#Sorry if the audio mixing sounds terrible

[dorian-gaye]

I made this thing over the course of the past week, 'cause why not? It's the spooky season and I missed writing weird little songs :3 Hope you enjoy it Posted 29th October, 2024

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Meteor Shower (Part 8)

If you want to get a sense of what Icy was going through you can open one youtube tab and type in ‘Screaming Dead - Night Creatures 12''(1983) side A’ and then open a second tab and copy & paste ‘[FULL ALBUM] f(x) - Electric Shock (2nd Mini Album) [HQ Audio + DLs]’ into the search bar. Hit play on both videos one after the other. Turn both up full blast (optional). You can also type in ‘Argument Ambience - Courtyard, Angry People, Yelling | ASMR’ for added torment. And that’s just about what Icy was enduring. You’re welcome or I’m sorry.

If she has to hear one more MeTor song, she is going to lose it. That ridiculous fairy won’t stop! And Stormy…that dull-minded dolt! Good music loses all of its appeal when it is warring for dominance with poppy drum machines. It ceases to have any appeal at all, instead becoming part of the chaos, part of the problem, one horrid mesh of clashing drums beats and vocal types that should never mix. Lyrics that don’t go together in the slightest and are terribly out of sync. A migraine inducing, ear bleeding mashup on par with low quality, old internet videos made by some pre-teen who dweeb dead in the middle of their ‘I’m so random phase’, who hadn’t been bullied enough.

Evidently this amalgamation is worse. 

Much worse. Between those warring lyrics that don’t go together whatsoever are shouts and grumbles; 

“Turn it down! This music is shit!” 

Stormy’s voice is beginning to take on the cadence of nails on a chalkboard.

“No you turn your music down! It’s depressing.” 

Stella’s voice has always had that effect. Doubly so with the MeTor girls providing her with backing vocals. 

“All of you shut the hell up!”

And Darcy isn’t helping at all. 

She is going to puncture her own eardrums. That would be more pleasant. Infinitely more pleasant. The urge to shout her own demand for all of them to shut up is overwhelming but she can’t allow herself to become part of the chaos. Her phone, however, has no qualms about adding its own noise. Suddenly she regrets having a song as her ringtone. 

Icy buries her face in her hands, massaging her throbbing temples with her thumbs. And her phone keeps ringing. Again and again and again and again…

It stops ringing and then it starts ringing all over again. 

And Darcy screams for Stormy and Stella to be quiet so she can concentrate on her spellwork. And Musa turns up the music because she can’t hear it over them. And Stormy turns up her music because she has to drown out the sunshine and perkiness. And Bloom is screeching at the top of her lungs just to be a complete menace. 

And Icy…

Icy is going insane. 

Absolutely batshit insane. 

Had she the sense or the peace of mind to do so, she would whip out that rule sheet and add a whole slew of new rules pertaining to music and aux cord privileges. All of which are about to be revoked. Evidently she is on the verge of making a ‘no music allowed unless it’s on stage’ rule. 

After giving her face a frustrated rub, Icy stands up and fetches herself a drink. Hard liquor, the kind that will hit quick. She kicks the door to their tour bus open and curses the universe for allowing the Winx tour bus to break down in the middle of the road as she steps out onto the rest stop sidewalk. 

She finds herself a picnic table in the shade and sits atop it with her legs spread and her feet resting on the bench. With  a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She wonders how long it’ll take for some busy body to come out and tell her that she can’t do that here with some dramatic gestures to the no smoking sign that she sits beneath. 

In her pocket, Icy feels her phone vibrate against her hip. Silencing it wasn’t good enough, she should have left the damn thing on the bus with the rest of the noise. She takes a long drag from her cigarette before putting it out on the tabletop. She answers her phone with a gruff, “what?”

“Afternood, Icy.” His voice is low and velvety, calm and even. And the sound of it drives her madder than any of the grating sounds that she has just escaped. “How is the tour going.”  He asks as though he hadn’t wanted damn near two weeks to call her.

“Oh it’s going fantastic.” She hisses. “Just fuckin’ perfect.”  So damn great that the Trix’s crowd is beginning to thin. So incredibly wonderful that there probably won’t be a witch in the crowd by the end of it. 

“You guys actually went through with it.” He comments. “Touring with the Winx.” He gives a low whistle. “I don’t think that the Wizards would have been brave enough to collaborate with the Specalists.”

Icy gives an indignant sniff, “ the Wizards weren’t even brave enough to tour with the Trix.” She tosses her bottle back and clunks it back onto the picnic table. “Embarrassing.” But no more than the shitshow that she is apparently running. 

She can’t say that she looks forward to preforming anymore. She isn’t exactly the sensitive sort, the type to be prone to ruminating on insults and mockery. She isn’t often ruffled by scrutinizing stares—she has been well and desensitized to all of that.But she swears that her witch audience is judging her for allowing this duo headline to happen. And it is starting to wear on her. Whittle away at what she had thought to be an impeccable sense of self-esteem. She has worked hard to craft this image for herself and now it is all falling apart. She could have just put on a longer show, just the Trix and no opener. She is so stupid. She should have thought of that earlier. A complete idiot. 

“You’re still mad at me.” 

“Two weeks. You haven’t called in two weeks.” 

“Because I knew that you were mad at me!” He accuses and not wrongly.

“Correct.” She confirms. 

“Well maybe I didn’t fancy getting yelled at.”

Icy rolls her eyes. “We’re several sentences in and I haven’t done it yet.” 

“But you’ve already insulted me at least twice. And you’ve got that tone.” 

“What tone, Darko!? What fucking tone!?” 

“You know the one.” He insists. “And you’re yelling at me now.”

“I know pixies that are less emotional and sensitive than you.” 

“Three times.”

“Three times?”

“You’ve insulted me three times now.” He pauses. “At least.” 

For the love of darkness! She should have just stayed on that bus and endured. Suddenly the sound of three songs playing over one another and the shouting seems quite soothing on the ears. “You’ve said something worth insulting three times now.”

“Ya know what?” Darko asks. “I’m done.” 

“Done?” She quirks a brow. 

“Done doing this.” 

“Then hang up the phone and call me back two weeks from now.” 

“I’m going to hang up the phone, Icy.” He replies. “But I’m not going to call you back. I don’t want you to call me again either.” 

She hears the phone click before she can get another word out. She curls her fingers more tightly around her phone, lest she chuck it clear across the rest stop. She picks up the bottle and finishes it off. By the time she sees fit to stumble her way back up the tour bus stairs, the drink has put a spin in her head. 

With any luck she’ll pass out relatively quickly, before the musical chaos can resume. 

Icy is not a particularly lucky person, the voices of Kyanite and Diamond follow her into the darkness. And she hears that horrid tangle of cutesy pop and dismal death rock in her dreamscape. 

It is the soundtrack to her suffering.

.oOo.

Why her? 

The question never seems to leave her mind these days. Everything she does is followed by that question. Why her? 

When she releases a new song. Why her?

When Valtor buys her a new dress to wear. Why her?

When she gets her paycheck and it is substantial. Why her?

When Valtor tells her that she is pretty—sexy even. Why her? 

She concludes that it is because she is easy—easy to manipulate and easy to exploit and he does so expertly. He tells her that it will be worth it in the end, that they just need to change one or two more things and then she will be perfect, and then she will be richer than she can imagine richer and well respected. A far cry for the loser in her high school yearbook photo. No one will be able to walk all over her ever again. 

No one but him. 

Today he has decided that her cheeks, the cheeks had only recently caressed and complimented are still too chubby for his liking, that the diets haven’t been working properly. He holds her head in his grasp and tilts it from side to side, humming and clicking in disapproval. “No, this won’t do at all.”

Kyanite’s stomach drops in unison with her head. 

“We’re trying to get rid of that innocent image of yours. That is terribly hard to accomplish when you still have this softness about you.” He pauses. “You have these doey eyes too. We might be able to fix that with makeup.”

“I don’t need surgery.” She mutters. She doesn’t want it either. 

Didn’t want it. The doubt is beginning to settle in. 

“It will only be this once.” He promises

“I can’t afford it.”

Valtor chuckles. “My treat, dear.” He pours himself a glass of white wine and stirs it so that the ice clicks and settles. “As usual.”

“What if it goes wrong?” She has seen pictures. Heard plenty of stories. Diamond’s friend…Kyanite shudders…Diamond’s poor friend. Those before and after photographs had haunted her for quite some time. Now and then it would be swapped out for one of the others that she and MeTor had browsed through as part of their vow to never cave to the pressure and get plastic surgery. They had all promised each other. A MeTor promise. 

She is no longer part of MeTor…

He waves her concerns away with a lazy hand gesture. “Then we’ll find someone who can do the job better and they’ll fix you right up.” He pauses for a sip. “But you won’t have to fret over that, my dear. I’ve booked you an appointment with the best.”

“You’ve already booked it!?” 

“Well we want you recovered before your next photoshoot. The sooner the better.”

“Right. Of course.” It is hard to choke the words out with such a large lump in her throat. She will be better after this, she tells herself. Valtor has only ever improved her. Has only ever lifted her to a higher point in life. And this is simply the next level. All of those photos showcasing swollen eyes and lumpy cheeks, they are the outliers. Uploaded for shock value and a means to deter girls like her. They don’t want to share their beauty. 

But Valtor wants her to be beautiful. 

And she wants to be beautiful. 

For him or for herself, she cannot tell…

And so she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She will get in the car and she will do it without complaint. Her hands are shaking and her stomach has skipped that gentle flutter, opting instead to feel downright queasy. But Kyanite is Valtor’s shooting star, his sun and moon. He wouldn’t open her up to something that would ruin her. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.

Aside from ruining her friendships. 

And her sense of self.

[dashboarddiaries]

Dashboard Diaries is a production of Atypical Artists, hosted by Lauren Shippen (@thelaurenshippen) and Cher McAnelly (@overchers). Our theme was composed by Lauren Shippen and mixed by Brandon Grugle. Art by Shae McMullin. Transcription by Laudable.

For bonus clips, ad-free episodes, and more, become a patron at atypicalartists.co/support.

Lauren: Hello, Dashers! Lauren Shippen here with a quick little comment about this episode before we jump into it. My computer had a complete and total meltdown in the course of recording ... or attempting to record ... this episode. I eventually got things working again but there will be times in this episode where my audio sounds truly terrible. I’m really sorry about that. But it shouldn’t affect the wonderful experience of listening to Gretchen McCulloch talk about Tumblr linguistics. It’s a really, really fun episode. A great interview with Gretchen. So, I hope you guys enjoy ... and sorry for the technical difficulties.

[intro music]

Lauren: Hello, Enthusiasts! I’m Lauren Shippen, professional writer, who absolutely has brought Tumblr-speak into her real spoken life. 

Cher: And I’m Cher McAnelly, Head of Entertainment at Tumblr. And student at Tumblr University.

Lauren: And this is Dashboard Diaries, a podcast for you – the folks who are in this internet bunker with us. We talk about what’s going on in our favorite hell site, get into what we like to call “tumbl-lore,” do fandom deep dives, and share the times when we’ve gone feral over a new ship.

And we have a really, really fun guest for you all later. But first, let’s do some Dashboard Confessionals. 

[guitar riff]

Cher, what do you have from the archives for us this month?

Cher: So, I have two posts, both of which I feel very much tie in with the topic of the episode today. So, I couldn’t decide between the two. Both of which I re-blogged in July 2015. So, the first one is from user:  officalcrow. It’s a text post that says “To my doctor after getting laser eye surgery: So, how do I shoot them?” 

Lauren: (laughs) That’s very good. 

Cher: The next one is very, very relevant I think to this episode. It is a screenshot of a YouTube video that says, “New computer terms:” and then it lists out “Avatar #trolling and meme.” And it’s from user: literallysame. Which I think, yeah, ties in really well with the focus of our episode today. What do you have for us today, Lauren?

Lauren: So, I have a post from, let’s see, 2014 from user: digitaltits. The post is a little bit like ... the one that I’m going to re-blog  the post formatting is a little bit messed up because it’s such an old post and the original poster has since deleted the post I think. So, anyway ... but it says, “Mood. *white kid from ‘90s TV show on bed throwing baseball up in the air and catching it while staring at the ceiling*” And that’s just such a specific mood. And I know exactly what this user is talking about. And I totally feel that mood often. 

Cher: As do I. It really captures the essence of the moment. (laughs)

Lauren: It really does. It’s amazing what language can do.

Cher: We love language!

[game show trill]

Lauren: So, this month we have a very, very special guest with us. We have Gretchen McColloch who is the host of the Lingthusiasm Podcast and Internet Linguist, and author of, “Because Internet.” Which I think has to be my favorite book about the internet that I’ve ever read. Thank you so much for joining us, Gretchen!

Gretchen: Thank you so much for having me!

Lauren: What is an internet linguist and how on earth did you get into that as a profession?

Gretchen: So, I spend a lot of time on the internet. (laughs) And also I think like many linguists I can’t really turn that linguist part of my brain off. So, if I am at a party or just talking to someone I’m always sort of analyzing bits about how they talk. And by the end of this podcast I’m going to have a whole report for you. 

Lauren: Oh no! 

(laughter) 

Gretchen: Nothing but good things, I promise. So, spending a lot of time online also means that I wanted to know more about how people were using language online. I also think of myself as an internet linguist as in a linguist FOR internet people. Because I started my blog, which is called All Things Linguistic on Tumblr back in 2012, during the first era of when Tumblr was cool. And I started it when I was in grad school for linguistics and I was feeling myself sort of inching further and further out of that ivory tower and also feeling like I wanted to retain that sense of connection that I’d felt with linguistics when I was discovering it as a high school student and reading pop linguistic books and feeling like this really had this very direct applicability to my everyday life.

So, doing pop linguistics or linguistics communication or internet linguistics is also a way for me of retaining that connection and being a linguist FOR the people of the internet or OF the people of the internet in addition to doing it on the language that’s found online.

Lauren: I love that. So, you started this blog on Tumblr. Was that the first time you sort of got on Tumblr was to make that blog? Or did you have some familiarity with the platform previously?

Gretchen: (laughs) You know what? No one has ever asked me that question and it’s such a good question! 

Lauren: Oh my gosh! 

Gretchen: It was NOT my first time on Tumblr. (laughs)

Cher: Ooh! What brought you to Tumblr?

Gretchen: So, do you remember the era of ... there was the “what should we call me” Tumblr era where it was ... a lot of it was very student-y. You know? “When I’m late for class ...” and then there’d be a gif. And then there would be all these sort of extra single serving Tumblrs that I think of like single topic Tumblrs that would be about a specific thing. And then there were all these different versions of those. And there were all of these advice animal Tumblrs that would be like a specific domain. 

So, the first Tumblr that I was involved with was some other linguistics undergraduate students and I collaborated ... Philosoraptor was probably the best known but there was like Philosophy this and History major that or whatever. And so we decided that the mascot for linguistics needed to be the Lingcod.

Lauren: Oh my god! I remember this blog!

Gretchen: Wait!? You saw the Linguistics Lingcod back in the day? That was us! 

Lauren: That’s amazing. 

Cher: Oh my god.

Lauren: Oh my COD.

Gretchen: Oh my cod! Exactly. So, we found this truly horrendous picture of a fish. This is not a pretty fish. It’s got these big teeth and it’s got this sort of open jaw. (laughs) We found this truly horrendous picture of a lingcod. And we made some captions for it and we made this single serving Tumblr. I bet Linguistics Lingcod is probably still there. Someone has probably forgotten the login. I don’t know if I actually ...

Cher: I can get you back in.

Gretchen: (laughter)

Cher: I have that power. 

Gretchen: Oh my god! (laughs) There were other linguist advice animal memes that were more popular than us. 

Lauren: Oh my god. Really?

Gretchen: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. We were a bunch of Canadian undergrad students. And so Linguist Lioness was also around for a little bit. But the really popular was one Linguistics Llama. 

Cher: Oh my gosh.

Lauren: I do remember Linguistics Llama, too, actually. YES. 

Gretchen: Linguistics Llama. We’ve been in the same [inaudible 00:07:18] of the internet for a long time, Lauren. I just have that feeling.

Lauren: Obviously. 

Cher: Oh my gosh.

Gretchen: And Linguistics Llama was not by me or my friends. And it had one of those backgrounds with the spiral colors and it had a scarf which was very classy of it. And I did ultimately ... I don’t know if IRL but I definitely exchanged Tumblr DM’s with the guy who ran the Linguistics Llama account who was an undergrad at NYU or somewhere like that. And so I had been aware of Tumblr for a couple of years before that from the meme perspective. 

Lauren: That’s fantastic! 

Cher: I love the concept of a single serving Tumblr. Or how each post is its own serving, snack, bite or whatever it is ... bite sized post. 

Gretchen: And you still see these sort of themed Tumblrs, especially these days a lot of Tumblrs ... There’s the Tumblr that makes a calligraphy version of the post.

Lauren: Yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Gretchen: Or there’s the haiku bot Tumblr that re-blogs posts that have accidentally a haiku in them. These days a lot of those single serving Tumblrs are a bit more interactive. But you still see ones that are like, “I’m just posting things on one topic” and have this very narrowly constrained post type and they’ll pick a type of post. That was partly why I picked the name All Things Linguistic because I was like I want this to be very clear that this is a linguistics Tumblr. And that I’m going to post about not one specific area of linguistics, that’s what the word “all” means. (laughs)

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: (laughs) But that it’s sort of all around that. I didn’t really realize despite ... so, I knew about these single serving Tumblrs and the linguistic advice animals. But I didn’t really know that there were people who were hanging out in the linguistics tag on Tumblr until I got on there and I saw people re-blogging my post and them tagging it “linguistics” and seeing some of the other posts on there. So, then I was like, “Oh, there’s a whole community here that I could be a part of. It’s not just sort of randomly whatever is going on.” But yeah, I picked Tumblr because I knew how the interface worked from the back in the day Linguistics Lingcod. 

Lauren: That’s amazing. I love that you’ve always been doing linguistics on Tumblr. That that’s sort of always been your relationship to it. And we like to think of Tumblr as this very niche unique place in terms of how we talk to each other and the memes that we have and sort of the internal language we have. In all of the online spaces that you’ve been in do you feel like Tumblr does have sort of a unique language unto itself?

Gretchen: I remember a couple of years ago on Twitter, maybe 2018, 2019, there were all of these Twitter memes that were coming up. And I was like, I saw these on Tumblr eight years ago! (laughter) 

Cher: Yep.

Gretchen: There was that period where it was like, oh, okay, so the Twitter people have discovered Spiders George. That’s cool. 

Cher: [crosstalk 00:10:17] 

Gretchen: I was just about to make the same reference! “Do not cite the dark magic to me which I was there when it happened!” 

(laughter) 

Cher: Exactly. 

Lauren: That shared language really is such a huge part of the Tumblr experience. 

Gretchen: That’s the thing. You have this sort of shared vocabulary. A couple of things that I think are really interesting about Tumblr is that, one, is the half life of posts is so much incredibly longer. 

Lauren: Yeah! Oh, interesting. 

Gretchen: And the half life of a tweet – especially when I first joined Twitter which was actually also in 2012 but a little bit later in 2012. It was like six months later. Which felt like an eon because i was like, “I understand internet platforms now. I’m going to join all of them.” But the half life of tweets when I joined was maybe like an hour or two. And then Twitter started putting their thumb on the algorithm a little bit more and the half life of a tweet became more like six hours or twelve hours of if this tweet gets so legs it’s going to keep going and keep giving you notifications a day or two in. But the half life of a post on Tumblr. I mean, first of all, even a post that’s not very popular that’s only liked by a few of your friends or your mutual’s kind of thing is still like 12 hours. Because people catch up on their whole dash. 

Cher: [crosstalk 00:11:28]

Gretchen: I was gonna say. Do you have stats on this?

Cher: I do! I have a fun metric. About 1/3 of engagement on Tumblr posts happens 30+ days after posting. 

Gretchen: Yeah! Yeah! 

Lauren: That’s wild.

Gretchen: I totally buy it. Especially if you just make a post that’s a little update for your mutual’s or something it’s probably not going to have a ton of engagement later but any sort of post that gets a re-blog or two – it just lasts so much longer. I’ve had posts that I made this post five years ago but it’s still going around.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Cher: It’s always funny to go by on your dashboard that you posted years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah! 

Lauren: That happens to me sometimes on my ... I’ve got a public facing Tumblr and then my real Tumblr  and every now and then on my real Tumblr dash I’ll see my own post from my public facing Tumblr from eight months ago kind of cross my dash. And that’s always such  a strange moment. Especially since I think that Tumblr users are very good at digging up really old stuff somehow and then all of a sudden circulating a post a year after the fact. And I think that this can mean that certain things become sort of baffling popular. I kind of wanted to get your perspective on this, Gretchen – around why certain memes or ... I think the word “blorbo” especially is a great example of this ... why certain words catch on when others don’t. What makes something sort of become part of the permanent lexicon versus something that just gets passed around for a couple of months?

Gretchen: Yeah. I think there’s sort of two parts to that. One is this question of why do posts last so much longer? And the fact that posts last so much longer is a contributor to Tumblr having more of a culture because if you missed it the first time around you have so many more opportunities to see it. Whereas sometimes on a faster moving social network – I’m thinking of sort of the Twitter family of networks. So, Twitter, Blue Sky, Mastodon, all of those ones that are sort of very short text post based. You can show up after six hours and Bean Dad has happened and you’re like, “What!? I’ve missed all of this!?” Whereas on Tumblr things don’t show up on your dash quite as quickly. But [crosstalk 00:13:45] a lot longer. 

I think that’s partly related to the queue feature. The queue feature is really a driver of that. Because people put posts in their queues and then they resurface a week later, a month later, three months later, six months later and partly that person still looks like they’re active and maybe some of the posts they’re making are live. But also they can resurface their post that they saw six months ago and it shows up on your dash now and maybe you decide to re-blog it or you decide to put it in your queue and this extends the half life yet again.

Lauren: That makes a lot of sense.

Gretchen: Other platforms really don’t have that ... on something like Word Press ... Which Word Press is fine. I use Word Press for my professional website. And I can schedule posts there. But what I can’t do is automatically put them in this sort of system that’s going to doll them out without me having to think about it. I have to say, “This post goes up next Tuesday at 2PM.” I can’t say, “Just put it up at some point in the future, whenever you run out of other stuff to put up.” 

Lauren: Yeah. I love and use the queue feature. I haven’t really thought about it in that way before.

Cher: And I love how Tumblr users will often tag their queued posts. And they have all these fun little puns. “This one’s for queue,” or whatever it is and they post those ... there’s a whole queue tag ... I don’t know ... subgenre. 

Gretchen: Or like, “You’re a queue-tie” or something like that. Yeah. 

Cher: Exactly!

Gretchen: The queue is a big factor for that. But also the scheduling thing. Because some posts get tied to specific days and times. So, Julius Caesar Ides of March stuff going up around the Ides of March or like the September song, 21st of September, do you remember? This type of stuff. Stuff that gets tied to a specific day, people see it the day after and they go, oh, damn, I missed the window to put it up. I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to schedule this for this day next year. 

Lauren: Yes!

Gretchen: Because I’ve done that! 

Lauren: Me too!

