#first time pretty explicitly he misses home and specifically like. the music i think. i forget

[birdricks]

stooooooop ur bird facts are giving me crazy bo thoughts but specifically the dyeing feathers to be more gender affirming. immediately started thinking abt birddaughter already doing a form of this and that by extension birdperson's far duller plummage could even make him read as gnc among birdpeople....

UEAHHH DEFINITELY W BIRDDAUGHTER. also yessss i do think personallllyyyy theres a lot to b said abt how bp doesnt fit neatly into bird culture anyways like REGARDLESS of being trans … it depends on how you interpret the culture but tbh id definitely consider bp to be gnc in some form ….

[its-me-im-coraline]

NSFW Alphabet // Ethan Torchio

words // 2383

warnings // smut, clearly its nsfw headcannons

pairing // Ethan Torchio x GN!Reader (might be mentions that seem like they are for f reamer but comeon theres lingerie for every body 👁️👄👁️)

author's note // if you want to be on the tag list let me know. an apology to the people on my tag list i think i accidentally have not been tagging you this whole time i am so so so sorry omg

request // yes, it was a reblog i cant find it right now

summary // self explanatory

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Regarding you, Ethan is the king of after care. As rough as he can be in bed, that’s just how sweet he can be once you're done with it. Goes full on dad mode (don’t know how else to explain this). He will have water, painkillers if you’re now in pain, a washcloth to clean you up, new clothes, and of course the cuddles.

“I’m alright, Ethan. I can do it on my own,” you say as Ethan walks to you with the wet cloth ready to clean the mess he made on your body.

“I know you can, amore. I just want to take care of you,” he says as he leaves a kiss on your lips.

I can also see him being the one to make a big fat breakfast the morning after, or at least get up early to pick something up.

Now I also feel that he is in need of some aftercare. It depends on the day really, if he’s had a pretty rough day and all I feel like he’d ask for some backrubs after. In this case he’d fall asleep so quickly like omg. But on the biggest part I see him feeling the need to reassure you that the things he said (i think we already established that this man would call you a slut) are not how he feels about you and will be asking if you feel the same.

“Do you love me?”

“Wha- of course I do, Ethan! Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know… I guess - I guess I am worried that you don’t after what I said.”

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

When it comes to himself I feel like he really likes his chest and arms. Like I don’t know but I see him really getting off with you pretty much mastubating on his chest. Ya know what I mean? (i think you do you little sluts). He pretty much enjoys anything you do on his chest. I can imagine him looking at the mirror after you two had sex, seeing the cum on his chest along with the marks you have left and just smiling.

“What are you looking at, love?” You ask, seeing as the man is standing in front of the bathroom mirror from your spot on the hotel bed.

“Nothing, just the mess you made.”

“Mhm, and I bet you like it, huh?”

“You have no idea… Hey, are you sure you got tired? Cause I think I can do another round.”

As for his arms, as I said, he simply really enjoys that he can man handle you anytime, get you in any position he likes and feel you scratching them from the pleasure.

When it comes to you, Ethan is an ass guy. Say what you want but the man is an ass guy, end of discussion. He loves anything that involves your but. It does not explicitly have to be something like anal. He simply enjoys seeing your butt and holding it in his hand. It does not matter if it’s big or not, if it has stretch marks or whatever. Wear lingerie that he likes or that itty bitty teeny weeny bikini if you wear them or even some tight pants that make your butt just poìp and he can not contain himself.

I think I have said that to someone here (i think I had sent an ask to zodi @ icouldbeyourputtet) before but I feel like this man is very into spanking, like not even the rough malicious way. but this very wholesome chill way.

You had been talking about it all day, not having had a minute alone with each other for days, you could only dream what you could do that night after everyone left.

A playlist was playing in the background and a cigarette was burning on the ashtray next to your legs, you assuming a similar position, as said cigarette, bent over Ethan’s lap as he caressed your ass cheeks and back, playing around with the lingerie set he had gifted you a while back. (Did I just go to search my fave porn vid, lol exposing myself, and get disappointed because I can’t find it and translate it into fanfiction? yes yes i did, so bare with what i can remember)

“It’s okay, baby, you can take a little more, come on,” he praised, leaving a spank and yet another soft rub on the very red cheek.

He continued, going with the music, a very nice pattern, not very rough spanks but just enough to cause pain, pleasure and redness all over. Accidentally the man landed a few very rough ones causing a gasp and a series of giggles as you practically fell off his lap.

“Ethan, what the hell?” You laughed getting up from the floor and this time sitting on the man’s lap, sharing kisses with him.

“What,” he copied your action and laughed, “it was not intentional. I got carried away by how nice your butt is.”

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

He is and is not messy. He will not want the cum to be in every surface possible you know, he will be careful but at the same time this man just loves to see his cum on you, whether it’s your back or your stomach, or in you if you’re ok with it. I bet he has a teeny weeny breeding kink but not necessarily because of the idea of breeding you but rather because he looooves seeing his cum run out of you… I'm not sure if this falls in the breeding kink category but alright

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He likes to fuck you while watching porn.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

I feel like he is pretty experienced. From what they band has said in interviews and stuff, he seems to be getting some pretty often (no one, NO ONE, is surprised at that). He is not acting arrogant tho (not unless that’s the dynamic of the night), he is willing to learn what works for you and you specifically

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

As I said this man is an ass guy so I’d say anything that involves having the view of your ass. Humor me but i think he’d really like 69 with a female/afab partner (don’t know if this works very well with two dick-baring people lol). It has it all, eating you out,

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

I think it can be both with him. He will not exactly try to make jokes but if something like the previously mentioned spanking incident happens it’s def welcome.

Now as a general rule I see him being pretty serious. I will be honest, I’m getting brat tamer vibes from this man so it’s all pretty serious when you really get into it.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Considering he’s an Italian man and if you look at a lot of photos of him he def fit the ‘mediterenean’ man type. I see him just barely grooming. I don’t see him really shaving or whatever but he also wouldn’t want you to choke on pupic hair, he much rathers you choke on his dick

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

It all depends, really. He can be quite intimate with you but it all depends on the moment. There are different occasions for everything. For example, and this is a paradox that I hope I’m explaining well enough to understand, he is not very rough (will not be very aggressive and stuff, like to the extreme those tik tok boys want to pretend they are with their * growling * ew) but he will be rough. intimidating looks, spanking just enough to make you feel pain and redden up your ass cheeks. He’s like that mostly when you are being bratty.

Most of the times, like we’re talkin kind of lazy sex moments, it more wholesome ig, like very intimate and just comfortable and almost comforting. Ok, but like why do i see him having sex and having casual conversation (not the most common, i see this as like lazy day off, having nothing else to do and not being like super horny but being more like h o r n y … am i making sense?)

Setting the scene, you two are at home, both have a day off but it’s kind of raining so any of your plans are ruined. At this point it’s at around 10 am, not early, not late. You have missed each other and both have made it obvious but you are both in a very tired state so you opt for something not too much.

Plain and simple missionary is what goes around this time, Ethan on top just holding your legs around his waist,, going at a pretty medium pace.

“It’s a pity the weather is bad today,” says Ethan staring out the window.

“I know, we were going to go to the beach… I’m bummed about it,” you say, short of breath as the man continues his pace fucking you.

“Mhm, true. But this is better, amore, no? I’ve missed you so much,” he breaths out the last part, moans interrupting his words.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He does that pretty often, especially if you are not around to help. Sometimes it’s because of you that he needs to. I would def see him exchanging naked pics with you and at first he does that to tease you but he ends up teased when he sees a video you sent of you masturbating.

Bets that he’d be taking photos and vids of you fucking on occasion so he goes to these when he misses you on tour.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

As I mentioned previously I see Ethan to be a brat tamer. That I see to be the main kink that kind of works around everything else.

“Can you stop this, slut? It has gotten exhausting. I told you no noise but here you are,” he ordered, looking down at you trembling below his finger tips.

His face was quite stoic, voice never wavering from the strict and cold tone he tended to have when scolding you on the daily. Most times it was leaving a cup out of the sink but this time the scolding came from misbehaving. As if it was not enough that he was punishing you for being a brat and riling him up all morning, now you had to disobey orders. It was getting to him for sure.

“I’m sorry daddy,” you whisper, Ethan seeming satisfied with the response.

“Aw, why so tame puppy, now you decide to be nice?” His tone stayed the same, his words imitating a joke but the whole ordeal was not even close to it.

Now as for other kinks (did I open a site because I could not think? yes, shut up), as a result of being a brat tamer dom there are some few more kinks accompanying specifically that. He is def into bondage, both tying you up but also being tied up on occasion.

“Puppy, I have told you that is not a way to treat me. Untie me,” he says calmly, wrists tied on the headboard of the bed, eyes fixated to you.

“Well, why not? You do it all the time,” you whine, placed on all fours, facing Ethan as you lean towards him on your hands, “I want in on the fun.”

If only he was not tied… Ethan’s mind was already going places, figuring out exactly how he would punish you after you untie him -or after he escapes the restrains, whatever comes first. You knew that, very well - in all honestly that was the plan, that is always the plan.

“Amore, let me go. Let me go and your punishment will be tame,” he voiced looking at you, now positioned on top of his lap, touching yourself right then and there.

“I sense you want to be punished puppy, don't you?” You simply nod your head, eyes closed in pleasure.

“You see, the problem is you will not enjoy what I am thinking.”

“Mhmn.”

“Well, get yourself off now that you can, cause after I get my hands on you… You’re not getting to cum for days, amore.”

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Honestly, anywhere. I can see him having a preference to the luxury of either of your houses or a hotel room but if you push his buttons just right, some restaurant’s bathroom it is.

why can i imagine him having sex at a weeding venue’s bathroom….. omg…..

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Honestly, both. I feel like he would be extremely good at giving it, but would never opposed to receiving

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He’s ok with them but he doesn’t love them, ya know?

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.

Is surely try to do new things but it will always depends on what it is.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Come on. This goes without saying. He is a drummer for a living. He can surely go on for long…

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

I def feel like he has a fair amount of toys. Some for himself, some for you… He looooves using them to punish you.

(small mention to my last fic little puppet)

“Beautiful, puppy! You have been doing so good for us, taking your punishment so well, but we are not done yet.” A buzz sound is what concerned the girl, eyes widening at the toy.

It was a small remote virator, imitating sucking on the clit. The drummer placed the girl over his knees, stuffing the toy between his leg and her clit, shocking the sensitive bud. “I think you can take a few more spanks,” said the man, landing one at the expanse of her thigh, the skin giggling at the contact.

“Damiano, count,” ordered the assertive man, seeing his friend kneel in front of Y/N, kissing her and then doing as he was told.

“I think we were left on twenty-three. Twenty four,” he began, counting all the way to forty before the ordeal was over.

The whole time Y/N was shaking, just about to fall off the edge, asking for permission to cum but her wishes were not granted just yet. She was exhausted, overstimulated, frustrated, and now unable to move on her own. But, oh man did she need more. The two men were more than willing to assist her.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

A ton! It’s his specialty. Maybe one of his most common punishments is edging and teasing. He can drag it on for days

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He is not very loud but is surely encouraging you to be.

tag list: @bieberhoodforever @tabi-toast @ginny-lily @moriro-da-regina @the-killer-queenie @makapaka11 @teenyweenynightghost

[lifeofkaze]

When Stars Ignite - Chapter 3

HPHM Rockstar AU

A/N:

General Warning: This whole fic has a general warning of being NSFW / 18+. We will give specific warnings for every chapter in itself, but several adult themes will be more or less present in every chapter, may it be explicitly or in mention. These include sexual topics, drug abuse, (ab)use of alcohol, smoking and a whole lot of cursing.

Specific Warning: Mentions of alcohol, mentions of NSFW content, suggestive NSFW content

~~~

Find the masterpost here, the previous chapter here and the next one here. The songs featured before every chapter can be found on this pretty badass playlist here.

~~~

This work is a collaboration with @the-al-chemist

Taglist: @slytherindisaster @carewyncromwell @night-rhea

Chapter 3: Dirty Little Secret

I’ll keep you my dirty little secret

Don’t tell anyone or you’ll be just another regret

Hope that you can keep it

My dirty little secret

~ The All-American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret ~

All three girls watched as Orion left the private area of the nightclub, two of them looking confused, one of them trying her hardest not to laugh.

“What’s got into him all of a sudden?” Merula asked, looking baffled.

“Seems like Jameson’s show rattled the poor guy alright,” Skye cackled.

Lizzie joined into her laughter. “As if. I don’t think anything could shake him, let alone me.”

She hid her smirk by taking a sip of her cocktail.

The next fifteen minutes felt like an eternity to Lizzie. She passed the time by listening to Skye and Merula’s chit chat, sipping her drink and nodding from time to time. She had to fight the urge to bounce her foot in impatience and not glance at her watch repeatedly. Not quite succeeding, Lizzie caught herself tapping her finger against her glass to the beat of the music; she willed herself to stop.

When she had finally finished her drink, she rose from her seat, stretched her already aching back and smiled at her remaining two friends.

“I’m afraid Orion had a point earlier, I always forget how exhausting playing a full show is,” she yawned and reached for her bag. “I’ll get a cab back home to get some sleep in.”

“Alright, let us just finish our drinks and we’re ready to go,” Skye said immediately, but Lizzie could tell she wanted to stay for a little longer; she always did.

“No, it’s alright, go and have some fun. Once we’re out of London there won’t be much time for that anymore.”

Skye scowled at her. “You sure? Not that keen on you going back all by yourself.”

Merula rolled her eyes. “Just let her go, if she wants to. If she gets kidnapped, no one can chew their captor’s ear off with that awful cheeriness like her. We’ll have her back in no time.”

Usually she would have shot back at Merula but right now Lizzie was glad she was playing into her hands. She was buzzing to get out of the nightclub, so when Skye tried to speak up again, she just shook her head.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll text you once I’m back, alright?”

Without giving Skye another chance to reply, she smiled at both of them, turned around and walked towards the exit.

The cool air of the summer night felt wonderful compared to the stuffiness of the packed nightclub as Lizzie stepped outside. She buried her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and bowed her head as she passed the group of photographers always present in front of high profile establishments like this.

It was her luck that they cared more for soap stars and minor starlets stumbling home on the arm of a football player than one relatively sober person leaving all on her own. It was only a few clicks and flashes she had to make her way through before the mob had already focused on the next familiar face emerging from the doors behind her. She just hoped she had waited long enough for no one to make the connection.

Checking the message on her phone telling her where to go, she quickly walked a few steps away from the crowd until she reached the entrance to a small side street. Turning her head, Lizzie made sure no one was watching her before she stepped into the darkness of the alley. Anyone still in possession of half of their senses would have told her to stick to the main street, but Lizzie knew where she was going.

A smile stole onto her face as she walked towards the figure stepping out of the shadows.

“What the hell took you so long?”

Ignoring his question, Lizzie sped up her steps until she had reached Orion, grabbing him by his jacket and pulling him towards her. Her lips crashed onto his and his arms immediately went around her as he kissed her with the same desperate hunger she was feeling herself.

She buried her hands in his dark hair and sighed against his mouth as she felt his hands wandering over the curve of her waistline before his fingers hooked through the loops of her jeans.

“So fierce tonight,” she chuckled as they broke apart for a moment. Both of them were breathing heavily, Orion’s skin feeling hot to her touch. There was a fire burning inside his eyes that made her shudder.

“You did keep me waiting,” he murmured into her ear. His breath ghosting over the sensitive skin of her neck was giving her goosebumps all over and he knew that full well.

“I couldn’t really down my drink in one go and run after you, could I? Your fault you left so early.”

She would have loved to go straight after him but that would have been way too suspicious; their little affair - if one could even call it that - was a secret both of them very much intended to keep from the others.

“After that show you’ve given? What did you expect?”

She had to laugh at his words, her eyes twinkling with promise as they found his. Her finger traced the line of his jaw, the stubble of his beard biting into her fingertip.

“I knew you’d love it.”

She rose onto her tiptoes to reach his ear as she whispered, “Want me to remind you what else my tongue can do?”

“I don’t think I’m the only one eager for that.”

Despite herself, Lizzie’s breath hitched and she bit her bottom lip as she felt Orion’s hands travel downwards from her waist. He stopped over the back pockets of her trousers, squeezing her bum as he captured her lips in another searing kiss.

Her head spun for a moment, dizzy from exhaustion, alcohol and Orion’s touch. She had to will herself to break away from him again, this time taking a step back out of his reach.

“Come on then,” she purred, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger as she looked him up and down, “What are you waiting for?”

But Orion knew how to play her game as well. Mirroring her grin, he simply walked past her in the direction of the main street, not sparing so much as another look. He passed so closely that he was almost brushing against her; the electricity between them was palpable and Lizzie felt her mouth go dry as she watched him from behind.

Orion waited a moment before motioning for her to follow him when he was sure no one would pay any attention to them.

While they were waiting for their cab, not being able to touch Orion when all she wanted was to feel his lips on her skin almost killed Lizzie; judging from his tensed shoulders and nervous fingers drumming against his leg during their ride home, that feeling was mutual.

It was no use, though; as long as they were in public, there was nothing they could do. Making out in the alley with a bunch of reporters around the corner had already been a hell of a risk.

The drive to Orion’s place in Nottinghill felt like an eternity; by the time they had finally reached his flat, Lizzie’s skin was positively tingling. Not being quick enough for her taste, she plucked the key from his hand and unlocked the door herself before stepping into the dark hallway first.

She turned around in the doorframe, shooting him a cocky smile over her shoulder.

“Are you coming? I think I promised you a show.”

***

The pale sunlight of the early morning seeped into the room from the skylight above Orion’s bed. Falling onto Lizzie’s face, it made her stir in her sleep, slowly waking her up from her dream. She tried holding on to it for a moment longer, but it drifted out of her grasp as her body was waking up until it was completely out of reach.

Sighing wistfully, Lizzie turned around and propped herself up onto her elbows. Her lips curved into a smile as her eyes fell onto Orion, who was still sleeping next to her. He was lying on his stomach with his face buried in the fluffy white pillows, his breath deep and even.

Now, in the light of the new day, Lizzie could see the bright red scratches running over his shoulder blades. She blushed a little; maybe she had gone a little overboard in the heat of the moment.

The sight of Orion’s maltreated back made the memories of last night return to her. The thought of his rough fingertips exploring every inch of her body, the sweet bite of his unshaved cheek against the inside of her thighs sent a pleasant shiver down her spine even now. The way she had relished the feeling of his skin against hers as he had coaxed wave after wave of pleasure from her body made her realise how starved she had been for his touch.

It almost surprised Lizzie how quickly sleeping with Orion had become her favourite way of winding down after a show. The sex was fantastic and the fact that no one knew what they were doing was only adding to the excitement. They were aware that it was one of the band’s most important rules they were breaking time and time again: No meddling with the other members. According to Ethan, getting involved with each other could cause nothing but trouble.

However, Lizzie was enjoying their time together way too much to just give up on it like that; free from any form of commitment, it was a bonus to their friendship neither of them wanted to miss. She could definitely confirm that Orion’s fingers weren’t only nimble when it came to playing the guitar.

Without really thinking about it, Lizzie reached out towards him. Her fingers were tracing the lines of the tattoo covering the whole of his back, from the now slightly scratched eagle wings spanning from shoulder to shoulder, down to the woven circle of the dreamcatcher the eagle was carrying in its claws. Her fingers tiptoed lightly over the pattern, joining up the beads worked into the web. Orion had told her that each of them represented a memory dear to him; she noticed he had some new ones added since the last time she had seen it.

Some of the inked feathers flowing down from the circle past beneath the eagle’s tail were new to her as well. Her fingers were wandering over them, dancing across his lower back.

Completely consumed by what she was doing, Lizzie hadn’t noticed Orion waking up. She jumped as he spoke to her, her eyes flying towards his face.

“What are you doing?”

Orion’s head was turned towards her, his eyes still closed, but a cheeky smile was playing around his lips.

Lizzie was spared an answer when he opened his eyes to look at her. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

Realising how his words must have sounded, his smile turned softer as he closed his eyes again. “Don’t stop though.”

Setting her hand onto his back again, Lizzie let her fingers wander up his spine. She lightly tapped them to a rhythm only she could hear and noticed the tiny shiver running through him when she brushed them downwards again, her fingernails grazing his skin ever so gently.

“You never stay the whole night when we’re touring,” Orion murmured sleepily.

Lizzie hummed in response, not taking her eyes off the beautiful picture painted on his skin.

“I missed this,” she murmured under her breath, more to herself than to him.

“I missed you.”

Caught by surprise at his words, her movements stopped abruptly. Orion’s eyes were soft as he watched her, taking in his shirt hanging loose on her body. Her open hair was still a tangled mess from last night

“Why would you say that?” Lizzie laughed, trying to mask her being caught unaware with a poke to his ribcage.

Orion laughed along and evaded her by rolling onto his side. He quickly caught her wrist and held it away from him. A grin formed on his face as he shrugged.

“Because it’s true; nothing relaxes me more than you do.”

Lizzie snorted. “Is that so?”

With a laugh, he let go of her hand and let himself fall back into the pillows. “Do I look not relaxed to you?”

“If anything, you look overly smug to me,” Lizzie shot back.

She grabbed her pillow and hit him with it before quickly jumping off the bed to get out of his reach. She searched her jacket that was among the pile of clothes littering the floor for her phone and a hair tie, all the while feeling Orion’s eyes on her.

When Lizzie had found what she had been looking for, she tied her unbrushed hair back and straightened up again. Unlocking her phone, she quickly scrolled through her messages.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Orion getting up as well, stretching his back.

“Come to think of it, I might have overestimated how balanced my body is this morning,” Lizzie heard him complain, “my muscles hurt like hell.”

She didn’t even bother looking up from her phone. “Tell me about it.”

Orion finally caught her attention when he stepped closely behind her. “I could do something about that, you know.”

Lizzie had to stifle a sigh when he gently began rubbing the tension from her shoulders, knowing exactly where her tight spots were; he had developed a knack for this she had come to appreciate.

Enjoying his touch for a moment longer, Lizzie pulled herself together and shook his hands off. She turned around, holding her phone up for him to see.

“Forget it, I have a breakfast date.”

“With Charlie, I presume?”

“Charlie is busy interviewing that new pyro guy.”

Orion tilted his head. “Who else then? Someone I need to be jealous of?”

Lizzie chuckled at the notion. “Only if you consider Skye as competition. But we both know you’re not the jealous type,” she shrugged. “And why would you be, anyway?”

She started gathering her strewn about things. “In any case, I need to get ready. I could really use a hot shower.”

Looking down at herself, still dressed in Orion’s shirt, she plucked at the collar and chuckled. “You’ll get this back another time.”

She turned to leave but didn’t make it far. Orion’s arms closed around her from behind, his lips nuzzling against the exposed skin of her neck. “Your wish and mine don’t necessarily rule each other out.”

Goosebumps were spreading all over her skin at his touch but she pulled herself together and broke free of his embrace.

“Tempting, but no. I can’t really show up at Skye’s place wearing last night’s outfit or, even better, your shirt.”

Her smile turned into a smirk as she looked him up and down, taking in his bronzed skin, lean but still muscular build and tousled black hair, regretting her decision already. “I might take you up on that massage later, though.”

She tried to leave a second time before she could change her mind, but Orion caught her wrist, pulling her back towards him.

“Do I get a kiss?”

Lizzie was already smiling; she had anticipated the question. He always asked it before she left, and her answer was the same every time. “You already got much more than that.”

She took a step back towards him, rose to her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Maybe next time.”

Orion laughed as he finally let her go. “I’ll get my kiss one day.”

Lizzie dipped her head back as she laughed and turned towards the door. “We’ll see about that.”

[erbferbatinlerb]

sorry for the long post, i'm on mobile and cant put a read more but.... drumroll please.... due to popular demand here it is! Phineas Has ADHD: The Essay.

Hyperfixation on building/inventing things: Even more specifically amusement park rides ("Rollercoaster", "Rollercoaster The Musical", "One Good Scare", "Leave The Busting To Us", "Don't Even Blink", "Cheer Up Candace", "Delivery Of Destiny", etc.) Now, you can argue that he's a kid, and rides are fun, so of course he likes them, but if you look at it from a building standpoint, from an engineering standpoint? Phineas' interest lies in fun, of course, but he also must have an extreme interest in the engineering aspect of a ride in order to be skilled and knowledgeable enough to build them, and to be able to focus on the task so wholly.

He also gets incredibly attached to very specific things that some people often find strange, which seems like evidence of hyperfixation to me. (E.g.: aglets in "Tip of the Day", dental hygiene in "Bully Bust", Bulgarian folk dancing in "The Beak", detective movies in "Finding Mary McGuffin") hot tubs in "Bully Bromance Breakup", "Lotsa Latkes", "Swiss Family Phineas")

HYPERFOCUS: He and Ferb will dedicate their whole day to just one idea that they have. Phineas is able to weaponize his hyperfocusing talent incredibly well and stick to one task, but only if it is something he is extremely interested in — for example: In "Bully Bromance Breakup", he becomes almost unable to function without the stimulation of inventing, to the point where climbing a mountain with his friends—something he, by all accounts, should enjoy—becomes a difficult task for him.

