#because the music industry is so near impossible to make a living in anymore without handing over everything to these companies

[artificialqueens]

Galactica, Chapter 73 (Group Fic) - TheDane/Veronica

A/N: Click here if you’re looking for previous chapters (or here if you’d rather read on AO3). 💫

Previously: Courtney committed a fireable offense when she lost Miss Fame’s sketches.

This Chapter: Bianca rides in on a white horse, and Violet says yes to cake.

***

BIANCA: I need Courtney’s address

ADORE: Why

BIANCA: Because she seems upset and she’s not answering and I’m worried

ADORE: What did you do?

BIANCA: NOTHING

BIANCA: I don’t think

BIANCA: Something probably happened at work

BIANCA: ADORE. SEND THE ADDRESS FOR FUCK’S SAKE

BIANCA: I WILL CUT YOU OFF BITCH

BIANCA: Adore, please.

ADORE: Fine! But if she’s mad, that’s on you

BIANCA: ACCEPTED

ADORE: Just to warn you, it’s a real shithole

BIANCA: Alright, alright, just please send the address

*

Even though Bianca felt like a little bit of a stalker just showing up at her place like this, she didn’t know what else she was supposed to do. Courtney had cancelled with those few cryptic messages and then gone radio silent. Bianca knew her well enough by now to be certain that something had gone wrong, since just hours earlier, she was sending sweet messages about how much she couldn’t wait for them to be together.

She tried calling her a few more times from the car, but there was no answer. Finally, standing in front of the crumbling brownstone, she had to come clean.

BIANCA: Look, I’m sorry for taking drastic measures, but I was really worried…

BIANCA: I’m outside your building

Seconds later, her phone rang. She answered, heart filling with relief. “Hi baby-”

“What are you doing here?”

Her voice sounded broken and raw, and it was immediately clear that she’d been crying. Bianca could feel her heart in her throat, head suddenly racing with all the possibilities of things she may actually have done wrong. Had she really fucked this up so quickly?

“I was worried about you, so I thought…” Bianca bit her lip, afraid to even ask if she was the one who had upset Courtney like this. “Are you gonna let me inside?”

There was a pause, a few beats, the sound of sniffling.

“I just...I kind of don’t want you to...see it.” She sounded choked up again, voice small and soft.

“Angel…” Bianca couldn’t help but feel a bit of relief. It didn’t sound like she was angry, at least not with Bianca--just ashamed of where she lived, which Bianca could understand. “Do you think I’ve always lived in a penthouse?”

“No,” Courtney admitted after a pause.

“No,” Bianca repeated. “Not by a longshot. Please let me in, I need to see you. I just want to talk.”

A few minutes later, Courtney appeared, opening the door from the basement level. Bianca raced down the narrow steps and swept her into a hug, trying not to fret too much about the way she hung limply in her arms.

She followed her inside, and while she’d been prepared for something small and substandard, based on everything she’d heard so far, this was far worse than her fears. A tiny basement unit, dank and dark with exposed pipes and what looked like the world’s oldest sofa bed. It was also clearly an illegal sublet with no kitchen--only a metal, industrial sink with an electric kettle and micro-fridge below.

Besides the bed, there was little furniture. Her closet appeared to be two wardrobe boxes, and a few other boxes were stacked next to the bed to create a makeshift side table. Bianca took it all in, wondering exactly how she ended up in such a dismal place.

But now was not the time to ask about that, not when Courtney looked so utterly miserable. Even in the dim lighting, Bianca could see that her eyes were red and swollen. She followed her to the sofa bed, sitting down gingerly beside her (and holy shit was that thing uncomfortable) and taking one of her hands into her lap.

“Tell me why you’re so upset, angel, please.”

Courtney took a shaky breath, fresh tears filling her eyes. “I did something...really terrible today.”

“Did you kill someone? Do you need me to get a shovel?” Bianca asked, and she was rewarded with a hint of a smile as Courtney shook her head.

“No, but…” Every trace of smile disappeared from her face as she said, “I bet Miss Fame is gonna think this is worse.”

“What happened?”

“I accidentally left an envelope with a bunch of her sketches in a cab.” A tear rolled down her reddened cheek.

Bianca’s eyes went wide, understanding why Courtney was so distraught. Fame rarely sketched anymore, but when she did, she was as attached to the original work as if it was a piece of her own body. She immediately went into problem-solving mode, trying to think of things to mitigate the damage.

“Have you tried calling the cab company-”

“I don’t know which cab company it was, I didn’t get a receipt and I can’t remember no matter how hard I try,” Courtney cried. “But I did call, I must have called a hundred different companies, but...I think they might be gone.”

“Okay-”

“It’s not okay! Her sketches, her original sketches! How could I have done that, I’m so dumb, I’m so bad at that stupid job!” More tears poured down her cheeks, sobs heaving her chest.

“Hey, come here…” Bianca pulled her in, hushing her softly, a hand rubbing circles into her back. “I know, I get what a big deal it is, but it sounds like you did everything you could. And I promise you, it’ll be okay-”

“How?! How will it be okay?! I’m gonna get fired!” Courtney exclaimed, and Bianca had to bite her tongue, the word ‘so?’ nearly slipping from her lips.

“Okay, well...let’s say you do get fired,” Bianca said slowly. “I don’t think you will, but if you do...would that be so bad? It’s clearly not your dream job.”

“But I need it. I can’t get my new work visa without it. It’s been months and I still don’t have the answer and-”

“You don’t have a work visa?”

“Not after March. I have an attorney who’s working on it, but he keeps running into problems and he’s already charged me so much and I don’t know-”

“Hold up. Galactica hired you, but they’re not handling your immigration issues?” Bianca asked.

“Well...Violet told me not to tell Miss Fame, so I...I was afraid to bring it up with HR. But I got the number of an immigration lawyer from Miss Fame’s contacts, and...it’s all just so expensive. He keeps asking for more money, and I can’t-”

“Wait a second.”

Bianca was no immigration expert, but she knew two things: 1, getting a work visa for an entry level administrative job was nearly impossible and 2, it was actually impossible without the full support of a sponsor company.

“Whoever that lawyer is, they’re a total fraud. Don’t give them any more money, okay?”

“Oh god.” Courtney moaned, squeezing her eyes shut. “Why can’t I do anything right?!”

“This isn’t your fault,” Bianca assured her. “You trusted a professional and they took advantage of you. They could be disbarred for that. And as for the sketches...stop beating yourself up. Yes, she’s going to be angry, and upset, but things happen. People make mistakes. I’ve made plenty, believe me.”

“Like this?” Courtney asked, eyes skeptical.

“I once dropped my boss’s wife’s passport off a subway platform.”

“Did you get fired?” Courtney asked.

“No. But I did get yelled at for a solid hour. Maybe two. It wasn’t a good day. But...I got through it. And you’ll get through this.”

“Maybe. But I just know I’m gonna fuck up again. Everything is...I don’t think it should still be this hard, not after 4 months. Miss Fame even said that, earlier today. I’m not new anymore, I should know better. I should be better. What’s wrong with me?!”

At first, Bianca said nothing, simply wrapping her in an embrace. She knew that Courtney was finding the job stressful--anyone in their right mind would find that job stressful. But the fact that it was this bad...Bianca felt guilty for not noticing sooner. She rocked Courtney slowly, letting her fall apart in her arms, whispering comfort into her ear.

After a while, when she sensed that Courtney was cried out, sobs slowing down and some of the tension finally melting away, Bianca pulled back and took her by the shoulders. She paused, considering for a minute if she really wanted to get involved before saying, “Maybe this isn’t the right job for you.”

“Well, I don't have another offer, so...oh, god, what am I gonna do? Is the visa thing really bad? Am I gonna get deported?”

“No,” Bianca said with a smile, shaking her head decisively. “I’ll take care of your visa. Don’t worry about it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet, but there are options. I promise, okay?” Bianca kissed her cheek softly, up near her ear, lips lingering on her tear-stained skin. “I’ve gotten pretty attached to you, so you leaving the country would be a huge bummer.”

Courtney finally seemed to relax, letting out a small chuckle, resting her head on Bianca’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to leave you either. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, angel.” Bianca squeezed her hand tighter, lacing their fingers together. “Does that mean you want to come home with me?”

Courtney nodded slowly, squeezing Bianca’s hand back. “Yes please.”

“Good.” Bianca tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “And, um...okay so, remember when you said that Christmas music makes you want to go to the beach?”

“Yeah…” Courtney tilted her head, puzzled.

“Well I may have booked us a little...getaway. Just for a few days. So you can have some sun and relax and get away from this dreary weather.”

“Where?” Courtney asked, eyes wide.

“Puerto Rico. It’s not that long of a flight, so-”

“But I thought you had to stay and work!”

“I can work from there.” Bianca flashed her a charming smile, adding, “I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you did. I’m…” Courtney took a deep breath, clearly overwhelmed, and then glanced over to where a beaten-up duffel bag lay on the floor. “I guess I need to pack some other clothes, although I’m not sure I have the right stuff here...”

“There are stores in San Juan.”

Courtney laughed, shaking her head and wiping her eyes. “I’m never gonna get used to the way you live.”

“You will. And that’s a promise,” Bianca said. “So will you come with me? Our flight leaves tomorrow at 2.”

“Yeah, of course! I just need like 20 minutes or so to pack.” Courtney’s mood already seemed to brighten as she began pulling boxes out of a stack against the brick wall.

“Of course, take your time. Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Oh. Uh...yeah, sure. It’s uh...out that door and down the hall, on the right. I share with Fred, but I think he’s at work right now, so-”

“Who’s Fred?”

“Um-”

“You know what, I can hold it,” Bianca assured her, crossing her legs.

“I’ll be fast, I promise,” Courtney said, pulling a pair of sandals out of the box and tossing them to the floor. “And B...thank you.”

“For what, sunshine?”

“Everything.”

***

“I’ll get to the dishes in a minute, mom!” Gigi closed the door behind her, looking around her bedroom in an attempt to remember where she had put her earpods. She crouched down, digging through her backpack. Symone had made her a playlist of music she had to listen to over the holidays, and if she was gonna be put on Cinderella duty, she might as well make it productive.

It felt strange to be home; the smells, sights and sounds were all exactly the same, while she couldn’t help but feel different, like she had grown up in the weeks she was away.

Some of her friends had reached out when they had seen on Instagram that she had returned to L.A, but she hadn’t responded yet. She was an adult now, with a real job, not a college kid that could mess around and do all the things she used to, hanging out in the skate park suddenly so lame and childish compared to all the things she was doing in New York.

She had spent the day in her mom’s studio, watching her work like she had done so many times before, her mom excitedly asking about what clothes she should make her, and showing her all of the sketches she had done while Gigi was away based on the pictures she had sent.

Gigi couldn’t wait to wear her mom's creations, the outfits more chic than anything she had seen in the multiple designer stores she had now been in. Sutan’s words that her style was her edge ones she had really taken to heart.

“There!” Gigi exclaimed triumphantly, pulling her earpods out of her backpack. She grabbed her phone, and was just about to get to the kitchen to do the dishes, when she saw that she had gotten a message from Symone, a massive grin spreading on her face as she slid back down to the floor, leaning against her bed to respond, her chores completely forgotten.

***

JINKX: Hey honey. Just want to make sure you made it home from the airport okay.

JINKX: I read it was snowing a ton.

JINKX: Plus you know, I haven’t heard from you in almost 4 hours so I miss you like crazy.

JINKX: ;-P

ALASKA: Haha, I’m fine. At a bar right now catching up with the bro.

