#i recognise that people find aesthetic making fun but sometimes you have to be aware that aesthetic isnt mroe important than like....

[fightinhand-blog]

ok i’m sorry to bring lowkey drama here but if your icons are so obscured by ~psds~ that you cant even see the character’s expression because the image is so pixellated and washed out then what is the point of using them honestly

[readyplayerhobi]

Flower | 29

; Hoseok x Reader

;Genre: Fluff, slight angst

; Warnings: Discussions of periods and contraception

; Word Count: 4.6k

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh…incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: I know it’s taking a long time for me to update this but I hope you enjoy it :D Please reblog if you do and let me know what you think my commenting on this or sending me an ask!

; Flower Masterpost

-

“Hey, meeps,” You hear Hoseok’s voice calling to you from the end of the aisle, his new nickname for you now gaining its own nickname as well. “If sunflower oil is made from sunflowers, and coconut oil is made from coconuts...then baby oil…”

He trails off, raising his eyebrows and giving you a scandalous look as he holds up a bottle of baby oil. For a moment, you just stare at him blankly before sighing and rolling your eyes in amusement. Taking the bottle from him, you place it back down onto the shelf before linking your arm through his.

Thankfully, he lets you direct him back to the little section they have in this makeup and skincare store that’s fully dedicated to Korean beauty. This is one of those strange stores where they have tons of products that are basically on sale yet also have branded stuff alongside it. Not that you cared though; it had the Korean brands you swore by for your skin and you were more than tempted to try out the Japanese beauty stand next to it.

For someone who isn’t particularly bothered about the whole concept of skincare, though you had managed to convince him to at least improve his routine, Hoseok was being a pretty good boyfriend right now. He hadn’t complained about the half an hour you’d spent perusing the makeup to find new stuff to put into your collection and he still wasn’t complaining as you filled your basket with face masks.

If anything, he’d managed to entertain himself quite well. 

But you think he was being good purely because you’d gone with him to a concert last night. It had been for one of his favourite bands, Metallica, and he’d ended up with a spare ticket as Jungkook had ended up ill with food poisoning. He had been about to go on his own, but you hadn’t liked the thought of him being lonely so you’d gone with him.

You’d recognised some of the songs they’d played from whenever Hoseok played them in the car or the house but it hadn’t been your scene. Still, it had been fun enough and you’d more than enjoyed seeing Hoseok happy as he’d rocked out to his beloved band.

It did mean that you were exceptionally tired today though as the two of you hadn’t gotten home from the stadium they’d performed in until after 2 am. That had been the closest performance apparently and you’d been shattered, sleeping until well after 11 am. Hoseok had promised you a day of relaxation, which you’d jumped on by asking him to do a full Korean skincare routine with you tonight.

He’d agreed, and you’d eagerly dragged him out to this store to replenish your supplies. The makeup was just because it was there and you couldn’t resist it. Already you were coming up with ideas for looks in your head that you could create and then put onto your Instagram. Moving places had meant that you hadn’t done many looks lately and you were eager to change that.

Especially now that you had a yard to take nice photos in. Hoseok and you had both been working hard on the weekends and evenings to transform the yard from the overgrown mess it had been into something nice. Nothing too amazing or expensive as it wasn’t your own house but nice enough that it made from some pretty aesthetic photos.

Placing a final bottle of moisturiser in your basket, you smile at Hoseok and hold it up proudly. He just looks at you in amusement for a second before smiling back.

“All done! We can go to pay now.” While you pay for all your new stuff, he goes and waits outside for you. Which you discover means he intently window shops at the video game store, getting that look on his face when he wants to do something.

Feeling that your bladder is a little too full right now, you glance over to where the public restrooms are and move over to Hoseok. “You can go in if you want, I’m going to the restroom so I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He takes your bag for you like the gentleman he is before disappearing inside, immediately making a beeline for the Playstation 4 section. You have a feeling he might be about to drop some money given how interested he’d been in some of the new games that have been released in the last few months.

Any thoughts of games are wiped from your mind very quickly though when you’re on the toilet. The sight of red staining your underwear has your eyes widening in horror as you realise that your period has decided to make an early appearance. For a moment you simply stare, brow creasing before you reach for your bag and grab your phone.

The period app you use says that you shouldn’t have started for another four days and you curse your body for doing whatever it likes. Scowling at the stain, you attempt to clean it before sighing in defeat, acknowledging that at least you were wearing black jeans today.

