victorious Just a B.S. masterpiece But I’m pulling at your seams and You’re even less than what you seem

I know ur trying hard 2 Outshine me, but I’m a star U R an asteroid and coming forth [he is to be a huge part of my life] But I glow in the dark [but I’ll always be special with or without him]

U can’t stand next 2 me, U C, I Can’t keep sending these receipts, Y can’t U text me W/o the sexting [not about him, but about Tinder/Grindr in general] Ur making me wanna scream

(Y.A.S.!)

I always think that you’re the one But just as quickly as it comes You Ain’t Shit On to the next one

WITH YOU

I wrote this in November of 2015, and it’s one of the most personal + vulnerable things I’ve ever created. I think this song is the absolute hardest to listen to of anything I’ve ever written because whenever I hear it, I almost immediately fall right into the mindset I had while writing it. It’s about trying your hardest to see a really powerful friendship through, while realizing that as you’ve been trying to help him be “happy again,” you yourself aren’t very happy anymore, either.

Hey Don’t cry I know that you don’t need me in your life

But I’ll stay Cuz I Know you’re scared to know you’re always on my mind

And I’m gonna live like this forever Or at least until you’re Better

Cuz when I’m with you I can see the sadness in your eyes But you smile when I smile So it’s nice to know that you’re fine again

When I’m with you I can feel the colors all around And I miss the way it used to be Cuz I’m dying to be happy again

#TOOMUCH

You keep me close, then you let me go, Say you need me then treat me like garbage But I’m not your bitch, And I’m sick of picking up and paying for empty luggage

I’M OVER IT

This song ended up being what Y.A.S. was supposed to be: it’s fun, it’s written well, and as if that wasn’t enough, I also produced the entire thing! It’s a song collectively about all 4 of the guys I went on dates with or even seriously talked to between late 2015–early 2016, but was specifically written about 2 dates I had in particular in January 2016...

Because I’m a FREAK, I literally record all of my first dates (in the event that that person ends up being THE ONE, so I could play it back at our 25-year vow renewal ceremony... Also because I just have a bad memory and wanted to take notes like in class LOL. So basically, less than mid-way through both of these January 2016 dates, while the other guy was preoccupied or in a different room, I mumbled into my phone “... yeah........ i’m over it............................” In fact, after the date with the Y.A.S. guy, I got in my car and recorded what became the chorus to this song.

All the clips in the above video are of me before all 4 of my first dates; the 5th one is of the only SECOND date I went on LOL! More on him in the next album...

You watch me as I’m walkin’ on by And I scream, but I keep it inside I’m sweet and a creeper, a bonafide keeper And you’re really lookin’ my type

I bite my lip as I’m writin’ to ya And sweat when I try to pursue ya But my first dates never leave the home plate So I’m safe not trying to reproduce

You can seduce me a little if you want I’m a little iffy but Not afraid to get what I want And you’re the one I want Like Travolta And I can play the part Like a Mozart

So I make the most of our time You got me at my prime As you rolled out of bed Looking lazy

Said you wanna do it again I said maybe, But in my head, I’m like, “baby, you’re crazy, ‘cause I said—

Ooh, I’m over it Not interested and Ooh, I can’t pretend You’re not overplayed and Ooh, you’re overrated But I can’t complain Cuz you ain’t worth the time of day I’m over it and on my way

You said you wanna meet up But don’t put your feet up yet Don’t get comfortable Fake ham, fake cheese, so Lunchable And I ain’t fighting, don’t want your bull [I LOVE THESE LINES]

But irresponsibly, I agree to meet you And when the day comes you’re silent You can apologize But you’re wasting your time It’s already been decided I guess Ooh, I’m over it

Baby baby I’m over it now Took time but I came to find you’re subar And I’m sobering down No crying when I say goodbye, cuz it’s over

You’re overrated I can’t complain Cuz you never meant a thing to me I’m racking my brain Cuz I can’t believe that I Even bothered trying to meet you

'Cause baby you had your chance, But you blew it I won’t second-guess Cuz I knew it I decided while driving in on the first date You weren’t great And I coped with it

So I bit my tongue Tried to have fun But you weren’t the one And I moved on Don’t need YOU What u gon DO When you send a text but I’m over it, BOO?

GET OFF YOUR PHONE, BITCH!

I also produced this entire song myself, though some of it it sounded a lot like You Know I’m No Good by Amy Winehouse, so I make reference to it in the end.

Parts of this song are about a particular person + incidents I had with him, but for the most part, it’s about a lot of people and situations in general. For example, one of my dates was on his phone for work. Understandable. One of my dates was on his phone scrolling through Instagram while I was talking. Not so understandable. When I’m talking to a friend in the car, I don’t even touch my phone. When I’m at dinner with friends or lunch with coworkers, I ALWAYS put my phone away. Scrolling through social media when someone is right next to you is insulting! So much so that I wrote a fucking song about it.

Hey You called about way too late I’m finally unafraid To say that I’m already home right now, so go figure it out

I’m not made To wait on your ass all day I’m free of that brown nose stain

I know it’s not my duty I’m putting down my phone like I’m about to watch a movie

It’s not OK When you are LOOKING At someone’s PHOTOS For that like BUTTON A millennial cliché And you aren’t even listening to me,

Look at ME And how you never answer ME If you’re always on your phone?

I can see it so hell, I assume you know well And you’re ready for what Imma say, OK:

Get off your phone, bitch! Listen when I'm talking I'm calling you out I know it isn’t that impossible following Conversation I’ve been patient I’ve been feeling alone Cuz you’re always on your Fucking phone, bitch! Introversion ain’t that cute I know you manage Speaking and I ain’t that stupid And you know it Don’t condone it So fucking press Log Out And put that finger down Get off your phone bitch

I’m not waiting for that SMS And I guess that The best you got Ain’t a lot No question

I rest on pretty You awake and trying And in a video I stay outshining And in a room Crowded front to back Side to side I do make the room light up systemizingly-so I said it before I’m Born To Slay, what’chu here for?

Information age is the present And I get it, and know it won’t change And I’m hesitant to let it You wanna look at screens? You can FaceTime You wanna be with me? You can make time You wanna be with me? Put your phone down I’ll give you the third degree if I’m snowed out

Fuck that misty eye Kiss that bitch goodbye I got bigger fish to fry

I said, I’m all for being cheesy But I'm lactose intolerant When the girls I be following Share their lives like an ottoman Sectionally displaying [an ottoman is a couch that can be displayed in sections] Whether the moment's a monument Blowing smoke up their confidence While my belly is bubbling

I don't like being hollered at If I'm just gonna be ignored 'Cause trust me, you need it more Like that hat you can't afford I'm an image of an winner, while you're out trynna score But you're boring, baby I don't wanna play anymore

Met you outside, by my parking stall You start your phone up as I start my car I said “What did you do at work today?” And wait in silence as you scroll away...

