#but that’s because in my head i’m a femme glam boy so.

[rustbeltjessie]

July 13 & 14

[thorne93]

Unforeseen Chasm (Part 1)

Prompt: Two sisters fall for men that are absolute enemies. The love they have could tear all of them apart, or it could bring them together. 

Word Count: 2191

Warnings: Language,

Note: This is by far the longest thing I’ve ever written (including my novels). It’s a collaboration with the amazing @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo. It started as a funny “What if...?” and it evolved and got huge. This took two years to write. We are both proud and happy and we hope you enjoy it. It follows from Thor 1 to Endgame in the MCU. Some of the timelines may be off in order to fit certain people, and some characters may show up earlier or in different ways than they have in the movie. But for the most part, it follows the MCU. It also has a bit of crossover with some other Marvel characters throughout the story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once in a lifetime, and sometimes not even then, people meet someone who can be described as their better half. The person who knows them better than anyone. The person who completes them. Sometimes it can be found in a lover, or a sibling, or sometimes...once in a blue moon, it can be found in just a friend -- a stranger you cross paths with one day. A stranger that eventually means more to you than anyone else in the world. 

That’s how it was for you and Shannon. 

It was freshman year of college when she walked into your life. The two of you were set together as roommates. She had a touch of pluckiness to her, drive that you’d never witnessed, intelligence that rivaled yours, and a take no shit attitude. 

Of course, she was shy at first, so were you. But within just a few minutes, you realized that you two were destined to be best friends. Her major lied in anatomical mutation and molecular engineering with a minor in foreign language. Meanwhile, you majored in physics and engineering, minoring in Norse mythology. 

Shannon definitely teased you for that. She wondered why or how you would ever need that, but your reasoning was simply that you enjoyed it. If you were going to spend thousands upon thousands studying something for a career for the rest of your life, the least you could do was study one thing that was a little different that fascinated you, even if was just for four years. 

Your areas of study may have overlapped, but your upbringing didn’t. Shannon had parents, who loved her, and according to her “sent her to a prestigious academy to refine all skills”. And you saw these skills in the way she moved, talked, carried herself, and focused her skills. She was all things a lady should be. In fact, she did so well in this so called “Red Room”, that Howard Stark (founder of Stark Industries) caught wind of her accomplishments and decided to invest further in her. He gave her a full ride scholarship to any college she wanted, to study whatever she wanted. He thought maybe, one day, she might be of use to his son Tony. 

In fact, they became good friends too. Tony and Shannon, that is. He was a few years older than her, but he helped her with her work, and became curious as to why Shannon was always hanging around his dad’s company. It didn’t take a genius to see why Shannon was selected -- she was elite, one of a kind. 

You on the other hand, you were the nerd. The little bit dorky type. All you ever really loved was science, math, technology. You were raised by foster parents, but they weren’t the greatest. They didn’t ever give you any attention past making sure the foster money cleared for you. The only person you had was Remy, another boy that lived in the foster family with you. Kids were in and out of that house for years, but you and Remy seemed to stay, that is, until you left for college. College was where you met Shannon and her family, and ever since then, Shannon’s family was now your family, making you far closer to Shannon than you’d ever been to anyone besides Remy. You went to her house for holidays, even met with Tony a handful of times. 

Once the two of you graduated college and decided on grad school, you didn’t want to separate. Four years of living together had made you two almost inseparable. Not wanting to lose each other just yet, you grabbed an apartment only thirty minutes away from your graduate school. Graduate school was surprisingly a breeze, and when you completed it, the two of you moved into a studio apartment together. 

After being best friends for nearly a decade, you got a dog together, both of you animal lovers and you thought it might add some more character to your home. And he certainly did. 

While the both of you, yes, were involved in STEM, for the most part, your paths slightly diverged.

After graduation from graduate school for both of you, Tony Stark offered a job to Shannon at his company as his assistant. She would help oversee nearly every operation, invention, gizmo, gadget. All of it, would be under her supervision. Through this, she became good friends with Dr. Bruce Banner, and Tony, being at the labs day in and day out with them. 

It was actually in those labs that her… well… accident happened. A lab malfunction caused a chemical gas to react with her molecular structure causing a strange reaction. By strange you meant, well, unusual. She developed a mutation, but not like a third eye, or another pinky. No, she gained the ability to manipulate the weather and drain people of their powers. It was the most magnificent thing to watch. She accidentally discovered her powers at home, in the kitchen, and you witnessed it, but you swore yourself to secrecy for her. You could never hurt her and betray her like that. 

Tony knew, of course, because he had to help her figure out what was wrong with her. And Bruce was an expert in lab experiments gone wrong. Between those two helping her control her powers, and your emotional support, she was just like a normal person -- until you pissed her off. 

Just another crowning jewel on an already nearly perfect woman. She was the epitome of a femme fatale -- beautiful, genius, deadly, and powerful beyond human strength. 

As for you? Your work placed you in the field. Your physics took you to some crazy locations and you picked up work wherever you could find it. You loved physics, you were good at it, damned good. But you weren’t winning nobel prizes, you weren’t heading huge projects for Stark Industries, you weren’t getting offers from MIT for research. No, you were scrounging for contract jobs, for little pick me ups with NASA. It wasn’t that you didn’t like it, or that you were desperate for work. People knew of your work, you spoke at conferences, you were in high demand. 

But by your dumb luck, it wasn’t you that ended up with the glitz, glam, and glory that came from working for Stark. 

For the last few months you’d been in the field with Jane Foster - a highly respected physicist -- with barely any funding. The two of you could barely split the research grant you’d been given and you had to hire an intern. You were all the way out in New Mexico while Shannon was still in NYC, living the dream. You missed her like crazy, but this work you were doing was important… At least that's what you kept telling yourself…

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

Jane and you had set up camp in Small Town, New Mexico, you’d been out here for a few weeks now. There were these strange atmospheric phenomenon that were going on that Jane felt were connected to the research the two of you were involved with. She called Dr. Selvig out to study it with you two, seeing as he was a pioneer in this field. 

Just before you all headed out to the site, you decided to give Shannon a call, a strong case of homesickness hitting you. 

You propped open your laptop and selected her contact and called. The familiar ring only went through twice before her wonderful face filled the screen. 

Y/N! Hey!” she greeted delightfully. 

“Hey!” 

She stepped away from the computer and back to her workbench in Tony’s lab -- a very familiar sight to you. 

“What’s up?” 

“Just missing you. We’re about to go study that aurora again tonight, but Selvig is here now, so it’ll be another set of eyes,” you explained. 

“Ah, yes, the light in the sky. Any headway on that?” 

“None. Hopefully he’ll have some insight because I’m growing tired of staring at clouds each night. I’m not out here to be a storm chaser…” 

“What’s this about storm chasing?” Tony suddenly said, entering your field of view. 

“Hey, Tony,” you greeted in a friendly tone. 

“Why don’t you ditch the desert and come to a real lab?” he asked as he walked backwards, looking at the camera before spinning to stand next to Shannon and work on the tool she was soldering. “You could have unlimited technology here. I could really use someone with your expertise on physics when it comes to landing gear for my suit. What do you say, Y/N? A real job, in air conditioning, not out in the dirt…?”

“Tempting,” you said with a smirk. “But I’m gonna stick to real work for now.”

“Did she just insinuate I don’t do real work?” Tony asked Shannon, pretending to be offended. She merely rolled her eyes and laughed, shaking her head. 

“You two…”  she lovingly chided. “When are you going to come home? I miss you. I need your world famous tacos.”

You laughed. “My tacos are trash and you know it.”

She returned the laugh before becoming serious again. “Seriously though. When? Things aren’t the same without you.”

You sighed, wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. I’m trying to get all this data, but since we have to wait every night… There’s no telling.” 

“Well work hard,” she requested, sadness but understanding in her voice. 

“I’m trying.”

“Seriously. Y/N, pick up the pace, I can’t take another week of this. She is killing the morale,” Tony remarked, gesturing to her with a tool. 

“Okay, Tony, for you, I’ll try,” you said with heavy sarcasm, making the two of them smile. “Oh, shit, gotta go. Time to go watch the sky give me some pretty colors.” You rolled your eyes and told them goodbye before signing off of your laptop. 

The four of you set off about twenty miles west from your little lab in the middle of town. You sat out there for several minutes, nothing happening. Selvig started to question Jane and you, and Darcy was getting restless. Jane was pleading that he just hold on a few more minutes. Finally, Darcy saw something and drew your attention to it. 

This was no subtle aurora. This was… something else. 

Jane ordered Darcy to drive, and all of you launched back into the camper full of equipment, bumping and knocking things as you went over the rough terrain of the desert. Darcy was pushing the camper to full speed, zooming towards the odd light in the sky when suddenly a funnel of light and wind swirled toward the ground. Jane was filming it all and you were taking in what you could. 

Just as you were about to go through the tornado-like event, Darcy cut away from it.

“Darcy!” you shouted, needing to get inside this event.

“I’m not dying for six college credits!” she yelled before Jane tried to take the wheel from her. 

The two of them fought over the steering wheel for a few seconds before -- THUD. You hit something… actually, you think it was someone. Darcy slammed on the brakes and all of you jumped out of the camper. 

You ran over to a man lying on the ground as Jane said, “Do me a favor and don’t be dead.”

“I think legally that was your fault!” Darcy called.

“Get the first aid kit,” you commanded as you knelt beside him. You grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse -- there was a strong one, good. Next you looked at his face to examine any damage -- but before you could do that, you were taken aback by his beauty. He was… handsome, very handsome. Then he opened his eyes. 

He jumped up, muttering and stumbling around. Jane noticed the markings on the ground, and you saw them too, and they should’ve been important to you, but right now all you could focus on was this stranger. 

“Hammer...Hammer!” he suddenly yelled. 

“Yeah we can tell you’re hammered, that’s pretty obvious,” Darcy noted. 

Jane began trying to note the markings on the ground, telling Erik to look at them, but he was telling her they needed to get this stranger to a hospital. Your mind wasn’t exactly focused on either thing as you watched him. There was something… familiar about him, but you were sure you’d never seen him before in your life. 

“Father! Heimdall! I know you can hear me! Open the Bifrost!” the man commanded, making your hair stand on end. 

“Bifrost,” you muttered inaudibly. You’d heard that a lot. Actually you’d heard that in Norse mythology. Clearly this man was delusional and thought he was some Viking God…

“You! What Realm is this? Alfheim? Nornheim?” the man asked of Darcy. 

“New Mexico?” 

She pulled out her taser and aimed it at him. “Darcy, no!” you demanded. 

“You dare threaten me, Thor, with so puny of a weapon?!” 

She pulled the trigger and he dropped, just as a mortal man would, making some of your suspicion (and hope) fizzle out. Of course gods weren’t real, that was just silly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

@essie1876

@magpiegirl80

@letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked

@iamwarrenspeace

@marvel-imagines-yes-please

@superwholocked527

@missinstantgratification

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Loki: 

@lostinspace33​

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@tngrayson​

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@harrymewmew

@jayfantasyatyourservice​

[mrs-dragneel-stark-solo]

Unforseen Chasm

Part 1 of Unforseen Chasm

Prompt: Two sisters fall for men that are absolute enemies. The love they have could tear all of them apart, or it could bring them together.

Word Count: 2191 Warnings: Language, Note: This is by far the longest thing I’ve ever written (including my other fic series). first major Collab with my best friend @thorne93​ what was first a simple "what if" moment turned into a two year writing session and I've never been more prouder of myself than when i started my first series. goes through most of the MCU plots there are some changes to accommodate for what we wanted and there is a bit of a crossover between the MCU and other characters. I hope you guys enjoy reading this just as much as I enjoyed writing it.

___________

Once in a lifetime, and sometimes not even then, people meet someone who can be described as their better half. The person who knows them better than anyone. The person who completes them. Sometimes it can be found in a lover, or a sibling, or sometimes...once in a blue moon, it can be found in just a friend -- a stranger you cross paths with one day. A stranger that eventually means more to you than anyone else in the world. 

That’s how it was for you and Shannon. 

It was freshman year of college when she walked into your life. The two of you were set together as roommates. She had a touch of pluckiness to her, drive that you’d never witnessed, intelligence that rivaled yours, and a take no shit attitude. 

Of course, she was shy at first, so were you. But within just a few minutes, you realized that you two were destined to be best friends. Her major lied in anatomical mutation and molecular engineering with a minor in foreign language. Meanwhile, you majored in physics and engineering, minoring in Norse mythology. 

Shannon definitely teased you for that. She wondered why or how you would ever need that, but your reasoning was simply that you enjoyed it. If you were going to spend thousands upon thousands studying something for a career for the rest of your life, the least you could do was study one thing that was a little different that fascinated you, even if was just for four years. 

Your areas of study may have overlapped, but your upbringing didn’t. Shannon had parents, who loved her, and according to her “sent her to a prestigious academy to refine all skills”. And you saw these skills in the way she moved, talked, carried herself, and focused her skills. She was all things a lady should be. In fact, she did so well in this so called “Red Room”, that Howard Stark (founder of Stark Industries) caught wind of her accomplishments and decided to invest further in her. He gave her a full ride scholarship to any college she wanted, to study whatever she wanted. He thought maybe, one day, she might be of use to his son Tony. 

In fact, they became good friends too. Tony and Shannon, that is. He was a few years older than her, but he helped her with her work, and became curious as to why Shannon was always hanging around his dad’s company. It didn’t take a genius to see why Shannon was selected -- she was elite, one of a kind. 

You on the other hand, you were the nerd. The little bit dorky type. All you ever really loved was science, math, technology. You were raised by foster parents, but they weren’t the greatest. They didn’t ever give you any attention past making sure the foster money cleared for you. The only person you had was Remy, another boy that lived in the foster family with you. Kids were in and out of that house for years, but you and Remy seemed to stay, that is, until you left for college. College was where you met Shannon and her family, and ever since then, Shannon’s family was now your family, making you far closer to Shannon than you’d ever been to anyone besides Remy. You went to her house for holidays, even met with Tony a handful of times. 

Once the two of you graduated college and decided on grad school, you didn’t want to separate. Four years of living together had made you two almost inseparable. Not wanting to lose each other just yet, you grabbed an apartment only thirty minutes away from your graduate school. Graduate school was surprisingly a breeze, and when you completed it, the two of you moved into a studio apartment together. 

After being best friends for nearly a decade, you got a dog together, both of you animal lovers and you thought it might add some more character to your home. And he certainly did. 

While the both of you, yes, were involved in STEM, for the most part, your paths slightly diverged.

After graduation from graduate school for both of you, Tony Stark offered a job to Shannon at his company as his assistant. She would help oversee nearly every operation, invention, gizmo, gadget. All of it, would be under her supervision. Through this, she became good friends with Dr. Bruce Banner, and Tony, being at the labs day in and day out with them. 

It was actually in those labs that her… well… accident happened. A lab malfunction caused a chemical gas to react with her molecular structure causing a strange reaction. By strange you meant, well, unusual. She developed a mutation, but not like a third eye, or another pinky. No, she gained the ability to manipulate the weather and drain people of their powers. It was the most magnificent thing to watch. She accidentally discovered her powers at home, in the kitchen, and you witnessed it, but you swore yourself to secrecy for her. You could never hurt her and betray her like that. 