He displays forgetfulness: In "Mom's Birthday", Phineas forgets it is his mom's birthday until he hears Candace mention it, and then he feels extremely guilty. We then see a montage of him, during various situations from the previous episodes (on the rollercoaster, etc.) telling Ferb: "We can't forget mom's birthday." Even though this was of course, a bit, if you take this as being canon (which there's no real reason not to), it means Phineas was constantly talking about their mom's birthday for weeks leading up to the event because he really didn't want to forget it and he was worried that he would (and in the end, he did), implying he may have a consistent tendency to be forgetful.

Phineas has an intense love of summer, and is implied to have a dislike for school—  which is natural for any kid his age, but it's not hard to imagine that he might feel cooped up and creatively stifled during school. Especially if we put his attitude towards school next to that of Baljeet, with whom he shares a love of learning and knowledge, it's hard to ignore the difference. Being as we've seen Phineas get agitated when he's not able to build and invent freely and on his own terms ("Bully Bromance Breakup", "Summer Belongs To You"), it's easy to imagine he may struggle in a public school environment.

He has impulsive and thrill-seeking tendencies, which are evident in many of the big ideas. ("Escape From Phineas Tower", "Rollercoaster", "Ain't No Kiddie Ride", "The Beak", "One Good Scare", "Phineas and Ferb-Busters", "Leave The Busting To Us", ETC.) Adrenaline-seeking behaviour is common in individuals with ADHD and goes hand-in-hand with a low tolerance for boredom which Phineas explicitly states himself to possess in the very first episode of the show. ("Rollercoaster")

However, on the flip side to his aversion to boredom, he can also spend literally hours just standing in the backyard, not even talking, if that's just what he feels like doing that day. ("Best Lazy Day Ever")

He is highly energetic and is the most talkative one of his friends. He has also suggested having an awareness and perhaps an insecurity that he talks too much in some situations. ("Misperceived Monotreme")

He sometimes has trouble with listening, and interrupts people, especially when he's excited: in "Ready For The Bettys", when they stumble upon Perry's lair, Phineas assumes Ferb built everything and doesn't listen, constantly interrupting when Ferb tries to protest; in "Hail Doofania", he assumes that he knows what Isabella is talking about (not having seen a rainbow before) and makes it his mission for the day to do what he thinks she means, and doesn't take the time to hear her out when she tries to explain otherwise because he's too invested in/excited about the project he has in mind.

Obliviousness / missing of social cues: The most obvious example is Isabella's crush on him, which he consistently fails to notice. ("Chronicles of Meap", "Meapless in Seattle", "That Sinking Feeling", "Happy New Year", "Summer Belongs To You", "Happy Birthday Isabella", "Doofapus", "It's No Picnic") He also seems not to understand that Candace wants to get them in trouble, nor that he actually probably would get in trouble if his mom knew what he and Ferb were doing. In fact, he gets excited about sharing their endeavors with Linda, clearly oblivious to the potential repercussions. ("Traffic Cam Caper", "What'd I Miss", "Suddenly Suzy")

Highlighted Episodic Evidence

Chronicles of Meap/Meapless in Seattle

Phineas's dismissal of Isabella's "cuteness" comments shows again his difficulty picking up on social cues, especially when distracted by a mission. He does not seem to understand, or at least does not acknowledge, Isabella's clear frustration with him. He does not understand that he is dismissing Isabella's feelings, because to him it feels obvious that she is cute and he doesn't think he needs to say it. Followed up in "Meapless in Seattle" with the "You think I'm cute?" "It's a scientific fact!" interaction—Phineas is not understanding that this isn't really how to give a compliment; he does not seem to realize that by not acknowledging Isabella's cuteness he could be hurting her feelings/nurturing her insecurities.

That Sinking Feeling

Once again, he misses cues from Isabella about her feelings for him, or if he understands them, he does not outwardly acknowledge them. He also tries to create romance for Mishti and Baljeet by taking "scientifically" romantic things, based upon his research (mostly the movie Titanic): candles, live music, the situation of a sinking ship... He over-does these things in a calculated way to try and curate the most scientifically romantic situation possible. This also mirrors Candace's opinion about his cold, calculated methods in "Perry Lays an Egg".

Cheer Up Candace

Phineas cares about Candace and when he sees her upset, he wants to help her, and he makes it his goal to do so. He hears the first step from Isabella's magazine is a makeover and he immediately thinks of a clown. He sets off to execute his plan without consulting anyone (except Ferb) and after it goes, as you can expect, not well, he realizes in hindsight that his impulsive idea was built on flawed logic. However, rather than dwell on this, he decides to dive right into the next step and he continues to do wildly over the top, fantastical versions of the magazine suggestions. I think this demonstrates a lack of understanding for social cues as well as impulsivity and impatience. Furthermore, he doesn't even wait to hear step two before setting out to achieve step one, and he doesn't ask Isabella her opinion or even listen to her suggestions once he has entered his own Idea Zone. Also, the Mix 'n' Mingle Machine is a great example of his unconventional and greatly efficiency-focused thought processes—  

he thinks of it as the most efficient way to meet as many people as possible in a short time, demonstrating a clear misunderstanding of what the actual intent of "meeting someone" was in the magazine. He is also basing this idea on his personal notions of what he finds fun, not what Candace would necessarily want.

Summer Belongs To You

When stranded on the island, Phineas shows an intense frustration when he's unable to put an optimistic spin on things. He also has a clear discomfort when he is without any tools to build with. Again, we see his hyperfocus on inventing (in this case: fixing the plane) get in the way of Isabella trying to have a romantic moment with him, and in the way of relaxing in general. She sees the sights of Paris, alone time with him, and chances to enjoy themselves, whereas Phineas sees things he could use as airplane parts, single-mindedly focused on his mission. And again he misses or does not acknowledge Isabella's frustration with him in the "It seemed like romance was a foregone conclusion" scene. This is strong evidence for Phineas' hyperfixation because he gets so caught up in his own world when it comes to inventing/building/working that he doesn't even notice what's going on around him, then he fails to see the irony of him identifying Candace&Jeremy and Ferb&Vanessa as romantic interests while entirely missing the fact that Isabella & him are also "a boy and a girl, alone in the city of love."

Also of note is his complete focus on completing the Summer Solstice goal. Because, despite the fact that they made it back to Danville safely after being in a pretty perilous situation—which should have become their main concern being as they were just stranded on an island with no food or way to call for help—he cannot be satisfied with that. Needing to get home before the sun sets for the sake of winning his bet and symbolically representing his worldview, he yells at candace when she doesn't want to get on the trike, because he's determined to still get there on time, intensely focused on both proving a point and upholding his personal values.

Happy Birthday Isabella

Isabella does not want an over-the-top surprise party, all she wants is to spend time alone with Phineas, but Phineas is so focused on his idea of her perfect birthday party that he does not seem to realize what her wishes are. He sends her away from him so that she won't know about the surprise, and does not even do so very gently (getting Buford to carry her away in a sack) instead of even asking her what she wants.

Bully Bromance Breakup

In this episode, Phineas is shown to get extremely distressed when he has to go even a short period of time without building/inventing anything. This is representative of a need for constant stimulation (which would explain why he is so adamant that he cannot put up with boredom). This also evidences his hyperfixation on building/inventing. The whole time that they're climbing the mountain with Baljeet, Phineas is completely preoccupied by his ideas for inventions, and after Baljeet rejects his ideas a few times, he gets increasingly agitated, eventually gets to a point where he is unable to climb anymore and has to get pulled up by the others, and he is shown rambling to himself about all of the invention ideas he has.

This is by no means a definitive list, and I'm sure there are many more moments in the show that provide evidence of these ideas, but this is the ones that stood out to me. Anyway, in conclusion, Phineas has ADHD. If you're still reading this incredibly long post by this point: uhh, thank you, I guess! Have a nice day. 💖

[bktynes-writes]

Hey friends! Chapter 2 is up because I’m impatient and didn’t wanna wait to post until Tuesday. Please let me know if you want to be tagged in future chapters. Read on ao3.

The Blood of the Covenant

Chapter 2: Drinks

Dean's mouth had gone dry. He sat, frozen, hand clasped firmly in the grip of the man in front of him. He was dimly aware of the fact that he had taken far to long to respond, and the look Castiel was giving him now made him even more painfully aware of the knot forming in his stomach.

Novak. The name rang in his ears. He composed himself and managed to shake the man's hand before withdrawing his own and lifting his glass. 

"Novak, huh? What is that, Serbian?" He grinned at the surprised look that crossed the face of the other man.

"Yes, actually." He turned back to face the bar. "Most people don't get that the first try."

Dean chanced a glance at him from the corner of his eye and caught the small smile still tugging at the corner of his lips. Something in Dean's chest tightened as he wondered what it would be like to see him smile in earnest.

"So, Castiel, do you make a habit of jumping into random people's bar fights?" Dean asked. He motioned to Lee for another round. The alcohol in his veins made him less aware that he was sitting with a potential rival and more aware of how attractive he found the man.

"No, I can't say that I do," Castiel replied. "But I'm new in town. And I like this bar. I would rather it not be sullied by unsavoury company." He thanked Lee with a nod as he placed down two bottles of beer on the bar.

"Well, Dean here is about the most 'unsavoury' as it usually gets in here, and you seem to have made his acquaintance rather nicely." Lee provided with a smirk.

"Dean," Castiel said to no one in particular. It was like he was testing the name, rolling it around on his tongue to see how it felt, and when he let it loose from behind is lips in that low growl of a voice, Dean felt his knees wobble, making him very thankful for the stool under him.

"Right, yeah. Dean Smith," He introduced himself, and he didn't miss the look from Lee who, mercifully, did not comment at his use of a pseudonym. "Sales representative with Sandover Enterprises." He smiled.

"Sandover?" Castiel questioned. "The steel distributor?"

"The very one," Dean replied, raising his beer to Lee and giving him a look that he hoped conveyed the importance of his silence. It must have worked because Lee turned and busied himself cutting limes on the back bar.

"I see." Said Castiel. "Tell me, Dean, can I often expect to have to jump in and save you from brutes prowling alleyways and backwater establishments? No offence." He added to Lee, who raised his hands in surrender and continued to obviously ignore their conversation.

Dean chuckled. "No, I'm usually good on my own, Cas. It's just been a long day."

Castiel's lips twitched at the use of the nickname. "Ah. I understand. The last few weeks have been...exhausting."

"Oh yeah?" Dean looked the man up and down, letting his eyes linger slightly on his broad shoulders, his throat where his adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, and back to his impossibly blue eyes. "You don't look like a labourer. And I'm guessing this whole tax accountant thing you've got going isn't the case either from the way you swing a punch. What do you do?" He felt like he was in grade school trying to make friends again, asking what their favourite colour was.

"My family..." Castiel began, pausing and looking down at his drink. "Let's just say we've got varied interests." He smiled slyly at Dean, who was suddenly very aware of how his hands were itching to reach out and thread themselves through Castiel's hair. He kept them clasped tightly around the cold glass of his beer bottle instead.

"Well, maybe it's a good thing I ran into you then, Cas," Dean drawled. He let his tongue dart out quickly to wet his lips and didn't miss the way Castiel's eyes flicked down at the movement. "I've got some 'varied interests' of my own." 

Dean could see the man's pupils dilate over the bottle that hung at his mouth. There was a distinct red tinge to his cheeks as his eyes flitted across Dean's face, from his lips to his eyes to his throat, back to his lips. Dean pulled his lower lip between his teeth and smiled at the nearly inaudible gasp that escaped the other man.

Dean heard Lee cough, fake and dramatic, behind him. He grimaced as the trance Castiel's eyes held over him was broken. Cas shook himself and turned his face from Dean to peer sheepishly at Lee, who was now smirking at both of them.

"Well, Mr. Smith, thank you for this...eventful evening. When I say the pleasure was mine, I mean it most sincerely." He took one last long swig from his beer and clambered off of his seat. "Perhaps if I'm lucky, I'll get the chance to see you again." He turned on his heel, trenchcoat billowing behind him as the breeze from the door caught it. Then he was gone.

"Dean Smith?" Lee chided. "Really?"

Dean didn't realize he had turned to watch him leave until he heard Lee speak. He spun around to see a knowing smirk plastered across his face and rolled his eyes.

"What?" Dean scowled, taking a few more gulps from his beer.

"Nothing, man, nothing..." Lee chuckled. "Just the next time you eye fuck a dude at the bar, you should probably have the decency to give him your real name. Maybe your number?"

"Shut up." Dean groaned. "I just heard about the Novaks tonight at dinner, okay? Bela says they're trying to start a war in her district, and Sam and I are supposed to 'deal' with them." He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars popped behind them. "Why did it have to be Novak..." He said quietly.

Lee roared with laughter. "Because you, Winchester, invite trouble wherever you go, and I have seen that look on your face before."

Dean flipped Lee the bird and reached over to take Castiel's abandoned beer bottle. "Yeah? What look is that?"

"You think he's cute, and you wanna feed him shots until he's drunk enough to let you blow him behind the dumpsters at Antoni's on 64th St." Lee raised an eyebrow as Dean choked on his mouthful of beer.

"That is...oddly specific," Dean said when he recovered.

"Only because it's the same way you used to look at me." Lee shrugged and turned back to his limes as Dean glowered at him. "And that's specifically what happened with us."

"That was thirteen years ago, Lee," Dean said, his voice dropping. "Things are different now."

"I know, I know. Things change, people change even more," Lee glanced over his shoulder, the same shit-eating smirk as before stuck on his face, but this time it didn't quite reach his eyes, "you've always been a hopeless romantic Dean, no matter how much you hate to admit it. And I like to think, after all this time, I know you pretty well, sometimes even better than you know yourself."

Dean looked away as Lee made a few more drinks for some of the other patrons. He couldn't bring himself to look him in the eyes. He was right; Dean did find Castiel attractive.

It was getting late, and as more people rolled in off the street to escape the rapidly cooling night, Lee became too busy to chat with Dean any longer. He finished the two bottles of beer in front of him, bid Lee a quick farewell with a promise to come back again soon, and departed.

He was rather tipsy now, and the alcohol sloshed warmly in his stomach as he walked back through the city towards downtown. He wasn't ready to go home yet, but the conversation with Lee had left him feeling less than willing to engage in meaningful human interaction, and he knew there was a strip club a few blocks away that might offer just the distraction he needed.

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and pulled out a crushed pack of menthol cigarettes. Dean didn't often smoke, but the alcohol combined with the thoughts in his head had him craving the sweet sting of nicotine. He stopped on the corner and lit one of the white paper tubes, hissing on the inhale as the minty smoke filled his lungs.

What did Lee know? So what if he thought the dark-haired, blue-eyed man in the trenchcoat was cute? He was a Novak, and if Bela was to be trusted - which he quickly reminded himself was questionable - that made him the enemy. Still...Dean found himself thinking more and more explicitly about Castiel as he continued to walk.

Would his pupils blow wide with desire and blackout that gorgeous blue if Dean touched him in just the right way? What would his already messy hair look like after having had fingers run through it a few times? How would Dean's name sound, groaned and gasped, in that rough voice, made deeper by lust? What would those chapped, pink lips look like slick with spit, wrapped around his - 

"Hey! Watch it, buddy!" Shouted a voice as Dean's shoulder bumped into another man on the sidewalk. "Fuckin' drunk..."

Dean couldn't even be bothered to respond to the man he had walked into. He really had been deep in his thoughts. Looking up, he realized his feet had once again carried him unconsciously to his destination, and he praised his knowledge of the city for allowing him to lose himself without getting lost.

Rowena's club was one of Dean's favourite places - second only to his car - and the buzzing neon sign above the door was music to his ears. Emerald green cursive spelled out "Eden" and turned into a snake coiled around a deep red apple missing a single bite. Dean delighted in the sacrilegious nature of the name. Given the activities that went on behind its doors, it suited the place. The knowledge that Rowena had chosen "Eden" to be intentionally heretical brought a smile to his face; even in Catholic school, Dean had never had much respect for the bible.

He cut the line with a curt nod to the bouncer and walked through the doors into the dimly lit club. Dean felt the tension of the evening evaporate from his limbs as soon as the pervading scent of cherries and tequila washed over him. The black brick walls and tables draped in blood-red velvet made the room feel smaller than it really was. It was hardly past midnight, and yet every table was full of men, mostly suits from the business district here to pretend their sexless marriages weren't failing. Dean snorted. Sam could have his apple-pie life with Jess; at least Dean would never end up like these poor schmucks.

Out of habit, he scanned the crowd and saw a few familiar faces, but thankfully no sparkling blue eyes and no trenchcoats in sight. The brightest source of light came from the rotating floodlights on the main stage. Dean supposed that keeping everything in shadow allowed people to feel more comfortable here. After all, a strip club may be fine and well, but when the money changed hands and gentlemen were lead to back rooms by beautiful ladies, it was best that no one knew each other's names in the morning.

A young woman in her early twenties gyrated and slowly removed her clothes on the main stage to the beat of the rock music blaring through the speakers. Dean couldn't help but watch her as she moved, dark hair falling over pale skin as she thrust her hips sinfully against the stage. Dean once again found his mind wandering, and he forced himself to engage the bartender in conversation as a means of distracting himself.

"Hey there, handsome," She said to him as he sidled up to the bar. "What's your poison?"

Dean noticed the way she leaned enticingly on the bar as she spoke, shoulders back, chest out in invitation for him to stare. He let his gaze linger for a moment before returning her suggestive smirk.

"Just a water for now, darlin'," he said. He could feel the whiskey from Lee's slowly soaking into his brain, clouding his judgement.

"Aw, you're no fun," the bartender pouted, placing a glass in front of him and filling it with water from the gun attached to the bar. "What, are you some kinda teetotaler or something?"

"Nah, nothing like that," Dean chuckled. "Just had a few already and wouldn't wanna forget your pretty face."

The bartender smiled coyly and extended her hand for him to shake. "Pamela." She said.

"Dean." He replied, taking her hand delicately in his own. "Do you just mix drinks around here, or can I look forward to seeing you on the stage later?"

She laughed. "I dabble. But tonight's not my night. I get off around three though, and uh, well, if you're still around, maybe you can too." She winked at him before being called down the bar. Dean watched her walk away, the sway of her hips capturing his attention.

"Well, well, well..." Dean heard the unmistakable accent drawl from behind him. "A Winchester. Alone in my club. To what do I owe the honour?"

Rowena was a tiny woman who had come from Scotland and made quite the name for herself in America's lucrative sex industry. She ran a tight ship with her girls, who did everything from stripping to pornography to escort work, and, in the case of Ruby and a few others, the occasional special favour for the Winchesters. No man controlled Rowena or her girls, and if anyone ended up on the wrong side of the devious little redhead, they were likely to find themselves in a sealed box at the bottom of the river.

"Rowena," Dean stated simply, rotating his chair to face her as she stepped closer to him. Her red gown caught what little light the club offered and shimmered. 

"I expected I'd be getting a visit from you boys soon." She sighed heavily and waved to Pamela, who nodded and brought her a martini glass of something pink and fruity-looking. "I was hoping it would be Samuel coming to call, but I guess you'll do."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?" Dean asked, sitting up straighter in his seat.

"Well, I suppose it's his well-muscled arms, his gorgeous hair, his tall, strong physique..." She mused, sipping her drink with a smirk.

"No, not that, Rowena, and ew," Dean cringed. "Why were you expecting us?

"Perhaps because of those Novak boys that Miss Talbot had Ruby go looking into." Her face darkened. "I don't know what she was thinking, but that poor girl came back beat half to death. She was a good dancer, always made a lot of money on her nights..."

"Where is she now?" Dean asked. "I wanna know what happened."

"Ah, well, we agreed it was probably for the best if Ruby took some time out of town." Rowena swirled the liquid in her glass and looked away from Dean to the stage. "I have other dancers that can fill her slot for the time being."

"Where is she?" Dean asked again, an edge to his voice that made Rowena glare.

"Not here, Winchester. And if you think for a moment that I'm so disloyal to my girls that I would tell you where she's gone, then you are sorely mistaken." She defended. Dean didn't push the issue. Her mind was made up, and there was no amount of bargaining or coercion that would change it.

"Alright, so why don't you tell me what happened then?" He directed. Rowena pursed her lips into a thin line. She was the only person Dean had ever met who could rival him and his brother for stubbornness.

Rowena sighed. "Oh, why not. The more, the merrier, I suppose." She gestured to a table next to the bar where an attractive young man stood guard, keeping the table open. She waved at Pamela for more drinks and slid into the booth's bench, touching the young man's arm gently as she did. When they were seated comfortably and had been presented with a fresh round of drinks - Pamela had ignored Dean's continued request for water and had brought him another glass of whiskey - Rowena continued. "What do you want to know?"

Dean wasted no time. "The Novaks." He said. "Who are they?"

"I can't say that I know too much, honestly." She purred. "But after the incident with Ruby, I did a little research. It would seem that the father, Chuck, had a wife years ago, Naomi, who was killed in some kind of gang war. He became obsessed with revenge and took over a good chunk of Newark, eliminating the gangs, building the communities, doing all sorts of goodwill charity work, all with funds gathered through several nefarious means." 

"What sort of means?" Dean asked again.

She sipped her drink slowly before she continued. "Standard fare. Murder for hire, arms dealing, the occasional art heist. If I had to guess, that'd be what made him target Bela in the first place. I don't know if you've noticed, but that woman can be a wee bit hard to handle. Not the type to make many friends." Dean snorted. He had no arguments there. 

"Now, Chuck and Naomi had four sons before she passed. Apparently, everyone is a bloody Catholic because they named them all after archangels, the poor boys. Chuck started sort of 'collecting' street kids who had lost their families to the gang wars. He took them in, made them a home, and built his own family, not out of associates and partners like you lot, but an actual family of brothers and sisters." She pushed her glass away and leaned forward into Dean, dropping her voice barely above a whisper. Dean had to move even closer to catch her words as the music from the club's speakers continued to fill his senses. "They are ruthless. Especially the four oldest brothers. They will fight and kill and bleed for their family, and they will smile while they're doing it. You think you and Samuel are close? You've got nothing on these boys."

Dean swallowed hard. Rowena wasn't one to exaggerate her claims. If she said the Novaks were dangerous, he had no reason not to believe her. "How much of a threat are they?" He asked bluntly.

"Well, they certainly aren't a problem you should ignore." She smirked. "But, I do have a feeling that some of that Winchester charm could come in handy." She reached out and tapped Dean lightly on the tip of his nose. 

"Thanks, Rowena," Dean said, slipping out of the booth. "And if you see or hear anything else..."

"I'll be sure to call you, quick as a whip." She said sarcastically. He nodded and headed towards the door. Pamela's earlier proposition rang in his ears, and, as much as he wished he could stay and accept, his gut was telling him to return home and relay the information from Rowena to his brother.

He staggered out into the alley again and rubbed his hands together to stave off the rapidly cooling September night. He thought about calling Benny for a ride. The Winchester bodyguard could always be relied upon to answer his phone at any hour and never say no to Dean. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and frowned. The screen displayed several missed calls from Sam and a few from his mother. He grinned widely. They were probably calling him to chastise him for not being present for Sam's proposal. 

Quickly tapping open the screen, he dialled his brother's number. It only rang once before Sam's voice came through the other end.

"Dean?"

"Hey, Sammy!" Dean beamed into the phone, staggering a little on the uneven sidewalk. "So? Did she say yes? Is my baby brother getting married?"

"Yeah, Dean, she did. Where are you?" Sam huffed into the phone.

"Out," Dean stated. "Celebrating on your behalf." 

"Are-are you drunk?" Sam stammered into the phone.

"I mean, pshhh, maybe? A bit?" Dean smiled. He was feeling great. Who cared about that pretty-eyed guy in the trenchcoat at Lee's? Dean didn't care. And he didn't care that he didn't care. "Listen, I talked to Rowena and - " Sam cut him off before he could finish his sentence.

"Jesus Christ, Dean!" Sam yelled into the phone, and Dean immediately began to lose whatever happy buzz he had gained through the night. Sam never yelled at him. "It is 2am, and I've been trying to call you for HOURS! I even called Lee's, but he said you left before midnight, and now you're wasted downtown by yourself and I just..." There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Dean could hear Sam taking deep breaths to calm down.

"Hey, hey, Sammy, listen, I'm okay." He tried desperately to soothe his brother's worries. The panic in Sam's tone had sobered him, and he transformed immediately into Big Brother. His primary focus was back on protecting his little brother, making sure he wasn't afraid. "Everything is fine. I'm not wasted, just a little buzzed. I'm gonna call Benny for a ride and head back to my place. I'll text you when I'm home and call you in the morning, okay?"