So I confess like a pretzel, [this is an inside joke] I think, “I can’t believe you’re an asshole” By the time I take you home, I’m pressed as hell, only heaven knows—

I don’t give a fuck ‘Bout your busted shoe I told you get off your phone, bitch And now, I’m off of you

I’M NOT THE ONE

Continuing my exercise of writing over songs/verses I felt were badly written, I wrote over the first verse of Meghan “you really think I can be replaced, nah, I’m come from outerspace” Trainor’s Lips Are Moving, and this is, I think, the best verse I have ever written! It’s sassy, it’s concise, and it’s catchy as HELL!

This is about all the guys on the dating apps that you thought had potential, but, for whatever reason, end up not responding to your messages until they’re bored/horny again.

The title, “I’m not the one” goes both ways, in Alyssa’s context, I’m saying “you pissed off the wrong bitch,” but in my own context, I’m saying that as these guys aren’t made for me, I, too, am not “the one.”

I seen that read receipt and I know That you ain’t meant for me Survival of the fittest In the Guinness book you’re best at being the biggest douche and I guess that

You f-ed it up: RuPaul Cuz when you’re alone you call

But I don’t fuck with you Had enough And you ain’t enough to get off to

Thought you could be the one I wanted to care for That I’d try to be there for, however I’m kinda getting tired of your piles of bullshit And I don’t need you, so, whatever

I’m getting tired Of all your bullshit Tell me, do you think I’m dumb?

Down to the wire, You’re fucking useless Don’t you try to try me I’m not the one!

Get out my face! Get off your dashboard Done with all your messing around

I said I’m tired Of all your bullshit Baby baby, I’m not the one/

You’re fucking stupid You’re fucking useless Sick of your bullshit And I’m tired, tired, tired, baby

Honey honey, I don’t think you wanna try me I think you’re bound to find me unpleasant Oh no no no, there is no way you could ever satisfy me I’m grown and you’re so pre-pubescent

You’re such a little fuckb0i And I think I’ve had enough, I wannaToss you in the garbage disposer If you chase me imma mace you I wanna just erase you But not till you get full disclosure:

I said I’m tired Of all your bullshit (repeat)

Maybe you just aren’t the right one.

This is the closing piece to this album, which started and ended when I started and finished dating/trying dating apps for the first time (September 2015–August 2016). It was a fucking WEIRD time in my life! LOL Not my GREATEST album, but I like it, and there are a lot of things that I’ve learned from it. One day I’ll tell the story about the worst date in my life because I learned more from that one meeting than I have in the last 6 years! LOL

Anyway, I’m just 2 songs away from finishing my NEXT album, which has tentatively been called “SNAP.” All my “albums” have 10 tracks each, and just consist of songs written during that 1-year period. This next album is, as of right now, my favorite! I can’t wait to share Son of a Bitch and Just a Little Piece of Garbage with you guys... I think they’re both in the top 10 of the best songs I’ve ever written!!!!!

To give you an idea of how things are going so far (in comparison to my own work):

Born to Slay (February–May 2013) – 1/5 Delusional (June 2013–April 2014) – 2/5 Intelligent & Beautiful (May 2014–July 2015) – 4.5/5 Better (August 2015–September 2016) – 4/5 SNAP (August 2016–present) – 4.5/5

#borntoslay^

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npet-autos-clothes · 1 year ago

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What is excellent car trunk organizer？——Two mother review

“I have a small SUV and my dog goes in the cargo area so I wanted an organizer that fit in the back drivers side seat. That way it is easy for me to grab things or take out things as I get in and out of the car. This fits great on the seat, I was able to store things like grocery bags, sun visor, etc. I was able to secure the organizer so it did not slide by looping the straps around the back of the seat. Someone can still fit in the passenger back seat, yet the organizer is easily removable if needed. Exactly what I was looking for.

It’s so easy to fold up or open up to use. We didn’t know if we “needed” it. But now so glad we got this. This is perfect to place groceries and water bottles or anything that can roll around or slide around when driving when your trunk is emptier. Also the lining on the bottom is like a a plastic liner that helps prevent spills onto your trunk. It’s not for that purpose nor will it prevent spills all together but with drinks that are cold and has perspiration on the outside I know the trunk won’t get wet. We really love how easily it fold up when not needed and doesn’t take up much space when folded closed”

NPET car trunk organizer with 3 compartments has 3 divided sections. You can use one or expand it to use two or 3 compartments, even full collapsible, depending on your preference. The dividers are made of plastic plates so they have well load ratings. Moreover, it also have a cooler bag. The removable cooler bag can be fitted it into the main compartment or used separately. It is made of waterproof material and super thermal insulation. With premium foldable cooler section, you can even put ice inside to keep drinks and foods cool. The base plates are made of plastic, even if they are immersed in water, they can perfectly maintain the shape.

NPET also published another kind of car organizer to help people clean their car.

NPET Car Backseat Hanging Organizer has 2 pockets with lids, 3 mesh Pockets, 2 extra large pockets, 1 long pocket. The 2 extra large pockets provide large capacity, even can store your sport shoes. The special space design allows this storage bag to store all things groceries, sports gear, kid tools, and other car accessories. Keep everything organized and keep your car trunk floor space saving with this collapsible storage organizer.

Someone like this product since it can help them a lot.

“I like to keep my car equipped with things for emergencies and extra sweaters. I was using a duffel bag for a while but it took up space - this was exactly what I needed - it stores everything you would need without taking up any extra room. It hangs up easily on the headrests and is sturdy, with pockets that selfie shut. It doesn’t move around when driving and you can pack up quite a bit in the pockets.

The trunk well of the van is pretty deep and picking up kids’ small things used to require bending deep down into the trunk. Not fun. This little hanging cargo changed it all. It’s so easy to carry and organize and retrieve small items while keeping the entire truck space available for other larger items. And, I don’t have to bend down and hunt! It’s awesome. I would hesitate to put anything really heavy in it because this organizer literally hangs on the metal spines of the headrests. Oh, it’s also great in keeping the eggs from crushed by other grocery stuff. :) It’s really useful

The best part is that it saves room in your car without taking away from your storage needs - I can fit everything I need in it.”

The two kinds organizer are produced after we collect a large mount of market data and based on the customers points.NPET Our Tools & Equipment are designed to spark enthusiasm, improve quality of life, and help conserve natural resources.

#autos #cars #camping #organizer #organization #storage

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explorerpri · 7 years ago

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I recently spent a month in India with my loving little 5 year old. It was wonderful to be amongst friends and family, not to mention have 30 fabulous sunny days with that perfect 75F temperature. The city I grew up in is now overpopulated with a lot of people moving in from other states, so the summers are a humid, hot mess for months, and the monsoon still wreaks havocs on the city due to floods and the resulting damage.