Tony knew, of course, because he had to help her figure out what was wrong with her. And Bruce was an expert in lab experiments gone wrong. Between those two helping her control her powers, and your emotional support, she was just like a normal person -- until you pissed her off. 

Just another crowning jewel on an already nearly perfect woman. She was the epitome of a femme fatale -- beautiful, genius, deadly, and powerful beyond human strength. 

As for you? Your work placed you in the field. Your physics took you to some crazy locations and you picked up work wherever you could find it. You loved physics, you were good at it, damned good. But you weren’t winning Nobel prizes, you weren’t heading huge projects for Stark Industries, you weren’t getting offers from MIT for research. No, you were scrounging for contract jobs, for little pick me ups with NASA. It wasn’t that you didn’t like it, or that you were desperate for work. People knew of your work, you spoke at conferences, you were in high demand. 

But by your dumb luck, it wasn’t you that ended up with the glitz, glam, and glory that came from working for Stark. 

For the last few months you’d been in the field with Jane Foster - a highly respected physicist -- with barely any funding. The two of you could barely split the research grant you’d been given and you had to hire an intern. You were all the way out in New Mexico while Shannon was still in NYC, living the dream. You missed her like crazy, but this work you were doing was important… At least that's what you kept telling yourself…

____________

Jane and you had set up camp in Small Town, New Mexico, you’d been out here for a few weeks now. There were these strange atmospheric phenomenon that were going on that Jane felt were connected to the research the two of you were involved with. She called Dr. Selvig out to study it with you two, seeing as he was a pioneer in this field. 

Just before you all headed out to the site, you decided to give Shannon a call, a strong case of homesickness hitting you. 

You propped open your laptop and selected her contact and called. The familiar ring only went through twice before her wonderful face filled the screen. 

Y/N! Hey!” she greeted delightfully. 

“Hey!” 

She stepped away from the computer and back to her workbench in Tony’s lab -- a very familiar sight to you. 

“What’s up?” 

“Just missing you. We’re about to go study that aurora again tonight, but Selvig is here now, so it’ll be another set of eyes,” you explained. 

“Ah, yes, the light in the sky. Any headway on that?” 

“None. Hopefully he’ll have some insight because I’m growing tired of staring at clouds each night. I’m not out here to be a storm chaser…” 

“What’s this about storm chasing?” Tony suddenly said, entering your field of view. 

“Hey, Tony,” you greeted in a friendly tone. 

“Why don’t you ditch the desert and come to a real lab?” he asked as he walked backwards, looking at the camera before spinning to stand next to Shannon and work on the tool she was soldering. “You could have unlimited technology here. I could really use someone with your expertise on physics when it comes to landing gear for my suit. What do you say, Y/N? A real job, in air conditioning, not out in the dirt…?”

“Tempting,” you said with a smirk. “But I’m gonna stick to real work for now.”

“Did she just insinuate I don’t do real work?” Tony asked Shannon, pretending to be offended. She merely rolled her eyes and laughed, shaking her head. 

“You two…”  she lovingly chided. “When are you going to come home? I miss you. I need your world famous tacos.”

You laughed. “My tacos are trash and you know it.”

She returned the laugh before becoming serious again. “Seriously though. When? Things aren’t the same without you.”

You sighed, wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. I’m trying to get all this data, but since we have to wait every night… There’s no telling.” 

“Well work hard,” she requested, sadness but understanding in her voice. 

“I’m trying.”

“Seriously. Y/N, pick up the pace, I can’t take another week of this. She is killing the morale,” Tony remarked, gesturing to her with a tool. 

“Okay, Tony, for you, I’ll try,” you said with heavy sarcasm, making the two of them smile. “Oh, shit, gotta go. Time to go watch the sky give me some pretty colors.” You rolled your eyes and told them goodbye before signing off of your laptop. 

The four of you set off about twenty miles west from your little lab in the middle of town. You sat out there for several minutes, nothing happening. Selvig started to question Jane and you, and Darcy was getting restless. Jane was pleading that he just hold on a few more minutes. Finally, Darcy saw something and drew your attention to it. 

This was no subtle aurora. This was… something else. 

Jane ordered Darcy to drive, and all of you launched back into the camper full of equipment, bumping and knocking things as you went over the rough terrain of the desert. Darcy was pushing the camper to full speed, zooming towards the odd light in the sky when suddenly a funnel of light and wind swirled toward the ground. Jane was filming it all and you were taking in what you could. 

Just as you were about to go through the tornado-like event, Darcy cut away from it.

“Darcy!” you shouted, needing to get inside this event.

“I’m not dying for six college credits!” she yelled before Jane tried to take the wheel from her. 

The two of them fought over the steering wheel for a few seconds before -- THUD. You hit something… actually, you think it was someone. Darcy slammed on the brakes and all of you jumped out of the camper. 

You ran over to a man lying on the ground as Jane said, “Do me a favor and don’t be dead.”

“I think legally that was your fault!” Darcy called.

“Get the first aid kit,” you commanded as you kneeled beside him. You grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse -- there was a strong one, good. Next you looked at his face to examine any damage -- but before you could do that, you were taken aback by his beauty. He was… handsome, very handsome. Then he opened his eyes. 

He jumped up, muttering and stumbling around. Jane noticed the markings on the ground, and you saw them too, and they should’ve been important to you, but right now all you could focus on was this stranger. 

“Hammer...Hammer!” he suddenly yelled. 

“Yeah we can tell you’re hammered, that’s pretty obvious,” Darcy noted. 

Jane began trying to note the markings on the ground, telling Erik to look at them, but he was telling her they needed to get this stranger to a hospital. Your mind wasn’t exactly focused on either thing as you watched him. There was something… familiar about him, but you were sure you’d never seen him before in your life. 

“Father! Heimdall! I know you can hear me! Open the Bifrost!” the man commanded, making your hair stand on end. 

“Bifrost,” you muttered inaudibly. You’d heard that a lot. Actually you’d heard that in Norse mythology. Clearly this man was delusional and thought he was some Viking God…

“You! What Realm is this? Alfheim? Nornheim?” the man asked of Darcy. 

“New Mexico?” 

She pulled out her taser and aimed it at him. “Darcy, no!” you demanded. 

“You dare threaten me, Thor, with so puny of a weapon?!” 

She pulled the trigger and he dropped, just as a mortal man would, making some of your suspicion (and hope) fizzle out. Of course gods weren’t real, that was just silly. 

Tag list:

@reigningqueenofwords​

@cas-you-assbutt-dean-needs-you 

@winchester-writes​ 

@winchesterenthusiast​

 @georgialouisea​

 @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog​ 

@dammit-stark​ 

@livelikeawinchester​

 @sammysbuttcheek​

 @bran2015

 @misz-adrii​ 

@sandlee44​

 @womanxofletters​

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 @childishhoebinoo​

  @depressed-moose-78

 @oldfreakything​

@expecteddifferent​

​ @girl-next-door-writes​​ 

@fanaticfanfiction​​

 @dakotapaigelove​​ 

@sassy-spn-knight-of-hell​​

[dippedanddripped]

One afternoon in 1999, when the designer Shayne Oliver was in the sixth grade, he came across a magazine ad for Dirty Denim, a line of “pre-soiled” jeans by Diesel. The ad featured a collage of faux paparazzi photographs documenting the meltdown of a fictional rock star. Oliver was struck by the campaign’s tagline: “The Luxury of Dirt.” “That blew my mind,” he told me recently. “Spending money on something that looks dirty? I was, like, ‘This is genius.’ ” He informed his mother, a schoolteacher from Trinidad named Anne-Marie, that he needed a pair immediately.

Oliver’s father had abandoned Anne-Marie before Shayne was born, and she had struggled to raise him on her own. They lived in a tiny apartment on Halsey Street, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Oliver, who attended some rough schools—he witnessed knife fights in the halls—was highly intelligent, and Anne-Marie was determined to nurture his gifts. She stood up to people on the street who heckled him because he was effeminate, and fought with school officials who wrote him off as a rowdy black kid. She didn’t have the money for the jeans, which cost three hundred and seventy-five dollars, but she respected Shayne’s sense of urgency. “How are we going to afford Diesel clothes?” she asked herself. She soon began working evenings at the Diesel store at the corner of Sixtieth and Lexington. She got an employee discount, and her kid got his jeans.

Oliver began accompanying Anne-Marie on her shifts at Diesel, folding shirts, examining seams, and offering customers unsolicited style advice. Although his suggestions were impeccable, after a few weeks the management told him to stay home, noting that it was illegal for twelve-year-olds to work in retail. Undaunted, Oliver walked a few blocks to a Roberto Cavalli store. Employees there were so charmed that they offered him an unpaid internship. He didn’t take it, but he continued to visit the store—and pester the staff. “I would just be in the shop, hanging out all the time and talking shit,” he recalls. “It was fun.”

Oliver was a recent arrival in New York. He was born in 1987 in Minnesota, where Anne-Marie had immigrated to pursue a teaching degree, and he had spent his childhood shuttling among female relatives in St. Paul, St. Croix, and Trinidad, before settling with his mother in Brooklyn, in 1998. In St. Croix, at the age of five, he had begun making his own fashions out of scraps of fabric scavenged from his grandmother, a dressmaker. After moving to the United States, he started cutting up items in Anne-Marie’s wardrobe. In an effort to discourage this practice, she took him on regular trips to Jo-Ann Fabrics. He kept looting her closet.

When Anne-Marie rode the subway with Oliver, she noticed him staring at men who were wearing streetwear brands like Mecca and FUBU. “Why are you looking at all of these guys?” Anne-Marie asked him. “You’re all up in their Kool-Aid!” Oliver protested that he was inspecting them for their clothes, which was only half a lie. He began cutting up his jeans and ripping out the crotch, which made him a target at the Pentecostal church that he and his mother attended. “I was being expressive!” he recalls, adding that other parishioners expressed themselves by speaking in tongues. At thirteen, he quit the church.

That year, Anne-Marie sent Oliver to a public school in Long Island City which focusses on the arts. For weeks, he came to class wearing a head scarf, and was often mistaken for a Muslim girl. (“I should’ve played that up a little bit,” Oliver told me. “Muslim girls get a lot of attention.”) Shortly after he enrolled, Anne-Marie rented for him a videocassette of “Paris Is Burning,” the 1990 documentary about voguing competitions in New York. A year later, he became a member of the House of Ninja, one of the groups featured in the film. “The Ninja people were all offbeat and not glamour kids,” he recalls. They encouraged him to explore various looks, and in competitions, he said, he “swayed between ‘vogue femme’ and ‘runway.’ ”

As a teen-ager, Oliver began applying his ingenuity to his hair: “There was one point where I was mixing textures—it was, like, a mullet of dreads and then permed on the sides. I’m sorry, that hairstyle was so nasty! It was ridiculous. It was so good.” He went out most nights, commuting between the largely white electroclash scene centered on Club Luxx, in Williamsburg, and the mostly black and Latino scene on Christopher Street, where he liked to “smoke, go to the pier, and then vogue.”

Before entering the tenth grade, he transferred to Harvey Milk, the country’s first high school for L.G.B.T. youths. Many of the students there wore three outfits a day: one for their neighborhood, one for school, and one for going out. It could be dangerous to wear the wrong thing in the wrong place, so kids kept outré clothes in their backpacks and changed on the subway platform. Oliver, though, prided himself on assembling outfits that worked in all three environments: butch enough for Bed-Stuy, smart enough for school, glam enough for the club. He devised subtle, colorless ensembles, the drape and shape of which sent coded messages to the educated eye. “If you have on all-black, you can go unnoticed on the block,” Oliver explained. “Then you go intothe city, and someone who’s thinking about clothing in a different way notices all the cuts and layering.” Styling choices helped him adapt his look to different contexts. Oliver liked wearing tight poom-poom shorts, but on his way to school he pulled them low, so that they sagged “in a masculine way.”

At Harvey Milk, Oliver made friends with another boy who was obsessed with fashion, James Garland. Each was an only child, raised by an indulgent single mother who had given her son the master bedroom. They recorded television broadcasts of runway shows and pored over the designs. Garland liked the debonair luxury of Tom Ford; Oliver preferred the forbidding moodiness of Rick Owens. Before long, the boys began making clothes, conducting photo shoots in Fort Greene Park, and staging runway shows at school. They generated new pieces through collage, stitching together items from vintage shops, children’s jackets from thrift stores, and treasures from their mothers’ closets.

After creating their first line of T-shirts, named Ammo, and their first collection, Cazzy Calore, Garland and Oliver graduated from Harvey Milk and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Garland flourished there, but Oliver chafed against the curricular constraints and dropped out in his freshman year. In 2006, he diverted the tuition money that Anne-Marie had saved for him, and launched a fashion line with his friend Raul López, who also hung out on Christopher Street. Oliver called the new line Hood By Air. The phrase suggested a style that was proudly ghetto and proudly élite (“putting on airs”). Within a few years, the label had become the most prominent high-fashion brand to have emerged authentically from street culture.

Oliver’s original mission with the label was to bring to fine menswear what he calls the “thug silhouette”: the shape created by a long T-shirt paired with saggy pants, as if the wearer had a very long torso and very short legs. He also believed that he could turn streetwear basics such as oversized hoodies and multipocketed jackets into high-concept luxury items.

By 2007, Hood By Air clothes had begun showing up in boutiques in downtown Manhattan. The collections cannily combined the audacious (trousers with a dozen pleats) and the accessible (silk-screened T-shirts). The first Hood By Air T-shirts featured bold graphics and slogans like “Back to the Hood.” Oliver and López had the shirts custom-made by Dominican tailors, and they were expensive: two hundred dollars apiece. From the start, they sold well.

In the aughts, Manhattan boutiques were awash in designer hoodies (many of them by Jeremy Scott and Raf Simons). Oliver judged their stitch too fine, their length too short, their colors too bright, their patterns too busy. He felt that designers who appropriated streetwear had a fascination with urban men but were also afraid of them—he considered their skittish engagement to be “peckish,” “gross,” and “disconnected from the real masculinity” driving street culture. He told me, “It’s, like, ‘I think that guy is really hot, but I don’t know how to approach him, so I’m going to put elements of myself in him.’ There’s a power play where you’re inspired by something but you don’t want to give it credit.” Turned off by these “fey” imitations of streetwear, Oliver made clothes that were aggressively harsh and masculine. The graphics on his T-shirts often played with urban-horror imagery: a panorama of a prison yard, red marks evoking blood spattered by gunfire. At the same time, instead of hinting at homoeroticism, he foregrounded it. The first Hood By Air editorial video, uploaded to YouTube in September, 2007, featured a model repeatedly grabbing his crotch.