JINKX: Tell him hi for me

JINKX: xoxo

ALASKA: <3

***

It was Christmas Eve Day, barely past dawn, but Courtney was already awake. She’d slipped from the bed as quietly as possible so as not to wake Bianca, padding over to the big picture window to watch the golden sunlight reflecting off the buildings, admire the light dusting of snow on the trees in the park. She wasn’t used to thinking of New York as pretty, but from up here, it really was.

“Hey...good morning…” Bianca said, her voice rough with sleep, just the way Courtney loved most.

“Good morning.” She turned around, giving her a slightly apologetic smile. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Nahh...I guess my body just doesn’t want to sleep without you.”

“I love it when you’re cheesy,” Courtney giggled.

“Oh yeah? Plenty more where that came from. What are you doing all the way over there?”

“Just...checking out the view. It’s pretty amazing.” Courtney turned and headed back to the bed, suddenly missing Bianca’s warmth beside her.

“The view over here isn’t half bad either,” Bianca told her with a wink.

Courtney giggled some more, crawling toward her across the mattress. “Happy Christmas Eve…”

Their lips met in a sweet and tender kiss, Bianca’s hands cradling her face.

“Speaking of which...how do you feel about opening one of your presents now?”

“Really? Already?” Courtney asked, eyes lighting up.

“Well, it’s kind of useful, so I think it makes sense.” Bianca got up out of the bed, pulling a huge box wrapped in silver from her closet.

Courtney sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly as she ripped open the paper to reveal a gorgeous pink Fendi suitcase, covered in what had to be custom crystals. Her mouth fell open.

“I figured you could use it for our trip. You know. I’m all about practical gifts.”

Courtney couldn’t help laughing. The suitcase was anything but practical...but it was perfect, like it was designed from Courtney’s wildest daydreams.

“I don’t know if I have enough to fill this,” Courtney said, running her fingers over it, watching the way the stones glittered in the light.

“Well...that’s cool, I could use the extra space myself.”

Courtney raised her eyebrows. She’d seen Bianca’s packed suitcases, two giant Louis Vuittons and a large, matching carry-on, nearly ready to go.

“You need more space? We’re going for a week...what are you even taking?!”

“More presents,” Bianca said, dimples deepening.

“Oh my god…”

***

Violet chewed on her lip; sorting through Google images really not where she excelled. She was looking for pictures of Raja at the Met Ball, slowly combing through what she could find since her emails to Max and Pearl had gone unanswered. It was annoying, but expected. Pearl never missed out on the chance of ignoring her emails, and Max was british so he completely ignored both phone and computer the minute he left the office, so she was on her own.

“Violet?”

Violet looked up from her station at the living room table to see Sutan head peek in through the kitchen door, his phone against his shoulder, the glasses in his hair betraying that he had been working  as well even though it was Christmas Eve. “My mom’s asking if you like klappertaart?”

“... Excuse me what?” Klappertaart? Violet had no idea what that was. It wasn’t unusual for either Raja or Sutan to get a bit confused when they bounced between Indonesian and English, their sentences sometimes mixed up, but that didn’t sound Indonesian at all. “Is that German?”

“Dutch, actually,” Sutan smiled. “Remind me to educate you on the thrilling saga of Indonesia's colonial history some day.”

“Ah,” Violet felt a brief stab of shame, that information seeming like something she should have known, though she had barely even been aware that Indonesia existed before she had met her boyfriend.

“So?” Sutan walked fully into the room, leaning against the doorframe, his black pants tight in the waist, and Violet couldn’t help but admire him for a second. “Klappertaart?”

“I still don’t know what it is.”

“Oh fuck, right” Sutan’s eyes widened, and Violet laughed as she heard a noise from the phone, Murni clearly picking up on her son’s swearing, Sutan quickly putting the phone against his ear.

“Ya Bunda, ya ya, maaf,” Sutan grinned, walking over to the table before putting the phone down so he could continue talking.

“Klappertaart is… It’s a cake, that’s…” Sutan paused, clearly looking for his words. “There’s coconut and… Know what, excuse me.” Sutan held the phone up again, Indonesian falling from his lips as he talked to his mom and Violet had to hide a smile, Sutan clearly never considering what was in this mysterious klappertaart.

“There,” Sutan pulled away, “It’s a coconut cake with almonds and raisins, and we usually have it for Christmas.”

“Huh,” Violet ran over the ingredients in her head. It was incredibly nice of Sutan’s mom to ask if she liked the menu, and there weren’t any of the ingredients that she hated, though warm raisins were disgusting, but she was pretty sure she could get away with picking them off, so there was no reason to create a scene. “That sounds lovely.”

“Great,” Sutan smiled, bending down to give her a quick kiss before he returned to his phone call.

[san-station]

Come home • Hwang Hyunjin

Pairing: Hwang Hyunjin x Reader

WARNING: kinda angst?

↝Word count: 2k

A/N: Imagine it's around 1940 - 1950

You were slowly dancing in the living room, all alone, while the jazz music from the record player flowed through the house into your ears, making you breath in a small bubble of nostalgic and happiness. Your beloved friend, Seungmin, was taking care of your children, well informed of the special evening so you decided to embrace yourself with your traditional ritual. 

You arrived home pretty late, tired of working all day, although, the warm feeling of your home inviting you to relax on that special day was very promising, so nothing could stop you from opening that bottle of red wine, taking off your hurtful shoes and setting the music up. It brought you a bit of tranquility in a whole industrialized country where working was the first priority for safety.

You glanced at every little detail around you, the shelves where pictures and some toys rested, paintings that your children did gathered over the floor, promises made on those walls that will never be true… and so, you finally saw it. It was a small velvet box covered with a few dust particles. You slowly stepped near it and grabbed it with your free hand. 

You sighed and opened.  

It’s a special evening, you remembered. 

“March 20th. 

Today is a special day, right? How are you doing? Are you eating well? This nostalgic is sickening the walls from our place, darling. Can you imagine the green walls getting darker and darker each time we say your name? We know you probably won’t read this on time but… happy birthday! It’s the first one away from us… How does it feel? Do you miss us? Sure you do, mister 'I love mi family so much I'll die for them'. That letter was cute, to be honest.

Anyway, remember we’re happy for you! Oh, and Rodie wrote a poem for you, it says ‘One day I’ll be tall, one day I’ll be strong, one day I’ll be like you, that day might be soon’. Isn’t it cute?! He misses you so much, I really hope you’re okay. Stay safe and you’ll come home very soon. 

Yours forever, 

Y/N ”

~

“April 19th.

Today, Rodie wanted to go stargazing, he said he saw a shooting star and wished you were here. Then, he cried because he was pretty sure that saying the wish out loud won’t make it happen, but I made sure to let him know that we will see you soon, Jinnie! You know... while I looked at the stars, all I could think was you, you and your beauty, you and your kindness, you and only you...

Your eyes are watching the same sky as we are, did you know? So basically we’re all stargazing together!  We still have this, tho haha.

You’re the brightest star of all the galaxy, darling. Also, thanks for your letter and the little poem, Rodie was bragging about it at school all the week, even the teacher said he should stop but he’s a proud boy showing how much you care about him. 

Anyway, stay safe.

Yours forever, 

Y/N.”

~

 “April 27th

I got fever for the whole week, Jinnie, my sister took care of me the whole time, don’t worry! Yet, as I was sleeping with the delusional heat, I suddenly felt your warm arms around my waist, back hugging me while we sleep. I could listen to your heartbeat, and I was trying to match mine with yours. And I heard you whispered that you'll be here soon! Was it all a dream? I wish you were here.

Sometimes I dream you’d touch my belly and ask if I'm doing okay, if we are doing okay. And I’d say that you don’t need to worry about the growing life that’s getting stronger everyday inside of me, we've been through this before, this is just another round!

  I didn’t want to wake up, however, Rodie asked to write you something again since we didn’t received a response from the previous one. He says ‘Dad! Did you know that elephants can’t jump?! And that pandas can be 12 hours eating?! I once ate for three hours because mom’s food is awful but I couldn’t throw it away, I love her too much... When are you coming home? Uncle Chan just arrived and he said he was with you for a couple of days but you had to go to another place… Where are you know? Take care, goodnight, Dad!’ 

He learned a lot today… I hope you’re doing fine and come home soon, love. We’ll wait for your letter. 

Yours forever, 

Y/N and Rodie.”

~

“May 14th

Your best friend Chan came home today, he says I’m getting fatter and I almost punched him in the face. Well, he’s not wrong, I hope you’d be here when the time comes. 

Some days I miss you more than others, but some days I miss myself more than you… I can’t recognize myself in the mirror if you’re not here, my love. Rodie wakes up every morning asking for his daddy but he knows you’re doing your best. Be safe, Jinnie… We love you.

Yours forever,

Y/N. "

~

“May 25th

Once again I’m standing here with my tainted fingers, today is colder than yesterday but warmer than the day before… I keep searching for answers to an unsaid question, and all I can think about is you, your soft lips against my cheeks, your bright smile making my heart skip beats, your loud laugh catching everyone’s attention, your sweet voice asking me to dance with you even if there was no music playing… Gosh, even if you're not here I fall in love more and more with you. I miss you...

We’re waiting for you, my love. It’s been a while since we got one of your letters but I’m certain you’re getting ours… We love you! Come home!

Yours forever,

Y/N.”

~

“June 30th

Today… Today was a nightmare, Hyunjin. I couldn't bring myself to write this but ... I found a letter at the mail station a month ago, it was from someone called Seungmin, he said you worked together for a while… I waited a month to write this but here it is. 

I’ll never forget you for doing this, Hyunjin. My heart is broken, I don’t think my tears will ever stop from falling, I feel like dying whenever I look at your pictures and… I can’t do this anymore.  Even when I know you’ll never read this, I need to write to you because, someday, this feelings would get to you in a way, meanwhile, I’ll let myself suffer because of what you did...

Yours,

Y/N.”

~

“July  6th

I yelled at Rodie today… He was demanding to see you but I can’t, not now. Chan visited us, he told me to stay strong but how? Does he even know how much a broken heart can swell and tear you apart from the pain? Does he know how difficult it is to breath when your chest is constantly on fire? It’s killing me inside every second, Hyunjin. I don’t want this, I don’t like to feel this way when I know you can’t feel anything… I don’t want to tell Chan how I feel… I… I’m broken because of you. 

Y/N.”

~

“July 13th

My sister looked at my belly and she cried… You made my sister cry, Hwang Hyunjin… You make me cry every single time of the day… I know you probably would be so sad knowing this, knowing you’re the reason I walk numbly from a place to another, the reason why Rodie can’t sleep, the reason why Chan and my sister have to take care of us. I said I don’t need their help but they insisted, they always do.

Now we’re having a beautiful dinner with your favorite food, my speciality… I miss you, and I know someday I’ll feel better, but right know I want to die slowly and painfully, it would hurt less than this mess. 

Y/N.”

~

“July 19th 

I finally stopped crying, Jinnie… but everything feels wrong. It feels… empty… my heart… 

Rodie won’t talk to me anymore after we fought, he speaks more to Chan than me. I don’t know what to do and I know you won’t answer, but… what should I do? 

Oh, we met Seungmin today, he visited us supresily. He’s kind. He told us about your stories together. After he left, I cried one more time… Listening how considerate you were with him… I love you. 

You know? This is not what I asked for. If you would ask, I would give all for rewriting an ending or two for the family that I knew, for the girl I used to be… For being yours one more time. 

Yours forever?

Y/N.”