Gretchen: I missed my window! Okay, I’ll just schedule it for next year with this idea that I’m still going to be here, people are still going to see it next year. Putting it into the future that way because it’s a way of participating in the culture. And also the idea of have I re-blogged this post a few years ago,  yep, maybe sure, I don’t care, I’m re-blogging it again because I’m seeing it.

Cher: Yep. Neil banging out the tunes, April 13th. 

Gretchen: Yes. Yeah.

Lauren: Right. All of these real holidays and all of these holidays that Tumblr has made up, or even days of the week memes! You know? Every fandom sort of has it. Whatever Wednesday. Yeah, that keeps a specific kind of culture alive. 

Gretchen: That part keeps it sort of going. I think the tags on Tumblr also contribute sometimes to posts getting revived again after a longer period. Because when you’re browsing for tags ... let’s say you just got into a show for the first time and you’re like, “Oh, what have other people posted? I want to re-post some gifs.” So, you go into the tag for that show and you filter for gifs and you start re-blogging them. And some of those people may have put those gifs up years ago. Depending on when the show came out. But you’re re-blogging them now because you’re browsing via tags and looking for stuff to put on your blog. That’s a kind of behavior that you don’t see ... there are other platforms that have tags but Instagram has hash tags and people browse with them but they have a very impoverished post sharing ability. You can really only do it in your story and then it disappears after 24 hours and so you don’t get anything like a re-blog culture. 

Twitter has a re-tweet culture and all the sort of Twitter family of networks. I’m on Blue Sky these days, baby. (laughs) And they have a re-tweet culture but they don’t have this “I’m gonna go find this and re-tweet all these tweets that are super old,” because they feature the timestamp very prominently on the tweet and so this idea of if you’re re-tweeting something that’s a week old it’s like, “Well, where were you?” Tumblr doesn’t feature timestamps very prominently anywhere on the posts. And so every post exists in this sort of eternal present.

Lauren: I hadn’t thought about the prominence of the timestamp being such a driving feature. But you’re totally right. I think that I’ll definitely get into a TV show from ten years ago and I’ll go and re-blog a bunch of gif sets from ten years ago because that’s when the fandom was most active. And I think that’s what Tumblr is for, right, is keeping those communities alive perpetually. 

Gretchen: Tumblr is also unique as far as internet platforms go because in the early days of the internet this was a very normal thing to do – to try and meet people online based around a common interest. But this is much less common in the present day internet and really since the internet became mainstream. And sort of when only a few people were online you had to figure out a way to try to get to know people online. Because your friends and your neighbors and your family aren’t going to be online so you have to figure out how you’re going to meet people. And that was often very interest based, like Use Net is all based on interest groups. 

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: But then when the internet became more mainstream you have things like Facebook which are all based on your contacts that you know IRL. Maybe you get to know people through a Facebook group or something but by and large Facebook is designed to connect you with people you already know. That’s this very sort of mainstream  style of internet behavior. Twitter has sort of got this combination of things where in some cases people you already know but in many cases it’s people who are like part of maybe a professional community or an interest type of community – but in a very loose sense. Right? So, it will be people who are romance authors are a big group on Twitter or people in tech in various ways are a big group on Twitter. Or like Linguist Twitter was a corner of Twitter that’s somewhat decimated now, which had overlap with other academic areas and this type of thing.

So, you sort of had a nebulous interest group but it was hard to find them because people weren’t necessarily using a tag to organize that. You just had to sort of start with some people and then go through their follower list and following list. Tumblr also doesn’t surface who you follow or who follows you automatically. You can do it optionally. I’ve always turned it off. And you can’t see how many followers someone has. And so you can’t follow a social graph to find people to follow. You have to look at tags or who people are re-blogging. Those are sort of your only options to find other people on Tumblr. 

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, in terms of how that drives language and shifts and how people are speaking online, I think in my head I’m imagining if I am on Facebook and I’m mostly interacting with the people from my real life or I’m on Twitter and I’m mostly interacting with podcasters or writers, then I am mostly engaging with people who are quite similar to me whereas on Tumblr I’m engaging with all kinds of people. And does that drive language faster or more differently if you are sort of engaging with a bunch of different types of people versus the people sort of more insularly in your circle?

Gretchen: I am so delighted you asked. There have been studies on this! (laughs) 

Lauren: Ooh!

Gretchen: A lot of the work on this has happened through Twitter because Twitter has an API that’s really good for downloading this type of data. There have been a few masters thesises about Tumblr linguistics which are very cool. And their authors are people who just use Tumblr and collect some data. But if you want to study Tumblr you have to do a sort of participant ethnography. You can’t just download a fire hose of a whole bunch of posts because that capacity doesn’t exist on a technical level. You could use the API to download one person’s Tumblr blog but what would be the point of that?

Lauren: Right. 

(laughter)

Gretchen: Whereas on Twitter, back before they killed this, but you could hook up to the whole fire hose and you could make a whole social network graph of who is following who and so you could get a sense of approximately who was seeing what. So, a lot of the internet language research has been done on Twitter not because everyone is on Twitter because very much everyone is not. But because it’s this very convenient sample that has this very convenient way of analyzing it. 

So, this particular study that I’m thinking of finds that the way we adopt new words is this balance between strong ties and weak ties. Social theory – strong ties are people where you have a lot of acquaintances in common, friends and acquaintances in common. You know a lot of people in common very densely imbedded in your social network. And in many cases people spend more time with their strong ties because that’s how they get introduced to your other friends, right? So, a lot of people’s partner is a strong tie, or their best friend is a strong tie, because that person also knows a bunch of your friends because you probably introduce them to each other or you met as part of a friend group. And so you have all these friends in common.

And then your weak ties are people that you don’t have any or very many friends in common with. And so you’re maybe likely to see them less often but not necessarily. So, let’s say a barista at your favorite coffee shop who maybe you go there twice a week and you see them regularly, more often than some of your friends maybe, but you don’t actually have any friends in common with that barista. 

So, weak ties are a really important source of new information to a social network. Studies have shown that you are more likely to get a job through a weak tie. 

Lauren: Interesting!

Gretchen: Because your friends already know everything you know. Basically. Whereas your weak ties, especially a weak tie who is sometimes a friend of a friend – your friends may not have a job that they could give you but they might know someone who has a job they could give you or like your acquaintance may know someone. And you have a much larger circle of acquaintances than you do close friends just because that’s how time works. (laughs)

So, there’s a very interesting study that I cited because internet, I can’t remember the author but if anyone wants to go look up the citation you can do that, that did a sort of network model analysis of what if you had a social network that was all strong ties? So, this is your sort of classic sitcom style social network where everybody is friends with everybody else. Or you have a really tiny town and everybody in the town knows everybody. There’s 100 people on this island and they all have known each other for their entire lives.

And in this situation, the language situation rapidly becomes very stable. There isn’t a lot of change in the language situation because where is that change coming from? We’ve all been talking to each other our entire lives. Someone would have to invent a new form spontaneously which is less likely than someone just picking something up from somewhere else and transmitting it.

Conversely, a network that’s all weak ties ... so you can think of something like an airport where nobody really knows each other. You’re just chatting with the person next to you in line and you never really become friends after that. Nothing ever becomes predominant in a community because there’s no reinforcement mechanism for anything. Everyone is just talking differently from each other but there’s no way for really anything to really spread. 

What they’ve found is that most social networks have a mix of strong and weak ties. And a weak tie is more likely to introduce a new linguistic form you haven’t encountered yet. Because they have a different social network to you. Largely. But you’re more likely to start using and picking up a form if someone who is one of your strong ties uses it. 

Cher: Have you noticed any difference in kind of communication, like the linguistic use or slang use or whatever it might be, on Tumblr within different communities that you might be a part of on Tumblr? 

Gretchen: One of the things that I think about from this is that like Facebook has sort of more strong ties than weak ties. And I feel like it is less linguistically innovative than Twitter is, or than Twitter used to be back in its heyday. Because Twitter had a lot more sources of new information, people you didn’t already know IRL. And so there were way more sources of new stuff.

For Tumblr, I’m trying to think about ... I feel like there’s less of an ability to get a gestalt of the entire site because your own personal network experience is so specific. Sometimes I see ... there was a past that went around a little while ago that was this, “I cannot stand these parodies of modern major  [inaudible 00:26:42] original.” And this post was getting like 10K notes in its first 24 hours. Three different people who are on my dash who I’m pretty sure didn’t know each other had all re-blogged it separately from different people. And I then went and checked the timestamp and I was like, oh, this post is 24 hours old and it’s just spreading everywhere.

I think people don’t have necessarily the same hesitation around, “I’m going to re-share this even though it’s already been in my feed,” because then the person that I re-blogged it from will just treat that as a compliment and not treat it as, “well, that’s kind of boring.” On Twitter I tend to not re-tweet a tweet if it’s too popular because then I’m like, “Yeah, that’s boring, that’s yesterday’s news.” That’s been done, everyone has seen this already.

Whereas on Tumblr a post has 100K notes and I’m like, yeah, sure I’m still re-blogging it, this was quality.

Cher: And you can re-blog as many things, I mean, up to our post limit, as you want and still your followers would be excited to have you re-blogging or re-posting 250 things in a day.  Versus being like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a lot.”

Gretchen: Yeah. So, there’s a couple interesting mechanisms around re-blogging. It’s very common to re-blog without commentary or re-blog with just a few bits in the tags on Tumblr. And then if your tags are witty enough or incisive enough someone else might promote them and you passed peer review. 

Cher: Yes. 

Lauren: Yep! 

Gretchen: And so this is a mechanism of saying which things ... fewer posts get circulated more on Tumblr. They get circulated more and for longer. So, this is another side of the Tumblr has a more cohesive culture because you’re more likely to have seen the same post as other people because they circulate so much. And I remember when I first joined Twitter it was very rare to see a tweet that had more than 100 re-tweets. Now they’ve been putting their thumb on the algorithm more, you do see these very popular tweets. But at the time it was already very common to see Tumblr posts with five digits or six digits of notes. That’s always been a part of Tumblr culture I think.

Cher: Why do you think the Tumblr community gravitates towards captioning or talking in the tags versus in the caption section? It’s one of my favorite things about the platform and the way users engage but it’s always interested me how that sort of came about. 

Gretchen: The commentary that I’ve seen and I sort of agree with this is that because ... Tumblr’s re-blog culture preserves the entire chain. So, if you say something in the tags then if somebody wants to re-blog the post from you they can just say their own things in the tags and they don’t have to preserve what you’ve said. If you say something in the comment field then if someone wants to re-blog the post from you they’ve got to preserve your comments. And sometimes I’ve seen a post that has three really interesting comments and then someone said something kind of boring and I will go back up that chain and re-blog the version without their boring addition, even if their boring addition was my friend.

Lauren: Same!

Cher: Yep. 

Gretchen: So, if you’re worried that someone is going to be like, oh, I’ll have to go back up the re-blog chain and re-blog this post without your boring addition, you’re like, I’m just going to put this in the tags, that’s polite. That’s sort of discreet. And tags are also a way of talking primarily to your followers because if someone re-blogs that post from you they’re not going to see it. Their followers aren’t going to see it. So, it’s a way of having a sort of private, or not quite private, but like a more intimate level of conversation at the same time as you’re participating in this sort of almost site-wide culture of these bigger posts that have lots of stuff on them – you can sort of do that in the replies. 

I also think that an underrated technological affordance of these tags is that Tumblr tags support spaces. Because Tumblr has a tags field and if you tag a post on Twitter or Instagram you have to write your hash tags without spaces. I’m saying hash tags on this platform but on Tumblr they’re tags. You have to write them without spaces. So, this puts a natural limit on how many tags and how long of tags you can write because no one wants to read this seven words all smooshed together with no spaces. That’s kind of obnoxious. Whereas with Tumblr tags you’ve got spaces in it so you can just read it like a normal thing. And also that tags on re-blogs aren’t searchable except for like if you’re indexing a post on your own blog. So, you can tag something that has your queue tag and then you can find your own queue tag. But otherwise they don’t become searchable and so the tags ... they’re sort of useless on a practical level which means you can write commentary in them because they’re not actually trying to do something practical. 

And it’s kind of obnoxious SEO behavior to put too many tags in your post on Twitter or Instagram where they are readily searchable. Because you can’t actually search tags on Tumblr, at least not in a re-blog very well, it’s like, well yeah, this is a space for commentary instead. There’s also a fannish culture because Tumblr is very fannish of using tags for commentary on archive of our own on AO3. 

Lauren: That’s such a good point!

Gretchen: AO3 tags have this mixture of commentary tag and functional tag that Tumblr tags also have. And so I would wager that most people on Tumblr know what archive of our own is. Whereas on sites like Twitter or Instagram some people do, depending on your subculture, but it’s less of a direct influence probably. 

Lauren: Do you think that’s something that AO3 took from Tumblr, because a lot of those users overlap, that that’s why that happened on AO3? 

Gretchen: I think a lot of them overlap but I think the directionality may be in the other direction. 

Lauren: Interesting! 

Gretchen: Because ... so, archive of our own was founded in I wanna say 2005. 

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. It definitely was sort of as fanfic.net was ... they sort of crossed paths a little bit. 

Gretchen: Yeah, ‘cause an analogy that I really like making is that AO3 is actually very similar in size to the English Wikipedia ... in terms of like how long its existed and how many bytes of words are on both. They are very similar in size. 

Lauren: That’s nuts! (laughs) 

Gretchen: And in terms of this sort of skewed long tail ratio of how many people write on them versus how many people read on them, I think also quite similar. 

Lauren: Yeah! Right, a small percentage of people are contributing of the people who are reading. Yeah.

Gretchen: I actually wrote an article for Wired a number of years ago when AO3 was winning the Hugo about how we should be ... because a lot of tech ink has been spilled about here’s how great Wikipedia is and here’s what we all could be learning about it. And not nearly as much has been spilled about here’s how great AO3 is and here’s what we could be learning about it. Even though they have very similar sorts of pedigrees. And I wrote a piece for wired that was like, “Here’s why AO3 is so neat,” and interviewed a couple of the tag wranglers to talk about AO3’s tagging system and how it works in the backend with a lot of volunteer labor to make it useable for users. 

Yeah, I just think that AO3’s tagging system and it had this sort of tag wrangling open field you can do your commentary tags and you can also do your sorting tags in the same field. This was influenced by fannish practice on earlier social platforms. I wasn’t really on Live Journal but a lot of people were on Live Journal. If somebody knows more about Live Journal’s tagging practice I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an influence there. Also on other fan fic sites for sure.

Lauren: Yeah. The tagging on AO3 is so interesting too because you’ve got your functional tags like Tumblr has, too, where you’re putting it to the people find it in a particular search or to categorize your own profile or whatever. And then there’s the commentary tags and then AO3 has this weird in-between space that I don’t see on Tumblr as much which is fandom specific tags that sort of begin as commentary and then become actual sortable tags. Like “such and such character is an idiot,” or whatever. These things that sort of become fanon and therefore sort of get adopted sort of by the tag wranglers. 

Gretchen: Like “dead dove do not eat” kind of thing.

Lauren: Right. Exactly! Yeah. Which is something I first encountered on Tumblr in the way it was used. Which is interesting ... 

Gretchen: I think there’s some extent to which people do this on their personal Tumblrs. I’m thinking of all these sort of fun creative queue tags which may have started out as like, “Oh, I’m just doing this sort of joke,” and then sometimes they carry on. My tag for internet language on All Things Linguistic is still “Language on the interwebs,” because I tagged a post that in 2012 and then I was like, I guess this is what I’m using for this tag now. I have to go back and check because it’s like did I spell interwebs with an “s” or a zed? I have to check every time. Because I was just joking! But I’m still doing this!? 

(laughter)

Lauren: That’s awesome. 

Gretchen: There’s over 100 posts in that tag because there’s so many things.

Lauren: Is it an “s” or a “z?” 

Gretchen: Look, I don’t know. I’d have to check! I think it’s an “s.” But I have actually tagged several ... some posts I’ve tagged with both because I couldn’t remember. So, if you click on one and you’re like, “there’s not any posts in here,” just click on the other one and see if you’ll get more. 

Lauren: I totally have ... my playlist tag I always just tag “playlist” and “playlists,” because I can never remember which one it is that I used. 

Cher: Sometimes I’ll be typing what I think is an original sentence as a tag and it will auto complete for me as ... someone has also typed out this similarly chaotic or unhinged sentence at some point. 

Lauren: The great Tumblr hive mind. 

Gretchen: I’ve always wanted to do a study of Tumblr tags. Cher, if there’s way you can hook us up with this data maybe this is a possibility, because it’s so hard to do data on anything in Tumblr. But also maybe Tumblr users would find this creepy so maybe we should just never do this. There was a meme that was going around ... I haven’t seen it in the last five years or so but there was this style of post that was going around for a while that would list five words and it would be “type these words into your tag field and fill in your tag that auto completes from them.” 

Lauren: Yes! 

Gretchen: So, it would be a list of colors or something ... when you tag something green what was that tag? 

Lauren: Yes, I love those posts because it always brings up stuff that you completely forgot about, about your own blog. You know?

Gretchen: And I always thought that if there was a way of scraping all the tags from a post, a post like that would be a really interesting one to do this weird cross section of tags on Tumblr. It would be a biased sample but it would be biased in a very different way compared to using the tags that are searchable tags. 

Cher: And we can absolutely hook you up with that data, Gretchen. So, just let me know what info you want, what data you want, and we can [crosstalk 00:37:38]. 

Gretchen: Where were you when I was writing!? Because [crosstalk 00:37:43]

Lauren: You need to make another book!

Cher: Yeah, I’m here for the sequel, Gretchen. I’ve got you. [crosstalk 00:37:53]

Gretchen: I was joking for a while that my next book would be called “Despite Internet,” which is how I wrote a book despite all the distractions online. 

Cher: Oh my gosh. YES. 

Lauren: I love that. What a great idea!

Gretchen: If I ever write a memoir ... (laughs)

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. I know that we are coming to the end of our time here. So, as a final fun question – do you have a favorite Tumblr linguistic quirk or meme or something that just has brought you a lot of joy on Tumblr as a linguist?

Gretchen: Oh man, how do I choose? They’re all my children! (laughs) 

Cher: You can pick a few. 

Lauren: Yes. Top three.

Gretchen: I’ve got this whole book that I wrote! (laughs) So, I’m going to pick a classic. I relaly like the style of what I have called stylized verbal incoherence mirroring emotional incoherence. 

Lauren: Ooh!

Cher: Beatifully put.

Gretchen: (laughs)

Cher: Put very coherently.

Gretchen: And the point is that it’s stylized and so you are actually doing it on purpose, it’s not just sort of random key smash type things. But the Tumblr minimalist style, which as far as I can tell was initially most popular on Tumblr of lowercasing things, not using a lot of punctuation, using maybe line breaks only or periods as a way of breaking things up but not using a whole bunch of other punctuation. There’s this classic Tumblr post that’s like, “Tumblr, language is so smooth, it’s like a jungle river, with no periods, nothing stops here.” I’m not memorizing it that well and I haven’t seen it go around my dash that much in recent years. But there was a while when I was seeing it every week. 

Lauren: I know exactly what post you’re talking about.

Cher: Yeah.

Gretchen: We can dig this up and re-blog it, right? 

Lauren: For sure.

Gretchen: What I loved about it was the meta commentary on the reflection about a style that already existed that other people were doing that was also doing this self referentially and that people were spreading it. One of the reasons why Tumblr becomes this source of linguistic innovation is that Tumblr users love commenting about their own linguistic innovation. And then spreading those posts that comment on it. So, you see all these posts that will be like, “Oh yeah, I’m doing this.” And this swift like a jungle river post got posted, re-blogged so many times. And so even if you weren’t seeing that style initially, you would see the post that was commenting about it and go maybe this is something that I might want to do. This is something that other people seem to recognize and I think that the re-blog culture and the number of notes gives these observations a sense of sort of authenticity or gravitas or just this sense that they’ve passed peer review. 

Other Tumblr users also think that this is the case because they’ve re-posted it. Because they re-blogged it. And if someone was making an observation about Tumblr culture or Tumblr language that wasn’t especially trenchant it just sort of sinks and vanishes without a trace. It’s these ones that get tens and hundreds of thousands of notes where people are like,  yeah, I agree with this, I cosign this, I believe this. And I think that’s why stuff spreads because Tumblr users like that meta commentary and the ones that feel real keep getting passed around. 

Lauren: Absolutely. I think that’s a perfect bow to put on the whole conversation. Gretchen, thank you so much for coming to talk to us about this. If people want to follow you online and learn more about this stuff – where can they find you?

Gretchen: Thank you so much for having me. I am at GretchenMcCulloch.com – my podcast is Lingthusiasm. It’s also @lingthusiasm on Tumblr. My Tumblr is @allthingslinguistic and my book about internet language is called “Because Internet.” 

[gentle music]

Cher: What has you in your feels this week, Lauren?

Lauren: So, I have two quick in my feels things. The first is My Lady Jane on Amazon Prime, which is a new TV show. And without saying too much about it, because I sort of went in not really knowing anything and was really delighted, it just reminds me of the peak CW shows from the late 2000s when it was still the WB into sort of the mid 20-teens. Just everything about it feels like a CW show from 2013 and I really  have been missing that on my television. So, that’s been bringing me  lots of joy. 

And then my daily podcast that I’ve been doing for the past year, Breaker Whiskey, is coming to a close tomorrow as of this recording, by the time this episode comes out it will have been ... the first year will have been over for a week. There’s been some really fun posts on Tumblr about it. About people getting excited for the finale. About people reacting to teh things that are happening. And it’s a very small group of people but it’s just always amazing when there is any Tumblr fandom at all for anything I make. And so that has been making me very, very happy this last week.

What about you, Cher? What’s got you in your feels?

Cher: I am having a lot of emotions, Lauren, about House of the Dragon. Do you watch?

Lauren: I don’t.

Cher: In my opinion, everyone especially the dragons should live forever. And that’s just what I’m going to say about it.

Lauren: Okay. Got you. [inaudible 00:43:12]

Cher: That is very much not the topic of the show. (laughs) The show is about how the dragons went extinct and they’re starting to show us and as it turns out I don’t want to know, Lauren!

Lauren: Oh no!

Cher: The dragons are all baby girls. They’re all poor little meow-meows. And they should be protected at all costs. 

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Shippen, and you can find me at TheLaurenShippen.Tumblr.com.

Cher: And I’m Cher McAnelly and you can find me at OverChers.Tumblr.com. 

Cher: This has been Dashboard Diaries. And ... 

[outtro music]

Lauren: May your anons always be loving.

Cher: Your dash always refreshed.

Lauren: Your gifs always be loading.

Cher: And your ships always canon.

Lauren: May the fics you’re reading always be finished.

Cher: And the answers you seek always in the re-blogs.

Lauren: Thanks for scrolling with us!

Every Tumblr user knows that we Tumblrinas use language a little differently. We're not like other social media users. We're weird. We're weirdos. And this month, we have actual linguist Gretchen McCulloch (@allthingslinguistic) on to talk about it!! Plus: House of the Dragon dragon-related feelings and throwing a ball in the air as you lay on your bed like a 90s teen character.