Oliver also embarked on a conceptual exploration that he calls “formalizing sloppiness”—highlighting the transitional phases between dressed and undressed. “It’s like when someone is horny and in a T-shirt, and it’s dropping off the shoulder,” Oliver explained. He liked conjuring those alluringly awkward moments when an amorous couple still has a few items of clothing on: “The idea of that being so open and so vulnerable—it’s, like, ‘Where’s my pants? Where’s my underwear?’ ”

By the end of 2009, López and Oliver had put Hood By Air on hiatus. López founded his own clothing line, and Oliver focussed on hosting a new dance party called GHE20G0TH1K (Ghetto Gothic). Held in various spaces in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, the gatherings united disparate musical tribes—urban, goth, queer, punk. Oliver ran GHE20G0TH1K with his friends Jazmin Soto (a pansexual Latina) and Daniel Fisher (a straight white Jew). Soto was in charge, but Oliver sometimes took a turn as d.j., and he favored a dark sound. “At the time, no one was playing Marilyn Manson, and I was playing records that resonated that way—the idea of, like, fear of the world,” he recalls. “I was prying into my past—all my history of being provoked.” Many of the party’s charismatic attendees wore Hood By Air T-shirts. Interest in the brand was so strong that Oliver decided to relaunch it.

This time, he had crucial help from Leilah Weinraub, a filmmaker who was working on a documentary about a lesbian strip club in South Central Los Angeles. (The film, which she plans to release in 2017, comes off as a female-focussed update of “Paris Is Burning.”) Weinraub, who was Soto’s girlfriend at the time, began doing projects with Oliver, and one day they shot a look book for the designer Telfar, a mutual friend. Oliver was among the people cast, and Weinraub was unafraid of challenging him. She recalls, “He was wearing the wrong piece—a shawl—and he refused to be styled. He said, ‘Style me like a lady’—he had on this I’m-a-demure-woman voice. I asked, ‘Can you stand a little more like a man?’ The room stopped.”

In 2012, Oliver asked Weinraub to work alongside him on the relaunch of Hood By Air. (The partnership with López was completely dissolved.) She said yes. Weinraub, who is eight years older than Oliver, told me that she felt protective of Hood By Air. “It was at the point where other people started seeing it as a success,” she said. “And at that point people start to rob you—blind. They start to trick you.” She was wary of mainstream cultural figures looking for a quick way to acquire edge—of invitations to, say, “work on Katy Perry’s team.” Shortly after Weinraub became Oliver’s partner, investors offered to buy Hood By Air and put Oliver and Weinraub on fixed salaries. She was appalled. “This isn’t fucking Motown!” she said. Hood By Air, she declared, would remain closed to outside investors while it was in its “incubation period.” (To date, the company hasn’t accepted any outside investments—an arrangement that is virtually unheard of in the fashion industry.)

In order for Hood By Air to maintain control of its intellectual property, Weinraub believed, it had to grow quickly and attract media attention. Otherwise, the company’s designs would be pirated by bigger labels, which treated avant-garde street culture as a resource to be plundered. In a 2013 article in the Times, Guy Trebay suggested that Riccardo Tisci, the creative director of Givenchy, had referenced Hood By Air designs “without crediting them.” (A spokesperson for Givenchy said, “Hood By Air has never been a reference for our brand.”)

Around the time that Weinraub joined Hood By Air, it presented a runway show at Milk Studios, on Fifteenth Street. One of the models cast for the show was the rapper A$AP Rocky, a friend of Oliver’s at the time. Rocky’s participation helped the brand reach a wider audience, affording it a measure of protection against fashion-world vultures. Rocky also boosted Hood By Air’s reputation by incorporating endorsements of the label into his lyrics. His devotion eventually cooled, though, and in 2014 he released a diss track that included criticisms of the brand. He gloated to a reporter, “I birthed it, so I can kill it.” But Rocky was too late. Hood By Air had established a cult following among affluent teen-agers, avant-garde adults, and pop stars like Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Kanye West. The label was critically acclaimed, too, winning the Swarovski Award for Menswear, from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and a six-figure prize from L.V.M.H. Although Hood By Air remained rigorously experimental, it also became profitable, as fans lined up to buy T-shirts with the H.B.A. logo, which cost as much as six hundred dollars each. According to Hood By Air, its sales have doubled every season since 2013. The brand’s reach remains unimpressive by Gucci standards, but business has been good enough to give Oliver “the ability to do whatever the hell I want” in the studio. (He still shares an apartment with his mother, in Prospect Heights.)

Last September, I visited a cramped office that Hood By Air was renting on Hester Street, on the Lower East Side. The space, crowded with garment racks, could have been mistaken for a costume shop, were it not for the giant poster boards propped against the walls, which were covered in mini-Polaroids of harsh, alluring faces. Attached to each photograph was a Post-it scrawled with a concept: “spanish hustlers,” “obscure fetish.”

A dozen men and women, including Leilah Weinraub, sat in a circle, with only one subtle sign of hierarchy: Oliver was the only person not taking notes. Since 2012, Hood By Air had grown into a small collective, and its members were meeting to finalize plans for the Spring/Summer 2016 runway show. They had been joined by an outsider, Rich Aybar, a freelance stylist. Born on the Upper West Side to Dominican parents, he looked like a cross between a Rastafarian and Rasputin.

Oliver was dressed in jeans, a black vest, and a Hood By Air necklace—a chunky chain and a padlock—that he never removes. “Ooooooh!” he said. He had just received a text. “Connie just got confirmed for the door.” He was referring to Connie Girl, a doorwoman who was famous for being impossible to get past and impossible to book. “Taste that,” he said. “Ta-a-a-aste.”

“What’s the lighting like at the space?” Akeem Smith, Hood By Air’s chief stylist, asked. His hair was in small braids gathered into pigtails, and he wore a T-shirt bearing the words “The Black Genius.”

“Bright,” Weinraub replied. “White-blue.”

“Clinical,” Oliver said, approvingly. The show was being held at Penn Plaza Pavilion, a cavernous, fluorescent-lit building, opposite Madison Square Garden, that was slated for demolition. Hood By Air shows are traditionally held in unglamorous spaces.

Several people got up to leave, and a smaller group began discussing the casting of models. Each season, labels compete to book them, and Cathy Horyn, a critic at large at New York, told me that Hood By Air had some of “the best casting of the season, and I mean anywhere.” The brand is known for “streetcasting”—enlisting people who aren’t professional models.

The group stood and went over to a casting board, which was crammed with photographs of prospects. “We have to edit,” Oliver declared, inspecting the images. “We have to be really hard right now.”

“I think your story up there is really strong,” Aybar said. “It’s, like, Undernourished Retards—in a beautiful way.” He liked the “living-under-the-bridge vibe.” Then Aybar started ripping photos off the board. One boy, a Ryan Lochte type, was deemed “too dopey—a white guy in the most boring way.” Oliver asked that another male model be removed for having a swishy walk that struck him as off-brand. “It’s gay-y-y-y-y,” he said. After thirty minutes, a dozen pictures had been taken off the board.

The designing of clothes follows a similar group dynamic. Paul Cupo, the brand’s fashion director, told me, “The top concept is Shayne’s concept, and there’s a very select group of people that are allowed to contribute to this concept. Shayne then comes up with some shapes and silhouettes he wants to show, and then I plug in fabrics and colors.”

Cupo, an Italian-American from Bensonhurst who favors loose tank tops and sneakers, showed me a creation for the upcoming show. “The basic idea is a bomber,” he said. Instead of using nylon for the shell, however, he had used taffeta—a material often fashioned into ball gowns and wedding dresses. It was a surprising choice, he acknowledged with a smile: “It’s sort of a weird fabric for ‘young edgy cool designers’ to be using.” A Hood By Air bomber jacket sells for nearly a thousand dollars.

few days later, at Penn Plaza Pavilion, Hood By Air sent a male model down the runway in a tight bun, a shirtdress, and black heels. The shirtdress, made with black silk, was divided into sections, which had been loosely lashed together with chainlike zippers. The bottom had a feminine band of ruffles, as one might find on a dress worn by Michelle Obama to a state dinner. The middle was a wraparound panel of fabric that, from a distance, resembled high-waisted athletic shorts. The top was a button-down shirt with a crisp collar and oversized chiffon sleeves. Like a chimera, the shirtdress was incongruous but beautiful.

The model, who had been spotted on Instagram, was a twenty-seven-year-old from West Harlem named Mello Santos. He had a thin mustache and a goatee, and as he walked down the runway he allowed the zippers holding the outfit together to start coming undone. Dark silk was peeling off his torso like a rotten-banana peel, and the garment threatened to self-destruct at any moment, revealing Santos’s many tattoos (and parts of his anatomy). From some angles, Santos looked like a cross-dressing gangster; from others, like a futuristic pop star.

Subsequent models showed off equally mongrel creations: bomber jackets recut into togas, backpacks made from tufted sofa pillows. Some models looked like bullies, others like prey. A recording of the Jamaican dancehall performer Buju Banton roared over glitchy speakers. “Circumstances made me what I am,” he sang. “Was I born a violent man?” For the finale, each model took a seat on a raised platform, as if posing for a class picture. Together, they looked scary but sexy, butch yet femme.

The collection was called Galvanize, and the idea for the runway show was to evoke the ramshackle school that Oliver briefly attended as a youth in Trinidad. To galvanize is to electrify—to shock and inspire. But it also means to coat scrap metal with a layer of zinc; it’s the poor man’s version of gilding. Galvanized steel is a common roofing material in Trinidad, and the show’s name suggested a duality about growing up in the West Indies: Oliver claimed that the education he received at the school was exceptional—“college-level English in fourth grade,” he said—but the building was decrepit. This duality extended to the students’ clothing. Oliver and his classmates modified tattered, hand-me-down uniforms so that they became fashionable looks. The Galvanize collection—manufactured in Italy from sumptuous materials but with roots in a Caribbean schoolyard—was gilded streetwear whose aim was to electrify the audience and inspire a new generation to carry the countercultural torch.

The show impressed many critics. Sally Singer, the creative digital director of Vogue, told me that Hood By Air had presented one of the season’s top collections. Cathy Horyn, the New York critic, who was seeing a Hood By Air show for the first time, wrote that the clothes represented a “shock from the future” and a “fist in your face.” She told me that Hood By Air’s startling designs were welcome mutations in an era in which high fashion is controlled by bland international conglomerates.

Several critics described the clothes in the Galvanize collection as “deconstructed.” Deconstruction—whether of a novel, a soufflé, or a shirt—means breaking down a concept into its constituent parts, often with an eye toward destabilizing our vision of the whole. In fashion, it’s traditionally associated with accentuating raw edges and functional elements like seams. Hood By Air’s collection, however, riffed on the modifications that wearersmake to those designs—details like slashing, cropping, and sagging, which typically define a look only after professionals have finished their work.

Galvanize was an homage to the expanding cohort of shoppers who use clothing to revise standard images of race and gender. (Weinraub calls such consumers “modern people.”) In blunt terms, a rich white woman can wear a Hood By Air garment and feel modern because it makes her look like a poor black man; a poor black man can wear it and feel modern because it makes him look like a rich white woman. Whereas other labels had merely broken down design, Hood By Air was breaking down identity.

A classic deconstructionist turns garments into sculptures and models into scaffolding; Martin Margiela often covered his models’ faces. In the show for the Galvanize collection, the models’ faces—adorned with splotchy, wraith-like makeup—were key visual elements. The splotches paid homage to YouTube makeup-contouring tutorials, evoking the moment just before blending tools transform a painted monster into a Kardashian.

Despite the show’s triumphant reception, it did not unfold without flaws. There was a monumental error in the execution of the choreography: the models failed to crisscross, as directed, along the venue’s multiple catwalks, with the result that much of the audience saw only half the collection. It was a mistake that might have sent a tyrant like Coco Chanel or Alexander McQueen into a rage. Oliver, though, was unfazed. After the show, he appeared briefly at a bar on the Lower East Side, and spent only fifteen seconds conferring with Weinraub about the mistake before moving on to a more vexing problem: someone had given Oliver’s mother the address of a rented penthouse where the Galvanize collection had been put together, and where a post-show gathering would be held. (The Hester Street office was too small to accommodate dozens of models.) Anne-Marie had just arrived at the penthouse with pink hair and an entourage of younger Afro-Caribbean women. Oliver was forlorn. “This is exactly the moment I want to turn up!” he moaned, rubbing his cherubic head, which was shaved, and clutching at a floor-length sweater-dress of his own design. “Now my mother is there with her friends!”

I happened to know the identity of the culprit who had supplied Anne-Marie with the party’s address. It was Weinraub, who enjoys seeing Anne-Marie at every runway show. Her own parents have never come to one.

In late March, items from the Galvanize collection began to arrive in stores. Barneys New York installed life-size silicon replicas of six Hood By Air models in its four windows on Madison Avenue. Two of the models were Hood By Air regulars named Chucky and Sunny—Angelenos whose bodies (and faces) are covered in tattoos. In the window, the fake Sunny wore a pleated pant-dress, and his mouth was held open by a guard typically used in dental surgery. Chucky wore a padlocked baby pacifier and a purple leather shroud that might look good on a Jedi. It was the first time that the windows had featured mannequins in menswear. When I stopped by to see the display, in April, crowds of tourists, joined by local one-per-centers, had gathered to gawk. Many observers reacted with baffled revulsion. Inside the store, meanwhile, none of the radical clothes worn by the mannequins were for sale. The Hood By Air racks were instead filled with logo tees. The runway pieces may have blown fashion critics’ minds, but it was the T-shirts that had changed the way people dressed.

Leilah Weinraub studied film as a graduate student at Bard. Before joining Hood By Air, she had no experience in business. Her official title is C.E.O., but she told me that the designation is “fictional.” She recoils at any suggestion that she is Oliver’s Pierre Bergé—the commanding executive who helped Yves Saint Laurent become an international brand. She took the title of C.E.O. in part so that she would be taken as seriously as a man would be: “If I were just Shayne’s friend, and a woman, and me, people would just be, like, ‘O.K., bitch, get the fuck out of the way.’ ”

As Hood By Air has expanded into a collective, she explained, everyone with authority is essentially a creative director—even if, like her, they don’t literally design clothes. The early phases of the label’s design process take place in group texts that unfurl over weeks. For the Galvanize collection, eight employees contributed to what she calls a “running personal diary.” In addition, the label has an iCloud folder for sharing found images—Hood By Air’s equivalent of a mood board. Weinraub wouldn’t let me examine the entire folder for the collection, but she sent me a selection of the materials. There were photographs of Ike and Tina Turner, a jpeg of Aunt Viv, from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and a picture of a Chinese acupuncturist who stuck two thousand and eight needles in his head, in honor of the 2008 Summer Olympics. “It’s memes,” Paul Cupo, the fashion director, explained to me. “It’s never really literal—you’ll never see a jacket on our reference board.” In 2015, when Women’s Wear Dailyasked Hood By Air for an “inspiration photo,” the label sent back a screenshot of porn.

Weinraub is one of only a few lesbians in high fashion. (Others include Patricia Field and J. Crew’s Jenna Lyons.) She grew up in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles, the daughter of an African-American textile designer from Compton and a Jewish pediatrician from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is small with squinty eyes, broad shoulders, and an almond-shaped face. The skin around her eyes is darker in tone; these raccoon-like circles are so formidable and stylish, and presented with such aplomb, that strangers often can’t decide whether the coloring is congenital or cosmetic.

Rebellious from the start, Weinraub ran away from home several times as a teen-ager. In response, she claims, her parents threatened to put her in foster care. (Her parents deny this.) As a compromise, Weinraub went to high school in Israel, through an exchange program.