~

“September 16th

Hi… Her name is Sam. Did you remember when we were joking about that name? I must say, she deserves that name. She looks like me, but she has your little mole below her eye and I kissed it, they same way I used to kiss yours. Congratulations, Jinnie, you have a daughter! (...)”

The music stopped playing a while ago, and the only sound filling the house was your little sobbs reminiscing the whole escenario. 

 “Ugh…  

I can’t do this anymore... “ 

~

“December 24th

Rodie wrote a letter to Santa. He asked for his dad, he asked to turn back time and stopped this, but he realized destiny is very machiavellian and sometimes, wishes won’t come true. 

By the way… Your friend Seungmin, he volunteered to take care of us, he said he owned you this for saving his life one time, he’s really generous. He saw how lonely I was and he’s trying to put a smile on my face, but only Sam and Rodie can do that. Sam, Rodie and you.

The idea of you still next to us as a family... that hunts me everyday. How beautiful would that be? Sam would climb to your back till she can see everything from your height. Rodie would make me chase him and ask for ice cream, and I’ll eventually buy ice cream for everyone… Hyunjin, I miss you so freaking much… this is just so unfair...

Yours forever,

Y/N, Rodie and Sam.”

~

“December 31st

Hyunjin, happy new year… The war is over! I miss you more than I miss the old me, now, when I look at the mirror, sometimes I don’t even know who’s the one in front of me, all I know is that my heart belongs to you and will always be yours. Sam is getting bigger every month! She started to make weird baby noises trying to repeat my voice. Also, she loves music! She moves her little body when we play music.

We all wish you were here. This is the first December without you. I can't keep asking you this because is impossible... Come home, baby.

Missing you,

Your family. "

~

“February 14th

Rodie got lots of candies from a lot of girls and boys in his class! They said he looked like his handsome father and they’re not lying, my love. Happy Valentine's Day.

This is going to be one of the last letters I’ll write for you, not because I don’t love you anymore, ok? It’s because I think it’s time to keep the good memories we made in my head, my safeplace. And writing this is a reminder of you being gone. I don't like that, you're here with me.

I took Sam and Rodie to the first place we met, the college cafeteria! Rodie hated it for a second, then he got a lot of attention and felt like the prince he is. Sam slept all the time placed in my chest, I love her… she’s so calm… I wish she knew how much her father loved her without even being born… We love you, Hyunjin.

Yours forever,

Hwang Family.” 

~

“March 20th

Happy birthday, my love! 

I know you can’t love me anymore, but you did it once and, for me, it meant the whole world. So, now. my love for you stays still as if it was the first time we said ‘I love you’... I was shaking so much that day… Thank you for loving me the way you did, thank you for giving me the opportunity to raise a family next to you. You’re gone, but you’ll always be in our hearts and minds, I’ll be sure to talk to Sam about you non-stop. 

You broke my heart by losing your life that day. I know it was for your country… that doesn’t mean you lost your family or friends, we will always remember your laugh, your face, your warmth, your cute smile, your bright eyes, the ways words came easily from your mouth, the way you showed your love so intense, the way you existed was... wholesome.

I love you, Hwang Hyunjin… And, like the old times… 

Please,

Come home.

Your one and only.”

(....)

Masterlist

[cathariis]

‘ i need you.’ — EVERYONE

send  ‘ i need you. ’ for my muse’s reaction.

halcyon & harley (main).

the words that dropped from his lips weren’t a surprise. halcyon had been away on location for the last two months and refused harley to visit her during filming. while the beginning of their relationship is going well, she didn’t want many people to know about her personal life –– especially since she’s still demanding respect among her peers and crew. they didn’t need to see her showing off the puppy love she felt for the male, although she hasn’t said those words to him yet. still, halcyon made sure to send him pictures and videos while she’s been away. the female smirked, seeing her boyfriend prepared for their long night. “didn’t think you could hold off without me for two months.” halcyon grabbed his shoulders, pushing him on to the bed as she crawls up on top of him. “but i need you too, now.”

halcyon & harley (alt).

they’ve been sneaking around for the last few weeks. they had yet to confirm or deny a relationship. but ever since that day in harley’s room where they had sex for the first time together, they couldn’t get enough of each other. it was a clear addition that neither one of them wanted to admit. she had gotten home from practice, both of her parents still out of town for a reunion in the next town over. their nights together have become more frequent, often falling asleep together in the same bed after their time orgasming. halcyon even showed him how to sneak into her bedroom, for when her parents were home. since arriving, she hasn’t texted harley since before and figured that tonight she’ll be alone. the thought didn’t sit well with halcyon but she didn’t want to form a relationship, despite her own feelings towards him. stepping out of the shower with her towel wrapped around her body, halcyon was greeted with harley sitting on her bed. it was silent for a moment before he spoke, causing her to bite her bottom lip. part of her wanted to tell him to leave, that tonight wasn’t it but the need to have him near was larger than her own will. was it possible that through sex, she has fallen in love? stepping closer to him, her hands placed gently on his cheeks, rubbing the skin gently. he removed her towel, allowing it to drop on the floor. harley knew what she wanted without her having to say a word. he laid a kiss on her chest, whispering those three words and before she knew, halcyon was laying on her back, lips locking on to his. “harley..” she whispered, fingers in his hair as he worked her core. “i need you too.” not only in sex, but forever.

danielle & harley.

danielle couldn’t take this life she lived anymore. every day, it was a nightmare. her husband caused a scene over the smallest thing, often blaming her although she had no hand in whatever it may be. this life was no longer her own –– everything that she held dear to her was taken away. her dancing, her sketches books, her communication with her father and brother, even the charities that she adored were removed from her life. she was a prisoner, a property value to her husband and step-father. all was taken from her except for one person: harley. danielle always managed to sneak away from her husband’s grip, hiding out in their secret apartment and knowing full well she’d have to pay the price later. in her miserable life, harley was the light that she needed to go on every day. even with everything they’ve been through –– the drugs, the rehab, the break-ups –– they always found a way back to each other. however, they have once again landed in a fight. it was clear that neither one of them could handle being apart from each other for too long. they were in love. in her mind, it seemed almost impossible for her to leave her husband but when harley yelled that he needed her, that was the final strike. “then take me to america!” she cried, forcing herself to hold back the tears that were forming. “i want to be in your life forever, have your last name and have children with you. i love my country but i love you more, far more than words could describe, mon amour. i hate saying good-bye and i do not want to do it again. take me with you.”

dimitri & andi.

those three words were tough for him to hear over the webcam. dimitri could have never foreseen this coming when he signed up to join the marines. not that andi was pregnant with their first child, that his father-in-law was getting worse by the day or that he was staying on location for much longer than he thought. a part of him wished that he remained home instead of signing up, to keep making videos and stay home with andi during this time. however, it’s not the case. there was no way dimitri could go back home at this stage, they were stuck until then. he’d miss the birth of his child and the possible chance to say good-bye to andrew. the guilt in his heart was heavy, something that he wasn’t proud of. he had to look away from the monitor, unable to look at his heavily pregnant wife on the screen. “i’m so sorry..” he mumbles, knowing full well that she could not hear those words but could hear his sobs.

gabriel & grey.

it was as if they were riding a bike. nothing between them as changed, other than the fact that they were older, much more experienced in the bedroom and have an equal amount of money in their bank accounts. either way, they were still the same individuals who fell in love all those years ago –– that has never changed. she sat on his lap as they overlooked the gardens of his home, both not having changed out of their pjs for the last two days with bed hair present. they were supposed to be taking a breather, eating a small meal before they got back into bed. however, it was clear that grey had other ideas, moving her hips against his in slow motion. his green hues looked at the back of her blonde hair, hearing her whisper those three words he always enjoyed. one hand held her hip as the other moved around, touching her core through the thin material of her thong. “alors je te ferai l'amour, mon amour” he mentions, allowing his fingers to enter her with ease. “mais je vais vous faire crier aussi.”

sage & connor.

they couldn’t get their hands off each other. the only time they decided to be civil was around noah but considering he was off with his father, all bets were off. the couple made the agreement to start experimenting in the bedroom. sage never backed down from a challenge but this was a whole new ballpark for her, especially with a man that she truly loved. they’ve been dating for almost a year and they have made progress, in the bedroom and out of it. right now, however, they were removing articles of clothing left and right, lips unable to get away from each other. sage sat on top of him, growing wetter by the second as her hips moved against his hard-on. her hands were about to pull away from his locks and to remove the material that separated them from continuing this activity. however, when connor pulled away to say those words to her, sage noticed a difference in his eyes. it wasn’t lust in his eyes, it was love. with that realization, a tint of blood rushed to her cheeks, smiling softly at her boyfriend. “i’m not going anywhere, baby…” she stated, bringing her right hand down and held her pinky out. “that’s a promise.”

boden & charlie.

boden wanted nothing more than some time to take a break and be with his girlfriend. however, with his new album coming out in the next few weeks, he knew that there was more buzz needed for sales to go up. truth be told, he didn’t care about the money and simply wanted to make good music but he understood how the industry worked. still, he didn’t expect to make an instagram live while on vacation with charlie. he promised that it would only be thirty minutes but somehow it ended up being an hour, answering fan questions and giving small snippets of what’s to come. boden was supposed to be on for another fifteen minutes but charlie whispered in his ear, stating that she needed him in her spanish accent. he was forever thankful that the camera was fixated on him from the chest up because she had moved away from the screen, only to start teasing him from the side. “well, that’s all for this live. see you all in the next one!” he quickly said to the camera, turning off the stream to give his girlfriend his full attention. “you are a sneaky, sneaky girl and i fucking love you for it.”

[maximelebled]

Growing Pains - Zelda, Tony Hawk, The Sims, games and related memories from my formative years

This blog post is about my personal history with video games, how they influenced me growing up, how they sometimes helped me, and more or less an excuse to write about associated memories with them.

This is a very straightforward intro, because I’ve had this post sitting as a draft for ages, trying to glue all of it cohesively, but I’m not a very good writer, so I never really succeeded. Some of these paragraphs date back at least one year. 

And I figured I should write about a lot of this as long as I still remember clearly, or not too inaccurately. Because I know that I don’t remember my earliest ever memory. I only remember how I remember it. So I might as well help my future self here, and give myself a good memento.

Anyway, the post is a kilometer long, so it’ll be under this cut.

My family got a Windows 95 computer when I was 3 years old. While I don’t remember this personally, I’m told that one of the first things I ever did with it was mess up with the BIOS settings so badly that dad’s computer-expert friend had to be invited to repair it. (He stayed for dinner as a thank you.)

It was that off-white plastic tower, it had a turbo button, and even a 4X CD reader! Wow! And the CRT monitor must have been... I don’t remember what it was, actually. But I do once remember launching a game at a stupidly high resolution: 1280x1024! And despite being a top-down 2D strategy, it ran VERY slowly. Its video card was an ATI Rage. I had no idea what that really meant that at the time, but I do recall that detail nonetheless.

Along with legitimately purchased games, the list of which I can remember:

Tubular Worlds

Descent II

Alone in the Dark I & III

Lost Eden

Formula One (not sure which game exactly)

Heart of Darkness

(and of course the famous Adibou/Adi series of educational games)

... we also had what I realize today were cracked/pirated games, from the work-friend that had set up the family computer. I remember the following:

Age of Empires I (not sure about that one, I think it might have been from a legitimate “Microsoft Plus!” disc)

Nightmare Creatures (yep, there was a PC port of that game)

Earthworm Jim (but without any music)

The Fifth Element

Moto Racer II

There are a few other memorable games, which were memorable in most aspects, except their name. I just cannot remember their name. And believe me, I have looked. Too bad! Anyway, in this list, I can point out a couple games that made a big mark on me.