December, however, and even January, is just perfect. My son and I had a fabulous time jogging at the parks and having coconuts every morning. Mind you, if you have tried the Thai coconut and think Indian coconuts are the same, you couldn’t be more wrong! Indian coconuts have thin cream inside, which melts in the mouth (better than jello :)). My son has absolutely loved coconuts since he was less than 2 years old. And admittedly I beam with pride and joy that we share this love of coconuts. One time, we even chased a coconut cart in a rickshaw and pulled him to the side and bought a coconut. There are some things you can only do in India 🙂

While in India, we decided to embark on a 4-5 day trip to Rajasthan with my mom and my little guy. Jodhpur has a direct flight from where I live, so that seemed like a viable option. My favorite place in Rajasthan is most certainly Jaisalmer, also a World Heritage Site. To me, it is the most authentic city that bears the soul of Rajasthan – a majestic fort in the middle of the desert, rising from sand stone like a phoenix from the ashes, an astute reminder of a bygone era. Men with the longest mustaches you’ve ever seen, and one of the biggest deserts of the world, the Thar Dessert. Not to mention the food so delicious you will literally lick your fingers (or order more ;)). I had visited as a teenager with my family many years ago, and I remember Jaisalmer so vividly I could sketch a picture of it with my mind’s eye. Here are some photos of Jaisalmer, just so you can visualize what I am talking about (these two are not taken by me, the rest on this site/page are my own photos):

Jaisalmer, being a good 5+ hour drive from Jodhpur though, with a heavy heart we skipped it this time and went to Khimsar instead, which is a small town that offers an authentic desert experience but happens to be much closer to Jodhpur (less than 2 hours by car). I figured since it was my first time traveling within India with my son, might be wise to keep things less tiring so we could spend more time relaxing and taking it all in. Khimsar was just perfect for a short trip, and did not disappoint at the many wonders it offers inspite of being such a small town. More about Khimsar below.

Jodhpur – Day 1: We took a morning flight from Jodhpur, which got us there about 11 am. Here we are at the airport, passing the time listening to music and taking selfies:

We reached Jodhpur about 11 am and started to make our way out of the airport. As we were walking past, a security guard/military officer asked me to stop. My brother had warned me to not take photos at Jodhpur airport since it is an active military base and photos are strictly prohibited. I had been careful though and not exhibited my usual enthusiasm at photography. I turned back to my officer and asked if everything was ok, to which he replied “Itne sare balloon hai. Bacche ko nahi denge to kya fayada” (“There are so many balloons here, what’s the point if we can’t give one to the child”).

It was just a few days after New Years Eve, so the airport was decorated with yellow and pink balloons. And before I could say another word, the officer removed two balloons from the wall and handed them to my son, who was absolutely delighted. I felt so welcome, and thankful to get this opportunity to show Neil “my India”. I wanted him to see the beautiful landscapes, animals and natural beauty of India, but most importantly the warmth and hospitality of the people. I wanted him to love India, the way I love India, and see it with my eyes, rather than the eyes of a foreign tourist, which he will inevitably do when he’s all grown up.

Our taxi driver was old and reliable – my brother had shared his number from a previous trip and I was thankful to not have to go with a random one. Our first stop in Jodhpur was Umed Bhavan Palace. It is atop a hill which means it can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. My son is hiding under his hat since it started to get so hot and the sun was in his face :)!

We went in and looked at the palace turned museum, marveling at the beautiful, precious artifacts used by kings and queens in the years past. “Wow, look at that beautiful blue decanter”, I would say to my son. “Oh, that means you think all the king’s things here are so beautiful, but not me. You don’t think I’m beautiful anymore”. Oh, my, my. I had to constantly reassure him that he was way more beautiful than all the artifacts in that entire museum. This is what I love about writing – I didn’t realize I remembered this wonderful memory about my son saying this until I started to write this! Here are some photos – a model of the palace, a conch shell with carvings, and the colorful decanters 🙂

One of the palace rooms had an outstanding collection of clocks, my favorite ones – the ‘windmill clock’ and the ‘renaissance chariot’ clock are below:

After the palace it was time to see the King’s collection of classic cars, which was breathtaking, given how shiny and impeccable these very old cars had been maintained. There was a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, a Bentley, a Mercedes and practically every luxury car brand you can imagine. I have photos of these beautiful cars in my SLR camera which I will add here later.

After Umed Bhavan Palace, we headed over for lunch in a “Rajasthani Thali” place. It was a large meal ending with paan 🙂

After lunch, we headed to Mehranger Fort. This is the same fort where Christopher Nolan filmed the opening scene (and I believe some more) of the last movie of the Batman trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises”. Bruce Wayne climbing up the tunnel of the fort and escaping out while the prisoner’s cheer on – well, that’s shot at the fort, and you can watch that scene here to jog your memory 🙂

Mom was a bit tired of the heat so she stayed downstairs, while my son and I got tickets and headed up to the upper floor of the fort on an elevator – and my I’m so glad we did!

Below you can find a pigeon flying off a tower of the majestic fort, and onto the beautiful “blue city” below. Note that the main city of Jodhpur lies on the other side of the fort, and this is perhaps the best spot in the city to get a bird’s eye view of the “old blue city”. If we had more time I would have definitely loved to explore the streets and get some more shots of the bright blue homes, but at least we got an amazing aerial view:

It was so sunny up there that my son was struggling to see, so I handed him my sunglasses which he carried quite well I must say! And then he was so interested in my SLR and begged me to let him take some shots, so here he is my little photographer:

I know blogs are supposed to be more about describing the place in words, but on this particular post I am including a lot of photos because words truly fall short of the beauty and scale of this place. If you imagine yourself standing atop this fort and close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like when the King had to decide to fight an enemy approaching this fort. Watch the movie Padmaavat if you want to really experience the grandeur and challenges of the olden days; ignore the political correctness and controversy, I am simply recommending the movie here so you can see what it was like to wage war from a fort, some 100 years ago :).

And of course, we couldn’t leave without seeing the guns and swords of the kings and queens (imagine the excitement of a 5 year old who is into power rangers and Ninja Turtles):

And last but not the least, notice the detailed carving work in each of the “jharokhas” of the fort in the back of our photo below. This one is my favorite because my little guy climbed on my back and it was just a playful, natural moment:

When we tried to take the elevator back down from the top of the fort, they asked us for tickets yet again. We realized we had forgotten to buy tickets to get back down. On a normal day, and if I was travelling alone, I would have walked down. But my son was tired so we hitched a ride on the elevator; only to be asked again by the security guys at the bottom if we had the ticket, or money to pay for it.

I fetched in my pocket and found nothing. Suddenly, my son handed me a note from his pocket. My mom had given him some money to keep just for fun, and who knew it would come in so handy! I told him he had “saved my life” but in reality saved me from a ton of hassle and embarrassment, but oh, well. He remembers this moment even now – “remember mom that time when I saved you by giving you money for the ticket?” 🙂

Finally we arrived at our hotel. It was a beautiful Haveli in the old city. It was amongst the hustle and bustle and yet once we reached our room it was so, so tranquil.

Our room was on the 3rd floor; luckily we had help with our bags. We had a beautiful room with a large window overlooking the fort and and old temple. It was twilight, the fort lit up, and the sky got darker. I could feel the happiness in my heart, it felt the universe had somehow fell into place; being there, in that moment. I longed to come back there alone sometime and write at the desk by the window. Perhaps I could write a whole small book in that one night, that’s how thought provoking and emotional that place was.