After a year, Weinraub returned to L.A., legally emancipated herself, and looked for a job. Her uncle knew a buyer at Ron Herman, an upscale clothing store, and helped Weinraub secure a shopgirl position. “It was in Brentwood,” she recalls. “There would be kids shopping there that were my same age. I hated it.” She soon took a job at Maxfield, a boutique with a more progressive bent. Its owner asked her to help oversee the books section, where she befriended a regular who liked to linger in the store and discuss topics such as slavery, America, and Judaism. It was the director Tony Kaye, who had just made a film about a white supremacist, “American History X.”

One day, Weinraub saw Kaye’s face on the cover of a magazine. She read an interview inside and noticed something: many of Kaye’s answers borrowed language that she remembered using during their conversations at Maxfield. Weinraub sensed an opportunity. She called Kaye and said, “I want to do this for you full time. I’ll be your voice, I’ll answer all your questions, I’ll do your research.” There was a catch: Weinraub was feuding with her family again, and she needed money to pursue higher education. She told Kaye, “If you send me to college, I’ll be your professional student, and you can own all my papers.” Kaye agreed, and began paying her tuition when she enrolled at Antioch College, in Ohio. When Weinraub returned to L.A. for breaks, she assisted Kaye on commercial shoots and chauffeured him around the city. The arrangement lasted until Kaye got a girlfriend who demanded an end to the tuition payments.

Kaye famously lost control of “American History X” in the editing suite, when New Line Cinema allowed Ed Norton, the film’s lead actor, to do the final cut. (Kaye disavowed the version that was released.) The incident left a lasting impression on Weinraub: if you don’t control celebrities, they’ll end up controlling you. She was happy to leave people like A$AP Rocky behind. As she put it, she preferred to go it alone and make Hood By Air’s “own world happen.” She was adamant that she would not temper the label’s provocations. “People are into high concepts and respond well to them,” she assured me. “People want drama. They love it.”

The penthouse that Hood By Air rented in the weeks before the Galvanize show had cathedral ceilings, a vast terrace, and an eight-person hot tub overlooking the Lower East Side. An apparent extravagance, the penthouse was leased in order to save money on hotel rooms by providing a live-and-work space for collaborators flying to New York. This frugal-luxury strategy would succeed, though, only if the palatial digs survived the week intact. (The label has a history of losing hotel damage deposits.) To keep the proceedings professional, alcohol was banned from the penthouse until the work was finished.

Five days before the Penn Plaza Pavilion show, I visited the penthouse, which was fragrant with expensive leathers and gleaming with racks of lustrous silks. Models began to arrive, lining up like supplicants to be dressed by the label’s clergy. Hirakish, a twenty-two-year-old African-American artist and musician from New Orleans, was one of the season’s most charismatic new models. He was walleyed and skeletal—you could see every bone in his cranium. For the show, he was to be dressed in a slashed wedding gown and accessorized with a strip of gauze affixed to his forehead, as if he had just survived a street fight. He was in drag, but the effect wasn’t campy: he looked mutilated but threatening, like a zombie. Hirakish had moved to New York a month earlier, after breaking up with his girlfriend, and this was his first fashion show. “This is what I dreamed of,” he confided, gazing at the penthouse’s occupants, who included several d.j.s whom he followed on Instagram. “This is the modern-day Andy Warhol.” (I never heard the principals of Hood By Air compare their workplace to the Factory. Instead, they referred to the label as a “family company.”)

As evening fell, I spoke with Ian Isiah, Hood By Air’s “global brand ambassador” and an in-house muse. Isiah can pull off the label’s clothes with confidence—or, as Oliver puts it, with “a lot of swag.” Isiah wears the brand exclusively, and between runway shows one of his responsibilities is to attend events where he will be photographed. He also coaches celebrities on how to wear Hood By Air properly. Six feet tall, he shaves slits in his eyebrows and styles his hair in tendril-like dreads.

Isiah went out to the terrace. Disrobing and getting into the hot tub, he said, “Now, this is a fashion interview.”

Isiah had been helping to recruit other models for the Galvanize show. The label, he said, had sought to create a unique tableau: “Black doll-babies. Transgender babies. Little skater boyish-boys. Boys with rashes on their face—less albino, more scabs everywhere. Braces! There’s a braces girl on the board.”

Isiah told me that the more established fashion brands were trying to keep current by copying Hood By Air’s streetcasting (and, sometimes, by poaching models with the promise of more money). But he wasn’t worried about the competition. “All the grannies of the ten-year anniversaries”—he was disparaging Alexander Wang, who was celebrating his label’s decennial—“are trying to latch on to what’s happening now, which you can’t do by getting a random model. You need a culture behind it.”

Oliver appeared, and Isiah urged him to get in the tub.

“What, you want me to do Mariah?” Oliver asked, alluding to Mariah Carey’s passion for swimming fully clothed.

“Yas!” Isiah squealed. “We got a dryer.”

Oliver decided to forgo clothes. A casting associate named Walter Pearce walked onto the terrace. A frenetic twenty-year-old with sixteen thousand Instagram followers, Pearce looked like a member of the cast of “Kids,” but he had come to the Lower East Side by way of Chappaqua, where he graduated from Horace Greeley High School. Like Oliver, he had dropped out of F.I.T.

“I started interning for Shayne when I was fifteen,” Pearce said. “They literally raised me.” A gifted streetcaster, Pearce was responsible for bringing on Hirakish, the New Orleans model. “He’s a legend,” Pearce declared. “And it’s not only because his look is unreal; it’s because he lives the life—he’s a maniac.”

Oliver confirmed that Hirakish was “extremely H.B.A.” He grabbed a towel and took a seat on a nearby bench. “I have conversations with him, and I’m, like, ‘Whoa, his mind is so insane—I want to work with this person.’ ” Hirakish’s mind was so insane that, later that night, he urinated inside the penthouse elevator. The mishap panicked Oliver until he discovered that there were no security cameras to record the violation. Oliver admired Hirakish’s uninhibited spirit, and felt a duty to place people like him under Hood By Air’s wing: “It’s almost, like, not orphanage-y, but I want to see these energies succeed.” (Later, he added, “New energy is very intimidating—it rewrites what has been created. We all get jaded by experiences in life, but I try to create environments for younger kids.”)

Pearce, who is gaunt and pale, got into the hot tub, and Isiah cooed, “Oooh, we got trade in the water.”

Cupo and Akeem Smith, the stylist, joined the group, along with several interns. Weinraub eventually got in, too. Many of the people in the hot tub, if viewed from behind, would be hard to identify in terms of race and gender. Oliver and Weinraub had complained to me that fashion critics often described their work with terms like “unisex” and “gender-fluid,” which evoked shapeless androgynes. Oliver hated “unisex,” because the word was unsexy. Weinraub had a similar problem with “gender-fluid”—in her estimation, it was “not hot.” She had come up with a syntactical solution, though. “You can say it differently, and it could be hot,” she said. “Like, ‘Wait, I smell gender fluid.’ ‘I’d like a little gender for my coffee.’ ”

By now, more than a dozen Hood By Air employees were in the hot tub, and the gathering looked at once absurd and utopian: creative directors splashing and laughing alongside their junior associates. At one point, Weinraub spoke ruefully of how Hood By Air was perceived by outsiders. She said, “People are, like, ‘The super-gender-bending, nonconforming, all-day-all-night party that’s coming at you so windy! Who’s a boy? Who’s a girl?’ Then you’re embarrassed by your own life.” ♦

[joonieflower-archive]

Playboy!Namjoon Pt. 7

Pt. 1 / Pt. 2 / Pt. 3 / Pt. 4/ Pt. 5/ Pt. 6/ Pt. 7/ Pt. 8/ Pt 9

{Warning: smut ahead!}

The thing was, you loved Jackson. Jackson was your best friend, having met you when still were a trainee at your former agency, and working his way into a friendship like he always did with every English speaker he could find. It was him who suggested you to a manager at JYPe when you had decided to leave the dream of being a singer behind, he was also the one who refused to let you give up. He was also the one who actually made you go to the damn meeting with the producer himself to discuss the matters of your contract.The two of you had grown so close together he knew what you were feeling before yourself did.

The thing also was, you really didn’t want to go to his birthday party. Which was terrible of you. Jackson deserved the world and you couldn't even find in yourself the will to get ready to wish him a happy birthday, maybe sing a little song and leave the famous people infested party. The netizens comments on you weren’t good. They could be worse, sure, just the immature stans were saying bad things, but you knew these fans weren’t the whole fandom. After the official statement your agency had made, the comments seemed to dim down.

But you still were silly enough to look at the comment section of that stupid article. Big mistake. That had ruined your mood, killed your appetite and will to move away from your bed. Which was why you had called in the big weapons.

You had called Hyejin, the only one who could pretty much kick your ass into the right place when you were being like this. She was soon knocking on your door, leaning against the corridor wall all dramatic in her red dress, smiling at you like the cat who ate the canary.

She lost her smile the second she saw the state you were in. You had just taken a shower, your hair was roughly dried with your hair dryer, looking like a mess and your face wasn't any better. You had dark circles for days, which made you look a little bit like a zombie.

“Oh my God, you look like actual shit.”

“That’s nice.” you snorted, stepping aside for her to come in. “You look like an actual goddess.  That’s not fair at all.”

Rolling her eyes so hard at you wondered if she could see her brain, she threw an arm around you. You weren’t lying. Hyeji was probably one of the most beautiful women on Earth, and the tight red dress made her look even more like the femme fatale she was known to be. She leads the way to your room, sitting you in the chair in front of your desk, already reaching for your makeup drawer to start working on you, “Tell me what's bothering you, sweetie.”

If there was someone you trusted to be impartial about all your problems was her. Hyejin always spoke her mind, and even if it sometimes hurt you, she was mostly always right. She had taken you out of a lot of emotional dumps just by listening to you and telling, as logically as possible, in what ways you were being stupid and for that, you loved her fiercely. So you told her. About Sehun approaching you again, about Namjoon and you and whatever the hell it was that was happening between you two and…

“He hasn't texted me in, like, 4 days? Which is odd, because I can’t think of anything that I’ve done that could have gotten this reaction from him. And I mean, he doesn't have to text me every day, but I thought we were friends, y’know?”

“Honey,” she said, looking at you like you were younger than her, and not actually her older by good six months. “you can’t be casual and be friends. I love you, you know that right? So don't get me wrong when I say you should think about what you feel for him. And don’t even come at me with that ridiculous I don’t feel nothing that I know you’re about to say. You are probably one of the most talented, amazing and loving persons I know, and if that asshole thinks he can ignore you for days and you’re still gonna go running to him he can think twice.”

You blinked a little as she applied highlighter on the high points of your face. “I don’t go running to him, though. He’s the one who usually comes here.”

She gave you a knowing look. “Still. You’re a strong woman, Y/N. Don't let those ridiculous antis get to you. It's your life, you can live how you want to.” she cocked her head, seeming to think a little better. “I mean, without breaking your contract, that is. You don’t have a dating ban, do you?”

You shook your head. You didn't. Your contract was a little different from the rest of the artists, you knew that. You had specifically asked to not be moved to a dorm, and after your year as a trainee at JYPe, they trusted you enough not to have to legally ban you from dating.

She hummed a little, going to your closet as you start curling the ends of your hair. She had made an excellent job on you, going full glam with the makeup. Your smokey eyes made you look sexy and mysterious, and the highlighter made you absolutely gleam every time you moved your head, it was so different than the soft make-up you usually used when you were performing that it made you look like a new person. You already felt better with just that.

She threw a black bandage dress in your face, making you glare at her. She gave you a very suspicious smile “You’re going to look so hot, Unnie.”

It was your time to roll your eyes. “I’m not trying to look hot, Hyejin-ah. I’m not even gonna stay there for long. Pick some jeans or something, not a dress.”

Pouting a little, she chose high waisted ripped black jeans and a rose cropped top, which was just comfortable enough without looking too effortless. You slipped into the high heels she had waiting for you, checking yourself in the mirror. You did look good, even if you weren’t dressed for the type of party Jackson was famous for throwing.

You smiled at her, your full megawatt smile. You felt ready to go to your Best friend party, even if you didn't really know a third of the people who would be there.  

The good thing was that the boys' dorm was literally in the same neighborhood your apartment complex was, in another one of the housing complexes. You and Hyejin only had to walk two blocks, you could even drive if you wanted. You checked the mirror again, feeling a lot more confident than before.

She was the one who drove you two there in the end. After the security at the gates checked if you both were on the list and not some crazy fans trying to crash the party, you both walked to the door of the big house the boys had recently moved in. You could hear the low bass echoing through the walls, making your skin crawl with the beat, all these years of training telling you that you should be dancing, following the beat.

Opening the door, you let your eyes adjust to the low lights, recognizing a few faces in the living room, Hyejin pulling you behind her to say hi to them. You see a familiar set of shoulders, and you reach out your hand grabbing his sleeve.

“Oppa!” you say, smiling widely at the black haired man that was now giving you his famous eye smile.

“Y/N, you look stunning,” Jaebum says as he looks at you from head to toes, whistling low. “Did you find Jackson yet? He asked me about you a while ago.”

“I just got here, I don't know where he is. Take me to him?”

He nods, extending his hand to you. You take it without hesitation. Like all the rest of GOT7, he felt like family, you were used to the skinship. You waved at a few other Idols that called your name, smiling at them and promising to come back to talk later. You caught what you thought to be a familiar face with the corner of your eyes, but when you tried to identify who was it Jaebum was opening the door to the backyard, where Jackson was surrounded by - guess what- more famous people. You scoffed fondly at him, how he could make that many friends you didn't know.

The blond haired man screeched your name when he caught sight of you, making all the heads around him turn your way.

“You came! I'm so happy!” he screamed, turning to his side, grabbing the person closest to him, who happened to be his maknae. “Yugyeom! Y/N is here! Arent you happy, we love her don't we?”

You looked at Jaebum, who shrugged. “He drank a little already, you know how he is.”

You rolled your eyes going to him and hugging him, the familiar perfume making you smile. He spun you around for a second, and you humored him. It was his birthday, after all.

“Happy birthday, Oppa.” you managed to say after he put you down, hugging him tightly. “ Are you having fun?”

He nodded enthusiastically, making you smile again. You loved him, and even more so you loved seeing him happy. “You look so pretty that I'll forgive you for coming late. Do you want a drink?”

You hesitated for a second, making Jaebum lift his bottle of water to you. “Go ahead, I'll take you home later if you want, I won't be drinking today, I lost the ladder game.”

“You're so unlucky, oppa.” you said pityingly at him, making him ruffle your hair teasingly. You turned back to Jackson, who was excusing himself from his friends. “I'll take your offer, though.”

Jackson led you to the bar, back inside the house at the kitchen. There was a snack table next to it, you a… puppy ice sculpture on it? You laughed quietly with yourself.

“Two soju bombs, please,” he ordered, turned back at you as the bartender set the glasses of beer on the counter, pouring the two shots of soju and dropping the shot glasses inside the beer. You lift your glass at him.

“Here's to you, oppa. I hope you can be even more successful this year. I love you, Wang puppy.”