First, the Alone in the Dark trilogy. It took me a long time to beat them. I still remember the morning I beat the third game. I think it was in 2001 or 2002.

There was a specific death in it which gave me nightmares for a week. You shrink yourself to fit through a crack in a wall, but it’s possible to let a timer run out—or fall down a hole—and this terrifying thing happens (16:03). I remember sometimes struggling to run the game for no reason; something about DOS Extended Memory being too small.

I really like the low-poly flat-shaded 3D + hand-drawn 2D style of the game, and it’d be really cool to see something like that pop up again. After the 8-bit/16-bit trend, there’s now more and more games paying tribute to rough PS1-style 3D, so maybe this will happen? Maybe I’ll have to do it myself? Who knows!

Second, Lost Eden gave me a taste for adventure and good music, and outlandish fantasy universes. Here’s the intro to the game:

A lot of the game is very evocative, especially its gorgeous soundtrack, and you spend a lot of time trekking through somewhat empty renders of landscapes. Despite being very rough early pre-rendered 3D, those places were an incredible journey in my young eyes. If you have some time, I suggest either playing the game (it’s available on Steam) or watching / skimmering through this “longplay” video. Here are some of my personal highlights: 25:35, 38:05, 52:15 (love that landscape), 1:17:20, 1:20:20 (another landscape burned in my neurons), 2:12:10, 2:55:30, 3:01:18. (spoiler warning)

But let’s go a couple years back. Ever since my youngest years, I was very intrigued by creation. I filled entire pocket-sized notebooks with writing—sometimes attempts at fiction, sometimes daily logs like the weather reports from the newspaper, sometimes really bad attempts at drawing. I also filled entire audio tapes over and over and OVER with “fake shows” that my sister and I would act out. The only thing that survived is this picture of 3-year-old me with the tape player/recorder.

It also turns out that the tape recorder AND the shelf have both survived.

(I don’t know if it still works.)

On Wednesday afternoons (school was off) and on the week-ends, I often got to play on the family computer, most of the time with my older brother, who’s the one who introduced me to... well... all of it, really. (Looking back on the games he bought, I can say he had very good tastes.)

Moto Racer II came with a track editor. It was simple but pretty cool to play around with. You just had to make the track path and elevation; all the scenery was generated by the game. You could draw impossible tracks that overlapped themselves, but the editor wouldn’t let you save them. However, I found out there was a way to play/save them no matter what you did, and I got to experiment with crazy glitches. 85 degree inclines that launched the bike so high you couldn’t see the ground anymore? No problem. Tracks that overlapped themselves several times, causing very strange behaviour at the meeting points? You bet. That stuff made me really curious about how video games worked. I think a lot of my initial interest in games can be traced back to that one moment I figured out how to exploit the track editor...

There was also another game—I think it was Tubular Worlds—that came on floppy disks. I don’t remember what exactly lead me to do it, but I managed to edit the text that was displayed by the installer... I think it was the license agreement bit of it. That got me even more curious as to how computers worked.

Up until some time around my 13th or 14th birthday, during summer break (the last days of June to the first days of September for French pupils), my sister and I would always go on vacation at my grandparents’ home.

The very first console game I ever played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my cousin’s Super Nintendo, who also usually stayed with us. Unlike us, he had quite a few consoles available to him, and brought a couple along. My first time watching and playing this game was absolutely mind-blowing to me. An adventure with a huge game world to explore, so many mysterious things at every corner. “Why are you a pink rabbit now?” “I’m looking for the pearl that will help me not be that.”

Growing up and working in the games industry has taken the magic out of many things in video games... and my curiosity for the medium (and its inner workings) definitely hasn’t helped. I know more obscure technical trivia about older games than I care to admit. But I think this is what is shaping my tastes in video games nowadays... part of it is that I crave story-rich experiences that can bring me back to a, for lack of a better term, “child-like” wonderment. And I know how weird this is going to sound, but I don’t really enjoy “pure gameplay” games as much for that reason. Some of the high-concept ones are great, of course (e.g. Tetris), but I usually can’t enjoy others without a good interwoven narrative. I can’t imagine I would have completed The Talos Principle had it consisted purely of the puzzles without any narrative beats, story bits, and all that. What I’m getting at is, thinking about it, I guess I tend to value the “narrative” side of games pretty highly, because, to me, it’s one of the aspects of the medium that, even if distillable to some formulas, is inherently way more “vague” and “ungraspable”. You can do disassembly on game mechanics and figure out even the most obsure bits of weird technical trivia. You can’t do that to a plot, a universe, characters, etc. or at least nowhere near to the same extent.

You can take a good story and weave it into a number of games, but the opposite is not true. It’s easy to figure out the inner working of gameplay mechanics, and take the magic out of them, but it’s a lot harder to do that for a story, unless it’s fundamentally flawed in some way.

Video games back then seemed a lot bigger than they actually were.

I got Heart of Darkness as a gift in 1998 or 1999. We used to celebrate Christmas at my grandparents’, so I had to wait a few days to be back home, and to able to put the CD in the computer. But boy was it worth it! Those animated cutscenes! The amazing pixel art animations! The amazing and somewhat disturbing variety of ways in which you can die, most of which gruesome and mildly graphic! And of course, yet again... a strange and outlandish universe that just scratches my itch for it. Well, one of which that forged my taste for them.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened or what it was, but I do remember that at some point we visited some sort of... exposition? Exhibit? Something along those lines. And it had a board games & computer games section. The two that stick out in my mind were Abalone (of which I still have the box somewhere) and what I think was some sort of 2D isometric (MMO?) RPG. I wanna say it was Ultima Online but I recall it looking more primitive than that (it had small maps whose “void” outside them was a single blueish color). 

In my last two years of elementary school, there was one big field trip per year. They lasted two weeks, away from family. The first one was to the Alps. The second one was... not too far from where I live now, somewhere on the coast of Brittany! I have tried really hard to find out exactly where it was, as I remember the building and facilities really well, but I was never able to find it again. On a couple occasions, we went on a boat with some kind of... algae harvesters? The smell was extremely strong (burning itself into my memory) and made me sick. The reason I bring them up is because quite a few of my classmates had Game Boy consoles, most of them with, you know, all those accessories, especially the little lights. I remember being amazed at the transparent ones. Play was usually during the off-times, and I watched what my friends were up to, with, of course, a bit of jealousy mixed in. The class traveled by bus, and it took off in the middle of the night; something like 3 or 4 in the morning? It seemed like such a huge deal at the time! Now here I am, writing THESE WORDS at 03:00. Anyway, most of my classmates didn’t fall back asleep and those that had a Game Boy just started playing on them. One of my classmates, however, handed me his whole kit and I got to do pretty much what I wanted with it, with the express condition that I would not overwrite any of his save files. I remember getting reasonably far in Pokémon before I had to give it back to him and my progress was wiped.

During the trip to the Alps, I remember seeing older kids paying for computer time; there was a row of five computers in a small room... and they played Counter-Strike. I had absolutely no idea what it was, and I would forget about it until the moment I’m writing these words, but I was watching with much curiosity.

The first time I had my own access to console games was in 2001. The first Harry Potter film had just come out, and at Christmas, I was gifted a Game Boy Advance with the first official game. I just looked it up again and good god, it’s rougher than I remember. The three most memorable GBA games which I then got to play were both Golden Sun(s) and Sword of Mana... especially the latter, with its gorgeous art direction. My dad had a cellphone back then, and I remember sneakily going on there to look up a walkthrough for a tricky part of Golden Sun’s desert bit. Cellphones had access to something called “WAP” internet... very basic stuff, but of course still incredible to me back then.

I eventually got to play another Zelda game on my GBA: Link’s Awakening DX. I have very fond memories of that one because I was bed-ridden with a terrible flu. My fever ran so high that I started having some really funky dreams, delirious half-awake hallucinations/feelings, and one night, I got so hot that I stumbled out of bed and just laid down against the cold tile of the hallway. At 3 in the morning! A crazy time! (Crazy for 11-year-old me.)

(The fever hallucinations were crazy. My bedroom felt like it was three times at big, and I was convinced that a pack of elephants were charging at me from the opposite corner. The “night grain” of my vision felt sharper, amplified. Every touch, my sore body rubbing against the bed covers felt like it was happening twice as much. You know that “Heavy Rain with 300% facial animation” video? Imagine that, but as a feverish feeling. The dreams were on another level entirely. I could spend pages on them, but suffice to say that’s when I had my first dream where I dreamed of dying. There were at least two, actually. The first one was by walking down a strange, blueish metal corridor, then getting in an elevator, and then feeling that intimate convinction that it was leading me to passing over. The second one was in some Myst-like world, straight out of a Roger Dean cover, with some sort of mini-habitat pods floating on a completely undisturbed lake. We were just trapped in them. It just felt like some kind of weird afterlife.)

I also eventually got to play the GBA port of A Link To The Past. My uncle was pretty amused by seeing me play it, as he’d also played the original on SNES before I’d even been born. I asked him for help with a boss (the first Dark World one), but unfortunately, he admitted he didn’t remember much of the game.

We had a skiing holiday around this time. I don’t remember the resort’s or the town’s name, but its sights are burned in my memory. Maybe it’s because, shortly after we arrived, and we went to the ski rental place, I almost fainted and puked on myself, supposedly from the low oxygen. It also turned out that the bedroom my parents had rented unexpectedly came with a SNES in the drawer under the tiny TV. The game: Super Mario World. I got sick at one point and got to stay in and play it. This was also the holiday where I developed a fondness for iced tea, although back then the most common brand left an awful aftertaste in your mouth that just made you even more thirsty.

We got a new PC in December of 2004. Ditching the old Windows 98 SE (yep, the OS had been upgraded in... 2002, I think?). Look at how old-school this looks. The computer office room was in the basement. Even with the blur job that I applied to the monitor for privacy reasons, you can still tell that this is the XP file explorer:

A look at what the old DSLR managed to capture on the shelf reveals some more of the games that were available to me back then: a bunch of educational software, The Sims 2, and SpellForce Gold. 

I might be misremembering but I think they were our Christmas gifts for that year; we both got to pick one game. I had no idea what I wanted, really, but out of all the boxes at (what I think was) the local Fnac store, it was SpellForce that stood out to me the most. Having watched Lord of the Rings the year prior might have been a factor. I somewhat understood Age of Empires years before that, but SpellForce? Man, I loved the hell out of SpellForce. Imagine a top-down RPG that can also be played from a third-person perspective. And with the concept of... hero units... wait a second... now that reminds me of Dota.

Imagine playing a Dota hero with lots of micro-management and being able to build a whole base on new maps. And sometimes visiting very RPG-ish sections (my favorites!) with very little top-down strategy bits, towns, etc. like Siltbreaker. I guess this game was somewhat like an alternate, single-player Dota if you look at it from the right angle. (Not the third-person one.)

I do remember being very excited when I found out that it, too, came with a level editor. I never figured it out, though. I only ever got as far as making a nice landscape for my island, and that was it!

A couple weeks after, it was Christmas; my sister and I got our first modern PC game: The Sims 2. It didn’t run super well—most games didn’t, because the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 wasn’t very good. But that didn’t stop me or my sister from going absolutely nuts with the game. This video has the timestamp of 09 January 2005, and it is the first video I’ve ever made with a computer. Less than two weeks after we got the game, I was already neck-deep in creating stuff.

Not that it was particularly good, of course. This is a video that meets all of the “early YouTube Windows Movie Maker clichés”.