It was like sitting by a faraway lake alone, where you are still inside the forest but somehow far removed from the noises of the jungle. Where if you throw a pebble in the lake you will hear that as the only sound, and you will see the ripples in every widening circles. It is as if you have a piece of that tranquility all to yourself, to hold in the palms of your hands, yours to keep, forever. The photos I have below are not from my SLR and don’t quite do justice to the scene. That was the view from our window (below), notice the Mehrangar fort in the background and the old temple in the foreground:

Of course, my son found the real lock and key endlessly fascinating to play with:

Finally, before it got too dark, we headed up to the terrace which boasted among the best views of the Fort from the entire city; not to mention a small, cozy rooftop restaurant:

We ended the day as the smoke from ritual fires started coming in and the air didn’t seem as clean to be outside anymore; plus it got colder as this was the desert climate after all.

We retired to our beautiful room and the tranquil window, and had the most wonderful sleep in this jewel of a Haveli.

In the next post, let’s discover day 2 of the Rajasthan trip, where we head out from Jodhpur and onto Khimsar to another large, sprawling, majestic fort. And there, we will meet the beautiful Indian green parrots.

Until next time,

Pri.

Writing after a long time...getting my Rajasthan diaries going finally :0 I recently spent a month in India with my loving little 5 year old. It was wonderful to be amongst friends and family, not to mention have 30 fabulous sunny days with that perfect 75F temperature.

#rajasthandiaries Indiatravel travelwithkids jodhpurtravel

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lineatura · 7 years ago

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Issue #12: Sebastian Mayer

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Sebastian Mayer is a photographer with an unruly, curious eye. He is well-known to magazine readers all over the world for his portraits of musicians. However, it was his RANDOM series what really caught my attention. A juxtaposition of two seemingly random photographs which attract and repel each other at the same time, causing a wonderfully provoking, eye-opening tension each time you look. A sublime visual blast of a two-verse haiku: anachronistically honest and disruptively up-to-date. I met Sebastian Mayer in his apartment in Wedding to talk not only about the concept behind the RANDOM series, but also about his personal detours and the experience of time in his photographic oeuvre.

Sebastian Mayer. Photo: P.K.

Peter Koval: What was your most beautiful detour?

Sebastian Mayer: It was when I didn’t fly back from London to Berlin but instead, went to Rio de Janeiro and then stayed on the road for the next nine years.

PK: That’s almost an Odyssey!

SM: [Laughing.] I wouldn’t compare myself to Ulysses.

PK: How did it feel returning back?

SM: For a while I felt like I was encountering echoes from my own past. I lived in Berlin from the beginning of the 1990s until 2005. That’s a relatively long period. I take many pictures on the streets and the city didn’t really change much during my nine-year absence.

PK: How was Tokyo different from Berlin?

SM: Tokyo is an enormously dynamic city. It’s almost like an autonomous organism which constantly changes. You step out of a subway station in a neighborhood you haven’t visited in three months and you don’t recognize the streets anymore because everything was demolished and newly rebuilt. As a photographer, that makes Tokyo much more interesting than Berlin. Berlin is very rigid in comparison. When houses are built in Berlin, they are supposed to stand for the next 300 years or even longer. In Tokyo they may last 30 years. In Tokyo you see something new each day, there is almost no repetition or monotony in the cityscape. The city appears to me like an organism – incredibly fascinating but also quite monstrous and dangerous – not because of violence in the streets but because of the enormous dimensions. You are at the mercy of its dimensions. The city threatens to swallow you, it will literally absorb you. For me Berlin was always a city of concrete, of cobblestones and unfettered growth. Tokyo is rather like quicksilver. It’s amazing to look at it, everything glitters, everything moves, nothing is inflexible and everything is surface. But if you get too close, it can be extremely toxic.

PK: Photography records a moment of presence, which automatically makes looking at photography an act of retrospection. You worked a lot with your archive during the last year. What was that like?

SM: Of course, in the moment you press the shutter release button, it becomes sentimental. You can go mad if you think of the past too much. It was for a good reason that Susan Sontag described photography as a melancholic medium. When I go through my pictures from 2006, I recall many situations I am personally attached to. When I look into my archive for too long, I lose contact with the now. You shouldn’t dig too deep into your archives, otherwise the danger is that you will live only in a photographic copy of your own past without being able to perceive the present. It’s quite narcissistic to stick your nose only in your own past. That’s another problem with the essence of photography.

PK: In this regard, the archive seems to be very similar to all the selfies, which are hurrying ahead of us.

SM: In Beijing or Shanghai, I often observed people who are taking selfies all the time. But also in Venice, you often see people walking through the street with a selfie stick in their hand without really seeing anything from the town. Some of them carry their GoPro cameras or smartphones on a selfie stick in front of them like an antenna – the camera pointing back to them. They look all the time only in the camera, while the display is turned to them so they can watch themselves walking through Venice. They aren’t really present. They see only their own mirrored video image. Theoretically, they could walk in front of an empty projection wall and the images of Venice or any other random place could be copied into the background. It wouldn’t make any difference. For me, that’s absolutely crazy. It can’t be more narcissistic.

PK: During your last exhibition one of your pictures received quite a bit of interest.

SM: Oh, that one with the ass!

PK: Yes, that one. The longer I look at the picture, the clearer I see that it withholds something, that there is something I’m not permitted to see.

SM: Yes. There are only three visible faces, and their expressions allude to the reaction of those who are out of the frame. You can only guess what’s going on there at the moment. The photography leaves many questions unanswered, which makes it interesting. On the other hand, it’s totally pop and direct: a naked ass. I believe the picture was received that broadly because it’s at the same time very direct, almost obscene and yet it doesn’t show everything the viewer wants to see.

PK: And how do you create that allusion as a photographer? How do you show that you hide something?

SM: In my pictures, the concept of a gap plays an important role. My whole RANDOM series is based on the gap between the pictures. It’s not about what you can actually see on the photographs but rather about what happens between them. For me, that’s sometimes even more interesting than working directly with the images. But even when I’m working with the individual images, I would say that a good image always bears a secret – something you can’t immediately see or understand. It’s this secret – the inexplicable – that makes us wanting to look at the picture again and again. The image continues to interest us because you don’t really know what’s going on, because you can’t really get to the bottom of the picture, because it remains at least partially inexplicable.

I have a portrait of a friend which I took on the street in Nakameguro Tokyo. He is standing with an umbrella, his eyes pointed to the right, to something out of the frame. In the background, a couple people are crossing the street. For some reason, this image has a magic attraction to me. It’s a quite simple image, but I can’t get it out of my mind. The more I look at it, the more I try to understand why I’m so drawn to this image, why I’m so fascinated by it. Is it because of the lines, the colors, the look or maybe the composition? I just can’t figure it out. That’s why it remains interesting for me. Some pictures contain this kind of magic. Even after you look at them thousands of times, they still want to be viewed and they will remain interesting.