"No, Dean," Sam said weakly into the phone, "it's not okay."

Any remaining happiness Dean had from the alcohol was extinguished. His feet stopped moving, and his own voice seemed distant as he spoke. "What's wrong, Sammy? What happened?"

Sam sounded like he was speaking through a tub of water. "It's Dad. You need to get home."

Tags: @valleydean @fighterfortheforgotten

[thompsborn]

Can I get 👉👈 a Flash centric one shot 👉👈 for the song shuffle thing 👉👈

you were good to me by jeremy zucker, chelsea cutler

leavin' isn't better than tryin'

growin', but i'm just growin' tired

now i'm worried for my soul

and i'm still scared of growin' old

you were good to me

and i'm so used to letting go

but i don't wanna be alone

you were good to me

god only knows where our fears go

hearts i've broke, now my tears flow

you'll see that i'm sorry

'cause you were good to me

you were good to me

[send me a character/ship/dynamic/etc. and i’ll put my music on shuffle and write a drabble/one shot based on the first song that plays!]

actually i’m gonna wait to take more shuffle song requests until after i finish the ones i still have in my drafts!!

-

i was debating how i wanted to approach this and then earlier today @peachy-keener sent me messages about flash x harley which i already lowkey shipped before but now,,,,,,,, But Now,,,,,, they live rent free in my brain. but this is flash centric!! this is less harleyflash and more PRE-harleyflash. also post endgame.

the ending is abrupt and not good but i genuinely cannot figure out how i want to move forward so that’s the end! that’s it!

(it isn’t stated explicitly, but peterxnedxmj)

-

tw: rough childhood implications for harley, descriptions of neglectful parenting and verbal abuse, cycle of abuse, getting kicked out of the house, loneliness. it’s a hopeful ending though!! even if it is abrupt and not very good!!

-

Flash meets Harley Keener after the worst morning of his entire fucking life.

They’re going back to school, because of fucking course they are—barely two weeks have passed since Flash reappeared on the steps leading up to MoMA, tripped over his own two feet in his haste to get a grip on his bearings, and prompty slips on a step and lands nose first into the concrete, a crunch filling his ears. The public hasn’t even gotten a full release about what the hell happened—just a basic press conference, where Steve Rogers, clad in stained sweatpants and with bags under his eyes, a side of him that the public has never seen, handed his shield over to a teary eyed Sam Wilson and promised transparency and honesty, the entire story from start to finish with nothing held back, as soon as they recovered enough to give it all.

Flash doesn’t want to go back to school, except for the fact that he definitely does, if only for the chance of semblance of normalcy.

Everything is different now, after the snap. Or, the re-snap—second snap, the return, the blip, whatever the hell people are calling it. He doesn’t care about what it ends up being called. He just knows that nothing is the same, now.

His sister wasn’t one of the ones who lived those five years, crumbled to ash (dust?)just like Flash did, and he despises the meer idea of Jesse staring down at her hands in terror while watching them disappear and him not being there to at least offer comfort, or something, but he’s selfishly grateful, as well. He didn’t miss a second of her growing up. She’s only thirteen to his sixteen, after all—had she lived, he would have come back to his baby sister being a year older than him, likely a completely different person, like all the shells of people he’s seen on the streets, shells that only ignite with life when they find the person they lost. Christ, Jesse could have been one of those shells.

Thinking about it makes shivers run down his spine, his stomach churn.. He hates it. He hates how close he was to losing that.

God, he hates them—his parents, or the sorry excuse of parents that they are. He hates that he’s coming back from being dead for five years to a step-mom and a step-dad, both of whom clearly despise the fact that they’re expected to help raise these two kids who are just lost and terrified and trying to adjust. They both moved to bigger houses—that are, at the very least, still in the same neighborhood and no more than a ten minute walk apart, making it a bit easier to handle when, inevitably, Flash gets shoved into his father’s care while Jesse is lovingly enveloped into their mother’s arms.

Their mother, who seemed to care at least a little bit beforehand—always kept bandaids and juice boxes in stock, just because he had a tendency of scraping his knee in elementary school and always wanted a juice box when he got home. Sometimes, she would brush fingers through his hair and promise that she loved him, even if she knew she was awful as showing it—even if she, willingly or not, would always love her daughter more. She had not loved him like a mother, no, but like someone who at least gave a shit about his general well being.

Something—well, again, everything—has changed since before, because his mom never even looks at him anymore, barely manages a glance in his general direction whenever he happens to be nearby, which has been a lot, because the custody battle—which, of course, his father paid great money to make a priority in the courts, and then blamed Flash for because of how far he had to dip into his wallet to make it happen—has taken most of the two weeks, even though it was that first day he was shoved into his father’s house, like they knew what they wanted, like it wasn’t going to be a battle until Flash and Jesse themselves spoke up about how much they didn’t want to be separated.

Of course. More things to blame Flash about.

Which his father—and his wife, Trudy—both do. Something they like to flaunt in his face at every hour of the day, like it isn’t bad enough that he put up a fight and still ended up separated from Jesse, like he isn’t about to go back to school with a still-healing broken nose and living in a house he doesn’t know in a room that was clearly never supposed to be his and—

He wakes up the day he’s supposed to go back to school and stares at an unfamiliar ceiling and none of the posters that he had up before he disappeared, an alarm clock that must have been invented while he was gone blaring obnoxiously in his ear. It immediately sets his teeth on edge, makes his shoulders tense.

Maybe, he hopes, school will be familiar.

But everything has changed.

The school, itself, isn’t completely different, of course—classes are where they’ve always been, even if the names on the desks have changed; bathrooms are still pretty gross and have that high school bathroom smell that, for the first time in existence, he’s kind of glad to come across, if only because it makes him feel like it’s still 2018 and he’s going to walk out the door and see faces that he actually know.

He opens the door and a tall blonde guy walks into it—nose first, of course, whips his head back with a yelp and brings a hand up to poke at his nostrils, looks down a moment later and frowns at the crimson shining on the tips of his fingers, and then looks up at Flash.

Instead of anger, he grins, all crooked and boyish, and says, “Hey, we match!”

“We...” Flash trails off, confused; this guy doesn’t even sound like a New Yorker. Has the normal New York accent changed, too? The dude sound souther, for fucks sake. “What?”

Bloody fingers point at Flash’s face—actually, really, at his nose, still bandaged. “That. Noses, y’know? Pretty sure that just broke mine, so—”

“Oh, god,” Flash groans, head dropping to his hands. “Please tell me you’re joking, man.”

Stupidly, the guy pokes at his nose again—this time, at the slightly noticable crook towards the end. He sucks in a sharp breath, winces, and says, “Well, it ain’t feelin’ all that great...”

Flash groans again. “Of fucking course I just broke someone’s fucking nose. Of course.”

“Uh...” The guy frowns, glancing down as a drop of blood falls on the tip of his shoe. “S���alright. You didn’t do it on purpose, so—”

Instantly, Flash chokes on a stupidly bitter laugh. “Not like that’ll matter,” he murmurs.

“So,” the guy goes on, either not hearing Flash’s interjection or choosing not to react to it, “I don’t see what the problem is, here.”

“Of course you don’t,” Flash says, laughing again. “No one—” he stops, brows furrowing as he shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, shouldering his backpack with a sigh. “C’mon.”

The guy doesn’t follow when Flash starts walking. When he looks back, the guy is visibly confused. “Why am I following you to a random place, and why are you looking at me like I’m the one who’s being weird right now?”

“The office,” Flash says, instead of providing, like, a real answer. The guy looks even more lost, even looks over his shoulder like Flash is talking to someone else entirely. Flash sighs. “I just broke your nose, man. We have to go to the office so you can get it checked out and tell them what happened. Call home, too, probably, since you’re pretty sure it’s actually broken.”

The guy tilts his head. “We?”

Flash’s frown deepens into a grimace. “Yeah.”

“I think I’m a bit confused, here...”

Groaning once again, Flash gestures down the hallway, in the direction he had been trying to walk, and says, “We need to tell them—”

“That I walked into a door?”

“That I broke your nose!” Flash exclaims.

The guy crinkles his nose before immediately flinching and smoothening it out. “You opened a door. The door that broke my nose because I walked into it. That’s not your fault.”

Flash stares at him, beyond confused and borderline incredulous, but he’s also tired and he doesn’t know this guy or most of the people currently attending this school and his dad married a woman who hates him and his mom also apparently hates him now, too, and he’s living in a guest room that he knows was made specifically for Trudy’s parents to visit them and Jesse doesn’t like mom’s new husband (Flash doesn’t know his name; he wasn’t introduced to the guy and was always lost in his head whenever the judge occasionally brought it up during the custody ordeal) and she misses living together but she’s becoming less and less bitter every day, gushes about how much mom spoils her and peppers her face with kisses and cries while blubbering over how much she missed her and, Christ, no one missed him!

No one. No one wanted him to come back.

“Whatever,” he tells this stranger, no longer seeing the guy, no longer caring.

He doesn’t look back when he walks away.

-

Harley Keener—as Flash later learns, since he apparently has fifth period with the guy—is, of course, friends with Parker.

Parker, who Flash will never admit to admiring, will never vocalize how jealous he is of everything that Peter has, greets Harley with a small smile, and maybe, if Flash hadn’t instantly scoffed and looked away, he could have noticed the look of understanding and grief that the both of them wore.

Though, he can’t deny, seeing someone he actually knows makes things easier. Or, at least, it does for a few seconds, until he sees the way that Leeds is quiet, staring down at his hands a lot, looking at Parker like he’s looking at a gravestone, glancing at Jones, who is damn near stoic, with pain in his features. Until he notices all the ways that they’re different, too.

He sinks his teeth into his lower lip, tastes copper, and doesn’t pay attention to the teacher—who he doesn’t fucking know.

Nothing is the same, he thinks.

Not a single god damn thing.

-

Flash finishes his junior year with no friends, bimonthly weekend visits with his sister, and so much anger burning in his veins that he spits insults at anyone who crosses his path, people who don’t get it, who will never understand.

“You’re a fucking hick that’s probably here on scholarship,” Flash snarls when Harley tries to interfere a verbal beating of a random kid who looks like he isn’t old enough to drive just yet.

Harley’s eyes harden, and his nose—not as straight, now, as it once was, a constant reminder of the break that healed just a little bit wrong—crinkles. He looks conflicted about the situation, and Flash knows that Harley has, for the past few months, been nothing but a kind stranger that tries to talk to Flash in the halls, who always asks how he is and how his day is going and doesn’t even deflate when Flash acts like it’s a hinderance, because Flash doesn’t know how to accept kindness, to react when someone seems to give a shit about him.

Jesse cares—loves him, of course. But Jesse is making friends at her school, and she’s adapting in a way that Flash can’t seem to do.

Harley is a person, a random person, who shows interest whenever he has the opportunity to talk to Flash. Who acts like, maybe, he might kind of care, too.

“Do you think anyone gives a shit about you?” Flash asks—seeing Harley’s face in front of him, sure, but his words are directed at only himself, unable to accept the idea of a stranger caring about him. “You’re nothing,” he says. “You don’t fucking matter, alright? No one fucking cares!”

And then, Parker—in a blur of motion, something awful and protective battling on his face—is standing between them. His teeth are bared like an animal, eyes burning, as he spits out, “Do not talk to him like that.”

“Peter,” Harley tries, voice weak.

Having none of it, apparently, Parker ignores his protest, tells Flash, who is shellshocked by seeing Peter genuinely furious for the first time since tripping him in the halls as freshman, “I don’t give a shit what you say to me, Flash, I’ve put up with it for years, but you do not talk like that to—to anyone else, but especially not to one of the only family members I have left!”

A wounded noise rumbles from Harley’s throat, but Flash—Flash is furious. Because, really, at least Parker has people—he has an aunt who is a better parent than either of his have ever been, friends who are so loving and protective that it feels like they’re in love with the guy ninety-nine percent of the time, and Harley, too? Harley, who has tears in his eyes and Flash doesn’t know if it’s because of his words or Peter’s, who reaches forward and yanks Peter back towards him. “Peter,” he says again, more forcefully now. “It’s fine, dude. Let’s just go.”

Parker sets his jaw and glares at Flash like his life depends on it. Flash, of course, decides to open his fucking mouth and says, “Sure, just go back to people who probably hate you—”

He doesn’t know where he’s going with that, but he doesn’t get the chance to before Ned fucking Leeds steps in front of him and swings.

He starts summer with another broken nose.

Sure, he deserves it—but it sucks, nonetheless.

-

At the start of senior year, Harley approaches him and, for some reason, apoligizes

“What?” Flash says—the only that that comes to mind, sometimes standalone, sometimes followed by an even more incredulous the fuck?

“M’sorry,” Harley repeats. “Pete shouldn’t’ve yelled at you like that, and Ned—Christ Almighty, he’s a sweetheart, but him and Michelle would do anything for Pete, and when they thought you were sayin’ that shit to him, there wasn’t nothin’ that could’ve stopped ‘em.”

Flash frowns. “Dude... what the fuck?”

Harley mirrors his frown, tilts his head to the side. “What? Am I not makin’ sense?”

“You’re apologizing,” Flash says. “To me.”

Slowly, Harley nods. “Yeah, I am.”

Flash shakes his head. “Why?”

“‘Cause you weren’t sayin’ that shit to me and Pete, that’s why,” Harley answers, almost matter of fact and simple. “I know it.” All Flash can manage to do is shake his head again, not understanding what the hell Harley is talking about, until Harley glances away, brings a hand up to scratch nervously at the back of his neck, and murmurs, “I mean... I get what it’s like, saying somethin’ about someone else that you really mean about yourself... y’know?”

He doesn’t have any semblance of control when his features go blank, when his shoulders are drawn up, defensive, disbelieveing. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Harley smiles. He smiles. “Yeah, I know what it’s like to play stupid, too. Seriously—I get it.”

No one gets it, Flash thinks.

He doesn’t say it. Or anything, really.

All he does is walk away.

-

He walks away later that day, when Harley tries to approach him. He turns tail and bolts the second he sees blond hair in the distance, whether it’s Harley or not—does this for days, and then weeks, and then—

And then Harley stops trying to approach him.

Flash doesn’t get why that fact makes him heavy, his brain a taunting repetition of knew that no one cared, knew it, knew it, knew it.

Oddly enough, it hurts more than usual.

-

He graduates.

No one is in the crowd for him—his mother planned a vacation with her husband (still nameless, since Flash doesn’t care enough to learn it anyway) and Jesse that just so happened to line up with graduation. Trudy and Harrison stopped acknoledging him entirely a few months after he came back, unless out of absolute necessity and usually with scathing commentary that burn every single time.

A few people clap for him—and he knows, once he sees that it’s Harley and Peter and Ned and Michelle, that he doesn’t deserve it.

Too nice, all of them. Acting like they give a shit.

Always too damn nice.

-

It hits him, after he gets kicked out.

Hits him, suddenly, how badly he fucked it all up. How he took an opportunity that he didn’t deserve and pushed it away. Harley had wanted to be friends, had cared, whether Flash understood why or not, and Flash had been awkward and unsure and ruined everything.

He sits on the curb with a suitcase. Only one, because it’s all he had time to pack before being shoved harshly onto the streets.

Though he wants to, he doesn’t cry.

-

It’s a miracle that the number hasn’t changed.

It’s an even bigger miracle that Harley, apparently, never deleted his number after what happened, after obtaining it only because he had prompted Flash about wanting to join the Decathlon team and asked if he could text him questions about it later that day, before—

Well. Before, but after. Before Flash destroyed what he didn’t even gave, but after everything shifted, changed, began to hurt.

Miraculous doesn’t even begin to describe the slightly hopeful tone when Harley answers and, without hesitating, asks, “Flash? You there?”

Doesn’t deserve it—god, Flash should be getting spat on right now—but he needs it, now more than ever. Holding his phone tighter, he stammers out a shaky, “Y-Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

Maybe his voice gave it away. Maybe the fact that he’s reaching out at all. Maybe Harley just knows. Flash isn’t sure the how about it, only able to focus on making his tongue cooperate with him as he breathes out a broken kind of, “I’m sorry, I—about everything, but I—I have no one else to call and you were—the only one, y’know, who was—who was nice to me—”

There’s a faint jingle. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know,” Flash whispers, trying to blink through the tears that suddenly fill his eyes, swallowing roughly. “I just—I started walking, once it hit that I didn’t know where I should go, and I—fuck, I shouldn’t have called.”

“‘ey,” Harley says, tone—firm, angry. “I dunno what you’re thinkin’, but I’m the best person you could have called. I’m on my way, okay?”

Flash closes his eyes. “You shouldn’t.”

“Well,” Harley says, “I’m not turnin’ around.”

-

He doesn’t cry.

He doesn’t, untill Harley steps out of a car wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt that’s inside out. Then, of course, he sobs.

Then, of course, Harley cares, like he never should have, and hugs Flash.

Jesse is the only person who has ever hugged him. His mother, almost, when he was really young, but—but no one else. No one.

In Harley’s arms, he melts.

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 13 – Out of My Dreams [TFP 3/3]

 We’re finally here. I can’t actually believe it. This meta series has exploded over lockdown but we’re finally at the close. The title of this chapter comes from a song in the musical Oklahoma! that you can find here, which has a fantastic dream ballet sequence – weirdly, during lockdown the fantastic film I’m Thinking of Ending Things was released which draws heavily on dreams in Oklahoma!, so maybe that’s my next project. Now, however, onto the end of TFP.

Before jumping into this meta, I really suggest reading this meta by @sagestreet (X) – it breaks down exactly why Redbeard represents homosexuality, and the probability that Sherlock’s repression draw’s on his father’s own repression, which is in turn a metaphor for ACD himself. This is really important in the light of the metatextuality I’ve been plugging through this series, and ties together the 1980s and 1890s themes really nicely – these are the periods of growth for Sherlock and canon!Holmes respectively and their homophobia has to be dealt with.

We left off with about 20 minutes to go, as Sherlock is sinking into the black depths of his mind – the deepest we’re ever going to get as well as the darkest in colour, chiming with the rest of the series. And then – flashes of Eurus, Redbeard and young Sherlock bleeding in through his memory. @sagestreet’s meta argues that Victor Trevor could genuinely have been Sherlock’s first love even at that age, and I don’t dispute the possibility, but I do have an alternate reading for slightly later in age, based on one image alone. Jump back in your mind to TAB, when Mycroft tells Sherlock he was there for him the last time – we get a shot of a teenager in a drug den which is never repeated again, but which has a sense of absolute past trauma attached to it.

I plump for this to be our key trauma personally, but currently I don’t think we have enough information to go on. However, regardless of which age you read Victor, the outcome is pretty much the same. So – Sherlock plunges into dark and we get memories flash before him, and it’s almost like he’s drowned in his EMP, his life has flashed before his eyes – but there is one thing stopping him from dying still. Eurus, trauma!Eurus, is ever a paradox, as repressed sexuality inherently is. On the one hand it’s constantly pushing down and on the other it’s constantly pushing up – and the sheer mania we see in Eurus is only really explicable as a set of mental contradictory impulses in this way. At the end of TFP, we spend so much time thinking that she is trying to kill Sherlock, but she’s trying to save herself and him. His gay trauma has completely regressed to a child’s fear here in the form of the little girl asking why she has been abandoned. The plane in the girl’s hands, going back to the height metaphor, is symbolic of the final struggle for life – as long as it’s in the air, Sherlock is in danger of death (see Chapter 2 ), but he is still under the impression that keeping going by crashing it, and crushing the queer side of him, is the way to go. We see him walk past images of him and Victor as children on the walls and ignoring them, after all.

It’s pretty important that these images are shown just as Sherlock connects to his heart for the first time, who is still drowning of course. The connection is closer and closer to being made! Under that water are the bones, which is symbolic of them being hidden in the recesses of his mind. We get the fantastically awful lines from John, if read superficially, that the bones are ‘small’ – others have been very good at pointing out John’s sudden inability to be a doctor as evidence for the EMP, and so it’s important for us to recognise here that John is not John, but heart!John.

There are other obvious indicators of the EMP here, most notably in the location. Even being out for a couple of hours, it is not possible that Eurus could have done this to Sherlock and John. Who aided her in getting John down the well, and how did they get out? How did they come to shore and not get stopped? How did nobody notice the construction of the giant cell in the garden of Musgrave Hall, and how does it spontaneously open after Sherlock pushes one wall? This switching from location to location – island, cell, home – is a shifting of perspective common in dreams. Moffat has used the idea of there being no time between location shifts before as a dream indicator in the Doctor Who episode Forest of the Dead, so it’s clearly something he has thought about. The pushing down of the wall is a huge symbolic moment – it couldn’t have just been a secret door! Instead, it ties in with the image of the breaking busts from TST as the idea of breaking down walls in his mind – and the drama of it suggests that we seem to have arrived at our final destination.

Everything unites rather wonderfully as trauma!Eurus threatens to drown heart!John, as though this is the culmination of ‘burning the heart’ – because ‘the heart’, both literally and metaphorically, is John! And so the destruction of Sherlock’s heart is happening inside his mind because of John’s suicidal suffering outside. We see the same kind of projection as is implied at the end of TST in the aquarium scene – this pulls in ideas of artificiality, which are important, but it’s also an important visual link. In the death of Mary, Sherlock tries to rerun his own assassination but imagines that John is devastated by the loss of Mary rather than Sherlock because he cannot cope with the queerness – it’s a way of processing John’s suicidal impulses without fully recognising them. This link of someone dying surrounded by water with the projection light shows that this is the revised (and correct) projection of what is happening to John in the real world – it is connected to Sherlock’s heart.

Sherlock, with the help of his heart, finally works out that Redbeard is not a dog. @sagestreet’s meta is useful in pointing out that Daddy being allergic to dogs doesn’t mean that Daddy didn’t want one, just that he couldn’t – and that’s a pretty good way of thinking about ACD’s inability to represent queerness as he might have wanted to, and so stamping on the character of Sherlock Holmes. The fact that he explicitly cracks one of the symbols in his mind is fantastic, because it calls back to the TLD scene suggesting that tea and coffee is some kind of code – there is a code in his brain, and he’s starting to break it down. Victor Trevor, whether child or teenager in reality, here is a child and is chosen I think to look like I imagine a child Martin Freeman would look like, but that’s bye the bye. What’s more important is that together, they played pirates. Given that Sherlock has been drowning in the repressed queerness of his brain, we’ve talked about piracy before as being symbolic of fielding that (see TST meta) and instead riding the wave, controlling it and refusing to drown. This hints at the love that Sherlock and Victor were able to enact, if only in youthful play, mastery of the high seas as opposed to adult Sherlock drowning in them. And then, gay trauma!Eurus traps Victor down a well – forces Sherlock to drown his love in that repression, and we know it’s love because it’s the same well that heart!John is in – Victor is equated with him.

“You couldn’t face it, so you told yourself a better story.” Ah yes – how convenient that it’s all tied up in ideas of fictionalising. I’m just going to leave that one there.

“Deep waters, Sherlock, in all your life, in all your dreams” – linking the Carl Powers pool, the TAB waterfall with TFP, and the light on his face reflecting TST – all of these links tying up 1890s repression (TAB) with 1980s repression (TGG, TST). And what is trauma!Eurus’s motive for destroying Sherlock’s love? ‘I had no one.’ The most striking thing about this is that before Sherlock meets John in the real world, and even during the beginning of their friendship, this is the recurring theme in how he chooses to portray himself. It’s not something that applies specifically to Eurus – it’s what we all associate with Sherlock, more than anything, pointing to this motive being about him. ‘Alone is what I have; alone protects me.’ Remember that? Trauma has forced that specific characterising of Sherlock onto him – his queer trauma necessitates solitude.

We already have a clue that Eurus is the girl on the plane by looking at the plane in her hands as a child, but it also suggests that even in her undeveloped form, the capacity to destroy him has always been there. It suggests a suicidal impulse in Sherlock that goes a long way back, specifically connected to his queerness – which ties in with the teenage addict in TAB as well as the cut scene from ASiP in which Greg implies that Sherlock has been suicidal.

Solving the code is a lovely moment – we have all of these hallowed graves of the past Holmes ancestry, which we can read as the hallowed adaptations over the years – and it’s nothing. It’s completely empty. We are disregarding the Holmeses of the past except to use them as tools to get to our trauma – which is what metatextual references have been doing throughout this series. However, there’s something else tricky that I want to throw up here.

