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thekingofwinterblog · 11 months ago

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Thoughts on those "the downfall of One Piece" videos by that Drizzt guy? He seems to really like Brandon Sanderson, and with you quiting the same author, I thought it may be interesting to contrast views that seem to be so different in regards to the quality of post time skip One Piece

I watched drizzt's take once yeah... Im not doing it again, so i'll try to give my thoughts on his from parts i distinctly remember.

Well to start off with, my opinion on One Piece isn't entierly positive. I too regard it as a series well past it's prime and highpoint... I just dont regard what came after that highpoint as bad(with exception of one arc). It's a series that is good, but is dragged down by the fact that no matter hoe much it tries, it can never recapture the glorious highpoint that was water 7/enies lobby.

By contrast Drizzt regards One Piece post timeskip more in the vein of Naruto. A series with a very clear, and obvious point where it fell off a cliff, broke it's back, and had to crawl across rocky, muddy, marshy terrain towards the finishline.

So lets start with the shit i kinda agree with him. The Strawhat's dreams are for the most part the most underutilized part of one piece by a wide margin.

Ironicqlly, the two dreams i completely disagree woth being used badly are the ones he bitched the most about, namely Luffy and Zoro. Luffy and Zoro's dreams are different than the rest, in that they don't actually have to achieve anything in between. Beat mihawk, and find One Piece. That's it.

The fact that they just travel on their journey, getting stronger along the way is not really a problem.

He compares luffy negatively to luffy, but the reality is that both of them came into the political climate under very different circumstances.

Roger had to actually do it, he was the trailblazer, the one who proved that it could be done... Evsryone else that followed him, luffy included, all had to repeat his feats to reacht he top. It was from the scramble for that goal that the Yonko system came to be, with 4 pirate superpowers who simply did it better than all the rest... but none of them had the power to sweep the rest away.

And its into this system that luffy came in, and in the end toppled, setting the stage for the endgame.

Otger than luffy and zoro though, none of the crews dreams are used in a particularily good way.

Nami wants to map all the world... We never really see any focus on her map making, and later learn there are over 10 million islands on this planet... Good luck with that.

Sanji wants to find the All Blue... I genuinely dont think it's even been mentioned in any real capacity since all blue.

Usopp wants to be a brave warrior of the sea and meet his dad again... Wrll while the latter seems likely to happen very soon, if usopp hasnt done it by now, he will probably remain a man ruled by fear for the rest of his life.

Chopper wants to create cures to any disease in the world... Sorta used in an interesting way by contrasting him with caesar and Queen... But notice he didnt actually go on to fight and defeat either of them.

Robins dream is at least in the same way as Luffy's and zoro's in that there is a logical endpoint, but unlike theirs we really could have gotten way more insights into the past before through poneglyphs discovered in the story, rather than all the lore being dropped all at once. Oda really was way too focused on the ancienct weapons to realise that the poneglyphs could have been used to give us haunting snippets of character momenys, and pictures of lore from a dying age, that brought about the world government, that would all have fit together at the end.

To illustrate this point, we dont actually know the tone or the content of Joy's apology to the Mermaid princess.

Was it a harrowing apology for his own weakness? A nochelant eh, sorry things didnt work out? A We sure gave it our all huh... And yet it didnt change anything.

The fact is, we dont know. And that illustrates what a missed opportunity the poneglyphs actually were. There was so much room to use them beyond info on the ancienct weapons.

Franky's dream is also a missed opportunity, because we are never really given focus or attention on him fixing the ship or upgrading it.

Brooks is bizarre, because he could have achieved his dream at any point during the timeskip, and just... didnt.

And finally i dont remember what Jinbe's dream actually is... Which is a bad sign in its own way.

As for his other conplaints... I don't actually recall them much. It's been a while.

My own thoughts on one Piece post timeskip is that the problems boil down to a number of key issues.

1. Way too many new characters in each arc.

2. The age old One piece problem of Oda almost never killing characters no matter what means almost nobody gets to exit this story on a highnote, and when Characters do die, it usually feels more like an afterthought, rather than a defining moment(Pretty much everyone of luffy's allies who died in wano feels like this). Combine with point 1, and you get stupidly large casts that almost never get trimmed down, meaning every single arc is full of characters who almost always devolve into greek choruses in some form by the end.

3. One piece has completely changed it's fight structures, so fights where we get to see the action from beginning to end are much rarer, rather than the norm. There is a reason most of the strawhats post timeskip only has 1 or 2 good fights each under their belt(if that), when before every single one of them(except brook) had plenty of vool fights and moments. The new structure where we usually only get to see snippets of fights rather than the entire thing mrans oda can put in way more stuff alongside them, but it also means the fights themselves are usually lackluster.

4. several characters have become worse in one or several ways, and the narrative doesnt really avknowledge this. The biggest, by far, is Sanji, who not only is a worse character in every regard, but every single genuine development he got is undermined and undone. He gets a girl who genuinely loves him in the form of pudding. He hits a woman because of the german upgrqdes and decides to abandon them completely, only for his powers to sorta still be there maybe, but in the end he didnt actually hit the girl, it was an invisible queen. I cpuld go on, but oda had some many chances to shake up Sanji's character after the timeakip, and he backtracked on all of them.

5. Haki got fucking insane in wano. Oda made a gigantic mistake early in wano's arc, where Kaido took out Luffy in one blow. It was a cool moment, but it also meant that haki's ability to let fighters stay on their feet and recover from total beatdowns in record time had to baloon to insane degrees. And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. Which sucks even more, because the qctual explanation about how luffy had to improve to reqch thw kind of offensive that roger, whitebeard, big mom kaido and shanks have and had was actually pretty cool and set up way before this. But unfortunately that's also introduced in the arc where luffy gets up again and again after kaido beat him unconcious, with no other explanation than Haki baby! It sucks any tension out of any fight when you know haki can allow people to just get back on their feet no matter how gravely theyre wounded.

6. Gear five having no actual foreshadowing/being a zoan.

Oda wrote himself into a corner with the biggest reveal one piece ever had... And there was only 2 ways to handle it to make it truly work.

Either go all in on foreshadowing this shit, and have characters point out that luffy losing his rubber body against sea stone when he doesnt when underwater is kinda wierd(which makes sense for a zoan, but not a always transformed parmecia), and judt highlight that there is a mystery here... So that when the reveal comes it all falls into place.

Or, and this is the solution i would have gone with, have luffy awaken and have all the powers of Nika luffy, just withouth a transformation. Id have accepted the cartoon logic becoming part of the world around him as the awakened powers of a rubber devil fruit no problem... It was adding in, oh he's actually a myyhical zoan devil fruit intrical to the world's history where oda lost me.

There are other flaws too, but these are the main repeating ones, you'll find all over the story after impel down.

Overall though, O would say One piece is a good story that suceeds in spite of its flaws... But those flaws very much means that it isnt a perfect story, and after the timeskip, it has never come close to reaching the high watermark again, and thats very the big problem. When you have reached the top, there is nowhere to go but down.

Arguably one piece biggest achievement post timeskip is arguably the fact that in spite of this, it has only had one bad arc, with the rest being good, to great if never outstanding.

The only bad arc of course being dressrosa. I could make an entire retrospective about all the ways that one dropped the ball.

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gladiolidiaries · 2 years ago

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quackity priv tweets talking about content/his english audience

12/22/22: im feeling under the weather guys no driving stream i am sorry :(

12/20/22: ME AND F**LISH (FOOLISH) ARE GOING ON A DRIVING DATE TOMORROW AND IM STREAMING IT (DONT TELL HIM ITS A DATE)))(

12/7/22: Want to take the time to thank all the English speaking viewers who take the time to learn o try to learn the Spanish language to understand some of the content. It’s the coolest and cutest thing ever. Don’t worry to those who don’t anyway, lots of HUGE stuff coming for yall

10/19/22: I’m genuinely upset that throughout my career I’ve been seen as a horrible cook for all the silly little cooking streams I’ve done, when I OBVIOUSLY am not that shit at cooking. On Saturday I’ll do an actual serious cooking stream to prove all of you wrong because I’m sick of it

10/11/22: thank u guys for being so sweet and so nice to me at twitchcon. had a blast meeting every single one of you, both from my English speaking and Spanish speaking community i will proceed to yell from happiness AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

9/25/22: DOING A SHORT SPANISH STREAM THEN DOING THE $5k CLOTHES STREAM RIGHT AFTER ❤️

9/22/22: FUN STWEAM THIS WEEKEND

9/17/22: i'm going through so much footage and so many scripts that explain SO much. I wrote all the scene contexts with such depth, this is gonna be amazing

9/15/22: In one of the upcoming days I’ll be doing a FULL ON behind the scenes stream of ALL the Las Nevadas footage/scripts/images/bloopers I’ve obtained throughout almost 2 years of DSMP. :)

9/12/22: I WANNA DO A DRIVING STREAM AGAIN SO BAD

9/7/22: IM SO FUCKING NERVOUS THIS NEXT LORE STREAM IS A LITERAL MOVIE IM GETTING SHAKY JUST EDITING IT I CANT BELIEVE WHAT IM LOOKING AT OMFG. AND YALL KNOW I DONT OVERHYPE WHERE THERE IS NO HYPE THIS IS FUCKING THE GREATEST THING EVER; LORE STREAM TIME WILL BE ANNOUNCED TOMORROW

9/2/22: BIG ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY

8/25/22: i cant believe how fucking crazy this whole lore is ending up looking like lol

8/13/22: Despite it being short, had so much fucking fun with this stream can’t wait to do it again soon. Love and appreciate u guys so much

8/12/22: MAIN CHANNEL VIDEO OUT TOMORROW (SATURDAY) DRIVING STREAM TOMORROW (SATURDAY) ALSO OPENING THIS ACCOUNT RIGHT NOW

8/11/22: BIG VIDEO BIG STREAM BIG LORE THE DELIVERY DATE ON ALL OF THESE IS VERY APPROXIMATE IN TIME

7/30/22: I just hit a million subscribers on my Spanish channel and I cannot thank you guys enough for everything. Iwouldn’t be able to do this in Spanish if not for the insane support my English community has brought me throughout the years. Love and appreciate you all so much ❤️; It may not seem out of the ordinary but being able to do all this in Spanish as well has been a dream I’ve had since I was a kid. I feel so blessed to have TWO amazing communities. Cant wait to bring a lot more incredible content to everyone!!!!

7/27/22: miss u guys!!

6/26/22: I REALLY MEAN IT WHEN I SAY I LOVE AND APPRECIATE YOU GUYS SO MUCH ❤️; I feel so emotional, a few days ago I got to stand inside the boxing ring of the BIGGEST ever Twitch event ever made in history with many of my Spanish friends. You guys have given me these opportunities and I’m so fucking grateful to have TWO massive and supportive communities!

6/15/22: For the next 3 days (or less) I’m participating in a huge Spanish Minecraft event on my alt Twitch channel :-) Super appreciative of those who come and support the streams despite not knowing Spanish. In one of these days I’ll raid into my main and do an English stream btw ^_^

4/11/22: MY VIDEO IS NEARLY FINISHED SO MANY BIG THINGS COMING IM SO EXCITED I LOVE U ALL I CANT WAIT

4/2/22: Hey guys, sorry for the lack of activity recently. I’ve been working hard on literally my favorite fucking video of all time. I say this for each video I make and I mean it every time. It’s coming out soon and im so fucking excited for you guys to see. Big fucking plans ahead ily

3/20/22: i remember after working on my last lore stream every day from morning to night for a month, i remember the morning after the stream, i woke up at 5AM and i literally just went to the beach and sat there for an hour it was so nice. im so happy to see everyone getting the merch; i have so many projects in the works and i can’t wait to replicate this feeling many more times in my life

3/9/22: I just filmed the most incredible video I think I’ve ever done in my career. I’m so fucking happy for these opportunities. Love you all I’m so excited to show you

2/24/22: AHHHHHHH school has been super difficult on me recently but i have so many projects on standby ready to go!!! thank you guys so much for the patience i promise theres some really big stuff for you all soon!!!!

2/21/22: STREAMS BACK IN FULL FORCE SOON 😈😈😈 HAVE A BUNCHA COOL THINGS PLANNED BUT ID STILL LOVE 2 KNOW WHAT U GUYS WANNA SEE

2/12/22: i miss you guys. ive been incredibly busy but working some incredible fucking stuff. i feel excited and very blessed

oh thanks for sending that. i think deep down he probably wants to shift to Spanish only but knows that a big % of people are attached to his english content so he keeps trying to say that things are coming

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sendyefrogs · 4 years ago

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saudade

a/n: WELL. im back! *confetti pops out*. i mean, kinda hehe, apologies im absolutely swamped with school and my degrading mental health :). n e way, this is LONG, because i’ve missed writing a lot <3 wrote this for @sykuui, this is long overdue babe tw: verbal and (probably) physical abuse, kuroo just being a gigantic dick, dont come after me pls ily, cheating, swearing word count: 2K (word vomit ;-;) pairing: kuroo x gn!reader genre: angst (if it’s not very good, pls forgiveness, internet person)

What keeps you up at night?

Gentle snores, his soft hair brushing your arm, muffled breaths reminding you that the world knew not of the Kuroo that slept by you at night, unburdened by the worldly dilemmas. For just a few hours every night, he was yours, through and through, in your arms while the clouds drifted across the jet black sky with no destination, and the moment seemed to freeze.

Love, love for Tetsuro, is what kept you up, and it would never have once crossed your naïve mind that love is what would break you, keeping you up, not for the love you felt, but the love that was torn from you.

Simple signs would not tell you what happened, it came crashing down on you all too quick, for he was proficient at hiding it, behind his caring smiles and affectionate touches. His love wasn’t as pure as yours, he did not yearn for you as you did for him, and it showed, eventually enough. The cracks in the relationship built up gradually, slowly but prominently, too wide for either to bandage up alone, and that is how you found yourselves; alone.

He did try to provide for the both of you as best he could, being the sole income earner, and it didn’t always end well when you expressed that maybe he was too occupied by his office for your liking, unable to care for you as he once did throughout high school, when he was attentive to you no matter when you beckoned.

“Tetsuro, welcome home!” You’ve had a long day and not nearly enough time with your husband, deprived of his peppering kisses and gentle strokes of your hair. You get neither, receiving just a simple grunt, and it is clear he has had a grueling time as well. “Dinner is ready when you want it.” He nods slightly, not making eye contact with you yet, his hair appearing even less groomed than usual. You stand on your tip toes to kiss his forehead, but he shoves you away, harder than playful, glaring at you.

Maybe it’s just weariness, but he makes no attempt to apologize. You blink back the sting of tears, walking towards the kitchen to serve the food that you had learnt to make for him. He’s just tired. I’m sure he didn’t mean to push me away. That was the first tear, in the loosely woven fabric that was your relationship, that began as high school sweethearts but was now, you realized only later, becoming too stifling for Tetsuro.

The steam rose of the bowl of rice and curry, curling around your jawline as you carried it to the tall figure seated at the table, with his head in his palms. “Do you want to talk now, baby?” Your question is only answered with another sound of fatigue. You seat yourself beside him, curling your arms around his bicep, watching him lift the spoon to his mouth, trying to make him comfortable. You wanted to show him that you’d be there when he wanted to share his exhaustion with you, never occurring to you that maybe, it was exhaustion of you that plagued Tetsuro’s mind.

“Y/n, can you please be quiet for once?” It was barely a whisper; you weren’t sure if you heard him right.

“Huh?”

“Just shut up for once, god.” The tears stung again. What was with him today? He seemed genuinely mad, but you didn’t know what you had done to make him behave like this.

Little did you know, it wasn’t actually you, but the idea of you. Kuroo had grown to be frustrated with his daily routine, tired that every day was the same, that his life had lost that spark it had when he peaked in high school, your presence monotonous and the marriage empty. He didn’t want it.

“Tetsuro, why would you-?” His hand swiped out, knocking the bowl off the table, a gasp erupting from your mouth. In that moment, all you can think about is to get as far away from him as possible. There is an uncharacteristic bitterness in his eyes, directed towards you as you lie in his line of vision. You flinch as he raises his hand to run fingers through his hair. Without a second thought, he spits his frustration out at you.

“Y/n, I’ve had a long fucking day, and I don’t need you to make it even worse with your constant questioning.” The chair slides back with a scrape, not unlike the scrape of his words against your soul. There is, and always has been, an insecurity bubbling away in you that maybe you aren’t good enough for Tetsuro, maybe he deserves better, maybe you are too overwhelming for the calm male that now stands enraged in front of you.

“You need to learn to shut the fuck up sometimes, because no one wants to listen to your endless whining. I get it, you need constant reassurance that you’re the perfect partner, but I couldn’t be fucking bothered. And you sure aren’t perfect with how clingy you’re being right now. So shut up, and leave me alone.”