You both gulped down the contents of the drink, one glass alone being able to give you a pleasant buzz. You weren't a lightweight, so you should be okay for now.

“How are you? I feel like it's been ages since I last saw you. Are you still rehearsing for the special stage? What song was it again?”

You sighed. Just thinking about all the time you had spent locked in the dance studio made you tired. “It's Fetish, by Selena. There's so much floor grinding on it that I don't know how they're gonna air it. But I've been fine, you don't have to worry about me, oppa.”

He tsked at you. “You always say that. How about our dearest rapper, are you still seeing him?”

You sucked your bottom lip in, biting at it trying to formulate your answer. “I guess? It's been awhile since I last saw him. But it's not like we're dating, y'know. Were casual.”

He quirked an eyebrow at you. “I thought you guys cuddled.”

You sighed, ordering rum and coke. “I cuddle you and we're not dating.”

“We're not fucking either.” He singsongs, his head quickly turning in the direction of someone else trying to wish him a happy birthday.” Look, try to have fun, alright? Find me if you need anything or Jaebum hyung.”

You waved at him. Focusing on the drink in your hand, you made your way through the crowd, trying to find Hyejin again or at least someone else you were familiar enough with

“Hello, stranger.”

Your hand goes straight to your heart as you turn around and see Chanyeol giving you his dorky grin. You both were friends, and your break up with his group member didn't change this fact.

“Oppa, you scared me!”  you punched him lightly in the shoulder, noticing a very grumpy looking man beside him, looking at you with curiosity. You bowed awkwardly when you realized who he was. “Sunbaenim.”

Min Yoongi looked at you with a knowing smirk. “Have you been well, Y/N?”

You nod at him, trying to give a confident smile. Did he know about you and Namjoon? “I’ve been well, thanks for asking.”

“Yoongi-yah, have you heard the demo for her new song? I’ve been helping her with her rapping, it’s coming along pretty well.”

Yoongi looked at you again, eyebrow cocked. “You asked Chanyeol for help when you could have just asked Namjoon?”

You faltered a little at the mention of Namjoons name. God, you should really follow Hyejin advice and just sort out your feelings already.

“Oppa can you stop promoting me to every single person you know? You’re even worse than Jackson,” you whined, then turned back to the black haired rapper. “I did not ask him for help, I just sent the song to him to get a second opinion. And Namjoon was busy, why would I bother him?”

Chanyeol frowned a little. “Why would she ask Namjoon for help?”

“Cause they’re dating, that's why.”  

You almost snorted your drink through your nose, making him laugh at your expression, taking another sip of the drink in his hand. Chanyeol, the traitor, openly laughed at how red you got.

“We’re not dating. Why does everybody thinks I’m dating somebody?” You pointed a finger at the taller man. “Stop laughing you overgrown puppy, we’re not like that.”

“Sure you aren’t,” Yoongi replied, seeming more amused than he should be, voice laced with irony. “Look, send me the song, it won't kill me to take a look at it. I heard some of your tracks before, you’re pretty talented, it wouldn't hurt me to help you.”

You bowed again, smiling brightly. “That would be great, I’m a big fan of your mixtape, I cried listening to it.”

He gave you his famous shrug. “I have that effect on people.”

Someone else called you from across the room, so you took your leave.

A blur of a familiar face catches your attention at the corner of the room. Just as tall as you remembered him, Namjoon looked as strikingly handsome as always as he sucked faces with a girl that looked like a model. His hands were gripping her waist as he pinned her against the wall, and you felt sick, sick, sick, a foreign feeling settling in your chest, knocking the air out of your lungs as you turned on your heels and left the room.

You had to get out of there. You had to sort yourself out, because of this feeling, whatever it was, was something you weren't supposed to have. You weren't supposed to feel hurt by it. But he was avoiding you, even though you had done absolutely nothing wrong. Even though you two were friends.

You know you two weren’t exclusive, but you never thought he actually was hooking up with other girls. You turned around, going back down to were Hyejin was with some of her other Idol friends. The only one you knew was Jaebum and Jimin. Hyejin looked at you surprised when you simply took the drink from her hand, drinking it all in one long gulp.

“Are you okay?” She asked, taking the cup back. “You look upset.”

You gave her a smile that could only be described as a little maniac.“I’m great. I'm going to dance for a bit then I think I'll head back home.”

She and Jaebum exchanged a look. The older man looked at you with concerned eyes. “Come get me when you're ready, ok? I'll drive you.”

You nod. waving at them ad you made your way to the dance floor, hips already swaying with the beat of the music that was playing. You needed to get your mind off of the image of Namjoon swallowing some girls face, and you knew you could erase all your thoughts while you were dancing.

You could feel the alcohol freeing your movements even more, making your thoughts go hazy and taking your worries off of it. You weren't drunk, by any means, you were just feeling slightly buzzed.

You soon find a group of female idols gesturing at you to join them, which you happily do so, accepting another drink and doing the slightly unsynchronized choreography of whatever music was playing. When you feel your last drink starting to fade, you make your way to the bar again, tripping over something on the way.

Strong hands catch you before you can even fall down, the scene all too familiar.

“Why are you always tripping in something?”

You look up at Sehun, looking like a model as always. You have to stop yourself from scoffing at him. “That’s cause you’re always in my way.”

He seemed a little amused at that, taking the drink from the bartender and handing it to you. “I was literally behind you. But yeah, I was looking for you, I still want to talk.”

You give him your best stinky eye, which wasn’t that stinky at all, but really adorable. “Why should I talk to you? Last time I talked to you someone started rumors about us again.”

He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “I know, I’m sorry about that. I just really want to clear the air between us. I’m tired of you avoiding me every time.”

You chewed on your bottom lip, scrutinizing the boy in front of you. He looked sincere, and to be honest you were also tired of all this. You were a little drunk by now, which made it less likely to you killing him. And you were tired of having all those bad feeling about him, hating someone took a lot of energy.

You nod your head, looking around for somewhere you two can talk without having to shout. Seeming to understand what you wanted, Sehun grabbed you arm lightly when you looked a little unstable again in your high heels, guiding you to the kitchen.

You push yourself up on the counter, sitting comfortably. Sehun watches every move you make, his sharp eyes familiar even after all this time. “You can talk, stop staring at me.”

“I’m sorry.” He starts after a second or two, taking a step closer to you, eyes on yours now. “I was wrong about the things I said to you. I was stressed about the group and I took it out on you. I regret the way we broke things off. I didn’t know how to deal with my emotions.”

You feel yourself nodding again. You had lashed out of stress more than once too, you could understand. But even so, his words had hurt you. “Did you mean any of it, though, even a little bit? Me being hard to love, and a clingy pain in the ass?

He winced at the memory. “You’re not any of that. I didn't mean it, Y/N. You were perfect, I was just stupid, and my manager kept telling me that all my fans would drop me if they knew I was dating you. I just wanted a way out.”

You nursed your drink again, pondering about what he said. You could understand, you were in the same position than him, being an idol it was a scary thing to like somebody. After what seemed like a while, you smiled tentatively at him again. “Okay, Sehun-ah, I forgive you.”

He looked up at you, giving another step forward, getting closer to you. “Really? But why?”

You laughed a little. “I’m trying to be a better person, and hate is not a pretty feeling. But I won’t get back with you, I still don’t understand all that bullcrap at the café.”

“I meant it. I do miss you, and I’m not gonna lie, if we got back together it would be amazing. Do you really don’t feel anything for me anymore?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know what I feel about anything lately,” you answer truthfully, letting him rest his hands on the counter, trapping you in between them,  watching him as he leans a little bit more towards you.

And maybe you only let him do that because of all the drinks you had, or maybe it was because you saw Namjoon with that girl and you wanted to prove yourself something, or maybe it was because Hyejin had told you to sort your feelings about everything, which was what you decided to do now when he asked, “Do you want me to leave? Is this okay?”

And you shook your head, “Is okay, I want to see if it’s true.”

He smiled at you, bringing his lips to yours, his hands now gripping your hips as he kissed you deeply. And it was… it was nice. Sehun had always been a good kisser, and he felt familiar. He kissed you like he wanted to prove a point, biting your bottom lip and sucking it. It was nice, but...

But he didn’t make your heart skip a beat anymore, didn't feel like home like he used to in the past. Not like someone else did. You pushed him away lightly, giving him a small smile. “It’s not the same, is it?”

He sighed, sliding both his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, it isn’t.”

You leaped out of you sitting position, sending a wave of dizziness to your head, making him reach out his hand to stabilize you again. “Oh, shit. I should go home before I break my ankle. Did you see where Jaebum went?”

He guided you through the crowd again, earning you two a few stares. You didn’t really mind. You were feeling especially light, in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with not having a bunch of negative emotions about someone. And yes, you still were kinda hurt by everything he said, but you knew you had made the right decision at being a better person. You had needed closure about that, and you finally got it. Your other feelings you could deal with later.

Namjoon listened to Jackson talk about this new rapper he liked, smiling at his friend. Jackson was so excitable. He looked around discreetly, trying to spot you. He saw you smiling at Yoongi earlier before that girl had pulled him upstairs, offering a smile and the promise of making him forget about all the thoughts of you.

It obviously didn’t work. It didn’t feel right, kissing her, pressing her against the wall.

Heaving a sigh, he focused on his slightly inebriated friend again. He was standing with his back to the door, which was why he heard you before he saw you.

“Oppa,” you called out, making Jackson turn his head in your direction. “where's Jaebum? I want to go home.”

In the back of his mind Namjoon thought how ridiculous it was, the way you looked straight out of a movie as you walked over to them, avoiding people who were in the way. Being in this field of work he was pretty accustomed to pretty girls in high heels. But you, he thought, looked like something out of this world. He had thought so as well the first time he saw you, nervous-looking but still smiling at your dongsaengs encouragingly as you were walking the way to your first stage, bowing at him and smiling when you two crossed ways.

“Nah, last I saw him he was talking to Youngjae. Do you want me to call you a cab?”

You almost tripped on somebody's foot, making a hand shot from behind you, keeping you in place. You batted the hand away, turning to say something to the owner of it. With your movements, Namjoon was able to see Sehun behind you, giving an amused smirk at what sounded like an annoyed 'i'm not gonna trip stop trying to catch me you big tree log”.

And just like when he had seen the photos, he felt something heavy in his chest.

Sehun lifted his hands to show he was giving up, turning around and leaving the room as you rolled your eyes. You turned your attention back to Jackson. your eyes finally registering who was standing beside him.

Your gazed locked in his for a second, full of things he didn't know how to identify. Before he could say anything, you averted your eyes. “ I can walk home, I’m not drunk or anything and it's close by anyway.”

You walked over, giving Jackson a hug, smiling at him wishing him a happy birthday again. “Try the next room, but if you’re going alone be careful, okay?”

And before he could say anything, before he could even explain why he hadn’t talked to you in days, you were walking away again.

“She’s really pretty, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon croaks after a second, watching you disappear through the crowd.” she’s breathtaking.”

“I don’t know what happened between you two,” Jackson says, quietly but more serious than Namjoon had ever seen him look, “but you should fix it Namjoon.”

Namjoon gulps down the drink in his hand. “Nothing happened. I don’t fuck with girls with boyfriends, that’s all.”

Jackson frowns, looking over at the taller man again. “She doesn’t. She and Sehun broke up over a year ago. And besides, she never looked at anybody like she looks at you.”

“Oh,” Namjoon whispered, checking his pockets for his phone. “I have to- look, happy birthday, Jackson, but I should-”

“Yeah yeah, go after her.”

After removing your makeup and changing to comfortable clothes, you stand in front of the big windows in your living room, absorbing the moonlight. It wasn't late, is almost 2, and you weren't going to be able to sleep if you tried. In the short walk home you had sobered up completely, and now you had to deal with the conflicting emotions you had about Namjoon.

At least you didn't have to worry about Sehun anymore. You really didn't feel nothing for him anymore, and he seemed to realize that as well. It would be a good thing, you let your past with him in the past. All the future stages you both could possibly do would be a lot less awkward.

You were still staring at the moon when you heard a tentative knock on the door, making you grab the closest weapon (your tv remote control) before cautiously opening the door.

Namjoon looked at you and to the object in your hands, wielded like a sword.

“Were you planning to turn whoever was at your door off?”

You groan a little embarrassed, stepping aside so he could come in. “I didn't know it was you.”

Taking his shoes off, he looks at you again. “Why did you leave so early? Weren't you having fun?”

Again. you focus on anything else but his brown eyes. “Not as much as you. That girl was pretty, by the way. I thought you would take her home, what’re you doing here Namjoon?”

“You're prettier,” he says, stepping forward and cupping your cheek with his hand, the other going to your waist. “I'm sorry I didn't talk to you even though I said I would. I was busy overthinking stuff. I also thought you were dating Sehun.”

“I'm not. “ You clarify quickly. “I'm only seeing you.”

He's closer now, eyes glued to you, watching you every reaction. His scent surrounds you, making you feel a little dizzy, making your chest hurt a little with the realization of how you had missed him.

You continue after a second of trying to understand what the look in his eyes meant as he stared at you so intensely. “You could have at least said something, it was a dick move, Namjoon-ah. Friends don't just ignore each other like that.”

“I'm sorry.” He replied sincerely, gulping a little loudly. “I missed you. Can you forgive me? I promise I'll be a better friend.”

“Okay.” You say easily stepping closer to him, closing the distance between you two. “I missed you too. Did you have fun on tour?

He nodded yes, smiling with relief. “The boys drove me insane half the time and I thought I was gonna lose my voice with all the interviews.”

“Poor you,” you cooed sweetly at him, getting on your tiptoes and lacing your arms around his neck. “must suck to be so smart and know a whole other language fluently.”

He gave one of his laughs at you, the one he did when he was left wordless. “I forgot how bratty you could get.” he fake scoffed at you. “You don't have any right to say that, you speak even better than me.”

You smiled at him before hiding your face in his neck, kissing the spot where it connected with his shoulder. “Oops, my bad.”

“You're lucky that with a smile of yours you can get away with anything.”

“I'm not the one with dimples, oppa. I could live in your dimples and die a happy woman.”

He laughed his sponge bob laugh, making you look up at him again. “I really missed you, Y/N.”

You traced his jawline with your fingers, looking at him through your eyelashes, “Show me, then.”

His gaze on your changed at the same time the atmosphere did, becoming dark and heavy with the innuendo of your words. Without saying anything, his grip on your waist tightened as he stepped forward, making you do the same until your back was against your door, his body pressed flush against yours. He reached his arms behind you, palming your ass over one of his oversized shirts you were wearing, making your hips press against his again.

“I couldn't stop thinking about you since I went away. Especially since the last time we facetimed. You looked so good moaning for me all across the world, baby girl.”

You licked your lips, waiting impatiently for him. “I always look good. I look even better moaning live, or did you already forgot it?”

His lips brushed against yours, sending electric shocks all over your skin.

“I remember. Don't think I'll ever forget, angel.”

And then he was kissing you, mouth devouring yours, drinking your needy whines as he rutted against you like he hadn't drink water in a long time.

And this, your heartbeat speeding up, you breathing becoming heavier with each squeeze of his hands against you, was what was missing when Sehun kissed you.