I found this problem on an Australian site here, and haven’t seen it on tumblr although I may be wrong! The problem is the cipher. When cracked, it’s not what Sherlock says it is. It might just be a mistake, as the linked website theorises. The words missing are:

Lost Without Your Love Save

Although they appear in the song, their numbers aren’t in the cipher. It could fully be a mistake, or something cinematographical in not making the full cipher clear on the screen – it passes in a blur, after all. But I want to postulate something a tiny bit tenuous here. Sherlock’s subconscious has clearly been grappling with his repressed love for a long time, and it’s something he hasn’t been able to deal with, stemming right back to childhood. Up until now, he has never been able to crack the case, so to speak. But let’s jump back to the (slightly flippant) moment in TSoT when Sholto is dying, and John tells Sherlock that he’s a drama queen, there’s a time limit, the game is on, this is when he works best. And it’s true! We see Sherlock work under very specific time pressure a lot – look at the bomb scene in TEH and the bonfire scene, literally everything about TGG – the show is littered with these moments, and now they come to fruition. He could keep going living a half-life, in constant trauma, because it was not a matter of life and death, and it was too painful to try to confront it. But now in the real world, John is dying – as we can see by the heart down the well (note that brain!Mycroft is abandoned here, cementing the importance of the heart to this deduction sequence) and so he has no choice. And that is the missing bit of the code! ‘Lost without your love/Save’ is exactly what has propelled him to finally face his gay trauma – the fact that John Watson loves him, and will kill himself if Sherlock does not wake up. !!!

The girl on the plane is Eurus. This should not be altogether surprising for those of us who have seen HLV, because EMP theory seems to be repeating the same motifs again and again. HLV – it’s the Mind Palace. TAB? It’s also the Mind Palace. Now here. We also notice that Sherlock’s brain is reusing the plane from ASiB and the initial phone tactic used by Jim Moriarty – another link to John being in danger. But when Sherlock finally breaks in to his trauma, the most important thing is that it’s not threatening. She’s frightened. She has a constant urge towards death, represented by the plane, that ties into Sherlock’s suicidal urges. They will always be there, every time she closes her eyes – but Sherlock gets her to open them. I don’t have an answer to eye hell (yet), but my current theory is that this is the key – sightlessness is a link to suicidal urges through Eurus.

To jump past the police scene then, which we’ll get to in a minute, Sherlock’s reconciliation with Eurus rather than treating her as an enemy is perfect. Just like trauma!Eurus can never end her suicidal ideation, Sherlock can never put an end to the trauma inside him. Framing this as a battle was always wrong. He resurfaces by learning to live with her and to treat himself with kindness. Forgive me whilst I get soppy, but that’s beautiful. In that light, Eurus remaining in a kinder, friendlier version of Sherrinford is fantastic – she’s still inside him, not particularly desirable, and will never go away, but Sherlock has made peace with her and is friends with her. The violin was a symbol of desire in ASiB and again in TSoT, a way of Sherlock articulating what he could not say, and early in TFP that articulation was destroyed by Eurus’s discordance – here they have learned to play together. A difficult relationship – awkward, dangerous, unsure of boundaries – but a relationship nevertheless.

Rewinding to the police moment – despite the chains around John’s ankles, he miraculously climbs out of the well. More important in this scene, however, is that Sherlock gets Greg’s name right. This is, for me, one of the most significant sections of the entire show. Sherlock has never got Greg’s name right before – it’s a running joke on the show – and the reason Mofftiss have made such a joke of it is that it ties into ACD’s complete inability to remember names. Much like having Mrs. Turner live next door is a nod to canon inconsistency, as is the John/James parallel which, although a mistake in the initial work, they have exploited remarkably well, ACD famously never named Lestrade, only giving him the initial G. This is why Sherlock comes up with every possible G name for him. This is tied into Sherlock’s inability to move beyond the mistakes of canon – we see this weird inability to stick in modern Sherlock’s universe in other ways too, like the slightly old-fashioned nature of his costume (passed off as ‘timeless’, but clearly belonging to old as much as modern times), the deerstalker situation, thinking England has a king, not knowing the earth goes around the sun, not knowing Madonna, seeming to forget who Thatcher is – the list goes on, but Greg is the most constant one. Calling him Greg is a symbol that Sherlock has broken out of the confines of all of the past Sherlocks and has completely slipped into the modern version – which is exactly where he needs to be. Greg saying that Sherlock might be good as well as great – because the persona doesn’t matter anymore.

We should note in passing, in accordance with @sagestreet’s reading of Daddy Holmes as ACD, his disappointment and clear distress at brain!Mycroft hiding trauma!Eurus for so long because it was ‘for the best’. I’m not certain where Mummy Holmes stands in this, though I’m inclined to equate her with Daddy as ACD here, but I’m open to other suggestions for that.

And then we have the final sequence – who you really are. And I admit, I am thrown by Mary’s words – which is a terrible way to end the meta series! She says: ‘who you really are doesn’t matter’ – which is an awful thing to say, although coming from a still present comphet is inevitable. She also says that it’s all about the legend. But regardless of what comphet!Mary says, she’s not there anymore. The life that is being rebuilt is one of two men in Baker Street. Baker Street is the symbolic home of the heart within the EMP, so the rebuilding of that and the replacing of heart!John inside is lovely. Furthermore, if Daddy Holmes is ACD to Sherlock, the idea of Sherlock and John parenting Rosie feels like the start of a new, freer, queerer chapter in Sherlock Holmes history – authorship has changed, and it’s been handed over to a new generation. The final shot, however, hammers home for me the validity of the metatextual interpretation – Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place.

I mention the significance of this in an earlier chapter – Basil Rathbone is arguably the definitive Holmes interpretation who has defined the character for many years, and so could feasibly represent Holmes’s film/tv status as the most portrayed character of all time. They’re not running into Rathbone Place – they’re leaving it. They’re on their way up and out of all those previous adaptations, as Sherlock builds a new heart with no comphet.

He’s still got to get out to save real!John though – let’s not get too carried away – although we seem to have broken through the bulk of internalised queerphobia at the end of this series. I’ve previously explained on my blog why I don’t think there will ever be a series 5, and sad as that is, it is just life, so this behemoth of a meta series has actually just been an academic exercise more than anything else! Nevertheless, I hope if you’ve made it to the end that you’ve enjoyed it, and if you have any thoughts on tjlc that spring from this I would love to hear them!

[amphtaminedreams]

Filling the Met Shaped Hole (No, Not Like That): The Best Red Carpet Looks of Awards Season 2020

Hi to anyone reading,

I want to jump straight into things and ask a question. Which is the best Met Gala theme of the last 5 years and why is it Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination?

Seriously though, despite the fact that I’m not sure anything will top Heavenly Bodies with the preceding and succeeding Met Galas being relatively disappointing (the camp theme definitely could have been taken further and lets not even talk about the Comme Des Garcons disaster), I still get excited for the gala every year, staying up til whatever hour of the morning so I can see all the fashion live. Of course, it makes complete sense that this year’s event has been postponed until October given the circumstances but the chosen theme of Fashion and Duration had the potential to be quite interesting, so I hope we do eventually get to see it; whilst I don’t miss endlessly scrolling through photos of every white male celebrity wearing the exact same suit and tie to the point where fangirls claim Harry Styles to be a pioneer of breaking gender norms because he wore a pink top, I long for the days where we could all temporarily coexist in peace and harmony thanks to the internet’s collective dragging of the Kardashians for paying no attention to the theme whatsoever. We should’ve guessed life as we know it was about to be flipped on its head when they actually turned up in something interesting last year.

What I’m trying to say is that I would love nothing more than to jump back in time to when tomorrow morning’s top Google search would be best Met Gala looks, and not how many lives did Boris Johnson’s fuckery cost us today. So in honour of the lack of trivial content, I thought I’d fill the Met shaped hole in our lives (amongst many other unfilled holes; today the freezer door at work hit me on the ass whilst I was putting ice cubes out and I think for a split second I got all flushed) by putting together a collection of my personal favourite red carpet looks from this year’s awards season and their respective afterparties: the BAFTAs, Brits, Critic’s Choice Awards, Golden Globes, Oscars, SAG Awards, and the Grammys to finish with.

Enjoy!

British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award (yes, that’s the BAFTAs but I needed a longer title)

(L-R: Zoe Kravitz in Dior, Rooney Mara in Givenchy, and Scarlett Johansson in Versace)

I am a British fan of television and arts but I will gladly say it: of all the awards ceremonies, the BAFTAs is hardly the most exciting, and the red carpet even less so. As I said, lots of boring men in boring suits and middle aged women being dressed by stylists who seem to think we’re dead from the neck down by the time we hit 40 and dress us accordingly so. Any hint of a décolletage explicitly forbidden.

There were a few good looks, however. From left to right, above we have Zoe Kravitz in Dior, Rooney Mara in Givenchy and Scarlett Johansson in Versace, who looks so amazing I almost forget that 1). Versace is going down the drain and 2). Scarlett Johansson would stand in front of a forest and take the role of a tree if she could. Which, along with her whole defence of Woody Allen, is really shit-she’s genuinely great in Marriage Story and an otherwise talented actress. As for Zoe Kravitz, she is up there with Robert Pattison as one of my biggest crushes right now and looks amazing in literally everything she wears, and Rooney Mara is consistently low-key yet elegantly dressed. 

(L-R: Greta Gerwig in Gucci, Florence Pugh in Dries Van Noten, Renee Zellweger in Prada)

Renee Zellweger proved an exception to the rule when it came to women over the age of 40 generally having clueless stylists-her dress is beautiful, very reminiscent of the delicate, demure beauty of 50s icons such as Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn. Florence’s dress, I actually really loved. It didn’t seem to go down all too well with actual Florence Pugh fans but red and pink together is an elite combo; I’m still firmly on the “surprised that it works but I’m into it” train. I mainly included Greta’s dress for the green velvet, to be honest; it’s disappointingly low-key for Gucci but nice enough all the same.

(L-R: Andrew Scott in Paul Smith, Charlize Theron in Dior, Daisy Ridley in Oscar de la Renta, and Emilia Clarke in Schiaparelli)

I was particularly excited to see Emilia Clarke in Schiaparelli-yes, I adore her because she played Daenerys Targaryen and I was ride or die for that bitch but also whenever I see her interviewed she has the most exuberant energy and honestly I want to be best friends. It’s not the most interesting dress Schiaparelli has ever put out there, but I like the fact that she went for something unique all the same.

Forest green is a colour I find hard to resist which is why I included Andrew Scott’s otherwise kinda basic suit (points for it being velvet) and Daisy Ridley in Oscar de la Renta. As elegant as the dress is, I would love for her stylist to have really leaned into the forest nymph vibes I’m getting and do something a bit less uptight with the hair and makeup; like imagine loose curls with tiny braids and hair rings and a dark lip and a slight smoke around the eye and...yes, I have very specific visions, I know. As for Charlize Theron, her work with Dior is the only reason I care about the brand; there’s definitely a case to be made here for giving Maria Grazia the benefit of the doubt, assuming that she tries all the prototypes on women who look like Charlize and that that’s why she’s happy to send dresses that are otherwise relatively underwhelming down the runway. 

The Brit Awards

(L-R: Charli XCX in Fendi, Ellie Goulding in Koche, Hailee Steinfeld in Fendi, and Harry Styles in Gucci)

In my opinion a much better reflection of quintessential British style than the BAFTAs, I originally ruled out including any music award ceremony red carpets in this post until I saw Maya Jama and Charli XCX’s looks. Consider me pleasantly surprised by Hailee Steinfeld’s cobalt blue burnout dress, a classic incarnation of the regal bohemian aesthetic Fendi channelled in their 2019 haute couture show. Plus Charli’s emo take on Glinda the Good Witch is also Fendi, driving home for me just how much I love their collections. I don’t know if I’d be sure about Ellie Goulding’s dress on the rack but the simple styling makes it work and she looks gorgeous, and Harry Styles looks just as pretty in a Gucci look that is MADE for him.

(L-R: Adwoah Aboah in Vivienne Westwood, Celeste in Gucci on the far right! I’m not sure who the guy in the middle is, I’m sorry and if anybody knows drop me a message and I will correct this immediately!)

Unfortunately, Harry Styles and Celeste didn’t get to pose together because this is really a perfect his and hers Gucci look; I feel like seeing one outfit next to the other would really highlight the quirky elegance of each. That being said, it feels criminal to talk about elegance without including Adwoah Aboah in Vivienne Westwood in the sentence; the dress is obviously stunning quality on its own merit, but Adwoah is what elevates it from unremarkable to ethereal. Fuck the weird ass knight figure that’s currently on top of the Brit Award, this woman is the definition of statuesque! Put her on top of the trophy you cowards!

And just to get it out of the way, when it comes to the guy in the middle, to quote Keke Palmer:

Sorry to this man.

Honestly, I saved all the red carpet photos from a Nylon (I think it was Nylon?) article back when the awards aired and towards the end of the photos they stopped including names-this happened a few times when I was looking through red carpet galleries. I reverse image searched where I could but not every photo turned anything up. If anyone does know who this man is, message me so I can include his name. He looks sick, and as far as suits go, this one is built upon and accessorised enough that it’s actually a look rather than the same old variation of a suit we’ve seen a million times before that may as well be the straight man’s designated red carpet uniform. 

(L-R: Maya Jama, Neh Neh Cherry in Bottega Veneta, Laura Whitmore)

And now the woman that forced me to include the Brits red carpet in this post in the first place: Maya Jama. Don’t get me wrong, my mind isn’t blown by this dress on its own, I probably prefer Laura Whitmore’s (Jaded do a similar newspaper dress and I’ve resisted adding it to my basket for 6 months now, this is the ultimate test of whether or not I finally cave), but Maya looks fucking MAGNIFICENT. The fit, the gloves, the confidence with which she carries it, it’s all SO good. Considering the timing, this is basically her Princess Diana revenge dress levelled up, 2020′s Jessica Rabbit moment. 

(L-R: Maya Jama, Ellie Goulding, Kendall Jenner)

Obviously anything is gonna be a step down from the red carpet look but Maya’s Brits afterparty outfit was cute too, if a tad Pretty Little Thing. 

Don’t ask me what Kendall Jenner was doing at the Brits afterparty btw, because I have no idea. We live in a world where the Kardashian-Jenners just seem to occupy every public space possible and I’ve begrudgingly accepted it at this point. I don’t have the energy to question it-and it helps that green catsuit is actually Very Cool™. 

For the last of my favourite Brit Awards looks, we have a few more afterparty photos-from left to right we have Charli XCX again, Lizzo, and Anne Marie. It was Charli posting her dress on Instagram that sent me searching for afterparty looks in the first place; apparently wearing nothing but feathers and crystals is something that appeals to me, and the more I read that statement, the more it sounds spot-on. I’d categorise it as gothic glamour hoe, and slot it in with the rest of the night-out clothes in my wardrobe that I think I’ll finally have the balls to wear out of sheer desperation once this lockdown is over. The Blossom to Charli XCX’s Buttercup here, we’ve also got Anne Marie looking extra AF and I loveeeee it; it’s an ensemble somewhere between a high-end version of Alaska Thunderfuck’s candyfloss Sugar Ball dress from season 5 of Drag Race (Alaska DID deserve to win AS2 nation, rise up) and a low-key version of a Katy Perry California Dreams Tour costume. I don’t call it low-key as a drag, just a regretful admission of the fact that maybe wearing a cupcake bra which squirts whipped cream out of the boobs is a bit too much for most of us. 

Critic’s Choice Awards

(L-R: Alison Brie in Brandon Maxwell, Chloe Bridges in Azeeza, Cynthia Erivo in Fendi, Florence Pugh in Prada)

I was going to say the Critic’s Choice Awards is kind of America’s version of the BAFTAs but then I remembered that the BAFTAs is really the only big TV and film awards ceremony we have here in the UK and that it’s kind of sad that I have to compare our most high-profile red carpet of the year to L.A’s most low-key one. Getting Cynthia Erivo and Florence Pugh to infiltrate is the best we can do. 

THAT BEING SAID! 

They both look amazing. This is Florence’s best red carpet look of this year, imo (she the prettiest icicle I’ve ever seen), and Cynthia Erivo’s arm must ache from serving the entire awards season. And in Fendi! Taste!

Side note before we move onto the next set of looks: has anybody else watched Alison Brie in Mad Men and Community simultaneously and experienced the extreme cognitive dissonance that comes from watching her play a tragically nerdy (relatable tbh) 18 year old and an overly-sophisticated 30 something married to an ad man in the 60s at the same time? Weird, but anyway! The orange dress with the red lipstick is channelling Marina Diamandis’ Froot era style subtle sex appeal and is a timeless, playful combo. Put the hair up into a beehive and it’s Megan Draper on a date in Cabo-don’t know much about the place but I know the sea is aqua and the sun seekers are blindingly white and the cocktails are plentiful (and whatever colour you want them to be), and all that together is a juicy palette if we’re talking cinematography. The Mad Men directors are out there somewhere shaking their fists at the sky that they never got to consult me on that, I’m sure. 

(L-R: Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Dior, Saoirse Ronan in Erdem and Zendaya in Tom Ford)

Zendaya’s red carpet look was the stand out of the Critic’s Choice Awards for sure; the skirt I can do without but I hope that hot pink metal breastplate ends up on display somewhere because that is ART, and she is the perfect person to wear it. The Tiffany Pollard “she's so powerful” meme was made for this moment. 

Also, can we talk about Phoebe Waller-Bridge backing up my Dior 2019 Haute Couture wasn’t *that* bad hypothesis? Because unless I’m mistaken this is one of the dresses from that collection and it is quite beautiful. Yeah, black mesh isn’t going to start a revolution or anything but it’s so delicate looking it almost seems out of place on a red carpet-I don’t know if it’s the structure of the bodice or the tulle but I can totally see this in a gothic ballet, whether that’s sensible in theory or not. Probably not. But then again I did quit ballet when I was 10 after months of getting people to near poke me in the eye on the way out of class so it would look like I’d been crying and I didn’t have to go to my lessons after school. So what do I know? Fuck all, in case that wasn’t clear. I also feel a little vindicated by Saoirse wearing one of the Erdem dresses I loved from last year’s collection-if multi-award winning actress Saoirse Ronan’s probably ridiculously well-paid stylist liked it enough to pick it out for her then I guess I’m doing okay in terms of taste levels.

(L-R: Olivia Wilde in Valentino, Lucy Hale in Miu Miu, Mandy Moore in Elie Saab, and Margaret Qualley in Chanel)

The last few Critics Choice Awards looks I picked out above aren’t thrilling or anything but they’re cute enough to include-from left to right we have Olivia Wilde in Valentino, Lucy Hale in Miu Miu, Mandy Moore in Elie Saab and Margaret Qualley in Chanel. It’s kind of besides the point, but Margaret worked with Chanel throughout awards season and I just wanted to add my two cents in here and say that I think she’s the perfect person to collaborate with (also think Laura Harrier would be a good match, anyone agree?) and that in a similar vein, I urge Miu Miu, the creative directors of which I’m sure are eagerly awaiting the opinion of irrelevant Tumblr user amphtaminedreams, to work with Lucy Hale more often. I feel like if girl stopped starring in those shitty Blumhouse horrors and did something a bit more sophisticated she’d fit the brand right down to a T.

The Golden Globes

(L-R: Cynthia Erivo in Thom Browne, Dakota Fanning in Dior, Jane Levy in Steven Khalil, and Janina Gavankar in Georges Chakra)

Finally! I hear you cry! A more exciting red carpet! It’s not the Oscars, but celebrity stylists still pulled the big guns for this one, the Golden Globes probably being considered the second most prestigious American awards ceremony of the year. Plus Dakota Fanning was there! Big yay for me! She and Elle can practically do no wrong in my eyes and are probably the only 2 women that could take on Dakota Johnson and Jennifer Lawrence when it comes to established red carpet style. 

Cynthia Erivo did it again, of course, as slick, as dignified and as regal as she was at the Critic’s Choice. The woman really has got this power stance thing locked down; she always seems so cool and confident in everything she wears that the whole getting dressed up to go out out out (we call going to the club going “out out”, but I’d say a red carpet is a slightly bigger deal than my local club with the sticky floors hence the 3rd out) thing looks like second nature.

(L-R: Zoey Deutch in Fendi, Karamo Brown in Grayscale, Lucy Boynton in Louis Vuitton and Kat Graham in Georges Hobeika)

Lucy Boynton was another of my Golden Globes stand outs, and in general is someone who I really look forward to seeing at red carpet events. She (or her stylist, I don��t know how much of a role she plays!) always seems to commit fully to an outfit and sees it as part of a whole concept where the makeup, hair and accessories are equally as important and that is a girl after my own heart. 60s space age empress is the theme here and I’m all about it-well, either that or a feminine editorial take on the tinman from the Wizard of Oz but the former sounds a bit cooler and does way more justice to how good she looks so we’ll go with that. Quick shoutout to Kat Graham too because she looked absolutely radiant. 

(L-R: Shailene Woodley in Balmain, Winnie Harlow in Laquan Smith, and Zoe Kravitz in Saint Laurent)

The trio above I really couldn’t skim over, Winnie Harlow especially; my America’s Next Top Model grudges aside, she consistently turns it out at every event she’s invited to. She’s another woman that wears pieces with such confidence that they look like they were actually made on her body-even if the garment itself isn’t the most breathtaking in the room, she’s the one that draws my attention. Though she’s got these dainty, other-worldly qualities about her, what you’d expect to be a gentle presence is firm and commanding and whilst the sharp drama and glitz of the dress probably helps, that’s just the way Winnie Harlow is naturally, based on her other red carpet appearances. 

Zoe Kravitz is an interesting one because, on the one hand, her looking amazing with that bone structure (I would trade a vital organ to look like that any day) is a given, but it does also seem like she went out of her way to do something a bit different this past awards season. I have always loved her street style for its trademark edge and the androgynous, oversized silhouettes that she leans towards, and the overt femininity of her red carpet dresses is that grungy, skater girl aesthetic completely flipped on its head. It’s cute, and if anyone can pull a dress as kitschy as this off, it’s Zoe. She’s got that just rolled out of bed look we all dream of that screams “I’m over this shit” whereas the rest of us have to rely on dark circles to get the message across. It’s very weird to think that she and Shailene Woodley were in Divergent together, especially since Zoe in particular has changed so much since. 

My main note with Shailene was just that I got excited to see that Balmain dress off the runway-it was one of my favourites from the S/S 2020 collection (IIRC, mostly on the basis that I’m pretty sure it wan’t haute couture), and it looks good! Not wildly good because I’m not sure the fit of the dress is inherently all that flattering, but still good-she makes it work.

(L-R: Taylor Swift in Etro, Sofia Carson in Giambattista Valli and Scarlett Johansson in Vera Wang)

I know a lot of people online didn’t seem to like Taylor Swift’s dress, but she looks cute, imo. I will say that I’m surprised it’s Etro! At first glance I would’ve thought Carolina Herrera or Oscar de la Renta or something along those lines. And predictably, I think Sofia Carson looks flawless. If you’ve read any of my other posts you’re probably sick of hearing it but I really can’t resist anything that is this modern Disney princess, like powder pink layered tulle? Feathers? What did you expect me to say, ew? I think deep down my clothing preferences will always be that of a 9 year old girl and you know what, that’s okay. Sometimes. Well, when it comes to red carpets. That’s when you can kinda get away with it.

(L-R: Bell Powley in Miu Miu, Billy Porter in Alex Vinash, and Charlize Theron in Dior)

There’s a few things worth mentioning when it comes to the above outfits. Firstly, and most importantly, I need to proclaim my love for Billy Porter. No man is doing it like him, honestly. To compare Harry Styles in his pink suits is unfair. The drama and the beauty and the flair that Billy brings every awards ceremony is on another level and that’s all I have to say about that. If you disagree, I’m gonna need a bullet pointed essay-I am that firm in my opinion.

Second, Bell Powley in Miu Miu semi confirms the direction their PR team tend to head in when choosing women to work with. I might be totally alone here but I feel like she and Lucy Hale both have one of those porcelain doll faces which work really well with Miu Miu’s signature girlish silhouettes and overly-ornate details. 

And thirdly, just to restate my earlier point: someone give Charlize Theron a pat on the back for bringing some life to a Dior design. That is all.

(L-R: Jodie Comer in Mary Katrantzou, Joey King in Schiaparelli and Kaitlyn Dever in Valentino)

All the newcomers really turned it out too, which is a sentence I type through gritted teeth; to call Jodie Comer of My Mad Fat Diary origins a newcomer pains the former depressing 2013 black and white Tumblr user in me, though I suppose to the US audiences uncultured in the ways of British teenage angst Vilanelle is her breakthrough role. And how Vilanelle is this dress too!? It’s bold and it’s attention-grabbing and it’s fun and it is definitely very theatrical female fictional villain that you were inexplicably drawn to as a child before you realised why as an adult-”oh, it’s because she was hot”. 

Joey King in Iris van Herpen was a pleasant surprise too considering that when I first looked through the red carpet photos I only knew her as the girl who was in that shitty Netflix original-having watched her in The Act, I apologise for the dismissal! And I admire the sartorial choice! I adore Iris van Herpen designs but as a short girl, wearing one of her dresses to a red carpet event is a risky decision-I hate to admit it because casting a diverse range of people for shows is something I have come to expect of my favourite brands, but the appeal of a lot of IvH pieces comes from the movement of the garments on standard willowy runway models. Fortunately, the styling is really complementary here, and whilst it can’t be denied that the dress itself does swamp her a bit, I liked that she and her stylist stepped out of the box. 