Kuroo knocks over a jug of water on his way out, slamming the door over the sound of it shattering as your sobs rack through your body, dry but hard enough to hurt.

Being furious wasn’t a thought that occurred to you, and whether this was his fault made no difference, because it was yourself you blamed when you found him the next day, with his secretary, the bento lunch you had packed him, to resolve the night’s arguments, spilled over the wooden floor, much like the shattered pieces of your heart.

What broke you, was that there was no chase; Tetsuro didn’t come after you, didn’t try to convince you to stay, didn’t try to explain that this was a mistake, didn’t even try to salvage a nine-year long relationship that he tossed out the window of his high-rise office building, not a single second glance back at the spouse that had supported him through his struggles, through thick and through thin, comforting him when things got tough, consoling him as he lost matches, lost money, lost old friends.

Gratitude wasn’t something he had ever considered. You were always there after all, there to ensure that he was happy, that he was content with his unchanging life, the responsibility of being his unpredictable little spark of excitement weighing down on you.

You were gone that night, with hurriedly packed bags, worn out spirit and tears streaming down your face, sparkling as they dripping onto the marbled floor, sparkling like the diamond of your wedding ring that you left behind on the counter top, with one last admiring glance. It was worth a lot, but not enough for what you were being put through. And recognition of that fact is what liberated you, to start your own life, without a Kuroo Tetsuro.

What keeps you up at night?

Y/n. Bubbling laughter and affectionate aura. Everything that was gone, that now made Kuroo’s life… empty; as empty as he had left the relationship, as empty as the void that was once filled with y/n’s warm smiles, that he now attempted to fill with anyone who would throw themselves at him.

A different face to wake up to everyday, but none of them yours, the only one he longed to see, heart aching as though it might burst out of his chest to find its rightful place with you.

The day after you left, he had had no idea that his life would crumble without you, the backbone around which he organized his life, the foundation for his happiness. He knew it was unfair to put the expectation of his functioning on you, but he did it anyway, and without you, he couldn’t wrap his head around the concept that was independence.

“Tetsuro”, his seventh secretary in two months waltzed into the room, carrying a stack of files, discovering him with his head in his hands, glaring up at the one who dared use the name that you had so loving adorned upon him, the word only perfect on your tongue. “Do you want me to spend the night again? You seem tense.”

Kuroo growled, at the audacity they had, suggesting that they were even worth attempting to comfort him like you did. With a swipe of his hands, he knocked the files off the table, standing up to spit his frustrations out at the secretary.

But one glance at the look of apprehension on their face made him buckle, reminding him of the very last night he spent with you, broken jug, bowl of curried rice upside down on the floor. You; cowering from him, frightened of what he would do to you, flinching as he raised his hand.

Dry choking sobs left his mouth, you were afraid of him, the person you had loved more than life itself, given up everything to make happy, and he had never even uttered a word of gratefulness.

Realization engulfed him, leaving him on his knees. He hadn’t shown you how much he loved you, forgetting or simply just ignoring you.

No wonder you were gone, because what was there to stay for, in the dead-end life that you lived, without a loving husband or self-contentment? What had he done? Why had you stayed for so long?

Why had you stayed up all those nights for him?

Tetsuro never could forget about you, the absence of you gnawing away at him, slowly taking over his life. The final straw that broke him irreparably was you, at the national volleyball match that you attended, not for him, but as a sports reporter, beaming in pride in your professional outfit.

Your independence is what did it, because if you could live without him, it mean you would never return. And why should you, after everything he had done, why should you when you had finally found yourself, why should you when there was nothing to return to?

His eyes followed you around, trying to take in as much of you as he could. Interviewing people, smiling at them, the warm smile that was once only for him. Suddenly, your eyes locked, and he froze, standing close enough to see the hurt swim in yours as you lay them upon him, and the moment was over just as quickly as it began.

“Hajime!” What? Why were you yelling out his name, jumping into his arms, fondly glancing up at him with that adoring look, completely forgetting about the one man that had been missing you for so long? Why weren’t you running back to him instantly? Did you not love him?

But Kuroo knew the truth.

You did love him, just, not anymore. He had lost you the second he took you for granted. And he wanted to yell that he would never do it again, come back to him, please just stay with him, he will always love you.

He couldn’t. The beam reaching from end to end of your glowing face, words bubbling over as Iwaizumi held you close, it was too bright to interrupt. The sparkle in your eyes not unlike the diamond that sparkled on your wedding ring, the one he still kept in his pocket, in hope that you would one day, return to him, forgive him, love him again. But-

Kuroo knew that he didn’t keep you up at night anymore.

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bxngchxn · 4 years ago

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strawberries and red wine || l. minho (lee know)

this is a fic that I have re-uploaded from my old blog, @ethereal-bang . I’ll be reuploading all of my old works here and deleting my old blog soon. hope you enjoy!

characters: minho x fem reader

wc: 4.8k

genre: SMUT, dilf!minho, some fluff

warnings: slight hard dom themes, unprotected sex (always wear a condom!), oral (male receiving)

THE FIRST OF THE DILF!SKZ SERIES IS FINALLY HERE!!

This contains mature content and is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18.

　∞༺♥༻✧ ✧༺♥༻∞　　∞༺♥༻✧ ✧༺♥༻∞　　∞༺♥༻✧

“No, Mina what did I tell you we do NOT pull people’s hai- wait, BENJAMIN, where did you get that frog from?!? Let it go!!” You scramble around the classroom as you try and control the chaos that is your 4s classroom. Being the lead teacher in a room full of toddlers is nowhere near easy, but you’ve always had an affinity for kids. It started out with babysitting your cousins on the weekends, then volunteering as a counselor at summer camp. Eventually it led to you, taking early education classes in college and graduating with a degree in Early Childhood Education. Now, you find yourself here, making sure these kids keep the sand IN the sand box, for the third time this week.

No matter how frustrated you got, though, you could never get genuinely angry. They’re just babies, after all. They have no real concept of right and wrong (or object permanence for that matter), therefore their decision making skills are ~slightly~ off. Plus, they look so cute with their innocent, bright smiles and big eyes. How could you not love them?

The day is just about over, and you’re trying to get everything as clean as possible before the kids leave, that way you don’t have to stay too late to finish it all. It’s Friday, and the thought of going home to your quiet apartment for some much needed me time is all you’re thinking about as you wipe down the snack table. You survey the other children to make sure no one is causing trouble, and you smile as you take in the sight of everyone (finally) sitting in their assigned seats, various hobbies distracting them as they wait for their parents to arrive.

You hear a slight crash, and a teeny tiny voice accompany it.

“Shit!”

That single word, coming from such a small mouth catches you off guard. You want to laugh– but you know better than to encourage it. Shocked expression on your face, you walk over to the table where the two girls are playing Jenga. The tower has been knocked down, and you can only assume that the expletive was said by the loser of the game. A sweet little girl, brown hair almost nearing her waist and big eyes that still held stars in them, was looking up at you in confusion. “Now sweetie, where did you learn that word from?” You ask incredulously.

The way she was looking at you screamed innocence, her smile never faltering. “From my daddy! He said it when he dropped the casserole on the ground the other night. But it’s okay! He ordered us a pizza instead!” She says and you can’t help but giggle, while simultaneously making a note to speak to the girl’s father. Kids tend to overshare way too much, and it reminds you of all the crazy things you’ve heard over the years– those poor parents.

Before you know it, the day has ended and it’s time to walk the children outside. Calling your students to form a line at the door, you double check for backpacks and blankies and stuffed animals. Once everyone (and everything) is settled, you lead the children outside to their parents who are standing with open arms, ready to have their babies back with them for the night. The sight is always so endearing, the little ones getting overly excited and jumping into their parents’ arms.

As you watch everyone begin to leave, you notice a certain brunette toddler waddling up to her father, who scoops her up into his arms and immediately puts her on his shoulders.

She looks like him, the way that his eyes seem to shine reminiscent of the sparkle you get to see in hers every morning. He’s rocking her back and forth as she’s sat atop him, her giggles ringing out through the daycare’s playground and bringing a sense of calm and happiness to the air. Making your way over to the two of them, your breath catches in your throat when you realize the height difference between the two of you. He’s at least a head taller than you, making you feel small as you get his attention. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lee? Would it be okay if I had a word with you for just a moment?” You ask him quietly.

He looks at you, and you can feel your heartbeat skip when a small smile graces his lips. Taking his daughter off of his shoulders, he ushers her over toward another parent, and the child runs off with Kim Seungmin and his daughter, with promises of ice cream from the truck down the road. “Absolutely, is everything okay Ms….?” He says, realizing (embarrassingly) that he’s never gotten your name. “Y/N! My name is Y/N.” You say with a smile, and he nods, wanting to commit your name to memory.

Minho has seen you day in and day out, greeting the kids in the morning at drop off, and bringing them outside to release to their parents. He’s spoken to you maybe once? Maybe twice? He really wasn’t sure, but something about your soft smile and the way you take care of the children is hitting him differently today. He has a mix of curiosity and slight panic running through his system, afraid his daughter had gotten into big trouble. She’s his whole world, and although raising her on his own definitely isn’t easy, it’s just as equally rewarding. She’s just like him, her personality so big and so funny for someone so little.

“Everything is okay! I just wanted to tell you, your daughter did something today…” you started, and you can see the look in his eyes shift from panic to humor as you explain the situation from earlier today. He chuckles a little once you finish speaking, and you’re laughing too. “Ah, oh my goodness I am so sorry…” he trails off. “It’s alright, Mr. Lee, dont wo-” “Minho,” he cuts you off. “You can call me Minho,” he says, and you nod your head in agreement. “It’s okay, Minho. It actually was pretty funny..just be a little more careful around her, okay?” You giggle, and you could’ve sworn you saw his cheeks blush pink.

After that, talking to Minho when he came to pick up his daughter became a daily occurrence. It was never for long, maybe two or three minutes of conversation at a time, but it was something you looked forward to. He seemed so carefree, always coming in with a smile on his face. Each day his little girl runs to him and demands to be put on his shoulders, and he always obliges.

It would be a lie to say you didn’t form some type of crush on the man in question. You would find yourself hiding your smile after every little interaction, and you weren’t sure how to feel about the fact that you fell for him so easily. It had been a long time since you had decided to focus on your love life, so every time you get those butterflies in your chest you’re unsure of how to react.

Minho, on the other hand, is absolutely smitten. He never took this kind of interest in his daughter’s teachers before. He couldn’t explain it, but the feeling he gets when he witnesses his little girl run up to hug you in the mornings as you head to class fills him with a lighthearted emotion. Plus, the more he spoke to you, the more he came to find out that the two of you are fairly similar. He knew that he needed to take you out on a date. It was the only thing he could think about.

Would it be inappropriate? Absolutely. For as long as you were her teacher, there was no way he’d be able to openly express his feelings. So, he waits. He keeps his feelings at bay for the remainder of the year, waiting for summer to come so he can ask you out on an actual date. And when he does, it’s in the most unexpected way possible.

You see, Minho had a plan. Your birthday was coming up soon, and he was going to get you a small gift and a card with some cheesy pick up line, asking you to do him the honor of going to dinner with him. His daughter, however, has a (very unfiltered) mind of her own.

The summer months were in full swing, the heat and humidity taking over the town as people rode their bikes through the streets, and everyone who drove a car with their windows down, music playing at full volume. It was one of your favorite things about summer, you loved seeing everyone enjoying themselves, alongside the nostalgic feeling of freedom that comes with the warmer weather. This is why you decide one Saturday morning to get up early and head to the Farmer’s Market. The big, open air market held fond memories from your childhood, and going there to shop for your groceries became a stress reliever for you ever since you started college. The older women selling produce were the sweetest, always giving you free samples when you came round.

Today was one of those days, the smells of spices and different street foods filling your noose as you looked at some apples at a produce stand. You pick up what seems like the perfect apple. Round, shiny, no bruises anywhere. That is, until you feel a little someone bump into your legs.

The apple falls to the ground when you’re knocked over, and you hear a small, familiar voice give you an apology. It’s almost a shock when you hear Minho’s voice, too, as you turn around. “Oh my god, miss, I am so…Y/N?” He apologizes, stopping in his tracks when he realizes that it’s you who is standing in front of the two of them. “Oh! Minho, hello! And hi there sweetheart! It’s alright, you didn’t hurt me,” you say in a small voice, dropping down to her level so you can meet her eyes. “But I made you drop your apple! I’m really sorry,” she pouts, and your heart absolutely melts at the sweetness. “It’s okay, I can just get another one! Why don’t you help me pick it out, yeah?” You ask, and her eyes light up with their familiar brightness.

She nods her head furiously and you laugh, picking her up when she raises her arms. You hold her on your hip and lean down just enough for her to grab a new apple to put in your bag. On the sidelines, Minho is trying so hard not to die at the sight in front of him. His daughter looks so happy, and so do you, bonding over the differences between the fruits. He just smiles as he watches in the interaction.

“This one looks perfect! Don’t you agree, sweetie?” You ask the little girl, and she giggles and takes it from your hands. “Yeah! Daddy, look at the apple~~” she says, and Minho’s attention is brought back to the girl in your arms. “Y-yes pumpkin, it looks really perfect! Red apples are a lot sweeter than green apples, they’re your favorite right? Why don’t we get some too?” Minho rambles rather quickly, and it makes you laugh as you watch him clumsily put some apples into a produce bag and hand money to the lady working at the register.

Once you also pay for your apples, Minho invites you to come have lunch with the two of them in the picnic area. You can’t bring yourself to tell them no, so you follow them to an area of grass that is filled with families eating, playing and just enjoying the summer weather. You and Minho help his daughter with her lunch, all the while enjoying the time together, as well. It had been a while since you’d seen each other, because the little girl was no longer in your 4’s class. You spent a few hours with the two of them, and when it was time to go, his little girl scrambles into your lap before you can even make a move to get up.

“I figured something out!” She says, proudly. “Yes, dear, what is it?” Minho asks her, and you crane your head to look over at her. “I think daddy likes you, Miss Y/N,” she blurts out. Your cheeks turn pink, and Minho starts stuttering. “W-what makes you think that, love?” You ask her, and she shrugs her head, completely unbothered by the fact that the two of you look like you’ve been caught, even though nothing has happened.

“Well,” she says, determined. “Daddy talks reaaaallyyyy fast when he talks about me, or soonie doongie and dori, because he likes us a lot. And he does the same thing when he talks to you, or talks about you. I just figured that because he talks fast like that, it must mean he really likes you. Because daddy talks reeeaaally fast about you.” She says, and then goes back to eating a strawberry out of the container that Minho brought with him. The blush on your cheeks turns even darker, and Minho’s face isn’t too far behind, either.

“Aaah, I see. You must be really smart to have figured that out, huh?” You ask her as you laugh, trying to make your nervousness go away. Minho has since taken interest in his hands, not being able to look you in the eye. “Well,” you start, getting the girl’s attention. You lean in close, but still far enough away that Minho can hear, too. “I think that I like your daddy just as much,” You “whisper” in her ear. Her eyes go wide, and Minho’s face shoots up from looking at his hands. “Really?!” The girl squeals, and you just smile and pat her head.

“Really.”

The three of you wander the market for a little while longer, before you notice Minho’s daughter getting sleepy. Once she asks Minho to pick her up, he carries her on his back and she’s out cold within two minutes. He laughs at the snoring toddler, and looks down at the ground before he looks at you. “Did you mean it?” he asks, and you feel your heart explode when you look into his eyes. “About liking me, did you really mean it?” He repeats, and you can’t bring yourself to hide the truth anymore. “Mhm, I did mean it.” You say quietly. His smile brightens ten fold, and if he wasn’t hauling a sleeping child on his back, he would’ve taken your hand. “Well in that case, would it be out of pocket to ask you over for dinner this weekend? She’s going to a slumber party at Seungmin’s house, so we can have an actual conversation,” he asks sheepishly.

“I would love that.”

__________

The rest of the week flies by, and you can feel the nerves gathering in your stomach as you arrive at Minho’s house. Walking inside, it’s exactly how you could imagine it to be. It’s cozy, and you can definitely tell that a toddler lives there. Toys are in the living room corner, stacked neatly next to a two story dollhouse. Sippy cups align the kitchen sink, and you see cat shaped sandwich cutters sitting in the dish drainer. The sight makes you smile, as you remember cooing over the cute shapes at lunch time.

Minho looks absolutely stunning, you think to yourself. He’s dressed casually, but his button down shirt makes his shoulders look broad and the way his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows makes your knees feel weak. He greets you with a warm smile and a small hug, leading you into the kitchen. He really pulled out all the stops for this– candles at the center of the dining table, two glasses with red wine sitting next to empty plates as he brings the food to the table. “Wow, this looks amazing,” you tell him as you take a seat across from him, sipping your wine. “Thank you, I really hope you like it,” he laughs.