Speaking of YouTube, I did register an account there pretty early on, in August of 2006. I’ve been through all of it. I remember every single layout change. I also started using Sony Vegas around that time. It felt so complex and advanced back then! And I’m still using it today. Besides Windows, Vegas Pro is very likely to be the piece of software that I’ve been using for the longest time.

I don’t have a video on YouTube from before 2009, because I decided to delete all of them out of embarassment. They were mostly Super Mario 64 machinima. It’s as bad as it sounds. The reason I bring that up right now, though, is that it makes the “first” video of my account the last one I made with the Sims 2.

But before I get too far ahead with my early YouTube days, let me go backwards a bit. We got hooked up to the Internet some time in late 2005. It was RTC (dialup), 56 kbps. my first steps into the Internet led me to the Cube engine. Mostly because back then my dad would purchase computer magazines (which were genuinely helpful back then), and came with CDs of common downloadable software for those without Internet connections. One of them linked to Cube. I think it was using either this very same screenshot, or a very similar one, on the same map.

The amazing thing about Cube is not only that it was open-source and moddable, but had map editing built-in the game. The mode was toggled on with a single key press. You could even edit maps cooperatively with other people. Multiplayer mapping! How cool is that?! And the idea of a game that enabled so much creation was amazing to me, so I downloaded it right away. (Over the course of several hours, 30 MiB being large for dialup.)

I made lots of bad maps that never fulfilled the definition of “good level” or “good gameplay”, not having any idea how “game design” meant, or what it even was. But I made places. Places that I could call my own. “Virtual homes”. I still distinctively remember the first map I ever made, even though no trace of it survives to this day. In the second smallest map size possible, I’d made a tower surrounded by a moat and a few smaller cozy towers, with lots of nice colored lighting. This, along with the distinctive skyboxes and intriguing music, made me feel like I’d made my home in a strange new world.

At some point later down the line, I made a kinda-decent singleplayer level. It was very linear, but one of the two lead developers of the game played it and told me he liked it a lot! Of course, half of that statement was probably “to be nice”, but it was really validating and encouraging. And I’m glad they were like that. Because I remember being annoying to some other mappers in the Sauerbraten community (the follow-up to Cube, more advanced technically), who couldn’t wrap their heads around my absolutely god awful texturing work and complete lack of level “design”. Honestly, sometimes, I actually kinda feel like trying to track a couple of them down and being like, “yeah, remember that annoying kid? That was me. Sorry you had to deal with 14-year-old me.”

At some point, I stumbled upon a mod called Cube Legends. It was a heavily Zelda-inspired “total conversion”; a term reserved for mods that are the moddiest mods and try to take away as much of the original foundation as possible. It featured lots of evocative MIDI music by the Norwegian composer Bjørn Lynne. Fun fact: the .mid files are still available officially from his website!

This was at the crossroad of many of my interests. It was yet another piece of the puzzle. As a quick side note, this is why Zelda is the first series that I name in the title of this post, even though I... never really thought of myself as a Zelda fan. It’s not that it’s one of the game series that I like the most, it’s just that, before I started writing this, I’d never realized how far-reaching its influence had been in my life, both in overt and subtle ways, especially during my formative years.

And despite how clearly unfinished, how much of a “draft” Cube Legends was, I could see what it was trying to do. I could see the author’s intent. And I’m still listening to Bjørn Lynne’s music today.

The Cube Engine and its forums were a big part of why I started speaking English so well. Compared to most French people, I mean. We’re notoriously bad with the English language, and so was I up until then. But having this much hands-on practice proved to be immensely valuable. And so, I can say that the game and its community have therefore had long-lasting impacts in my life.

I also tried out a bunch of N64 games via emulation, bringing me right back in that bedroom at my grandparents’ house, with my cousin. Though he did not have either N64 Zelda game back then.

The first online forum I ever joined was a Zelda fan site’s. There are two noteworthy things to say here:

It was managed by a woman who, during my stay in the community, graduated from her animation degree. At this stage I had absolutely no idea that this was going to be the line of work I would eventually pursue!

I recently ran into the former head moderator of the forums. (I don’t know when the community died.) One of the Dota players on my friends list invited him because I was like “hmm, I wanna go as 3, not as 2 players today”. His nickname very vaguely reminded me of something, a weird hunch I couldn’t place. Half an hour into the game, he said “hey Max... this might be a long shot, but did you ever visit [forum]?” and then I immediately yelled “OH MY GOD—IT IS YOU.” The world is a small place.

Access to the computer was sometimes tricky. I didn’t always have good grades, and of course, “punishment” (not sure the word is appropriate, hence the quotes, but you get the idea) often involved locking me out of the computer room. Of course, most times, I ended up trying to find the key instead. I needed my escape from the real world.  (You better believe it’s Tangent Time.)

I was always told I was the “smart kid”, because I “understood things faster” than my classmates. So they made me skip two grades ahead. This made me enter high school at nine years old. The consequences were awful (I was even more of the typical nerdy kid that wouldn’t fit in), and I wish it had never happened. Over the years, I finally understood: I wasn’t more intelligent. I merely had the chance to have been able to grow up with an older brother who’d instilled a sense of curiosity, critical thinking, and taste in books that were ahead of my age and reading level. This situation—and its opposite—is what I believe accounts for the difference in how well kids get to learn. It’s not innate talent, it’s not genetics (as some racists would like you to believe). It’s parenting and privilege.

And that’s why I’ll always be an outspoken proponent for any piece of media that tries to instill critical thinking and curiosity in its viewer, reader, or player.

But I digress.

Well, I’ve been digressing a lot, really, but games aren’t everything and after all, this post is about the context in which I played those games. Otherwise I reckon I would’ve just made a simple list.

I eventually got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Mario Kart DS. My sister had gotten her own just around the time when it released... she had the Nintendogs bundle. We had also upgraded to proper ADSL, what I think was about a ~5 megabits download speed. The Nintendo DS supported wi-fi, which was still relatively rare compared to today. In fact, Nintendo sold a USB wireless adapter to help with that issue—our ISP-supplied modem-router did not have any wireless capabilities. I couldn’t get it the adapter work and I remember I got help from a really kind stranger who knew a lot about networking—to a point that it seemed like wizardry to me.

I remember I got a “discman” as a gift some time around that point. In fact, I still have it. Check out the stickers I put on it! I think those came from the Sims 2 DVD box and/or one of its add-ons.

I burned a lot of discs. In fact, in the stack of burned CDs/DVDs that I found (with the really bad Sims movies somewhere in there), I found at least three discs that had the Zelda album Hyrule Symphony burned in, each with different additional tracks. Some were straight-up MIDI files from vgmusic.com...! And speaking (again) of Zelda, when the Wii came out, Twilight Princess utterly blew my mind. I never got the game or the console, but damn did I yearn badly for it. I listened to the main theme of the game a lot, which didn’t help. I eventually got to play the first few hours at a friend’s place.

At some point, we’d upgraded the family computer to something with a bit more horsepower. It had a GeForce 8500 GT inside, which was eventually upgraded to a 9600 GT after the card failed for some reason. It could also dual-boot between XP and Vista. I stuck with that computer until 2011.

We moved to where I currently live in 2007. I’ve been here over a decade! And before we’d even fully finished unpacking, I was on the floor of the room that is now my office, with the computer on the ground and the monitor on a cardboard box, playing a pirated copy of... Half-Life! It was given to me by my cousin. It took me that long to find out about the series. It’s the first Valve game I played. I also later heard about the Orange Box, but mostly about Portal. Which I also pirated and played. I distinctly remember being very puzzled by the options menu: I thought it was glitched or broken, as changing settings froze the game. Turns out the Source engine had to chug for a little while, like a city car in countryside mud, as it reloaded a bunch of stuff. Patience is a virtue...

But then, something serious happened.

In the afternoon of 25 December 2007, I started having a bit of a dull stomach pain. I didn’t think much of it. Figured maybe I’d eaten too many Christmas chocolates and it’d go away. It didn’t. It progressively deteriorated into a high fever where I had trouble walking and my tummy really hurt; especially if you pressed on it. My parents tried to gently get me to eat something nice on New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t stay in very long. I could only feed myself with lemonade and painkiller. Eventually, the doctor decided I should get blood tests done as soon as possible. And I remember that day very clearly.

I was already up at 6:30 in the morning. Back then, The Daily Show aired on the French TV channel Canal+, so I was watching that, lying in the couch while waiting for my mom to get up and drive me to my appointment, at 7:00. It was just two streets away, but there was no way I could walk there. At around noon, the doctor called and told my mom: “get your son to the emergency room now.”

Long story short, part of my intestines nuked themselves into oblivion, causing acute peritonitis. To give you an idea, that’s something with a double-digit fatality rate. Had we waited maybe a day or two more, I would not be here writing this. They kind of blew up. I had an enormous abcess attached to a bunch of my organs. I had to be operated on with only weak local anaesthetics as they tried to start draining the abscess. It is, to date, by far the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. It was bad enough that the hospital doctor that was on my case told me that I was pretty much a case worthy to be in textbooks. I even had medical students come into my hospital room about it! They were very nice.

This whole affair lasted over a month. I became intimately familiar with TV schedules. And thankfully, I had my DS to keep me company. At the time, I was pretty big into the Tony Hawk DS games. They were genuinely good. They had extensive customization, really great replayability, etc. you get the idea. I think I even got pretty high on the online leaderboards at some point. I didn’t have much to do on some days besides lying down in pain while perfecting my scoring and combo strategies. I think Downhill Jam might’ve been my favorite.

My case was bad enough that they were unable to do something due to the sad state of my insides during the last surgery of my stay. I was told that I could come back in a few months for a checkup, and potentially a “cleanup” operation that would fix me up for good. I came back in late June of 2008, got the operation, and... woke up in my hospital room surrounded by, like, nine doctors, and hooked up to a morphine machine that I could trigger on command. Apparently something had gone wrong during the operation, but they never told me what. I wasn’t legally an adult, so they didn’t have to tell me. I suspect it’s somewhere in some medical files, but I never bothered to dig up through my parents’ archives, or ask the hospital. And I think I would rather not know. But anyway, that was almost three more weeks in the hospital. And it sucked even more that time because, you see, hospital beds do not “breathe” like regular beds do. The air can’t go through. Let’s say I’m intimately familiar with the smell of back sweat forever.

When I got out, my mom stopped by a supermarket on the way home. And that is when I bought The Orange Box, completely on a whim, and made my Steam account. Why? Because it was orange and stood out on the shelf.

(As a side note, that was the whole bit I started writing first, and that made me initially title this post “growing pains”. First, because I’m bad at titles. Second, because not that I didn’t have them otherwise (ow oof ouch my knees), but that was literally the most painful episode of my entire life thus far and it ended in a comically-unrelated, high-impact, life-changing decision. Just me picking up The Orange Box after two awful hospital stays... led me to where I am today.)

While I was recovering, I also started playing EarthBound! Another bit of a life-changer, that one. To a lesser extent, but still. I was immediately enamored by its unique tone. Giygas really really really creeped me out for a while afterwards though. I still get unsettled if I hear its noises sometimes.

I later bought Garry’s Mod (after convincing my mom that it was a “great creative toolbox that only cost ten bucks!”), and, well, the rest is history. By which I mean, a lot of my work and gaming activity since 2009 is still up and browsable. But there are still a few things to talk about.