Another rummage in your bag causes you to find another problem, this one sending ice water running through your veins. Grabbing it and placing it onto your knees, you visually scan through every space and almost pull out the entire contents before letting out a small sound of despair.

You had no tampons.

Cursing to yourself quietly, you finish up and make do with an almost ridiculously large amount of toilet paper. Rushing out, you wash your hands before moving over to the machine that always had condoms, sanitary pads and tampons.

Only to see the ‘sold out’ sign on both the buttons you need. Groaning quietly, you do a little dance of frustration as you realise there are not even any other women in the restroom for you to ask. Not that you would. As if your social anxiety would allow for that!

So instead you have to slink outside and into the game shop, lip jutting out in a slight pout as you become hyper-aware of yourself. Can other people smell the blood? What if you leak through all the toilet paper and it does somehow show through your jeans?! What if you leak through onto a chair!

Hoseok wanted to get something to eat after this and you were dreading having to sit there for ages. Playing with your fingers nervously, you move over to where he’s crouched in front of the PS4 stand. He already has two game cases in his hand and is reading the back of another one, your bag of goodies on the floor between his feet.

Glancing up at you, he grins brightly before showing the cover of one of the cases he’s got.

“Look! The Spider-Man game is on sale! You want to play this, right?” Absentmindedly, you nod. The back of your mind takes in the fact that he’s also got Divinity: Original Sin 2 in his ‘buy’ hand and the other case he’s considering is the Doom remake. You wish that you could let him browse more but the drug store wasn’t close by and you didn’t want to just abandon him suddenly.

Still, the thought of what was going on down below was overwhelming and you found yourself shaking his shoulder slightly.

“Hey, are you done? Can we go?” Reaching down, you take your bag back and stand back as he rises, the crease between his brows letting you know he’s a little confused as to why you’re suddenly rushing him. He knows full well that there’s nothing important you need to do.

Still, though, he doesn’t question it and instead nods slowly. While he goes and pays for the games he’s buying, you go to wait by the entrance. Wrapping your arms around your waist, you realise that the low ache in your back that you’d had for a day or so was one of those early symptoms you got of your period.

Only you hadn’t thought anything about it. Not when you’d spent a few hours last night stood up. You’d just thought it was because you’d done a lot of work in the yard combined with the concert. Apparently not.

You’re pretty much already walking in the direction of the drug store by the time Hoseok comes out, causing him to have to jog to catch up with you. All you can think about is whether or not walking faster or slower would make things worse.

“Woah, hey, where are we going?” Hoseok asks, matching his speed to yours. You’re just thankful that there are not too many people out shopping today because it would only increase your stress levels if there was a big queue that you had to wait in or something.

“Just, to this store.” Admittedly, you’re not being very open and honest right now. But you’re embarrassed. Hoseok is fully aware of your periods and that they’re very much a thing that happens. They’d become a little more irregular recently as you’d had a copper IUD put in around a month before moving in with him.

Nothing drastic or anything, but then again they were also sometimes longer and a little heavier than you were used to when you were on the pill. It wasn’t exactly something you enjoyed talking about with anyone though; Soyeon and Chungha were pretty open about this kind of stuff but you had always mostly stayed quiet whenever they talked about it.

Which was silly. They were women who fully understood what you were going through and Hoseok understood that it was a monthly event. So it wasn’t like he’d be shocked to find out or anything. If anything, you’d probably done a bit of a bad job in explaining some things to him as you’d always got too shy whenever he’d asked things.

That was bad, you were well aware. But you’d only really got comfortable talking about sexual things with him. You knew that there were guys who thought it was gross that women bled for a week or so. Hoseok had never made those kinds of comments, but still. You were a work in progress.

“We’ve already been in here, why are you dragging me like Jason Voorhees is running after us with a knife?” He whines when you enter the store. You’re not surprised he’s confused because he’s right, you had come in here earlier and picked up what you needed. Still, though, he follows close by.

“I thought we didn’t need anything else.” Comes from him next, his lip pouting and you get the sense that he wanted to spend more time in the game store. A rush of guilt and shame washes over you, causing you to grip his hand even tighter as you shuffle awkwardly in place for a moment.

Finally in the store though, you realise just how silly you’re being with him. It’s not like he’s going to get outraged or upset. And you’re sure he’d have been much more willing to come along if he hadn’t been dragged along half the street with no idea what was happening.

Leaning into him, you cough slightly before swallowing as you feel yourself go hot with anxiety.