Dinner goes well, just as you expected it to. The two of you never run out of things to talk about, and the wine is definitely helping the two of you loosen up a little bit. Once dinner is over, you insist that you help with the dishes. Minho tries to decline, but you bump him out of the way with your hip, picking up a towel to dry the clean dishes with. He laughs and mimics the action, except his arm wraps around your waist in an attempt to catch you if you fall over. You feel electricity shoot through you at the action, and you turn to face him as you laugh.

He doesn’t let go, and the look in his eyes has you dropping your towel onto the kitchen counter. The air in the room feels charged, and you can’t help but reach up to wrap your arms around his neck. Everything just felt natural, with him. Like you were supposed to be this way all along. His other hand drops the dish he was holding into the sink, and he decides to wrap it around your waist instead. The feeling of finally being encapsulated in his arms makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

The two of you stay like that, for just a moment longer. It’s Minho who breaks the silence first, tightening his hold on you. “Is it..is it okay if I kiss you?” he asks softly. The action is so sweet, you smile as you pull him closer to you. “Please,” you ask, right before his lips crash onto yours. The kiss is soft, slow, everything you could have wanted. His lips still taste like the wine you’ve been drinking, and it makes you want to deepen the kiss. So you do.

Minho feels your tongue at his lips, and he immediately grants you entrance but quickly gains dominance over you. A hand of his moves from your waist up into your hair as he pushes you into the kitchen counter. Your hands roam his body, his broad shoulders and toned arms feeling like heaven under your fingertips. When your hands find his hair, you tug on it slightly and that’s enough to prompt Minho to lift you onto the counter. He’s standing between your legs, his hands falling to your hips once again. He traces light circles into the skin under your sweater as you start trailing kisses down his neck.

“I’ve been waiting so long for this,” you say breathily, and it makes Minho chuckle. “You really want this?” He asks, confirming that it’s okay for him to take it further. “I want all of it.” You say while looking him in the eyes. They darken, and you can tell that you’ve just awoken something inside the man. His hands bunch under your shirt, slowly lifting it up to reveal the royal purple bra that you were wearing. Thanking god that you chose a matching set, you take the initiative to take your sweater off the rest of the way, throwing it on a chair near the table.

Minho wastes no time attacking your neck, biting marks near your collarbone and trailing them down towards your breast. He takes one in his hands, feeling the fabric underneath his hands and relishing in the quiet noises you’re making. His fingers ghost over your nipples, the texture of the fabric bringing you an added sensation. You subconsciously move your hips against his, feeling how hard he is through his jeans. Minho sighs, and the sound is music to your ears. You continue to move your hips against his, and Minho quickly grabs the back of your legs. “Someone’s eager, aren’t they?” he teases, telling you to hold on as he picks you up and takes you in the direction of his bedroom. His lips never leave your neck, at least not until he has you lying comfortably on top of the pillows on his bead. The look in his eyes is almost primal, and it mirrors every feeling that is running through your body in the moment.

You sit up quickly, unbuttoning his shirt slowly as you kiss each inch of exposed skin. Minho helps you as he shrugs his shirt off his shoulders, and you take in the sight of the gorgeous man sitting in front of you. You look down to his jeans and then back into his eyes, as if asking for permission. He grabs your hand and guides it to his belt, and that’s a sure fire sign that you can continue.

You expertly undo his jeans, pulling the zipper down with your teeth in a teasing way. “Fuck, baby,” he says at the sight, and his little praise just spurs you on. You move him to sit on the edge of the bed, and you sink to your knees in front of him as you pull down his jeans. His cock is something to behold– the perfect size, pink and standing at attention. Tempting. You grab the base in your hand, and bring your tongue out to lick at the head. Minho melts into your touch, his fingers going to your hair instantly. You begin slowly, sucking on the head and using your hand to stroke the rest of his cock. It’s taking every ounce of self control from Minho to not fuck into your mouth, wanting to savor the first of hopefully many encounters with you.

You look so gorgeous on your knees for him, looking up at him through your eyelashes as you begin to sink lower onto his cock. He can feel your tongue on the underside of his dick, tracing the vein and making sure to swirl your tongue at his head with each pass you make. If you keep this up, he’s going to cum fast.

“As much as I enjoy the feeling of your pretty little mouth, baby, I don’t want to cum inside it this time.” He says, pulling you back up onto the bed. You feel excitement rise in your chest at the idea of a “next time”. You giggle as he hovers over you, pulling you into another kiss. He can taste you on his tongue, and there’s something so inherently dirty about it that makes him impatient.

He starts working on your jeans, undoing the buttons with ease and sliding them down your legs. He stares at the matching purple underwear that you’re in, and he chuckles darkly. “Seems like someone had something certain on their mind when getting dressed today, huh love?” He teases, tracing slow circles over your clit in a teasing way. “I-I don’t know what you mean,” you say as you try to keep your noises to a minimum. He’s going at a pace that is way too slow for your liking, but you’re not ready to beg for it. At least not yet.

“Hm? Feigning innocence now are we? That’s not very nice of you, baby. Tell me, what were you thinking when you put this on today, hm? Were you thinking that I’d take you like a good girl tonight?” He asks. His eyes never leave yours, and you try your hardest to keep your voice level. “Maybe,” you tease, and his pace quickens for just a moment, just enough to have you keening, but then he returns to the torturously slow pace. “Trying to be a brat, are we? Don’t worry, I can have that attitude fixed in no time,” he warns. You want to test him, see how far he’ll go. “Really? I don’t see you doing anything about it,” you fight back.

Bad idea.

Before you can even blink, your underwear are ripped off and thrown across the room, and Minho’s hand is now around your throat. The sweet feeling of the air leaving your lungs has you dizzy, not able to form coherent words. “Oh? Where’s that mouth of yours now huh?” He says, his tone condescending. His fingers return to your core, but this time his pace is rough and fast. You try to move, but the grip on your neck is tight. “Tell me what you want, love. Use your words,” he says. He decides to loosen his grip to let you speak.

“Please, Minho God just-just fuck me,” you finally speak out, voice shaky as your high is quickly approaching you. “That’s all the permission I need, baby doll.” He laughs as he pulls you closer to him. Reaching down, Minho grabs his cock in his hands and runs the head up and down your labia, teasing you before giving you the real thing. “You’re so wet, this is all for me right? I’m the only one who makes you feel like this?” He asks, knowing that you’re slowly losing your cool.

“Yes! Yes it’s only fo- only for you, Minho please” you beg, and it quickly turns into a moan as he enters you. Your back arches, and a low groan comes from Minho’s throat as he feels how tight you are around him. He stills for a moment, giving you time to adjust, but once you rock your hips into him even a little, he sets off at a steady pace. The feeling is euphoric, he’s stretching you in just the right places and somehow knows exactly how to make you see stars.

He’s panting, and when you whine a quiet “Harder, please,” he loses all control. Slamming into you quickly, he brings his hand back to your throat. “You’re so perfect for me, baby. Jesus. Only for me,” he says over and over again. He’s leaned close to you now, mouth against your ear and you can hear every ounce of praise that comes from his mouth. Your high is approaching, and you clench around Minho when he starts drawing fast circles on your clit once again.

“Minho I- I’m so close, please make me cum,” you moan, and with a certain swivel of his hips he’s hitting a spot that’s making you see stars. “Cum for me then, baby. Let me feel you,” he says, quickening his pace once again, so fast you didn’t think it was possible.

The only sounds in the room are skin slapping and your labored breathing, moans loud as you finally feel the knot in your core tighten and then burst. His name leaves your lips in a long, drawn out whine, and you feel him fill you up not long after your orgasm starts wearing off. He’s panting in your ear, grip tightening around your throat once again as you feel him spill into you.

Riding out both of your highs, Minho’s thrusts slowly come to a stop. The two of you lay there, basking in the glow of the events that just unfolded. You stay like that for a few minutes, and then Minho gets up to run the shower, placing a kiss on your forehead as he leaves the bedroom.

You end up going for another round in the shower, and then straight to bed as the two of you are too worn out to do anything else.

You wake up the next morning in one of his tshirts, and you can smell pancakes being made in the kitchen. You look over and realize that Minho is no longer next to you, and you smile as you hear the radio playing and a sweet voice singing along.

Aware that his daughter could be coming home at any minute, you throw your own jeans on as you walk into the kitchen, Minho’s shirt still falling off your shoulder. Quietly padding behind him, he jumps as you wrap your arms around his waist. “Good morning,” you giggle, and he quickly turns to place a kiss on your cheek. “Good morning to you too, doll.” He says. The name brings back memories of last night and you feel a blush on your cheeks.

“Y/N!!!!!!!!!!” you hear from behind him. You lean over and see Minho’s daughter coming at you full force. You quickly scoop her up into your arms, spinning her around as her bright laugh fills the room. It makes Minho’s heart explode, and he immediately feels embarrassed as he looks over at Seungmin. “I’m not judging, good for you bro.” The younger man says, sticking out his fist for Minho to bump. He laughs, but does it anyway, his attention turning back to your and his daughter.

“Are you here to have breakfast with us?!?! Daddy makes the best pancakes!!” The girl exclaims, and you laugh as you look over to Minho, sharing a secret glance.

“I sure am, sweetheart.”

✧༺♥༻∞　　∞༺♥༻✧ ✧༺♥༻∞　　∞༺♥༻✧ ✧༺♥༻∞　　∞༺♥༻✧

@dom--minnie @sparklemin @minholuvs @hanflix @moonlit-lixie @feliix

#stray kids scenarios #stray kids smut #lee know smut #lee know scenarios #bxngchxn fics

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ethereal-bang · 4 years ago

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Strawberries and Red Wine

Characters: Minho x fem reader

Words: 4.8k

Type: SMUT, dilf!minho, some fluff

Warnings: slight hard dom themes, unprotected sex (always wear a condom!), oral (male receiving)

THE FIRST OF THE DILF!SKZ SERIES IS FINALLY HERE!!

This contains mature content and is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18.

You hear a slight crash, and a teeny tiny voice accompany it.

“Shit!”

That single word, coming from such a small mouth catches you off guard. You want to laugh-- but you know better than to encourage it. Shocked expression on your face, you walk over to the table where the two girls are playing Jenga. The tower has been knocked down, and you can only assume that the expletive was said by the loser of the game. A sweet little girl, brown hair almost nearing her waist and big eyes that still held stars in them, was looking up at you in confusion. “Now sweetie, where did you learn that word from?” You ask incredulously.

“Everything is okay! I just wanted to tell you, your daughter did something today...” you started, and you can see the look in his eyes shift from panic to humor as you explain the situation from earlier today. He chuckles a little once you finish speaking, and you’re laughing too. “Ah, oh my goodness I am so sorry…” he trails off. “It’s alright, Mr. Lee, dont wo-” “Minho,” he cuts you off. “You can call me Minho,” he says, and you nod your head in agreement. “It’s okay, Minho. It actually was pretty funny..just be a little more careful around her, okay?” You giggle, and you could’ve sworn you saw his cheeks blush pink.

The apple falls to the ground when you’re knocked over, and you hear a small, familiar voice give you an apology. It’s almost a shock when you hear Minho’s voice, too, as you turn around. “Oh my god, miss, I am so...Y/N?” He apologizes, stopping in his tracks when he realizes that it’s you who is standing in front of the two of them. “Oh! Minho, hello! And hi there sweetheart! It’s alright, you didn’t hurt me,” you say in a small voice, dropping down to her level so you can meet her eyes. “But I made you drop your apple! I’m really sorry,” she pouts, and your heart absolutely melts at the sweetness. “It’s okay, I can just get another one! Why don’t you help me pick it out, yeah?” You ask, and her eyes light up with their familiar brightness.

“Really.”

“I would love that.”

__________

Minho looks absolutely stunning, you think to yourself. He’s dressed casually, but his button down shirt makes his shoulders look broad and the way his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows makes your knees feel weak. He greets you with a warm smile and a small hug, leading you into the kitchen. He really pulled out all the stops for this-- candles at the center of the dining table, two glasses with red wine sitting next to empty plates as he brings the food to the table. “Wow, this looks amazing,” you tell him as you take a seat across from him, sipping your wine. “Thank you, I really hope you like it,” he laughs.

The two of you stay like that, for just a moment longer. It's Minho who breaks the silence first, tightening his hold on you. “Is it..is it okay if I kiss you?” he asks softly. The action is so sweet, you smile as you pull him closer to you. “Please,” you ask, right before his lips crash onto yours. The kiss is soft, slow, everything you could have wanted. His lips still taste like the wine you’ve been drinking, and it makes you want to deepen the kiss. So you do.

You expertly undo his jeans, pulling the zipper down with your teeth in a teasing way. “Fuck, baby,” he says at the sight, and his little praise just spurs you on. You move him to sit on the edge of the bed, and you sink to your knees in front of him as you pull down his jeans. His cock is something to behold-- the perfect size, pink and standing at attention. Tempting. You grab the base in your hand, and bring your tongue out to lick at the head. Minho melts into your touch, his fingers going to your hair instantly. You begin slowly, sucking on the head and using your hand to stroke the rest of his cock. It’s taking every ounce of self control from Minho to not fuck into your mouth, wanting to savor the first of hopefully many encounters with you.

Bad idea.

You end up going for another round in the shower, and then straight to bed as the two of you are too worn out to do anything else.

You help him finish making pancakes, and when the front door opens, you hear little feet making their way to the kitchen, followed by the sound of Seungmin’s voice. “Hey, Minho I figured I’d stop in and say hi since I’m dropping off your- oh. Hello.” Seungmin says as he sees you at the counter with said man. “Hi,” you say quietly, giggling at his expression. “Y/N!!!!!!!!!!” you hear from behind him. You lean over and see Minho’s daughter coming at you full force. You quickly scoop her up into your arms, spinning her around as her bright laugh fills the room. It makes Minho’s heart explode, and he immediately feels embarrassed as he looks over at Seungmin. “I’m not judging, good for you bro.” The younger man says, sticking out his fist for Minho to bump. He laughs, but does it anyway, his attention turning back to your and his daughter.

“Are you here to have breakfast with us?!?! Daddy makes the best pancakes!!” The girl exclaims, and you laugh as you look over to Minho, sharing a secret glance.

“I sure am, sweetheart.”

________________________________________________________________

Masterlist

#this took FOREVER #but ITS FINALLY HERE #Minho smut #stray kids scenarios #stray kids smut #ryn's work: stray kids #ryn's work: minho

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the-flying-urayuli · 3 years ago

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uhhh nobody asked but heres my take on those cutscenes in inside (or at least the ones i remember) that i wanted to post for some reason

between content and comedy: no comment, a bit of an opening to the special and not really something that has to be analysed

brand consultant: pretty obvious, its about how brands pretend to care about the struggles our society faces but really is just leeching off of it for more money

can anyone shut the fuck up: also pretty easy, with the internet everyone is always voicing every opinion they have on everything that no one even asked for (hell look at me now) and maybe we’d be a bit better off if we just shut the fuck up. also kinda interesting that this part is done in a stand up comedy-ish format.

reaction video: also kinda obvious, parodying those reaction videos on youtube like the fine bros where it just keeps going on and on. however we also get one of the first big and obvious self hate? moments or at least that i remember and i ave so many hypothesis’ on this scene but none of them make much sense.

im horny: i fucking love how this scene looks, pretty straight foward, or at least i feel so i cant remember this scene too well and searching up “bo inside im horny” on youtube is definitely a regret. bo sorta confronts us straight up that this is pretty fucked. possibly interesting that it has a sort of podcasty vibe.

youtube thank you speech?: bo passively aggressively wants to stab the camera. could possibly be about how childrens content on youtube is so half assed or even bad for children. like some of these videos are disturbing to watch, this also sorta comes up with the other one above with the lines about how we have this system that only benefits a bunch of millionaires and billionaires and i dont remember those lines right.

bo looks at old videos: also pretty straight foward, this scene felt awesome though. leading into problematic its bo looking at his older more controversial past and either regrets it or is impressed with how far he’s come/learned? or a mix of the 2 but mote likely its the first one.

dont kys speech: i remember someone else saying this on tumblr ages ago, if you know who that is tell me and ill credit them but someone said in this scene he is quite literally self projecting and i think thats the best i’ll get out of this part

video game streamer thing?: this one is quite confusing and like the reaction one, i have loads of loose ideas but nothing to tie it all together. could possibly be about how streamers and videogamers dont really pay much attention to the message of a game or the actual experience and really just want to get through it as fast as possible and make another video, or something like that. there are definitely some more noteworthy lines and i could explain this a lot more but not today-

just before all eyes on me: i dont really think theres much to look at here. this sorta ending part of the special though is when it gets more confusing if its all acting or genuine emotion.

the ending part: this has to be one of the most confusing yet best parts so far. starting off, obviously bo finally leaves the room, his hair is still quite long but we see he looks a lot cleaner and is dressed now. then as he leaves the room he finds himself to be on some sort of set and an audience starts laughing. he attempts to go back inside but finds himself locked out, then he starts breaking down in front of the door as the audience keeps laughing. then suddenly it cuts to bo back inside watching that previous footage on a projector, then slowly smiling, in a satisfed manor. this part is a lot easier until that last part. starting off, the lockdown is over. he goes to try and go back into the world and back into the public eye or into normal life again but he finds he doesnt want to leave yet or isnt ready. so he tries to go back into that old state of just working on the special alone, day after day, but cant. so he freaks out. the laughing is a bit confusing and i dont even have anything to say at all for the part as he looks on.

also sorta noteable is how in all eyes on me, there isnt any actual audience cheering for bo, possibly he’s sorta going back and missing the times he got to go on stage and perform something he put a lot of work into and be praised for it.

sorry for this strange and confusing rant i just wanted to get this out of my head, if anyone else has any different takes on different inside moments id love to see them

#bo burnham #inside

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sparklyandchic · 5 years ago

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🦋 MINI MIND MAKEOVER 🦋

okay i started the idea for this mini little mind makeover when i broke up with my boyfriend in like january. instead of being sad or angry, i wanted to be grateful for this time and take it as an opportunity to make life better for myself. then quarantine happened, so some of these are related to things i’ve learned since that started. either way, these aren’t all concrete things to do for your mind; some of them are just ways of thinking or pep talks. but if you can find one little piece of information or thought that makes you a little bit happier for a moment, that’s all i can hope for!