In 2009, I bought my first computer with YouTube ad money: the Asus eee PC 1005HA-H. By modern standards, it’s... not very powerful. The processor in my current desktop machine is nearly 50 times as fast as its Atom N280. It had only one gigabyte of RAM, Windows 7 Basic Edition, and an integrated GPU barely worthy of the name; Intel didn’t care much for 3D in their chips back then. The GMA 945 didn’t even have hardware support for Transform & Lighting.

But I made it work, damn it. I made that machine run so much stuff. I played countless Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods on it—though, due to the CPU overhead on geometry, some of those were trickier. I think one of the most memorable ones I played was Mistake of Pythagoras; very surreal, very rough, but I still remember it so clearly. I later played The Longest Journey on it, in the middle of winter. It was a very cozy and memorable experience. (And another one that’s an adventure wonderful outlandish alien universe. LOVE THOSE.)

I did more than playing games on it, though...

This is me sitting, sunburned on the nose, in an apartment room, on 06 August 2010. This was in the Pyrénées, at the border between France and Spain. We had a vacation with daily hiking. Some of the landscapes we visited reminded me very strongly of those from Lost Eden, way up the page...

So, you see, I had 3ds Max running on that machine. The Source SDK as well. Sony Vegas. All of it was slow; you bet I had to use some workarounds to squeeze performance out of software, and that I had to keep a close, watchful eye on RAM usage. But I worked on this thing. I really did! I animated this video’s facial animation bits (warning: this is old & bad) on the eee PC, during the evenings of the trip, when we were back at our accomodation. The Faceposer tool in the Source SDK really worked well on that machine.

I also animated an entire video solely on the machine (warning: also old and bad). It had to be rendered on the desktop computer... but every single bit of the animation was crafted on the eee PC.

I made it work.

Speaking of software that did not run well: around that time, I also played the original Crysis. The “but can it run Crysis?” joke was very much justified back then. I had to edit configuration files by hand so that I could run the game in 640x480... because I wanted to keep most of the high-end settings enabled. The motion blur was delicious, and it blew my mind that the effect made the game feel this smooth, despite wobbling around in the 20 to 30 fps range.

Alright. It’s time to finish writing this damn post and publish it at last, so I’m going to close it out by listing some more memories and games that I couldn’t work in up there.

Advance Wars. Strategy game on GBA with a top-down level editor. You better believe I was all over the editor right away.

BioShock. When we got the 2007 desktop computer, it was one of the first games I tried. Well, its demo, to be precise. Its tech and graphics blew my mind, enough that I saved up to buy the full game. This was before I had a Steam account; I got a boxed copy! I think it might have been the last boxed game I ever bought? It had a really nice metal case. The themes and political messages of the game flew way over my head, though.

Mirror’s Edge. The art direction was completely fascinating to me, and it introduced me to Solar Fields’ music; my most listened artist this decade, by a long shot.

L.A. Noire. I lost myself in its stories and investigations, and then, I did it all again, with my sister at the helm. I very rarely play games twice (directly or indirectly), which I figure is worth mentioning.

Zeno Clash. It was weird and full of soul, had cool music, and cool cutscenes. It inspired me a lot in my early animation days.

Skyward Sword. Yep, going back to Zelda on that one. The whole game was pretty good, and I’m still thinking about how amazing its art direction was. Look up screenshots of it running in HD on an emulator... it’s outstanding. But there’s a portion of the game that stands tall above the rest: the Lanayru Sand Sea. It managed to create a really striking atmosphere in many aspects, through and through. I still think about it from time to time, especially when its music comes on in shuffle mode.

Wandersong. A very recent pick, but it was absolutely a life-changing one. That game is an anti-depressant, a vaccine against cynicism, a lone bright and optimist voice.

I realize now this is basically a “flawed but interesting and impactful games” list. With “can establish its atmosphere very well” as a big criteria. (A segment of video games that is absolutely worth exploring.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever make my own video game. I have a few ideas floating around and I tried prototyping some stuff, though my limited programming abilities stood in my way. But either way, if it happens one day, I hope I’ll manage to channel all those years of games into the CULMINATION OF WHAT I LIKE. Something along those lines, I reckon.

[saintanism-archive]

daaaamn aj, back at it again with the long as fuc headcanons !! anyway hi everyone it’s me this is saint he’s a pretentious fuck & my ( really long, sorry, feel free 2 skip them, there’s a tl;dr summary in my bulletpoints so u can just scroll past it ) headcanons and intro stuff is under the cut !

first headcanon. while most houghton parents are doctors, lawyers, and business executives, saint’s always been something of a horse of a different color. his family certainly isn’t unwealthy—he does, after all, live in one of those multi-million-dollar brownstones in beacon hill auctioned by freaking sotheby’s—but they’re certainly neo riche, which can be sort of hit or miss, depending on who you’re asking. saint is not unlike his parents in that they surround themselves with a kind of off-kilter opulence ( sure, that kind of cash value would have bought them a newly constructed sleek mansion in the suburbs, but why go for something new and modern when you could live in a brownstone with over three hundred years of history that, supposedly, one of the founding fathers lived in? besides, you just can’t beat that location—never mind that the brownstone’s been totally gutted and replaced with sleek, modern interior anyway, and definitely not anything that ben franklin or whoever would have touched ) while pretending to eschew materialism and vanity. why else would they live in boston instead of new york or la, right? anyway. saint is the only son of the one and only cordelia st. mercy ( pronounced, unlike saint’s name, the french way—san merci, which sounds hilariously close to ‘sans merci,’ meaning ‘without mercy,’ a joke that is not lost on saint ), a renowned fashion photographer and portrait artist ( think in the vein of annie liebovitz  and arthur elgort ) with a marked celebrity and high art clientele, and also the one and only son of the less elegantly named garrett wallace ( a pen name; his real name is garrett wallerstedt, but his editor and agent agreed that last names that are difficult to pronounce are harder to sell ), whose grisly but artful novels earned him a national book award in 1997, a film deal in 2001 ( the film was a critical and box office success but, in garrett’s opinion, too reductive of his book; ‘pure snuff’ ), and a professorship in the creative writing program at MIT. yes, that MIT, which yes, does have a creative writing program, and yes, it’s a very good one. SO—that’s the pedigree saint mercy-wallace was born into, and it probably explains a whole lot about him. his parents are not and were never married, so he can’t quite say he’s a child of divorce. instead, he spends the school year with his father while his mother travels all over the world, doing her work, though she comes home for holidays and saint’s birthday, and the summers he spends with his mother, dipping his feet into the world of the new york art scene. it was an unusual arrangement, but not a bad one; it was a long time before saint even understood that his family situation was out of the ordinary, but, like, at least he knew both his parents loved him or whatever. they are both pretty emotionally distant and prone to getting caught up in their own work—his father is always focused on teaching or poring over his latest book or invited to give a talk somewhere, for example—but it’s not a bad situation. they’re just more like friends than parents. as a result, saint grew up with a lot of freedom ( more than most of his houghton peers, whose helicopter parents put the weight of the world on their shoulders ) and little discipline, often left to his own devices and trusted with the ability to take care of himself.

second headcanon: ah, yes. the houghton food chain. it’s easy to say saint sits at the dead bottom. like, he’s not even the bugs that get eaten by the birds or whatever. he’s the plant that gets eaten by the bugs. or the soil nutrients that get consumed by the plants—something like that. but the easy answer isn’t necessarily the correct one, and you see, once upon a time, saint sat somewhere near the top. he was never number one, of course, but he was up there, in that little crew of self-proclaimed high school princes and princesses ( quite literally, what with calling themselves windsors and all ). and he fit quite well, all things considered. what, with his pseudo-celebrity family background and his instagram roll full of selfies with models and musicians and actors and that specifically youthful brand of devil-may-care attitude that bordered at times on cruelty—he was a perfect fit for the windsors, his five-story, oft-empty brownstone the perfect venue for their parties and his unconscious need to belong to some kind of family the perfect host for going along with anything that dante and his ilk said. that’s not to make it sound like he was manipulated into it or anything of the sort��he wasn’t. he and dante were good friends—they were all good friends—and like anyone would, saint relished in the perks that came with sitting at the king’s left hand instead of dancing for his entertainment. he was ( and still is ) always the kind of person who gave off an air of not really caring about anything at all, but that’s especially easy when you want for nothing. his life was impossibly easy. too easy, perhaps—exactly what went down that infamous day when saint fell from his high school pedestal remains a mystery. all anyone really knows is this: it was your typical rager at chateau mercy-wallace. the party was going as saint’s parties typically did, so, pretty well, until saint cut the music and ( red-rimmed and wild-eyed, or stinking of about a hundred cigarettes, or with a bloody nose from too many lines of coke, depending on who’s telling the story—it’s morphed a bit over time ) threw everyone out of his house with no explanation. just a party’s over, fuckwads, get outta my house, and some monologue about the bullshit superficiality of high school, of all of them, about how they were all talking in circles and repeating the same lines over and over, but not even their own lines, lines they’d inherited from generations and generations past. it’s equally up for debate whether saint left the windsors or was kicked out, but there’s something of a general consensus that it was in the muddy lines of both. that went down somewhere towards the middle of the end of his junior year. since then? total social pariah. he left behind the lacrosse and soccer teams, opting instead for chain-smoking under the bleachers and cutting class. he’s a mystery, that saint mercy-wallace.

third headcanon: they were friends until they weren’t. they met in middle school and hit it off pretty easily, these two sons of daedalus who feared not the dangers of flying too close to the sun. they were handsome and charming and confident and gifted and the world opened for them—it made it easy to get along. eleven-year-olds didn’t need much by way of substance to start friendships. if you were to ask saint, looking back on it, after that they remained friends out of habit—because they were in the same place at the same time, because they had similar privilege, because they both felt they could do anything and get away with it, because they had similar luxurious sensibilities. it was ( if you ask saint ) what really bonded all of the windsors together more than any other kind of commonality. but, you know. when you wake up—as saint describes it, a waking up—and you look around and you see all this shit you’ve been brainwashed into thinking matters about anything, and you call out the only flimsy common ground you’ve got. well. you’re not going to be friends anymore, are you? after that, saint didn’t harbor any particular resentment towards dante, but he made no attempts to be friendly, often making snide remarks about the absurdity that was the whole premise of the “windsors” and how maybe they all needed to get outside and look at something other than their phones once in a while. he was still fairly shocked and upset by his death—nobody wants anyone to die, old friend slash new enemy or otherwise—but not enough to make a big thing out of it. saint’s had a pretty hard time feeling much of anything these days.