Credits and transcript in our reblog. You can find transcripts for this, and every other episode, here.

Find the posts discussed in this episode in this tag!

[superstitious-hyperrealist]

i tried to watch the sandman show today and it was so dark it literally gave me a headache. didn’t production teams learn from game of thrones? i love neil gaiman’s stories and writing but that was just *one* of the things that i was really disappointed by. out of curiosity, once i felt better i checked out house of the dragon and holy FUCK the quality difference is remarkable. i was hooked quite literally instantly. it’s such a drastic difference between the quality of the shows it just really highlights the importance of good editing, and good set+costume design

[lightning-macrine]

Fuck it, OFMD E-sports/gamer/streamer AU + Valorant headcanons (ft. The rest of the Revenge crew):

Ed is a popular streamer under the user “BlackbeardX0” who is most known for his Valorant streams. He duos with Izzy (username “BasilicaHandsX0” – yes he made it so he was matching with Ed), who isn’t a streamer but has a lot of fans within Ed’s Twitch community because basically everyone but Ed can see that Izzy is absolutely smitten with him and wanna see how that trainwreck ends.

Louis is a big fan of Ed’s streams and in the midst of the divorce™️, Stede starts watching them with him to try and connect more with him. He instantly falls in love with Ed and gets the wild idea to reach out and sponsor him and fund his professional ESports team with his vast fortune, despite having NO idea what actually goes on in any of the games.

Izzy is skeptical (duh, who wouldn’t be?) but Ed is so fascinated by Stede’s email that he agrees to meet him for a quote on quote “business meeting”. They hit it off and so The Revengers (yes I’m mixing up OFMD and Thor: Ragnarok together it just works okay??) are born.

Stede and Izzy fall in hate at first sight but Ed needs Izzy on the team because half his amazing strats and moves all rely on Izzy being able to do his thing as support/healer so Stede has no choice but to let him join. However, because of Izzy’s overall attitude (read: toxic af) they don’t actually have other people who play with them regularly enough to join the team immediately (there’s Jack aka. “CalicoJackA$$” but he’s a bit of a wildcard and gets banned allll the time) so Stede has to venture out and find people to fill the roster. This is where the rest of the Revenge crew come in.

He finds Oluwande and Jim, a pair of up and coming Valorant streamers to join the permanent roster, and they recommend Roach who mostly does cooking streams but is also a top OP crutch player and so they have their full roster. On the bench they have Buttons, Wee John, Ivan, and Fang.

On the promotional/social media/technical side of the team they have Lucius (graphics and socials), Frenchie (sound and IT), Black Pete (editing and IT), and the Swede (HR).

Without further ado, (some, not all) my Revenge Crew Valorant headcanons:

Ed:

Yoru main

Loves a good fuckery using the teleports and fake teleports

A clutch god

Relies a lot on Izzy to heal/rez him when he tries new strats and set-ups

Usually proposes which site to push and what strat to use

Forgets to comm sometimes but when he does they’re pretty good

Izzy:

Sage main

A shameless pocket for Ed if he demands it (which is a lot of the time)

Not afraid to scream at his duelists (never Ed though) if they aren’t clearing site or protecting him during plant

Can clutch up every now and then, won’t be happy about it though

The epitome of the “a single mom who works two jobs” audio

Can be really toxic on comms or chat, has been penalised/banned several times because of this. He does not care. Will do it again.

Overall good comms, but he always sounds angry when he does

Jim:

Omen main

A sneaky bitch

WILL knife you from behind when you least expect it

A GOD at flanking and playing for picks

Will hold angles/be a rat if provoked enough

Actually knows how to use Omen’s teleport

Sometimes forgets to use their smoke (Olu has to remind them)

Proud owner of the RGX butterfly knife

Is a bit of a slow starter so tends to get underestimated a lot but once they know your movements you’re toast

Only comms after they’ve died

Oluwande:

KAY/O main

The perfect all-rounder, amazing comms and game sense

King of Assists

Can sometimes get distracted by Jim but overall it works out most of the time

Can switch to Brimstone if extra smokes are needed

Roach:

Chamber main

OP crutch

A one-tap demon

Will destroy enemy team morale with a cig hanging out the side of his mouth

Not the best team player, will bait you and is not sorry for it (he might apologise if he loses after baiting you, which is very rarely)

Trolls in All chat a lot

Terrible comms, he doesn’t know the name of anything

Will get straight up toxic if up against another Chamber

Buttons:

Cypher main

Knows something we don’t

Is actually…really good, infuriatingly good

Knows all the wildest set-ups for trips and camera

Has the weirdest comms though

Can clutch up every now and then (the moon needs to be in the right phase)

[edens-grdn]

Rating my tics cause thats a thing ppl do 👍

Gets long, i'm rating all the ones that are recurrent enough for me to remember off the top of my head-

Neck jerk: 3/10. Not that bad but it can hurt p bad- Overall a gross experience 👍

Rolling my neck: 2/10. That thing ppl do to pop/crack their neck by rolling it. Easy to play off, though it usually hurts and makes my other motor tics worse-

Head Bang: 1/10. Jerking my head forwards or backwards. Isn't always bad?? def worse than neck jerk though. I usually end up banging my head on shit-

Shaking my head: 9/10, like the way my hair moves, but it tends to make me kinda dizzy-

Eye tics: 7/10?. I don't like them but theyre the most tame and don't really annoy me besides my eyes twitching/blinking

Winking 0/10. Rated this separately cause i hate it. Makes people think i'm winking at them, im not i swear-

Hand jerks: 5/10. Neutral, idk. Doesn't bother me, subtle.

Hand clenches: 4/10. Neutral?, usually happens along with the hand jerks, which can be kinda annoying bc sometimes I hit myself-

Hitting my chest: 0/10. Painful, lowkey winds me and makes me wheeze for a bit

Middle finger 👍: 0/10. Have flipped off my cat one too many times. I always feel really bad after-

Full body shiver: 7/10. Kinda annoying? but not bad, not v obvious, people usually just think im really cold-

Full body jerks: 0/10. Annoying, obvious, tend to happen when i'm sitting or laying down, so i usually hit myself on something-

Paralysis Tics: -100/10. Tend to get my neck stuck in really painful positions, make me dizzy for some reason-

Clapping: 4/10. Usually hurts but not that bad

Hitting my wrists together: 5/10. Neutral, usually doesn't hurt. Kinda annoying

Raising my hands to my head: 0/10. very uncomfortable. Its basically my hands jerking up to hit my head but stopping right before i hit myself. Sometimes I end up hitting myself. Not fun.

Shrinking into myself: 0/10. I like- shrink into myself and cover my head with my fists, very uncomfortable, have hurt myself doing it, embarrassing

Slamming my hand down: 0/10. Hurts like all hell, literally me just slamming my hand down on whatever surface is closest. This includes myself and walls. Usually accompanied by my "home home" tic

Punching ppl-: -100/10. Literally me hitting people, have hit my friends on multiple occasions.

clicking my tongue: 7/10. Don't mind it, though people get annoyed quick

Pop sound: 5/10. Neutral/No opinion. Doesn't happen alot, and its usually p quiet

Cough tic: 0/10. People think i'm sick.

"woop": 7/10?. Sounds like a hiccup mixed with a "woo", can be really annoying but is usually p tame. Ppl don't tend to question it

"woohoo": 5/10. Not bad?, doesn't bother me, just a simple "woohoo", but ppl usually get annoyed and tell me to stop which is not v swag-

"Wow!: 7/10. I like the way I say it, though it tends to be loud and interrupt people

"Meow": 1/10. Hate it. Hate meowing. Absolute shit when i'm in public. V embarrassing. Not as loud though so not terrible

"Mrow": 0/10. Fucking Karl Jacobs "Mrow". Hate it, embarrassing, its very loud-

"Nya":0/10. Fucking hate it, very annoying, always accompanied by a fucking motor tic that i cant describe but its the one that goes with the dumb "arigato, nya" audio on tiktok-

"Euck": 5/10. Neutral, kinda funny. Picked it up from my friend

"WHERES MY SON??": 10/10. From Nemo. Fucking hilarious

"HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY SON?": 10/10. Again, from Nemo. A bit awkward bc of how loud it gets but my friends always laugh so its cool

"Fuck you": 0/10. Its really loud and I always feel really bad afterwards-

"Shit": 1/10. Not as bad as the previous but its still p annoying

"Fuck your mom": 2/10. Still annoying and loud but kinda funny

"Sorry": 4/10. Neutral? Not bad, usually happens after the cussing tics tho-

"Home Home": 6/10. Kinda funny, got it from Mr. Soot (Wilbur), though usually accompanied by slamming my hand down which hurts-

"Fucking Bananas!": 8/10. Funny, don't mind it, again, from Mr. Soot, though its gotten me in trouble before lmao

Making this weird "tck" sound, I do it normally when calling my cat-: 7/10, not bad, I like the sound

"Tweet": 0/10. Usually happens repetitively for awhile until another tic breaks it up, makes me lose breath

"DRUGS": 6/10. Kinda funny, really awkward when i'm around adults-

"CANNIBALISM": 8/10. Funny, always makes my friends laugh.

"Pog": 10/10. Don't have a reason to dislike it, use the word all the time anyways

"Pardon Me": 5/10. Usually end up interrupting people, but I do it with a british accent so it sounds nice-

"Check please!": 5/10. Neutral, can be funny or awkward, depends on the situation

"No!": 4/10. Awkward, has gotten me in trouble, but it can get p funny so

"Yes Please!": 5/10. No opinion. Doesn't happen often

[hanoella]

Affettuoso- With Feeling (Part 3)

Pairing: Bucky x Pianist!Reader

Set after the events of TFATWS: In an effort to start over and make a home in Louisiana, Bucky meets a friend of Sam’s who ends up being his landlord. With only a driveway to separate them, he finds that he’s not the only one looking for a fresh start.

Series tags/warnings: Slow Burn, Eventual Bucky x Reader, Mentions of Domestic Abuse, Canon Level Violence

Part 3 Word Count: 3k

A/N: Can you tell I don't really have a posting schedule? lol. I also introduced links to the specific pieces I had in mind. I'm using soundcloud because I don't think everyone has access to spotify. Trying to be reader friendly! This can be read with or without the audio, as I do my best to still convey the thought in the fic. Though if you can, I highly recommend :)

Thanks again for all your support! Every heart and comment motivates me and is just so wonderful

Read Part 1; Masterlist

---

A few days had passed since the night that Bucky had overheard your troubles. It had been quiet since, and you hadn’t left the house. The curtains were opened during the day and closed at night, the only telltale signs that you existed.

Doesn’t she have to work? Bucky thought to himself. He speculated all the different possibilities as he used the riding mower around the property. Maybe you were an heiress? You seemed pretty down to earth though. Or maybe you sold a patented idea for a ton of money. All this land had to have been expensive. And to not request actual money from him?

He eyed up the width of the gate for your fence. The riding mower couldn’t fit so he would have to use a push mower for your fenced off yard. He hadn’t seen one in the garage. Maybe the old shed at the back of your yard had one? Bucky parked the mower in the garage, taking a moment to make a mental list of everything. Depending on if he found anything in the shed, he might need to buy a few basic tools and a chainsaw for that fallen tree.

He walked out of the garage and over to the shed. The leaves were changing color and it brought a whole new atmosphere to the secluded forest area. Opening the gate of the weathered white fence, he looked around to see if you were out. No signs of life. Entering the yard and closing the gate behind him, he started walking to the back. Halfway through, he stopped at the fire pit. The grey stone blocks were starting to crumble, with a few of the bricks having fallen off. It would probably be really nice if he got a little bit of cement mix and filled in the gaps. Bucky made another mental note.

The shed had no padlock so he was able to open it with no problem. Amongst the cobwebs and bags of soil, was an older green push mower that looked like it might work. He gave the gas a pull and got no response back. Looking underneath, Bucky saw what might be the problem. He’d have to take a closer look later. Putting the lawn mower back onto its wheels, he pushed it across the yard, pausing when he saw movement though the glass doors of the back patio.

Craning his neck to avoid the glare, he saw you sitting at your fancy full keyboard. The way the piano was against the opposite wall, your back was to him. You had big over-ear headphones plugged into it, so he couldn’t hear the sound but he saw the flurry of keys being pressed down. Whatever you were playing, you played passionately. Hands and arms gracefully moved despite the speed at which they were moving. Enhanced hearing coming into play, he heard the muffled clicks of the fluttering keys. Suddenly, you pressed down forcefully, holding whatever chord you had struck as your shoulders gently relaxed. A deep breath. Arm creating a graceful arc as if you had studied ballet, you pressed gently on another chord. And another. Bucky counted three more times you did this before you let your hands gently fall from the keys to your lap. Several moments passed before slid the headphones off of your ears to sit wrapped around your neck. Another deep breath. This time as the breath escaped you, you stayed slouched, head tilting up to stare at nothing on the wall.

A buzz broke Bucky from his trance.

“Call me, new mission” The text from Sam on his home screen said.

He pocketed his phone, glancing through the glass one more time. There you still sat.

Unmoving.

---

The roar of the plane’s engine was just loud enough to drown out Bucky’s thoughts without being annoying. If it weren’t for the adrenaline of the recovery mission under the cover of nightfall, he probably would’ve been lulled to sleep. Beside him sat Sam, looking on his phone for the exact coordinates of the politician they had been sent to rescue.

“Here it is. I’m assuming there’s some sort of underground base since there are no heat signatures anywhere within the radius where he was taken. It should take us about ten more minutes before we’re directly over it.”

Bucky hummed in acknowledgement.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Earth to Bucky.”

“What does your friend do?” Bucky asked suddenly, sitting up straighter and turning towards him.

“… What?”

“What does she do? I’ve never seen her leave the house. Is she okay?”

“If you’re asking why she doesn’t leave the house, it’s because her contract doesn’t start for a while. She’s technically still supposed to be in physical therapy but she hasn’t found a place yet. You know, your whole routine gets messed up when you move.”

“For her shoulder?”

Now it was Sam’s turn to look at Bucky, trying to decipher the motive behind these questions. Bucky shifted his weight in the chair, antsy under the scrutiny.

“Never mind, I-”

“Yes, for her shoulder.” Sam said, cutting him off. He stopped himself from asking why Bucky wanted to know. There was an awkward pause before Bucky explained himself.

“I just wanted to know. I’m not used to seeing people so…”

“Similar to yourself?”

“I was gonna say isolated but fair point.” Bucky admitted. Sam leaned back in his chair, looking straight forward.

“She’s been through a lot… I know you heard some of it.”

Bucky blinked in surprise.

“I realized the window was open when I could hear you drive off.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s alright, it’s good that you know.” Sam said as he held up his hand to cut Bucky off.

“She’s just trying to get a fresh start. She’s in a raw emotional space and in the meantime is a little skittish. Just like someone else I know.” Sam jabbed his elbow into Bucky’s side as he enunciated the last sentence.

“Okay, okay, I get it. I’m trying!” He shouted as he held one hand up defensively and using the other to block the second jab Sam was trying to get in. Sam chuckled and then stood up, grabbing a parachute pack and tossing it at Bucky, who caught it without even looking.

“Figured you might wanna try an actual chute this time.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and mouthed Sam’s words mockingly with a grimace as he put the backpack on. Clipping it into place, he joined Sam at the side door of the plane.

“She used to play in an orchestra you know.” Sam said wistfully. “The piano. That’s actually how we met. She had volunteered to play a small concert before the dinner. It really helped raise a lot of money for the VA.”

Bucky stayed silent, prompting him to continue.

“Then that bastard she was engaged to beat her and then shoved her down a set of concrete steps when she tried to leave him. It was like a month after we all came back. She was in the hospital for a while. Broken ribs, broken shoulder, and a nasty concussion to boot. Neighbor saw the whole thing and called the cops but the courts were so backed up and the case fell through the cracks. Wouldn’t leave her alone after he got out. So, I pulled some strings and helped her move down here on the fly.”

“… That’s terrible.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say or how to react. They stood in silence, taking a moment to pay a respect of sorts to the trials you have been through. Then Sam broke the silence.

“She just needs time to heal in more ways than one. But she’s strong. Resilient.”

Putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, he squeezed it lightly with reassurance.

“Reminds me of someone else I know.” Sam said, finishing the conversation and pulling his goggles over his eyes, giving Bucky the opportunity to take the compliment without feeling too on the spot.

Pulling the door open, Sam shouted over the wind.

“Ready?”

Bucky nodded. Sam jumped from the plane and deployed the wings, the shield shining in the moonlight. Bucky jumped right behind him, using the glint of the silver star to guide his descent as he followed the man that gave the shield its meaning.

---

You laid with your head down on the kitchen table, letting the last golden rays of sun warm the side of your face. You were exhausted from going to physical therapy, especially since today had been the first appointment. All the measurements, all the exercises, all the stretching.

All the questions.

“So, how did you break your shoulder?” the young blonde physical therapist asked.

“Ah, I… fell down some stairs.” You said, looking down at your hands in your lap.

She didn’t look up from the papers, instead just raising an eyebrow.

“You also cracked some ribs and had a concussion?”

“… They were concrete.”

She looked up from the papers at you, analyzing. Her gaze softened and she asked no further questions on how these serious injuries had been obtained.

“Let’s look at your range of motion.”

You had practically stumbled into the house, kicking off your sneakers and plopping down at the kitchen table. Minutes passed by as you regained your breath, heartbeat steadying. The house was slightly cold since you had turned the heat down this morning. As your sweat cooled, you wrapped your arms around your legs in an attempt to keep you warm without getting up.

The sun feels so warm… You thought to yourself drowsily, feeling slightly less lonely. The sun was a cheap substitute for the warmth of a partner…

---

You jolted upright, the kitchen dark and cold. Neck and shoulder stiff from the awkward position you had dozed off in. Feeling the dryness of your mouth, you got up, stretching your neck gently while you walked to the fridge to get water. Chugging about half the bottle, you squinted at the clock. You had been asleep for about forty-five minutes. Groaning, you put the bottle down on the counter and walked into the living room to close the curtains. Grabbing one in each hand, you went to pull them together when you hesitated, noticing that Bucky’s apartment was dark for the third day in a row. The sleek motorbike that was usually parked under the slight overhang of the garage was missing as well.

He was probably on a mission, right? Not that it was any of your business. You shut the curtains and turned off the lights before lightly padded down the hall, stopping to adjust the thermostat. The heat kicked on, sending a puff of cold air your way. You shivered as you walked with a quickened pace to your room, shutting the door and heading into the master bathroom, turning the hot water on with just a tad of cold.

Waiting for the shower to warm up, you leaned over the sink and looked into the mirror. Dark circles under your eyes. Small scar on the bridge of your nose. Running your hand through the roots of your hair, you felt for the scar where the stitches had been. When was the last time you had a haircut? Or put on some makeup?

Some higher being must’ve felt pity for you since the steam from the shower fogged the glass, preventing you from tearing yourself apart any further. Stepping underneath the warm stream, you let the warmth seep into your muscles, then bones, filling every fracture and break with a temporary sense of wholeness until the emptiness of your heart and home caused it slowly to drip out until it, along with you, was gone.

---

The next morning, you weren’t motivated to do anything. You lounged around the house, sipping on coffee and browsing on your phone for furniture, clothes, even sneaking a peak at some pianos. Wanting to invest in one you’d use for the next several decades, you had put off buying one until the money from your contract with the orchestra started in a month. You were still well off, nowhere near struggling and probably wouldn’t ever be unless you decided to buy a mansion (which was a no). You just wanted to be careful.

In the afternoon, you popped a pain killer and muscle relaxer in preparation for the few hours you wanted to practice. Thirty minutes went by and the ever-present ache in your shoulder calmed enough to let you practice with relative peace. Sitting on the bench in front of the keyboard, you pondered what you might play to warm up.

Hmm, maybe a Chopin prelude? Short, emotional, familiar.

Your left hand held the soft deep chords as your right hand softly flitted around the higher notes. Breathing in and out with the music, you tried to ignore the ache that start to surround your shoulder.

Playing the last few notes, you paused before reaching over to the bottle of painkillers.

---

Shortly after finishing up, you dragged a small table outside next to the wooden bench swing that was hanging on the porch. Bundled up in a soft sweatshirt, long-sleeve shirt, wool lined leggings, fuzzy socks and slippers, you brought out your hot tea, several blankets, a pillow, and a book you had been meaning to read for months. You were determined to do something besides practice, watch TV, and scroll on your phone.

You settled onto the bench, wrapping the blanket around you, nice and toasty from the layers trapping in the heat of a thorough practice session. The extra medication had really helped keep the pain at bay. Tentatively sipping the steaming cup, you closed your eyes to further appreciate the sweet tones of peach and honey. Setting the cup in your lap with one hand, you used your other hand to flip open to the first page.

---

Bucky hadn’t expected the mission to get so complicated. Finding the base was one thing, navigating in and out of the expansive maze was another. It took a few days to successfully get the target out and back to the embassy. He hadn’t properly slept during that time due to taking shifts with Sam. Not that it was any different from how he slept at home.

The sun was letting its last few rays bless the earth when he turned onto the driveway. Taking it easy on the gravel, he eased his posture and slowed the bike. He put pressure on the brakes as he made it past the final wall of trees that hid the water that was reflecting the last bit of color left in the sky. Rolling casually into a stop, he parked and let out a deep breath, shoulders sinking.

A stray bird calling out turned his attention in the direction of your house. The porch light was on. That’s new, he thought. Squinting his eyes, he saw a bundle on the porch swing. Was that you? Quietly walking over while taking his leather gloves off, he confirmed his suspicions. There you were, lying on your side propped up by a large fuzzy pillow. Eyes closed and breathing rhythmically. Scanning the scene, he noticed the mug on the side table, empty except for the used teabag. Your book was closed, the page you were on marked by one of your fingers. You must’ve fallen asleep while reading.

“Hey…” Bucky said gently. No response besides a small nose scrunch.

He repeated himself a little louder, squatting to be at eye level while gently setting his hand on your arm and shaking you lightly. You groaned this time, eyes fluttering open, taking a moment to focus. You squinted and pushed yourself up into a sitting position, losing your place in the book and attempting to blink the heavy drowsiness from your eyes.

“Bucky?” You questioned hoarsely as you met his eyes. He was still crouching so you were looking slightly down at him. Brow furrowed, you searched the blue of his eyes before looking around to see how dark it had gotten. As you turned your head back to him, he stood back up, scratching the back of his neck just to occupy his hands.

“It’s starting to get cold. I didn’t want you to spend the rest of the night out here.” He explained, choosing to look out at the water, now dark. When he turned his head back, you had also turned your head to look at the water, exposing the side of your neck, the tendons and clavicle accentuated by the strain. Bucky swallowed and your eyes met his, oblivious.

“Ah, thank you. I must’ve fallen asleep reading. I just started going back to physical therapy so I’ve just been so wiped… Anyway,” you said, dismissing yourself mid-thought. He didn’t want to hear about all that. “…did you just come back from a mission?” You eyed the diagonal cuts of leather on his jacket, noting the missing sleeve that exposed the glint of the metal.

“Yeah. I was gone for a few days.”

“Okay. I’m glad you’re home safe.” You mindlessly said, picking up the book and other various items strewn about.