5-htp: okay first off- please ALWAYS consult your psychiatrist or medical professional before taking a supplement! taking 5-htp with, for example, serotonin-increasing medications can lead to a fatal illness called serotonin syndrome. personally, i started taking it because i had been on 10 mg prozac for a few months. it definitely dulled a lot of my anxiety and had a lot of positive aspects to it, but it dulled them almost too much to the point where i felt apathetic and detached from myself and the situations i was in. i was in a very unhealthy relationship and felt like i needed my mental clarity and “overthinking” processes back in order to identify what i was feeling and how to deal with it. i felt a lot more “sensitive” after coming off it, which was actually really welcome for me at first, but then it sort of dropped off into withdrawals. i was having constant panic attacks and crying very often. after a while, i was debating going back on prozac, but remembered i had taken 5-htp before. 5-htp is an amino acid that is a direct precursor to serotonin being produced in the brain. when u eat turkey, tryptophan is converted into 5-htp which leads to your brain producing serotonin, thus why you feel calm and happy afterwards. after taking 5-htp for just a few days, ranging between 200-300 mg per day (again, do your research, ask your doctor, and start small) i stopped crying constantly and really felt this sense of calmness and wellbeing but without the detachment and apathy i felt with prozac. i could still think clearly but didn’t feel overly sensitive to every emotion which arose. personally, it is really a lifesaver and really does make a noticeable difference.

cognitive behavioral therapy: ive tried therapy a million times. well okay, like 5 or 6 different therapists. at its worst, therapists told me i needed to use my sexual power as a woman in order to get what i wanted from men, told me i’m bad at socializing and should do group therapy, said my mom shouldn’t have encouraged me to “be myself” when i was younger because it made me less likeable than if i had conformed to normal societal standards of dressing. i had gone to “therapists” who claimed to be trained in CBT, but when i told them about my experiences with dissociation, the only feedback i got was to “take more baths.” while going through a few unpleasant experiences in my personal life, i decided i should try CBT once more, but like the real kind. i found an ivy-league educated licensed psychologist (NOT a “licensed clinical social worker” who doesn’t even have a psychology degree!!) who SPECIALIZED specifically in cognitive behavioral therapy. just after the first session, i was so elated with my experience. as opposed to just telling me that i needed to be more normal or more kind or a better person, she tried to identify WHAT was making me feel that way about myself in the first place. she pointed out the positive things i do and reassured me i was kind, good, and deserving of good things. she pointed out many aspects of my situation that would have taken me days or weeks to come to on my own. i’ve realized my hubris isn’t that i’m not socially acceptable or not perfect enough, but its just that i tend to THINK that i am these things despite having no evidence of it. so, over time with therapy, my positive self image about who i am as a person has grown and strengthened and i dont just randomly feel like a bad human being anymore lol. moral of the story, if you wanna do therapy but it keeps sucking, dont give up. go to a legit psychologist, find someone who specializes in the type of therapy you’re seeking, and also be vocal during your sessions. stand up to your psychologist when they continually push a narrative onto you, and explain why you don’t agree with it. sometimes it’s their job to try different narratives to see what fits, and if you just passively let them say what they want to, you’ll never find the truth of your experience! it’s a communal effort! therapy isn’t usually a magic cure-all where one session fixes everything that goes awry in your brain. but if you find someone who knows what they’re doing they can in fact really help your thought processes become less twisted up and more clear and healthy.

meditation and mindfulness: a few weeks ago i felt anxious and overly driven to get things done to the point where i spiraled into a space of guilt or a panic attack over not getting enough things done. meditation can be so so helpful here. it’s better to spend an hour sitting and doing nothing, but doing it peacefully and then calmly moving on to doing something else, than to spend 5 hours stressing yourself over every single thing you need to get done and how much time you’re wasting. the things that need to get done will get done. another thing that i’ve realized and say to myself a lot is: “focus not on doing all things perfectly, but on doing the small things well.” by this i mean, stop thinking about the 20 things you need to get done and how it all needs to be perfect, but instead take your time with the task that presents itself as most beneficial right now and focus on enjoying it and giving your whole self to the process. for example, stop thinking about how you need to clean your room, your closet, donate clothes, take a shower, take out the trash, read, workout, etc. think to yourself; “which task would bring me the most joy right now?” if the answer is taking a shower, then take that damn shower. bring your speaker into the bathroom, scrub every inch of your scalp with shampoo, scrub your feet and behind your ears and your neck with body wash, brush the conditioner through your hair fully. you may end your shower with 19 other things to do, but god damn if you can’t enjoy a single one of them and be present for it, what’s the fucking point! go light a candle and bask in its glow, go make your bed and huddle up in your neatly arranged covers, go take a long bath or a thorough shower, and be proud of and content with that today.

relationships, with others and yourself: okay, if you missed the memo, my ex-boyfriend sucked. like genuinely was a bad person. he was a drug dealer, so that’s red flag number 1 (which i ignored of course), he hadn’t graduated high school (he was 18, i was 20, he was supposed to graduate the last semester but refused to do the work and ignored me and his mother when encouraged to do it, which is uhh definitely red flag number 2 which i also ignored), he habitually did not show up for dates on time or lied about what he was going to do or what he did (literally everything he did was a red flag and i rlly ignored all of it). the worst part was how he responded when i worked up the courage to speak to him about it. if we had agreed upon a time for our date but he showed up literally 8 hours late, he would blame it on me because i “could have called” him, or that i was “demanding too much of” him, or that i “should have said something earlier so now [i was] just dragging it out because it already happened.” basically, whatever narrative he pushed at me, i eventually gave into. i’ve dealt with gaslighting in a relationship before and a part of me knew what was happening to me, but a part of me also kept having hope for him, kept empathizing with him, kept wanting to believe in him. after a bit too much time, i finally realized you have to trust yourself, empathize with yourself, and believing in yourself over anyone else. at first i felt bad for him not being able to graduate because i had my own struggles with high school and getting work done. i thought he may have issues but he deserves someone to be there for him because i wanted someone to be there for me. despite the pain and stress he was causing me, i sat around crying over him because i cared about him and tend to over-empathize with people close to me, whether they deserve it or not. my therapist told me something that at first i did not understand, but over time came to grasp in its entirety: “some people do not deserve your love or kindness.” after our first session, my homework was to “consider when you are being kind and when you are being taken advantage of.” this made me realize that what feels like your instinctual nature to be nice to others, can in fact be a self-sabotaging unfair action, depending on the other person’s response. i might be dishing out a lot right now, but bear with me. think of it this way: you regard an action as a “kind action”. you might think “kind actions” include: forgiving someone for large mistakes, putting someone’s needs over yours, sparing them some change when they ask for it, listening to the problems they are dealing with every day. BUT when their actions include not forgiving you for minor mistakes, not giving a sh*t about your needs or considering them, not caring how much money they take from you and how much money you need to have around, or habitually glossing over your problems because it doesn’t benefit them to care, THEN those actions you performed are NOT “KIND ACTIONS” anymore. the act of continuing to give them leeway is now the act of being taken advantage of. the act of giving them money is now the act of being taken advantage of. the act of buying into their story at the expense of your sanity, is now the act of being taken advantage. basically, all i’m saying is START PUTTING YOURSELF FIRST AND TRUSTING YOURSELF WHEN YOU FEEL SOMEONE DOESN’T HAVE YOUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND.

ending thoughts: i know quarantine is difficult right now. the desire to grow contrasted with the inability to move. maybe try and follow that old 2008~ quote; “bloom where you are planted”. you might not be able to reach the goals you thought you would during this time. you might not be able to run a marathon or make a bunch of new friends or wake up at 6 AM to workout or redo your bedroom or get a rhinoplasty or join a gym or get an internship. working towards productivity might be unrealistic right now. but you can work everyday towards becoming the woman you want to be, mentally. you can work on learning to be content, learning to make the best with what you have, learning to appreciate the little things, learning to slow down. these are all qualities that i for one want to have just as much as i want to be attractive or successful. if you can’t enjoy success, what’s the fucking point! life is on pause right now, take this moment as a gift and consider your internal world and what parts of your mind need a makeover. there are horrible things happening in the world right now, do what you can to help, but if you’re safe and healthy then be grateful for the things you can learn from this difficult time. take it slow, but keep moving forward!

#happyandchic #happy and chic

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retrauxpunk · 5 years ago

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sv 6.06

recap post of the penultimate episode of silicon valley under the cut (with spoilers as usual)

this miiiight be a downer post so if you want to avoid that ... this is your warning

...

... i think this is the first episode recap post i’m writing that doesn’t start with ‘what the fuck’ because honestly i think i found this episode a bit weird and not ................that good? and MAYBE it’s just because i’ve had a shitty couple days? i’m not totally sure.

but.

I dunno.

I’ll try do this chronologically.

it was a good point of yikes with richard not actually having secured the AT&T deal and just telling his employees that he had because like, that’s a good potential source of conflict. i’m down for that.

i liked when he was talking to AT&T guy and then there’s a cut to dinesh and gilfoyle standing their like shocked parents. dinesh’s expression of ‘WHAT’ ... yeah i like that. also gilfoyle looked especially fine as hell, particularly the hands.

okay.

... gilfoyle using THE AI TO DEBUG CODE? i think this broke my suspension of disbelief. this seems wildly stupid and implausible given, like, gilfoyle’s WHOLE CHARACTER? i don’t really buy that someone who’s as security-conscious and conscientious as he is would, um, DO THIS? please feel free to present counterarguments if you disagree with this (or any other points in this post tbh) because i’m honestly open to hearing them, in fact i would welcome anything that made this episode feel more sense-making and less ‘what the fuck did the show just decide to fire all their tech consultants and throw character out the window?’

LIKE. it’s partly the fact that this seems a bit farfetched on the technological realism front but it’s MORE SO the fact that it just seems so NOT GILFOYLE.

GIVEN THAT FIVE EPISODES AGO HE GOT MAD AT DINESH FOR LETTING THE TWO AIs TALK. HE’S CLEARLY AWARE OF THE RISKS.

and he acts like this cavalier dont give a fuck asshole but i DO NOT BELIEVE that he would risk ALL OF PIED PIPER’S CODE with his AI?????? FUCK what is this!!...?

..............????

okay.

i’m ............ upset that they seem to have COMPLETELY DITCHED this whole jarrich thing they were building up. i’m NOT saying i’m mad that they’re not canonically a romantic couple. i’m saying that -- shipper goggles completely not in the picture -- the first four episodes built up so much stuff for them, there was SO MUCH about their relationship, and with 6.05 and 6.06 there was just fucking NOTHING. and it just. feels like kinda shitty writing? UNLESS?? in the final episode there’s a lot of richard and jared content to make up for it?

like the first four episodes had so MUCH content about their relationship (jared’s whole generally lovelorn thing, accidentally driving to the hacker hostel, quitting, richard throwing a fit when he quit and watching with this cocktail of sadness and bitterness and anger as jared leaves, their fight at the hacker hostel, JARED BRIEFLY FORGETTING TO BE MAD AT RICHARD AND SMILING DURING THE WHOLE BUYING HOOLI THING, richard apologising and telling jared he missed him, JARED FUCKING CRYING) and then there’s just NOTHING? what the FUCK? IS THIS? it HONESTLY feels like the writers were building up to a big richard and jared moment (whether romantic or platonic, either works) but then that storyline got axed by an executive and they got forced into dropping or something, or they just fucking collectively FORGOT about this whole arc seriously WHAT. IS THIS?????

this is the first time in my life i’ve gotten this level of upset about any tv and i guess, well, whatever they do with the finale, it can’t be as bad as what they did with game of thrones!! (i don’t watch game of thrones or read asoiaf, but it was pretty impossible not to catch wind of that whole clusterfuck) that’s gonna be my source of ......... solace.

so yeah.

for FUCK’s sake. all of jared’s talking about gwart, i just. if that’s meant to be sincere i don’t fucking buy it because no fucking way did jared imprint so hard on a person who was fundamentally a rebound

I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THE LACK OF JARRICH STORYLINE WHAT THE FUCK this is not even a queerbaiting issue THEY HAD A FUCKING STORYLINE TOGETHER AND NOW IT’S VANISHED INTO FUCKING SMOKE WHAT THE FUCK

ALSO DID THEY SERIOUSLY JUST WIPE OUT HOLDEN OFF-SCREEN ARE WE REALLY MEANT TO JUST IMAGINE THAT IN THE GAP BETWEEN EPISODES JARED JUST CONTINUOUSLY EMOTIONALLY ABUSED/HARRASSED HOLDEN INTO QUITTING WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK

honestly when i set out to write this recap i was just like ‘this prob won’t be a long post because all i really have feelings about and want to talk about is the ending of the episode’ but clearly ... that has turned out not to be the case

okay anyway, yeah, i mean, it’s definitely plausible that if richard and jared were to real life people that jared would rejoin pied piper and they’d just simply never address their falling out, right, i mean people are plausibly that emotionally constipated sometimes and don’t communicate in situations where you’d expect them to.

BUT THIS ISN’T REAL LIFE IT’S FUCKING TV and it appears to me rather much like shitty screenwriting when you set up a relationship conflict that’s fucking PACKED with juicy emotional moments and then it DISAPPEARS INTO THIN AIR what the FUCK

jesus christ

okay

anyway.

russfest.

honestly when jared was seeing gwart around i was a bit like, okay if this meant to be a legit hallucination it’s a bit Much because, really, jared being that genuinely devoted to gwart that the breakup with her cut him that much? i’m not buying it

so i’m glad it turned out to be Not a hallucination

i liked the twist that actually yaonet wasn’t throttling pied piper, pied piper itself just wasn’t good enough. i liked richard breaking down over it. tbh on a subjectively level i found it a bit painful to watch because he really did behave like a toddler and that was a bit, like, second-hand-embarrassment. but i don’t like object to it or anything.

WHY IS THIS SEASON ONLY SEVEN EPISODES.

the fucking speed with which richard breaks down and then magically finds a solution honestly feels way too rushed and unearned.

U N E A R N E D

that is how i feel about the resolution of this episode. like.

okay so if i remember/understand this correctly, richard’s [extremely hand-wavey solution] was to apply his compression algorithm to son of anton which allowed it to become more intelligent and learn faster/better? and that basically FIXED PIED PIPER? he used gilfoyle’s [a tad unrealistically] bitching AI to like ... have pied piper fix itself?

i barely understand it.

and it’s not like i demand a fully fleshed-out solution, right, like with the middle-out jerkoff epiphany, that wasn’t fleshed out but there was enough detail for it to feel believable. whereas with this ... it did not feel like that.

yeah the whole thing felt way too rushed.

what even was it? like, gilfoyle was using son of anton on pipernet to debug things ... whereas richard first used his compression algorithm on son of anton, then set son of anton loose on pied piper? okay that makes, like, enough sense that if they poured more time and detail into this, then i’d probably be totally happy accepting this in the storyline and my suspension of disbelief wouldn’t have been fucking skullfucked

but this, just. this pacing. i did not like it. it felt massively unearned because there were, what, a very small number of minutes between when richard finds out his tech is inadequate to when he finds a solution?

GOD THEY COULD’VE MADE THIS SO MUCH BETTER IF THEY’D PUT AN EPISODE BETWEEN PROBLEM AND SOLUTION INSTEAD OF JUST LIKE TWO FUCKING MINUTES

this makes me SO MAD IT GIVES ME THE CONFIDENCE TO THINK I COULD WRITE A BETTER STORY THEN THEY DID? FUCK???????