OK THE TL;DR VERSION:

son of a big hotshot fashion/art/celeb photographer ( cordelia aka cordy st. mercy ) and an acclaimed writer, essayist, novelist, thinker, etc ( garrett wallace, who teaches creative writing at MIT )

lives in a big ol brownstone in boston proper, often left to his own devices

his parents are not married to each other so he usually spends the school year w dad and the summer w mom - pls advise if u want some kind of step sibling or “our parents are dating this is terrible!” connection

used to be a windsor ! he was once (in)famously a member of the elite Inner Circle(TM) until he even more infamously had a giant burnout , threw everyone out of his house during a Classic Saint Rager ( he used to be known for throwing parties ), stopped hanging out w the windsors and has been kinda.....weird ever since

i mean don’t get me wrong he was always a pretentious fuck but he used to be better at keeping it inside and like having fun and talking about silly things now he hates talking about basic high school bullshit

his instagram is full of selfies w models and artists and musicians and actors and he only listens to bands you’ve probably never heard of who are “on the up and up”

and also house music and gregorian chants and weird af shit he’s into, like, industrial noise. anyway..........

prides himself on being very fashion forward and forward thinking in general

BIG MESS

literally never says things that aren’t . ridiculous

examples:

“can’t today my existential dread is acting up”

“i only eat squid ink pasta it’s the most melancholy of pasta”

“i can barely navigate the hellish vortex between breakfast and dinner, let alone the labyrinth of the soccer field” ( said when he quit the soccer & lacrosse teams, which he used to play )

does not give a single fuck about anything ever

chainsmokes like u wouldn’t believe catch him on the bleachers during football practice wearing all black and smoking three cigarettes at once it’s disgusting ( lowkey he thinks it looks cool lol what a loser )

reads pretentious af shit like jd salinger and allen ginsburg and the other beats and thinks he’s so edgy. kill him

skips class.....all the time . . . . but has really good grades ? wild

hates everyone and everything that isn’t Elegant

acts like he’s so above all this high school hierarchy nonsense & too cool for it & blah blah but uh

he’s probably just depressed

maybe still gets invited to parties if people forget for a second that he’s a giant fucking weirdo now? but maybe not

i would Love a ferris bueller to his cameron frye but we’ll see

anyway he’s super hard to plot with but you should plot with me anyway

this has been an intro by aj thanks for coming to my ted talk

[deliverydefresas]

the club isn’t the best place to find a lover so the bar is where i go

What is this you ask? I have no idea.

I’ve always wanted famous!simón with college!ámbar au-thingy and i was like “hey maybe this could be au enough for this one prompt i’ve owed barbara since the ice age” that i was supposed to post (and finish) by muffin’s birthday but then shit happened in my country and then i got (still am) sick so it came out so ???? that it’s basically forcing me to be make it longer than one chapter bc me is sick enough to think i can actually achieve this without disappointing any of you lol 

ANYWAY this is famous simón + college ámbar + the beanie au mess (????) and i’m warning you that, it is, indeed, a mess xD

The night had proved to be a drag.

Music was loud, voices tuned out by the speakers and the booming voice of whatever rock band they were playing at the moment, so he had run off to a balcony outside the bar, where the chilly air would be clean of the smell of alcohol and sweat. It was well over midnight, but his friends seemed to be more awake than ever; Nico was off flirting with a girl, most likely asking for her number, while Pedro order them another round of drinks.

It had been a tradition for them to go out after a show, and tonight had been no exception. They’d found a nice middle ground club near the venue, far enough so not that many fans could find them, but not far enough to get lost and get cashed a fortune by the taxi drivers. Truth be told, he was in no mood to go out; now that they were officially home he just wanted to hide away in his apartment for a couple days, and sleep in his bed after the three months they’d been on the road, but his mates had insisted. It was the penultimate show, the penultimate night before they went on a break from the touring and start the writing process for their new album.

It was also to celebrate the end of their first arena tour in the continent, just the three of them, before their management threw a party with all their friends and family tomorrow and were distracted by their attention (personally, Simón couldn’t care less but, again, his friends had insisted).  

He had thought of asking Luna to help him ditch, though he’d crossed the idea as soon he remembered she was high on the honeymoon phase with her new boyfriend. The last thing he wanted was to third wheel their date, or fifth wheel if Nina and her boyfriend were with them, too. So, he settled for having a couple of drinks, and help Pedro babysit Nico in case the blond decided to fly solo, or with the girl he was currently flirting with. That boy didn’t need another ‘16 fiasco.

Simón was brought back to the real world and out of his mind by a hand on his shoulder. He looked up, and found himself eye to eye with a beaming girl, her voice as cheerful as she looked, a tablet well positioned in her hands, “you’re Simón Álvarez!” she took his silence as an invitation to sit at their booth, “oh my gosh, I can’t believe it! I told my friends you would be here, and they thought I was crazy! But you’re here, and I was right and they weren’t! I can’t wait to tell them!”

Her words were spoken too fast, but he did manage to understand a couple, “wait, wait, wait; you knew we’d be here?”

“As a dedicated journalist, vlogger and one of the biggest fans the Roller-Band has in the city, it’s my duty to know where, when and with who you are, of course!” Her chirpy tone never faltered, and it made him feel a little uneasy. Ever after over five years in the industry, he still felt weird when people approached him this way.

“What?!”

“We dedicated fans take details very seriously, silly. Don’t worry, I won’t post the exclusive right away, and I’ll definitely get your good side in the video; though, if you ask me, there’s not a bad side, at all.” She winked, but quickly turned her attention back to the screen of her tablet; “so, tell me, Simón; what is a hottie like you doing here tonight? Relaxing after a tough show? I heard a girl threw her bra at you and you almost poked your eye with your guitar, can you confirm you’re not blind? Also, did Nico really cheat on his last girlfriend with a groupie? Is Pedro gay? I know a girl who would die to get this denied. The Pedro thing, I mean, because Nico is kinda lame, don’t you think? I say it’s his hair. Anyway, how does it feel knowing the tour is ending with a sold out show in one of Argentina’s most important venues? Are you single? Or are you dating that girl from Cancún like that magazine says, hmm?” the girl bombarded him with questions, almost making him mentally dizzy with the speed they were out of her mouth.

“Listen-”

“Jazmín.” She offered her name, grinning at him behind the tablet.

“Okay, Jazmín,” he nodded, “listen I appreciate the interest but I came here to chill and an interview really isn’t what I had in mind-” Jazmín’s face fell in disappointment, and he cursed himself for being weak, “- but I guess a couple questions won’t hurt, right?”

She was back to beaming in a second. “Great! Thank you so, so, so, so, so much, Simón! The Fab and Chic fans will die when I tell them I met you and got an exclusive!”

He tried to smile as excited as she seemed to be, “yes, great.”

“Okay, I can always add the intro later so, back to the questions, did the flying bra blind you?” Jazmín sounded so serious, and so genuinely worried that he had to laugh at the question.

“No, it did not. Though I’d really appreciate it if they stopped throwing them at us, we have no use for them nor do we need them. Keep your bras, ladies.”

“They’re too expensive to throw,” she agreed before asking again, “about tomorrow’s show-”

Simón kinda tuned her out for a moment. Because then, he saw her entering. It was almost impossible not to, honestly, since her gold dress was an eye-catcher right away, shinning in the dim light of the balcony. Her scowl was enough to see she wasn’t happy, and was glaring directly at them.

“Jazmín!” the girl in front of him tensed immediately, cursing lowly before locking her tablet and turning to look back where golden girl was standing at. “Care to explain what you’re doing? Delfina and I have been looking for your ass for half an hour!”

“Ámbar!” Simón couldn’t see her face anymore, but he was positive Jazmín was grimacing. “Look who I met! It’s Simón, from the Roller Band! I told you they’d be here and he agreed to give us an interview, isn’t it great?”

Jazmín’s friend’s icy glare was now directed at him. She examined him for a minute, her eyes searching for something that he couldn’t really pinpoint. In the end, her gaze ended up on Jazmín again.

“That’s going to have to wait, because Delfi needs you right now. She found the other bandmates, and wants you to film it for the blog.”

The redhead started protesting as soon as the blonde started talking, but her friend was having none of it. “Maybe later? Simón, here-”

“Now, Jazmín.” Her tone was final, and it worked.

Jazmín hugged him out of nowhere, snapping a selfie quicker than he could smile and left the two alone, murmuring something that made her friend roll her eyes at her. He waited for the blonde to follow Jazmín out of the balcony, but it surprised him when she made no intention to move. Instead, she kept staring at him.

“What? Is there something wrong?”

“No.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

She shrugged. “I’m trying to see what the big deal is about you that Jazmín had to go behind my back to try and interview first.” Simón was sure he looked as confused as he felt, but the girl offered no further explanation.

“Oh? Well, I’m Simón, it’s uh- nice to meet you?” he offered his hand to her, expecting her to shake it like a normal person. Instead, she ignored it and got closer until she was almost in his personal bubble. He vaguely noticed she was short; not as tiny as his best friend, but short enough that even in heels, he easily towered over her.

“Ámbar Smith.”

At this point, it was getting awkward. Neither spoke, but her eyes never wavered from him; silently judging him. Never had he felt as uncomfortable as he was now meeting a fan as he was then.

“Uh, if that’s all then I guess I should get go-” she stopped him from leaving with her hand, grabbing his forearm lightly.

“You owe The Fab & Chic an interview, remember?”  

“Right. Sorry, I thought that with Jazmín gone-”

The girl, -Ámbar- scowled at his words, “she wasn’t even supposed to interview you in the first place.”

“I wasn’t supposed to get interviewed, at all, in the first place.” He joked, trying to get rid of her scowl, and overall of the tense air that had been brewing since she’d joined him in the balcony ten minutes ago.

He was expecting a smile, or even laugh, but -as he was learning- the girl wasn’t into doing what he expected. Instead, a frown appeared between her eyes. “You’re right, you can go now if you want. I’m sorry if Jazmín or I ruined your night.”

She dropped her hand from his arm, and made a move to leave. Simón had to laugh, because a) she didn’t look sorry at all, and b) the half smile she was sending him looked more like a grimace than anything else. As soon as his laugh was heard, the scowl was back on her face.

“You didn’t ruin my night, Ámbar. I am, however, confused as to why you didn’t ask our management for an interview instead of stalking us at a bar.”

“We tried, but an interview for a college blog holds no interest to your manager. So, we had to use our own resources, and stalking you until we got somewhat-of-an-exclusive was Jazmín’s idea.”

Simón smiled. “An idea you still followed.” She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t deny his affirmation.

“I was overruled. Jazmín’s obsessed with the band, and Delfi -the other cofounder of the blog- is in love with your drummer, it was a lost battle.”      

They fell into silence then. Simón thought it was cute (and lowkey creepy) that they had bothered and wasted time of their lives to follow them, since they were pretty boring dudes just enjoying making music, and did nothing interesting enough to be ‘an exclusive’. For real, the biggest scandal they’d ever gone through was when Nico ended his relationship with Jim over a year ago; and it was only a scandal because the idiot got so drunk he let himself get pictured with another girl a few days after it. Besides that, they lived a very lowkey life that had no drama; it took them months to learn it, but they achieved it and didn’t have to endure the scrutiny as often as other ‘celebrities’.

Just as she was to leave again, probably thinking he’d never agree to give their blog a chance, he spoke, “we can’t let your effort go to waste now that you’ve met come this far, can we?”

Ámbar’s head snapped in his direction, shock evident on her face as her lips formed a little ‘o’. He was still smiling, but as the sound of his phone’s alarm resonated in the balcony’s quietness, he realized just how late it really was. He needed to grab his bandmates before their manager killed them for staying up that late on a show’s night.

“Listen, Ámbar, I gotta go now before a search party is sent our way. I can’t tomorrow, since it’s the end of the tour and all but, uh, the day after tomorrow maybe?” he could tell she was still taken off guard, but she nodded anyway, “perfect! Then, uh, what about same place, but like, way earlier? Can you manage to come here at, say, 14?”

This time she shook her head, “I have class at 13, but I’m free at 15; can it be 16:30 instead?”

He grinned, “16:30 is perfect. I’ll see you then.”

Simón was halfway to the exit door when she called him back, “wait! How do I know you’ll actually show up and not stand me up?” He wondered for a second if she was being serious, but her frown and crossed arms made it more than clear that she was, in fact, waiting for a guarantee.

He wasn’t dumb enough to give her his phone number (they’d just met, and even if Ámbar didn’t strike him as someone who would throw him to the lions and betray his trust, he still wasn’t going to risk it) and since the only things he had on him where his wallet, keys and phone, he was at loss as to what he could give her.