Kaitlyn Dever’s red carpet look is obviously a lot more typical, but you can't go wrong with a Valentino dress, and this one in particular is so suited to the aura she gives off-it’s young and it’s fun and it’s fresh and the intricate floral print, otherwise muted if not for the spring influenced pops of pink and red, is timelessly pretty.

(L-R: Akwafina in Dior, Saoirse Ronan in Celine, Beanie Feldstein in Oscar de la Renta, and Renee Zellweger in Armani)

Lastly, there was Saoirse Ronan in Celine-one of my highlights of the night; she looked phenomenal, a glacial toned dream, and it was pretty different to what I generally expect to see her in. I might be way off base and in need of a bit of a review of her red carpet style, but I feel like she usually leans more towards pretty than edgy with regards to her styling at these kinds of events and a loose fitting, gun metal glittered slip dress is, imo, the perfect way to hit that previously uncharted midway point between the two.

(L-R: Kate Bosworth in Prabal Gurung, Kathryn Newton in Valentino and Sarah Hyland)

Now onto the afterparty looks, and I’m not gonna lie, they’re usually the highlight of the ceremonies for me; I feel like the initial ceremony is all about looking respectful and maintaining that whole dedicated actor image, whereas it seems the literal point of these showbiz parties is a competition to be the best dressed person in the room. Competition really makes people step their game up, and we always get to see more young talent whose style tends to be more current than that of the people we see on the red carpet. 

I’ve got to say, as annoying as I found her character in The Society, I have to overlook that gut instinct of irritation when I see Kathryn Newton and accept how stunning everything going on here is; honestly, she looks like an angel, and I feel like the team at Valentino must reeeeally like her to put her in that dress.

(L-R: Alexa Demie, Ashley Benson in Georges Hobeika, Maude Apatow and Barbie Ferreira)

Obviously I was super excited to see the Euphoria girls on the red carpet, especially Alexa Demie-she does 90s/early noughties inspired glamour better than anyone else on the young actor scene right now and her personal style and the sass she does so well as Maddy Perez shines through every time. Whilst Barbie Ferreira’s look is more casual and achievable for the rest of us in terms of wearability, it’s just as interesting a take on the same period; the delicate pink makeup, hair and jewellery with the 90s inspired slip dress in light teal is a red carpet take on soft grunge for the ages. As for Ashley Benson, she always looks gorgeous and that’s all I’m gonna say before I get emotional and start going into a rant about how her and Cara Delevigne’s relationship was one of the only good things about this shitshow of a year and how now that they’ve broken up the single flame of hope inside me has been extinguished and how their sex swing is gonna get so lonely with them caught in the middle of an ugly custody battle and-

You get the idea.

(L-R: Storm Reid, Sophia Bush in John Paul Ataker, and Sydney Sweeney)

(L-R: Billie Lourd, Paris Hilton, and Camila Morrone)

The Oscars

(L-R: Charlize Theron in Dior, Cynthia Erivo, and Florence Pugh in Louis Vuitton)

Ah, the Oscars. This is where the big money is really spent, and bad decisions are made-in fairness, this year’s winners were a lot more satisfying than usual and I think all of us felt that Parasite was a well-deserved win. I really thought it was gonna be Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just as a bit of a token gesture to Tarantino considering it’s his 9th film, though undoubtedly his worst of the ones I’ve seen, so I was relieved that this wasn’t the case. That being said, it still pains me to see the horror genre being ignored by the academy-in my mind, Florence is here for her performance in Midsommar just as much as Little Women. 

At the risk of getting repetitive, just assume my opinions on Charlize Theron in Dior here are the same again, that Cynthia Erivo is still bringing goddess energy (this is probably my favourite of her looks), and that against the opinion of the masses, Florence looks divine in this colour. I mean, when I say the masses I just mean the people I follow on Twitter, but still, I just wanted be an excuse to be dramatic so that I could insert a meme.

(L-R: Natalie Portman in Dior, Regina King in Versace, Scarlett Johansson in Oscar de la Renta, and Sandra Oh in Elie Saab)

Once again, Scarlett Johansson’s stylist is doing God’s work; this outfit is everythingggg-the Oscar de la Renta dress is probably my favourite thus far. Like we’re talking angel, but make it fitted and sexy, and I hope you read that in the Tyra Banks voice I intended because 2 memes in a row would rob me of any credibility I’m building as a fashion account and I’m not ready to trash that for bad memes just yet; give it a couple of mental breakdowns and I’ll be there. Natalie Portman’s look was a favourite of mine too, with the cape over the top adding a sophisticated touch to the celestial, slightly bohemian feel of the dress. I initially found the detail of the names embroidered into said cape to be quite moving-in a dream world, directing would be my career of choice and so I really admired the statement-but finding out that Portman herself is the only director hired by her own production company ruined that for me a little bit. Then again, multi-millionaire celebrities making performative gestures for good publicity and not doing all that much to make any real change? Colour me shocked.

(L-R: Beanie Feldstein in Miu Miu, Brie Larson in Celine and Billie Eilish in Chanel)

Now, of all the Miu Miu looks so far, I think Beanie Feldstein definitely got the best one. The intricacy of the embroidery, the silhouette, the old Hollywood stye curls-it’s all so graceful. I’d say this is probably her best look of awards season and she and her stylist did a really great job.

And as for Billie Eilish...Guys...do you think she might be wearing...Chanel...by any chance? I’m not sure.

Seriously though, as far as an oversized tweed suit with the brand’s logo emblazoned all over it goes, I like this look. The acid green roots and the jewellery are what make it for me, adding to the grunginess of the outfit which is interesting against Chanel’s prim and proper aesthetic of the last few years. I know she has good reason for the way she dresses, but I’ve never quite been able to appreciate it-this outfit proves to me that her style doesn't automatically equal ugly and occasionally, she can make it work.

(L-R: Leona Lewis, Colton Haynes, Dita von Teese)

Elton John’s Oscars afterparty being the less exciting of the two big ones in terms of fashion-the other being the Vanity Fair afterparty which I’ll cover in a moment-I thought I’d whizz through it (posturing aside though, I bet Sir Elton’s party was a lot more fun).

(L-R: Chiara Ferragni, Donatella Versace, Bella Thorne)

This is a big statement considering Alexa Demie attended, but I think Chiara’s outfit and overall styling might be my favourite of the partygoers; if they decided to do a live action Barbie film in 2020 minus the PG ratio-because lets be real, she’d be a noughties Paris Hilton type and get up to some SHENANIGANS-this is the look that would become iconic. 

(L-R: Ashley Greene in Off-White, Alexa Demie, Sydney Sweeney, Annalynne McCord)

It was a hard decision to make though: I’m just as into Sydney Sweeney’s interpretation of burlesque come 1950s red carpet Barbie, Ashley Greene’s surprisingly delicate Off-White number, and Alexa’s dress and (as always) impeccable styling. That being said, Chiara’s clearest contender here for the best dressed of the night is Annalynne McCord. I know I'm one to throw similes around but she looks like an ACTUAL Disney princess-the dress is magical and an absolutely flawless fit. She carries it with such grace. I'm truly in love.

(L-R: Tessa Thompson in Versace, Vanessa Hudgens in Vera Wang, SZA)

As for the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty, there were SO many iconic moments this year. SZA was the definition of the fire emoji, Tessa Thompson’s throwback Versace was the mermaid’s take on BDSM fashion I never knew I need to see, and I’d die to turn up to my graduation ceremony (here’s hoping for a successful attempt at the old uni shebang this time, lol) looking as elegant and simultaneously extra as Vanessa Hudgens did in Vera Wang. I mean, this was before Vanessa went on her dumb Instagram live corona rant because she was upset she couldn’t go to Coachella and I still kinda lived for her, mostly because of moments like this. She’s always been the queen of channelling a more hedonistic, carefree era and this dress is the most refined example of that boho decadence yet. It sounds dramatic to say but the rich purple is such a bold choice considering it’s a a colour we rarely see on the red carpet but now I’ve seen eggplant coloured silk I need it, lol. 

(L-R: Suki Waterhouse in Fendi, Lili Reinhart in Marc Jacobs, Lucy Boynton and Margaret Qualley in Chanel)

Then there was Suki, Lilly, Lucy and Margaret as well who all went full angel mode in some of my favourite runway looks of last summer’s haute couture week; Suki’s Fendi dress and Lili’s Marc Jacobs number were highlights of both their shows and there’s something even more magical about them both when the uniformity of the runway is removed. I also would go on about how much I love Lucy Boynton’s style for the millionth time but I think you get my point.

(L-R: Nicole Richie, Cynthia Erivo, Hunter Schafer, Billie Porter)

The more I look at the photos I saved from the Vanity Fair “red” carpet, the more I come to the firm conclusion that these looks are my favourite as a collective. Along with the elegance and sex appeal of the outfits above, we’ve got all these looks too which are so VIBRANT and fun and experimental. Billie Porter is absolutely majestic and continues his reign as the king of in-your-face, theatrical red carpet style, and Hunter and Cynthia look so radiant. Whilst Nicole’s look isn’t as colourful, she still brought drama with the satin gloves and the smoke lined eyes, and she is definitely ready to step on someone’s neck here.

(L-R: Halima Aden, Ella Balinska in Schiaparelli, Emma Roberts, Ciara)

(L-R: Kiki Layne in Michael Kors, Kim Kardashian in Alexander McQueen, Kylie Jenner in Ralph and Russo, Lashana Lynch in Michael Kors)

(L-R: Rowan Blanchard in Iris van Herpen, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Stella Maxwell, and Sarah Paulson with Holland Taylor)

I’ve got to say, it’s really cool to see Rowan Blanchard in Iris van Herpen too; it’s interesting that as far as I know, she and Joey King were the only ones to wear her this awards season, both being up and coming actresses. It would be a good choice for the brand, probably best known for its futuristic, conceptual aesthetic, to also focus its PR efforts on the young potential inheriting that future. Orrrr it could just be that Rowan, Joey and I have the same (good, lol) taste-not gonna lie, from my experience of stalking her instagram Rowan Blanchard does make some unique fashion choices and her feed is full of bold outfit inspiration.

(L-R: Adriana Lima in Ralph and Russo, Alessandra Ambrosio in Armani, Billie Eilish in Gucci, and Donatella Versace in Versace)

Then there’s Billie Eilish, who is really on another level. This is her second custom made baggy suit of the night, this time Gucci. IMAGINE. Chanel and Gucci making custom pieces to suit your very specific style. Again, though, I really like this; whilst it’s very clearly a Billie outfit, it’s got a level of sophistication, cohesiveness and glamour to it that takes it to that I can admire. 

(L-R: Camila Mendes in Moschino, Barbara Palvin and Dylan Sprouse, and Chiara Ferragni)

Honestly, the Vanity Fair red carpet really belonged to young talent this year, and Camila Mendes in one of my favourite Moschino looks from the Picasso collection really seals it. She could’ve just gone for a basic pretty dress-this isn’t a natural choice-but she really does have the proud, regal look of a woman who knows some man is gonna paint her a portrait that will end up in a famous gallery one day. 

One last thing before I move on, though. How the fuck does Chiara Ferragni get everywhere?! And by that I don’t mean how does she get invited, I had the shock of finding out this woman I followed on Instagram because I liked her outfits and thought she was pretty is a hugely successful businesswoman in Italy long ago. Power to her. She’s a big deal! I get it! I just mean, physically HOW? How do you hit Elton John’s party AND the Vanity Fair party in one night and look this good? God really does have favourites, huh. Well, I guess in this hypothetical scenario where I believe in him anyway. 

The SAG Awards

(L-R: Dakota Fanning in Valentino, Kaitlyn Dever in Ralph Lauren, Scarlett Johansson in Armani, and Zoe Kravitz in Oscar de la Renta)

So, I kinda forgot the SAG awards existed and thought that my post was basically finished before I looked in my folder and saw the one dedicated to this ceremony. My initial reaction was like “oh, this is the shitty Oscars, right?” and I assumed the red carpet would be shit and that I could call it a night-it’s 3:30am, I wish I was calling it a night-but then I looked and saw that I had even more outfit photos saved in that folder than I did for my Oscar dedicated one. Because fuck, I want to to sleep, but the SAG awards had a surprisingly good turn out?! So maybe not as irrelevant a ceremony as I thought? Because Dakota Fanning turned up looking like some divine mythical being again, Scarlett Johansson pulled another incredible look out the bag, Zoe Kravitz was a modernised Audrey Hepburn, and Kaitlyn Dever read my comments about her dress being “timelessly pretty” and said “bitch, you really thought” before showing up looking hot as fuck. Truth be told, I think the SAG awards were first but in this universe where Kaitlyn Dever would pay any attention to my opinion of her outfit do we really care? 

(L-R: America Ferrera, Andrew Scott in Azzaro Couture, Camila Mendes in Ralph and Russo, Caleb McLaughlin )

(L-R: Lupita Nyongo in Louis Vuitton, Lily Allen, Nathalie Emmanuel in Miu Miu, Cynthia Erivo in Schiaparelli)

See, I was going to make a comment above how I took back what I said about Camila Mendes not just going for pretty dresses (which I guess I just did here instead-JUST TO BE CLEAR SHE STILL LOOKS STUNNING) and then I uploaded the next photo set and got distracted by 2 things:

1. How weird it is that British legend Lily Allen, who does not get NEAR enough credit for her smart her songs were might I add, is dating David Harbour AKA. Hopper off Stranger Things!?

2. How mad I still am about Game of Thrones and how dirty the writers did Nathalie Emmanuel (and Emilia Clarke and Lena Heady and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and basically everyone else on that show but that’s another story).

In this same universe where Kaitlyn Dever cares about my opinion can we make the issues I have in the last bullet point not exist? Please?

(L-R: Sophie Turner in Louis Vuitton, Renee Zellweger in Maison Margiela, Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Armani, and Renee Bargh)

(L-R: Gwendoline Christie in Rick Owens, Madeline Brewer in Monique Lhuillier, Kathryn Newton in Valentino, and Lili Reinhart in Miu Miu)

Finishing off the SAG looks, we’ve got the four above. 

Once again, Kathryn Newton was Valentino’s blushing crown jewell; Allie Pressman hate aside, she really is the perfect dressing up doll for the brand. Fresh faced and poised, she has all the elegance and gentle femininity necessary to make floating down the runway as Valentino models do look natural, and Lili Reinhart did an equally good job being a Miu Miu girl. She makes that idiosyncratic cutesy-ness work, all the frills and fragility of a china tea set look easy where I’d just look like I’d been consumed by a charity shop doily. Madeline Brewer did a good job too, helping a Monique Lhuillier design pop in a way that it doesn’t usually. When your hair is bright red and your dress cerulean blue, coral tinted lipstick is a *ahem* choice, buuut in this case it paid off because the result is a look which demanded my attention-ML dresses are reliably pretty, however, they tend to be predictable. Madeline and her styling did a good job subverting that formula. To end the section, though, I feel it’s only fair to save my fave woman til last-probably one of the few people in the world that isn’t a Rick Owens model that can pull off his designs. Ofc, I’m talking about the queen that is Gwendoline Christie. If we’re talking embodying brands, she did justice like nobody else could to the spectacle of Owens’ formidable, out-of-this-world aesthetic. This is her version of the princess moment, and when you’re as striking as she is, nothing less would do. 

At least my girl Brienne of Tarth is thriving<3

The Grammys

(L-R: Ariana Grande in Giambattista Valli, Cardi B in Mugler, and Pia Mia in Julien Macdonald)

TBH, like I said with the Brits, I never planned to do any music award ceremony red carpets, just because I feel like the fashion tends to be more geared towards a younger audience buuuut I’m kinda glad I changed because Ariana looks INCREDIBLE. MESMERISING. TRANSCENDENT. JFC. There’s a reason the photo of her on her Wiki page has been changed to one from this night and it’s because she looks absolutely exquisite, like some kind of moon goddess with an R&B touch which I suppose is kind of her brand? Sometimes I go kind of lukewarm on Giambattista Valli and forget how mystical but at the same time frothy and indulgent and all around luxurious the pieces can be. This is a cupcake of a dress and I want to eat it. Cardi B has become a bit of an unexpected fashion icon and Pia Mia looks as hot-party-girl as ever but I feel to put anyone next to Ariana in this dress seems harsh because she just completely stole the show and I don’t even know if she won any Grammys.

(L-R: Josephine Relli, Gwen Stefani, Jameela Jamil in Georges Chakra, and Chrissy Teigen in Yanina Couture)

Other than Ariana, I’m not gonna lie, there was nothing wildly exciting, BUT I did think there were some beautiful colours out on the runway-plus for all her occasionally bad takes I really like what Jameela Jamil stands for and her style has always been very quirky cool. The electric blue tiled effect with the black mesh underneath kinda reminds me of a peacock, and contrasts wonderfully with the carpet-it’s very reminiscent of her T4 days. She’s one of those people that seems to get aggression directed at her that’s completely disproportionate to whatever it is she’s supposed to have done; sometimes the way she goes about saying things is wrong but the intention behind what she’s saying is usually good. Then again, the internet still despises Chrissy Teigen (in a way that’s kind of excessive considering what we seem to collectively let some people get away with) for a dumb AirPods tweet and I’ve included her too. THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT, this time anyway. I just think she looks good!

If I’m going to get controversial about anything, it’ll be Gwen Stefani. She looks stunning, the dress is stunning, and the boots are stunning. The outfit is not my problem! My problem is how she seems not to have aged at all. This woman is 50 years old! That she drank the blood of her Harajuku girls is the only explanation here. Can you imagine if she tried to pull that shit today? She’d get rightly accused of being a culturally appropriating weeb in about 10 seconds flat and we’d have to pretend to stop liking Cool and Hollaback Girl. 

(L-R: Finneas O’Connell in Gucci, Lucky Daye, and Shaun Ross)

(L-R: Tess Holliday, Dua Lipa in Alexander Wang, Tyler the Creator, and Grace Elizabeth in Giuseppe di Morabito)

Back to what I’m supposed to be talking about in this blog post: the fashion. And here, most importantly, Tyler the Creator looking like a cast member of the Grand Budapest Hotel. IDK why. But I love this man.

(L-R: Lil Nas X in Versace, Lizzo in Versace, and Shawn Mendes in Louis Vuitton)

(L-R: Billie Porter, FKA Twigs in Ed Marler, and Swae Lee in Giuseppe Zanotti)

See in general, the men were a lot more interesting on the Grammys red carpet. With the exception of Twigs, Dua and obviously Ariana, the men’s outfits are a lot more memorable; Billie Porter became the most fashionable meme on the internet, for god’s sake. And even when their outfits weren’t extravagant, they were just more interesting, imo, which is a rare occurrence. I didn’t expect Finneas O’Connell to be the writing half of Billie Eilish (the other half being Billie herself) I cared about and yet, in that Gucci blazer, here we are. 

(L-R: Jessie J, Hailee Steinfeld, and Madison Beer)

(L-R: H.E.R, Usher, FKA Twigs, and Matt Shultz)

Of the afterparty looks, my favourites are what we can see of these more casual outfits-I love what F.K.A Twigs and H.E.R are wearing, the headscarf with the leatherjacket on top is in particular very throwback rockabilly, and I’m even into whatever it is Usher’s got on.

(L-R: Olivia O’Brien, Amine, and Alrissa)

(L-R: Salem Mitchell, Machine Gun Kelly, and Sydney Sweeney)

Now, how to round this all up!? How to relate the confusingly persistent but very welcome presence of Sydney Sweeney on, like, ALL these red carpets back to the MET!?

IDEK. It’s been a long year. 

The Met Gala has usually come and gone before we know it, but with everything going on, it’s been the longest January-May I think most of us have ever known. I keep going on about COVID-19 in all my posts now but I have almost forgotten how to write an intro and outro because the pandemic is pretty much consistently on the brain and unless I have something right in front of me to use as a distraction, my mind tends to wander off into a very anxious place. I think, like many others, I feel frustrated and disappointed and angry with the way the situation is being handled by the people who are supposed to protect their citizens, and by how much of a fight some are putting up against measures that are in place to try and save lives. The point of this ramble, I guess, is that whilst we should never forget what’s going on and do the best we can to help prevent the spread of the virus, it’s okay to still care about mundane shit. Was this post one big long distraction for me? Probably. But if there’s something harmless you can do to keep your anxiety at bay, don’t feel bad for doing it. Contrary to popular belief, you can care about more than one thing at once. You can be sad that something you were looking forward to has been cancelled whilst still being sad for the people who are suffering because they’ve lost love ones or who have been forced into precarious living conditions. If talking about clothes on the internet is going to help you get through this pandemic, power to you.

If anyone has read til the end, thank you! I hope you are well! As always, feel free to reply to the post or inbox me with your thoughts! It doesn’t even have to be related to this post. If you’re struggling with everything going on, feel free to reach out too. I spend too much time on the internet anyway, lol! My plans are to finish my fashion week reviews and then I have a Lana Del Rey albums inspired lookbook which I pinched off the stans on Twitter (who I will of course credit when I write it!). For the time being, look after yourselves!

Lauren x

[glasyasbutch]

8, 14, 25, 27, 37! d10 option, but do 2 per question if you wanna answer w all your characters!

finally i have time on my laptop to type this out ........ thank you morgan for my life ................ (i had to roll this d10 so many times cause it refused to pick anything but 5, and while i have a lot of thoughts about gildy, other characters need love) 8.  If they were given 1000 acres of land with no strings attached, what would they do with it? Gildy: obvious answer here is build her own forge from the ground up. like hello. how sexy of her to do this. but like, she misses the bustle of being around people all the time so it’d be open to the public for demos/lessons. are teaching forges a thing? they are in my world and she runs it and its full of tiny little dwarven babies who probably shouldn’t be allowed access to burning hot metal but like she’s a cleric so its fiiiiiiine Ezra: this is a toughie for him but the dice are forcing me to think. My first thought for him would honestly be give it away to some farmers or something, since he’s never really been the kind of guy to have personal possessions or things entirely his own. like. he grew up in a temple and then spent the next large chunk of his life doing 24/7 hospice care for someone, he’s never owned a house, or had things just for him. his whole life has been about community and sharing, he’d feel bad using it for any of his own desires. 

however, for the sake of the question, if he has to take it and do something with it himself. big fat library. (where will he get the books from? don’t worry about it.) he only has 8 int but he thoroughly understands the value of knowledge, and you know, little selfish bonus. a huge collection of books like that is his best shot at finding something out about cate

14.  What’s a personality trait they wish they had?

Ebbie: Confidence. Not necessarily in the sense that he doubts himself, though he does a fair amount, but mainly what he wants is the ability to make other people believe him when he Does think he can do something. He doesn’t want to be “trying to make something of himself” in everyone’s eyes forever. He’s already made something. 

Nissy: Absolutely nothing he’s perfect how he is how DARE you insinuate that he could need ANYTHING added to his finely manufactured personali- (Patience. He has so, so many years to go ahead of him and he doesn’t know how to make things last. He’s worried that if he keeps letting people and interests slip through his fingers like sand he’ll have nothing left to hold before he even reaches his final lifetime.)

25.  If there was a day held in their honor, what would people have to do on that day? Craving: ooooooooooooooooooooooohohohohohohoho. Oh boy this is ,.... this is tasty. I’m thinking a sort of mardigras crossed with the purge but less murder in which the vibe is “fucking anything goes, you’re the tits so damn well act like it”. extravagancy, over-dressing for the occassion, blatant gluttony, open container alcohol, if you think it’s pretty its yours kinda attitude. tons of costume jewelry on your body and trinkets in your pocket with the expectation that you’ll swipe some and others will swipe yours, and you’ll come home with a new selection of “finery”. the nice things stay locked at home. restaurants offer free food and stores have huge sales, card games and county fair style side shows in the middle of the street. an excuse to indulge recklessly. Udoora: so like, there’s Kind of already a day in their honor cause the whole town has their yearly festival where they pray to the goddess and go yo whats up lady is your champion stepping down or are we re-blessing the one we already have!! but that’s not specific to doora. one Just for her... country town festival. think bilbo’s 111th birthday minus the magic fireworks. whole city comes out to party, tons of food, music and dancing, the streets lined with wildflower garlands. stories and laughing around a bonfire as the sun leaves the sky, reverence for the people around you and the place you call home.