Home safe. What an unfamiliar phrase.

As the words echoed in his mind, you had opened the door and stepped in, turning your head slightly to look back at him.

“Thanks again… Good night.”

“Good night.” Bucky replied, watching as you shut the door softly behind you.

Slowly walking down the porch steps, he crossed the driveway to the garage. Turning his head just in time to see the last light turn off in your house, he stood with his hand on the knob, meditating on the effect that one short sentence had on him.

Glad you’re home safe. Was this what it was like when you had someone waiting on you at home? The tired eyes and gentle smile. Would that be what it was like when he came home in the middle of a night from a mission when he had someone to share a bed with? Gently shaking them to let them know he was home? Or would he try to sneak into bed without waking them? He tried to imagine what that sort of intimacy would be like as he entered his apartment and then his room. Unzipping his jacket and tossing it over a chair, he stripped down to his boxer briefs and climbed into bed, wondering what it would be like if it was already warm.

[killian-whump]

Game Night! [Liveblog #4]

I’m gonna try to finish up the last game and the end of the video in this post, so we better get right to it!

The last game they’re going to play is called Quiplash. Okay, they’re going to be given a prompt... and whoever finishes the quip in the funniest way wins. Kat warns that she’s a master at this and that everybody’s going down. Colin seems impressed by her bravado, but incensed to win nonetheless. “Here we go,” says Sam unenthusiastically 😂

AND THE GAME IS ON!!!

...or it’s meant to be on. Sam’s not joined the game yet. Seems to be having some sort of technical difficulty. “You scared of losing, Sam?” Colin asks helpfully. “All the rest of us got in pretty easy...”

Sam has joined. His name is now Colonislosin 😂 It’s hard to see exactly how it’s spelled. I don’t think any of them can see it that clearly, either. Sam has to tell them what it says.

“We’ll see,” Colin says. “We’ll see.”

The game begins. “It’s more like Col-on is losin,” Sam says. “Col-on.”

The audio is breaking all up in this segment, and Josh even comments on “Low internet signal. We’re doing great.” Hmm. I paid $10 for this, you damn well better find a stronger internet signal.

ROUND 1! The first quip is: We can all agree that... The two answers are: “Covid sucks” and “Josh... is... hairy” “Covid sucks” wins ~ and Colin gets all the points.

The second quip is: A terrible name for a funeral parlor. The two answers are: “Happy Times Palace” and “We put the Fun in Funeral” “We put the Fun in Funeral” wins ~ and Kat gets all the points.

The third quip is: “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” The two answers are: “Me DUH” and “Get the fuck away from my door” “Get the fuck away” wins and Josh gets most of the points. Colin gets some too, I think, for his answer, because Sam voted for it.

The fourth quip is: “Something that would make a creepy replacement for the horses on a merry-go-round.” The two answers are: “Mini Josh’s” and “Creepy Princes” AREN’T THOSE THE SAME THING?! 😂 “One and the same,” says Sammy. “You don’t want to sit on a mini Josh, do you?” Sam ponders. Josh forgets to even vote, and Sam gets points for “Mini Josh’s”

At the end of Round 1, Sam is in the lead, with Kat and Colin tied for second.

I wanna take this moment to apologize for how BORING this post is so far. During the games, all five people (the three stars, Josh, and Sammy the producer) are in these miniscule windows on the far right of the screen. You can barely even see them. And during this game, there’s little to no conversation going on between/during the quips. As much fun as this game might be to play, it’s not a lot of fun to watch. The last one was better, but even that tended to DRAG for the audience at home. Josh really needs to work on the games he’s having stars play if he plans to keep charging $10 a month to watch this stuff. Also, the audio keeps breaking up in this segment, so even when they talk, some of it’s hard to decipher.

“I respect that Colin is doing this instead of reading bedtime stories to his children tonight,” Josh says as everyone’s entering in their answers for Round 2. “[That’s] how committed I am,” Colin replies. Kat says something that is so broken up, I can’t even begin to figure out what it is. Something about bedtime stories and Colin’s kids. It’s probably funny. 🤷‍♀️ I’m getting mad about my $10 gift card being gone again.

Alright. Round 2.

Quip #1: It never ends well when you mix ___ and ___. Answers: “poo and oatmeal” and “Sam and Josh” Okay, that second one is gold. Who did that? Apparently Colin did “poo and oatmeal” and Kat did “Sam and Josh”. Bless her. Colin gets the points with more votes, though.

Quip #2: The worst car feature that ends with “holder” Answers: “penis” and “diaper” Sam is just blinking rapidly. Now he’s laughing. “How does that work?” he asks. No one answers. “But I wanna know,” he says. “How does it work?” Josh wins the points with his “penis” answer - which Colin voted for, by the way - but no one cares now. “Does it move?” Kat asks. “Or does it just-” “Don’t ask too many questions,” Josh says. “What kind of size is it?” Sam asks. “Is it stationary or is there a motor feature?” Kat asks. “Maybe it’s a good idea...” Sam concludes, as Josh laments the kind of dreams he’s going to have now.

The third quip is literally happening in the background now, as everyone talks about the penis holder. Colin is noticeably silent on the topic XD

Quip #3: Something upsetting you could say to the cable guy as he installs your television service. Answers: “you smell like fart” and “want to see my murder room?” I’m sitting here going, “don’t be Colin, don’t be Colin” while simultaneously knowing 100% that Colin absolutely typed “you smell like fart” into his phone and... Yeah. Yeah, I’m right. That was him 😂 And he got 0 points. “Oh, boooo,” says Colin. Honey... Honey, I’m sorry, but that was bad.

Quip #4: The name of the reindeer Santa did not pick to pull his sleigh. Answers: “ohdeer” and “tipsy” Neither of these are very good. I hate this game. Kat gets the points with “tipsy”.

OH WOW, YOU GUYS. The final points are tallied and...

WHAT IS THIS TOMFOOLERY?! Colin is LOSING?!?! I mean, I know “you smell like fart” was bad, but this is unbelievable! I call shenanigans!!!

Colin is literally sitting forward in his chair now, lmao. The determination is intense, you guys. I once again cannot handle him right now. I wish he wasn’t in the teeny tiny window so I could show you guys better, but look at him getting his fucking game face on:

This man is a peanut and I love him with every fiber of my being. Look at him being a competitive little somesuch in last place. I can’t, you guys. Bury me here, etc, etc, I’m just a goner for this ridiculous man.

O’DONOINTENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last Round: Quip: Strange side effect to hear during a drug commercial. Answers: “cream cheese will come out of your butt” “seeing double horowitz” and “the screams of baboons” - there’s only three because Kat didn’t get her answer in before the time was up. Aaaaaaand the sound’s breaking all up again 😣 Josh is wondering what the point is of voting, if all you’re doing is giving points to your competitors. “Do you have to give all three votes?” Colin asks. “See,” Josh says. “Colin is thinking strategically, like me.” “Well, I’m not entirely sure the other two, I think, deserve any more than one point.” But it’s... it’s the WAY he says it, OH MY GOD, lol. Lemme... I gotta... Okay, I screen recorded it for you guys.

That O’Donosass is actually almost worth $10, you guys.

Which is good, because the audio is getting worse and worse on this and it’s starting to piss me off. Anyway! Everybody’s got a lot of points, because those were ALL good answers (Colin’s was “the screams of baboons” which I quite like). Let’s see the final tally...

Josh is the winner! But Colin managed a come-from-behind close second, so I’m really proud of him :D Sam mentions how Josh invited them all there to play games and then BEAT them. Josh is closing out the show, saying he hopes everyone enjoyed it... “I enjoyed it,” Josh says "But maybe that’s just 'cause I won at the very last second.” “No, well, you won ONE,” Colin cuts in. “You won ONE game.”

SERIOUSLY. BURY ME RIGHT THERE 😂😂😂

“Colin won the first round,” Josh says.

“...and then we have these two other people.”

Incidentally, I wish everyone’s webcams were as clear as Kat’s.

Anyway, now there’s some sweet summing up... and Josh hawking everyone’s current projects... (gee, it’s like this is promotional content or something) and the show closing down and-

“Can I win next time?” asks Sam Heughan.

~ The End ~

I hope you guys had fun reading this. I gotta say...  this one video isn’t worth $10. I can see if you’re a huge fan of Josh’s or really into celebrity culture, $10 a month might be a fine price to pay for a bunch of this kind of content... but for a one-time video when your fave happens to show up on his channel? Nah. He really should have a “one time access” fee available for individual videos that’s a LOT less. Like, I’m talking, like... $1 or 2. This is literally a zoom call... and as such, the quality’s only as good as his guests’ webcams and audio and everyone’s internet connections. Also, I found the game format enticing... but ultimately boring due to the games chosen. The Would You Rather was the most fun of the three, because we actually got to hear from the stars and get some banter going. The games relied too much on the stars interacting with their devices instead of each other or anyone really engaging the audience. Honestly, if it was any of my faves other than Colin in this video, I might not have even watched the whole thing. Colin’s adorable competitive streak and eagerness to win play games is what kept me watching. The idea is cute, but it needs some work. And the price is too high - especially with the audio issues in the last ten minutes or so. That’s my final verdict.

[have-some-popcorn]

Hold my popcorn

With mixed emotions I am eating my popcorn. For some reason I feel like writing a long ass essay. So here goes....

From the moment Todd erased everything linked to his notwhorosethinks alias online, I dove into the rabbit hole regarding the controversy about Todd’s sudden “retirement”.

My first guess was: “This is probably about some chick.”

(Funny, how intuition has never failed me for the most part.)

I’ve been following Todd [notwhorosethinks] off and on for quite a while now. Maybe two years. I’ve enjoyed listening to both his SFW and NSFW content. His deep voice was soothing during sleepless nights. He could be reading the ingredients off of a soup can and it would still sound amazing. It surely helped me through this pandemic as it did to many others.

By this point, I think I’ve listened to almost all of the available audios on Reddit and Patreon. Going all the way back to maybe 2018, maybe even earlier. To me, he was a voice actor with real potential and he could be doing so much more with that voice.

My 1st guess turns out to be sorta true. But, it just wasn’t some chick. It was several chicks. All with claims about Todd mistreating them terribly. There’s this woman he dated in real life, a few (barely legal) young listeners he sexted with and maybe there is more that will be revealed in time.

Several statements have been published on Twitter and Tumbler. If you haven’t read any yet, I suggest starting with this statement made by AlodiaThaliel :

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sro01f?new_post=true

There is a complete catalogue now, with links to all the recent statements and updates revolving the drama around Todd, made by @the-nwrt-librarian​

You can find it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZyJ5BTQhXodGCosaTuyc7DvFD0Vniz38V4Q3dVxVU7U/edit

Not excusing the guy for what he did. But let’s face it; He made porn for a living. Maybe he started out with the NSFW content as a means to get laid? There are a lot of lonely horny people out there who do that... Maybe along the way he met his now ex-girlfriend. Maybe he did wanted to stop with NSFW content and the private interaction with listeners. Clearly, there was and probably is a lot going on with him....

I remember how upset he sounded in one of his last rambles about people not appreciating his SFW content. How he wanted to move away from NSFW content. Then again, with over 2000 patrons and audios on Syrin, the NSFW content made him some decent money... 

It’s just so... The irony is that this man had a long ass F.A.Q. on which he stated how he doesn’t want to interact with his listeners privately on whatever platform. I believed that. A lot of people believed that.

Right now. As I sit here, with my popcorn getting cold, I still cannot fully believe it. I mean, I do believe the people who came out with their claims. If so many people come with an almost similar story, then how can it not be true? Where there’s smoke, there is fire. Right?

Several statements have been made. But there is one person who hasn’t made a statement yet.

If there’s a chance you read this, Todd: This puddle of mud that you’re in right now isn’t looking too good, man. It would show some real character if you would bring out your own statement upon the matter. But maybe you don’t care? Or you’re just chicken? I don’t know. Just curious. As many other followers of you and your content probably are.

To those who’ve had bad encounters with this man; I am truly sorry you had to go through all of that. I imagine my own 18 year old daughter and just get really pissed off just thinking about it. It’s not ok when someone uses you for their own pleasures while hurting you in the process. Regardless whether intentional or not.

I would like to close with this short statement:

People who are too sensitive should not be playing around with random strangers on the internet. The outcome could be ugly, people could get hurt. Always be careful and be safe.

Seriously though. What is up with this new drama show? And where is my popcorn?

[originofjaehyun]

Interlude: No More Drama | Part 11 | Not Alone

Interlude: No More Drama Masterlist

Word count: 5,432

Warnings: Graphic description of violence, mentions of rape, language

Part 11 | Not Alone

“One step, one step, one step each. Closer, closer, closer to the place that appeared in my dream that looks like me, can you feel not alone?”

Prev • Next

The laughter and the applause in the room are quickly replaced by whispers between each other. They are clearly baffled with the turn of the event, trying to solve the puzzle.

“What is the meaning of this?!” While he still talks in a somewhat calm manner, the way his eyes stutter tell Jaehyun that he is anything but calm.

The officers in uniform reached to where they are standing, each proceeds to hold the arms of Mr. Jeong’s and Kyungmi’s. As expected, at least one of them goes berserk.

“Don’t touch me!” Kyungmi swatted the officer’s hand, refused to be taken away, “Jaehyun, tell them who I am! They don’t have the right to do this!”

“Oh, but they do.” Jaehyun talks calmly. A side of him that you know –when he locked on his prey and he knows the percentage of his success is almost absolute.

“Jeong Jaehyun, you don’t want to do this.” His father warned him, and for the first time that night, he whispered instead of speaking proudly, possibly so that the mic wouldn’t catch his words. “Don’t mess around.”

He took a glance at his father and his so-called fiancée that he never acknowledges. He gave a nod to the officers, cueing them to proceed with the arrest.

Before any of them could make a scene, Jaehyun took the mic again, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m terribly sorry for the commotion.” He didn’t even bother about the ruckus behind him, “I understand that today was supposed to be a celebration of our new launch, but I’d like to use this opportunity to address a few things, and why it is important to announce it right here, right now.”

His eyes are now directed to your table, where he mainly locks his gaze to yours, “Also, I’d like to apologize to the involved team, especially to Mr. Seo and also Ms. [Y/L/N] as the person in charge of this project. Really, I do regret that I need to steal the star of the show.”

The way he calls you flinches you. Not only does it causes the whole hall to look at your direction, but also it feels extremely strange for Jaehyun to address you that way. It’s foreign, so foreign.

“Objections!” Frustrated that his own flesh and blood did not obey him, you can tell that he starts to lose his composure, “Jaehyun, what are you doing?! You’re clearly not thinking straight. You exposing me means you exposing yourself.”

Jaehyun just stands there, giving his father a disdainful look.

Obviously you can hear a bit of their words from the microphone, but not enough for you to grasp the full picture as the stage was quite far. Everyone seems perplexed and share the same sentiment with you, except for Johnny.

“Johnny,” Noticing that it is very strange for him to be this calm, you called him in hope you could get an answer, “What is going on? Do you know anything?”

Smirk appears at one corner of his lips, “Just wait and see.”

“Mr. Jeong,” Jaehyun said, purposefully talking in front of the mic so that the whole hall could hear him loud and clear. There’s a hint of contempt in the way Jaehyun called his father. 

He no longer addresses him as his own.

“Before you could object to anything, I’d think it would only be fair for our valuable guests to know where I’m coming from.”

“Don’t you dare…!” He tried to threaten Jaehyun, but at the same time he was being careful not to taunt him too much. He didn’t want to lose his pride, even so, there was a trail of fear in his tone.

“Oh, I do, sir,” Jaehyun said, ice cold. “Taeil, would you please.”

“Guards!” His father tried to intercept, calling his own men.

However they never arrived. The imperious man finally lost his presence of mind, looking around, puzzled. On the other hand, the strikingly handsome person who is stationed at the FOH immediately granted Jaehyun’s command.

“So, your father, how is he?”

The screen at the stage displayed an audio-only footage. And even without the picture, it is no brainer to figure out who is the owner of the voice.

“You know, it’s the same old, Jaehyun.” The other counterpart owns a fairly high-pitched voice, and it was no other than Kyungmi’s. “Thank God your dad is well connected to Chief Jang! If not it will be over for us.”

“Chief Jang?” 

“Yes, him! Daddy was telling me he was involved in poker scam when all he did was to invite that stupid rich guy from Sri Lanka!”

“Ms. Hyun, if I were you I wouldn’t say such information in a public place like this.” That is when you realized the audio was mixed with rustles, including a few sounds of people’s laughter in the background.

“Oh, Jaehyun, you’re so square!” Kyungmi squealed, borderline annoying, “We’re going to be husband and wife soon anyway. Also, I know your father would take care of it if things go bad, so it’s toots fine!”

“So yeah, I was saying,” She totally dismissed Jaehyun’s warning, “Daddy’s worst habit is he never checks on his client’s background. Who would’ve thought he was a criminal, a mafia or some sort!”

“Well that’s a surprise,” The clinking sound of cutleries being put down –presumably fork and knife– leaks in the audio, “I mean, knowing our backgrounds, Ms. Hyun, I thought your father would take extra precautions.”

“I know right! But I think daddy felt safe because we’re about to get married. Nobody messes around with your father, Jaehyun, we all know that. In any case, the seven hundred million that daddy gets from him will also be split to your father’s bank account too.”

The whole audience gasps.

“Nonsense!” His father tries to escape the officer’s grip. “Jaehyun, I command you to stop! This is ridiculous!”

“Jaehyun! You recorded our conversation?!” Kyungmi also protests.

“What are you doing, son?!” His father used all of his strength to move closer to where Jaehyun is, suit all wrinkled from trying to escape the officers’ grip. “Don’t you realize the consequences we’ll have to deal with once all of these leaks out?!”

“Everyone!” She pleaded, “This is all fabricated! My father and I are people of honor! We, The Hyuns, would never do such things!”

“Fabricated?” Jaehyun stared at the two people who looked awry in front of him. 

That is when they know they just landed on the minefield.

Jaehyun scoffed, mockingly, “Initially don’t want to show this because the footage is not very pleasing. Believe me, if only the two of them would admit the truth, I wouldn’t.” He speaks to the audience, dismissing the protests behind.

“For the record,” He continues, “I would like to warn everyone that what I’m about to show you is containing graphic content and might be upsetting to watch. So if you are sensitive to the subject, I advise you to not look, but this is needed to unfold the truth.”

Jaehyun gives Taeil a nod, permitting him to play the infamous clip.

Suddenly the screen plays a motion image of a corridor. By the setup, you’re guessing the location was in the corridor of a luxury hotel. A penthouse, probably.

“Ready, Chicago?”

“Whenever you are, Winnie.”

The unfamiliar voice called for the unfamiliar name, but after spending so much time meeting with him, you know that the voice belongs the man who’s sitting next to you. You seem to be the only one who realized this, as you are the only one who shift your gaze to him who casually watching the footage while crossing his legs.

At the cue, they forcefully enter the room, at the sight of middle-aged men in the middle of intercourse, where a lone woman is unconscious. There are no subtitles available, but it is evidently clear that she was drugged. One of the men who was in the middle of recording the lovemaking panicked. He tried to escape but unfortunately for him the person who wore the camera got him. Johnny, on the other hand swiftly took care of the man who was raping the lady.

“Do we got them all?” Johnny checks.

“We do,” Another man appears on the frame. He was wearing a uniform so you couldn’t tell who it was.

“Good.” The cameraman applauds them for their swift and clean job. “Teddy, help Winnie tying them up. I got business to ask this guy.”

“Roger that, Casper,” The person with code name Teddy exclaims, before the camera pans to a disgusting figure of the rotten old man. Not only you were horrified with the fact that the footage wasn’t censored, but you were also shocked by the fact that you know there could be only one who possessed the low velvety voice like the cameraman’s – no other than Jeong Jaehyun himself.

“Chief Jang,” He approached the man in question, filming the man’s then-horny face. “Look what we got, a prestigious man gang-banged an immobilized woman. What would the society say?”

“Don’t!” The man asked for mercy. “Please, I’ll do anything! Don’t let people know!”

He whimpers, but Jaehyun shows no sign of backing off, “Anything?”

“Yes, yes! Anything! What do you want? Money? Gold? Oh, I can give you women, too!”

Johnny clearly was not satisfied with his answer. He almost lost his temper at the way this man looked down on women, he reactively choked the man out of anger.

“Easy,” Jaehyun commands, “Now listen you piece of shit,” Jaehyun squatted so he can be on the same eye-level as the man. He pulls his hair so he could get a clearer shot of his face, which in return gains a shrieking yelp from the man.

“Tell me, where did you get all of these accesses?”

The man writhed in pain but refused to speak a single word.

“Chicago,”

Johnny slammed the man’s head to the end of the bed, causing him to scream in pain, and blood started to ooze from his head. The audience screamed at the sudden violence. Some even took a napkin and rushed to the nearby toilet, feeling nauseated.

“Talk,” He pulls the man’s head once more, revealing his ugly sobs that are mixed with blood. “You don’t want to mess around with our friend here,” He gestured to Johnny, “He’s a man of brute strength.”

“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” It’s almost disgusting how he easily gives in. “It’s Wonshik Hyun! He told me if I could let him out of his gambling cases, he would exchange it with these!”

“Wonshik Hyun?”

“The founder of Hyun Ventures!” He choked, almost out of breath due to the pain. However when he looked at Jaehyun’s glare, he was instantly intimidated, “He is addicted to gambling, and it is thanks to his partner, the founder of NCT Corporation he’s able to walk away!”

“You’re from fucking law enforcement, Chief Jang.” Jaehyun scowled, sickened by the way he acted, “At the highest ranking for fuck’s sake, yet here you are.”

“I’m sorry!” He cries, “I was about to investigate it but I just can’t stop.”

Jaehyun clicked his tongue in disbelief.

“Please let me go! Don’t tell anyone about this! I have a family back home.” He sobs, asking for their pity.

“My son, yes, my son!” His pathetic face quickly turned bright, as if he just found a way out. “He’s about to enter college! My child, he aims to enter law school this year, surely you don’t want to ruin his future?!”

A fist landed on his cheek, snapping his nose into a grotesquerie. He didn’t stop with just a punch, not until Johnny held him back.

“Enough, Casper. He won’t be able to speak.”

“Fucking bastard.” Barely holding his anger, you never know Jaehyun is capable of releasing such wrath. “We are the one who’s gonna ruin his future? Look at yourself you filthy fuck–”

The video stops, and the crowd quickly starts to murmur. They closed their mouths at the sudden revelation, and it’s obvious that they’re giving displeased looks to Jaehyun’s father.

“How…”

Cat got his tongue. He can’t say anything when the evidence is crystal clear.

“Sir,” Jaehyun answers confidently, “You, introducing me to Ms. Hyun is exactly the key that I needed to unfold the truth. That part I have to thank you.”

“Jaehyun, you used me?! How could you, I’m your fiancée!”

The crowds let out a loud gasp before Jaehyun calmly handles the situation, “Fiancée? Did I ever say yes to the engagement? You’re the one who’s acting on your own. Our meetings are always arranged by my father, telling me I should get close to you. But I’m glad I can turn our dinners to gain the information I needed, Ms. Hyun”

His statements made Kyungmi lost all the strength on his legs. She couldn’t accept if this is her fate so she continues to freak out, “How dare you, Jaehyun! I loved you, and I thought what we share was real!”