“My period started.” You whisper, keeping the words quiet enough so that he can hear them without having anyone else overhear. Though the rational part of your mind knew that you shouldn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thought. It was a natural, bodily function and all that.

Your mind has never quite done things rationally though.

Hoseok has heard you though, you can tell by the way his head tilts to the side ever so slightly. But his expression is blank for a moment before his brow creases in obvious confusion, lips pursing as he contemplates what you’ve just told him.

“Okay...so why are we here?” Annnnd there it is. That famed male obliviousness to female problems. You couldn’t get annoyed at him though, not when he was good with you on everything else. He was cute.

“It’s early? And I have nothing to use. So I need to buy some.” His face changes immediately when he understands finally, mouth curving into an ‘o’ shape as he lets out a noise of recognition. It then contorts into worry for you, his eyes glancing down to your crotch area with wide eyes.

“Wait, so that means you’re...just…” He creates a rushing gesture with his hands, imitating a waterfall as he makes a ‘whoosh’ noise with his mouth. It’s a little too loud for your liking and you hiss at him, poking at his stomach before quickly pulling him over to the menstrual health aisle.

“I’ve used some toilet paper but it probably won’t last. It’s come on pretty hard and fast today. Please don’t laugh.” You beg him and his face sobers immediately, eyes darting over your own as he takes in your distressed appearance. Licking at his lips, he inhales deeply before nodding.

“Okay, you use tampons, right? So like...which ones? You never keep the box.” Automatically he starts to look over all the boxes of tampons; staring at the brands, types and absorption levels like he’s reading signs in Mandarin or something. It makes you want to laugh, despite the situation.

You appreciate his eagerness to help though, even when he points at random boxes with absolutely zero knowledge of what it was.

“What’s the difference in the brands? Is there a difference? Or is it like...when you buy those store brand biscuits and realise they taste the same as the branded biscuits only to find out that they’re made in the same factory and just relabelled?” That makes you snort with amusement, particularly as he’s now holding up a box of Tampax and a store brand to try and see the difference.

He’s not finished yet though, and even though you still feel the urgency to just grab some and run, you can’t help but let him entertain you. Because that’s what he’s doing. You’re not oblivious, you’ve realised over time that if you’re feeling anxious or uncomfortable or shy, Hoseok will often use humour to distract you away from your negativity.

It’s nice, which is why you let him carry on for a minute or so more.

“What are the drops for? And what’s the difference between regular and super? I mean, I think you’re pretty super but is this like...super big or something? Wait, is this plastic?! How does it absorb blood if it’s plastic?” Rolling your eyes at him, you bite your lip to stop the laughter that wants to escape before reaching past him to grab the box you usually buy.

Lifting it, you decide for a quick crash course in tampons. As your boyfriend, you never know when you might need him to run out to the store for some and the last thing you need is him bringing the entirely wrong type back.

“I use Tampax, purely cos it’s just the brand I’ve always used and I’m familiar with it. Super and regular are like the absorption so you’d use a super for the first few days when a period is heaviest. Hence why I’m getting these. The drops are the absorption rating too basically and it’s not plastic, that’s just the applicator that makes it easier to insert.” You say it all pretty quickly, but quietly enough that only he hears. 

Not that there’s any need, the store is loud enough that your conversation can’t be overheard and on top of that, there’s no one in this aisle anyway. But Hoseok nods thoughtfully, scanning the front of the box carefully.

“When we get home, I think I need a crash course in periods because I’m feeling pretty useless and dumb right now.” Laughing, you lean up to kiss his cheek quickly before heading in the direction of the cashiers.

“We can do that for you. It’s better to be educated after all. This is where I find out that you have this bizarre knowledge that is unbelievably wrong and I cringe.” Hoseok doesn’t answer back to that, causing you to look back and chuckle at his meek shrug and wince.

“What can I say? I’ve never had a girlfriend long enough to learn and education in high school was terrible. I’m not even gonna try to defend myself.” Humming lightly, you grin at him as you pay before heading out of the store. Looking in the direction of the toilets, you twist your lips as you consider your options.

“You want to eat at that place, right?” You ask, nodding your head towards the Japanese place that was down the opposite end of the street. Hoseok looks that way and nods, confirming his desire to you. Already you can feel your stomach rumble as you imagine the delicious food.

“Okay, we’ll just go there and I’ll go straight to the restroom in there. Come on.” Reaching you, you take his hand and smile up at him, your walk not so hurried now compared to before. Not that you aren’t completely aware of the fact that you’re free bleeding from your vagina right now, but walking faster might just aggravate it more. 