27.  What makes a person beautiful to them?

Stella: Gentleness. Now you may read this and go how the FUCK did she end up with craving, and the answer to that is: this question said “beautiful” not “extremely sexy”. she got together with craving because she was horny and THEN she fell in love with craving’s soft side. (Her favorite physical aspect of craving is her hair. she loves to run her fingers through it, because it’s always inexplicably soft, in comparison to the horns and the barbs)

Stella grew up in the woods though, learning to tread light so as not to scare an animal or disrupt a nest. Her favorite place to be as a kid was calf-deep in the slowest part of the river. She knows the soft kiss of the sun on shoulders and the cushion of moss under toes. She was raised in the gentleness of nature, and she longs to see that gentleness reflected in humanity.

Hedja: Now this is an interesting one bc I’d explicitly decided against romance if I ever play them (not that if they don’t pursue romance they’re incapable of seeing beauty but it’s not something i’d thought much at all about). I’d say humor, levity, optimism. The ability to find any speck of brightness you can and kindle it. They don’t care much for physical looks or appearances, but that belief in happiness around every corner is what makes them continue to serve their god, because they find it to be the most beautiful part of life.

37.  What do they think is a conspiracy? Tov: so. a conspiracy that he believes is true is that rowan and sloan are fucking to make him and moos jealous. we know this. but a truth that he believes is conspiracy ... you know i’m gonna say that there’s several warlock patrons who are definitely real in d&d canon but he refuses to believe that they exist because he had such shit luck trying to contact them with rax. (don’t ask me which ones i don’t know enough d&d lore for this) Roona: my god. she’s the perfect one for this holy shit ... she’s about 30% convinced that every thing that’s been said to her for her entire life is fake and she’s part of a really fucked up social experiment, so there’s that. she’s also a strong believer in the “we’re all in a simulation” theory, as well as “i’m the only one who’s alive and everyone else is a simulation” theory. she waffles on and off as to whether all the gods are actually just one guy. there’s one town she passed through where she’s sure the king has been dead for years and is being puppeted around by a necromancer group running a shadow government. there’s no fucking way math is real, everyone’s bullshitting numbers bigger than 100. not really a conspiracy but since getting the ass spoon she doesn’t believe in the societal value of forks cause she’s been doing just fucking fine with her spoon and her hands only thank you VERY much.

[claritalunaluna76]

When Bob Donnelly entered the music business as a lawyer in 1976, payola, or pay-for-play, was standard in the radio industry.

“When I first started, it was hookers and blow [to help get songs on the air],” Donnelly says. “Then that disappeared and it became sports tickets, trips, sneakers and the like. It changed over time so that it became much more sophisticated. At the end of the day, the labels still wanted hit records and the radio stations wanted cash.

While some radio promoters today liken those days to the Wild West — a distant past — conversations with more than 30 people in the music industry familiar with the modern radio business indicate that payments to influence airplay are still a significant feature of the radio landscape. “It never went away,” says Paul Porter, a veteran of “urban” radio who discusses his experiences with payola in his 2017 book, Blackout: My 40 Years in the Record Business. “The old days of coming in [to a radio station] with a 12-inch [record] full of money [and offering] trips and cocaine are all gone. Now everything goes to LLCs and cash apps.”

“Everyone knows it’s there,” adds Allen Kovac, CEO of the rock-focused Eleven Seven Label Group. “It’s a game that should’ve gone away a long time ago. [But] it’s prevalent enough that you’re not gonna get into the Top 15 without playing that game.”

Pay-for-play is at least as old as rock itself. The first congressional hearings on payola in the radio industry were held in 1960, resulting in the prohibition of undisclosed pay-for-play. But pay-for-play did not end. Donnelly heard so many stories from fed-up artist clients about payments to DJs and radio stations that he decided to alert Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, to the state of the industry in 2004.

Spitzer’s investigations revealed that payola was rampant in radio. To influence airplay, money and other “valuable considerations” moved among labels or middlemen known as “indie promoters” and radio stations. “It was the early stage of people using email, so [labels and radio programmers] were pretty straightforward in terms of what the deals were and the transactions that were being cut,” Spitzer tells Rolling Stone. In 2003, for example, one program director asked Columbia Records, “Do you need help on Jessica [Simpson] this week? $1,250? If you don’t need help, I certainly don’t need to play it.”

As a result of the New York investigation, each of the major labels agreed to pay multimillion-dollar settlements. Radio chains like CBS and Entercom also paid financial penalties. In addition, the major labels committed to significant “business reforms” in the ensuing deal with the New York attorney general’s office. The most important of these was a promise to “not use … [contests or giveaways, commercial transactions, advertising, artist appearances and performances] in an explicit or implicit exchange, agreement or understanding to obtain airplay or increase airplay.”

Despite these agreements, pay-for-play transactions persist in the industry. One manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, recently spent approximately $10,000 through a third party directly paying radio DJs in the “urban” and rhythmic formats to play a single. The payments were strategically employed to boost the singer’s spins. When a label signed the artist, the manager was able to earn his money back.

That was a relatively cheap investment. Another music-industry veteran who requested anonymity claims that he spent five times as much to try to break a record in the rhythmic format. “I bought all my spins at the right places,” he says. “We spent about $50,000.” He got around 800 plays, mostly in mix shows.

Four radio insiders say there are small-market stations in the Top 40 and “urban” formats that appear so susceptible to influence that their playlists cannot be trusted when trying to gauge the success of a single. (Program directors often consult their colleagues’ playlists when making decisions about whether or not to play a song; few want to step out on a record without seeing it working elsewhere first.)

Stations like this exist “in every format,” says “Tom,” a label promoter with cross-genre experience whose name has been changed to protect his anonymity. “Say a song is Number 20 on the Top 40 chart [ranked by spins], but it’s Number 40 in audience [reached],” Tom continues. “You’ll probably see stations pop up with a high concentration of the spins overnight [when barely anyone is listening]. They’re getting something in return. They’re not doing it every single time just to help somebody out.”

“Take a look at the Mediabase chart and look at how many people got one, two, or three spins [a week],” adds the veteran who spent $50,000 buying spins. Songs become radio hits only if they get played in bulk; a couple of spins a week is not enough for a track to become familiar to casual listeners. “How do you break a record spinning it once a week?” the veteran asks. “For $300.” A rep for Mediabase declined to comment for this article.

In addition to direct payments to people in programming positions, industry veterans say that money passing from record labels or artists to radio stations for the purpose of influencing playlists often takes a subtler, more circuitous route. Payments are fuzzily described as promotional, and funneled through independent promoters who are frequently compared to “consultants” or “lobbyists” for hire.

In radio, this form of lobbying is reminiscent of behavior that was explicitly prohibited in the Spitzer settlements. In 2006, the New York attorney general’s office wrote that “in an effort to dodge the payola laws, record labels and radio stations have also enlisted the services of so-called independent promoters … middlemen who act as conduits for delivery of the labels’ ‘promotional support’ to the stations and help perpetuate the fiction that this support is not actually being delivered by the labels in exchange for airplay and therefore does not violate payola statutes. Many independent promoters receive compensation from the labels for each ‘add’ they obtain.”

Today, some indie promoters establish special rapport with specific stations. Then, thanks to their exclusive relationships, these promoters develop a certain amount of clout — they serve as gatekeepers to the stations in their flock. In the Top 40 space, two promoters are known for allegedly having a number of stations under their influence.

“Jane,” a former major-label promotions executive whose name has been changed, explains that “some independent promoters claim to record labels, ‘You won’t get access to certain radio programmers because there are too few hours in the day and they’re not going to take calls from every single label out there. If you pay me to promote your record, yours can be one of the eight tracks that I’m working. These programmers return my phone calls.‘”

To promote a single in the Top 40 format, “you’re probably gonna hire 10 different indies on every record,” Tom says. “There could be one guy who has one station you want, another guy who has 12 stations that you want. I don’t think there’s any way somebody could have a hit at radio without having to do that.”

In the case of one prominent radio network that allegedly has an exclusive relationship with a single promoter, “he gets the adds, and then you pay him 3,500 bucks,” says “James” (not his real name), a second promotions executive with extensive major-label experience. “We call it the toll — everybody has to pay it.”

Unlike the old days, when a programmer might take home $1,250 for spinning Jessica Simpson, “the toll” doesn’t always go into the programmer’s pocket today. Instead, “what [the stations] need the money for is to go toward marketing, quote-unquote,” James says. That might include buying advertising time on the airwaves or billboards in the market, or putting money toward products like T-shirts and bumper stickers that publicize both the radio station and the record label.

Again, this behavior was uncovered — and prohibited — in the New York attorney general’s investigation more than a decade ago. “In addition to employing the traditional device of delivering bribes to radio programmers … record labels endeavor to gain airplay for their songs by providing such inducements to the radio stations as ‘promotional support,’ ” the attorney general’s office wrote.

To the extent that program directors even acknowledge the existence of seamy promotional behavior — which they rarely do — they hasten to say it’s concentrated in formats that are not their own. Multiple people working in the pop space pointed fingers at “urban” or Latin radio. Another program director who spoke on the condition of anonymity singled out country music for “get[ting] away with fricking murder.” “Everyone thinks they’re sweet boys because they got missed on the big sweep that happened with Spitzer,” the program director adds. “All the pop stations got their hands slapped, and everyone looked at us like we were a bunch of pigs. Country just skated right on by.”

Insiders claim there are notable differences between radio’s behavior today and the disguised payments that were uncovered in the Spitzer investigation.

Two people working in promotion point out that major radio chains like iHeartMedia and Cumulus have tried to distance themselves from pay-for-play, mostly by refusing to work with indie promoters. Since those two chains control many of the stations that make up the radio charts, this distancing limits the impact of any payola-type activity. A spokesperson for Cumulus said that the company has “a strict ‘no independent record promoters’ policy dating back to the 2005 Eliot Spitzer investigations”; iHeart noted that “we don’t typically work with indie promoters because we have so many other opportunities to work directly with labels and independent artists.”

Promoters also note that there are times when spending money on “promotional support” can be entirely above-board, especially if a singer in the station’s rotation is planning an upcoming show in the area. “One legitimate reason for a record label to advertise on a radio station is if they’re doing tour support,” says Jane, the former major-label promoter.

In addition, several radio and label officials argue that most promoters’ influence is indirect or advisory. “There really are people who just call people and have good relationships and can cite good facts [about songs they are hired to advance],” Tom says. “There are people where there is no quid pro quo.”

“There is still a way to structure this so it works,” adds a lawyer in the communications industry. “What the indie is obtaining from a station is the right to meet with the music director every so often and tell them about the latest records he’s promoting. One other right he’s allowed to have: When they do add one of his songs, [the station] tells him first. For these agreements to be legal, that’s all the [rights the] indie has. In return, he can give promo items to the station because he’s only getting the right to meet with them.”

Multiple people note that promoters with exclusive relationships work carefully with attorneys to make sure they are “buttoned up” — secure in the eyes of the FCC. “My sense is it’s extremely common for there to be some kind of financial transaction taking place between the station and the label,” says one FCC source. “But they just package it in a way that passes muster under our rules. The way they do it is basically exploiting loopholes in the law.” That makes radio “a very tricky area to take enforcement in.”

“On the surface, it looks sleazy and cheesy, and at times it is,” sums up James, the promotions veteran. “But it’s also on the up-and-up.” Recently, however, he says he refused to pay “the toll” to a station that had a relationship with one of the prominent independent promoters working in pop. As a result, James claims the station refused to put his song into rotation until it already went Number One.

The last line of defense against improper radio promotion behavior is major-label compliance departments, which were set up after the Spitzer lawsuits to “monitor promotion practices and develop and implement an internal accounting system designed to detect future abuses.”

Many of the people who spoke for this story pointed to the paperwork they have to sign — forms that declare that no money was exchanged for airplay — and the compliance training sessions they attend, suggesting these measures serve to curb any inappropriate behavior.

Representatives from two major-label compliance departments said the indie promoters are required to certify that they adhere to the rules laid out in the settlements with the New York Attorney General’s office every year. But “we don’t get involved in whatever relationship the promoter has with the station,” one major-label compliance officer says. “There’s nothing in the agreement that prevents us from working with independent promoters who have exclusive relationships.”

That suggests that majors may not have enough information to ensure that the indie promoters are acting in the correct manner: How can a compliance officer determine if an indie is using improper methods to influence a station without knowing the relationship between the two parties?

And even if compliance officers do have the correct information, they don’t seem able to do much about it. “The tools we have are the certifications from the independent promoters, educating them about their obligations and any information I get [about improper behavior],” says one major-label compliance officer. The annual compliance certification for one major label, reviewed by Rolling Stone, is relatively toothless: If an indie promoter violates his or her agreement with that label, it “could lead to disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.”

“Clark,” a second former major-label promotions executive whose name has been changed, described the compliance agreements as “some bullshit, but you keep it moving.”

“Who’s regulating this, and who’s going to enforce it?” he asks.

The labels aren’t going to police themselves?

“Fuck, no,” Clark responds. “Why would we do that?”

It’s hard to find anyone in the radio ecosystem with good things to say about any of the variants of payola. “Labels don’t generally want to pay money for airplay; they’d rather get their airplay strictly on the basis of merit,” Jane says. “To the extent that payola has been a recurring form of corruption, it has been a cost of doing business competitively that most labels would prefer not to have to pay.”

Kovac, the indie label head, throws the blame back on the major labels for perpetuating “an old system that shouldn’t even be around anymore.” “If you’re a promo guy, and you’re bonused on charts, what’s the problem with incentives?” he continues. “They work. If you’re [Universal Music Group CEO] Lucian Grainge and you said to all the presidents of all your labels, ‘Tell your head of promotion from now on they only get paid on consumption [rather than spin-based charts],’ all of a sudden you’ve changed the incentive.”

Many in radio claim not to be fond of the current system either. “We hate it on our end,” James says. “But again, they sign documentation saying that there’s no money being exchanged for airplay. I guess there is money being exchanged for airplay, because you have to pay it. [Radio stations] have a choice of so many different records that they can play [instead of yours]. You’re either in or you’re out.”

Promoters and programmers say radio stations with exclusive promotion arrangements do stand to benefit from them. Phil Becker, EVP of programming for Alpha Media, says these exclusive relationships help streamline a hectic process for overworked program directors. And someone who worked at a group of radio stations notes that exclusive arrangements also drive revenue and promotional benefits for stations — especially valuable in smaller markets.

“In effect, radio stations are selling airplay to record labels,” says Gabriel Rossman, an associate professor of sociology at UCLA and the author of Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us About the Diffusion of Innovation. “A lot of it is for promotional support: If the 10th caller gets concert tickets, that sort of thing. It’s a transfer from the labels and the artists to the stations.”

Artists can benefit from this transfer, since power is hyperconcentrated in the music industry. Say an artist doesn’t have a major-label deal, and his team does not have a longstanding relationship with Spotify and Apple Music’s small number of very-hard-to-reach playlist “curators.” In that case, lobbying radio might still allow this artist to get his music in front of a wide audience. That was the case for the industry players who directed strategic payments to DJs.

But even if radio serves to bring attention to unknown artists, it’s a tough game to get involved in without deep pockets — or, more likely, major-label support. To have real success promoting a song to “urban” radio, experts say you have to be able to put up at least $100,000 to $125,000. Pop radio has many more stations, so promotion there is more expensive.

One interpretation of the modern radio system suggests that the high price for airplay is the whole point: It creates a barrier to entry that favors major labels. In 1990’s Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, Fredric Dannen’s detailed history of radio promotion at its most corrupt, the author wrote that “the large record companies understood on some level that if radio airplay were not free, it would mean a major competitive edge.”

Rossman sees it differently. In 1960, he says, “the pre-rock labels were convinced that the only reason rock was played was the indie labels bribed all the DJs. By the 1980s, the dominant narrative was that the major labels compete unfairly through payola. I think it’s just [that] this is how labels compete. There’s a valuable resource, and they bid up the price.”

This is a game primarily for the rich, but playing it still has risks. For one thing, it’s streaming, not radio play, that drives monetization today, so labels largely don’t expect a direct return on their investment. Instead, they hope that the radio exposure they are shelling out for at high prices will boost clicks on Spotify or Apple Music.

But the math might not work that way. A song that is played heavily at radio but not consumed otherwise is known as a “turntable hit.” If an artist has to pay $3,500 for an add in one market, radio play needs to create roughly a million streams in that market to break even. “You’re spending a lot of money in tertiary markets that are playing songs in overnights,” Kovac says. At the same time, “the revenue that would come out of broadcast radio airplay has been reduced by three-quarters, two-thirds, due to the evaporation of CD sales and ever-declining digital sales,” according to a third promoter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You’re not seeing the same revenue return from radio airplay because the amount of streams you have to get to make back your investment in radio promotion spending is greater than the short-term return.”

Payola may also complicate marketing strategies. If radio play causes streams to jump, it isn’t easy to determine why they increased. “Is it for the right reasons [e.g. people like the song] or the wrong reasons [e.g. anything else]?” Jane wonders. Plotting the correct next step — the follow-up single, the tour routing — depends on understanding the initial source of success. Pay-for-play practices obscure that.

“It’s not a good thing for the artist,” says one longtime East Coast DJ. “It’s not a good thing for the labels. It’s not a good thing for the integrity of our radio stations.”

But the fate of pay-for-pay-like practices may ultimately be tied to the health of radio itself. “As long as [radio] maintains that hold on breaking new artists [and] new music, there’s always going to be a competition for those limited number of spots on their airplay list,” says Donnelly.

“People are just going to do whatever they have to do to get a play.”

Source (August 7, 2019)

[thaumatological]

im gonnaaaa revise and post my very dirk centric analysis of the epilogues here as well

also in case it needs stating, spoilers abound!

i read through both of the epilogues simultaneously yesterday, consuming both at the same time rather than one and then the other, and i feel like while it may not have been the most “satisfying” approach from a character-centric perspective, i have a more complete understanding of the stories than those who read them separately. if you’ve read through both and have the stomach to do it again for some reason, i suggest doing it in parallel, m1 c1 m2 c2 etc.

i will warn you though, i ended up having two nightmares at the same time in my dreams last night. like, simultaneously, two separate threads of terror unraveling in my subconscious. i woke up this morning already knee deep into an analysis of the homestuck epilogues, and it was less like “waking up” and more “becoming aware that i was conscious”

anyway, without further ado!

dirk killing himself in candy 14 is the scene that resonates with us as being “dirk” because it is. that’s all dirk, our dirk, the one from homestuck. he Has to do that in order for candy to continue being candy, and part of me believes that he knew that on a conscious level—hence his death being just. he knew he wouldn’t get a nice fluffy outcome in the candy timeline because him, all of him, not just this one instance, was fated to be meat dirk.

—and speaking of, the concept of Ultimate Selves pretty much squares away meat dirk. he doesn’t read like our dirk, the one from homestuck canon, because the narrative explicitly states he’s Not anymore. he’s become all of him, all of him from across paradox space, including notable players bro, doc scratch, and lord english. dirk’s Ultimate Self is a culmination of every possible him taken to the highest intensity. it reads like one of his personal nightmares because it WAS his personal nightmare—the personal nightmare of our dirk. he’s a prince of heart. the ascension to his Ultimate Self resulted in the complete destruction of the barriers between his splinters. the more i think about it, the more brilliant it is. he seems out of character as the dirk we know and love because he isn’t.

i feel like i finally Get it, but i’m still not looking forward to seeing people who dislike dirk using this to discredit the progress he made on his personal journey (ie “see he was evil the whole time!”) nor am i looking forward to all of the “dirk would never do this! it’s ooc writing!” from people who seem to have missed the part of homestuck where what scared dirk about himself most was the undeniable truth in it. there’s more than one example of “bad dirk and/or dirk byproducts” out there in paradox space. it’s more than feeling like you “might” be bad, it’s… being afraid of what you would be if you weren’t so afraid of being it, it’s seeing things that were a result of You-but-not-you and having to stare down the fact that even if you weren’t bad, even if you didn’t, you could have, would have, did. dirk’s Ultimate Self being a nightmare scenario is ..almost a recursive throwback to his fears about his ultimate self (note capitals)

him taking control of the narrative was epic though. it honestly did not catch me off guard? it makes sense. it is a 100% dirk strider move. if you haven’t read it by now for some reason, go read detective pony. i am diagnosing you with read detective pony by sonnetstuck. it’s terminal.

the only two people aside from hussie to have controlled the narrative in homestuck canon are the cherubs. and i did make the point somewhere up there that dirk absorbed lord english, and by extension, caliborn. that’s WHY he got that ability. not because he’s a prince of heart. dirk controlling the narrative makes sense from the perspective of dirk controlling the external narrative as well, ie, the whole thing is on a piece of paper that he wrote as some form of bizarre cathartic self punishment for his existence, but in the grander scheme of things and truth of homestuck dirk controlling the narrative makes sense as the puppetmaster-turned-puppet we see him become in several of his iterations, because caliborn literally becomes part of him.

everything is so skewed by the narrators. yes, both of them, because the whole point of the epilogues is that both of them suck and muse calliope is just as shitty as “impartial” “narrator” as Ultimate Self dirk is. it actually makes the whole thing a lot greyer in morality than it comes across at first. US dirk does a lot of Bad Shit as narrator, yeah, but even as passive as she is, calliope’s narration has its flaws (see: everything relating to trickster mode)

the epilogues are less about the characters themselves and more about a grander conflict between the two cherubs, using dirk and jade as their puppets—and yes, muse calliope is using jade as a puppet LITERALLY, which upsets me on so many levels i can’t even get into it here. let jade be fucking relevant and happy hussie or so help me i will write myself into your narrative and do some renovation of my own. but dirk is equally deprived of his agency in this scenario. i’m not going to debate with anyone about the inherent goodness/badness of dirk strider because that’s an entirely different essay, but in canon, dirk’s entire arc is about NOT becoming exactly what he becomes in the epilogues. the dirk we know didn’t choose to become his “Ultimate Self,” the dirk we know doesn’t get a choice between meat and candy, the dirk we know is at the mercy of the narrative even as he pretends to control it.

and that’s not something new to dirk strider, in any variation of himself. i’m specifically going back to thinking about the term “puppetmaster-turned-puppet” here, because i like it. in canon, we see dirk get out-puppeted by hal. it’s implied that bro is being controlled at least in part by lil cal, who is in turn.. a splinter of dirk indirectly via hal via arquiussprite. i’m getting a little lost in all the splinters. why is dirk’s worst enemy consistently himself? don’t answer that. uhh also it should be mentioned that makes lil cal a puppetmaster-turned-puppet-turned-puppetmaster, both literally and metaphorically. i fucking hate andrew hussie.

anyway, both of the epilogues do all that shit to to drive home the point that both of them (and i mean muse calliope and LE here when i say both, because this has officially stopped being about the dirk we know) are removed from human concepts like “good” and “evil” and represent duality in an alien manner that to a casual observer could be mistaken for some objective statement about morality, but they’re both wrong to us from our perspective as humans with human morals. the choice of candy and meat from the beginning was a cherub one. that’s not a balanced meal! that’s not even a reasonable dichotomy for humans! meat is not more real or “canon” than candy was, both of them are very flawed stories being manned at the helm by omnipotent green aliens.

okay we’re ALMOST done here, i just want to touch on the actual authors of the narrative rather than the ones the narrative insists are its narrators. by which i mean the actual real life human beings who wrote the epilogue. the point i was making above about how dirk doesn’t have any agency? the point of these epilogues were that none of the characters have any agency in their stories. every work is a reflection of its author, even when aforementioned authors are hiding behind pseudoauthors on a narrative level.

the homestuck epilogues feel very meanspirited to me. they punish their readers for not understanding their intentionally heavyhanded meta. homestuck was always very meta, but it was also fun. this, on the other hand, wasn’t fun. i haven’t seen anyone claim that the epilogues were a “fun” read, even those who enjoyed them enjoy them on the basis that “tragedy is a valid form of art,” and,,, ........and their opinions are. valid. and they can have them. sure.

but for those of us who read stories in order to enjoy them, which i am safely assuming makes up the majority of those who read homestuck, the homestuck epilogues are like a final kick in the teeth as a send off to a fandom with barely any teeth left to lose. we’re already having people who refuse to read them, and god i wish that were me, but it’s also.,, you can’t criticize something properly if you haven’t read it. we’re going to see a lot of very bad takes in the coming days about all kinds of things from information proliferating through the grapevine, and personally, i am not looking forward to it. i really hope this is the end, that homestuck is finally fucking over, and the epilogues are done with and we can all live our lives unmarred by strange orange men with typewriters. i’m going to hole up with my cool and new webcomic music albums and all of the good novel-length dirk-centric fic i’ve bookmarked over the years and wait this one out. i invite you to do the same.

cool and new webcomic bandcamp | cool and new greatest hits | my personal favorite album by them

detective pony by sonnetstuck (seriously please read this it watered my crops and cured my lead poisoning)

literally anything by callmearcturus but this is my personal favorite (chamomile, rosewater, and other unlikely intoxicants)

this long winded discworld joke by oxfordroulette that inflicted me with a terminal case of loving jake english despite it being a dirkjohn fic (vanitas vanitatum) also if you finish reading this one and also succumbed to loving jake english, i’m not going to link it but they have another fic that’ll scratch that itch for you. that’s all i’ll say on that matter.

this fic said nonverbal autistic dirk rights and thank god (we were made for another world by princex_n)

thanks for reading

[mst3kproject]

209: The Hellcats

With both the writer and the star of Sidehackers on board, we know we’re in for a delightful fun-filled romp.