???

okay like yeah totally possible the writers had constraints outside of their control and they did the best they could. but. i’m still not ... happy with the result lol

anyway yeah i’m fucking cheesed off about how richard gets skullfucked with the inadequacy of his own tech, has a breakdown, and then MERE MINUTES OF SCREENTIME LATER, he has a wild solution that works!

and sure, they had it appear to fail first, which was good. but then it magically was back up and running! and yeah i liked how russ said ‘lights!’ and it turned out that this magical new pied piper had gotten so awesome that it build this new feature for itself or whatever, but, honestly, it happened way too quickly to feel believable or satisfying and i’m mad.

because this show has set a pretty high standard in the past and now it’s been a fucking let-down with this episode. god.

what the fuck is this pacing? it was so good at the beginning of this season!! WHAT IS THIS???

AND IF THE PROBLEM IS TIME

THEN WHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE SO MANY PLOTLINES WITH FILLER? THE WHOLE ETHAN CONFLICT. GILFOYLE AND MONICA VS TRACY. GAVIN FUCKING BELSON’S STUPID BOOK DEAL. can you imagine how much better this russfest plotline would’ve been if they’d had MORE TIME from not doing those ultimately unimportant subplots? fuck

i have legitimately worked myself into a rage writing this post. i did not expect to have this many feelings, to this level of intensity.

and it’s fucking frustrating because the bones of an awesome arc are here! the moment when the AT&T guy sees the giant hologram from the plane, that could’ve been actually epic rather than a feeling of ‘i know this is meant to be epic but it just feels totally hollow because they completely fucking compressed the biggest part of this whole episode into five fucking minutes’

and richard’s breakdown where he’s jumping on the laptop, screaming about ‘six years’? god that point would’ve been amazing if there’d been more time to explore it!

on a lighter note, i was amused when richard said he had gilfoyle’s laptop because i was like ‘oh okay it’s nice to know that richard is a l33t enough hax0r that he can get through gilfoyle’s undoubtedly Strong laptop security with [presumably] relative ease’ ... and then it turns out it’s dinesh’s laptop and i’m like, ah, okay, less impressive then XD

...there’s no way that the girls in jian-yang’s ‘coding class’ were stupid enough to believe that writing fake amazon reviews constitutes ‘coding’. not in fucking 2019.

i’m mad.

god this has lowered my expectations of the series finale SO MUCH which i guess may be a good thing because, y’know, there’s less capacity for disappointment now.

IT’S OKAY.

EVEN IF THE SERIES ENDS ON A SHIT NOTE, WE HAD FIVE AND A HALF SEASONS OF SHOW THAT RANGED FROM FUCKING AMAZING TO NOT AS GOOD BUT STILL ALRIGHT.

and i have a whole imagination’s worth of potential fan content to be created once the show’s over. i don’t know how long this sv love affair will last but i sure fucking intend to keep it alive as long as i can.

on the topic of fan content, if you’re interested in making sv fan stuff and receiving it as a christmas/holiday gift, please consider signing up for the silicon valley secret santa/gift exchange that i’m running :))) the official blog for it is @svexchange2k19 and the sign-up form is here

#silicon valley #rain watches sv s6 #sv s6 #sv s6 spoilers #silicon valley spoilers #spoilers #precipitation #my sv text posts

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salfordiansiren · 5 years ago

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Interview Questions for Ren Harvieu, God is in the TV ‘In Conversation with…’article

We do like to ask some ‘off-the-wall’ questions, also some slightly tongue-in-cheek and left-field ones not connected to the music business at all. There are also a few multiple questions and I’ve mixed them up a bit so that the subjects keep changing. Many of them are open-ended, giving you the opportunity to be as verbose as you wish. Please ignore any question you do not wish to answer.

Hi Lauren, my name is David Bentley, I write for a UK-based e-zine God is in the TV (GIITTV).

The objective of this interview, which will be published in GIITTV within a week of receiving your responses, is to introduce you to a new audience in the UK and abroad and to promote your forth on ming album.

The interview will also feature some embedded videos and/or audio unless you ask us not to do that.

There will be an ‘introduction’ to the interview but that will be written after its completion.

Thanks for agreeing to take part.

So, here we go…

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. How are you?

I’m in a great mood today thanks. I had foot surgery last week and so I cant leave the house or really move for 6 weeks but I feel strangely calm about the whole thing, I dont mind bein

For the benefit of readers who may not be familiar with you, how would you describe yourself as an artist, in a paragraph?

You have released two singles, ‘Teenage Mascara’ and just now ‘Yes, Please’ from your second album, ‘Revel in the Drama’ which is scheduled for next April and the first one was well received by broadcasting ‘tastemakers’. How does the album differ from the first one, ‘Through the Night?’

The difference between Revel In The Drama and Through The Night is that this is a much more personal album. I spent the last couple of years honing my songwriting craft and these lyrics have come straight from my gothic salfordian brain. Its darker, more intense, stranger but still has the beauty of Through The Night. I think both albums sit nicely together.

Since 2015 you’ve been co-writing with Romeo Stodart of the Magic Numbers and he appeared on stage with you at your recent concerts. Will that relationship continue? Do you prefer to control the songwriting process yourself, or are you content to work with other music or lyric writer(s) into the future? If the latter, who has the final say?

I’ll keep writing with romeo till I die if he wants to. He’s the best of the best, and he understands me. I never really felt understood as an artist till I met him. I feel so comfortable in his presence that I let it allllll out, not just the versions of me t

You signed with Universal, a huge corporation, as a 17-year old. Is that too young, or are there any benefits in being ‘bloodied’ in the industry at such a tender age?

I think I was too young, although Universal were great that wasn’t the problem. But there was a lot going on behind the scenes that I was dealing with. I wasn’t a show biz kid from a showbiz family and I had real problems that seemed bigger than singing about about being dumped by some boy. I felt too young and overwhelmed but also too streetwise and smart for it all. It was a confusing time.

They say that everything happens for a reason. In 2011 you suffered a life-changing event, just as your debut album was about to be released, and one which set you back several years. Eight years on do you think the dreadful accident in which you broke your back has had any positive repercussions?

I think there had been positive repercussions,I dont think I would have started writing if it wasn’t for the accident. I dont

What attracted you to signing with Bella Union for your new album?

Well

Do you have any role models in the music business? A hero or heroine? Anyone you would enjoy being “mentioned in the same breath” with? (Dusty Springfield comes to mind, also perhaps Shirley Bassey).

I really admire Fiona apple because she does whatever the hell she wants. And her records are stunning, unique and completely un compromising.

You are compared occasionally with Elkie Brooks (I’ve done it myself!), a different kind of singer perhaps but a highly respected one who hails from the same city, and even the same suburb as you. And she’s still performing, in her seventies. Is there anything you feel you can learn from her and, indeed, are you ever in contact with her?

I dont know Elkie personally but I love her shes a legend. Rising Cost Of Love is my jam!

You left Salford and relocated to London a while ago. Do you miss it? How did the move impact on your creativity?

I really miss the north, everything about it but I needed to leave because I was really sad and I knew if i didnt do something soon I was going to slip down the back alleyof my mind and maybe disappear forever. I have memories on every street, bus stops make me emotional. Corner shops where me and my friend would try and get booze in our school, theres just memories everywhere and I needed a clean break. To create some distance so I could write about it

When you’re writing, how do most of your songs start life? A piano part? A chord? A melody? Does inspiration simply come, or do you have to seek it?

I feel inspired everyday by everything. When writing a song I like to visualise it, like a film, frame by frame. Sometimes I move around, dance, put on voices. Romeo will play something off the cuff that’s so beautiful that I’ll just start shouting and laughing and hugging him. Its the closest I get to spirituality. Writing wise, I want the narrative to have as much depth as possible, I want to feel something and I feel it is my duty to give the emotion and the stories the respect they deserve. I take it very seriously.

Do you see yourself as a live artist, or a recording artist, or both?

I see myself as both. I get to appease the introvert in me by being in the studio and attend to the outrovert by playing live.

How would you personally measure ‘success’? By ‘breaking’ America? Or something more modest?

Success to me would mean I get to create and perform music for all time and make a living on it. Success to me would mean that people are touched and moved by my music. I would love to be a voice to someone that can comfort them, just as say Rufus Wainwirght was to me when I was a depressed 14 year old. I’m not doing this just to stroke my own fragile ego, I genuinely want to reach o

When I saw your show at the Deaf Institute in Manchester recently, in one song (I think it was ‘Cruel Disguise’), you reached and sustained a note that convinced me and those in my company that you could probably tackle opera singing. Do you have any ambitions to perform in that or any other genre?

I would love to learn opera. I think

Back in 2012, while you were recovering, you performed several James Bond film theme tunes with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, including ‘You only live twice’ and ‘Nobody does it better’, both of which arguably could be applied to you. Do you picture yourself as a ‘Bond girl’ in the sense of recording the theme to a future movie, or do you even have any acting ambitions to actually play such a role? After all, the new album is constructed so that you can “revel in the drama of my life” as you say. (Incidentally, a female friend of mine – also from Salford – commented that you look like a 1950s Hollywood movie star).

Tell your friend I said thanks a lot! I would love to sing a Bond theme, I feel like it could happe

Acting wise I’m open to it, why not?

I saw one of your Christmas Special shows at the Soup Kitchen in Manchester in 2015. During the show you told a story about how a school choirmaster prevented you joining a musical assembly on four occasions for no better reason than that there was something about you that he didn’t like. Your rejoinder to that was “Well, fuck him” and of course you soon went on to release demos on MySpace which were picked up by a local manager and sent on to Amy Winehouse’s producer. The rest is history. A new song, ‘Little Raven’ was written cathartically as one to your younger self when you had no label and didn’t know if it would ever be recorded. What advice would you give to young people who find doors being slammed in their face as that schoolmaster did to you?

If anyone is picking you, school teachers, other kids, parents, anyone i would say to

If schoolmasters are singling you out and picking on you, its probably because your different and they cant stand

What touring plans do you have to support the release of the new album?

We are organising a tour right now around the UK, quite a big one its really exciting. I also cant wait to tour outside of England, I’ve never done that.

If you weren’t a musician what would you be? Do you ever aspire to being ‘something else’ entirely (model, politician, footballer, train driver…?!)

I think I’d try and be a fiction writer. I love books and stories and characters. I heard Donna Tartt say something life ‘as much fun as it is to read a book, writing one is one level deeper’ There’s something about losing myself into another world entirely that really appeals to me.

The environment. Whose viewpoint are you closest to? Donald Trump or Greta Thunberg?

Greta or course.

United or City?

United

Coronation Street or EastEnders?

Corrie

Thanks again and good luck with the album and your future career.

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pengosolvent · 6 years ago

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really frightened that i am lacking something essential and will never be able to be a skilled or creative artist no matter how hard i try. equally frightened that i have sabotaged my own progress in various ways and have wasted years backsliding and will never “get back” any skill i did previously exhibit. do you have any suggestions for how to continue to produce art and improve even when constantly suffocated by fear

anon this is a common but unfortunate occurrencei feel this a lot too this is a very long reply because i think about this kinda stuff often, so there’s a readmore

i’ve got some advice for you, though i’m sure you’ve probably already heard some if not all of this before, so i don’t mean to talk to you like this is new magic info, but just reiterating stuff that i try to keep in mind that might work for you tooalso i want to point out that i’m not a professional remotely, so the things i’m stating are completely from my own personal experiences ….. and also i struggle with perfectionism and other things so while i give this advice i also still have trouble with the problems noted and also i use a lot of examples and comparisons when i talk because its easier for me to understand things that way

anyway:

1- you are the person who sees your art the mostthis is a very obvious thing, to state but it ties directly into a lot of what you’ve statedyou feel you lack something essential, you feel you’ve backslid and lost previous skills, and youre afraidbut think about the other art you seeyou ONLY see the end result of what everyone posts… or even if people do post in-progress pictures or speedpaints, you’re not really seeing the “scope” of it with in-progress pictures, you don’t know how much changed or how much was erased how much time was spent how much etc with speedpaints, you see all the progress but its sped up and it’s easy to feel like all of that was done faster than it really was even if youre aware its sped up

and even if you watched a realtime video of someone drawing… theres thousands of hours outside of that video of this person doodling, and even THINKING about their art that you havent seen it makes other peoples art feel a lot more.. confident? secure?

for your own art however, you are fully aware of the struggle of every line because you’re the one doing it and thinking about itit might make you feel like you’re trying so hard when everyone else has just Got it

2- experiencing art as a consumer vs a creator is a different feelingthis is directly tied to the previous idea but it’s easy to feel like you lack something essential when, instead of consuming the art, you are the one producing it

here’s an example: i love horror contentnot all of it of course, but i love horror that really makes me think and makes me see a characters motivations and really digs in deep psychologically and sticks with you even after you’re done experiencing the media

however it is very very hard for me to make anything that is strictly horror. for a long time i thought i was just bad at it, but i realized later that i’m not missing something that helps to write/draw horror … i just experience horror different based on if i’m consuming it vs making it part of the horror appeal to me is the MYSTERYif i am writing/drawing horror, there is NO mystery! i know everything there is to know about the situation i am making! i know all the character’s motivations, i know everything there is to know about every tiny detail and even if i am writing something where i don’t know what happens so it’s a purposeful mystery (such as in this comic where i don’t know what happens if you take off the tinier beak) it sometimes feels less Cool Mystery for me and more like “oh no i don’t know this thing, oh god, i’m a bad writer”i’ve gotten over that little by little, but it’s still hard to shake that i’m “missing” something with work that ISN’T mine its easy to put meaning that may not have been totally intended and THINK that the person meant it, and thus feel like that thing is more thought-out than it actually is

you might be experiencing something similar with art… where it feels like when you see OTHER art, you feel happy or like theres a meaning there etc but with your own art, you can’t capture that same feeling… it could literally be because you know what youre going for and what youre doing because youre the one doing it

3a- old art feels better sometimes because it is more removed from youyou know better than i do in this regard if this is true to you, because sometimes people can genuinely get rusty and lose but for the most part older art tends to feel better due to the fact it is becoming more and more removed from your current state and mindsetold art starts to slowly get treated the way you read Other people’s art because you’re not staring at it constantly and you start to forget the process and effort behind the old art

sometimes you can’t see well if your new art is “better” or not because it is too current on your mind and you know how hard it is to make and if it does or doesnt match what you were going for or etc etcmeanwhile your old art starts to be viewed more objectively because you dont remember every difficult line with it, and you can see it as a bit better because you’re not bogged by the negativity

3b- even if you fell off, you can regain the skill

even if you DID get worse over time… you did it once before and you can do it againyou can learn from your old works, but also try to learn from your old mentality a lot of my old stuff was more expressive and emotivei could learn to do that again mechanically, imitating my old stuff, but a big part of why my art was that way was because my mentality was different back then i was louder, more open, etc etcthink about what’s changed within you to see reasons for things changed in your art

4a- fear only works if you’re afraid of being badit is important to be able to see ways you can improve… but it’s also important not to fear that you have areas that CAN improveif you view “making something bad” as a punishment/negative outcome your fear directs itself through all your art

the easiest point fear can attack is starting to draw at allbefore you start drawing its very easy for your mind to go “why do this? why try if it’s just going to be stressful” and all through out the process that ramps up like “see it’s just stressful why do it”

your fear seemingly offers you something to gain if you don’t even try: avoiding the pain of art altogether

but what if you were unphased by that pain? if you don’t care about making something bad, that fear can’t manifest

some artists start their day by drawing the shittiest thing they can to shake off rust and have fun doing it … drawing a cartoon character from memory, drawing and overly rendered shitpost etc now i’m not saying not to care about your quality and take a ton of shortcuts and blablait’s still good to want to learn and improve it’s just that you have to start rearranging your perspective on your steps to achieve that

4b- no-stakes neutral is no problemhow do you get rid of that fear? how do you stop feeling being bad is.. bad?

try to view arts range as neutral to positive (as opposed to negative to postive) because at it’s base that’s exactly what art is what i mean by that is…let’s say you’re trying to draw a cat (and it’s not a commission or anything). your first attempt does not look anything like a cat this is not a “bad” thing though it may feel that way your failed attempt at a cat has not stabbed you or taken money or food from you or in any way truly inconvenienced you

the base idea is that you drew something and it wasn’t what you wanted this is completely neutral.. it’s like going to look for a new shirt. if you see shirts you don’t care for, you move past them until you get to the shirt you want.your “bad art” is just that. a bunch of shirts you don’t want til you find the one you’re looking for… you don’t have to pay anything for those “bad” attemptssure they take a bit of time and if you don’t have a lot of energy you might feel bad to use it on a drawing that you don’t enjoy and it can be frustrating if you keep trying to no avail, but all in all it’s not a stark negative

art isn’t a straight pathit’s winding, it’s really confusing , and it can be tiringbut if you go down a path that’s a dead end, you just try another pathdon’t fear reaching dead ends, there are always more paths

chuck jones (an iconic animator) said he had to draw multiple drafts to get expressions just right failure is in the eye of the beholder… he felt the first drafts for those expressions did not fit what he wanted, but he didn’t fear failure because of that even if the art was not by his standards, he continued until he got the one he felt was appropriate

it takes patience to get to where you wantif you stay patient you will eventually arrive there