If a gaze could cut, Kyungmi would be in pieces right now. Jaehyun’s stare was sharp, and cold, causing her to flinch. “How could I love you when I don’t even have your number, Ms. Hyun? I know nothing of you, except the fact that you own a loose mouth.”

You can start to listen to the people behind you talking to each other.

“She’s his fiancée?”

“What kind of fiancée that doesn’t have each other’s number? What a crazy woman!”

“She’s just delusional, Jeong Jaehyun probably just talked to her once and she thinks he’s her!”

“Ms. Hyun,” Jaehyun continues to speak, this time looking directly at her, still standing near the mic. “I’d like to thank you for giving me the most crucial information regarding…” He hesitates but decides to proceed. “This father of mine. But I’d like to tell you and,” He looks forward to the guests. “To everyone who attends.”

“There’s only one woman in my life that was able to change my heartless soul. She’s the one that I will always treasure. I never know my heart is capable of beating the way it beats when she’s around me. Her views, her visions. She’s different from any other woman I knew. She’s a fighter, a firecracker, in fact. And that is why I love her. She’s the one who introduces me that there is always hope.”

“Because of this,” He looked back at the two people, scornfully, “I was unable to keep her. But like a ray of sunshine after rain, I hope tomorrow, or the day after, or even after it passes seventy years.” He took a quick glance at you, before directing it back upfront. “I hope it could bring her.”

You bring both of your hands in front of your hand, not expecting his sudden confession. You swore you’re not a crybaby, but the last few minutes are probably the most information you have to take in a short period of time and it’s understandable that you’re unable to keep your emotion in check.

Your heart is about to jump out of your chest, heart racing from his words. Tears welled up, but you’re not a fighter –like what Jaehyun mentioned, if you didn’t try to fight your own tears.

“Fool!” Finally snaps, his father uses every bit of his strength to escape from the hands that are holding him. “You just expose our family, Jaehyun! Do you think you can escape this?! Or your filthy ungrateful brother?!” He said, grabbing his son’s suit. Jaehyun, who’s clearly on the upper hand in term of strength, easily broke free from his grip.

“Don’t act like we’re your own,” Jaehyun grunts, “I’ve not used a single penny you gave to me. You can check my bank account where you always transfer my money. The amount is exactly whatever you gave to me in years.”

His face slowly lost its vibrance, “And don’t act as you care about Mark,” Jaehyun looks at Mark’s direction, nodding at him to make him feel secured. “I did this for our family, when you failed to do so. I bet all of my net worth that you don’t even know that Mark has been working part-time for his own spendings. Also, from this day onwards all of his necessities will go through me as I will be his guardian.”

Mark’s jaw drops, he could not believe the turn of the events –of his rotten father finally meeting his doom.

You thought by now his father would turn himself, but you were wrong. Instead, he started to laugh hysterically.

“Heh, do you think it will be easy, boy?” His father snickers, as if he lost his sanity. “Wait until I talk to my lawyer. Do you think my men would stop? You just took one person, son. That is barely enough to take me down.”

“Oh?” Jaehyun raised one brow upwards, “Three months ago when you first introduced Ms. Hyun at Seo’s office, we’re already more than halfway in on our operation.”

“Not only I was involved, but I am connected to your people too. I hope you haven’t turned insane to not remember that you do planned on making me the next heir.” He said, unfazed.

“Most of your powerful men are now waiting for their trials. You’ll be the next in line. You’ll have the right to consult with a lawyer prior to any further questioning at your own expense. Though, your personal lawyer, Mr. Yang would not be able to attend due to the fact he receives money from illegal transactions.”

“You son of a bitch!” Jaehyun’s father finally lost it, about to throw his fist to Jaehyun. Him, being well-trained in combat, is able to tackle it easily, twisting his father’s arm.

“Bitch? Who are you referring to, my deceased mother?” He looked low at his father, who’s writhing in pain. “Let’s finish this in the court. Though, I’m positive you’ll end behind the bars for the rest of your life. Then, go and think twice before you call my mother that way.”

He pushed his father away and the officers quickly grab him. With Jaehyun’s commands, they finally take both Mr. Jeong and Kyungmi away.

“Sorry for the scene,” He runs his hand through his hair, fixing it before he greets the audience, “There will be another separate session for the press release regarding this. So for tonight, do enjoy the food and the champagnes. I was told the canapés are marvelous.”

He then goes down the stage, to where Mark is. Mark practically runs to his older brother, asking for a further explanation about the whole situation. Same goes with the rest of the people. As expected, the crowds start to swarm around both of them.

“I guess nobody is interested in the canapés, huh?” Johnny said, finally turning his body to where the rest of you are.

“Duh. But before that,” You lean forward so you’re closer to Johnny, “You are a fucking secret agent? What the heck is going on! How could I not know?!”

“Language, [Y/N]. And if you do know then I’m doing a lame job as a secret agent, no?” He chuckles, rightfully earned your tiny punches.

“I thought you invited me for your project launching party, [Y/N].” Yuta finally spoke, after every single one of you on your table was silenced due to the drama that happened on the stage. “You never told me that… we’re going to watch a soap opera.”

“Believe me, Yuta,” You rolled your eyes, “How could I know?”

You guys were busy discussing what just happened, and then suddenly you sensed that flocks of people were coming to your direction.

You turned your head to find the fine man in white suit was the one who brought the crowd to you.

“[Y/N],” He says softly.

“Jaehyun,” You reactively rose from your seat, but quickly hesitated. Jaehyun did declare his love to you. Sure, he never mentioned your name but that doesn’t change the fact that the first woman he approached was you –and you know how much people quickly jump into the conclusion. The last thing you want is to gain people’s attention by being together with him.

“Johnny,” As if he could read your mind, he quickly glanced at Johnny’s direction, which Johnny replied with a single nod.

“Alright, everyone,” Johnny stands up, fixing his suit. “Donghyuck, let’s guide them to the VIP room.”

Without any further explanation, Donghyuck escorts both you and Yuta to the designated room. The journey there was tedious, you couldn’t imagine how Jaehyun could even walk to you with the crowd constantly barging him with questions. 

“Mr. Jeong! What makes you do this?”

“Is it out of revenge, Jaehyun?”

“Our transaction with NCT Corporation is legal, right?”

The crowd was more persistent than what Jaehyun thought. They keep pushing, demanding for an answer while Jaehyun kept his mouth shut. As the result, they squeezed you. Of course, Jaehyun would stay by your side in a heartbeat if he could, but there’s a line that he couldn’t cross –Yuta trying his best to protect you next by your side. But there’s so much that Yuta can do, fighting the rest of the hall by himself.

“Sicheng,”

Jaehyun uses his eyes to point in your direction, and a person named Sicheng who was stationed nearby quickly guards you. It becomes more bearable, since he granted you with enough space to walk, especially when you’re wearing an evening gown.

When they almost reach the end of the hall, more bodyguards are stationed, letting you and the rest of the group in while they hold the crowd who are still curious.

“Alright,” Johnny closes the door, now that everybody is inside the room. “So, how should we start, Jae?”

Now all eyes are on Jaehyun, including yours. But Jaehyun only fixes his gaze to yours.

He was drained. He might win this, but that was after he pulls every of his ace cards. All he wanted was to hold you, and for you to pat him on his head and thank him for his effort. 

But he can’t, not when Yuta is crossing his arms in front of his chest, waiting for an explanation. Yuta might not be directly involved, but now that he knows, he won’t accept a cliffhanger.

“Uhm, so where should I start…”

In contrast to his excellent stage presence, he is now stuttering, clearly awkward after engaging in eye contact with you. You are equally as nervous, fidgeting on your own fingers.

Yuta seems to notice the tension, breaking the awkward atmosphere, “I think you guys should talk.”

Everyone is in shock with his statement. Clearly giving him a ‘you just let your lover talk with her ex, though?’ kind of look. Yuta, on the other hand, finds his action to be very logical.

“I think you owe [Y/N] plenty of explanation, man. Probably something that’s only between you guys.”

You give him a look, asking him once more whether he’s sure with his decision. He gives you a gentle nod. “Just make sure you’re back for me.”

As much as Jaehyun is thankful to Yuta for giving his permission to talk to you, it doesn’t change the fact that his last sentence stings. The fact that Jaehyun is no longer the owner of your heart makes his heart feels heavy. 

Eventually you and Jaehyun agree to his suggestion, making your way to the room next door.

“I, uhm,” He scratched his head.

“Since when, Jae?” You asked first, giving him the hint where he should start.

“Well, let’s sit down first.”

He then proceeds by telling you that it started after he met Johnny again. They were teammates back in high school but turned out the friendship actually didn’t start there. Johnny entered NCT Corp. due to the fact he was the agent that was stationed there, for a mission that was obvious; arresting the head of Jeong.

He approaches Jaehyun, but Jaehyun outsmarts him to figure out his identity. Johnny thought he failed his mission, with his target’s son finding out who he was, but what a twist of an event it was for Jaehyun to actually offer his hand to help.

“So you were living this life even when we were together?”

“[Y/N]...” He gently speaks, as if he was afraid to break a heart that is so dear to him, “It was never my intention to put you in danger. It was a miscalculation on my side to fall for you that night.”

“Miscalculation?” You emphasized his choice of word, ready to snap at him.

“The best mistake I’ve ever made.”

Your cheeks start to turn pink at his remark, makes you forcefully break the eye contact.

“Uhm,” You awkwardly converse back to him, “No wonder you always came home late. You were rarely at home before midnight.”

“Aren’t you pushing yourself?”

You were about to tug one of his wild strands of hair, before you back off and remembered that he’s no longer yours.

He lets out a disappointed smile.

“I met you and I was already in the middle of my mission.”

“Yet you’re still asking me out?”

“I wish I could blame it on the alcohol that night, but I know they just unleashed my deepest desire. I couldn’t forget you ever since that night where we met at the bar. Ever since we made the first eye contact.”

“But you’re keeping secrets from me, Jaehyun. And not just any secret, you being a COO is already a big step that I have to take. Then suddenly you are the next heir of an underground business, and the next thing I know you’re also a secret agent! I was living a pretty normal life, Jaehyun, then you suddenly came into the picture. How do you expect a person like me, dating a powerful man like you?”

“It’s just the consequences that I have to take eventually.”

“You could’ve just told me properly, you know, as a warning.”

His voice was saturated with regret, “I know it’s wrong, but I swear I would never purposely put you in danger. The reason why I didn’t tell you all of these was because the egoistic part of me didn’t want you to leave me out of fear. I was overly confident that I could overtake my father in no time. I thought I could keep it hidden and live my life peacefully with you, but I didn’t expect him to... meet you.”

Part of you felt guilty at the way he mentioned how you would leave when you discover the truth. On how accurate his predictions were.

“It’s just…”  He sighs, “I was this close, [Y/N]. Of course, Hyun Kyungmi was an opening I never knew would come, but even so I was confident I could arrest him on my own. And I have to do this. For Mark, and for my future, our future.”

The sentence ended with a pregnant pause, both of you unsure how the conversation should continue.

Was it always this awkward with Jaehyun?

“So…” He finally breaks the silence, “Yuta, I think he’s a great guy.”

Your eyes quiver at the way Jaehyun speaks Yuta’s name. 

“He is, Jaehyun.” You carefully replied, “Though his jokes are borderline rude, it’s just his way to show his affection.”

Jaehyun dryly laughs, “He’s different from me, doesn’t he?”

His words stop you from going, prolonging the pause.

“But I’m glad he’s able to make you laugh like that.”

You saw how his gaze turns soft. It’s been forever since Jaehyun got a chance to look at you, and only you. It’s been a while he could have all of you for himself, for you guys talk in private like this.

He was intoxicated, in you. And he let you slipped away. He finally reached his goal, but he didn’t receive his prize.

“I miss you, [Y/N].”

You pressed your lips together. Air of melancholy filled the way you look at him.

“Jaehyun, I-”

“I know, I know. Just… let me get this out of my chest.”

He took a deep breath in, “Please let me this one go,”

He hugs you, and it feels like years since the last time you’ve felt Jaehyun’s warmth. 

There was a momentary pause before you could react.

Is this okay?

Is this fair, for you, Jaehyun, most importantly, for Yuta?

But how could something that feels so right be so wrong?

So you hug his broad shoulder back, pulling him closer to you. Indulging his embrace that’s been missing from you.

“You know, I always thought by hiding it from you means I can have my own haven. Living a triple life is can be quite chaotic.”

You laughed, “I could imagine.”

He scoffed warmly, “I have to wear three different masks in each settings, and there are times where I feel like I could break into pieces.”

“But then I met you,” He carefully caressed your hair, making sure he didn’t ruin your hairstyle for the night. “Every time I woke up next to you, I just knew what I’ve been missing in my life. How our mind connected, the sound of your laughter, and the way you teach me how to love, and the way you loved me back.”

Jaehyun always feels perfect, but he is a human too. You can feel he’s trembling, fighting the waves of emotion, “For once, I could be just myself when I’m with you. Not COO Jaehyun, or the next heir for some underground business, nor a secret agent. I can just be just Jaehyun, and it was liberating.”

His words hit you hard. You never knew how much weight he has on his shoulder, and how he hold everything on his own. You never knew that Jaehyun leaned on you that much.

It’s not fair for him to tell him all of this now. Not when you thought you can live your life without him.

“The next morning after you left, I thought I just had a nightmare.” He continues, “That night was probably the longest night I ever experienced. I fell asleep, drunk. When I woke up and I couldn’t find you next to me, I thought you were in the kitchen. You always said you wanted to make me breakfast.

Jaehyun took another breath in, “Yet the only sight I saw was the mess from the night before and everything finally became a reality for me.”

He lets you go, to see that you’re about to cry. He forcefully smiles, trying his best not to show the already apparent sadness.

“Don’t cry. You’re kind, that’s why you pitied me.”

No, that’s not it, Jaehyun.

You wonder why it is so hard for you to tell him so, but words just won’t come out.

“I realized that I meet someone and we sometimes drift apart. Sometimes it seems to be too much and too vague, so I get anxious over it. Even so, the world moves on, and so are you.”

Are you?

“I’m happy that Yuta’s able to make you smile. Something that I took away from you that night. I’m sorry for hiding things from you, but please know everything that we shared, our relationship, is real. Probably the most genuine feelings that I ever felt.”

You took one of your fingers to wipe the corners of your eyes, preventing the tears to ruin your makeup.

“Jaehyun, please don’t be so hard on yourself. Now that I know every reason behind it, it would be stupid of me not to forgive you.”

He nods, and there goes another silence.

Are you OK leaving things this way? How could you figure out your heart when your mind is filled with numerous tangled threads?

Suddenly the room next to you became so loud, surprising both you and Jaehyun. 

“Looks like he’s here,” Jaehyun stares at the wall, seeming to know the reason behind the fuss.

“Let’s go?” He offers his hand, shocked with his own action.

“Sorry,” He quickly shoved his hand to his pants pocket. “Old habits die hard.”

Oh, Jaehyun.

That, you too know very well.

Both of you walked to the first room to see Taeyong who’s busy crying while Mark continuously patted him, telling him to stop.

“There’s no way I could not cry, dumbass!” Taeyong pouts, receiving tissue from Johnny, “You’re finally free, Mark.”

A/N: Can you believe next week we’re going to have our last chapter? :o

So quick question, are you team Jaehyun or team Yuta? lol

[lifeasadorkwithnolife]

Drunk Texts (Bucky x Reader)

this is the first story i’ve written in over two years, so it’s not going to be as good but i hope you still like it! 

word count: 1576

 “Ma’am, I will have you know that I am not-“ You pointed a finger at Natasha, “Not drunk! I am not! Drunk!”

              She nodded her head, a smirk on her face. You were trying to keep a straight face, to prove to her that you could control your facial expressions, but you had a feeling that you were failing utterly. “So this is you completely sober right? Not drunk at all?”

              “Yep!” you took another sip of your pina colada, “I mean no, yes I’m not drunk.” You fell back on your couch cushions. “Okay maybe just a little, but not like super drunk, only a little drunk.”

              She laughed. You both were curled up on opposite sides of the loveseat, drinking terrible pina coladas and watching whatever show popped up first on Netflix. It was past midnight, and you had invited Natasha over after her “super dangerous top-secret mission” that you weren’t supposed to know anything about. You were, after all, just a civilian. “I don’t know how you can get drunk off of two pina coladas,” Nat shook her head, you shrugged your shoulders, taking another long sip of your drink.

              “So how did your mission go?” You asked, looking over at her. Her hair was tied back in the smallest ponytail, and she had removed all her makeup prior to coming over. She made a face and shrugged. “That bad, huh?”

              “Not really bad as much as it was…a waste of time.” She said, taking a sip of her drink. “I don’t really know what Fury is thinking at this point.”

              You nodded your head, “Was there anyone on this mission with you?” You asked.

              “Oh it was just me and Steve, Barnes came along as-“

              “Bucky was there?” You smiled, unable to keep the warm feeling from rushing through your veins. “I mean- Steve and Bucky came along? That is so cool.”

              She rolled her eyes, “You need to get over this obsession with Barnes”. Natasha warned, and you looked away. “No seriously- he’s a good guy but he’s dangerous. He could hurt you, or any of us, at any moment. You need to get over it.”

              “But he’s cute.” You pouted, and Natasha just rolled her eyes again. “but yeah, I get it.”

              “Do you want anymore to drink?” Nat asked, standing up. You smiled brightly and gave her your empty cup, nodding eagerly. She strode to the kitchen, and you watched the show.

              Bucky may have seemed dangerous to everyone else, but you really believed he had a soft spot for you. It was probably just in your head, but you really felt like he cared about you. He always held open the door, walked you home, and constantly asked if you were safe. You figured it was nothing romantic, you’ve never actually seen him with other girls, so he was probably like this with everybody. You were just dumb and caught feelings.

              You opened up your phone and opened your text messages with Bucky. The last time you guys had texted was two days ago, but that was right before he left with Natasha and Steve. “Hey Y/N! We’re out of Pina Colada Mix, what else do you want?” Natasha shouted from the kitchen. You smiled, Bucky knew a lot about alcohol. This is a great excuse to text him.

              You started to text, ‘I need help-‘ before glass shattered and a scream erupted through the empty apartment. You threw your phone down, a little vibration signaling a message had sent. “Natasha!” You ran to the kitchen.

              She was in hysterics on her knees, the only bottle of vodka you guys had left was shattered on the kitchen tile. You looked closer and she was laughing. “Sorry sorry.” She panted, standing up and wiping the excess liquid off her pants. “Ugh sorry- I think I may be drunk too.”

              You joined in with her laughter. Natasha was never clumsy, and it was actually hilarious to see her this disheveled. “Why don’t you run home and change?” You offered. She only lived a couple of floors below you. “I’ll get some snacks ready and we can gossip and go to bed.” She nodded, agreeing.

              “Okay- Ill be back in like 20 minutes. Pause the show!” She ordered, grabbing her keys. “I don’t want to miss any of it!”

              “You haven’t even paid attention to it!” You argued, and she just shook her head and opened your front door. “be back in 20 minutes or I’ll call the police.”

              “Yeah yeah.” She muttered, laughing and shaking her hand at you. You locked the door behind her. You flopped back on the couch, turning your head towards the television and trying to catch up with what was going on with the show. The main character was making out with another main character. You sighed, turning off the screen and flopping on your back.

              You thought of Bucky and how off limits he was. He was handsome, polite, a gentleman. You were obsessed with Bucky, and it was awful. You knew that you didn’t really have a chance with him, or that Natasha would literally kill you, KILL YOU, if you ever got with him. You wished that he would just come in and take you away, and you could run away from New York and Natasha. Especially Natasha.

              The was a locking sound and the door swung open. You nearly fell from the couch in surprise. Bucky Barnes was standing in the doorway, his arm raised and his eyes looking murdurous. You screamed and literally flopped over behind the couch, landing uncomfortably on your side. “Bucky!” You shouted angrily, peeking over the couch at him.

              His fist lowered and he looked around. He was sweating, and wearing sweat pants?

              “Are you okay?” He asked, coming closer. “I came as fast as I could.”

              “Yeah Bucky, I’m fine.” You stood up slowly, looking around. “Um, no offense or anything but why are you here?”

              “The text you sent?” He asked, dumbfounded. “The one where you said, I need help? Then the audio message of glass shattering and someone being murdered? That message?”

              “Oh.” You squeaked, looking at your phone that was shoved in the corner of the couch. “I accidentally sent that.”

              “Accidentally?” He exclaimed, “Accidentally! I just ran over here as fast as I could. I thought you were getting murdered!”

              “Bucky… you live like 5 miles away. I only sent that text maybe 10 minutes ago.” You whispered, he stared at you, waiting for your point. “you ran all the way here just because you thought I was being murdered?”

              Your heart swelled, but Bucky rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Stop being dumb, Y/N. You know I would do anything for you.” He walked past you, into the kitchen. You stared at where he stood, your heart pounding. You wished you wouldn’t have drank as much.

              “Bucky!” You followed him, he turned. “What do you mean, you would do anything for me?”

              “I’m not doing this now, Y/N.” He chided. “You’re drunk.”

              “No I’m not drunk, only a little drunk!” you replied, grabbing his arm and turning him around. You looked up at him, begging. “Please Bucky, just tell me what you meant.”

              “You know what I mean.” He said quietly. He didn’t try to pull away. You shook your head. “Y/n, I would literally do anything for you.” His voice came out in a whisper. “I would run to the end of the Earth just to make sure you were okay.”

              “But why?” You asked, immediately ruining the moment.

              He looked down at you, a smile on his face. “I’m not going to ruin this, I’m sorry.” He pulled his arm from you and headed towards the door “I’m glad you’re okay, really.”

              “Just tell me the truth!” You shouted, throwing a pillow at the back of his head. He froze, turning towards you. “Just tell me how you feel, James! I cant take it anymore! One minute you like me, the next minute you don’t. I freaking love you, and it’s so annoying. I don’t know how you feel!”

              He stared at you, eyes wide. You started to feel insecure about your words, but you glared at him anyways. “You want to know how I feel?” he asked slowly, stalking towards you. “You make me feel like I’m going fucking insane.”

              “I feel like I’m going crazy. You’re always on my mind, I’m always worrying about you, I’m always thinking about you. I didn’t see myself having a future until I met you, Y/n.” His eyes were locked on yours. “You want to know how I feel? I feel like I need you. I feel like without you, I’m nothing. I feel like every minute you’re not mine, is a minute of my life I am wasting. Is that what you want to hear?”

              He stopped when he was right in front of you. He was breathing heavy, and you couldn’t move. You could barely breathe. He grabbed your hand and slowly slid his fingertips up your arm, around your shoulder, until he grasped the back of your neck gently. A smile crept its way onto your face, and he sighed in relief. “You’re missing one thing.” You whispered, gently caressing his cheek.

              “I feel like I love you.” He whispered back, leaning in to kiss you.

 -

                Natasha stood in the doorway, watching as her best friend made out with her colleague. She decided maybe she should just come back later.  