Detective Dave Chapman is murdered by some sort of extremely small mob (kind of a mob-let) before he can close in on their drug smuggling operation.  His brother Monty gets back from Vietnam or somewhere just in time to hear the news, and being played by Ross Hagen, he decides he’s going to have to get revenge himself.  He and his fiancée-in-law Linda decide to dress up as bikers, get themselves invited into the gang that does the drug-running, and bring down the whole operation from within.

For a long time, I felt like there had to be a lot missing from The Hellcats, because when I would watch it as an MST3K episode I was never totally sure what was going on. Surely the Brains had removed something very important when they edited this film for the show.  Then I started doing this blog, and I got cynical.  If you’ll recall, I thought the same thing about movies like Laserblast and Swamp Diamonds, and it turned out I was wrong – the stuff they took out was even more irrelevant than the stuff they left in.  Yet upon re-watching episode 209 again, I got that same old feeling.  Where were everybody’s motivations?  Were they in the missing scenes?

Of course they fucking weren’t.

I’ll give you a specific example: I thought there had to be more to the scene at the airport, where Monty and Linda meet up after Dave’s death. Remember in movies like T-Bird Gang and Wild Rebels where the police want somebody to go undercover and get evidence?  I figured there would have to be something like that, but there isn’t.  Instead, as I said in the summary, the only reason Monty decides to do this himself seems to be because he’s Ross Hagen, and when Linda tries to protest, he won’t let her out.  Why can’t they let the police handle it?  You’d think the movie would want to offer at least a token reason.

What about the relationship between Linda and Monty?  She’s introduced as his brother’s fiancée.  She’s posing as his girlfriend when they meet the bikers at the Moonfire Inn (a place where the real-life Manson ‘family’ hung out), but she quickly becomes actually jealous when first Cyclops Woman and then Sheila take an interest in him.  Is she supposed to have fallen in love with him in the week or so since Dave died? This is never dealt with explicitly but their tender parting, with Linda urging him to come back soon, seems to imply it.

Like Megara in The Loves of Hercules, Dave is the movie’s fridge meat: he’s only here to die, and only dies to motivate Monty and Linda.  We know him about as well as we knew Megara, and we don’t really care about him or about the bond these other characters supposedly had with him.  Once Monty and Linda have ingratiated themselves with the gang, events move off in other directions and Dave is pretty much forgotten about.  It’s at least kind of refreshing that the movie places a man in this role, but then it goes and kills one of the girl bikers in order to anger her boyfriend.  Two fridges in one movie!

There’s more stuff missing.  Like, who are the other biker gang, who assaulted the artist and model and then showed up to challenge Snake to a race?  They seem to pop out of the void and then fade back into it.  How did Monty know where Sheila and Linda had gone when they went to see the moblet boss?  He was too far behind to have followed them.

Meanwhile, the things that are in the movie look and sound terrible.  The photography is awful: it’s out-of-focus, poorly-framed, jumpy, washed-out, and badly-lit… often all five in the same shot!  I watched the scene of the Hellcats’ Company Team-Building Picnic two or three times trying to figure out if it were supposed to be day-for-night or if it were just really crummy filming in general.  I favour the latter but I’m still not sure.  There’s at least enough light to tell what’s going on, which is a step up from some of these movies, but it’s bland and flat and everything looks like somebody’s home movies.

The actors are terrible.  The moblet boss in particular sounds like he’s reciting the times table in every scene he’s in.  Everybody else is better than him, but that leaves them a lot of room to suck.  Most of the ‘bikers’ look like they’re accountants or something dressed up for a theme party.

The music is bad, with not a single memorable song.  I can hum the Hellcats theme that plays over the opening and ending, but I remember it mostly because it reminds me of the Zombie Stomp from Horror of Party Beach.  A song about the brutality of a motorcycle gang should not sound like Playful Teen Beach Movie music!  Later, when things get actiony, we get what sounds like cheesy spy movie music.  It’s weird.

The crappy music plays over a lot of padding.  There are long-ass scenes of bikers on the road, and of the gang drinking, dancing, and fighting in the bar and at the picnic, while nothing much happens.  These make the movie longer, but they also provide something to show while the music plays, and the music really is the point because believe it or not, there was a soundtrack album for this movie.  I wonder how that went.

Insofar as the movie means something, it has an anti-drug message presented through the character Hiney’s bad trips (his version of Roses are Red does at least make me snicker) and the Mexican guy’s addict girlfriend begging for a fix.  This is as unsubtle as anything in Reefer Madness, if slightly less melodramatic, and it doesn’t merit deeper analysis.

Then there’s the ending, when the gang is undone by sheer bad luck. Instead of our heroes gathering evidence, finding out who was responsible for Dave’s death, and getting revenge, the whole drug operation falls apart as a result of a traffic accident.  One of the girl bikers crashes her bike after running over a board on the road, and the police lay a trap, knowing the gang will come back for the drugs she was carrying.  The man who does so decides to just turn everybody in to save his own skin.  Monty and Linda show up at the moblet’s HQ, where Sheila has gone for… some reason… and the final fight has far more to do with escape and survival than with revenge.

Monty and Linda participate in this climax but they are not in any way responsible for it.  An act of revenge does occur, but it’s on the part of the biker gang, who want vengeance for the dead girl on behalf of her grieving boyfriend.  If Monty and Linda had simply left things to the police, as Linda herself recommended, all this would probably have happened exactly the same.  Like Cabot in Outlaw, or Cal and Ruth in This Island Earth, they’re entirely useless in their own movie!

Of course, in Outlaw and This Island Earth, we had some idea of the personalities of the people we were watching.  In The Hellcats we’ve barely met Monty and Linda and what we’ve seen of them doesn’t particularly encourage us to like them.  Monty gets off his plane and immediately vows revenge, and the next time we see him is roaring up to the Moonfire Inn on a bike with Linda clinging to him.  We first meet Linda carping at her fiancé about him ignoring her in favour of work.  If he’d lived and been the hero of this movie, she would have been the nagging girlfriend whom he eventually reconciles with after realizing how important family is. We don’t know or like Monty or Linda well enough to root for them, and we definitely haven’t seen enough to care about their emotional bonds with Dave.

I find myself comparing The Hellcats to The Sidehackers and trying to figure out which movie is worse.  The Sidehackers did at least try to be about something (religion), but it was a nasty misanthropic movie that killed off both the protagonists and the antagonists, and left a bad taste in my mouth for days.  The Hellcats doesn’t have any themes besides Drugs Are Bad and the characters don’t appear to grow or learn anything from their experiences, but it doesn’t hate the audience the way The Sidehackers did.  If I had to pick one of the two to watch again, I don’t know which it would be.  I mean, The Sidehackers is less boring, but I hate it so much more.

Have I just lost patience with these movies after over a hundred of them?  Or was this one actually that bad?  I don’t remember being so annoyed by it when I watched it as an MST3K episode but then, I only watched it once – the flashback host sketches disappointed me so I never bothered with it again.  Too, I’ve learned a lot about what to pay attention to when I’m watching a film, and I probably have a very different perspective on shitty movies now than I did when I started this blog.  I wonder… when I’m finished the full run, maybe I should re-visit some of the early entries, and see if I have any new thoughts on them.  Maybe they’ll suck more than ever.

[v5hadow]

Even if we don't clam up about our interests, don't think we aren't hurt.

I've spent decades trying to pick up pieces when they get swatted to the ground. I miss a couple every so often and sometimes I just need a moment to look at all the mess. I do eventually pick up what I can but here and there is a "wow does that edge now stab my arm." Occasionally I get some time to adhere things back together. Or I leave this piece on my dresser so I can pick up the new shiny.

This is why I generally have a couple things that I default to when people invariably ask about things I like. Games, drawing, writing, reading. Rock and pop music. I dont generally watch movies or TV besides Disney movies. I went back to school for medical. If they are curious they can ask expanding questions, otherwise I'm just going to allow the friendship to develop and them to find the specifics themselves. It doesn't take long to pick up whatever the fixation of the week is but even the others get some decent time pretty quickly. Like I love folklore/fairytales/mythology even a bit into superstitions, divination, and magic themselves. My room is just mountains of books with those as a major component. I grew up in a sci-fi, & gaming household, my parents on opposite sides of the wars/trek debate but they're just going to go watch doctor who, Battlestar, etc. or play the latest first party Nintendo game. Also Disney was a huge fixture but that one I can discuss with little conflict with people as a general rule of thumb, even if I cringe at the misinformation. Because international television isn't especially popular even in this day and age (and I will never understand why because Netflix is right there) I don't often mention anime and the variety of crime shows and dramas I watch from around the world. Theater is a language you might want to know around my family home certain times of year (hs musical production and tony awards) and is fact one of my degrees. I work on cruise ships on a limited basis as the prop installer actually. Of all theater things, props and puppets are my specialty and I love a well done performance with puppets. I have another degree in, what is for all intents and purposes, game design. My senior projects were a medical oriented website, a game about fairytale subversion, and co-prop master for an opera (each was a separate semester, I try to take care of myself). I read, draw, and write fan pieces all the time, whether I share them or not. Or you realize it is one or not. You would only get hints of any of this if you don't listen, and especially if you don't ask questions and care about the responses. Unless I felt like taking the risk and that's a variable all its own.

People are way more complex than sometimes others give credit for. And all you need to do is listen and ask questions. My one manager is into video games, anime, and horror but you don't normally hear about anything but the first one due to the rest being something people shut down for him all the time, especially since he's black. I know about the last two more due to them aligning with my own interests better but he's always so surprised when I know a reference or otherwise show I remember that about him. Many a one of my female coworkers are into makeup as their primary safe topic but what kinds and why is the fascinating element, which they will discuss with me as I can follow their language, partially because I can do it but much better at art. They feel comfortable that I'm not going to think they are shallow but they know it's not my thing. They know I get lost in the palette names and the celebrities, but don't mind when I ask questions, and in fact sometimes love it. I've used this as part of my approach to how I interact with the HS students I volunteer for. We paint or I teach them tools and construction methods and talk about whatever their other interests are, with maybe some intercross of my own. I've been explicitly told by many of the kids that they feel I know them better than their own parents, and definitely seen them more in the same span of time. It's a lot of academic and music oriented discussion outside of theater things. It's almost always a pleasure and it's great to see smiles.

So let me reinterate: listen and ask questions. If you can, be the person you'd want around. And that almost always starts with listening honestly. You'd be surprised who you end up with as a friend.

if you’ve been trained to to dislike yourself for enjoying anything due to years of being told you’re annoying clap your hands 👏👏👏

if I listed out every particular instance that was met with negativity enough for me to stop feeling comfortable talking about it, this comic would be like 50 panels.

[ more comics | Patreon | Tapastic ]

[gigsoupmusic]

Yoke Lore talks expression and connection through stories - Interview

Adrian Galvin is telling stories of connection as the act Yoke Lore. These tales come to life through his art and music. In three years Galvin has released three EP's and singles, earning millions of streams and even a spot on Taylor Swifts 'Songs Taylor Loves' playlist. His music and the stories in them help the listener find their place in the world. Of this mission Yoke Lore says "I think that is what stories ultimately do for us is they give us orientation in time and space and culture and romance and like phileo duties and in cultural ideas." Yoke Lore is an artist in multiple mediums. The obvious is in his music, with the unique sound and far-reaching lyrics. The singer is also responsible for all of the artwork for his music and merchandise. Each medium complement each other nicely and work together "I know they're separate like drawing is drawing, and music is music, but it all kind of blends together for me after a while." The artistry doesn't stop there, seeing Yoke Lore live you are brought into this world of creativity. First, the songs are incredible live and the energy the singer puts into each song is top-notch. Second, the son of visual artists brings cool visuals of his own with the New York skyline and subway lines as a backdrop while he plays. Last, with a background in dance the artist takes his own experience with his dance company and puts it on stage with a high-energy performance with his banjo that you won't see anywhere else. Yoke Lore is a live act you don't want to miss. I had the chance to sit down and interview Yoke Lore. We talked about the powerful way he uses many forms of expression, his commitment to telling stories of connection, what it is like landing on a Taylor Swift playlist, and more. Read the full interview below. https://youtu.be/kW-hpNniRas Hi, I'm with Yoke Lore before your show here at Urban Lounge. It's sold out with a line down the block which is incredible to see. But I like to start by talking about why I made the request for an interview. Yoke Lore: Yeah sure! So I talked to you about moving to New York on a whim and soon after I moved to New York is when I found your music so a lot of that time as I was connecting to the city your music was the soundtrack behind the scenes. So I can think of different times or certain songs that take me back to Brooklyn. Wooow! No way! That's so cool! No seriously, so being here is really cool. One time I was listening to Beige on a walk home at 2 A.M. and I was just dancing as I did and I turned a corner I didn't see someone and maybe I came across threatening but this guy took a step towards me like he was going to fight and it's a funny memory now. Now it is the sweet memory I have every time I think about it and how your music brought me to that uncontrollable movement on an early morning walk home. That's funny because some of my dancing could also be construed as combative. https://youtu.be/dm7kh8Nw454 (Laughs) Okay, I'm not the only one then. But we differ because I am a terrible dancer and you have a bit of a dance background right? Yeah a little bit. A little bit. I grew up in a very artsy family, I took ballet classes when I was really little. Then kind of like got too cool for it in my teenage years you know what I mean? But then I did other things that required an amount of grace. Like the sports, I chose to play had some kind of connection to dance, at least with the way I played them. What sports did you play? I wrestled which is a big one and all about spatial relationships and weight differentials and stuff. I played tennis which was all these huge broad movements and then I played ultimate frisbee which you're like in the air half the time and again a lot of huge broad movements. So then when I got to college I also started rollerblading. I got really into aggressive skating. I met this kid at a couple of tournaments and we ended up going to Kenyon College together and so freshman year we started skating together. Eventually that kid, his name is Matt he convinced me to take a dance class with him. Then I loved it and we had a great time, and after school, we started a dance company together and performed at like The Kennedy Center, and at a couple of festivals together in Berlin, Paris, and we performed in New York, LA, Chicago, it was a lot of fun. And so you are a drummer, dancer, you've been in a number of bands including a Led Zeppelin cover band, a screamo folk band, and you do a lot with your own artwork. I wanted to ask what form of expression means the most to you, and how do they connect? I think I'd say for me they all are a really necessary piece of the way I move through the world. I know they're separate like drawing is drawing, and music is music, but it all kind of blends together for me after a while. I see it like you know on a multi-cam tv show and they go to camera two and you behind the scenes when they go to camera one and the perspective changes but it is all capturing the same scene. I think that is the best analogy I can come up with to describe how I view expression. If I write a song about something it is one way of moving through an idea if I draw something with something in mind it becomes another perspective from which to see that. But I need all of them. I need to move between them and I don't have complete view until it passes through as many expressions as I can. You mentioned drawing as a way of connection, you do all the drawing for your artwork. Has there ever been a time where you were drawing something and it became an inspiration for a song or another form of expression? Yeah, so there's a piece of art that I drew for the song Chin Up. When I was drawing that I wanted to do something that like... Chin Up is about the idea of forgiveness and that you should forgive everyone all the time, for everything. Because it is not useful to hold onto shit and for me the metaphor of just like raising your head and looking up and not being so mired in your kind of like lower animal self. But to raise the perspective, and raise your vision so you can like see in the heights you know like raise yourself up to your divinity, to your most lofty self. I wanted something that would like keep people up and so I drew this boat is what it is, but it's not explicitly a boat, but it's like something that keeps people afloat. I try to kind of like represent ideas but like I infuse the idea with some other element of it or kind of a facet that people might not immediately think of or associate with the idea. I want it to almost be like a sibling of the song itself and not like an indicator but more like something else that can accompany the whole thought. https://youtu.be/tCmEw5GCRnM Yeah, it comes from a deeper thought and really knowing the song's meaning, I like that. Now Yoke Lore started as a lot of experimentation and now has really took off, which I saw as I walked the block deep line to get in here tonight. What can you tell me about the journey of starting a few years ago to where it is now? I guess have just been following my nose I guess... there's no formula for how to do this and there certainly isn't a right or a wrong way to go about doing this. But for me, like I really want it. I think that I have something to say. Well... it's not I have something to say, that's stupid. It's that things are being said in a certain way and I want to say them differently. I think to say them differently is to really change the nature of those ideas and really make them super valuable for people so they can use art to their own advantage. It shouldn't just be a pleasure for the senses it needs to be able to be used to get somewhere. I think for me I've used it to get somewhere by just wanting it and staying actively honest with myself about how I want to do it. I have also had an incredible group of people around me who have been in it with me the whole time. I feel like if you are honest in your desires and sincere with the amount of work you're willing to put in, you can't fail. I love that, I love that view. I really appreciate your writing and how you compose a song and put it together. The name Yoke Lore I especially love the meaning with yoke like oxen and being connected and lore with stories. What can you tell me about your commitment to telling these stories of connection? Everyone is a little bit lost to a certain extent I think and kind of just bouncing around trying live good lives, trying to be happy. I think something really changing or meaningful is orienting yourself and knowing where you are in time and space. I think it is a really rare skill to have to be able to orient yourself and know where you've just come from, and know exactly where you want to go, know the kind of ground you're standing on. I think a lot of people get depressed or unhappy because of their disorientation. They don't know where they are at, what they're supposed to be doing, or how to get where they need to go. I think that is what stories ultimately do for us is they give us orientation in time and space and culture and romance and like phileo duties and in cultural ideas. They give us an idea of where we are and I think that is paramount to giving people insight into how they can make their lives a little bit better and knowing where they are. https://youtu.be/9VSUSke-fHo So with orienting yourself, where is it you want Yoke Lore to go? I want to be a huge rock star man. At this point I can like support myself and some other people while doing Yoke Lore which is great. I think I just want to do that on a grander scale. There is like a line of people out front tonight and that's awesome and I want to have that like worldwide. I want to have everyone feel like that. I think Yoke Lore is a specific way of looking at something and a pretty detailed and deep way of approaching things, and I want to make Yoke Lore like its own hermeneutic which is like a technique of analysis almost like psychoanalysis was originally termed depth hermeneutics because of diving deep into something and finding a way to analyze it. I want Yoke Lore to be that for people. I want it to be a not just a set of ideas but a set of techniques with which to approach those ideas and like a set of words with which to kind of approach yourself. Because people don't have a lot of great words these days. Our vocabularies are getting constricted and shrunk and our emotional vocabulary is waning for sure. I want to put it back. I wanted to ask, I once interviewed someone that won the TV show The Voice and I tweeted the interview out and I got a big amount of retweets and follows from all these older fans of The Voice. One of your songs got added to Taylor Swifts 'Songs Taylor Loves' playlist. With that experience I've got to ask what the response was like from Swiftie's after that? (Laughs) Yeah, that...that was wild. I quickly got a lot of fifteen-year-old girls following Yoke Lore and that was cool. But you know you also have to know your audience a little bit and speak in a language that people will understand otherwise it's going to go right over their heads. So it definitely forces me to second guess the level of esoteric on what I want to get, but not in a bad way that I have to dumb everything down. I just have to be aware. I want everyone to be able to hear this, I want everyone to be able to use it. In order to do that I have to speak the language of the people I can't just be speaking my own language to myself. It's interesting how something like that changes your approach a little. Yeah totally. Also by the same token, I want to keep this project dynamic and know that some people are going to gravitate to the really lovely romantic songs like Beige, and then there are going to be people that gravitate towards the loud punchy songs like Hold Me Down, Goodpain, or Fake You or something. I want there to be something for everyone. I want to show all sides to my music and my proclivities and I think both the intimacy and the grandiosity have really necessary places there. I want to do it all and give them everything. https://youtu.be/ttKahjcT2M0 Your approach is very aware and calculated and you truly do have a song for everyone. Thank you, I appreciate that. I have a question I ask in every interview it goes differently each time and that's what I love about it. I know you were a drummer and usually, the drummers have a similar answer so I am excited to see your answer. I ask first if you are into karaoke, and if so what your go-to karaoke song is? I fucking hate karaoke. Really? This is why I love this. Is that the thing that drummers always say? Not at all. Usually, drummers like it because they get to be in the front. I fucking hate it. (laughs) I can't do it. Maybe though because I am a drummer that has come up front and I already get that. Karaoke is hard for me because I am always in this awkward position. It's my fucking job I don't want to make fun of this in a bar (laughs). https://youtu.be/g2j0ybI2tBI Okay so rephrase it then, if not karaoke what would be a go-to cover maybe? See that's exciting! Something fun like Michael Jackson maybe. I like all those fun like 80's song like um *sings* "Josie's on a vacation far away" Who is that? Who sings that? All those bands had like one song. (The song he was singing was 'Your Love' by The Outfield) Your most recent single 'Dead Ringer' just came out and what has been what you want people to get from it? The song is about pacing. It is about like my speed and stuff. Dead Ringer is about kind of like I like to move really fast through the world because I believe in progress over perfection and I just believe in like moving to the next thing. It's my instinct with everything to move quickly and with that I kind of worry sometimes in my more reflective moments that I might miss something or someone because I am always moving so fast. So this song is about moving real fast and worrying about what that might leave me with later on and for other people to think a little about their pace and how they use speed and if other people recognize that. There is a new song I'll play tonight called 'Body Parts' and I ask a couple of questions during it like "Do others feel what I feel?" or "Is all my love real?" and I want people to ask themselves these questions as I am asking myself these questions. It's a song about my fears and I hope it will make other people reflect on their own fears. That also makes it sound like super morose and like really sad (laughs) it's not a sad song. It's pretty rousing and catchy but yeah it's about me fearing my own speed. Yeah, that's a pretty deep thought and realization for you to have. Yeah, it's something like I definitely I don't want to miss anything... like I want to... catch them all (laughs). You mentioned playing a new song 'Body Parts' and you are always coming out with new songs and I appreciate that and wanted to thank you for that. No thank you! Thanks for appreciating that. https://youtu.be/u0j9JLJxDfs Along with that new song what is next for you? Yeah like you already mentioned I have Body Parts which I am playing tonight. So I have that one and another song to go with it. Then we have a tour coming up with Bishop Briggs in Europe in December. Dang, that's cool, that's a show I wish I could I see the two of you together. Dude she is so cool. We both played this festival in Vegas and it was so weird and so after our set we busted out back to LA right after and the whole time we were on stage she was tweeting about us that we were like amazing and stuff, we were like an hour down the highway and we saw it and were like "Fuck like shit" so we tweeted her back and we ended up hanging out at Firefly and now have a European tour. I also have a whole new EP coming next year at some point. It takes so much longer for me to get shit out than it does for me to make it. Really? Yeah, I am sitting on like 7 songs right now. I'm just waiting. And does that suck? Is it all about timing where you're waiting to get it out? I mean it is a lot with timing. Like you can't just release shit. You have to have a plan in place, a marketing budget in place, and shows on the docket. There are so many things to go along with it that it definitely takes time and it's how it is. I'll always have stuff on deck. Thank you again Adrian, I had such a connection to your music and so being able to be here and the time has been great. Yeah, absolutely! Thank you for taking the time to come out and doing it. Check out more from Yoke Lore on his website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Read the full article

[personalcoachingcenter]

Here's How to Start Affiliate Marketing for FREE!