You had gone a month without his touch but now it felt like you were going to die if he didn't touch you properly already.

“Joon, please. Bed.” you pleaded when he stopped the kiss, moving to your neck, sucking the skin there, sending shivers through your whole body.

“Jump,” he said, hands pushing your butt up. You obeyed, lacing your legs around his waist. This way you were directly grinding at his erection, causing him to hiss as you took your time to suck his neck this time, not caring if you left a mark. Makeup was invented for a reason.

He didn't waste any time as he lowered you to your bed, taking off his own shirt and pants as quickly as possible. You could see how hard his cock how, stretching the fabric of his grey boxers. You gulped loudly with the promise of him inside of you soon.

He kissed you again, making you sigh against his lips. His hands sneaked inside your shirt, fingers hooking at the seams of your underwear, pushing it down your legs.

And then his fingers are brushing against your sex, sliding against your slit, making him let out a half groan when he realizes how wet he already made you.

Stopping the kiss, he lifts himself up bending the arm his not using, watching you as you moan when he finally push two fingers inside of you, watching you as you arch your back, hand gripping his arm to ground yourself a little.

He smirks when you moan his name loudly, nudging your hips upwards into his touch.

“So eager, angel. Do you like my fingers?”

“Yes, so much. I- ah, Namjoon, please.” you whine, “aren't you gonna take off my shirt?”

His movements stop, “It's mine, actually. And no. I told you I was gonna eat you out in my shirt, didn't I?”

You can only nod, watching him positioning his face between your legs, parting them even more with his hands, pushing your knees up, making you more available to his mouth. His lips traced invisible lines down your already wet folds, making your breath hiss.

His tongue circled your clit slowly, going down flat, the tip of it playing with your entrance. He lifts his head a little, looking you straight in the eyes. “You taste so good angel, do you want me to fuck you with my mouth?”

“Yes, “ you say, voice uneven and raspy with desire. “please, oppa. “

He smiled again, and suddenly his dimples didn't look so cute anymore. He attacked you with his mouth again, sucking hard at your already swollen clit, licking it like his sole purpose on earth was to make you cum in his mouth. And you were already so close with only his fingers that when his tongue enters you this time, pressing against the spot that had you moaning, his thumb now working on the bundle of nerves, making you come so hard your legs were still shaking when he deemed he had tasted your juices enough.

When he finally lifts himself up, taking your shirt now, you push him into a kiss. tasting you in his mouth, all your muscles feeling like pudding.

“I can't move “ you informed him with a pout as he reaches over your into your drawers, fishing a condom out and rolling it in his cock after kicking his boxers out. “I wanted to ride you, that's not fair.”

He gives you a laugh, nose nuzzling your year, positioning himself between your legs. “Life's not fair, angel. Are you too sensitive or can you go again?”

“I can always go again with you.”

“Good.” he hums before sliding inside of you, his hips hitting yours with a lewd noise. His eyes are closed as he hisses, “Fuck baby, so tight for me. I'm gonna fuck you so well, make up for all the lost time.”

You don't respond to it, only being able to sigh a moan as he picks up his pace, letting him hold both your knees up, making you even tighter around him. And god, how you had missed him inside of you hitting you so hard that the sound of skin meeting skin echoed through your apartment, the sound of his moans against your neck making you clench around him.

His hands let go of your legs. coming to both your hands, entwining your fingers, lifting your arms above your head. “Oppa, I'm close again already.”

He slows down, watching you squirm under him, his eyes now almost black with desire as he watched you moaning with each lazy trust, the skin of his pelvis pressing against your clit so slowly. He kisses you again, this time slowly, just like his trusts. before he's reaching for one if your pillows, turning you around stomach down, sliding the pillow underneath your hips, lifting your hips up. You perk your ass up, feeling him slide inside you again, deeper, this position making it easier for him to hit the head of his cock against your g spot with every thrust.

“Come, angel. You feel so good around my cock, god, you're such a good girl, aren't you? Come for me, baby girl, let me make you feel good.”

His hands are in your hair, pulling it so he can kiss you as he fastens his pace, making your clit rub against the pillowcase, the friction so good together with him pounding into you, making you close your eyes with the intensity of the pleasure it's causing you, and you feel your second orgasm hit you again, moaning so loudly Namjoons name into his mouth, whining as he continues to pound you until he's the one coming, gripping your hips in a way you knew was going to bruise but you didn't mind not a little bit.

He slides out of you, rolling to your side, pulling you against him. “I missed you, baby.”

“Yeah,” you say quietly against his neck letting his hands in your hair lull you to sleep. “Me too, oppa.”

Next morning the first thing you see when you wake up is Namjoon, bathed in the sun seeping through your window, staring straight at you.

“You're really beautiful, even after seeing you so many times I'm still awed by how gorgeous you are.”

“Thank you.” you say quietly hiding your face in his neck, blushing even though you were more than used to being complimented, breathing his scent deeply, letting his smell wrap around your chest as you continue to think about how you felt about him.

It was beyond obvious, you notice after a second of staring at his bronze skin, at the moles in his neck. that you were a little gone for him. Bittig at your bottom lip. you push back from him, looking at his face now.

It was scary, this thing. Not knowing what somebody else felt about you. Especially when that someone was somebody you treasured as your friend.

He pauses before looking down at you like he can sense that there's something in your mind that's bothering you. “What's wrong?”

You quickly shake your head. “It's nothing.”

“That's bullcrap in a chef's salad. Tell me what's bothering you.”

You breathe deeply.“I was jealous when I saw you kissing that girl. I shouldn't be, should I? We're casual… right? Just friends.”

He blinks a little, seeming confused. “I mean. yeah. You did? But why-”

“I don't want to lose you.” You said quietly, voice so small you were afraid he couldn't hear you. “And if we keep doing this thing it's going to have to end sometime, we'll end up awkward, or even hating each other. I just...value our friendship too much to risk it, oppa.”

“Do you…” he hesitates for a painful moment. “Do you want to stop this?”

“No, but we have to, don't we?”

He pushes himself off the bed, looking for his clothes. avoiding your eyes. “If it's what you want, angel.”

You feel your throat closing a little. You didn't want it, not really. What you wanted for him to tell you what the hell was this thing between you two because you were damn sure both of you knew it had stopped being just casual a long time ago.

“We can still meet as friends, right? Oppa?”

He looks at you when your voice wavers. He cups your cheeks, caressing your skin with his thumbs. “Of course we can, baby. Our friendship will be okay, I'll come here a lot to complain about my members while you try to study.”

You give him a tentative smile. Kneeling on the bed so you could be eye level with him, hugging him.

His arms wrap around you tightly, his lips resting a kiss in the top of your head. “We’ll be okay.” He promises, even though his heart had seemed to stop the moment you had uttered these words. “We're friends. You're right, angel.”

++++++++

(a/n: ITS NOT OVER!!! it’ll have one or two more chapters i promise!! Also, can’t those just admit their feelings already??? Please do tell me what you think of this chapter, what you think will happen etc!!)

[familyvisionis2020]

Day 1 - Asheville (2 of 2)

We got to The Mothlight around 6 and loaded in our gear. The sound guy is kind, learns or names, gives more bass mix in the monitor when the singer asks for it. I see our band name on the big movie broadsheet sized monthlong show poster and feel excited. In Asheville we take a walk and make fun of the murals, I tell the band about the Asheville 11 riots and the vegan restaurant that used to hook us up and memories of the anarchist scene that fees antique on my tongue. Kabir passes the rose water spray and so I take off my glasses and spray my face.

There’s a green room beneath the stage floor with a ping pong table and two dozen Battle Star Galactica VHS tapes and two water bottles with pee and an abandoned rocks glass. I beat Kabir in ping pong, Jeremy beats me, I think about the basketball game I quit last month because I habitually got too competitive and hurt or upset someone every week for weeks. I’m still on the group text for that game but I have it muted but I still read the texts.

We go upstairs and I read the first chapter of The Left Hand of Darkness over the course of an hour on a dusty velveteen mustard colored couch. Labor and Jeremy and John socialize and I’m happy to be left with my book, the sunset comes, the bartender arrives with a fuzzy jacket on, turns down the lights, puts on a playlist, takes plastic wrap off of limes. I’m able to get my friend from Carrboro who’s visiting in on the guest list which is nice. I get to share the kit of the headliner which means nicer than usual gear and mic’ed drums too which sounds so solid and big when I kick. I bring my own breakables though: snare, cymbals, sticks.

I find out there’s a few arcade cabinets in the back, make a b-line to the 1989 Atari Tetris cab. It’s not my favorite Tetris iteration but it’s a good one, joystick and two rotate buttons, kind of a soft high score situation because you can feed the machine quarters and prolong a game indefinitely. The longer the game goes the harder it gets though, and I’m rusty so it’s still a challenge. It’s a joy to play. The ecstasy of order, the familiar grid and cascade; the solid thunk of the joy stick isn’t unlike the satisfying fullness of a mic’ed kick drum. With a dollar I put up a casual second place high score and stop short because the opening band, Yeller, is playing. The lead singer is a femme with a merit colored crushed velvet cape, exaggerated mascara that I would call ‘corpse paint lite,’ dainty lace socks, torn fishnets, middle length brown hair that’s pretty but that has split ends. They remind me of how I looked when I dressed femme in Philly in 2015. I miss the way my girlfriend used to treat me when I dressed like that; I don’t miss the way most other people treated me. I miss feeling superior to boys who dress the way I dress now. I think about whether or not I’m much of a feminist as I was since I have conceded the battleground of the aesthetic, since I won’t show up for that fight anymore. I feel a wisp if fear and I am very comfortable. Earlier Jeremy Sharéd his kimchi with me; he said sometimes he just eats a whole jr in a sitting. Their band is hard to describe, it is rock, there is some bass solos. It does not sound like black metal or power pop or glam rock which are the genres my mind assumed the singer’s outfit signaled. The vocals remind me of folk punk, which in my narrow experience tracks with Asheville. Here are people in the front of the crowd bouncing around to the music and they look like they’re having so much fun and I try to let myself dance how they are, I find myself stiff but not too stiff to bounce a little. My body hasn’t done this movement pattern in a long time. In 2010 I would’ve called these people ‘muppets,’ a derisive epithet used primarily to excoriate such people for their putative positivity, lack of dourness, loud outfits and their bubbly interpersonal comportment, something like crunchy twee. Or is it deportment? I’m unbound by rigor typing with my thumbs in the van on the way to Knoxville. It’s nice to write slower and imperfectly.

The opener mentions us before finishing up which fees nice. We set up, slapdash soundchceck, I set up the breakables, change into shorts, fill up a water bottle, settle in to the cage of hardware, make it to the throne only after nearly falling over the cables slopped over the stage like black spaghetti. Big black electric udon, and is it the amps or the guitars who eat the noodles?

Before I know it Kabir has done his intro banter and my body knows it’s time to start the set, and it’s my responsibility as drummer to count off the first song and luckily we practice plenty and so my body knows just what to do and we’re playing and it’s smooth and tight and I let myself loosen up and I head bang and make faces and bounce all around. I know I don’t need to but I think the crowd likes it and I know the band likes it and as long as I don’t get too carried away and forget where we are in the song then it’s a great way to drum as so fun and exhilarating for me. I’m not so nervous like I was last tour. The set is smooth, over before I know it. I pack up quick and try to be courteous by coming back on the stage to ask Kabir if I can help him break down and I carry his combo off stage and get some water. The set was 20 minutes and my shirt is soaked with sweat, it’s a little gross but I feel proud like I have proof I worked hard for my band and the crowd.

I go back to check out the headliner, Yawpers, mostly to be polite and not at all because I am interested in hearing them play. I catch up with my friend from Carrboro before it gets too loud to talk, he tells me about when he was in his early 20s trying to teach his daughter to potty train and not doing a good job because he didn’t understand, anatomically and ergonomically, how exactly girls peeing worked. I like hearing about the story and when the band cuts the conversation short it feels like a mercy because I don’t have to respond or find a way out of the conversation. I wish that I didn’t treat conversations like a trap. I want to not be scheming for a way out of connecting with people. It’s something I can work on improving. I bounce around to the headliner, they sound like Led Zeppelin I guess, no bass at all, cool effects on the vocals modulated by a hdand-operates effectsbpedal mounted on the mic stand. After ~2.5 songs I slip into the back room where he Tetris cab is, pull up a stool, feed the machine 3 quarters and settle in. I push earplugs in and wipe sweat from my palms onto my jeans. I feel really really happy. I love playing Tetris so much. I forbade it for the most part in the last two years, one of dozens of activities I associate with a less stable past, a throwaway activity in a life where nowadays I believe my time is valuable, where I avoid ‘wasting’ time, which is the only way I used to spend my time. It is silly and pointless to play Tetris and I am the best at, here and now. I’m in the zone, my mind feels sharp, the joystick is responsive, I shake off the rust and I am knocking pieces around and finessing rotations in a groove, in the pocket, rhythmic and precise ad drumming, plus with visual proof. I lose track of time! That never happens lately anymore it seems like. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jeremy has trickled in and is spectating from a respectful distance. I love this, I love showing a small audience my curious pointless skill, I play harder and focus and do well. I get out of tight jams with ease. My play is a silk tightrope, or like watching a diligent curling pushbroom operator and the stone slides just exactly right into place. And I do that over and over and when I see my score surpass the high score I point to the score on the screen and later I find out Jeremy captured this on his phone and that makes me feel special and talented and seen.

I finally die but only after I’ve beaten the old high score by 100,000 points, a solid and respectable showing of ~488,000 over 3 credits and about an hour of play. I’ve gotten more than a million points on this same cabinet at the Quarter Horse in Durham but it took more than Han two hours and closer to $5 in quarters if I remember right. I get off the stool and Kabir is losing his mind in that warm exited way he does over my play, tells me I’m incredible, he kept thinking I would die and I kept not dying. This reminds me of how I felt about myself almost exactly two years ago. I feel happy and healthy and hale and held and whole, Kabir gives me dap and somehow Yawpers has not finished yet. There’s a weirdly long spoken word soliloquy from the frontman about his cocaine habit, ex wife, their divorce, some other stuff. Evidently this band had a write up in Pitchfork describing their sound as ‘an expansive vision of Rock.’ Expansive is the watchword as their set tips the scales at about 75 minutes and mercifully ends. I get to introduce my friend from Carrboro to Kabir and watch them connect which is lovely.

We get our cut of door plus extra plus we sold merch so we leave in the black which to me is a shock bc im used to playing show costing money. Our band is good and people really liked it and danced and came up to us after and gave what get to me like sincere earnest praise.

[mwitchipoo]

In the past few years, I’ve done portraits of famous musicians and icons, such as David Bowie, Lemmy Kilmister, Quentin Crisp, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Elizabeth Taylor, Wendy O Williams, and a few others. My focus are on those who had some sort of impact on my psyche, whether it’s small or significant.

Which brings me to Marc Bolan. My introduction to the ’70s Glam band T Rex was through covers by Bauhaus, Violent Femmes, Powerstation, Siouxsie and The Banshees, etc. Being curious, I decided to go straight to the source.