PK: Where do these gaps come from?

SM: I can’t really tell. When I’m holding the camera, I’m not looking for the gaps. They emerge later, while viewing the pictures. Here is one photograph, which I still consider to be one of my best portraits. It was taken from a bathroom wall from a 5-cm distance. It’s a little sticker, that somebody tried to tear off. That’s why the context is missing.

The facial expression of the man is distorted, one arm is pulled up, it looks like he is falling or about to lose consciousness. But because half of the picture is torn off, we can’t really see what’s going on there. Was the man just shot down? Is he on drugs at a rock concert and is about to flip out? This information is missing so we simply can’t know. At the same time the tear has a form of wings, which gives the man on the photo an angelic appearance. For me, that’s something very interesting because it opens a meta level for interpretation. But the image was just there and I took it with me. I took many pictures from books, magazines or billboards. Actually, I don’t really care where the images are from. When I take a photo of them, then they also become my images. It’s the art of appropriation; Prince sends his regards.

PK: But the RANDOM series is based on a different concept.

SM: It’s a juxtaposition of two seemingly random photographs which, if upon closer inspection, have an associative relationship. That can happen either through the content or the form. But sometimes, two pictures just “click” without an explicit reason why the combination works or why the tension occurs. The individual pictures aren’t so important here, but the mere fact of the juxtaposition. Here is for example a combination with the photo we were already talking about:

in one picture it’s obviously raining, while on the other, there is a cut-off fish head. There is no obvious connection in content or form. However, something happens here. It’s like putting together two words. Each word is nice and can stand by itself, but already two words can produce a tension that goes far beyond the meaning of each word. I am very fascinated by this poetic tension. [Lights a cigarette.] I like to work with sequences. Narratives were always very important to me. I believe it comes from the fact that I began my artistic career as a comic artist.

PK: Tell me more about your comic art.

SM: During my first years in Berlin, I spent almost all my time at the drawing board. I couldn’t really talk to people and I apparently suffered under a severe social phobia or a communication disturbance. I still know how it felt to get palpitations each time when I wanted to buy cigarettes at Café Westphal at Kollwitzplatz, because I couldn’t stand the looks of all the people there. I was so scared of them. Each time I entered the room, I felt all the eyes were staring at me, but I had to cross the room because the cigarette vending machine was at the opposite corner. That’s why I went out among people as rarely as possible and was only drawing for several hours a day for three or four years. But I didn’t really want to tell a story with the comics back then. It was more experimental – taking some fragments, putting them together and watching if something would happen. It’s a little bit like William Burroughs’ Cut Ups, even I wasn’t working with scissors. I like to think that I am strongly influenced by the Cut-Up idea, especially when I’m reviewing my RANDOM series.

PK: How do you take photographs?

SM: Quite simple. I take my camera, I go out and start making photographs. There are many photographers who have to make a plan first, who first try to develop an image in their head, let’s say of a person they want to portray. They think a lot about how they are going to take the picture, how they want the person on the picture look like or which light should they use. These photographers often become very nervous during the photo shooting. They can’t control everything or the person doesn’t want to fit into their imagined picture. I try to be as open as possible. Especially while working on assignments where I have actually only a couple of minutes to shoot the photo – for example when I portrait musicians for Spex. In such situations, it’s almost impossible to implement your own idea. Then the best thing is to focus on the person from the first second on and to take what you get. I think it’s also more honest and direct. I have nothing against arranged or well-designed photos and I’m actually quite good at implementing planned pictures for commercial clients. However, in my artistic works I’m interested in as direct and authentic a picture as possible.

PK: The camera window is a frame. You can’t put everything into that frame.

SM: Yes, you leave things out. The framing cuts automatically everything else away.

PK: That’s a quite violent act, isn’t it?

SM: I wouldn’t call it “violent”, ideally it’s more like a chirurgic incision. But there are ways to be “violent” with photography. Last year I made an experimental installation. I took all the pictures that I made during my last trip to Japan and projected them all in one sequence in a brutal speed of 60-70 images per second. I consciously didn’t leave anything out. It was around seven thousand pictures, some of them just random snapshots of room ceilings or flash tests. Literally everything I had. It was absolutely hypnotic to watch the “film”. The images weren’t planned as a stop-motion animation. They were all meant to be viewed as individual pictures. At the limited speed of perception of the human eye, by the time some pictures made an impression, they were already being overlapped by ten subsequent pictures.

PK: The duration of looking is related to the depth of the photography…

SM: I have to think of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up when you say that. The longer you look at the picture, the more you can interpret into it. Photography is like a document. That’s what makes it so interesting. A two-dimensional reflection of reality that took place. Photography is standing still. That makes it an object of investigation. The more you look, the more you will find.

PK: You can decide not to take a picture. Sometimes you leave your camera deliberately at home. How about deleting pictures?

SM: I never delete a picture! I can’t do it. I would rather buy another four Terabytes of external storage to keep also all my black underexposed photographs in RAW format. I was on the road with just one suitcase for nine years. I really have no problems getting rid of things I don’t need or which aren’t functioning any more. To the contrary. But when it comes to photographs, that’s different.

PK: What is so different about photography?

SM: Five years ago, I exhibited the RANDOM series in Tokyo for the first time. I went through 15 years of my photographs and I chose some pictures I liked in the moment when I reviewed them. I’m sure I would chose different pictures from the same archive today because my perspective has changed and will also change again in the future. Different time and different context allows us to see different images in the same photographs and also to discover new connections between them. I have so many blurred photographs or photographs that seem insignificant – with just a big toe on a beach or so – and I often ask myself if I should keep them or not. In the first moment, you might not be able to really see anything meaningful in the photograph, sometimes it’s just blurred or totally underexposed and black. But it could be that when we look at the picture for the 500th time, then we finally will find something we couldn’t see before.

It’s also a question of technology. Recently I read that it should be theoretically possible to reconstruct the sound of ancient spaces from the pottery found by archeologists. The bristles of the straws which formed a vase hundreds years ago also made grooves, and as the straws were vibrating, excited by the sounds around them, they must have recorded the sounds just like on a vinyl record. With appropriate technology, the grooves could be played like a gramophone, allowing us to hear the sounds of the original environment. I’m not sure if it’s really possible to extract these sounds, but the idea itself is immensely fascinating to me! I see it similarly with my black underexposed photographs. Maybe one day, we will have techniques which we cannot imagine today, which can extract a properly exposed picture from an underexposed RAW file. That’s why I still keep all my completely black pictures. Maybe there is something interesting on them that I just can not see yet.

So I’m sitting on the whole mountain of pictures and I have to step down at a certain point to find the people, because I have something to say to them. I don’t know exactly how many pictures I have by now. I guess around one million: 700,000 digital and 300,000 on negatives. And how many pictures do I need to tell a story? Three? Ten? A million? [Laughs.]

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Sebastian Mayer continues to work on his book until he believes that it’s finished. His photographs will be on exhibit in KM Galerie (Mehringplatz 8, Berlin) as a part of a group exhibition titled “Changing and Growing”. Opening on 17.06.2017.