- Wanna get started with affiliate marketing for free? In this video I'm gonna share with you five actionable steps to get started with affiliate marketing for free today. No money down, no money up front, you got nothing to lose so keep watching, stay tuned. Hey, what is up guys? Odi productions here and I am back. It's been at least a week since I've made my last video. If you guys missed it, in my last video I taught the best ways to get started with affiliate marketing on any budget. So whether you have no money, whether you have $100 or up to $1,000 I teach the best ways to invest that money to get started off on the right foot with affiliate marketing and in this video today I'm actually expanding upon that first method which is how to get started for free, how to get started without any money down. You basically got nothing to lose, there's no risk. I'm gonna teach you the best way to get started today for free and I'm gonna give you guys five actionable steps on not only getting started by how you can successfully create an affiliated marketing business for basically no money down. Now, it's important for me to say that if you are getting into this you're gonna be at a disadvantage compared to people who are willing to invest some money up front. So it'd be naive of me to tell you if compared to investing 100 to 1,000, $500 you're gonna see the same amount of results or success quicker than people who just get started for free. So just wanna put that little disclaimer out there but still, you can still get started today. There's nothin' to lose so let's get right into it. So I'm gonna put the time stamp right here if you wanna skip right to the steps. Before that I did wanna just give some life updates real quick just to update you guys on where I've been and what I've been up to lately. Life's been pretty crazy. I think I said that in my last video too but my last video I introduced my new apartment here, as you guys can see. I got the little guy, Taco. If you guys haven't met him yet this is my pup, hi Taco. Say hi. He is adorable and he's so awesome. Taco, he's a French bulldog. He's about 11, maybe close to 12 weeks old now but he's just a little angel. Look at him, oops. (laughs) Anyways, so today I actually just got off a call with an NFL player, Stepfan Taylor who actually is the leading rusher, running back for Stanford in college football and he played for the Arizona Cardinals as well. So as you guys can see right here I got the clip kinda saved right here. Maybe I'll throw the clip in here right now where you guys can see a little bit, introduce him a little bit to the channel. Hey what's up guys? Right now I just finished a call with Stepfan Taylor who is right here. We've been talking on Skype. - What's up, what's up, what's up? - [Odilon] Yo, how's it goin? - Good man, it's been a good call. - [Odilon] I'm glad, I'm glad to hear it man. Did you get a lot of value from that? - I did, I did. I appreciate it man, you know. We got some things cookin'. - [Odilon] Yes, sir, yes sir. Yeah, me and Stepfan here, we got a couple, we're schemin' up low key. We got some business ideas that he presented to me. And this guy, I mean he's got a lot of great ideas but this one that he's gonna be goin' after is gonna be, I think is gonna be a huge hit. It's gonna be a success. But yeah, I'm glad to connect with you man. It's really dope to be able to connect with you. And how exactly did you find my channel and the course and everything? - I found it on YouTube. Literally, I don't know what I was watching but I saw on the screen, because I've been interested in marketing things like that. So I'm always doing some learning, so I clicked it and I was like huh, then I shot you a DM on Instagram saying I appreciate that transparent content and you know, I bought the course. - Yes sir. Man, that is awesome, that's crazy. It's crazy. You played for the Arizona Cardinals, he played for the Stanford Cardinals. I thought that was kinda funny, playing for the Cardinal. But yeah, this is insane, he's in the course, and we've been working together on this mentoring and he's interested in the affiliate marketing. And you know, so it's been pretty awesome. So, alright man, thanks, appreciate that. Just got off a call with Stepfan Taylor. We talked affiliate marketing because he is actually a student of mine in Affiliate Marketing Champ. So no joke, an NFL player is in my course. He DM'd me on Instagram. He's a paid student. He joined about a week ago and it's just so crazy. So I'm gonna put that clip right there so you guys can watch that. So aside from the interview with Stapfan Taylor I was in Scottsdale for about a week on Thanksgiving vacation with my girlfriend and her family (squeak toy being compressed) hey Taco, keep quiet. I was there for a week, it was beautiful. It was my first time in Scottsdale. I've been to Arizona before but only Phoenix and Scottsdale is just, it's amazing. There are so many nice sports cars. The weather was beautiful. It was just a great place to be. So I'll show some clips here from my trip that I recorded on my phone or something but it was a great time and shoutout to my girlfriend who also unpacked my entire place. In my last video there was a bunch of huge boxes right here. Everything's cleaned out now. I made it a little messy, that's my bad. I kind of made the place messy again but she unpacked my whole place so shoutout to her. But yeah, so basically, ya know, just got back from vacation. I've been connecting with a lot of people lately. It's been pretty crazy but it's time to get on to the meat and potatoes of this video and it's just to jump into the five steps for how to get started, I'm gonna use the whiteboard, with affiliate marketing for free. Let's get it. Alright guys, so we are gonna hop onto this whiteboard and I'm gonna start with step one for how to get started with affiliate marketing for free. So step one right here, as you guys can see is you need to choose your niche. Alright, so step one is choosing a niche. You have to come up with basically the topic or the market that you want to go after for your business. So choosing a niche is gonna be a tough decision for a lot of people who are just getting started and here's my advice for that. I get a lot of people who ask me, should I choose something that I'm passionate about or should I choose something that is more explicitly profitable? And my advice for you, if you're just getting started, especially if you're getting started for free, is to just go after a niche that you are passionate about, at least for your first business. Now I'm not saying that for every business that you create you should just straight up go for passion over let's say profit. But for your first one, specifically the first one I think it's okay to go for your passion. So for me, my first affiliate marketing business is RecordingNow.com, which I actually have right here on my headphones, you guys can see the logo Recording Now. And you guys can visit the website right now. It's a home recording website. So that's the niche that I chose was home recording for my first affiliate marketing business. And the thing is I didn't do any research when I went into home recording. The reason why I did it is because honestly I just love making music. I like producing music and I happen to already have this knowledge in that industry which gave me a competitive advantage. And so for you if you happen to know something or you're passionate about something, chances are you have competitive advantages such as more knowledge and expertise that you can utilize in your business that will allow you to create better content, it will allow you to basically serve your audience better if you are knowledgeable about a certain subject. So again, one thing I wanna say is you don't have to be an expert. A lot of people think that okay, but I'm not an expert. I like doing this but I'm not an expert, I'm not an authority. Well the thing is you don't have to be an expert, guys. You just have to know enough to teach someone else or to help someone else. So honestly, it's a limiting belief to think that you have to be the world's leading expert to teach someone something because it's not true. You can start today, you don't have to be an expert, but you know, keep learning, keep going, and eventually one day you will become an expert. So number one, choosing a niche. Go with something you're passionate about at first because one, it's something you have a competitive advantage in, and number two it's simply because you won't get burned out. Now the problem is if you go after something that you're not passionate about, so let's say you go after something like laser technology. Alright, I don't know anything about lasers. I don't really care for lasers but let's say it's extremely profitable to talk about lasers, okay? And if I go into this and I start creating content about lasers and I try some products that I know nothing about in the laser industry I'm gonna get burned out because frankly I don't care, it's not fun for me, ya know? You wanna do something that is gonna fulfill you and it's not just financially but fulfill you in a sense of having fun, in a sense of giving you a sense of enjoyment and accomplishment. So number one, go with something you're passionate about so you don't get burned out and something that you have advantages in already. So step number two. Your next step, this is how you get started for free, this is the key step right here guys. Writing it down, step number two. Boom, start a YouTube channel. Boom, that's the key right there. If you wanna get started for free you have to start a YouTube channel. There's no other way that's better than creating a YouTube channel for many reasons. So traditionally what you would do if you had let's say 70 to $100 to spend you actually only need about 70 bucks to create a website these days, which is actually what I taught in one of my last videos, which I'll link to right here. Where I taught a college student how to get started with affiliate marketing for $100. Usually you'd have a website. That's the best way to get started. But you could also just create a YouTube channel. So I usually recommend if you have the money to really create both the website and the YouTube channel and combine it, that's where the magic happens. However, if you have no money, you're dead broke, you can start a YouTube channel. It's free, it's completely free to get started. It doesn't cost you anything, creating videos, posting videos. It doesn't cost you anything to post a video. This video I'm posting right now it cost me $0. I'm gonna upload it today. It's probably gonna reach thousands of people and it didn't cost me a single cent, it didn't cost me a single penny. So that's the beauty of YouTube and you know, I know there's gonna be a lot of resistance right now. There's gonna be some of you who are saying I don't know how to create videos, I'm shy, I don't wanna get on camera. Listen to me, listen to me right now, level with me. This is the best way to get started and there are many things that you can work around when it comes to making videos. And if you have weaknesses, like let's say you don't like being on camera you don't have to be on camera, guys. If you watch my review videos from my headphones from RecordingNow.com and these videos have gotten hundreds of thousands of views, there are plenty of videos, actually in not a single video do I share my face. In fact, I just do a voiceover. I do voiceovers and I feature the headphones in my hands but I never share myself, I never show my face, nothing like that. So you could do that. Another way is you could hire someone, you could hire someone to either make these videos for you or take care of the video editing if you're not good at that. The only other option is to outsource. You need to outsource it to someone else. If you don't wanna make videos you have to get someone else to do it. Now, the thing is if you're broke, if you have no money to spend you can't pay anyone to do the videos so you have to make 'em yourself. And ya know, there's gonna be a lot of resistance here again but trust me, this is the best way and I'll explain why. Because when you create a YouTube video and you create a YouTube channel you can get traffic to your content for free, for free. YouTube, if you look on the right-hand side there's a bunch of videos there, right? Those are suggested videos. And it doesn't cost anything to have a suggested video. And if you create videos about certain topics, a certain subject and someone, let's say there's a viewer on YouTube, they're just browsing around and they're already watching stuff that's in your market or topic your video may pop up there and that's the beauty of it. You can get views for free on YouTube and it doesn't cost you anything to create this content. I mean, if you have an iPhone that right there is your video camera. You don't need to buy an expensive camera. All you need is a smartphone that can record video which is all the smartphones these days. And they make some pretty darn good video quality as well. So no excuses, start a YouTube channel. It's the best way. If you don't wanna do the YouTube channel you have to create a website. However, it costs some money to make a website. About 70 to $80 to get started with a website, that's probably the cheapest you can get started and honestly that's what I recommend. But you know, this video is about starting for free. So we're getting real scrappy, we're bootstrapping right now so we gotta do the YouTube channel. That's our only option. So number three, after you've chosen your niche, after you've started your YouTube channel, so number three and four these two steps are interchangeable but basically you have to join the affiliate programs. So the one that I always recommend for beginners is called Amazon Associates. If you haven't heard about it, it's Amazon's affiliate program. If you ever see, if you ever see links in YouTube videos for products you know if someone does a review video and then there's Amazon links in the description, chances are those are Amazon Associates links. Which is the largest affiliate program in the world where you can basically link to any product on Amazon and earn a commission if someone purchases anything within 24 hours. So pretty cool stuff. You have to join the affiliate program and that's why we have to create the YouTube channel because when you join the Amazon Associates affiliate program they ask you for a website. Now if you don't have a website you can actually substitute it with a YouTube channel. But what you wanna do is you wanna make sure that YouTube channel looks lived in. You wanna make that YouTube channel look like it actually has some decent content on there. You don't just wanna have an empty YouTube channel which is why steps three and four are kinda interchangeable because step number four is to create content, right there. So this would be videos. If you had a website, content would be blog articles or posts but for a YouTube channel the content that you create, they're videos. And so what you wanna do when you create this content is you wanna create content that gets people in that buying phase. So what does this mean? Basically when people, they wanna buy something. Let's say they wanna buy a new pair of headphones, right? What do they do? They go online and they do research. They read and they watch review videos, right? So they read, they watch reviews, they watch comparisons. You've seen these videos, you know? Stuff like top five headphones, bluetooth headphones of 2017 stuff like that, right? So this content is extremely powerful and effective for selling products because it directly speaks to people who are in that buying phase. Now there are some people, the phases of selling are like researching, there's buying, there's people who are ready to make a purchase, then there's people who are just discovering a topic. So you don't necessarily want to reach people who are looking up, what is bluetooth, right? You wanna be reaching people who are looking up what are the best bluetooth headphones for $200 in 2017? That's what you wanna be targeting rather than a very general topic, right? So basically you wanna create content that gets people in that buying phase because it's gonna be so much easier for you to sell if someone is already willing to buy, you just need to give them that gentle push to get them to make that purchase. So step number four, that's content. And in that content you put the Amazon Associates links. You put your affiliate links in the description of the content and it's very simple. And I have a tip for you guys to increase your clicks, increase your sales. If you do have these videos, you're creating this content you have the links in the description. Make sure in the video that you mention and you tell people directly to click the link in the description, why? Because for some reason people like being told what to do and you know, you may disagree with that. A lot of people, maybe you're a rebel. But psychologically human beings like being given directions it makes things easier. You know, you don't have to think as much. So for this kind of content, what you wanna do is you wanna tell people to click that link in the description but also provide an incentive. Now, the incentive that I usually go with is hey, if you'd like to save some money, if you want a discount then click the link in the description to get the lowest price available. And Amazon usually has the lowest prices anyways so by saying that and giving that incentive and initiative, telling them to take action, it's so much more effective than putting the link up there and then not speaking on it on your video, right? So that right there, golden nugget. Number five, step number five of our five steps to starting an affiliate marketing business for free. Step number five, this right here is going to be, I'm just gonna call it distribution but let me expand upon that. So distribution, there ya go, distribution. So actually in my call with Stepfan earlier today we discussed content and distribution. So there are two sides of the coin, one of them is you need to create content, content that sells. You need to make good videos that get people to buy, that get people excited to make a purchase that get people sold, basically. So you need to create really good videos. Now number two, the other side of the coin or the other side of the ball is distribution. You have to distribute this content because you could create the greatest sales video on the planet but if nobody watches it how many products are you gonna sell? Not a trick question, it's very simple. If your video gets seen by zero people chances are you're gonna make zero sales, right? So the question is pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward. How do you get traffic to your content? How do you get eyeballs in order to get those sales, right? So I get this question a lot, probably almost daily, and I get people asking me how do you get traffic to your content in order to get sales? And there's a lot of strategies here and I teach some specific strategies to my students; however, basically it's very simple guys. There's two ways to get traffic. One of them is organic, one of them is how to get traffic for free. And you know, there's a ton of different methods that you can get free traffic; however, it's not as effective as paid traffic to be honest with you and just to be straight up. Because when you have no following, a lot of people ask, how do I get no traffic with no following? The secret is paid traffic. You have to pay for it and you know, beggars can't be choosers. If you don't have a following, if you don't have any subscribers, you don't have any followers and you're creating content, no one's gonna watch it you know, unless you use free traffic methods or you pay for it. Now, I'm a big believer in you gotta pay to play. I'm a big believer in investing in your business so I think that you should use paid traffic to get results much quicker. However, this video is about starting for free. So let's double down on the free method which would be you need to just promote in as many free channels as possible. And this involves basically bootstrapping and getting scrappy with it. It means gorilla marketing tactics. So it means stuff like going on forums, right? And going on YouTube comments and not spamming. You need to avoid spam at all costs because there is a way to do free traffic; however, it's not in being spammy or basically throwing up your links everywhere. The way to do free traffic is as much as possible if you can provide value to people and if you can make it as organic as possible, so that means giving before taking, you gotta give to get, then do that as much as possible. So if you're on a forum for example answer questions, help people out, provide a perspective, say thank you, appreciate people and they are more likely to you know, scratch your back in return versus people who just ask, they just take, take, take. They're like hey, I need this, I need that, help me, help this, help that. People are not gonna wanna help you if you're not willing to give them something in return or in the first place. And one of the key laws or ya know techniques in influence and persuasion is reciprocation. That's giving someone something without necessarily asking for something in return right then and there but just giving. Because the more you give the more value you give the more you're gonna receive in the long run and that's the best way to go about things. Don't chase the quick buck because that's honestly gonna hurt you more than it's gonna help you. What you wanna do is you wanna give as much as possible in order to get. So that right there, that is my views on free traffic is you have to make it as organic as possible. That's the keyword, organic. Don't make it seem like a sale. If people know that they're being sold to they don't like it, right? So instead, why don't you actually try and provide some real value to people and help people out. That way everything comes so much easier. So distribution, again since the problem is we're kinda limited here since we are talking about free you're not gonna be as effective as someone who has the means to do paid traffic and invest in ads. And it doesn't even have to be that much. It can be $5 per day and that could literally land you dozens if not hundreds of views. Honest, think about that. If you do come up on some funds, you do want to invest in paid traffic, and I can't get into that in this video, it would literally take me hours to discuss my strategies for paid traffic. This video is just a quick primer on basically giving you guys a five-step strategy on how you can get started for free today. So anyways, that wraps up the strategy. I hope you guys enjoy that. I hope you guys got value from it. If you did please right now, thumbs up and comment below letting me know or else I'm not gonna know, I'm not gonna hear you, and the more likes and comments this video gets the more I'm gonna create content just like this and keep making those affiliate marketing videos. So if you guys did find value in that, you know, take two seconds to give it a thumbs up and to comment but that wraps up this video. One last thing that I wanna way is I wanna touch upon the course because so many of you are interested and you're messaging me every single day and commenting about the course. But basically things have been pretty crazy in a good way. We now have hundreds, hundreds of students and I mean the diversity of the students is insane. Like I said earlier, Stepfan Taylor. We got NFL player in the course. I have these YouTubers who have close to half a million subscribers who actually just joined the course as well and who I'm working with right now and mentoring. I got Iman Gadzhi who is a 17-year-old entrepreneur who specializes in personal branding and social media marketing who has made over $300,000 at 17 years old. He's in the course as well. So basically things have been pretty crazy. I've been making a lot of really cool connections and the best part has been the results that my students have been seeing. So I just wanna share this with you guys. One of my students, his name is John. And he posted this yesterday. He posted this picture. He has been in the course for I think just a couple weeks now and he just made and launched his website. And as you guys can see here in a one-week span November 21st to November 27th 2017, in a one-week span he sold over $600 worth of items on Amazon with a 20% conversion rate. So it's pretty nuts. These numbers to some people, they may not be that impressive, ya know, but to me this is amazing. This guy just got started and he had no experience, no background, and he just created his first affiliate marketing website and business and is getting sales. He sold over 20 items in a one-week span. And this is nuts to me because this is just the beginning for him. And I know that if he sticks to this and he keeps working I mean that's gonna be 10 times as much, 100 times as much one day. So it's really insane for me to see these students getting results in such a short period of time because for me it took me so long to get my first 20 sales and people are doing that in a week. And I have other students who actually have earned over $1,000 from the course alone in just about a week or two span. So again, I never preach get rich quick, and my course is not for the people who are looking to make a quick buck, it isn't for you. It's for people who are looking to make a long-term business and brand that's gonna last for months if not years to come. It's gonna make you money on vacation just like it did for me when I was in Scottsdale, Arizona last week. So if you guys are interested in the course, again I mentioned in my last video that the price is going up and I'm about to increase the price by Friday. So I said Friday in the last video, it's gonna be this Friday that I'm gonna be increasing the price of the course because I'm gonna be wrapping up the email marketing module which I'm expanding upon. But yeah, so basically it's been a great ride. So many connections, so many cool people have been in the course have been sharing their stories, have been sharing their results and success. So it's been so great and if you guys are interested shoot me a message or hop in there because I'd love to work with you, I'd love to see you in there. So, anyways, appreciate everything guys. I wish you a great rest of your day. I hope you guys stay productive and you stay positive. Alright, catch you guys in the next one, peace.

[ulyssessklein]

Promoting your Sync Placement: How to make the most of your 30 seconds of fame

Finding out that your music will be featured on a TV show can feel like a huge career breakthrough. It’s a major opportunity; one you need to plan for. “Every single week we see artists missing out on this chance to connect with new fans,” says TuneFind’s Amanda Byers.“Those potential fans aren’t going to come back later.”

There are simple things you can do to maximize your placement’s impact on your career, and easy ways to get your music and information out to potential fans.

Get your music online (and in online stores)

This sounds like a no-brainer, but many songs wind up on a show — and nowhere else. Setting up distribution can take time and require some diligence.

To make sure you’re not shortchanging yourself by signing a contract that doesn’t serve your best interests on the publishing side, it’s best to start early. “I’ve waited until the last minute before, and it cost me thousands of dollars,” notes singer-songwriter Aron Wright, whose music has appeared on shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Empire, and The Vampire Diaries.

[With CD Baby Pro, you get worldwide music distribution AND worldwide publishing royalty collection, so you’ll be set up to collect all your royalties from the start.]

“A digital/indie distributor is ideal so you can sell your track across multiple platforms, but even Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or your own website is better than nothing,” agrees Byers. “Engage your new fans, make sure they know who you are. Get them to follow you on social media or get their email addresses. Get them to listen to your other songs. It all helps build your audience.”

Get your music on Shazam

It makes business sense to get your music in online stores or on streaming platforms. But don’t forget Shazam, which is how many viewers will identify your track as they watch.

“Shazam isn’t perfect–it can’t identify well if the clip is too short or if there’s dialog or background noise –but it’s an important channel for discovery,” Byers says.

Note: with CD Baby, your music will be included in Shazam’s database as part of your distribution.

Promote your placement on social media

Post about it. Tweet about it. Instagram it. Tag your friends. Ask friends and fans to share the news explicitly. Thank the Music Supervisor (using their Twitter handle) for the placement when you post there, and be sure to research and use the correct show hashtags.

You might also want to consider buying ads, but be strategic here. You can specifically target the show’s fans. Social media ads let you specifically target fans of the show, certain geographies, and audience demographics that match your typical fan base. Think carefully about how to slice and dice your potential fans, and target who you’re most likely to appeal to with that track.

Says Wright, “Do A/B testing with multiple ads and track conversions so you know what’s effective. You don’t want to spend $2 to make $.99. Think about where your ads are directing people who click, based on your goals.” Wright recommends advertising merchandise like t-shirts, not just mp3 downloads, to get more bang for your ad buck.

Look for and reach out to show fans

“You often don’t know exactly how the song will be used until the show airs. If you know it’s going to be at an important moment, get on Twitter,” Byers suggests. “Some shows also have fansites, forums, and message boards, too. These can be another venue to raise awareness.”

However, artists need to tread lightly with show fans: “If it’s just a few seconds in the background of a transitional scene and you’re making a big deal about it, you’ll get flamed,” warns Byers. “If your music is part of a major scene, or related to a specific character, you’ve got a good chance to interest a lot more fans.”

Interact with users on TuneFind

Going to places where people specifically look for the music they hear on screen will help your efforts to connect with new fans. Make sure to submit your sync placement on TuneFind, and check out fan activity on the site after the episode airs.

“TuneFind has seen lots of indie artists with sync placements come to the site and find passionate listeners who are excited about their music,” Byers says. “The back-and-forth between musicians and new fans is really great.”

“I’ve had so many people find me and my music via TuneFind over the years,” adds Wright. “Thousands of people may be looking for your song after a placement. TuneFind usually pops up first on a Google search because it’s the best organized website for TV and film placements.”

Put together a lyric (or other very simple) video and post it

Another platform viewers are likely to search: YouTube. Posting a well-annotated and tagged video there will help them find you.

“A lyric video is a great, simple way to get your track up,” Byers suggests. “It’s better to have something straightforward up there – that references your placement – than nothing at all.”

Wright agrees. For one of his first placements on Grey’s Anatomy, he spent several thousand dollars on a produced video, only to find that a far simpler video–a still photo with the song title, show name, season, and episode numbers–got far more views. “You want to put up a link bubble or other way to grab attention in the video, that sends people to iTunes. Put in as many relevant tags as possible, and give it the same title as the text you use in the video itself. That makes it highly searchable for people who know the episode, but not who you are.”

Talk to the music supervisor

When you’re coming up with your sync promotion plan, don’t forget the people who got you the placement in the first place: the music supervisor who chose your track.

Many music supervisors reach out to followers and show fans directly via social media. You can encourage them to talk about your track when they do. “You can ping a supe – politely! – and ask if they are going to mention your track and your Twitter handle,” Byers recommends. “If a supe tweets songs during a broadcast, make sure you’re included there.”

Make sure your team is making some noise

And don’t forget the sync agent who got you the placement. They may be happy to shout out the success, too. “We’ll sometimes see sync agencies or management posting about a placement,” Byers remarks. “If you’ve used an agent or have a team, make sure they are making noise, too.”

Reach out to the media

Sometimes you can get a little more press love thanks to a sync. It never hurts to reach out to journalists you admire and who cover your genre or scene and let them know. You may hear nothing back, but your sync may be just the nudge they need to cover your music.

“I got a song reviewed in USA Today, alongside Kelly Clarkson, by writing the journalist and saying the song was going to be on Grey’s Anatomy,” Wright recounts. He also advises patience and persistence, sound advice for any promotional or marketing effort. “Keep asking. You may only get one good thing out of a hundred, but that one good thing or connection with a person might be what changes everything for you. That’s how it was for me.”

About TuneFind

The leading site to find music that’s been featured in TV shows and movies, TuneFind has music listings for over 780 TV shows and another 780+ movies. Working directly with the Music Supervisors who select the music, composers, and our community of over 2 million super-fans each month, TuneFind compiles all the songs featured, including unreleased tracks, original score, and other hard-to-identify music. With over 10 years in the business, TuneFind is the top destination for fans, music licensors, artists, and labels interested in sync and soundtracks.

About Aron Wright

Nashville-based artist Aron Wright spends his days in a 100 year-old church-turned recording studio that is on the same street as his home. Rarely performing live these days, Aron’s focus has turned to what he is most passionate about: crafting songs and recording them. Aron has had success in the TV/Film world with placements on shows such as Finding Carter, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, The Vampire Diaries, Hart of Dixie, and Pretty Little Liars. Aron co-wrote the song “Hallelujah” by Panic at the Disco, featured on their album Death of A Bachelor, which debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200. A song that he wrote with Sean Van Vleet (lead sing of the band, Empire) entitled, “Walk Out On Me” was featured on the FOX television show Empire, performed by rock legend/actor Courtney Love. “Walk Out On Me” was also featured on the show’s soundtrack which was a Billboard #1 album.

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