You had what you needed, so now you could relax a little more.

-

“Why are there so many steps in this? Don’t you get bored?” Hoseok mumbles, his words a little slurred due to the fact you’re rubbing serum into his cheeks. He’s already been here for ages in the bathroom as you’d used a cleanser to clean his face before exfoliating and then using toner on some cotton pads. 

You could tell that he was amused by the whole situation, even though he’d seen you do this many times before. But it was different experiencing it for himself you supposed. Still, he looked so adorable and you cooed to him, squishing his cheeks even more in amusement.

“No. It’s relaxing. You’re supposed to relax.” That makes him scowl, the expression not nearly as intense as he was going for given you’ve got his lips in the cutest pout. Still, you’re finished with that part so you let him go, laughing as he runs his fingers over his skin.

“I’m not relaxed. More...manhandled.” Scoffing, you roll your eyes as you get to work rubbing the serum you need into your skin, focusing on your eyes. The dark circles beneath them were far too...well dark for your liking.

“Okay, how’s your skin lately? Dry? Oily?” Frowning at you, he twists his lips as he considers your question. He’s been taking better care of his skin than he had been before dating you, but you knew that he still didn’t care that much. Surprisingly though, he has an answer for you.

“Dry?” Nodding to yourself, you reach through your box of face masks and pull out a moisturising one. Handing it over to him, you take your own and rip it open, pulling out the mask and carefully putting it on. Hoseok watches you intently before opening up his mask, his face immediately twisting into a cringe.

“Ewwww, oh my god. Why is it so slimy?!” He whines, holding it over the sink like it’s some monster that might kill him. With the mask on your face, you can’t laugh properly like you want to.

“Stop being a baby and put it on.” With a little more whining, he does so, lining it up and putting it onto his face. What follows is then complaints that it’s also cold and feels weird, causing you to roll your eyes at him once more as you help to smooth out any creases in it.

“Right, we’ve got to keep this on for twenty minutes so let’s go watch some Netflix,” Looking over him, you take in how he still manages to look handsome even with a white sheet mask on. “It’s not fair that you always look so good. Honestly.”

Hoseok just shrugs before licking his lips, his reaction immediate as he registers the foul taste. “Oh fuck me, what the fuck. This tastes fucking vile!”

“...you’re not meant to eat it, babe, they don’t make it for the taste.” He washes his hands in the sink to get rid of the remaining residue before following you out to the couch in the living room, Netflix still paused on the large television screen. Kasumi is curled up on her cat tree, fluffy body small as she sleeps quietly.

For around ten minutes, neither of you speak as you continue to watch Warrior Nun. It’s surprisingly got both your attention hooked, so you’re a little surprised when Hoseok suddenly speaks up and distracts you.

“Hey...I know this is a weird time to talk about this but after your whole period thing today it reminded me. So, I’ve been thinking lately. You definitely don’t want kids...right?” He looks at you and you get the impression he would raise his brow if he could. When you nod in response, he blows out a breath slowly.

“Okay...how would you feel if I said I wanted to get a vasectomy? I mean, I know you’ve said you don’t want kids but there’s always a chance that you might and a vasectomy is pretty final. Despite what people say.” Now it’s your for your expression to be mostly hidden by your face mask, your eyes widening until your eyelashes are uncomfortably touching the edges of the holes.

“You want that? I thought guys normally got all weirded out at that prospect. And I don’t want kids, ever. Full stop. Are you sure?” Of all the things you were going to be discussing tonight, you did not expect it to be this. It’s almost amusing that Hoseok has decided right now is the time for something so serious, when you both look so silly.

“I do. I just...I don’t want to risk a pregnancy and I know you’re scared of that too. Also, it’d put less stress on you, I know most birth control is usually aimed at women except for condoms and it’s a lot easier for me to get a vasectomy than for you to get anything done.” That makes you snort in acknowledgement, shifting on the couch until you pull your leg up and wrap your arms around it.

“Yeah, because god forbid a woman not want to fulfil her natural duty and pop out a kid, right?” 

“I’ve been looking into it, I’m pretty sure I could get one. If not, I’ll just talk the doctor’s ear off until they let me. Because it’s gonna happen. It’s way easier and less stressful than anything you have to do.” His dual concern for not wanting to cause an accidental pregnancy that neither of you wanted along with not wanting the burden to fall too heavily on you warms you, causing you to reach out and grasp his hand tightly as you squeeze at it.

“Is it easy? Or quick?” 