  Recently came the news that T Rex is going to be an inductee into the 2020 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Usually I don’t give a rat’s ass about who’s been included. Being part of Gen X, I should’ve been happy for Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. Instead I’ll wait to rejoice when Kraftwerk gets in. I’m always that one person who goes against the grain.

For those who don’t know who Marc Bolan is, here goes. Marc Bolan, real name Marc Feld. His father was an Askenazi Jew, his mother English. Marc was born for the showbiz life. He first appeared as an extra on the British television show Orlando as a Mod. Age nine he was given his first guitar, and his life course was set. After being expelled from school at the age of 15, he tried modelling. It’s rumored he was bisexual, piling his trade as a ‘rent boy.’ In 1964, Marc met his first manager. The result was one of Bolan’s professional recordings. The track was in the style of U.K. teen idol Cliff Richard. Marc soon moved on to a second manager. He had changed his style, adopting a Boho-chic look. The contract was later sold to a landlord to back off back rent, in which the contract was later destroyed. In 1965, Marc signed Decca Records. It was this point Marc switched his stage name to Marc Bolan. Two Decca released singles went nowhere. In 1966, British music producer Simon Napier-Bell, met Bolan, listening to Bolan’s claims about how he was going to be a ‘big star.’ Napier-Bell was managing The Yardbirds at that point. He put Bolan in the band John’s Children, which had some success. It was short-lived, so Marc had to reconstruct his plans for stardom. Influenced by fantasy and romance, he came back with the first formation of T Rex, originally known as Tyrannosaurus Rex

Tyrannosaurus Rex gained a cult following among the U.K.’s Hippie subculture, releasing four Psychedelic-Folk-Rock albums. However, Marc wanted more. Despite charting success, percussionist Steve Peregrin Took was terminated due to drug use. Tyrannosaurus Rex then developed into T Rex, adding electric to the sound. Took was replaced with Mickey Finn on the bongos.

1970 saw the release of the rebooted formation with the self titled album T Rex. As the cliche goes, the rest is history. Marc reinvented himself yet again, setting the bar for what would be known as ‘Glam Rock.’

  The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. This also synchronized with David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era. In fact, both T Rex and Bowie worked with the same music producer, American Tony Visconti and the same manager, Les Conn. Hippies were replaced with teenage fans as Marc performed on stage wearing satin and glitter. This is the iconic T Rex everyone knows. At one point T Rex was as huge as The Beatles over in his native country. T Rex did have success over in the U.S., with the top 40 hit ‘Bang A Gong’, but never as massive as they were back in the U.K. With releases such as Electric Warrior and The Slider, the band was rumored to be selling 100,000 records a day.

What’s up with these ’70s rock stars wearing pants a certain way? 

It really should be noted that Marc would probably never had the success if it wasn’t for his wife, June Ellen Child. June Child already had connections within the British music industry, and was instrumental in T Rex’s success. Finally Marc achieved the rock star status he so desired.

Marc and June on their wedding day

Marc Bolan and June Child

Marc Bolan and June Child

The wave continued to ride high, appearing in Ringo Starr’s film, Born To Boogie. After the album Tanx in 1973, the success T Rex had started to taper off. His marriage was disintegrating too. Marc found new love with American R&B singer Gloria Jones. Jones has her own interesting history. She was involved with Motown. Finding success in the U.K., she was the Queen of  the Northern Soul movement. Most importantly, Jones was the original vocalist for the song Tainted Love, later made internationally famous by ’80s New Wave band Soft Cell.

Marc and Gloria’s paths first crossed in 1969. It wasn’t until 1972, when Jones got a gig as T Rex’s backup singer.  You can guess the rest, as Jones and Bolan became romantically involved. Out of that union, Jones gave birth to their only son, Rolan Bolan in 1975. By that time, Bolan’s star was fading. He had gained a bit of weight, acquired a drug habit, and record sales slowly declined. Jones and Bolan continued to collaborate. In 1975 Jones did background vocals for the T Rex album Bolan’s Zip Gun. Unfortunately the tenth studio album did poorly, only being released in the U.K. (The American version was Light of Love, released on then new Casablanca record label) Another pairing for Jones’ 1976 album Vixen. Jones continued her tenure with T Rex with the albums Futuristic Dragon and Dandy In The Underworld.

Marc’s luck turned around in 1977, when he landed his own variety show on Granada Television. Now this synchronized with the imminent U.K. Punk movement. (The Damned opened up for T Rex on a later British tour) Marc had a few appearances from bands like The Jam and Generation X (with future ’80s New Wave superstar Billy Idol). Thin Lizzy also did a guest spot on Marc. The rest was littered with local performers, never to be heard from again. David Bowie was the most significant delegate, with a spot on the last Marc episode. Bowie was both a rival and a friend – but later proved himself to be a loyal friend as we’ll find out later.

Marc was renewed by Granada, but the next season never came to be. After celebrating on September 16, 1977, Marc and Gloria got into a car crash. Jones was the driver of the Mini 1275GT. While Jones survived, Bolan died instantly. Marc Bolan was only two weeks from his 30th birthday.

While the funeral was taking place, Gloria Jones was hospitalized in a coma. When she came to, to her horror she discovered the home she had shared with Marc had been looted dry. Further matters were complicated because Bolan never divorced from his estranged wife June Child. This meant that Bolan’s was tied up, freezing both Jones and the child she had with Bolan out. Skipping the U.K. legal inquiry over the car crash, Jones and the son returned back to Los Angles, California. Jones continued to be involved with the music industry, but destitute. This is where David Bowie comes into play. Bowie just happened to be the godfather to Rolan Bolan. Refusing to have Rolan continue suffering, Bowie stepped in providing financial assistance, paying for Rolan’s education. It was all due to Bowie’s loyalty towards friendship he shared with Marc Bolan. It wasn’t until June Child’s death in Back in the U.K., a plaque was placed where the crash occurred. For decades, the site has, become a small pilgrimage to T Rex fans.

Over the years, people have held torches in Marc’s memory. Marc On Wax was a label run by two former heads of Bolan’s fan club. Most importantly, the influence Marc and T Rex had continues. As mentioned earlier, many late ’70s/’80s Post-Punk and Alternative bands have covered many a T Rex ditty.

As for Gloria, she later co-founded with the Light of Love Foundation UK, a music school in Sierra Leone, West Africa named in honor of Marc. Called Marc Bolan School Of Music, it gives children opportunities to learn all facets of music and film. Oh, and in 2007, she did a duet with Marc Almond once on a U.K. stage performing Tainted Love.

Gloria Jones and Marc Almond on stage. 2007. 

Honestly, I don’t know why there’s hasn’t been a biopic film about Marc. If they can do one on Freddie Mercury and Elton John, surely they can do one on Marc. I digress.

Now that you’ve read more about Marc Bolan than you originally wanted to, here’s my portrait of him, just in time for his induction into the class of 2020, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Hand drawn, pen, ink and watercolor. There’s a tiny bit of sheen and glimmer with the watercolor, but I don’t think Marc would’ve minded. Here’s a little Marc in your heart.

Marc Bolan. Pen, ink, watercolor. Illustration by Michele Witchipoo. Completed March 2020. 

    Marc Bolan – T. Rex In the past few years, I've done portraits of famous musicians and icons, such as David Bowie…

[skold]

this post is Marina’s List Of Favorite and/or Iconic Music Videos

this could also be subtitled as: if you truly want to understand me as a person, watch these videos because it’ll answer a lot of questions

it’s gonna be a long one so i’ll pop it under a cut

alright we goin by artist then chronological

AIDEN

knife blood nightmare - this is iconic for me simply bc i rly wanted to look like wil in this video so bad in 6th grade.

die romantic - WHAT A BOP. i used to do my black eyeshadow like wil in this video too lmao

ALL TIME LOW

poppin champagne - because blonde alex and also?? honestly?? what a wild video. this is truly late 00s oversaturated pop punk at its finest

i feel like dancin - i’m not the biggest fan of this record or even this song in general but this is like, quintessential all time low to me video-wise. like. it’s everything i want from an all time low video.

ARCHITECTS

follow the water - or as sam carter says, follow the wah-uh. first of all i love that this is in a church. second of all when will i get to go to an architects show this lit here in the states

heartburn - bc they all look pretty. ok. aesthetically on point as well.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD

beast and the harlot - i don’t always bop this song but when i do, the whole cul de sac does too. no but really this was so influential to middle school me i wanted nothing more than a boyfriend who looked like zacky or jimmy and whatever eyeshadows zacky was wearing in this clip

BLINK 182

i miss you - the video that inspired this post. THE AESTHETIQUE. 20′s inspired romantigoth film noir. i don’t yell about this music video enough.

BRING ME THE HORIZON

chelsea smile - it’s literally just a house part video but the song literally defines the year 2009 for me. emetophobia warning at 1:08

it never ends - this video got mad shit but i love it. pretty heavy gore throughout this video

alligator blood - CREEPY ASS AESTHETIC SHIT!!!! i live for it. 16 y/o me had it so bad for matt nicholls and him getting tied up and violated was like, god tier for me

visions - more creepy aesthetic shit. the videos on there is a hell were underrated

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

hey john what’s your name again? - i gotta throw this one in just bc this hurls my ass right back to the year 2008. that bible imagery. those haircuts. it was a better time for music

html rules d00d - THIS SONG STILL SLAPS LMAO DON’T READ ME

ELISSA FRANCESCHI

salt - i’m not crying you’re crying!!! how did anne and christian franceschi manage to spawn two flawless and talented siblings!!!!!!

EVERY TIME I DIE

ebolarama - it’s a performance video in a roller rink what more could you want

wanderlust - you’ve probably caught on to the fact that i love creepy aesthetic shit.

decayin with the boys - THIS VIDEO HAS ME HOWLING. there are too many good moments to list here but the personal highlight is the dude admiring the lesbians making out, then he turns and admires they gays making out at about the 1:30 mark. also the jenga dream sequence. there’s a dick in this video, just a heads up. and a whole bootyass. i love andy williams. mild emetophobia tw at 2:30

FOXY SHAZAM

a dangerous man - eric nally’s screeching was the soundtrack of 2008

i like it - the chorus of this song is literally just “that’s the biggest black ass i’ve ever seen and i like it” and i have nothing more to say

holy touch - it’s a performance video but it’s. different. i really don’t wanna ruin this by saying too much about it. that’s just kinda how foxy shazam were. this song is a fucking banger. yes, they did have a trumpet player in the official lineup.

FRNKIERO ANDTHE CELLABRATION

joyriding - another performance video that’s. different. lmao. aesthetically perfect

GOOD CHARLOTTE 

lifestyles of the rich and famous -  the proletariat banger we weren’t ready for in 2002, but we’re ready now.

girls and boys - old people being punk rock. that’s all.

predictable - i SPECIFICALLY remember watching this on the good charlotte website the day this dropped. THE EARLY 2000S BAD CG IS REAL. i was literally ten years old but i somehow Felt every word of that spoken bridge, man. WHEN THE LITTLE GIRL GIVES JOEL THE ROSE AND IT TURNS BLACK i deadass thought that was so fucking dope y’all

i just wanna live - ignoring the irony of joel whining about being famous, this video had THE MEMES. 

GREEN DAY

longview - iconic simply by virtue of being their first video.

when i come around - ask me about my favorite songs of All Time and i’ll probably mention this one. it’s still great nowadays. i love all the shots of berkeley.

brain stew/jaded - this is such a great piece of art lmao the fucking. sludgy feeling of brain stew going into the chaos of jaded is great on the record, but even better in video form going from being stoned in sepia to tripping acid in an oversaturated cluttered space

walking contradiction - comedy gold

hitchin a ride - creepy weirdness and an iconic bassline. also mike dirnt looks fine as hell in this video

minority - i’m running out of ways to explain that a video is iconic to me purely bc of how important the song was to me at a given time lmao.

american idiot - is there anything i can truly say about this video? it was perfect in 2004, it’s perfect in 2017. uncomfortably relevant. epilepsy warning for strobe lighting effects in the second half

holiday - technically this was released before blvd, but since it chronologically precedes blvd in the story, i’m putting it first. this is like 90% here for the bridge section y’all. fucking iconic. i wore a fedora on the first day of sixth grade bc tre cool wore one in this video. not my proudest fashion moment. emetophobia warning at 1:56 but them playing EVERY character in the bar scene is perfection

boulevard of broken dreams - ah yes, 2005′s most overplayed song. i could not escape this song. every time the intro started everyone would just look at me bc i was The Green Day Chick. this video is aesthetically perfect though. shout out to mike dirnt’s jawline in profile

HOZIER

work song - first of all, this song makes me cry. second of all, the video is dreamy as fuck. it gives me irl chills. i love the choreography so much. the whole vibe is very modern southern gothic. and it’s incredibly intimate feeling without being... sexual or vulgar, i guess. 

IN THIS MOMENT

adrenalize - first of all i’m gay. second of all i’m gay. this video is decidedly nsfw

whore - aesthetically pleasing. chris motionless being subby is the real highlight here

sick like me - again, it’s here for the aesthetic.

big bad wolf - also aesthetic but THIS MAKEUP LOOK. maria’s makeup look in this video is actually literally my aesthetic goal. epilepsy warning for strobe light effects

sex metal barbie - say it with me: aesthetic. i also love this one bc the lyrics are largely lifted from people talking shit about maria on the internet, shaming her for being a woman with sexuality and agency, so fuck yes i support it. mild body horror warning for this one

JOHN 5

making monsters - john’s videos are mostly performance based but this one is so cute lmao. where do i cop a j5 action figure

LADY GAGA

paparazzi - i’m only including the RLY vital gaga videos here and the full version of paparazzi is her best work imo......

bad romance - .......but bad romance is a close second.

telephone - i can’t not include this one though. the collab of the decade.

LINKIN PARK

one step closer - i think this was the first linkin park video i saw Back In The Day......... it was 2 heavy 4 baby me at the time lmao but nowadays it’s one of my fave lp songs. the video is super corny let’s be real but it was 2000

numb - this song is so fucking emo but i love it. the video is like peak emo too. i swear the main girl in this video was like my fashion icon at the time. layered tank tops, ripped loose jeans, oversized hoodies and jackets. i wanted her hair so bad lmao

what i’ve done - this video is really visually solid. i thought this was like the Deepest Shit in middle school lmao

MARILYN MANSON

sweet dreams (are made of this) - THE CINNAMON TOPOGRAPHY!!! god i have no complaints about this video except that twiggy is in it. visual fx?? dope. wardrobe?? dope. location?? dope. manson in the wedding dress?? dope. unsanitary warning for the later half of the video bc manson gets pooped on by birds lmao

tourniquet - one of my fave vocal performances by manson tbh. i prefer this one of the two videos floria did w/ manson. 

long hard road out of hell - femme manson and religious imagery need i elaborate

the dope show - the first manson video i ever saw. i was... so creeped out lmao. LOOKS ON LOOKS ON LOOKS. john 5 lookin like a snack in this one

i don’t like the drugs (but the drugs like me) - this is probably the most heavy-handed manson has ever been with the christ allegory lmao and yet......... i love it. also shout out to manson and rose’s dogs bug and uncle fester for guest starring. body horror tw here

coma white - basically a flawless music video i have nothing to say here that isn’t already said by the video itself

disposable teens - everybody looks great in this one except twiggy fuck twiggy. i actually love the mtv version of this video too, which is all performance, but i can’t seem to find it rn??

the fight song - one of my fave manson looks. those boooooots tho. the gloooovessssss. i’m gross let me live

tainted love - sorry to send y’all to vimeo for this one but i couldn’t find one on youtube that didn’t look like it was filmed with a potato or watermarked. y’all slept on the genius of this video tbh

mobscene - hello it is me gaogfucker666. 

this is the new shit - still me, gaogfucker666. this video feels misinterpreted too honestly

(s)AINT (director’s cut) - specifically the director’s cut bc more tim skold in a dress and boots smoking a cigarette. this video is seriously fucking nsfw. needles, drugs, sexual content, vomit etc watch with caution pls

personal jesus - i love this glam rock look so much. tim looks so good in this he never wore the look again bc he knew he looked so good we could never handle it a second time.

putting holes in happiness - I CAN’T FIND the extended version with tim’s full solo and i wanna scream. but. here’s the official version

say10 (short) - i really fucking wish he’d compounded off this for the official say10 video, beheaded orange man or not. just the verse. it’s so good. moody and creepy and AHHH.

we know where you fucking live - heed the warning at the beginning lmao. i honestly loved this video. i know some people thought it was edgy but i rly rly don’t see that. it’s offensive and obscene yeah but it doesn’t have that edgelord feel, as much as i love to call him an edgelord.