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Credits

Interview & photo of Sebastian Mayer: Peter Koval

English editor: Elle Peril

Did you know that you can support Lineatura Magazine by buying the very original Lineatura notebooks? Get the same notebooks that all our interviewees use for their creative ideas and read more inspiring interviews in the future!

INTERVIEW MIT SEBASTIAN MAYER

Der Blick des Fotografen Sebastian Mayer geht unter die Haut. Seine Musikerporträts dürften Magazinlesern auf der ganzen Welt bekannt sein. Mein Interesse weckte er aber erst mit seiner RANDOM Serie. Das sind immer Zwei, als ob zufällig nebeneinander gestellte Fotografien, die sich anscheinend nichts zu sagen haben. Erst bei näherer Betrachtung entfaltet sich vor dem Auge des Betrachters zwischen den zwei Bildern ein Gespräch. Das Faszinierende daran ist, dass dieses Gespräch jedesmal, wenn man die Bilder betrachtet, anders verläuft.

Ich traf Sebastian Mayer in seiner Wohnung in Wedding, um mit ihm nicht nur über das Konzept der RANDOM Serie zu sprechen, sondern auch über seine persönlichen Umwege und über die Bedeutung von Zeit in seinem fotografischen Werk.

Sebastian Mayer. Foto: P.K.

Peter Koval: Was war dein schönster Umweg?

Sebastian Mayer: Nicht aus London nach Berlin zurückzufliegen, sondern nach Rio de Janeiro und dann neun Jahre unterwegs zu sein.

PK: Das ist ja fast eine Odyssee!

SM: [Lacht.] Ich würde mich nicht direkt mit Odysseus vergleichen.

PK: Wie war denn die Rückkehr?

SM: Ich hatte eine zeitlang das Gefühl, auf ein Echo meiner eigenen Vergangenheit zu stoßen. Ich lebte von Anfang der 1990er bis 2005 in Berlin. Das ist eine relativ lange Zeit. Ich mache viele Bilder auf der Strasse und so radikal hat sich die Stadt während der neun Jahre meiner Abwesenheit nun auch nicht verändert.

PK: War Tokio visuell ein so starker Kontrast zu Berlin?

SM: Tokio ist eine enorm dynamische Stadt. Es ist fast wie ein eigenständiger Organismus, der sich dauerhaft ändert. Du steigst nach drei Monaten aus einer U-Bahn Station aus, die du eigentlich gut kennst und plötzlich kennst du dich nicht mehr aus, weil der komplette Stadtteil um die Station herum abgerissen und neu hochgezogen wurde. Das macht Tokio für mich als Fotografen wesentlich interessanter als Berlin. Im vergleich dazu ist Berlin sehr starr. In Berlin baut man Häuser, die für die nächsten 300 Jahre oder sogar noch länger stehen sollen. In Tokio sind es vielleicht 30 Jahre. In Tokio sieht man jeden Tag etwas Neues, es gibt kaum Wiederholung und Monotonie im Stadtbild. Dadurch wirkt die Stadt wie ein Organismus – unglaublich faszinierend, aber auch monströs und gefährlich. Aber nicht etwa wegen der Gewalt auf den Straßen, sondern einfach wegen des ungeheuerlichen Ausmaßes, dem man als Einzelner ausgeliefert ist. Die Stadt droht einen zu verschlingen, man wird von ihr regelrecht einverleibt. Berlin war für mich immer eine Stadt des Betons, der Pflastersteine und des Wildwuchses. Tokio ist eher wie Quecksilber. Es ist wahnsinnig toll anzuschauen, alles glitzert, alles bewegt sich, nichts ist starr und alles ist Oberfläche. Aber wenn man dem Ganzen zu nahe kommt, wirkt es extrem toxisch.

PK: Fotografie hält einen Augenblick der Gegenwart fest. Das macht jede Betrachtung der Fotografie automatisch zum Rückblick. Du hast in der letzten Zeit viel mit deinem Archiv gearbeitet. Wie war es?

SM: Klar. In dem Moment, in dem man auf den Auslöser drückt, wird es sentimental. Wenn man zu viel über die Vergangenheit nachdenkt, kann es einen wahnsinnig machen. Susan Sontag hat nicht grundlos Fotografie als ein melancholisches Medium beschrieben. Wenn ich heute durch meine Bilder aus dem Jahr 2006 gehe, dann sind viele Situationen dabei, die mich persönlich betreffen. Wenn ich zu lange durch mein Archiv schaue, dann bewege ich mich bald nur noch in meiner eigenen Vergangenheit, dann verliere ich den Kontakt zum Jetzt. Man darf nicht zu tief ins Archiv sinken, sonst wird die Gefahr groß, dass man nur noch in einer fotografischen Kopie seiner eigenen Vergangenheit lebt, ohne das Jetzt noch wahrnehmen zu können. Es ist auch tatsächlich ziemlich narzisstisch, seine Nase nur in die eigene Vergangenheit zu stecken. Das ist noch ein weiteres Problem mit dem Wesen der Fotografie.

PK: Das eigene Fotoarchiv unterscheidet sich in dieser Hinsicht gar nicht so sehr von den vorauseilenden Selbstbildern auf den Selfies.

SM: In Peking oder Shanghai habe ich sehr oft Leute beobachtet, die ständig nur Selfies machen. Aber auch in Venedig sieht man häufig Menschen, die mit einem Selfiestick in der Hand durch die Stadt laufen, ohne was von ihr wirklich zu sehen. Während diese Touristen durch die Stadt gehen, sie sich also bewegen und nicht stehen, tragen manche ihre GoPro Kameras oder Smartphones am Selfiestick vor sich her wie eine Antenne – die Kamera von vorne zurück auf sie selbst gerichtet. Sie schauen die ganze Zeit nur in die Kamera, während der Bildschirm ihnen ebenfalls zugewandt ist und ihnen ihr eigenes Bild zurückspiegelt, wie sie gerade durch Venedig laufen. Die sind gar nicht mehr da, die schauen sich nur noch ihr eigenes Video-Spiegelbild an. Sie könnten theoretisch auch vor einer leeren Projektionswand laufen und die Bilder von Venedig oder auch von jedem beliebigen Ort könnten dann einfach im Nachhinein tricktechnisch in den Hintergrund kopiert werden. Das würde wahrscheinlich kaum einen Unterscheid machen. Für mich ist das verrückt, narzisstischer geht’s nicht mehr.

PK: Während deiner letzten Ausstellung wurde eine Fotografie breit rezipiert…

SM: Ach, die mit dem Hintern!

PK: Genau die meine ich. Je länger ich sie betrachte, desto klarer sehe ich, dass sie mir etwas vorenthält, dass ich etwas nicht sehe.