[dontasktheradiodemon]

Radio Host & Radio Ghost - Nov 14

Alastor meets a ghost possessing a vintage radio.

He’s absolutely delighted.

Valera

Valera hums, rubbing their hands together. What a lovely day to bring demons into their home. Not a single consequence could possibly result from this! With Alastor's okay, they could finally get around to opening a portal for him, whatever water he'd decided was sufficient rippling and turning into an inky void before his eyes. On her side, Valera plops back on the couch and awaits his arrival.

Alastor

And Alastor’s more than ready to jump through the inky void he’s been promised is a portal!

He has not, however, been informed that the portal he just jumped DOWN into is VERTICAL on the other side.

He lands on his back with a blurt of confused mixed frequency crosstalk. What.

Valera

A laugh track plays from across the room, and Valera leans forward to get a good eyeful of the poor, confused fellow. "My dear, if I'd known you were falling all over yourself to get here, I'd have invited you much sooner! Come now, pick up those sorry spirits and have some spirits with me." Funny way to talk about spiked tea, but alright Val.

Alastor

Disoriented by the 90° shift in the angle of gravity, he blinks up at the ceiling for a moment. “What, was the repeated pleading to come see it not obvious enough?”

As his head sorts itself out he abruptly registers the laugh track—SOMEBODY ELSE’S laugh track—and he immediately sits up and looks toward the source of the sound. “Well!!” He’s on his feet in a flash and crossing the room, heading like an arrow toward the authentic, vintage, genuine, incomparable 1931 Philco 90 Baby Grand Cathedral Radio. “Oh my goodness, what a beauty! Look at this! Oh, this is the only cathedral I’ll ever worship at.” He kneels down to get a better look at the front of it. “The wood needs a little love and care—walnut, isn’t it? I don’t know wood but I know my radios, I could swear Philco used walnut—but it’s in fantastic condition!” He presses the side of his head to the front, eyes closed like he’s trying to listen to it. “All nine tubes sound beautiful, just beautiful!” Apparently that’s something you can hear, at least if you’re Alastor.

He sits back and turns to the man sitting next to the radio, beaming. “Listen to me, gushing away without even—Hello! May I compliment you on your lovely home, sir!”

Valera

Whatever Valera was planning to say is forgotten immediately, Alastor's enthusiastic response to her latest acquisition more than entertaining enough to distract her from her train of thought.

The radio flicks on and off like its fluttering its lashes, dial twirling playfully in a reflection of the Ghost Of The Hour's own beaming grin. A waggle of his fingers, and he speaks, voice emanating from the radio and rather garbled as the dial flicks back and forth.

"Compliment taken and appreciated, you beautiful stranger! Aren't *you* all the candy and then some? Lovely to meet a man who knows his stuff, you're right on all counts! Walnut, hand rubbed finish, this is a genuine type two article straight from the production line of late 1931! Updated with AVC and the beautiful addition of type 47 power pentode tubes for the finest and most reasonably priced audio on the market!" A pause to "breathe" as the radio's light flickers, and he shrugs, still beaming. "I'd offer to shake your hand, my good man, but I find I left my tangibility back home. Though I'm happy to try!"

Alastor

His invisible studio audience oohs and aahs appreciatively at each new technical detail. “Reasonably priced, oh, boy—I’d barely paid off a ‘32 when I died! Eighty bucks, if I remember right! Well with the price but good golly if I wouldn’t have loved to enjoy it a little longer.”

He gets to his feet, leaving one hand lingering on top of the radio affectionately. “Oh, I’d give it a shot! Typically, the dead can touch the dead.” He offers his hand. “The name’s Alastor! I’m a radio man myself—on air from ‘24 to ‘33, you might have heard me if you were in range of New Orleans! And what do I call you, my friend?”

Valera

"Oh! A fellow dearly departed? And so close to my own time, give or take a few years! I'd offer my condolences on your departure from the mortal realm, but it seems to me that you're doing rather well for yourself! PLEASURE to meet you, Alastor!" He takes the offered hand in his own, grinning even wider when he realizes he can actually touch the red newcomer. He's got a handshake like he's going to sell you something, firm and eager. "New Orleans, you say? KTRD? Well I never! I do believe I played your station in my old shop! Your broadcast helped me sell quite a few radios back in the day."

A delighted chuckle, and he gives Alastor's hand a last squeeze before dropping it to mess with his suit lapels. "My friends called me Al, but my name is Alexander! I had some other names too I'm sure, but they haven't found their way back yet."

Alastor

He shakes back just as eagerly and his grin stretches wider. “Yessiree, that was me! *Your Pal Al, first voice you hear in the morning and last voice you hear at night!* Why, if I’d known that I was doing free advertising for Philco, I would have written them a letter and asked them to give me a Baby Grand on the house. Still, probably the best eighty bucks I ever spent.”

He takes a step back, giving Alexander a bit of his own space. “I’d catch you up on what you missed, but I’d probably only be able to offer you a couple of years—were you ‘31, or did that just happen to be the model you had nearby when you shuffled off the mortal coil?—and I’ve spent my time since then down in Hell—hope that’s not too off-putting, you know how it is, make a few little mistakes and forget to say your Hail Marys before you kick the bucket and suddenly you find you’re serving an afterlife sentence without possibility of parole! I expect you’ve had a better chance to keep up with the news than I have!”

Valera

"I'd have sent you one myself if I hadn't bought the farm! But your business was appreciated, I'm sure. A radio broadcaster with your chops has quite the eye for quality if I do say so myself, your radio was in the best hands possible!"

"This beauty was a gift from my parents, got it new and died within the month, if memory serves! Damn shame, but it all worked out. I'm sure my mothers would be charmed that I was so attached!"

He waves off the news of Alastor's new home with a scoff. "Oh, pah to that! I was never much for religion before I bit the dust, God always struck me as a terrible sort of man. If you wound up in Hell, it's probably for the better! I'd hate being in close quarters with the kind of parent who thinks tossing his children into fire and brimstone was the best teaching method!"

Alastor

A studio audience laugh at “attached”; attached in more senses than one, apparently. “They must have been women with exquisite taste! Quite a pity about the timing, but at least you’ve had plenty of time to enjoy it! Amazing how well it’s held up, can’t tell you the last time I saw quality like this. Of course,” he arches his eyebrows, “that might just be a side-effect of the neighborhood I’ve been living in, eh? Lucky you latched onto this beauty—otherwise you probably would have ended up living there too, considering your personal leanings. Fair enough if you don’t want to move into that big gated community in the sky, but I wouldn’t recommend the alternative, either.”

He glances over at Valera—wow, look at that, he actually does remember that they’re in the same room. “Speaking of which...” He nods at the spot of the portal he so gracelessly stepped out of earlier. “You probably don’t want to take this with you the next time you spend the night at your fiancé’s. I’ve never heard of a ghost voluntarily walking into Hell so I’m not sure if they’d immediately notice, but I do know that imps conducting business topside are charged with keeping an eye out for rogue spirits that ought to be down below. You take him in, they might not let him back out.”

Valera

Alexander rolls back on his heels, happy to peek around Alastor and back at Valera. Ah, his unexpected rescuer who he's trying very hard not to be wildly rude to by screaming at over the existence of actual aliens! Thumbs up!

As for Valera, she looks at Alastor with raised eyebrows. "Good to know! I hadn't made any plans yet, but it would be a damn shame to get this fellow stuck in a new prison so soon after getting him out of the previous one." A sip at her cup, and she curls her tail politely around her legs. "Either way, I brought you here to help with repairs! Bring your friend over here and lets start getting the cobwebs out of his home, hm?"

Alastor

“Why, of course! Pardon me—“ And up it goes. As he carries the radio over to Valera he’s cradling it half like it’s a heavy sack of groceries and half like it’s a baby. “I didn’t have an opportunity to look around the back, what all needs doing?”

Valera

Valera opens her mouth, and is immediately cut off as Alexander practically flings himself forward to 'sit' on the floor next to the cleaning supplies. "There's almost no damage to the internals, lucky for us! My lovely little number's managed to hold up beautifully despite the.. Unideal conditions. This sweet faced dame here scraped off most of the wax from my previous landlord's attempt at what I assume was an exorcism, but a gentle wash wouldn't hurt! Aside from that, it's largely dusting and polishing! Mindless, really."

He chuckles, the dial on the radio tapping back and forth like a metronome. "Though the lady here took one look at the bottom of the chassis and said she'd rather call an expert, poor thing. From what I saw, it's just a bit of rust and dirty wires, nothing even a child couldn't handle! I'm sure a man like yourself wont even break a sweat!"

Alastor

“So I see.” He leans forward, arching an eyebrow as he inspects the remaining wax. “What kind of ‘unideal conditions’ are we talking about, here? And how *did* this end up here?” He directs that question to Valera. “Of all the places I’d expect to find a ‘31 Philco, you have to go pretty far down on the list before I start listing locations off of planet Earth. And even at that ‘the moon’ and ‘Mars’ would have been my next guesses.” SPEAKING OF WHICH, he leans toward Alexander and gives him an excited look. “Did you know we put ROBOTS on MARS?”

Okay, exciting news shared, back to business. He carefully inspects the bottom of the chassis himself—nothing too bad down there. “I’m as good an expert as you’ll need! I’ve lovingly cleaned off enough fine old radios in my time—although I’m hard-pressed to think of one as fine as THIS!” He looks over the selection of cleaning tools.

Valera

Valera's attempts to speak are once again completely drowned out by Alexander's crackly voice. "Oh she got me on Earth, rest assured! I was in one of my.. grand nephew's attics, I believe? And yes, I DID hear about the robots on Mars! I had nothing to do but listen to the radio while I was up there, and as much as they like to pretend they've murdered the art of broadcasting, there certainly are still plenty of stations out there sharing the news! Nothing compared to your own, of course, but still." A dip of his head towards Alastor, and he scoots closer to watch him work.

The standard tools are available. Wood cleaner, a few soft rags, a small steel wool brush, and rust removing solvents, along with a little pack of cloths for polishing brass. Val side eyes Alexander and deliberately doesn't speak as she picks up a rag to offer to Alastor.

Alastor

He's starting to detect a pattern here. "Say, my phantasmal friend!" He leans over and slings an arm around Alexander's shoulders. "I realize you haven't had much experience with conversation in a while—but let's let our friend Valera get a couple of words in edgewise from time to time, shall we?" He winks, then returns to studying the radio, this time inspecting the innards. He takes the rag and starts brushing out the worst of the dust, just a rough pass to get out the easy stuff. "Ah, of course you would have heard! Naturally. What kind of a state is radio broadcasting in these days, anyway? I've heard some dismal things."

Valera

There's a flash of confusion on Alexander's face as he looks between Alastor and Valera, but he nods without any protest, obligingly leaning in until Alastor releases him from the casual half embrace. "Of course! Terribly rude of me, I'll curb the enthusiasm. My manners could use as much dusting as my radio, it seems!" A light chuckle, and he props his chin on his hands, watching Alastor's movements intently.

"Miserable! It's atrocious the kind of programming they think passes standard these days. Once they broke the stations into specialties, the bar dropped straight past hell! Why, if you have a grave, Alastor, I'm sure you were rolling in it. Half the contents is advertisements, and the other half replays the same songs every few hours with no shame!" He heaves a dramatic sigh, shaking his head. Valera rolls her eyes.

Alastor

“Oh, Hell hasn’t fared much better, I’m afraid—although I’ve helped keep things interesting on the AM band, at least!” A weary sigh. “And to think in the twenties we were butting heads against the regulations that discouraged specialization. Who would have thought the alternative would make so many stations so bland?” His tone darkens. “Although I blame the networks more than anything else, truth be told.”

He’s got a bone to pick with networks.

Valera

Valera finally has a chance to speak? Good. "Well, I'm glad you two have so much to talk about! I'd say you should exchange numbers or find a way to talk in DMs, but I haven't had a chance to try and explain texting or tumblr blogs to Alexander yet." And she is NOT looking forward to it!

"Though, Alastor, if you'll indulge my hypotheticals while we tidy this fellow up. What do you think would be the best way to deal with his current state? I've thought about asking Pentious to make him some kind of automaton frame around his radio, or find a way to separate him from the radio entirely and... Force him to manifest some form of body."

Alexander shrugs, flipping a dismissive hand. "I've got no knowledge of the supernatural, and barely any on the normal natural either, so this is all Greek to me!"

Alastor

“I wonder if it would be possible to get a radio signal through to Hell! I’ve never picked up a radio broadcast from the living world before, but as far as I know none have been sent out by the dead. At any rate, if Internet can get between here and Hell, radio should be able to just as easily—it’s all the exact same stuff, just traveling through the air on different frequencies.”

Alastor considers the issue of Alexander’s body for a moment, glancing over at him. There’s a brief quiet humming noise like microphone feedback from the radio’s speakers as Alastor stretches out with his own energy field, prodding around Alexander’s, measuring it.

Then he snaps it back in and continues working. “Automatons are all well and good, but if you want to know how I’D do it—the easiest thing would be to get him trained up as a poltergeist! There’s three parts he’d have to learn: drawing more energy from his environment than he’s currently getting through passive processes; focusing it so he can telekinetically affect his environment; and finally, focusing it to visually and physically manifest a form for other people to see and touch. It’s essentially what I’m doing any time I step out of Hell, although I’m cheating: coming straight from Hell means I’m carrying enough Hellish energy with me that I don’t need to gather or focus any more, I’m fully solid from the outset. But it’s a skill that can be learned!”

He beams at Alexander. “You’re lucky you’ve got a focus for your energy, here! I’d hazard a guess that all this time you’ve been using what ambient energy you’ve picked up to help power it—but I bet it wouldn’t be too hard for you to use IT to help power YOU!”

This is all too exciting. The study of the interactions between spirits and electricity had only been going a few decades when Alastor died, and the topic is obviously irrelevant in Hell; what he’s proposing was supposedly possible even in his own time, but he can’t imagine what information might be available today.

Valera

Alexander twitches as Alastor's field brushes against his. It's an almost ticklish sensation, like almost but not quite touching something charged with static electricity. The moment passes, and he rubs at his arms. Could ghosts get goosebumps? It sure seemed so! Weird! Everyone he's met has been so strange and colorful, he'd hardly even thought about his own appearance. Immediately distracted, he starts looking for a mirror to check his hair in.

"Hm, I don't have any experience with poltergeists.." Valera's at a bit of a loss, narrowing her eyes as she squints at the two radios. Three radios? Does Alexander count as a separate entity from the radio? Gods, she should have taken the Mortals and Their Souls elective in school. She heaves a sigh. "Well! I hope you're willing to help teach him, Alastor, because otherwise I'm going to have to start doing _research_."

Alastor

“You and me both! Ha! Most of what I learned about poltergeists in life was how to get rid of them, imagine that. But! You know where ghosts end up once they’re got rid of! I’ll inquire around, see if there are any ex-poltergeists interested in sharing their tricks of the trade. If not, I’m sure the imps will know all about it.”

He beams at Alexander. “Oh, this is going to be fun. I haven’t had a reason to dip this deep into the occult since the sixties!”

Valera

"Oh that's marvelous. Thank the gods, the less I have to try and muddle through human focused occultism the better, it gets damnably frustrating trying to find books that aren't full of teenage angst and garbage." She sighs, taking her tea in hand and busying herself with draining the glass. That's ONE problem out of the way.

Alexander glances over, feeling eyes on him again, and offers Alastor his sunniest grin. He wasn't really following the conversation, but that doesn't matter when there's an obvious opening. "Don't leave us hanging, my good man! What happened in the sixties? Inquiring minds, and spirits, want to know!"

Alastor

“The first step is to get book recommendations from actual occultists.” Where is Valera picking up teenage angst?

Oh, Alastor is going to love this new guy, he follows up on the topics that Alastor leaves dangling. “A deep dive into angelology! Researching what sort of defenses Heaven has aside from being ridiculously high in the air—this was before rockets, you see, so we couldn’t just fly up and check—and trying to deduce any of the angels’ vulnerabilities.”

Valera

"Fair enough, I assume you knew a fair few back in your day?" Meet enough overly young heroes and some of them are going to write about their experiences while unfortunately being teens. Combination diary and field guides are the _worst._

Alexander BEAMS as Alastor speaks, the light on his radio dial glowing like a little beacon. "Fascinating stuff there, Alastor! I never even knew that was a field of research, shows what I know! Did you learn anything useful in your forays?" A pause. Wait. " You have rockets in Hell?"

Alastor

“A decent amount! I had a healthy circle of pen pals. None of them quite as successful as me, if I do say so myself—but that had less to do with their occult knowledge and more to do with their heads for business. All the symbols, herbs, and precious metals in the world won’t do you a lick of good if you don’t know how to make a deal with a demon.”

He’s gotten the inside about as clean as he feels safe to while the radio is still clearly *on*—there’s probably no way to fully turn it off as long as Alexander is connected to it, is there?—and starts on the outside. “In the living world, it probably isn’t one! Angelology in general, sure, but penetrating the gates of Heaven? Maybe in an ‘astral projection’ way, but certainly not a ‘breaking and entering’ way! I can’t say I picked up much of practical use, but...” He falters a moment before rallying. “The project I was researching it for fell through, so I abandoned it early with several research avenues unexplored.” Shrug.

For a moment he’s tempted to let Alexander think they DO have rockets. But then he bursts out laughing. “No, no, hah! I only meant that humanity in general has rockets, don’t we—and enough people with the know-how to make ‘em are in Hell by now. We *could* have rockets if we decided to. But we don’t have our act together enough for that—put together a list of everyone who could make it happen, and even the person at the very top of the list has priorities pointed very firmly elsewhere. Anyway, where would we go with them?”

Valera

"You can say that again. Though of course, my experience is decidedly _not_ from the mortal's side." A hum, and Valera leans in to take a peek at Alastor's work. "I knew you were the person for the job, that little darling is looking almost as good as new." A grin for his efforts, that's more than payment enough. That and getting to work on such a nice radio. Probably.

Alexander snickers, pressing a hand to his chest in mock dismay. "My goodness, you really had me going for a moment there, Alastor! I suppose there wouldn't really be anywhere to go, you're right! Though that does beg the question. How *does* Hell compare to all the biblical stories? I can't imagine it being all fire and brimstone if you're as well dressed and decidedly not prodded by pitchforks as you appear to be!"

Lowering her empty cup to the table, Valera flicks her eyes over to watch as Alexander quickly turns to try and pick up the teapot to offer a refill. Bless his dead little heart, he gave it a good shot even if all he managed was a slight rattling.

Alastor

Getting to work on such a nice radio is *absolutely* its own reward. “A professional could do something about the scuffs. And you definitely want somebody else to do something else about the last of the wax.” He rubs a thumb over the last little bumps stubbornly stuck on the wood. “I don’t think I can get the remains off without scuffing the wood.”

He tries to think back to what he was taught Hell was like before he saw the real thing. What had his first impressions been like? “Picture Dante’s Inferno. So you’ve got your rivers bile, your fields of icy mud, your endless hurricanes—but then dump a bunch of humans in it and assume they’re going to do what humans always do. We build cities and civilizations in scorching deserts, frozen tundras, and smothering jungles—and we do just the same in Hell. Sure enough, fire and brimstone is Hell’s natural, untrammeled state—but we’ve been trammeling all over the place for thousands of years by now! The native demons and fallen angels in charge are largely content to ease up on the pitchforks as long as our labors improve their standard of living, too.”

Alastor watches Alexander attempting to manipulate the teapot, then puts his hand on top of the radio and focuses on channeling as much of his own energy into the cathedral case as he can. “Try again now.”

Valera

"You can say that again. Though of course, my experience is decidedly _not_ from the mortal's side." A hum, and Valera leans in to take a peek at Alastor's work. "I knew you were the person for the job, that little darling is looking almost as good as new." A grin for his efforts, that's more than payment enough. That and getting to work on such a nice radio. Probably.

Alexander snickers, pressing a hand to his chest in mock dismay. "My goodness, you really had me going for a moment there, Alastor! I suppose there wouldn't really be anywhere to go, you're right! Though that does beg the question. How *does* Hell compare to all the biblical stories? I can't imagine it being all fire and brimstone if you're as well dressed and decidedly not prodded by pitchforks as you appear to be!"

Lowering her empty cup to the table, Valera flicks her eyes over to watch as Alexander quickly turns to try and pick up the teapot to offer a refill. Bless his dead little heart, he gave it a good shot even if all he managed was a slight rattling.

Alastor

Getting to work on such a nice radio is *absolutely* its own reward. “A professional could do something about the scuffs. And you definitely want somebody else to do something else about the last of the wax.” He rubs a thumb over the last little bumps stubbornly stuck on the wood. “I don’t think I can get the remains off without scuffing the wood.”

He tries to think back to what he was taught Hell was like before he saw the real thing. What had his first impressions been like? “Picture Dante’s Inferno. So you’ve got your rivers bile, your fields of icy mud, your endless hurricanes—but then dump a bunch of humans in it and assume they’re going to do what humans always do. We build cities and civilizations in scorching deserts, frozen tundras, and smothering jungles—and we do just the same in Hell. Sure enough, fire and brimstone is Hell’s natural, untrammeled state—but we’ve been trammeling all over the place for thousands of years by now! The native demons and fallen angels in charge are largely content to ease up on the pitchforks as long as our labors improve their standard of living, too.”

Alastor watches Alexander attempting to manipulate the teapot, then puts his hand on top of the radio and focuses on channeling as much of his own energy into the cathedral case as he can. “Try again now.”

Valera

"Fixing the wood? Not a problem. I just didn't trust anyone else with the internals!" She shrugs, seemingly content to lay back and idly listen as he explains the inevitable human nature of settling even the inhospitable lands of Hell. But the moment Alastor's powers are channeled, Valera stiffens, head swiveling to stare at where his hand at the radio meet as her fins flare out.

Alexander looks between Valera and Alastor, then down to his radio. You know what that reaction sounds like? None of his business! He nods, then carefully, carefully, picks up the teapot and pours a single cup of tea out with a look of utmost concentration. Once the teapot is safely back on the table and the cup is delivered into Valera's hands, and ONLY then, he shuffles back a few feet, looks around to make sure there's nothing breakable near him, and finally throws his arms in the air with a cheer. "Alastor! Whatever you did got me back on the trolley!"

Alastor

The motion catches Alastor's attention and he meets her gaze. Oh, hello? What's all *that* about?

But he doesn't get a chance to ask before Alexander is celebrating his triumph. Alastor switches his attention back to him, beaming. "Back on for the time being—although I'm afraid this trolley company makes you pay by the block and I essentially gave you one nickel. Still, it's proof of concept! You're powering your radio—and your radio can power you. This expands our options immensely!"

Valera

Scoffing while grinning ear to ear isn't something you see often, but Alexander is quick to wave off even minor pessimism with the cheeriest dismissal. "Bah, who cares about that! That's more interaction with my environment than I've managed since I died, I'll take this nickel as far as they'll let me." He pushes the teapot to the left, then the right, and then picks it up once more for good measure before moving to start carefully prodding at Valera, who tolerates it with the face of the family dog tolerating bratty kids yanking their fur.

Alastor

“I suppose five blocks is exciting if it’s the first time you’ve been allowed on the trolley,” he says dryly; then, while Alexander is distracted, he gives Valera an inquiring look. He’s not going to ask Valera about their reaction to his magic while Alexander is around, but he wants them to know he *noticed* and he’s *going* to as soon as he has a chance.