His phone sounded again after the five minutes snooze passed, hurrying him to get out of there and find Pedro. Simón scratched the back of his neck, a nervous habit he’d caught from Pedro years before, and then it hit him. As quickly as he could, he walked back to her, took off the wool garment off his head and put it on hers. It went a little lopsided, her head was smaller than his and wouldn’t fit as perfectly as it was used to being on him, but it fitted just fine. He allowed himself to think it looked cute. She was cute, after all.

Ámbar wasn’t as happy, though, “what the hell is this?!”

“It’s my favorite beanie, given to me by my grandma when the RB was formed, and your guarantee that I’ll be here after tomorrow. I really do need to go now, Ámbar; when did you see my friends last, can you tell me?”

“At a table near the bathroom; though, Simón this thing isn’t-”

He wasted no time, he kissed her left hand quickly, and ran out of the balcony; barely registering her -by now- almost non-audible protest.

Simón found a tipsy Nico and a very happy-looking Pedro sitting at the table a couple meters away from the bathroom; Jazmín chatting away to her tablet, and a blushing brunette talking to Pedro, a small notebook and a pen in her hand. He guessed she was the other cofounder of the blog Ámbar was talking about, the one smitten with his best friend; he knew he’d have to interrogate Pedro the next morning, his usually-shy-not-talkative friend looked way happy for someone who hated being interviewed.  

“I’m sorry to cut your chat, ladies, but we have to go. It’s almost 2 AM and we have a concert tonight.” He interrupted, raising his voice so they could hear him from above the music. Nico started laughing at nothing, but Pedro was on his feet immediately, saying his goodbye’s and thank you’s to Jazmín and her friend. He smiled to the girls, before dragging Nico out of his seat and started walking towards the bar’s exit.

As soon as they were out of earshot of anyone in there, Nico asked him where he had run to, why had he ditched them when the girls attacked them for an interview (they hadn’t attacked them, Pedro denied, but they did take them off guard when Jazmín appeared with her tablet practically on their faces), and questioned his beanie’s whereabouts (at least he knew he wasn’t drunk enough to forget that he had one on when the night started). He explained them what had happened, his blond friend lost it.

“Simoncito has a date! Simoncito has a daaaaaateeeee!”

He snorted at Nico’s chanting, “I don’t have a date, I’m just helping them with their blog.”

Now it was Pedro’s turn to snort, “you realize the redhead got a selfie with you, and filmed your meeting before you even met her friend, and so you didn’t have to give her anything, right?”

Simón didn’t answer, groaning when he realized Pedro was right; who, in seconds, was on the floor laughing at his expense.

He really needed to stop being so nice.

“A dateeeeee has Simoncitooooo!”

[idolizerp]

[ LOADING INFORMATION ON JINX’S MAIN VOCAL EDEN…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 25 DEBUT AGE:18 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 17 SKILL POINTS: 00 PERFORMANCE | 00 VOCAL | 00 DANCE | 00 RAP SECONDARY SKILLS: acting

INTERVIEW

eden is approachable but tempting. the ripened fruit in the garden, offering itself up to you, daring you to bite. she is the sugary honey sweetness of an overripe peach that bursts on your tongue. she is flushed cheeks, still rounded as if her youth may be endless, as if she will never outrun the image of the fresh faced girl who debuted so long ago, as if she will never be more than the dumpling princess peach of jinx. but she is. the girl next door you want to fuck. ruin.

eden’s image has matured over the years, or at least, she has matured. she has been allowed to do this safely, perhaps because of the offset of her features, because her voice outshines the movements they give to her. eden can writhe on stage, can wear the sharpest cat eye liner and the slickest red lips and forever and a day her fans will say “what a surprise, to see our little mandu so sexy, ” and it’s double edged maybe. maybe she’d like to be looked at as a woman.

but she’s used to this. to the infantilization that is in itself sexualization, a commentary on an industry that thinks a concept can’t possibly be deemed “sexy” if  they girls are in pastel tennis skirts, no matter how many times pelvises rock or legs spread or hands glide effortless over bodies.

despite her vocal power, she doesn’t run the route of a solo artist, not yet. maybe not ever.  she has the image for it, the draw to stand on stage. on stage she captivates, performance capabilities and energy overriding dance skills that at the start are truly lackluster. they improve over the years but it’s never something she’s known for, and she’s comfortable with that. “she’s got the gestures down, she’s not the best but i can’t take my eyes off her,” they say - when they’re kind, but then, with an ego like eden’s, you only see the kind comments anyway.

so with her cheeks as her shield, with her skill and a few years of aegyo trends under her belt, eden’s future begins on instagram. aesthetic photos begin softly but traipse towards risque, blending the virgin whore dichotomy with an effortlessness that seems impossible. there’s backlash, always is, in what can be perceived as attention seeking or affected, but eden is a master of push and pull, of sweet and sultry, and balances upon it as if on the edge of a razor. she builds a more serious image through her acting, embarks on various projects that truly don’t always do well (or even often), and the notable criticisms are there from the start. but she’s compelling, and she’s expressive, and more than that she’s hardworking. she puts in the hours. just stick to singing, that’s what you’re good at, they say. but she is stubborn and greedy and selectively deaf and continues forward stubbornly forging her path.

and ryan?

who is ryan anymore? is she kim rian born in seoul and transplanted at twelve, just in time for a young brain to be overloaded by unfamiliar syllables, because what english she had learned prior had been a standard northern american accent from after school tutors, not the fast paced natural speech of auckland new zealand. is she the girl adapting too, navigating a foreign country as ryan? is she the bright young thing with laughter like bells in all the choral classes, in vocal lessons after school, dutifully taking piano to appease her mother? is she ryan who moves back to seoul at eighteen with no idea of this place she is supposed to call home, this place her mother is so thrilled to return too? is she the ryan who is somewhat accidentally enfolded into the lineup for jinx, who learns in crash course fury how to smile and simper and sweeten that sharp tongue of hers? maybe she doesn’t know. maybe she never knew, really.

BIOGRAPHY

mangwon is a nice district. up and coming, they’ll tell you. trendy, a bit artsy. the next hongdae, but aimed at a bit older set. it was in a little rooftop apartment here that kim rian was born on a warm summer day - no hospital necessary. this was perhaps a foolish decision, but the kim family was home to two decidedly atypical parents. her mother an artist and. her father a gallery owner.  kim kyujin worked tirelessly and without  complaint to support the whims and whimsy of his wife, bae minji. at the time of her birth their home was modest at best and it would remain so, their district not yet the up and coming location it is today.

kim rian was born into a home of pastels, paints, flowers, and hardwork. tireless effort and patience were the tools of her parent’s trade and they applied this to rian as well. they were gentle but firm and poured their expectations into the young girl relentlessly. they did not mean to fill her to the point of bursting, but this is what happened, regardless.

kim rian was given every opportunity to succeed, and her father worked to the bone to make it happen. after school classes in english, in math, in art and in singing. she had a class for musicals, one for painting, one for korean literature, one for western literature. by the time she was in middle school she was out until ten each night and when she arrived home there was homework to do, piano pieces to practice, vocal scales to run.

when they discovered she had the voice of an angel, they traded some of the math lessons for vocal training, the arts for musicals, and so on. of course she enjoyed this - she enjoyed being talented, being told she was talented. she liked that she was making her parents proud, making them happy. when they had been endlessly sacrificing for her for so long, it felt as though it was her sworn duty to provide them that bliss.

the thing is, of course, that kim rian was never consulted about any of this. she never requested these sacrifices. more than anything. by high school the pressure was insurmountable. her voice continued to improve, her range growing, her appearance matching the soft and soulful nature of her music. “she sings like she’s lived a thousand years,” her trainer told her parents one day. “like she’s lived a thousand heartbreaks.”

maybe she had, in a sense. she’d always felt too much, too intensely, in a way that seemed just a bit More than other people did, perhaps a bit too much entirely. and in this way her parents did not mean to break her, but they did. hours of lessons. the pressure of performance. auditions for endless programs and schools, camps and opportunities.

so they relocate with her, right on the cusp of middle school, to new zealand of all places. it’s there that she learns the world is wide and vast and beyond her comprehension. the whole thing is isolating at first. it’s an arts school, for talented people, and she’s not the top of the barrel anymore. she learns, though, she progresses. she throws herself into after school english lessons to try and keep up with the curriculum, gets by on phonetically memorized ballads for awhile. unlike the more rigid korean idol system, they help her develop a tone of her own, something shaped to suit her voice first, her strengths. she learns from there to widen it, to expand her range to the airy falsettos of her home country. finds herself now, in a distant country, fiercely proud of korea. of the hallyu wave as it spreads.

she finds a new goal, in returning to the idol scene back home, which riddles her parents with dismay. where was this misplaced pride back home, when her gaze was turned to distant shores? why had they sent her to this expensive and thoroughly classical school only for her to awaken a love of pop music? she picks up dancing - she’s not great, but her performance ability is strong. she’s got the lung capacity of a damn whale, apparently.

she returns to korea at eighteen, vocational training landing her a spot as a vocal tutor. she’s apprenticed to a big name in the business, following her around to her lessons, in awe of the music that pours so freely from the lips of others, jealous of their opportunities. after having failed to catch eyes at global auditions or through submitted tapes, she thinks its enough just to be near the magic. the woman she’s been shadowing brings her along one day to midas media, and the melancholic fury in her bones is insurmountable. the desire to have been a part of this gleaming pinnacle, the knowledge she couldn’t have it.  

she’s given the chance to help with the lesson. and just as soon as she opens her mouth to coach them, she found herself drawing their attention. there was a flurry in the corner as he pulled out his phone, trained it on her. she remembers now blinking away her confusion in favor of returning to the lesson. when she came back at the end of the week for her next scheduled lesson, alongside her trainer, their students are gone. in their place were company representatives, and a contract. and thus started her crash course in idol activities, in dance, in presence and poise and passion.

once more a maelstrom of expectations and desires that were not her own had overcome her, caught her up, taken her into a new and bizarre world. debut came swiftly as she upset the lineup- a vocally geared group needed someone with her wide range and endless years of training. and besides, they had time. midas was a well honed system. she had the vocals down, they just had to get her up to speed with the dance, and her modest background was enough that gruelling hours of training, working her double time compared to the others, was enough to push her towards debut. by the time she was finished, they’d taken a round cheeked girl with a honeyed voice and made her something formidable, had taught her to use the presence of gaze and motion to overcome for faults in dancing, to make the world long for her the way she’d longed for this, for the stage.

a journey starts with one step, and that was hers.

endless years in the industry later she’s known for her soft image, her clean character, her outspoken nature and the fact that she appears to be the portrait of dorian gray in lithe, fairylike form, ageless and undying. this is the image she crafts - like the softness of impeccably carved marble, of soft spun linen and thick drawn liner, the dichotomy of what it means to be innocent and alluring at once, begging to be tarnished.

she picks up role after role, expands her sphere into acting, and every time the reaction is the same. they cast her as a teenager, as a smiling love interest, they relegate her to roles that are bright and youthful and as years tick by she wonders if anyone will ever notice she’s a grown woman. if anyone will ever look past naturally rounded cheeks and take her seriously. it seems unlikely, but it’s an uphill battle she’s willing to fight. 

in reality, ryan isn’t sure who she is, besides an aching maw of yearning, a void that won’t fill, a desperation she can’t shake, a melancholy that she’s never quite able to unseat. there’s sensitivity, sensibility, honey sticky sweet and the bloom of flowers, dense with hidden thorns, a nostalgia for a life she hasn’t lived, will never have.