SM: Ja. Die Gesichtsausdrücke der Menschen sind nur an drei Gesichtern angedeutet. Man kann nur vermuten, was da gerade passiert. Die Fotografie lässt Vieles offen, aber dadurch wird sie erst interessant. Auf der anderen Seite ist es total pop und direkt: Ein nackter Hintern. Ich glaube, das Bild ist auch deswegen so breit rezipiert worden, weil es gleichzeitig sehr direkt ist, fast schon obszön, und trotzdem nicht alles zeigt, was man als Betrachter sehen möchte.

PK: Und wie macht man das als Fotograf? Wie zeigt man, dass man etwas nicht zeigt?

SM: Bei meinen Bildern geht es oft um die Lücke. Meine ganze RANDOM Serie basiert auf der Lücke zwischen den Bildern. Es geht nicht so sehr darum, was auf den Fotografien zu sehen ist, sondern vielmehr darum, was zwischen ihnen passiert. Das ist für mich manchmal sogar viel interessanter als unmittelbar mit den Bildern zu arbeiten. Aber auch wenn ich mit Einzelbildern arbeite, auch dann würde ich sagen, dass ein gutes Bild immer ein Geheimnis birgt – etwas, was man nicht sofort sehen oder begreifen kann. Es ist dieses Geheimnis, dieses Unerklärliche, das dafür sorgt, dass man sich ein Bild immer wieder anschauen kann und will. Es bleibt interessant, weil man eben nicht wirklich weiß, was los ist, weil man es nicht ganz und gar ergründen kann, weil es bis zu einem Teil unerklärlich bleibt.

Ich habe da ein Bild, ein Portrait von einem Freund, das ich auf der Strasse in Nakameguro Tokyo aufgenommen habe. Er steht da mit einem Regenschirm und schaut mit den Augen nach rechts aus dem Bild heraus, im Hintergrund laufen ein paar Menschen über die Strasse. Aus irgendeinem Grund übt das Bild eine magische Anziehungskraft auf mich aus. Das ist ein ganz einfaches Bild, aber ich komme davon nicht los. Je öfter ich es anschaue, desto mehr versuche ich zu ergründen, warum ich so zu diesem Bild hingezogen bin, warum es mich so stark fasziniert. Ich finde es aber nicht heraus, ich kann nicht sagen: Es sind die Linien, die Farben, sein Blick vielleicht oder die Bildkomposition. Ich finde es einfach nicht heraus. Genau dadurch bleibt es aber für mich interessant. Einige Bilder haben so eine Magie, das sind die Bilder, die auch beim tausendsten mal draufschauen immer noch angeschaut werden wollen und immer interessant bleiben.

PK: Woher kommen die Lücken?

SM: Das kann ich so nicht beantworten. Wenn ich die Kamera in der Hand halte, dann suche ich nicht nach den Lücken. Sie tauchen meist erst später, beim Betrachten der Bilder auf. Hier ist eine Fotografie, welche ich immer noch für eines meiner besten Portraits halte, und das obwohl ich es von einer Toilettenwand aus 5 cm Entfernung abfotografiert habe. Es ist ein kleiner Aufkleber, den jemand versucht hat abzureißen. Dadurch fehlt der Kontext.

Der Gesichtsausdruck dieses Menschen ist verzerrt, eine Hand ist nach oben gerissen, er wirkt wie im Fall oder als würde er gerade ohnmächtig werden oder als wäre er von irgendetwas getroffen. Dadurch, dass das Bild aber zur Hälfte weggerissen ist, sieht man eben nicht, was eigentlich los ist. Wird der Mann gerade erschossen? Ist er auf Drogen auf einem Rockkonzert und rastet gleich aus? Diese Bildinformation fehlt, man kann es nicht wissen. Der Riß hat aber gleichzeitig eine Form von Flügeln und das verleiht dem abgelichteten Mann etwas Engelhaftes. Das finde ich sehr interessant, weil sich dadurch eine Meta-Ebene öffnet. Aber das Bild war da und ich nahm es einfach mit. Ich fotografiere ohnehin viel aus Büchern und Zeitschriften oder von Werbetafeln ab. Mir ist es eigentlich egal, woher die Bilder kommen. Wenn ich sie abfotografiert habe, dann sind das auch meine Bilder. Das ist dann wohl Appropriation-Art; Prince lässt grüßen.

PK: Die RANDOM Serie ist aber anders konzipiert.

SM: Das sind immer zwei, als ob zufällig nebeneinander gestellte Fotografien, die bei näherer Betrachtung einen assoziativen Bezug erkennen lassen. Das kann entweder über Form oder über Inhalt passieren, aber manchmal “klicken” zwei Bilder auch einfach, ohne dass ich einen Grund finden kann, warum die Kombination funktioniert, warum da auf einmal eine Spannung entsteht. Die Einzelbilder selber sind dann gar nicht so wichtig, sondern allein die Tatsache der Nebeneinander- oder besser Gegenüberstellung. Zum Beispiel hier, eine Kombination mit demselben Bild über das wir vorhin geredet haben:

Auf einem Bild regnet es offensichtlich und auf dem anderen ist ein abgeschnittener Fischkopf, da gibt es keinen offensichtlichen Zusammenhang im Inhalt oder in der Form. Trotzdem passiert da etwas. Es ist, wie wenn man zwei Wörter zusammensteckt. Jedes Wort für sich kann schön und interessant sein, aber bereits zwei Wörter nebeneinander erzeugen eine Spannung, die weit über die Bedeutung der einzelnen Wörter hinaus wirkt. Eben diese poetische Spannung fasziniert mich. [Zündet sich eine Zigarette an.] Ich arbeite gern mit Sequenzen. Narrative und Zusammenhänge waren immer sehr wichtig für mich. Ich glaube, das liegt daran, dass ich als Comic-Zeichner angefangen habe.

PK: Erzähl mal!

SM: Während meiner ersten Jahre in Berlin saß ich nur am Zeichentisch. Ich konnte nicht wirklich mit den Menschen reden und litt anscheinend unter einer starken sozialen Phobie und Kommunikationsstörung. Ich weiß immer noch, wie ich, immer wenn ich Zigaretten im Café Westphal am Kollwitzplatz geholt habe, Herzklopfen bekommen habe, weil ich die Blicke der anwesenden Menschen im Lokal nicht ertragen konnte; sie haben mir furchtbare Angst gemacht. Wenn ich den Raum betrat dann fühlte ich mich von allen Seiten angestarrt, es war grausam. Ich musste aber durch das ganze Lokal gehen, weil der Zigarettenautomat auf der anderen Seite des Raumes stand. Also habe ich nur gezeichnet. Drei oder vier Jahre lang, mehrere Stunden täglich. Bei den Comics ging es mir damals allerdings nicht so sehr darum, eine Story zu erzählen, sondern vielmehr darum, Fragmente zu nehmen, zusammenzukleben und zu sehen, was passiert. So ein bisschen wie William Borroughs Cut Ups, auch wenn ich nicht mit Schere gearbeitet habe. Ich glaube sowieso, dass ich ziemlich von der Cut-Up-Idee beeinflusst bin, gerade auch bei den RANDOM-Arbeiten.

PK: Wie gehst du beim Fotografieren vor?