5- drawing and thinking go hand in handart is a blend of being able to draw and being able to problem solve through what you already knowwhen i get stressed with art it’s usually because i don’t know what the hell i’m doing with no way to check myself if i’m close to what i want or not with me it tends to happen with backgrounds or animalsthis is why ppl typically suggest learning to draw cubes, cylinders and spheres from any angle because then you can transfer that base knowledge into other objectslike, cubes can be used to draw rooms, boxes, screens, fences, etccylinders can be pipes, water bottles, arms and legs, etc

transfering base knowledge is essential in art and understanding that you can do that, even if only as a base, helps a lotwith learning how to draw a mouse, you have a starting point for learning how to draw a rat (comparing the headshapes, sizes, ears, etc)… then you can use these two as a base point for drawing a squirrel, then a rabbit etc

another example could be maybe you know how to draw claws but not fangs… you can interchange the shape of a curved claw for a curved fang easily

starting with something you know and figuring out how to transfer the knowledge is very important and can help lessen that stress because instead of not even knowing where to start, you can problem solve to figure out what you already know under different termsits just all about knowing what connections you can try and learn, and working “smart”

on that vein… 6- perfecting things doesn’t make perfectit’s very tempting to make every tiny detail as good as you possibly can… but it’s very daunting and time consumingyou should try to work “smart” here too and now what i mean by that is … say i’m making a comic. i can make the comic to the absolute best of my current ability and take forever and become extremely drained Or… i could decide to try but still set a deadline for myself, and not worry TOO much about the smaller details why is the second one better? because i will get it done. if i try very very hard my ABSOLUTE best on a comic, making sure every single line is perfect, in a few months that comic will still be outdated. it will still get old and the amount i learned from it is limitedif i give myself some leeway (still trying of course, still learning and challenging myself) and set a deadline, i learn to be disciplined in my comics, i get a comic finished, AND i learn more because i am finishing more work in general

this is a really helpful video that explains this point more in depth

this isn’t to say you need to take the easiest routes for art that are availableit’s more like… back to the comic example, let’s say it’s like making a cake i can be a huge perfectionist about my cake, carving everything exact and putting every drop of frosting as exact as i can… but i’m still not a “master” at this i’m still learning the next time i make a cake i’m going to have to do the same situation … take forever to try to make the perfect cake

if i make a cake and still try, but accept when i don’t know how to get the exact result, my first cake is going to be a bit of a mess, but the next cake i make, i’ll be a little closer and in the time it takes Perfectionist Me to make 2 cakes, i might have already made 10 and i’ve sped up the process now and improved because i’ve learned a lot with those 10 cakes

there’s probably more that can be said about art, but i’m hesitant to try to dictate too much about how you experience your art and go about it i hope that this can help you at least a bit though

#nonbonart post

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baekberrie · 6 years ago

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Hi!!! Can I request an ANGSTY fic with a Baek X Reader ending, where you are bffs turned lovers, but then you discover that he is seeing someone else, someone you realise he LOVES. You start sneaking out of bed at night to the guest room when he joins you, but one night he wakes and asks u to come back, but you still dont. You leave for work early and head over to Chan Yeol's to spend some time apart from him. But he sees you at a grocery store and this leads to a chase. ANGST plz n thx!

It was late at night, the moon was shining through the curtains while you laid there, in your bed; limp and emotionless. The man beside you was letting out soft sneers, his body on the left side of the bed and yours on the right. You wondered when had things gotten like this. When had you started struggling to call him, your man? When had the two of you stopped sleeping in each other’s arms? You loved him, but you couldn’t find the courage to ask him about his feelings for you at this rate. It could mean losing him, and you couldn’t risk that. Only the thought was able to shatter your heart.

You missed his warmth, you missed the times when the two of you would go to bed together; when Baekhyun wouldn’t wait a second before tangling his legs with yours and plant sweet kisses on your face while he sang in soft hushed tones, when his scent would wash over you, when your world would be built of him only. But now? What was it anymore? You weren’t sure, it was just fading away, it was cold, you were cold. Every night, you would sleep in the same bed but it wouldn’t mean anything with his back facing you. Your heart losing one piece slowly but surely, painfully.

Deep down, you knew that your glory days were over, and shamelessly, you wished that you could go back to these times, where he actually looked at you with affectionate eyes, and not just a polite smile. Where his hand would automatically find yours, fingers always intertwined. When a kiss would last ten minutes, where his hands also showed you love, when his lips spoke more than words, now you had to content yourself with the rare pecks that the two of you would share. You almost felt embarrassed about the fact that you still felt chills when he would kiss you, perhaps it was because it had become such a rare thing and you wished for it every day. Because these days he was so distant, always typing away on his phone. Sometimes even smiling away at his texts.

You knew what that meant, Baekhyun wasn’t necessarily cheating on you, he would never do that. But you were sure that he had on the way met someone that was completing his days more than you ever would. It was difficult to walk around, to work every day with your heart clenching in your chest, your heart that you had given to him, and that he had over time forgotten somewhere, dusting away. Sometimes you wondered why the two of you still stuck together when his feelings had obviously faded away. It wasn’t that he didn’t love you, just not enough to leave his heart in your hands anymore.

From strangers to friends. From friends to best friends, and from best friends to lovers. It was like a circle, no matter how big it is, it will reach its end again, and you and Baekhyun were back at the start. You didn’t want to admit that yourself, your heart was barely keeping itself together, facing reality would completely throw you off.

But that was why you were crying in your bed, sobbing as quietly as you could to not wake Baekhyun, salty tears staining your cheeks, landing on your lips your hands clenching your shirt right in the middle of your chest. You heard Baekhyun shift and your breath hitched in your throat, his face was now in front of yours, the light in the room was dim but bright enough for you to see his concerned eyes, and for him to catch on your stained cheeks. Before you knew it he had moved closer, one hand was tenderly stroking your hair out of your face, while the other laid lazily over your waist.

“Baby? What’s wrong?” He murmured into your ear, lips kissing your temple, the way he called you, the way he comforted you was still the same as it had been one time, it made you go back to those times that you cherished so much in your heart, because they were gone, nonetheless, your heart trembled with anticipation, even though you knew it was more of habit than anything else.

His hold around you tightened when you didn’t answer and he proceeded with comforting you, your face in the crook of his neck as he gently kissed your crown. You almost illuded yourself that this could mean that there were still some feelings for you burning inside for him, but you stopped the idea before it could convince you.

“Baekhyun,” You whispered and he hummed, inhaling the fresh scent of your shampoo, his thumb was drawing slow circles on your thigh. It was unfair. You found it so unfair of him to touch you like that, right now when you were trying to accept the truth.

“Who is she?” A frown came on his face at your question, and his fingers stopped tapping your leg.

“What do you mean babe?” He sounded genuinely confused, but sadly, you knew better than that and lifted up your face to look at him in the eyes. Before you could react Baekhyun had already bent down to savor your lips, it took all of your willpower to break the kiss, but you had to, for yourself.

“Baaekhyun, I know- Just tell me the truth, that you don’t have feelings for me anymore-” You started, but got interrupted by Baekhyun placing a finger on your lips.

“Hey, hey, why are you talking like that?” Your lips pressed into a thin line, he really had to make this harder for you. A tear was burning behind your eyelid as you sighed. But when you looked at him in the eyes, you saw confusion. You pushed his finger off your lips as your face got more serious.

“You know, I can see it by the way you have distanced yourself from me. There’s someone else that is making you happy, I get that. It’s hard to accept it, but please don’t make me suffer here while you are experiencing something amazing all over by yourself.” You felt less heavy after saying everything on your mind, Baekhyun parted his lips to say something, but he didn’t know what to say, he couldn’t deny what you had said. Saying sorry wouldn’t justify his actions either so he nodded meekly, face lowering slightly.

That night you allowed yourself to remain in the comfort of his arms for a few more hours, you didn’t have much time left before you would leave this house, forever, you were going to take your heart back and hopefully, it would heal outside of this place. You needed it, to be away from the person you loved the most, but also the ones who hurt you the most. It was time to stop suffocating.

It was early in the morning when you carefully stepped out of the bed, thrusting the necessary into a bag and heading towards the bedroom. You gave Baekhyun a last longing glance before stepping out of the room, out of his life, the car keys rustled with your fingers.

The morning air was fresh and crisp when you exited the house, and as you inhaled the breeze you felt new, like you had gone out for the first time in months. Your back hit the car seat and you didn’t waste any time to turn the key and drive away. There were a couple of hours before your work shift started, so you took your time to call your other best friend, the one that used be in your trio together with Baekhyun. You fished out your phone and quickly dialed his number, you knew he would be awake even this early, he was a producer and even if he mainly worked at home, he had a tight schedule. But you figured out he’d make some time for you.

The phone rang against your ear and to your surprise you didn’t have to wait before he answered.

“Y/n, good morning?” Chanyeol’s dark voice greeted, making you chuckle, the amused tone in his voice had an unspoke question to why you were calling him at such an hour.

“Hey, could I crash at your place?” You figured that you’d tell him the situation once you were at his place, “for a while.” you added, not sure how long it would take for you to find your own place. Chanyeol lived alone and he often complained about it so you didn’t think he’d mind having you over for a couple of weeks. You felt a little bad for invading his space so suddenly, Chanyeol would always make sure to let every one of his friends know that he’d be there with open arms whenever they’d need it, that was one of the many reasons you couldn’t even express with words how much you appreciated Chanyeol.

Time had flown by like seconds, you hadn’t even realized how seven had gone so fast. You were still at Chanyeol’s place, your luck seemed to be hiding somewhere far, no apartments had ever available for you to rent since the day you entered Chanyeol’s home, you couldn’t stop apologizing to him for constantly having to stay with him. He always waved off your apologies though, telling you that he’d be more than happy to have you with him as long as you helped with the rent, and so you did.

Work had helped you distract yourself from your almost destructive feelings, you felt healthier and happier, you smiled more often, and you enjoyed life as it was, You had learned many things during this period of time, and even if your feelings for Baekhyun had supposedly faded you had wholeheartedly decided to cherish the beautiful times that you had spent with him as friends, as lovers. You knew that erasing him from your life wouldn’t give you anything but something more to complain about.

That’s right, your heart’s wounds had healed, and your feelings for him were gone, at least so you thought. You were just grocery shopping for you and Chanyeol when you saw him for the first time in seven months. Something seemed to have burst inside of you, his eyes immediately finding yours, and the emotions inside of them were unreadable for you, nonetheless, they shined with your reflection. The heart quickened its pace when he walked towards you, looking even better than when you had last seen him. He seemed surprised to see you, but so were you.

“Y/n,” he breathed, your name sounded so much better once he called it and the chills that went down your spine when he smiled at you made your heart betray you, all the hard work you had done to forget was slowly going to waste.

“Baekhyun, hi,” You greeted back, it was weird calling out his name aloud, it almost felt wrong. You got more nervous when you saw how his eyes scanned your whole figure before they traveled back to your eyes. There was a moment of silence before he spoke up again.

“ I’ve missed you,” Baekhyun admitted, his orbs never leaving yours, your heart skipped a beat inside of your chest at his words, though you didn’t know how to feel about it. Where you supposed to feel happy? Be indifferent? It would be a lie if you said you didn’t miss him, because you had, and a lot.

“Ah, I see. How are you? And your relationship with that person..?” You figured it’d be safer to just change the subject, you weren’t sure that you actually wanted to know how his love life was going, but now you had asked for it so there was no turn back. You almost regretted it when you saw how Baekhyun’s shoulder dropped. His eyes lost the spark, and a little did he remind you of yourself just some months ago.

“She wasn’t who she made me believe she was,” Baekhyun muttered, looking away in shame, and it oddly brought some kind of satisfaction to you, maybe he had missed you a little more than you had hoped he’d do.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” You said half-heartedly, thinking that if he hadn’t chosen her over you, he would never have suffered like he was now. But there was no use in thinking about things that should have been done, he had chosen his path and reached the impasse, now it was his turn to find the way out on his own, just like you had.

Baekhyun’s eyes snapped to yours again, this time they were hopeful, he wasn’t going to let this chance let slip away. He had lost you once, but he believed that he had left some kind of print in your life, it wasn’t going to be an easy task to remove him completely from your heart.

“Then Y/n, we have a lot to catch up about, if you want to get a coffee someday?” He suggested, and it reminded you how he had exactly done the same thing when you were in your high school years.

“Baekhyun, I don’t know if it’s a good idea-” You hesitated, of course, you did, what were you supposed to do when your ex was asking you to reconnect, after all the efforts you had done to erase him. Though Baekhyun interrupted you before you could finish.

“Then I’ll see you on Monday, you know where!” And with that, he rushed away, not giving you any choice but to walk into his life again, and him in yours.

First of all, I am really sorry, it’s really rude of me to make you wait so long :(( I hope you enjoyed this, I’m not good at angst so please bear with me!

#this seriously suck im so sorry boo :(((((#bbh #baekhyun x reader #baekhyun angst

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thelifetimechannel · 6 years ago

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This week’s bonus content brings us Jake and John discussing the likelihood of a robot apocalypse:

JAKE: Hey there pal! JAKE: So youre jades... brother? JOHN: that's right! JOHN: compared to how confusing everyone else's family trees are, we are very straight forward. JOHN: even if we did not know we were related at first... JOHN: i wasn't sure how YOU were related to her, back when you were pen pals. JOHN: do you remember sending me that letter? JAKE: By jove i almost forgot about that. It feels like ages ago. JOHN: i don't know how long it was for you, but i got it three years ago. JAKE: I mean from my point of view it was only a couple of months but a lots gone on. JOHN: it arrived on my birthday so it was right on time. JOHN: it came in handy in a tight spot. JOHN: you were right in your letter, i DO love movies. JOHN: even if i am not into wrestling that much. JAKE: Oh well ive had my fill of fisticuffs for awhile anyway. Movies on the other hand i havent had much time to dig into! JAKE: By the way did you like your present?? And little terry kiser? JOHN: um... JOHN: well, i named her liv tyler, actually. i didn't know you already named her, or him. JOHN: anyway, she saved my butt in a big way! JOHN: and then she flew off on a ship heroically, but ran off again i guess? JOHN: and then she somehow joined dave and rose on their even more heroic mission to blow up a sun. JOHN: which they failed to do mostly because they actually MADE the sun, but the important thing is that they tried. JOHN: they came back, but i think the bunny didn't make it. :( JAKE: I live by the philosophy that when a stuffed toy changes hands its appropriate to change its name. It gives things a history like that. JAKE: At least she died doing something i presume she enjoyed. JOHN: blowing up? JAKE: No!! Being a hero and dicing up bad guys! JOHN: was the robot sentient? JOHN: maybe we should have treated it with more respect, so it would not turn evil and destroy us like a watership down version of skynet. JAKE: I mean dirk helped me a little in making it and all of his projects seem to enjoy that kind of mayhem. JAKE: Not as much as his own version of the rabbit but i think in giving me advice at least a couple of his engine greased fingerprints are on it. JOHN: man, everyone is some sort of robotics genius around here. JOHN: if we hadn't already had an apocalypse ushered in by rogue technology i would be worried. JAKE: I briefly suspected hal but no worries. JAKE: I think if he were going to attempt a robopocalypse he wouldve done it a long time ago when he was bored and had less to do. JOHN: he and terezi would get along. they both seem to enjoy wreaking mayhem for fun, although she says she's sorry now. JAKE: They might try but dirk would go spare. JAKE: And I think hes tossed out all his spares for today already. JOHN: everyone has learned their lesson about devious deeds! JOHN: i'm confident that will not happen in the future. JOHN: instead we can relax and do things like watch that movie you were recommending. JAKE: Oh yeah!! JAKE: Which one did i recommend again? I think it was weekend at bernies. JOHN: the one about the corpse getting moved around to trick people? JAKE: Oh yes! Two gentlemen discover that their boss has died shortly before throwing a party and try to convince people hes still alive by puppeting his body around! Its really quite hilarious! JOHN: it sounds good. JOHN: although apparently i'm already locked in to watching a few others. JOHN: including dave's? JOHN: i can't believe he became a big deal movie star in your world, that's hilarious. JAKE: He did. Ive got one of his characters tattooed on my arm! JOHN: um JOHN: you do? JOHN: wow. JOHN: have you told him that? JAKE: Not yet. Should i? JOHN: you might actually make him speechless, which would be a first. JOHN: definitely try it. JOHN: wait, which one is it anyway? JOHN: also, how did you get a tattoo? JOHN: i thought you grew up alone or something, like jade did. JAKE: Ive got sweet bro. Dirk gave it to me after we met up! JAKE: Hes got hella jeff. We match! JAKE: Let me tell you it was a harrowing thing getting it! Id heard getting a tattoo really hurts but you know what i just closed my eyes and before i knew it it was over just like that. JOHN: ... JOHN: huh. JOHN: well, that sounds exciting. i'm sure he'll be thrilled. JOHN: none of us have ever shown that level of devotion. JOHN: mostly we just repeat his shitty memes. JAKE: Dirk takes memes to a whole new level pal. JOHN: i haven't really had a chance to meet him before this. JOHN: i've been missing out on so many reunions today, maybe because i keep bouncing around taking people places. JOHN: out of you guys i've mostly talked to jane and roxy. JOHN: and i only talked to jane once! JOHN: i'm already behind. JAKE: Oh im sure youll get along great! Hes a cool dude and super smart. A little odd but he genuinely means well. JOHN: i'm looking forward to meeting everyone! JOHN: wait, i did meet him once, that's right. JOHN: back in the bad timeline, i saw him floating in space and asked him what happened, because i'd just come back from fighting calliope's brother. JOHN: but all he said was 'i failed' and then he... turned into glitter? JOHN: there were lots of glitches floating around, it was a hazard. JOHN: hopefully we can overcome that first impression. JAKE: ...yeah that sounds like dirk. JAKE: He can be pretty dramatic. JOHN: rose and dave are super dramatic too, he'll fit right in. JOHN: with all of us together it's going to be all drama all the time. JOHN: it will be up to us normal people to keep things under control. JAKE: He grew up all alone so sometimes i think he only knows how to act from movies too but who knows. Maybe it runs in families. JAKE: Family. Weird. JAKE: Hey that means were family too arent we? JOHN: i guess so! JOHN: you're my... JOHN: hm. JOHN: relative. JAKE: Relative. I guess. JAKE: I cant exactly go calling you great uncle john even if i still call jade "grandma". JAKE: Has a ring to it though! Great uncle john! Its all folksy like poppop crocker. JOHN: that's right, i was jane's grandpa in your universe, i guess. JOHN: which is also weird to think about. JOHN: and i was sort of everyone's dad, by mixing our slimes. JOHN: so it keeps getting more outrageous. JOHN: as for knowing how to act from movies... JOHN: i didn't even grow up alone, and i think sometimes i have that problem. JOHN: you want your life to make sense that way! JOHN: but real life is a lot more complicated sometimes. JAKE: Yeah!! JAKE: God yes it is. ESPECIALLY when it comes to romance. Good grief. JOHN: i know! JOHN: the movies make it look like it's essential or something, when usually in real life it mostly seems to cause trouble. JOHN: but you can't get a good ending otherwise, unless you accomplish that and a bunch of other arbitrary criteria. JOHN: most of which we haven't accomplished ourselves, but i think we're going to get a good ending anyway. JOHN: still it can mess with your head. JOHN: real life is not like the movies, that's for sure. JAKE: Its hard to have a romance going when your life is constantly under threat by skeleton monsters. JAKE: Also your first time seeing another person in ten years and your first boyfriend happen on like the same day. JOHN: see, that's how it happens in the movies sometimes. JOHN: the main characters meet up and get together right away, and i guess you have to assume it all works out, because the movie ends. JOHN: but when you're actually doing things it is not that convenient, you have to keep going. JOHN: although i hope we're going to get a break soon. JOHN: i would be happy for the credits to close on the constant heroics and dying for a while. JAKE: Me too. JAKE: I want a nap. Without an evil spider troll waking me up. JAKE: Movies also dont tell you how tiring the whole rigmarole of adventure is. JOHN: the main characters always look great, if fashionably ruffled, and they can keep going no matter what. JOHN: but i'm kind of tired. JOHN: especially since i've lived through the same hours twice in places i think? JAKE: You and your weird time travel nonsense again huh? JOHN: i will probably be mostly retiring that, i wouldn't want to cause any more trouble. JOHN: for now it looks like everything is turning out fine on its own. JAKE: Yessir i think were on the right path now and as soon as were done here im gonna take a long nap and anyone who cares to wake me up can throw down about it even if they are a hitherto-perfectly nice troll lady. Or human lady. Or anyone else. JAKE: The suplex of slumber justice is unisex. JOHN: that's the spirit! JOHN: we will all pass out and righteously beat up any one who disturbs us. JOHN: except hopefully once we are settled somewhere a little less exposed. JOHN: if we were asleep here someone might roll off. JAKE: But we can fly? JAKE: Where would we even fall? Towards the frog since its like a planet? Or... down? Were being pulled down by gravity i guess but how can we fall down if theres just space? JAKE: Would we float in our sleep? Maybe just get sucked back to the victory platform? JOHN: that sounds like a question for jade, she's more interested in how this works. JOHN: i told her science was dumb and boring if it didn't work the way i wanted, which made her upset, but i guess i got what i wanted. JOHN: so hah. JAKE: So science works how you want now? JAKE: Are you ganking my power set young man?? JOHN: not all of science, just space and time i guess. JOHN: and all of the scientific laws i am violating with my wanton displacement of matter and energy. JOHN: what ever those laws might be. JOHN: i am not a scientist or lawyer. JOHN: or science lawyer. JAKE: You fiend. Ah well as long as you dont go abusing your power im sure nothing terrible will happen. Like you flap your windy hood and cause a hurricane down south like an errant butterfly of causality. JOHN: well, i sort of lured lord english here, but i had to to save calliope, and we had to fight him anyway, so hopefully you can let that slide. JOHN: like i said, i will be taking it easy from now on. JAKE: I hear you there. Im over here asking myself do i even want to go wandering around this wonderland of dreaminess or do i just want to curl up over in that edge of the lily pad and have a nice snooze? JAKE: You know i can nap almost anywhere. I consider it a talent. JAKE: I have fallen asleep on clear grassy hills except thats probably not a good thing because centaurs can track through at any moment and they arent too careful about where they step! JOHN: jade was like that too! JOHN: although it MIGHT have partly been a troll messing with her brain again? JOHN: trolls sure are meddlesome. JOHN: anyway, this is probably our last chance to explore the dream bubbles, so maybe hold off on the naps until later. JOHN: also, centaurs? JAKE: Centaurs! JAKE: Oh yeah did i never say my island was full of alien monsters? JAKE: Because my island was full of alien monsters. JOHN: wow, your life actually WAS like a movie. JOHN: no wonder it was tempting to see yourself as an action hero. JOHN: everyone else had such weird and dramatic childhoods. JOHN: i don't have many bragging rights but JOHN: i liked mine. JOHN: i guess i'm one of the people that actually... left something ok behind? JOHN: but that's fine! because there can be ok things in the future too. JOHN: or hopefully more than ok. JAKE: I hope so. JAKE: I mean most things would probably be better than having to keep an eye out for monsters while walking to the pantry for canned friggin beets. JAKE: Not that i couldnt handle myself but beets arent worth that much. JOHN: bluch, no. JOHN: jade kept trying to make us eat our vegetables. JOHN: it was terrible. JOHN: she doesn't even know about lunchables. JAKE: My grandma ONLY stocked veggies. JAKE: And this weird stuff called spam. JOHN: i think our jade would probably have a heart attack if she saw spam. JOHN: although she does like raw beef these days. JOHN: which is a little alarming if you see her eat it. JAKE: I think she mostly included it as a courtesy to me and also i dont think theres many other great ways to keep meat. JAKE: So i hunted! Hopefully most of those creatures were edible and i didnt give myself any weird diseases. JOHN: the rest of you were like man versus wild! JOHN: including dave and rose kind of, even though they lived in real houses. JOHN: i will have to catch up if we are in some sort of survivor situation in the new universe. JOHN: i'm not really sure how that will pan out. JAKE: Youll be fine. Well watch your back! JAKE: Dirk will probably like. Invent a house if you give him long enough. JAKE: Just stick with jane and youll be fine. Shes kind of like you in that she also had a pretty cushy upbringing if you count out the assassination attempts. JAKE: Not that i hold it against her anything. We all take our lumps as theyre given. I mean she also has a dead grand- JAKE: Wait a minute. JAKE: Did you say you were...? JAKE: *Suspicious squinting.* JOHN: what? JAKE: Janes... JAKE: Poppop? JOHN: i... guess so? JOHN: that would make sense, she was my nanna. JOHN: oh man, was i also crushed to death by a flying baby? JOHN: that would be so undignified. JAKE: But hold the damn phone!! JAKE: You were ALSO jades brother in my timeline! JAKE: So if you were siblings and youre also janes poppop... JAKE: Would that make her and i... related?? JOHN: um... JOHN: not genetically? JOHN: but i think you were adopted siblings in our world. JAKE: !! JOHN: she grew up with a brother under a wicked alien queen. JOHN: which was betty crocker! JOHN: and the troll empress. JOHN: it is all connected. JAKE: So we were always family! JAKE: Gosh shell be so surprised to find out i bet. Just over the moon. JOHN: who doesn't want more family? JAKE: Of course! Good gravy aint that just like a movie. So many of us grow up without any family to speak of and we find out we were all family all along! JAKE: Consarnit id even call that some kind of irony. JOHN: at least it's a pretty crazy coincidence. JOHN: except since skaia set it up that way it's not a coincidence at all. JAKE: The chilly wind of fate whips through our unshielded undercarriages. JAKE: Get out of there skaia that zone is closed for business! JAKE: Its not enough to be whipping round my legs its gotta go and nab my shorts too... JAKE: Well ive had the last laugh. Ive got PANTS now! AND family! HAH! JOHN: well, fate or coincidence or whatever, I'M happy about it. JOHN: and i think both pants and family are important.

#bonus content #jake english #john egbert

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tumblunni · 6 years ago

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Man, god, im just suddenly thinking about "ak/ur/oku" and like.. How the fuck did that even become such a huge thing in early 2000s fandom? Dear god so much early gay shipping in fandom was super unhealthy "sinful" bullshit made by straight people for fetishy purposes rather than genuine representation. But a/kurok/u was such a weird one because it was like.. Just globally accepted and never aknowledged to be problematic?? Man i still remember how lil 13 year old me didnt know there was anything wrong with it, like seriously when stuff like this becomes popularized it ends up sending bad messages to actual queer youth. Learning about your sexuality via the internet cos there's no sex ed irl for you, abd you end up stumbling into toxic fandoms before you have the critical thinking skills necessary to know that this stuff is bad and shouldnt be imitated. Like seriously one of the things i worry about EVERY NIGHT AT 2AM THAT KEEPS ME FROM SLEEPING is that stupid lil 15 year old me made a post on deviantart going like "are pedophiles really all bad? I mean it sounds like an illness. I mean maybe theyre just scared and they want help." Like im terrified constantly that someone will find that old thing and judge me as if i still believe that apologist crap, or as if it was actually an opinion i formed from a fully developed mind, rather than from a kid who (as far as i knew) had never met a pedophile, thinking about pedophiles in the abstract, while being influenced by fuckin pedophile-dominated fandoms and having NO IDEA. and of cooooourse i wanted to believe that i was mature for my age, i thought that was a compliment.. Uuuuugh...

Sorry, going a little offtopic there.

But anyway isnt it kinda weird how akur/oku was just.. Not even regarded as pedophilia? And when i was a kid it wasnt just me not understanding the gross parts of the fandom, i legit never thought axel was that much older than roxas. And it was one of the more popular gay ships cos at that point as far as we knew it was the only person axel had any sort of backstory with, and he cared so much about this guy that he was willing to sacrifice his life to help sora even when he knew roxas would never come back. At the time without further context it seemed like a reasonable assumption to make? And it wasnt until Days that i realized axel was intended to be an adult rather than a teenager, and even worse A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO MADE THAT SHIPPING ART KNEW THAT. Uuugh it was so gross in retrospect to go back and see all the clues i missed that these people were fetishizing roxas's inexperience and veey much writing him as underage. AAAAAAA!

Anyway im glad that shit is now recognized as shit and now we have canon evidence of this dude being old as balls. And honestly i love the relationship of him as a big brother/dad to roxas and xion a lot more, even though as a kid i was desperate for any kind of queer representation in kh. Like.. I never really actually liked the ship that much or felt any chemistry? I just latched onto a few bad writing flubs that could potentially be interpreted as Gay Evidence because i was SO damn desperate! Like i felt like i had to support all these gross abusive ships in fandom cos if i wasnt then i was being 'homophobic', i mean they were THE ONLY AVAILABLE OPTIONS, right? :( Its only now ive grown up i can see how wrong that was, and how people just used it as an excuse to make gross shit and get away with it. Like how in Black Butler all these 'yaoi fangirls' kept erasing the rarest of rare things, a canon trans woman, because 'its sexier if its gay'. Ughhhh. And seriously that discourse still exists for poor Grell, and there's still a lot of these shitty bigoted people pretending to be allies, but like seriously this was EVERYWHERE in 2005! And lgbt rights and even lgbt communities at all were way smaller and less available to the poor teenagers who really needed that positive influence while they were figuring out who they are. So man the abusive side of yaoi fandom was WAY more powerful, and wya more.mainstream, with barely any criticism. And the whole content of this fandom was creepy fuckin adults making pedo porn, and kids who just discovered they were queer and tried to headcanon their favourote characters as being like them. Fucking predator heaven! So yeh that ruined KH for me and definately made me scared of returning to Black Butler for almost a decade. And then i found out that the manga itself has none of that pedo shit and that one of the fandom's biggest abusive gay man archetypes was actually a trans woman this entire time, and just gahhhhh....

Also like seriously this is a tad offtopic but can we kill the anime trope of either everyone looking young or everyone looking old? Or creepy things where just one character looks the wrong age in order to fetishize pedophilia? I dont think kingdom hearts was one of those intentional ones, like i mean there's super bad shit where its like 'this 5 year old looking person is really 9000 years old/actually 18 and just hasnt had their growth spurt yet' (somehow its even more insulting when theres not even a magical excuse) Or the other way around and we have a character thats canonically underage but drawn looking sexually mature with big ol knockers so its somehow okay. The existence of those horrible things is why i end up feeling uncomfortable even seeing ambiguous ages as just a trope in completely innocent anime, yknow? Like in pokemon and digimon all the 10 year old protagonists are exactly the same height as all the adults, and all the female love interests for ash have to be early bloomers in terms of chest and hips, while notably Iris is the only one who actually looks her age and also the first non love interest. Its another reason why i prefer the new art style for the latest season, they make everyone look like kids and Lillie continues to look like a kid even though she's the main girl and has all the cute scenes with Ash. The girls even got very normal looking kiddy swimsuits in the beach episode! Why is that so uncommon, to find the bare minimum thing of underage kids not being sexualized at the beach??

Soooooo yeah, thats at least part of why kid me thought axel and roxas were within a similar age range. Like i thought roxas was maybe 16 and axel was 18?? Somehow?? I dont even know, kingdom hearts isnt even SUPER bad with the 'kids look like older teens,all adults look like age 20 at the most' anime syndrome. Its probably more because id been raised on games and anime that followed that trope, before i played kh. And as a kid you just dont really know the exact differences between 'old', like i mean i knew teenagers were tall and boys get a growth spurt, so somehow it made sense to me that axel could be the same age as roxas?? And man even if i knew he wasnt, i was barely educated at all about pedophilia and i didnt know the nuances of it. I just knew 'its bad for adults to marry kids' like man i was really behind the curve in general learning due to my undiagnosed autism and abusive parenting so like HERE'S 12 YEAR OLD ME NOT EVEN THINKING ABOUT THE SEX ASPECT. And i didnt know that adults in relationships with teenagers was bad too, or like 16/17 year old teens dating kids... I was so fuckin dumb... I really cant believe that not only did i believe stupid adults saying 'pedophilia isnt bad if you're non offending, its okay to make cartoon child porn as long as you dont physically abuse real kids' but also i somehow just DID NOT EVER REALIZE that axel was an adult and roxas wasnt even a goddamn older teen...

So yeh im making a lot of excuses for why my stupid younger self was blindly parroting bullshit, but im not trying to excuse how goddamn wrong and bad it was. I still wake up ashamed in the middle of the night for crapoy decisions i made as a dumb kid, and in terrified that some shreds of it might still exist out there on the internet and maybe someone else could read it?! Gahhhh! Seriously could i have accidentally helped spread that bullshit brainwashing to other kids? And seriously when people say this shit is harmless they just need to look at this, look at how being into problematic yaoi is such a common 'phase' for ACTUAL CHILDREN. Like its not fuckin NATURAL for kids to fall into this stuff, they do it because they dont know any better but the people making the goddamn founding blocks of the fandom are fuckin grown women fetishizing gay men or grown men fetishing lesbians. There's people who do know better who actually conciously decide that a/kurok/u is a good ship while knowing all the goddamn details of what it actually is and exactly what theyre supporting by shipping it. Ughhhhh!