Valera

Valera looks at Alastor, giving him the most innocent stare they can manage with those big ole eyes... And then snorts, shakes their head, and gives a thumbs up. Yeah, yeah. Quiz them later, radio deerman.

Looking back to Alexander and his prodding hands, Valera finally hauls herself up to cheerfully clap her hands together. "Well! This has been lovely, but I think that's enough excitement for the day. We've both got new projects to get to, and the sooner we sort this fellow out the better!"

Alastor

“I think you’re right! Happy I could offer my assistance.” He offers a hand to Alexander. “And a pleasure to meet you, my good sir!”

Valera

Alexander pauses in his prodding to take Alastor's hand in both of his, giving it a firm shake. "I hope I'll see you again, Alastor! Even if we can't figure out how to help me, meeting a fellow radio enthusiast of your caliber is more than worth being stuck in an attic for so long!"

Alastor

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find a way!” And a firm shake back. “And even if not, I’ll be visiting from time to time anyway, never you fear.”

Valera

Val would ask if that was a threat or a promise, but she isn't really sure she wants to know. A portal is prepared in short order, one wall of the sitting room turning a familiar inky black as she rises from the couch. She does, however, make a point to look Alastor dead in the eyes as she speaks her goodbye. "I'll see you in Hell, Alastor."

Alastor

It’s only a threat if Valera finds his presence threatening.

“Imminently, or eventually?” He *does* still want to find out what that Look was about.

Valera

She grins, ignoring Alexander as he quietly oohs and aahs over the portal. "Eventually! I'll be there tonight or tomorrow, depending on wherever Penny decides to sleep, but who knows when you'll actually _see_ me there."

Alastor

“Well, track me down to talk when you can.” An unnecessarily dramatic half-bow and he steps through the portal.

Carefully. He doesn’t know what angle he’s going to emerge at.

[felixnation]

THE TOP 10 WORST KPOP SONGS OF 2020

(WARNING: I DON’T LIKE THESE SONGS AND WILL BE MEAN AT THEM. I DO NOT HAVE ANY PERSONAL BEEF WITH ANY OF THESE GROUPS OR ARTISTS SO DON’T COME FOR ME IF YOUR FAVE MADE A STINKER TRACK THIS YEAR.)

Ah, 2020. The year where disco came back, the 80s came back, and everyone was titling their songs after nonsense words. It was a good year for k-pop overall, with a lot of new trends entering the game towards the end of summer. However, there were some real clunkers that refused to get out of my head this quarantine and pissed me off to varying degrees each time I heard them. This list is an attempt to chronicle all of those.

So without further ado, let’s get this shit done.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

NCT 127 - PUNCH This isn't actually a bad song, hence it only making it to the honorable mentions section. In fact, I think this could've easily made the best list had it not been for one thing, and that's the presence of NCT 127, namely their rap line. The instrumental on this thing is absolutely killer and one of the best productions to come out of SM in a long time. The entire thing is bizarrely structured and incredibly gutsy, and therefore I think it's a travesty that an instrumental this incredible was drowned in ASMR-esque whispers and EYYYY WE BALLINs. There are a few salvageable sections, namely the first post-chorus, and we see glimmers of NCT 127's true potential, should they choose to explore this sound further.

CIGNATURE - NUN NU NAN NA Similar to Punch, I admire the production choices here - there are a few sections that blast you with 100gecs-esque womps, and that's always something I enjoy. The vast majority of the song rarely dips below decent territory, but since the entire thing hinges on the titular hook, it ends up falling apart right when it needs to bring the hype the most. I mean, building a hook around those notes was...an interesting choice, I guess. It reminds me a lot of fromis_9's FUN!, which also constructed the entire song around a terrible set of notes. Listen to them yell that hook at you and tell me it doesn't sound off. Most frustrating song of 2020.

ONG SEONG WU - GRAVITY Have you ever heard a drop this weak? I sure haven't. I hate the way he says DIVING INTO YOUR LOVE, the over-enunciation kills me and there's one syllable too many. Also, thanks Ong Seong Wu for giving CRAVITY the promo they deserve.

BTS - FLY TO MY ROOM I can't relax while listening to this, the beat is so sparse and has this nauseous sway to it that really makes me feel like I'm reliving these past 9 months of quarantine all over again. And just like quarantine, it really feels like this goddamn thing never ends. That final set of choruses is really a chore to get through, and I'm not the only one who thinks so - shout out to Taehyung for serving taste and I'm sorry Jimin convinced you to sing out of your natural range yet again.

TREASURE - MMM Ew.

I*ZONE - FIESTA It's a pretty standard girl group song up until that chorus hits and oh my god, who on earth produced this? Are they actively trying to trigger my psychosis? There are so many sounds happening that it feels like three or four demo tracks laid on top of each other, it makes me confused even trying to figure out what's going on here. And that post-chorus drop is horrendous, it's like the instrumental is literally screaming into my ear STREAM BLOOM*IZ!!! STREAM BLOOM*IZ YOU DUMB CUCK!!! YOU LOVE IT!!!

NOW FOR THE REAL LIST.

#10: TAEYEON - HAPPY

I do not like this. Taeyeon has one of the most powerful voices in the industry and instead of putting it to good use, she decided to put out the musical equivalent of eating a stick of butter. Bland, horrible texture, seems to go on forever and ever, you know you shouldn't be consuming it and you don't know why you're doing this to yourself, etc.

The MV contributed to my dislike, with Taeyeon whitewashed all the way into uncanny valley as she lounges around her beautiful apartment. Well of course you'd be happy if you lived in a place like that, I know I would. The sad thing is that there's some really nice vocal work here and there, but for the majority of the song, Taeyeon decides to serenade us in the most nasal tone that she can muster. I know she can sing better than this, and I'm disappointed in her for creating this and unleashing it on the world.

#9: WEKI MEKI - OOPSY

Whereas Picky Picky was annoying in the best way possible, Oopsy is annoying in the worst way possible. The instrumental legitimately sounds cheap, the drums sound so tinny and artificial that it's hard on the ears. Not to mention the hook, wherein the girls force their voices as high as they can go as they proclaim OOPSY! 

I'm a huge fan of cute concepts, but when it comes to putting out a high-energy sugary track like this, you're walking a fine line between adorable and irritating. Weki Meki didn't even try to walk the line, they just dove headfirst into irritating territory without a care in the world. It literally feels like the audio equivalent of having to hold a whiny toddler and then it pisses itself and the mom is just cooing about how her little darling made an oopsy.

#8: VICTON - MAYDAY

It feels like for most of the year, the vast majority of boy groups were stuck in a rut, knee-deep in sludgy EDM and leather harnesses. You know the songs I'm talking about, and I could've put any one of them here, but I chose this one purely because that chorus makes me feel like I have a concussion. I don't like this song nor the trend it's representative of - I spent most of quarantine having the same dark BG concepts thrown at me over and over and I'm glad things are starting to take a bit of a turn.

The bridge on this is actually pretty great, and the guys in VICTON do know how to sing, as can be seen in the final post-chorus. But man, there's just nothing fresh being brought to the table here, just the same stale trends in their worst form yet. The hook is so slow and drowsy, the same few notes just repeated over and over. I have not seen the MV because I feel like I can picture it well enough in my head just by listening. Are there harnesses? Don't forget those, boys.

#7: MCND - SPRING

Only Pentagon are allowed to do these concepts.

#6: HYO, LOOPY, SOYEON - DESSERT

This is genuinely unlistenable as soon as the drop hits, with a vocal stitching job that might be a horn synth, I'm not sure. That's how annoying it is. The producer is clearly incompetent and the performers are oozing with personality, though not the pleasant sort. The hook is  bratty and the raps here are beyond generic. After the halfway point, there are a couple interesting sounds thrown into the mix, but it's not enough to save things.   

Soyeon in particular sounds awful here, with her iconic nasally tone morphing into something genuinely irritating and borderline spiteful. Age up the toddler from the Oopsy comparison to around 7 or 8 and that's basically what you've got here. All I can hope is that this song is not influential in any way, shape or form, because I just had a vision of Blackpink imitating this production style and I felt a shiver run down my spine.

#5: SECRET NUMBER - WHO DIS?

I'm not sure how many Secret Number fans are out there, but I'm about to make all of em real mad at me right about now. However, it must be said.

This is basically Your Turn by Kaachi again.

I don't think I need to explain that hot take, just listen to the song. It's surprisingly amateurish, to the point where I feel like the vocals aren't in sync and they just used the first take they got from each girl. The raps in particular are awful, and I swear they even sound like they go off-key a couple of times. How this blew up in any aspect is bizarre to me. Anyways, stream Photo Magic and stan Kaachi.

#4: BAEKHYUN - CANDY

Did you want a k-pop version of Yummy by Justin Bieber? No? Well, Baekhyun decided to make it anyways! At least Yummy was sort of funny in how bad it is, this is just...a somber affair. Inexplicably, he manages to oversing the final third of the song, which I don't get the point of, but okay. Lazy, underproduced and overproduced at the same time, bland, boring, annoying...

Wait, did he just say...

Okay, I changed my mind, this is hysterical. Like Pop rocks, strawberry, bubble gum...

#3: (G)-IDLE - DUMDI DUMDI

I'm so sick of this group's 'ethnic' schtick, it's like they never learn. They just don't give a fuck - after a string of genuinely great tracks like Hann, Lion, and Oh My God, they just decide to put out this shit and expect me to listen to it? They're a group with a lot of potential, with some brilliant vocalists and the talent that is Soyeon (who really loves being on this list, apparently) but if they continue down the path of using different cultures as concepts I can't support them any further.

The song itself has salvageable parts, a recurring theme on this list, but the over-the-top tribal influences are so obvious and tropey that even listening to it feels gross. (G)-Idle have more creative control than most groups, and the fact that they're capable of creating works of art like Lion is what makes me harsh on them. Instead of moving forward, they continue to regress into their comfort zone of cultural appropriation.

#2 YOOA - BON VOYAGE

Speaking of cultural appropriation...are we gonna address this? Nah? Okay.

Oh My Girl, YooA's parent group, has a history of blatant cultural appropriation (and arguably some legit racist moments depending on how you look at it) and they seem like they're not changing anytime soon. That's why this particular song stings even more than it probably should. If you thought Dumdi Dumdi's tribal influences were a little too on the nose, take a listen to this chorus.

YooA has a bad voice, is wearing tribal face paint, and is running around the wilderness whitewashed into oblivion while a choir of nameless voices chant vaguely tribal things behind her. Even in an industry like k-pop, this sticks out as something in bafflingly poor taste, and I can't see how she got away with this in 2020.

#1 BLACKPINK & SELENA GOMEZ - ICE CREAM

Well, this is a predictable pick. 

I don't know why or how Blackpink thought they could get away with drip-feeding blinks content for 4 goddamn years in the lead-up to their first album, only to drop this big fat clunker on them. I honestly felt insulted by the song, from its cheap, tinny production to the god-awful lyrics. I don't know how anyone could find any value in a piece of music this soulless and hollow.

Lisa's raps are by far the worst part of it, with FIRE BARS such as "you're the one been chosen, play the part like moses" and "mona lisa kinda lisa". Unfortunately, these raps take up a good portion of the song, and there's nothing going on in the instrumental to distract you from them, save for that little ice cream truck jingle. (or at least I think that's what the producer was going for)

Selena is a non-presence and essentially blends in with the girls, who WAIL that awful hook like their lives depend on it. Also, there's some really cheesy innuendos here that're sung with all the sex appeal of the actual ice cream truck driver from literally your neighborhood. 

I loathe what this song represents - the only good thing about it is that the girls look stunning in the MV. And that's exactly the thing - this song represents the exact moment in time wherein Blackpink admitted to their audience that music is no longer their main focus. This is the peak of their influencer-ization, and only time will tell if they'll redeem themselves. (Spoiler: They sort of did, goddammit.)

[bri-rog-deak-fred]

In Good Company (Part 4: Finale)

Brian May x Reader: The reader is the 5th member of queen, and she sleeps with Brian when they were both drunk and she finds out she’s pregnant half way through a tour, causing her to try and hide the pregnancy from everyone, especially Brian. Rock stars don’t have babies, right?

Note: Alrighty folks, the time has come!! This is the 4th part to the In Good Company series. Thank you to everyone who has read and continues to read this. It’s been a pleasure writing this all for you! Now, it does say finale, but I was thinking about writing maybe a BONUS part 5 about life having the baby with Brian. Let me know if anyone would interested in that sort of thing. Anyways, I’ll leave you to some angst to fluff. I sure enjoyed all of your company! Keep requesting, I have two new projects, a request and maybe a Cinderella-esque story, so keep an eye out for those! Kisses! xxx

PART 4:

 Many things ran through your mind, like why wasn’t the door locked? What were you going to say? Brian looks awfully faint… Uh-Oh. You felt your body drain of all warmth when you looked up and realized it was actually Brian staring at you and your middle, face twisting in odd concentration.

You act quickly, throwing the guitar to the side and swiftly moving across the room, pulling on a dressing robe, closing it quickly over your stomach, thanks to your ill-fitting night shirt. You felt your heart pound.

“You should’ve knocked.” Was the only thing you could muster, wishing you could shrink yourself and hide. Brian was still shocked. He swallowed and took in a deep breath. His hand found the back of his head, still desperately trying to understand why you were hiding something to huge.

“You’re…” He began finding himself still at a lose for words. You clenched your teeth, feeling your arms shaking. “You’re pregnant? Since when? How-“ Brian tried again, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. He opened his eyes again, trying once more. “You’re pregnant?” He asked, voice going up a few octaves, barely loud enough to hear.

You took in a deep sigh, wishing that the stars would grant you courage, but you still found yourself scared, and weak. “Yes. I’m pregnant.” You answer slowly, biting your cheek.

“Since when- No, how- Why didn’t you tell anyone? Brian questioned, quickly closing his mouth that had been hanging open. His face suddenly twisted into frustration and he crossed his arms. He blew out a long exhale, sounding exactly how he did when he was pissed during an audio take and Roger would goof off. It wasn’t a good sign. You couldn’t reply, not knowing how to answer, truthfully.

“So… You’re pregnant. You’re having a baby…and you just weren’t going to tell anyone? Not Freddie… Roger, John. Not even me?” His voice was harsh and annoyed, hanging on to a little jealousy too. “Just for you to go about, risking hurting yourself… or even the baby for that matter, every night on the stage and pushing yourself to exhaustion, and everyone away from you? What about when we get home? Did you think you were just going to come home one day with a baby and think hmmm, this’ll be fine?” Brian was getting more upset by the second, more frustrated than anything. He didn’t realize how loud he was being.

You felt your eyes sting and you pull in a shaky breath, feeling your chest tighten at Brian’s words. “I was being safe on stage, you know that. Tonight was different. I haven’t felt that close to you in ages! I’ve been safe! I-I couldn’t say anything, Bri. I couldn’t ruin this tour for us, for Queen. For anyone’s reputations. A baby would send the media crazy and suddenly there’ll be photographers peeping in through our windows. They’d make stories about you or Roger or Deaky or even Fred and I couldn’t do that to you all. I knew from the second I found out that I was pregnant that life would be very hard, hiding it or not. I honestly-  I don’t know what I’m going to do, I can’t do this alone…I just..I-I… I’m scared Brian.” You say, voice mixed with short gasps and tears beginning to fall. “I’m so scared.” You breath finally, hiding your face by burying your face in your hands.

Brian’s face immediately softened, feeling his heart pang for the poor girl in front of him. He let out a gentle sigh. Brian May bit his lip and shook his head, putting his hands on his hips. He walked around for a moment, just to come back to his same spot, heart breaking for you. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really had no idea. Y/N/N love, I’m sorry for yelling.” He said softly, feeling terrible for getting so upset, but you understood his anger and frustration. You felt the same way towards yourself. He looked at your figure and let out deep breath, slowly approaching you. He held out his arms and you were hesitant at first, but the look in his eyes was different. He gently held you, calming you momentarily, before he sat down with you, on the edge of the bed you had just been laying in.

He took in a deep breath and sat up straight, prompting you to do the same as you wiped you eyes with your sleeve. “I didn’t mean to get so upset, Y/N. I really didn’t. I hope you can forgive me for being this way. It’s just a difficult thing and I wouldn’t want any harm to come to you or the baby. I just care… so much for you. Having a baby is huge. It’s life changing for some and I really wish you would’ve told me. I thought I was your best friend.” Brian let out a gentle laugh, voice still soft and comforting. “Am I not your best friend?” He asked in a silly way, trying to meet your eyes through his eyelashes.

You swallow and look to him. “Brian, you’ll always be my best friend.” You smile, laughing gently too as more tears fell from your eyes. You sniffled and let out a breath. “It’s just… Brian.” You try, not knowing how to begin with bringing up the fact that you actually very much loved him and that you were carrying his child.

“Hmm, what?” He asked, tilting his head a little to look at your face. His eyes were hazel green once again. The same hazel green of that night.

“Do you remember anything that happened on our holiday that week we were driving through Arizona?” You ask very quietly, cheeks going pink with embarrassment from the memories that were all coming back and flooding your brain.

Brian gulped. “Yes, I-I do.” He answered. “Why’s that?” voice sounding a little suspicious.

“I’m not crazy, am I?” You ask, sighing and looking down to your stomach. “I just… I remember that we went out for drinks and that I asked you to come over to my room that night.” You begin, picking at your cuticles on your fingers. “And, if I’m not mistaken. I believe I told you that I loved you. Very much so and then we-“ You gasp a little, feeling your cheeks burn bright, eyes meeting Brian’s for a moment. You looked away.

“I always thought that maybe I had imagined that… or that I saw it in a dream or something.” Brian let out a breath of relief. “So, I really wasn’t dreaming? You love me and we actually …had sex?” Brian said, laughing slightly as he smiled greatly. “Afraid so. I thought maybe you had forgotten and I didn’t want to ruin a friendship over a drunken wet dream or something along those lines.” You say, chuckling with him too. “I just… I wanted to tell you that… I really do have feelings for you. You make me feel so safe and at home, Bri. I love every inch of you and the things you do. I love you, truly, Brian May.” You confess with watery eyes.  

“I love you, Y/N L/N. I don’t think I could love someone anymore.” He smiled, eyes shining with the light of the Milky Way.

You smile and laugh under your breath, shaking your head.

“There’s something else I should tell you, since my secret is out and I’m talking to you now.” You rolled your shoulders back and held your chin up high.

Brian’s face grew a little scared once more. ‘What more could happen now?’ He thought.

“Well, I’m sure you’re a little curious as to how this- “ You gesture to your round stomach. “-Happened.”

 Brian shrugged a little. “I’m sure whoever it was would be thrilled to know a rock goddess was having their child.” He said, trying to be chuffed, but inside he was a little jealous of the person, whomever they were.

“You… were… the first and only person I happened to have slept with on this entire tour.” You say, pursing your lips and looking around the room, before you found Brian’s face, hoping he understood.

Brian laughed, wondering how both of you could be so scared to even discuss it in the first place. He began to nod, tisking, not really understanding quite the reason behind you telling him your sex life, until it hit him like a tour bus. “Wait, you’ve only had sex with me? Wouldn’t that mean that…” He looked from you to your belly, back up to you. His face was absolutely astounded, surprised and smiling. “I’m going to be a dad?” He asked, soul blooming so wildly in his chest.

You couldn’t hold back your smile as you nodded in confirmation, your hand holding the side of your stomach for support and comfort.

“If you’d like… yes. I-I wouldn’t want anything more than to be yours and have this baby with you Bri.” You admit and took his hand, squeezing it tightly. “Only if you want, though. I know it’s very sudden for me to spring this onto you. Don’t think that I’m holding you back should you find someone else-“ You shook your head before Brian stopped you with a deep warm kiss, wrapping his arms around your body.

He held you so close, looking at you as if you were the most brilliant constellation in his universe. “I would like nothing more than to have this baby with you, Y/N. I would be honored to do this with you. I love you. But, I am going to have to take you on a few dates to know you better.” Brian joked and placed a gentle kiss to your forehead. “We can even turn my room into a nursery if you’d like, when we get back.” Brian suggested, head swimming with thoughts of becoming a father and having a baby with Y/n’s beautiful eyes and her gorgeous Y/H/C hair.

“I love you too… so much Bri. I’m sorry about all of this.” You began.

Brian interjected before you could even start apologizing again. “No, I’m sorry for not noticing that any of this was going on. I should’ve known. I really should have.” He sighed and stood up. You stand with him. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to grab a few things, then I’ll be right back. I’m staying with you tonight.” He teased, shutting his eyes and pursing his lips. “Tonight and tomorrow night and the night after that…” You began, laughing and kissing his nose as he bent down until his face could meet yours. ”Forever.” He smiled. “Or until Queen breaks up.” You roll your eyes. “Hey, okay. Don’t say that.” Brian opens his with a dramatic gasp.

“Oh you know we’ll all be old and well into our 70’s still doing all of this. We’ll be relics, but legends. I just know it.” You beam, taking Brian’s hand. “Can I show you something quite incredible before it ends?” You ask, feeling a familiar flutter in your middle again.

“Oh, anything!” Brian said excitedly. You take a step back and untie your robe. You took in a deep breath and let it fall open. Brian’s eyes fell to your swollen belly feeling so oddly protective. His heart swelled knowing that it was his baby. He smiled fondly as you took his hands and gently placed them on your belly. You hiss, his fingers chilly against your sensitive skin.  You held up a finger to Brian, telling him to be patient. A few moments passed before you felt the kicks again and moved his calloused fingers a little more upwards.

Brian starred down in awe, feeling the tiny fluttering against his hand. “Oh wow….” He said so softly, voice ever so gentle and calm. “They’re so strong already, my goodness. Oh my goodness.” He kept repeating, unable to process it fully. “They really only started doing that today. All through the show tonight. I felt the strong flutters every now and again. It makes it feel all the more real. Even to me too.” You sniffle and feeling a very strong urge to protect this child you were giving life to.

Brian looked up to you with teary eyes and stifled back a cry of joy. You would always remember the way he looked up in such admiration as he got to experience the baby for the first time. You felt guilty that you hadn’t just told him in the first place. “That’s really our baby, isn’t it?” He breathed out, feeling pure unadulterated joy, getting down to his knees. You let out a heavy sigh, placing your hands on your back, feeling a little twinge by the base of your spine.

Brian pressed a gentle kiss to where the flutters were occurring, before you heard him beginning to whisper softly. You smile fondly, feeling as though your heart would explode from the happiness and domestic moment you had always longed for with Brian.

“What are you saying, dear?” You asked, eyes finding Brian’s. He had a cheeky smile on his face.

“I’m telling our little one how much I really do love their mother, and how proud I am to be called their father… and that they will never be a drummer.” He hummed, and you couldn’t help but laugh at his comment.

“Go get your things, Bri. We need to rest. We’ll need to have a chat with everyone once we’re on the tour bus back to the airport.” You help him stand, kissing once more.

And so he did, leaving to grab his things. You put your robe back on and stood in the door way, helping him move his things inside so both could share a space together once again.