MOTIONLESS IN WHITE

reincarnate - old school horror vibes!!! as a Humble Fetishist of Boots and Gloves, this is a great video. also this is one of those songs where i Feel the lyrics for real

eternally yours - THE COLORS!!! THE FUCKIN IN A COFFIN!!!! i have nothing more to say

MOTLEY CRUE

looks that kill - please watch this corny ass fuckin 1983 ass hair metal ass music video. please. i’m tryna add more shout at the devil era nikki sixx vibes to my wardrobe tbh

wild side - i love a late 80s arena performance video ok also where do i cop nikki’s shirt

dr. feelgood - i will always credit this as one of the songs that made me want to play bass tbh

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

vampires will never hurt you - too emo to view with the naked eye.

i’m not okay (i promise) - the video that spawned a million high school AUs. god i love this one. even watching without the nostalgia goggles it’s great.

helena - perhaps my favorite music video of all time? if not then top 3. this video still remains my ideal aesthetic 12 years later. HOW I’M TRYNA BE. i just wanna look like an extra in this video, okay.

the ghost of you - time to cry!!!!! emetophobia warning at 0:47

welcome to the black parade - it’s hard for me to talk about these videos bc they’re so universally iconic that to explain why i love them so much would be mostly redundant.

famous last words - see above. this song means the world to me

desolation row - if i had to pick a video other than helena to look like an extra in i’d pick this one. has gerard ever looked this good, before or after this video?? peak.

NINE INCH NAILS

down in it - these are getting linked to vimeo since the official nin account has them all uploaded there in better quality. anyway i love so many of the shots in this video and i love the colors and i love bab trent

head like a hole - SO dated y’all but bab trent leveled up and became baby dread trent.

happiness in slavery - this is seriously graphic. but it’s great. also where’s the extended version that shows trent getting eaten by the weird carnivorous robot

gave up - bABY BRIAN!! infants, y’all. INFANTS.

march of the pigs - it’s a one-take performance video but it’s...... so much more than that. this video hurts me in my hand/glove kink.

closer - this is in the top 3 with helena honestly. it is... a piece of art film before all else. a Must Watch. 

burn - another case of a video being important to me because of the song it’s for tbh.

the perfect drug - marc romanek is a GOD. also a piece of art film honestly. just y’all wait till i make my dnd character based on trent in this video lmao

starfuckers, inc - hm, another nin video that trent invited manson to be in. interesting. all memes aside it’s a great video even as much as i hate the use of the “fat = ugly” trope. epilepsy warning for flashing effects in the last part of the video

deep - why. are. y’all. SLEEPING ON THIS!!!!

only - this may have been the first nin video i willingly saw and recognized as nin. this video still holds up, especially with it being 95% cgi and still looking as good as it does.

ROB ZOMBIE

living dead girl - the theme song of my life??? iconic couple costume idea????

meet the creeper - i have to include this video because it’s BAD. it’s terrible and i fucking love it

american witch (live version) - WHEN ROB PICKS UP JOHN AND STARTS SPINNING HIM AROUND!!!! this is here specifically for all the long hair john content

dead city radio and the new gods of supertown - the aesthetic. everybody looks great. matt is in a gorilla suit

well everybody’s fucking in a ufo - highly nsfw. where do i begin with this fucking hot mess...... sheri’s huge fake boobs. john and matt and ginger as astronauts. john jerkin off. the aliens with dicks. the fact that the whole story is about getting gang banged by aliens???? nothing will ever reach this level

SKOLD

self titled promotional clip - epilepsy warning for a lot of flashing and smash cuts. sort of a few partial music videos in one, but there are only two official skold videos, so i gotta include both of them. the quality is garbage. it’s so incredibly 1996. yet i love it. the last song, anything, is pretty nsfw as in there’s actual femdom porn clips but this is why i love it.

better the devil - if there were more skold videos i’d put them here. but as i said there are only two. tim out there lookin like not just a snack but a full course meal in 4k quality. goddamn. the only man i can ever truly call d*ddy. tiffany and eli lookin like delicious side dishes as well.

TAKING BACK SUNDAY

you’re so last summer - flava flave is in it

this photograph is proof - this song makes me so fucking nostalgic............. it transports me right back to eighth grade lmao. tbs were one of my fave bands in middle school.

makedamnsure - the most emo song of all time?? side note regarding tbs: real talk, being fat in middle school, seeing another fat person in a band was so fucking reassuring and great. i love eddie. 

liar (it takes one to know one) - these visual effects are SO cool, even now.

YOU ME AT SIX

jealous minds think alike - ART... no but actually look at these literal fetuses. i fucking love this song. it’s probably my fave track on take off your colours.

kiss and tell - you right it’s another house party video BUT. baby josh with an undercut. he must be 18 or barely 19 here??

liquid confidence - WHEN YOU GOT NOTHING TO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE

stay with me - jkfljkghdfskljgs okay serious time: this song got me through a seriously rough part of my life and i have the title tattooed on me partially because of the video. 

loverboy - i have never seen a fandom in such utter chaos as the ymas fandom was on the day this video dropped. holy fucking shit. the THIRST was REAL. 

bite my tongue - peak ymas captured in one music video. that’s truly the most important part. that peak sns era ymas was preserved forever in this video.

lived a lie - is it bad if i still kinda want a “we are believers” tattoo lmao. i really....... love this song a lot. is it obvious by now that ymas love a big chorus lmao

give - this song gives me The Feels. it deserved better than a performance video in an empty arena but it’s all we got, so here it is.

[gplusbfics]

A BDay Request + 43 Things

I’ve been wanting to do this anyway, but today’s my birthday – first one since I started this blog last fall – and I wanted to ask everyone to tell me what your Garashir story is and give me a link. (Or just the name if you cannot find the link.) Leave it in the comments or message me. Later I’ll post all the links. And read them, if I haven’t already.

Meanwhile, here are 43 things about me, one for every year of my life. Some I’ve definitely mentioned, others not.

The earliest “crushes” I can remember in my life are Spock and the Tin Man (Wizard of Oz). Notably, both wore blue eyeshadow, which made me feel all fuzzy inside.

I grew up in northeast Massachusetts (New England) but have somehow lived in Georgia for the past 20 years (19 of those in Atlanta).

I’m 6 ft. tall and got to that height at age 12. (I was 5 ft. in 2nd grade already.)

Was severely bullied as a child (definitely just for being tall), going on through high school and while it was pretty horrible, had lasting effects, it’s had some positive too, like I am extremely empathetic and I never say nasty stuff to anyone ever.

Favorite movie: The Wizard of Oz (1939). Other favorites: The Third Man, Lawrence of Arabia, Wings of Desire, Young Frankenstein, Metropolis, Lord of the Rings, My Life as a Dog.

One of my dearest friends is British fantasy-scifi author Storm Constantine. (Rather a cult author, so not hugely well known, but if you’re into dark fic or are a goth or into weird fic or queer sci, you might know her.) I am actually her fiction editor (on her Wraeththu universe books) and we are currently working on our fifth short story anthology together. I’ve also visited her at her home in Stafford, England, I think six times now. I love her :)

I’m really big on international travel or, I should say, travel to Europe. As a teenager I spent a summer in Germany and after college I got hooked, to the point I’ve been over 20 times at least. Been to the England, Scotland, Germany and Italy multiple times – Germany by far the most often – and also Slovenia, Austria, Czechia, Netherlands, Belgium. My most recent trip was Berlin. For my most immediate travel plans (next year) I have in mind: Sicily, Bucharest (have a friend there), Scandinavia, Dublin, Budapest (friends there too).  

Pretty much fluent in German, although not to the point I could write any decent fanfic :)

My eyes are true hazel.

I live in condo in a 104-year-old neo-Gothic skyscraper. It’s beautiful.

I’m actually terrified of the idea of going to or being in outer space.

I’m more intrigued by the mysteries of the ocean than space.

My B.A. was in journalism but I never used that degree professionally as an actual journalist. Instead I went into web development. But eventually with my current job (starting 10 years ago) I came back around to using my verbal & comm. skills like gangbusters.

For my work I spend a huge amount of my time promoting academic medical research.  

I -love- black licorice. I, um, even have a Tumblr about it.

Back in college (UMass Amherst) I spent 2 years living in an all GLBTQ dorm. Yes, for real. THAT was an experience. 

I’m a gray asexual. The part of me that is into people is bisexual. 

Consider myself trans and/or gender nonconforming, bc in many ways I do not identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. For several years I had it in my head I was meant to be a man (outwardly, possibly with hormones or other physical changes) but gradually had a realization that this was utterly unnecessary. 

I consider pretty much ALL clothes (my clothes) to be “drag.”

I don’t know how to do regular makeup Everything I do ends up being either like glam rock or drag queen style. Over the top is my style 

On multiple occasions, my friends have been asked, out of my presence, if I am a trans woman. (Which I find flattering.)

In college I used to go into Boston completely in trans man type drag and would see how many times I could get sirred. (Answer: always. It was very skinny.) This now sounds unbelievable because…. see 21 above.

Over the past 8 years I’ve gained about 70 lbs. and as result I’ve switched to wearing dresses and “femme” type clothes almost all the time. Don’t have to worry about growing out of them nearly as much and I can get dressed in about 30 seconds. Also my outfits are usually flamboyant, so it’s kind of my own gender expression. 

I’m kind of in love with my cats and I don’t care what people think of that.

I’m genetically immune to caffeine.

1/3 pint of beer is enough to get me drunk.

I love beer and my fav types tend to be extremely dark, opaque. Also 9%+ alcohol by volume. This plays interestingly into my susceptibility to alcohol (even regular beer).

My dad died 4 years ago and my mom (my favorite person IN THE WORLD) is 81. Mom is amazing and ever since Dad died we take awesome vacations together. Mom is is a total geek.

I’m the youngest of 5 kids and by FAR the youngest. The age spread is 16 years and my nearest sibling is age is 7 years older.

I hate hot weather. I live in the South. Go figure.

Crazy crazy Instagrammer.

I’ve known my two BFFs nearly 24 (!) years now, since the first month of freshmen year. One of them has been down here in GA with me 20 years, while the other was here for a bit but moves around. Been in Seattle for years and I see her when she comes to Atl for Frolicon and Dragon Con and stays with me.

My favorite “holiday” is Dragon Con.

This year will be the 10th year I march in the Dragon Con Parade in the “walking Periodic Table” as Beryllium.

Favorite post-70s bands/artists: David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Björk, NIN, The Cure, Queen, Beastie Boys, Einstürzende Neubaten, Sinead O’Connor, The Orb, Prince, The Smiths, Morrissey, Kraftwerk, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees.

I can listen to Philip Glass on infinite loop. (Which is funny)

Obsessed with Art Deco. Like… you have NO IDEA.

Pescatarian. But I have a rule whereby I can eat meat on holidays, on vacation and on my birthday. (Tonight: BBQ ribs.)

I love reading smut. I loathe watching porn. (When I was younger I would watch gay porn but in my mid-20s I just started to find it repulsive, watching anyway.)

As a teen and into college I was kind of a misogynist. Gender issues. But I am OVER IT.

Because I live in the City of Atlanta and in addition don’t drive, rely on public transit, I have spent the past 19 years in situations where I am frequently the only white person on a bus or train. Happens at least once a day. Given that I grew up in a town where there were maybe 2 black families per 35,000 people, this has rewired me.

I am virulently anti-fascist.

I seriously underestimated how hard it would be to get to 43. Like OMG.

[rustbeltjessie]

from Safety Pin Girl #5, spring 1999

True facts: In my teens and early twenties, I often wrote about some variation on a character like the one in this story: a bisexual femme-androgynous glam/punk boy. Partly because I wanted to meet a boy like that, but mostly? Because I was that boy. In my head I was a bisexual femme-androgynous glam/punk boy, and I wrestled with it in a lot of different ways for a lot of years and then, no shit, it turned out I’m a nonbinary trans person.

*     *     *

glamour boi

specimen: one boy. aged: 16.

fashion: feather boas. chunky sunglasses. platform shoes. glitter. scars. blood. black eyeliner. chin-length platinum hair (tipped in red). polyester shimmer shirts. tight pants.

music: hole. the new york dolls. the cure. iggy pop. the pretenders. david bowie (the ziggy stardust years). blondie. nirvana. placebo.

there was something to be said about being the glamorous fuck-up. his “friends” would talk about him behind his back, and he knew this. but it was better than being invisible. at least everyone knew who he was - even if they only knew him as “that ‘fag’ boy.”

he cut his chest like iggy pop, watching the blood run down his naked body in red rivers. he found blood comforting - it proved that he was real, and he was there - that he wasn’t just a faded black and white photo of a ‘70s glam rocker.

he blasted new york dolls records in his room, and cried. (even though he knew that “boys don’t cry.”) he painted his fingernails black and caked glitter mascara on the eyelashes that fringed his sad, sea-green eyes. he draped feather boas around his slinky, cat-like shoulders and smoked menthol cigarettes in his car, listening to a blondie tape with the windows rolled down.

he liked that people remembered him for certain things. people remembered him for dressing like ziggy stardust on halloween. people remembered him for always defending courtney love, no matter what anyone else said. people remembered him for showing up at homecoming completely, out-of-his-mind drunk and wearing a lacy black slip, fishnet stockings, and combat boots.

he liked the shocked stares he got from old ladies when he bought make up at walgreens. he liked to think of himself as a “warrior in walgreens,” sort of an x-ray spex song for the nineties. (and he was also a bit like “skinny tie sensurround,” the bis character.)

his parents thought he was a freak, and they told him so. the only thing that kept him alive was the tiny, shining seed of a dream in the back of his soul: that someday, a shimmering girl with skinny girl legs and strong girl arms would find him, and see him for who he was. not a psychotic, dysfunctional freak; but a lovechildglamslampunkrocknewwavegoth boy who didn’t deserve to be alone.