So yeh fuckin Please Stay Safe In Fandom, Kids

And pedophiles have absolutely none of my sympathy, please ignore that goddamn shit i wrote as a little kid being fuckin groomed by a fandom without even knowing it.

This also applies a lot to the rest of LGBT+ aside from just gay shipping, like seriously it took me til age 18 to find any positive representation of trans people or even a proper explanation of what being trans is, yet before i was even 8 years old i'd seen a million 'lol gross man in a dress who gets sexual gratification from wearing women's underwear' jokes in kids shows. And when i was 12 i'd already been exposed to the fuckin hell of m/pre/g thanks to its prevelance of untagged n/sf/w shit in the kh fandom. And by age 15 i'd been exposed to pedophile apologists arguing whether child porn was okay if they only got off to that and didnt personally abuse that kid with their own hands. All of that shit but actually learning about homosexuality and gender in sex ed would have been 'too much' for someone my age...

God what a fuckin mess. Fuck im really really fuckin worried that any of my ignorant comments at those ages could have been read by other ignorant kids and contributed to that disgusting fandom atmosphere. Fuck i think about this so damn often im so damn ashamed of how ignorant i used to be yet i know the adult fuckfaces making pedo shit never reel one lick of shame any damn day of their life. I used to excuse their shit as an actual kid cos i just ASSUMED they would be ashamed and want to seek help! Gahhhh..

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04loved · 7 years ago

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To A Happy 2018

This isn’t a follow forever or mutual list, I just wanted to give a little personal shoutout to some of you who make tumblr a place i want to keep coming back to.

There are many more wonderful people I didn’t mention, but I hope in the coming year to step out of my comfort zone a little and try to talk to you all more, even if it is only over anon. To everyone who has sent me an encouraging message or anon in recent days, I was truly touched and I thank you so much. To all of my followers, i love you and you’re doing great and i hope you have a soft 2018 filled with love and good things!!

@bbhsavocado i feel like i learned so much about u pricilla that night of the bbh in panties talk aldkjsgljk how validating to see my kinks shared n sub bbh appreciated like that, but it was also awful n i hated it. i love all ur bisexual bbh-loving content n ur friendship with some mutuals is so adorable i hope u all find great gfs this year <3 i have no idea y i took so long to follow u bc ur everything i want in a blog

@bbhsthighs nicole, u want to be a person who gives happiness like the boy who inspired ur url, and u do, u really really do. ur hilarious and adorable in ur tags and ur interactions with ur other friends on here. i can tell how much you love them and how much they love you back <3 maybe some ppl first liked u for ur humor and light, but love means accepting u when ur hurting and when u dont feel like u can shine anymore. pls dont be afraid to share that side of you with those who deserve ur trust, bc thats what a true friendship is. pls treat urself with the same kindness u give to everyone else. asking for help isnt being selfish and it isnt letting anyone down. u do not have to shine for everyone else while being blind urself. following u has been a wild ride from the day i first found ur blog and ive enjoyed every day since. this year i hope the world becomes a bright and beautiful place for you.

@bobohu elaine, im not sure who you want following you since u changed ur blog...i think u left while i was taking a break from tumblr, but i found you again from a post about the kinds of love you feel for exo, i knew there was only one person who writes like that, so beautifully and so full of love. you were one of the first exo blogs i followed and you have always been someone who radiates good vibes and sunshine. i want u to know i appreciate every one of ur positivity posts, and even in your selfies, your smile, you look exactly how i would expect from the kind of cute content you have. i want to genuinely thank you for being a fan for so long and doing what u can to make others happy. i love seeing your posts and im very happy i found you again

@boxianb ive been following u for so long and like idk how u do it but u reblog every single baekhyun post i have on my blog without fail. always. u r just all baekhyun all the time and u know what i admire that i respect that so much that is dedication and i see u and appreciate that, its exactly what i want and need in my life, thank you !!

@byunchen mel, ive seen your posts lately and how you are lonely and missing friends on here, and ive been following you for like...two years now..and we don’t really talk, im shy and you say ur shy and bad at talking.... but here’s me saying that i see you and i appreciate the time you spend on here blogging and talking. im not really active enough anymore to promise to interact a lot but this year i will try to talk more and i wish you many adorable anons and people to call friends !! thank u for coming this far and being an important part of my dash

@exolgbt around when i first followed u i was questioning a lot if i was actually a lesbian and somehow ur blog just like...comforted me ? made me feel good ? helped me try to understand myself ? seeing someone so proudly a lesbian and also so in love with exo... ive come to terms with being bisexual but i admire you and really love your content and all the exo mlm appreciation !! ur doing good work <3

@imagine-baekhyun i dont know who is running this account but ur literally ruining my life thanks i hate it !!!!!!

@kjonginswife i have to admit ive wanted to talk to u for a while alkjgslkjg its nice to see someone my own age on here, i did see ur universe reaction and i think youre adorable haha i dont follow a lot of non-bbh stans and honestly i think i followed you at first by mistake but i have never regretted it !! idk how to put it into eloquent words but basically u give me such good friendly vibes and i love seeing your posts and your tags and your personality and just know someone on here really appreciates you and would miss you if u left

@kkaeb-my-song one of the holy first baekhyun blogs i followed <3 from the beginning you struck me as a very sweet person so cutely in love with baekhyun and that hasn’t changed, ive only come to appreciate you even more. you’re a constant on here and being in this fandom wouldn’t be the same without you !!

@mochibaeks I LOVE YOU i know youre not as active lately jelly but I LOVE YOU youre like the sweetest cutest squishiest most adorable person ive seen on this site i just...love...everything you say and make!! im p sure i first followed u bc u did like the bias audio challenge a while ago...u sounded so friendly and adorable, ur voice is very fitting for you haha you are so warm i hope you stick around for a long time because i love you soooo much

@rosybbh ive been following u sophia for a while and we’re mutuals but we havent talked a lot and im still honestly intimidated by you lol idk how u feel about this view but i see you as a very strong person, just the way u talk seems confident in some way to me, whether u feel like that or not. i dont really have the right words, but i admire that. i LOVE everything u say about bbh...all ur posts for bbh n about u n bbh...damn u always got me daydreaming about him too :( except ok there was this one pic of chanyeol and u said smth like ‘imagine him manspreading’ and id like u to know that that actually ruined my life and i havent forgotten it so thanks. for u especially i hope u have a very bright and healing year

@r-velvets vivian i know u have been gone recently but still lurk, and u have one of my fave blogs content wise and gifs and personality. u r still like THAT way too cool mutual i get so excited to see...especially bc you’re also so kind and during that really hard night after the news of Jonghyun, idk how or why but just those few words u said made me feel a lot better. i miss you online but i hope youre doing well in your real life and finding happiness

@sefuns i dont have a lot to say bc im really shy but u were the FIRST exo blog i ever followed and you have given nothing but great content since i found you two years ago, and when u followed me more recently i could not believe the notification aglksjgljk i have no idea how u found me but knowing we’re mutuals made me very happy and gave me a little blush and i just wanted to let u know that

@thundaelights fey, i dont think this will mean much to you coming from a stranger, but after following you for two years, i feel like i know you some, and i want to say that i hope this year you see many beautiful sights, and your heart feels light, and you are surrounded by things that give happiness. i hope something happens soon that makes the whole world look different, look brighter. its funny how life can change so fast and without warning. i wish you not just strength but also a safe place to fall apart and hope to put yourself back together. may you find countless reasons to smile

@wangeun we talked a lot for a while and then i just kind of disappeared i think as i often do rip but i still love following you and i just want to say real quick that i see you and i notice you and i would miss you if you left and i hope youre finding a lot of success in your life

to new mutuals @cuddlyjd @okaybaekhyun @baekhyuns i still get so shy and happy when anyone follows me back but thank you !! you are all three cute and adorable and funny n kenzie i hadnt followed a great jongdae stan in a while since the old dae-biased blogs i followed became inactive thank u for loving jongdae so well alkgjs

@sebyun @winterbyuns @etherealbbh @progamerbyun @dearbyun @baeksee @byunvoyage @solobaek @queenbyun @baekhyy @baehkhun @ethereal-baek i love all of u bbh stans giving baekhyun the love and adoration he deserves n giving me the positive baekhyun content my heart needs. esp solobaek (kiki, right?) u have the cutest most wonderful tags i love reading them all and seeing so many heart emojis

im sorry i dont have the most to say but im thinking of you all and wishing you the best!!!!

#sry if u dont even know me lol i mostly lurk rather than actually talk #happy new year!!!!#p

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iameverything · 4 years ago

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A Conversation: Lost Under Heaven

“The Manchester duo Lost Under Heaven, or LUH, have never been keen on subtlety. Super-sized in every dimension, the music of former WU LYF leader Ellery Roberts and visual artist Ebony Hoorn sought grand answers about love and mortality by way of drastic melodies.”

First off, for people who dont know, who is Lost Under Heaven? Ebony Hoorn & Ellery James Roberts Collaborative life work.

The first time I heard of you guys was 'I&I' on the HBO show Ballers and I was hooked. I originally thought of bands like July Talk etc, where the voice coming from the person is a surprise, in a very fascinating and amazing way. Was there a moment you can remember when you (Ellery Roberts) realized you had such a unique voice? When I was young I found a cathartic uplift in singing as hard as I could, usually in response to the noise of the rest of what ever teenage band I was playing with, since then I’ve learned to control it, focus it, People always tell me my voice is unique, it’s just how it comes out, but these days I am singing quite differently, working on a softer croon. I have nothing to shout about anymore.

In regards to the previous question, whats it like to get your music featured on HBO Ballers and even Netflix 13 Reasons Why, among other content? How surreal is that? Its always strange to see a song that has quite specific meaning or ambiance to you, put in a totally different context, but that is also the beauty of creation, once you release something you never know what it may go on to inspire.

With how unique Ellery's voice is and than to be accompanied by the other beautiful voice that is Ebony, I am surprised your music isn't showing up in a lot of other content. I picture LUH having a song in a tv show as the intro in my opinion. How much longer until North American tv/movie productions start taking notice you think? Have you gotten any offers you turned down? We haven’t turned anything down, sure it would be nice to have some high level syncs, make cash flow easier and get the name out to a wider audience, but these things always come out of the blue… We enjoy narrative, atmosphere and an expansive sound in our song writing so it lends well to soundtracks. We are actually working on our first soundtrack for ‘8 days with hopper’ a feature film due in 2021, a really beautiful project that we are very excited to be a part of.

Before we dive into the bright future that is Lost Under Heaven, we gotta go back to the past. Before you (Ellery) joined Ebony for LUH, you started in a band called WU LYF, mindset wise, what was it like being in WU LYF vs LUH? And creatively how different was it? WU was a teenage jam band that got picked up on a wave of hype. I loved the creation of the record and feel it is a very genuine document of untamed youth, but after touring it for 18 months relationships soured and the joy, the fire was gone- trying to write the second record and growing in awareness to the state of the world I fell into a deep depression, I longed for a deeper life and my heart knew I needed to make a change. I broke the band up quite impulsively which I regret for it needlessly hurt those closest to me- but life moves on, wounds heal. creatively all the songs came out of 4 people jamming together for hours and hours- with LUH the process is much more focused, considered, I sit at a piano or with a guitar & write songs working with Ebony to produce them in a cinematic world of atmosphere and tension. I only miss WU LYF in the nostalgic way people miss their teenage years of wild abandon.

With endings come new beginnings.... Right before the end of WU LYFE, did you guys always know Lost Under Heaven was the next project in mind? And has it lived up to the expectations of what you pictured? Lost Under Heaven began when I moved to Amsterdam to live with Ebony, we were not really anticipating working together but it naturally came with me making music whilst she made her visual art in the same small apartment. We then started to have grande visions of what we could create together, we see LUH as a life work, ever evolving, a process thru which we can experiment with ideas and express our ever evolving level of consciousness.

You guys are just absolutely marvelous, I even went as far as calling you my favourite band of the last decade. You guys present not just new ideas, but new sounds and something I have not yet seen. You guys have such a unique vibe its insane. Have you guys ever been approached by any labels or music reps to change anything up significantly? And what do you think of artists doing that to get signed? Fortunately we both have always had a very clear idea of what we should be doing. We are ever motivated to create and have great gratitude that we are able to live this life. To be honest nobody’s ever really challenged us to change, the way in which we work is essentially D.I.Y so we just explore where ever the energy take us. We probably would benefit from some business management, but the blessing of doing everything yourself is you learn and grow at a high pace. As to other artists, each is own their own path and they have to live with themselves so I have no judgment- personally I have never compromised my art to get a wider appeal, or more success, I strive for soulful honesty- not just entertainment.

Little backstory: I was once standing on a beach somewhere in a middle of nowhere, and the beach was a temporary home, something to hide away in but it was only a band-aid of escape. In the mist of the sunset setting and nothing but ocean in the backdrop, your track Loyalty from the album Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing came on, and everything made sense in that moment. One of my favourite songs ever, hands down. Talk about what that song means to you guys? How did it come to be? Loyalty is one of my favorites, it was actually the first song Ebony sang on, the first time I really heard her voice- I wrote the cello part years ago, probably when I was a teenager and always had the idea to make an epic street hassle (Lou Reed) kinda record, but could never figure out how, then I came up with this guitar riff and sang along it all started to come together but I had no idea how the chorus should go, so I asked ebony to just play around and those line’s “we are going to sail away…” came out of it- perfect! yeah I love that song, we have never really been able to play it well live (with out a cello player!) so I haven’t heard it for a few years- but you made me want to revisit it now…

While we are on the topic of your first album, what was the song writing process for it vs your second album Love Hates What You Become? Would you say there was a difference creative wise between the two? Spiritual Songs was written in lots of little fragments over a couple of years (2012- 2015) I mostly wrote it on a piano and then straight into Ableton so its a lot more processed production, - Love Hates I wrote whilst we toured the 1st record in 2016- I had started playing guitar for the live band so I wrote nearly all the songs on 6 strings, I finished it up in a week in January 2017 so it was fast, focused- we produced the record with Jon Congleton in 3 weeks recorded and mixed, so it was all very fast- I felt the record to had a raw urgency, to keep us moving, keep the band on the road, but then the label stagnated the release schedule for 18 months and it kinda lost the energy, I am proud of the record- but it was quite a frustrating period, which I am happy to have behind us.

I've always wondered, with your album titles like Love Hates What You Become or Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing, where do these ideas for album names come from? The Unified Field. I don’t know man, ideas arrive and you note them down and then months later they have meaning, that’s the way titles, lyrics most of what we do comes to be- I like walking around aimless, letting my mind roam, writing down anything that feels exciting

Speaking of creative, you guys recently left Mute Records to start your own label LUH International. What prompted this big change up? And in a nutshell what can we expect from these big changes? As eluded to earlier, after the release of Love Hates we had become frustrated by the slow and bloated process working within a label system can place on your creativity- We were looking for new way to work in the world with more intimacy and spontaneity, an opportunity had arisen with a de-centralised video platform called Vevue that enabled us to become financially independent for the foreseeable future- so we decided to make LUH.international formalised as an entity- to release our work, not necessarily a record label, I see it more as creative studio that will periodically make short run pressings of our projects- we are currently putting together the First, a book that consolidates our work on the Love Unite Humanity web series release via Vevue.

What advice can you give someone who would want to start up their own record label? Patience, perseverance and maintain a level of success consciousness- law of attraction vibes.

You guys are not just starting your own record label, but developing original content (and music) titled Love Unites Humanity (Episode zero here) and will be featured on the video platform Vevue. In saying all that, what does this project mean for you guys? And how will this take Lost Under Heaven onto the next level? Love Unites Humanity brings together a lot of our thoughts and experiences over the last few years, I see it as a way of articulating our world view, thru artistic expression. It also provides us a free space to experiment, creating work quickly and immediately releasing it with no middlemen, the Vevue platform enables us to directly earn from our work with it token exchange economy.

When can Canada expect to see LUH live in concert? ah man, I have no idea, we’d love to get over to you tho- perhaps some one reading this will want to make it happen.

5 rapid fire questions, give the answer that comes to mind first If you were not called Lost Under Heaven what else would you want to be called? Ebony & Ellery James and their Famous Flames Best venue to play in? The White Hotel, Manchester Favorite current song? ROSALÍA - Juro Que Best underrated artist? So many but my today I say, Kali Malone Favorite song that is your own? Here Our Moment Ends or Black Sun Rising

Cover photo by Chris Almeida

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