When he was finally settled, you both were excitedly talking about the baby and plans for it, leading to Brian waiting to feel the baby kick once more, and then you two cuddling up in bed, Brian holding you so securely. You nuzzled your face into his chest, inhaling his scent so deeply. He smelled so wonderful you couldn’t help but shiver. Brian noticed and silently pulled the covers up a little more to warm you up, thinking that maybe you had shivered from getting cold. You pressed a gentle kiss to his sternum, feeling him return the kiss gently to the top of your head. You finally drift off to sleep, feeling so happy and whole with Brian at your side.

 After everyone had finally woken up and started to pack all their things, you couldn’t help but feel nervous having to tell your band mates about your pregnancy and relationship with Brian. You look through your clothes, picking at the many things you wish you could be wearing, but you sigh and frown.  Brian notices your struggle. “You know, I don’t think you really need to hide it anymore.” He said, coming behind you and wrapping his arms around your shoulders and rested his chin on your shoulder.

“Plus, I think you look stunning like this. You are a true vision of Aphrodite.” He hummed and kissed your cheek.

“Are you saying I should wear nothing?” You giggle, playfully tickling his side. You sigh and click your tongue. You rummage through your suit case and find a beautiful bright red sun dress that had ruffled baby doll sleeves and a high waist line. It was long and flowed down your legs. It would actually hide your stomach perfectly. You smile at it, remembering wearing it that night you danced with Brian.

“Close your eyes for a second.” You say, smiling to yourself as you hid the red dress from Brian’s view.

He put his hands over his eyes. “Uhm… why?” He asked. “Just wait a moment.” You say, struggle in your voice as you undress and get the red dress on over your head. Your chest was a little too big for the top of the dress, hoping your boobs weren’t as fully on display as you felt, but the rest hung off your body perfectly. You quickly strap on a par of wooden wedge heels and fixed your hair, ruffling it up a little. You let out a deep sigh, giving yourself a once over in the mirror. “Okay.” You said quietly.

Brian opened his eyes and found you, eyes widening at the sight of you in the beautiful red dress you had gotten from New Orleans. He drank in every ounce of your being, from your gorgeously feathered hair, to the read capped sleeves that sat lightly around your shoulders. Or the lovely, tiny tied white bow on the front of the dress, heaving as your chest did with every breath. The lovely flowing red fabric over your body, and your hands to your sides as your belly poked through the dress only slightly.

“What do you think? Is it too much?” You ask, hoping his silence was for good reason. “Out of the whole universe, how did I get so lucky to have had so many moments created for me just for this one to occur? I’m… You steal my breath away, Y/N.” Brian said, head almost feeling dizzy with your beauty. A true Renaissance painting you were. And you were his.  “I think you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever saw.” He says quietly.

You blush hard, feeling your throat tighten. “Bri..” You laugh and hide your face from embarrassment. You shook your head. “Come on, they’ll leave without us.” You say and press a kiss to his cheek as you begin grabbing all your things. You throw your faux fur jacket on about to pick up one of your suitcases before Brian swiped it up first. “Nope. No heavy lifting, Y/N.” He said, struggling with all his bags. “I’ll be okay, Brian. You have a lot of your own. We’re just taking it to the bus.” You chuckle and grab your bags and guitar case.

 Once everyone was settled on the bus, you all chit chatted while the bus began its last stretch of the journey to the nearest airport. You sat next to Brian, hands occasionally brushing up against each other’s as you talked with Freddie over a riveting game of scrabble. You watched Brian play his words, gaining a great idea about how to tell your friends about your news. “I call next round.” You say, squinting your eyes around the table at John and Roger and then Freddie, sending him a suspicious grin and a wink.

Once Freddie was declared winner (yet again, somehow), you take the bag of playing tiles, shaking them up quite a bit. “Alright, I’m sure they’re shuffled, Y/N. You’re not going to win by warming them up.” Roger laughed, ashing his cigarette in a glass bowl behind him, on a window ledge.

“Just hold on.” You roll your eyes at him and begin to spell out words on the board, getting confused looks all around. You smiled quite proudly to yourself when you were done, turning it around so the boys sitting across from you could read it.

Across the board you had spelled out:

        I M PREGNANT

Freddie starred before looking up to you with a wide-open mouth. “What?!” He shrieked.

John smiled happily to you, chuckling to himself and your little secret with him.

Roger took a moment longer, looking at you and then to Brian and then back to you. He looked back to the words and then back up, before it struck him. “You’re having a baby! Holy shit!” He shouted, laughing. Freddie climbed over the seat, standing by your side, scooping you up into a large hug. “Congratulations! Oh my goodness, my dearest darling, you’re having a baby!” Freddie laughed wildly. Everyone had huge smiles and felt so happy for you. “You shouldn’t just be congratulating me, though.” You say and Freddie looks at your face lips pulled taught. “What do you mean by that? Roger, what did you do!” He accused him, flipping his hair, turning to him with his hands on his hips and a sour look on his face. John and Brian laugh too.

Roger gasped and shook his head. “No! No! I didn’t do anything I swear!” He began defending himself like a little school boy. You laugh hard, cheeks turning bright pink. “No, Fred. It wasn’t Roger.” You grab Freddie’s hand, meet his eyes once again.  Brian cleared his throat and stood, his hand hesitant before it wrapped around your waist. He looked to everyone and then to you. All the boys were silent, and Freddie looked to Brian’s face, smile pulling hard at his face, enough for tears to form in his eyes.

 “Brian and I are having a baby.” You say and hold on to Brian’s hand.

 Freddie got choked up, taking a moment to collect himself as he broke down from happiness, fanning his eyes. “Oh look at me! You’ve made me a into a bubbling mess!” He said, laughing softly. “Oh lovies, I never thought it would happen, you two were too stupid to see your feelings. Congratulations, my darlings.” He said, playfully punching Brian’s arm before pulling you in a great hug. The punch to Brian had everyone starting to laugh, apart from Roger. He quietly fumed in the corner. You notice and look to him, biting your lip.

“Roger? What’s wrong?” You asked, pressing your back against Brian’s chest.

“I owe Freddie 50 quid for betting you two wouldn’t actually get together, and I owe John another 20 quid for betting that Brian wouldn’t have any sex on this tour.” He huffed. Brian send up a look of daggers and you couldn’t help but snicker.

“Dear, you’ll have to let me help decorate the nursery.” Freddie began, taking your hands and sitting back down, talking up and down about the baby and how excited he was for you both. Roger insisted that his new name would have to be Uncle Rog, the cool uncle. Once you got a second with John, he began to babble on and on about his baby and what he and Veronica had been through and suggested that you all have a double date and discuss. You smiled, finding yourself in truly good company.

(let me know if you wanna be) Tagged: @sleep-paralysis-demon @mazzello-lee-jones-malek @t0r @geek-and-proud @im-grac3ful-but-fi3rc3 @kellypenac @awkwardangelshezza @brenna-xoxox @leah-halliwell92 @kiwi-coconut-dreams @sunflower-borhap-boys @fruityfreddie @neymarlionelmessi7 @rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives @stephydearestxo 

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Robin Hood, Bohemia Interactive, ESRB & Mathematically perfect steak

Welcome back. We've been expecting you.

We have a bit of a longer episode than usual this week because we just had so many interesting people to talk about, including a liar who looks like Hugh Jackman, and one of the most prolific Astronomers to ever live.

But, first up, the Nerds discuss the rumoured Disney Robin Hood remake. In live action. With photorealistic CGI. This sounds terrifying. This is a terrible idea. This will haunt your nightmares forever.

One of Professor's favourite game studios has had a great year, and Professor wants to talk about their future. Bohemia Interactive has some great projects in the works that are well worth checking out, so we've got a summary for you.

Dev-i-Boy has brought us the ESRB's disappointing attempt to resolve the Lootbox debate. He and Professor agree that this is a poor response. Maybe one day there will be a solution, but not today.

Dev-i has also found the algorithm for creating the perfect steak. It involves dozens of factors and complicated equations. But don't pull this paper out next time you go to a barbecue, or everyone will go home before you start cooking.

As usual, we bring you the games of the week. Professor and his girlfriend are finding out why they shouldn't have kids in Think of the Children. DJ and Professor are still playing Generation Zero. Professor is better at surviving the robot apocalypse than he is at raising kids. Dev-i is playing VR chat again. We wish him luck in his quest to become an anime girl.

Live action Robin Hood movie starring animals

            -https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/robin-hood-remake-works-at-disney-blindspotting-director-1289702

Bohemia Interactive sales reaching 68 million USD

            -https://www.bohemia.net/blog/bohemia-interactive-sales-reaching-68-milion-usd-in-2019

ESRB’s new measures to combat loot boxes

                - https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/13/21219192/esrb-new-label-loot-boxes-gacha-game

The mathematically perfect steak

            -https://www.sciencenews.org/article/math-equations-cooking-perfect-steak-beef-meat-simulation

                - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepjp%2Fs13360-020-00311-0

Games Played

Professor

– Think of the Children - https://store.steampowered.com/app/573600/Think_of_the_Children/

Rating: 4.5/5

DJ

– Generation Zero - https://store.steampowered.com/app/704270/Generation_Zero/ 

Rating: 4.5/5

Dev-i-Boy

– VRChat - https://store.steampowered.com/app/438100/VRChat/ 

Rating: 4/5

Other topics discussed

Cats movie butthole cut coming soon

- https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/6/21207710/cats-release-the-butthole-cut

ARMA 3 (open-world, realism-based, military tactical shooter video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_3

DayZ (DayZ is a survival video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DayZ_(video_game)

ARMA 3 APEX : Old man

- https://arma3.com/news/arma-3-apex-old-man-is-now-available

ARMA 3 developers arrested in Greece

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_3#Espionage_arrests

ARMA 3 banned in Iran

- https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/9/19/3357600/arma-3-banned-in-iran

Vigor (Free-to-play online action game by Bohemia Interactive for the Xbox One.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigor_(video_game)

Minecraft Hunger Games

- https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/technology-blog/minecraft-hunger-games-exists-just-amazing-imagining-165117705.html

Star Wars Battlefront II (action shooter video game based on the Star Wars film franchise.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Battlefront_II_(2017_video_game)

Heston Blumenthal's perfect steak

- https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/heston-blumenthals-perfect-steak

Perfect steak journal article

- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.10787.pdf

Flory-Huggin’s theory (Flory–Huggins solution theory is a lattice model of the thermodynamics of polymer solutions which takes account of the great dissimilarity in molecular sizes in adapting the usual expression for the entropy of mixing.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flory%E2%80%93Huggins_solution_theory

Incredible dads save kids compilation

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RIhUUt88ZM

Oculus Quest (Oculus Quest is our first all-in-one gaming system for virtual reality.)

- https://www.oculus.com/quest/?locale=en_US

Ugandan Knuckles (Ugandan Knuckles is the nickname given to a depiction of the character Knuckles from the Sonic franchise created by YouTuber Gregzilla, which is often used as an avatar by players in the multiplayer game VRChat who repeat phrases like "do you know the way" and memes associated with the country Uganda, most notably the film Who Killed Captain Alex? and Zulul.)

- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ugandan-knuckles

Simp (Simp, often interpreted as an acronym for Sucker Idolizing Mediocre Pussy or a portmanteau of "sissy" and "pimp," is a slang expression used to ridicule males who are perceived as being overly invested in a woman and acting submissive to that person.)

- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/simp

Amiga 500 (The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end Commodore Amiga 16/32-bitmultimedia home/personal computer.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500

Conway’s Game Of Life (The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematicianJohn Horton Conway in 1970.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

 Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life

- https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life

The Avengers (British espionage television programme created in 1961.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(TV_series)

The Avengers (1998 American action spy film adaptation of the British television series of the same name directed by Jeremiah Chechik.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(1998_film)

Brown note (a infrasonic frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note

Ted Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist, anarchist, and former mathematics professor.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

Ken Kesey (American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kesey

That’s not COVID (TNC podcast)

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/thatsnotcovidpodcast

Shout Outs

11 April 2020 – John Conway, a renowned mathematician who created one of the first computer games passes away - https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/us/john-conway-death-obit-trnd/index.html

John Conway, English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory,number theory,combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. A Google search for "Conway's Game of Life" prompts the search engine to automatically start playing the game. It is now commonly used as an introductory exercise in computing classes. Conway used his love of games to connect with children, spending time at math camps across the country. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 82 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

12 April 2020 – Sir Stirling Moss, F1 driver known as one of the best behind the wheel, passes away - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/stirling-moss-f1-driver-known-as-one-of-the-best-behind-the-wheel-dies-at-90/2020/04/12/91f03b9c-7cd3-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html

Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". Mr. Moss was known in his sport as “Mr. Motor Racing.” Long after his retirement, he was also considered a British national treasure — a dashing gentleman racer who was chivalrous and always sportsmanlike to his competitors despite the cut and thrust of motor racing. He was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the queen, in 2000. Mr. Moss’s sportsmanship was perhaps most evident in 1958, when he could have won the world championship after taking the Portuguese Grand Prix in Porto in his British-made Vanwall racecar. His archrival, Mike Hawthorn, finished second, giving him a key six points, which would have clinched the world title. But Hawthorn, a fellow Englishman, was threatened with disqualification for pushing his stalled Ferrari back onto the track after a spin. His disqualification would have put Mr. Moss in the driver’s seat for the world title. But Mr. Moss told race officials that Hawthorn had pushed his Ferrari only on an off-the-track area and should not be disqualified. His intervention swayed the officials, who awarded Hawthorn second place, eventually enabling him to win the F1 world championship by a single point over Mr. Moss. He passed away from a long illness at the age of 90 in Mayfair, London.

12 April 2020 – Tim Brooke Taylor, best known for his work on The Goodies and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue passes away - https://www.etonline.com/tim-brooke-taylor-the-goodies-star-dies-at-79-of-coronavirus-complications-144654

Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor, English comedian and actor. He was best known as a member of The Goodies, starring in the television series throughout the 1970s and picking up international recognition in Australia and New Zealand. He also appeared as an actor in various sitcoms, and was a panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue for almost 50 years. In 2008, Brooke-Taylor was heard in the Doctor Who audio story The Zygon Who Fell To Earth, made by Big Finish Productions. Paul McGann played the Eighth Doctor, and Brooke-Taylor played the part of Mims, a Zygon taking the shape of a human. In 2011, Brooke-Taylor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) during Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honors, for his services to entertainment. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 79 in the United Kingdom.

13 April 2020 – Rick May, who voiced Star Fox 64 and Team Fortress II passed away - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8216159/Rick-voiced-Star-Fox-64-Team-Fortress-II-characters-dies-79-coronavirus.html

Rick May, American voice actor and theatrical performer, director, and teacher from Seattle, Washington. He began voice acting in video games in the late 1990s, including roles as Peppy Hare and Andross in Star Fox 64, Peppy Hare might not be one of gaming's most famous characters, but May’s line in 1997's Star Fox 64 where he played Fox McCloud’s mentor is one of the most iconic lines in gaming history - so much so that even Google got in on the beloved meme. Go ahead, Google "Do a barrel roll". His other various campaign characters, include Genghis Khan, in Age of Empires II'; and Soldier in Team Fortress 2. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 79 in Seattle,Washington.

14 April 2020 – Pip Baker, one half of the Dr Who writing duo known as Pip and Jane Baker passes away - http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2020/04/pip-baker-died-2020.html

Pip Baker, along with his wife and writing partner Jane, was one of the best-known writers from the mid 80's era of Doctor Who, writing eleven episodes for the series. Together they created the Rani, a female Time Lord scientist who was brought to life so vividly by the late Kate O'Mara, as well a creating the companion Mel. The Bakers scripted or contributed to four serials for the programme in the 1980s: The Mark of the Rani, The Trial of a Time Lord, Parts 9–12 and 14 (also known as Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe); and Time and the Rani. They have also written novelisations of these stories, as well as a Make Your Own Adventure With Doctor Who (Find Your Fate With Doctor Who in the United States) gamebook titled Race Against Time. Pip and Jane's audio story The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind featured the return of the Rani and was released in 2000. He passed away from complication from a fall at the age of 91 in the United Kingdom.

Remembrances

5 April 2020 – Honor Blackman - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Blackman

English actress, widely known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers, Bond girlPussy Galore in Goldfinger, Julia Daggett in Shalako and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts. She is also known for her role as Laura West in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand. At 38, she was one of the oldest actresses to play a Bond girl, and was five years older than the star Sean Connery. Albert R. Broccoli said Blackman was cast opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond films based on her success in the British television series The Avengers. He knew that most American audiences would not have seen the programme. Broccoli said, "The Brits would love her because they knew her as Mrs. Gale, the Yanks would like her because she was so good, it was a perfect combination." She died from natural causes at the age of 94 in Lewes, Sussex.

13 April 1938 – Grey Owl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Owl

Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, commonly known as Grey Owl, was a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer who pretended to be a First Nations person. While he achieved fame as a conservationist during his life, after his death the revelation that he was not Indigenous, along with other autobiographical fabrications, negatively affected his reputation. Belaney rose to prominence as a notable author and lecturer, primarily on environmental issues. In working with the National Parks Branch, Grey Owl became the subject of many films, and was established as the "'caretaker of park animals' at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba" in 1931. Together with his numerous articles, books, films and lectures, his views on conservation reached audiences beyond the borders of Canada. His conservation views largely focused on humans' negative impact on nature through their commodification of nature's resources for profits, and a need for humans to develop a respect for the natural world. Recognition of Belaney has included biographies, a historic plaque at his birthplace, and a 1999 biopic about his life by the director Richard Attenborough. He died from pneumonia at the age of 49 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

13 April 1941 – Annie Jump Cannon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon

American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. She was nearly deaf throughout her career. She was a suffragist and a member of the National Women's Party. Cannon manually classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else, with a total of around 350,000 stars. She discovered 300 variable stars, five novas, and one spectroscopic binary, creating a bibliography that included about 200,000 references. She discovered her first star in 1898, though she was not able to confirm it until 1905. When she first started cataloging the stars, she was able to classify 1,000 stars in three years, but by 1913, she was able to work on 200 stars an hour. Cannon could classify three stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns and, if using a magnifying glass, could classify stars down to the ninth magnitude, around 16 times fainter than the human eye can see. Her work was also highly accurate. In 1925 she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Oxford University. In 1935, she created the Annie J. Cannon Prize for "the woman of any country, whose contributions to the science of astronomy are the most distinguished." She died from congestive heart failure at the age of 77 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

13 April 1944 - Cécile Chaminade - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade

French composer and pianist. In 1913, she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur, a first for a female composer. Ambroise Thomas said, "This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman." In 1908 she visited the United States, where she was accorded a hearty welcome. Her compositions were tremendous favorites with the American public, and such pieces as the Scarf Dance or the Ballet No. 1 were to be found in the music libraries of many lovers of piano music of the time. She composed a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, the ballet music to Callirhoé and other orchestral works. Her songs, such as The Silver Ring and Ritournelle, were also great favorites. In London in November 1901, she made gramophone recordings of seven of her compositions for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company; these are among the most sought-after piano recordings by collectors, though they have been reissued on compact disk. Chaminade was relegated to obscurity for the second half of the 20th century, her piano pieces and songs mostly forgotten, with the Flute Concertino in D major, Op. 107, composed for the 1902 Paris Conservatoire Concours, her most popular piece today. Chaminade's music has been described as tuneful, highly accessible and mildly chromatic, and it may be regarded as bearing the typical characteristics of late-Romantic French music. She died at the age of 86 in Monte Carlo.

Famous Birthdays

13 April 1570 – Guy Fawkes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years' War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder which they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords. He became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks. He was born in Stonegate, York.

13 April 1892 - Robert Watson-Watt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson-Watt

Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, Scottish pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio signals given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as huff-duff. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio in seconds and it became a major part of the network of systems that helped defeat the U-boat threat. It is estimated that huff-duff was used in about a quarter of all attacks on U-boats. In 1935 Watt was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio. Watt and his assistant Arnold Frederic Wilkins quickly determined it was not possible, but Wilkins suggested using radio signals to locate aircraft at long distances. This led to a February 1935 demonstration where signals from a BBC short-wave transmitter were bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft. Watt led the development of a practical version of this device, which entered service in 1938 under the code name Chain Home. Watson-Watt justified his choice of a non-optimal frequency for his radar, with his often-quoted “cult of the imperfect,” which he stated as “Give them the third-best to go on with; the second-best comes too late, [and] the best never comes.” He was born in Brechin,Angus.

13 April 1899 - Alfred Mosher Butts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Mosher_Butts

American architect, famous for inventing the board gameScrabble in 1938. In the early 1930s after working as an architect but now unemployed, Butts set out to design a board game. He studied existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games such as dice and bingo; move games such as chess and checkers; and word games such as anagrams. Butts decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players would draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their seven letters. A key to the game was Butts' analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter's frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four "S" tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy. Butts initially called the game "Lexiko", but later changed the name to "Criss Cross Words", after considering "It", and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game "Scrabble." To memorialize Butts's importance to the invention of the game, there is a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that is stylized using letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript. He was born in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Events of Interest

13 April 1953 – Project MKUltra begins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra), also called the CIA mind control program, is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control. The project's intentionally obscure CIA cryptonym is made up of the digraph MK, meaning that the project was sponsored by the agency's Technical Services Staff, followed by the word Ultra which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of World War II intelligence. Other related cryptonyms include Project MKNAOMI and Project MKDELTA. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke. The program engaged in many illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as its unwitting test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions. Techniques included the covert administration of high doses ofpsychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, electroshocks, hypnosis,sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of torture. In December 2018, declassified documents included a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants.

13 April 1970 - Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/apollo-13-oxygen-tank-explodes

On April 13, 1970, disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive. Mission commander Lovell reported to mission control on Earth: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water had been disrupted. The landing mission was aborted, and the astronauts and controllers on Earth scrambled to come up with emergency procedures. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon, circled it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth. The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its air supply and providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13‘s course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, with the world anxiously watching, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

13 April 2017 - The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province,Afghanistan.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Nangarhar_airstrike

 The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (commonly known as "Mother of All Bombs") is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was said to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. The basic principle resembles that of the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, which was used to clear heavily wooded areas in the Vietnam War. Pentagon officials suggested MOAB might be used as an anti-personnel weapon, as part of the "shock and awe" strategy integral to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The MOAB is not a penetrator weapon and is primarily intended for soft to medium surface targets covering extended areas and targets in a contained environment such as a deep canyon or within a cave system. The MOAB was first dropped in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIS) tunnel complex in Achin District, Afghanistan. Casualty figures were initially reported as 36 but increased over the following days as reconnaissance units investigated the site. On 18 April 2017, one senior Afghan security official said the bomb killed 96 Islamic State militants, among them 13 major commanders. Stars and Stripes reported that General Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said that since the strike, the offensive operation in the area was resumed. An Afghan officer also said that trees 100 metres from the impact point had remained standing.

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[the-broken-prince-of-hallownest]

Ever since I had heard Lazy Moonkin’s rendition of Myla’s song, I had wanted to have a go at it! I tried making my voice to sound what I felt like Myla would. Also I have not a single clue on how to mix audio so I am SO sorry if it sounds terrible ksjgh