SM: Ganz einfach. Ich nehme meine Kamera und gehe los. Es gibt viele Fotografen, die zuerst einen Plan machen, die ein bestimmtes Bild, zum Beispiel von jemandem, den sie porträtieren wollen, im Kopf entwickeln. Sie denken viel darüber nach, wie sie die Person fotografieren wollen, wie sie auf dem Bild aussehen soll, oder welches Licht sie gern verwenden würden. Solche Fotografen werden dann beim Shooting oft sehr nervös. Weil eben irgendetwas nicht stimmt, oder weil sich die Person in das vorgestellte Bild nicht wirklich fügen will. Ich versuche es immer so offen wie möglich zu lassen. Gerade bei kurzen Terminen – wenn ich etwa Musiker für die Spex porträtiere –, da habe ich manchmal wirklich nur einige wenige Minuten, um ein Foto zu schießen. In solchen Situationen wird man nur schwer eine eigene Bildidee umsetzen können. Dann muss man sich am besten von der ersten Sekunde an auf die porträtierte Person einstellen und das nehmen, was man kriegt. Ich finde das auch ehrlicher und direkter. Ich habe nichts gegen “gestellte” oder “konzipierte” Fotos und ich bin tatsächlich auch sehr gut in der Umsetzung von geplanten Bildern, wenn ich für kommzerzielle Kunden arbeite. Aber bei meinen künstlerischen Arbeiten interessiert mich das meist nicht, da soll das alles so direkt und unmittelbar wirken wie möglich.

PK: Die Kamera ist ein Rahmen. Da passt nicht alles rein…

SM: Ja, du lässt Dinge weg. Durch die Ausschnittfindung schneidest du automatisch alles andere weg.

PK: Macht das nicht Fotografie manchmal zu einem ziemlich gewalttätigen Akt?

SM: Es kommt drauf an. Letztes Jahr habe ich als Experiment eine Installation gemacht. Ich habe alle Fotografien genommen, die ich während meiner letzten Reise in Japan aufgenommen habe und habe sie dann bei einem brutalen Tempo von 60-70 Bildern pro Sekunde hintereinander projiziert. Ich habe ganz bewußt nichts aussortiert. Es waren etwa sieben Tausend Fotografien, teilweise nur Schnappschüsse, irgendwelche Zimmerecken, Blitztests… Einfach alles. Es war absolut hypnotisch, dem "Film” zu folgen. Die Bilder habe ich ja nicht als Stop-Motion-Animation geplant, sondern wirklich nur auf Einzelaufnahmen geachtet. Bei einer Geschwindigkeit, die gerade so fassbar fürs Auge ist, blieb immer wieder ein ganz bestimmtes Bild scheinbar zufällig für einen ganz kurzen Moment im Kopf hängen, während es in der Zeit bereits von weiteren zehn Bildern überlagert wurde.

PK: Die Dauer der Betrachtung hängt mit der Tiefe der Fotografie zusammen…

SM: Dabei denke ich sofort an Michelangelo Antonionis Film Blow-Up. Je länger und je näher man hinschaut, desto mehr sieht man und desto mehr kann man auch hinein interpretieren. Eine Fotografie ist wie ein Dokument. Das macht sie ja richtig interessant. Ein zweidimensionales Abbild einer stattgefundenen Realität. Die Fotografie wird dadurch, dass sie still steht, erforschbar und betrachtbar. Je näher und länger du hinschaust, desto mehr findest du.

PK: Du kannst dich entscheiden, ein Foto nicht zu machen. Du lässt manchmal auch ganz bewußt die Kamera zu Hause liegen. Wie ist es mit dem Löschen?

SM: Ich lösche nichts! Nein. Ich kann es nicht. Dann hole ich mir lieber weitere vier Terrabyte Speicher, damit ich auch all die schwarzen unterbelichteten Bilder im RAW-Format behalten kann. Ich war neun Jahre lang nur mit einem Koffer unterwegs. Ich habe wirklich kein Problem damit, Sachen, die ich nicht unbedingt brauche oder die nicht mehr funktionieren, wegzuwerfen. Ganz im Gegenteil. Bei den Fotografien ist es anders.

PK: Was ist bei den Fotografien anders?

SM: Vor fünf Jahren habe ich die RANDOM Serie zum ersten mal in Tokio ausgestellt. Damals habe ich durch 15 Jahre meiner Fotos geschaut und habe bestimmte Bilder ausgewählt, die ich in dem Moment der Betrachtung gut fand. Ich würde heute aus demselben Archiv bestimmt ganz andere Bilder auswählen, denn meine Perspektive hat sich geändert und wird sich auch weiterhin ändern. Eine andere Zeit und ein anderer Kontext lassen uns in denselben Fotografien immer neue Bilder, immer neue Zusammenhänge entdecken. Es gibt ganz viele verwackelte und verschwommene Fotografien oder solche, auf denen man vielleicht nur seinen großen Zeh am Strand sieht und man sich schon fragt, ob man das Bild behalten will oder nicht. Man sieht da im ersten Moment nichts, alles ist unscharf oder einfach nur komplett schwarz und unterbelichtet. Es kann aber eben sein, dass man auf dem Bild, wenn man es zum fünfhundertsten mal betrachtet, doch etwas findet, was man zuvor nicht sah.

Es ist auch eine Frage der Technik. Neulich habe ich gelesen, dass es theoretisch möglich sein müsste, von alten gedrehten Tonvasen Klänge herauszufiltern, die von den Borsten der Halme, die vor hunderten von Jahren den Ton geformt haben, dort in den feuchten Ton geritzt wurden. Man könnte so den Klang des Ortes rekonstruieren, alleine anhand der winzigen Schwingungen der Halme im Ton. Das ist doch faszinierend! So ähnlich sehe ich das mit meinen schwarzen Fotos auch. Irgendwann wird es vielleicht Techniken geben, die wir uns heute noch gar nicht vorstellen können, die aus einer schwarzen unterbelichteten RAW-Datei ein ordentlich belichtetes Bild extrahieren können. Daher behalte ich auch meine ganzen komplett schwarzen Bilder. Vielleicht ist ja dann doch etwas Interessantes drauf.

Also sitze ich auf diesem riesigen Berg von Bildern und muss doch irgendwann heruntersteigen, um den Menschen zu finden, weil ich dem was zu sagen habe, weil ich damit etwas zu erzählen habe. Ich weiß nicht genau, wieviele hunderttausende Bilder es mittlerweile sind. Ich schätze ungefähr eine Million: 700 000 digital und 300 000 auf Negativ. Und wieviele Bilder braucht man, um eine Story zu erzählen? Drei? Zehn? Eine Million? [Lacht.]

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Sebastian Mayer arbeitet derzeit an einem Buch. Seine Fotografien können demnächst im Rahmen einer Gruppenausstellung unter dem Titel “Changing and Growing” in der KM Galerie (Mehringplatz 8, Berlin) betrachtet werden. Die Vernissage findet am 17.06.2017 statt.

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Interview & Foto von Sebstian Mayer: Peter Koval

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