“Apparently. Some guys say it doesn’t hurt at all, others said it hurts. But...I’m pretty sure I want it. I just wanted to check with you that you’d be okay with the idea too. As I said, it’s final.” Hoseok smiles at you as best he can, causing you to shuffle a little closer to him. You’d like to rest your head against his shoulder but you’d just get it covered in face mask gunk.

“I mean, it’s your body. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Pointing this out to him, you look up and tilt your head, your statement almost a question.

It makes him sigh and focus on your hands, shifting them until he could interlink his fingers with your own. You let him do so, figuring he should probably be taking the lead in this conversation. It is about him after all.

“We’re in a relationship. A serious relationship and this decision would affect both of us. It’s cutting off the chance for biological kids, despite people saying you might be able to reverse it. I feel you should have a say too.” Nodding slowly, you hum lightly as you consider his words carefully.

“Well, if you want it then I’ll support you completely. I never want children so you don’t have to worry about that. It’s your decision, but I just want to make sure you think it over properly and do research, okay? Don’t go rushing into it.” That makes him snort in amusement.

“Meeps, if there’s one thing you should know by now; it’s that men do not take decisions regarding their dick and balls lightly. You can be damn sure I’m going to be 100% in my decision if I’m going to let someone come near my balls with a scalpel or somet.” The way he says this is so matter of fact that you can’t help but laugh, the sound not as big or bright as you’d like it to be given you still had your mask on.

“Man, I can’t believe I’m talking about someone knifing my balls while I’m sitting here looking like a dollar store Michael Myers.” Hoseok points at himself, his bemusement clearly obvious despite his poor Halloween costume and you giggle softly.

Reaching out, you run your fingers through his hair that’s currently being held back by a bandana and smile at him softly. “Come on, let’s go get these off and start looking human again.”

Hoseok follows you immediately, already peeling the face mask off and making casual comments about how the mask isn’t as slimy as it had once been. You take off your own and drop it into the small bin in the bathroom, making sure that he does the same.

“Okay, rub it in and pat it dry. Make sure you get the excess to go on your throat and stuff, it’s good for your skin there too.” Hoseok looks in the mirror, his face shining obscenely from the residue leftover and grimaces.

“Ew, this feels...gross,” One hand presses to his skin, rubbing it in and cringing. “Is this what it feels like when I cum on your face?”

The comment is so random that you pause for a moment, all thoughts disappearing as you comprehend what he’s just said. A glance at him makes you realise he’s being completely serious, his expression focused on rubbing his face as you’d told him. It’s moments like this that make you love him even more, the blasé comments he makes that are so funny and yet also x-rated.

“No...not really. That’s more...well it’s not all over, you know? And it’s thicker than this. And I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you. You know what your cum feels like.” A snort from him gives away his bemusement.

“Yeah, but I’ve never smeared it all over my face before.”

“Maybe you should. Experience it for yourself for once. It’s not all that good for you by the way, despite what people say. It has protein but it’s not enough to make it worthwhile or anything, so don’t think I’m going to be asking you for your special facials anytime soon.” Looking away from him, you grab the next item on your routine before looking at him with a smirk.

“Damn, there goes my plan to be self-sufficient. Could’ve made a whole organic spa thing out of it.” 

[anxiouslyfred]

Lockets and Emo’s

Summary: Virgil can guess a lot about their soulmate from the knife locket they were drawn too, and the portrait within, but they’ll wait for them to visit the shop he works in.

/\/\

People always talked about how accurate the portraits in their lockets were, and that they'd never have been able to find their soulmate if not for the picture held inside. Frankly, people talked a lot of nonsense and no matter how accurate a painting was, it was still limited by the paint, the artist and the amount of space available in how detailed it could be. Even photographs suffered that limitation.

When Virgil first got their locket, they had been far more interested in the process of the caravan, being blindfolded in the room with the lockets until one called his hands to them, and afterwards sitting with the soul artist as though for their own portrait but actually so they could get their energy to reveal the image of their soulmate. They'd been lucky enough that the locket in their hands filled them, providing more space for the image to appear in. That gave him more details to look for in the faces of others alongside the reflections of who their soulmate is in the design of the locket.

Remus hadn't cared when he was taken to get his locket. It wasn't that he didn't want to meet them, but that he'd spent the week reading about the soulmates who didn't work out, and just wanted to discuss with all the workers there if there's anyway to know how soulmates will actually react to each other. After all, even in fiction there were soulmates like Heathcliffe and Cathy who were perfect to destroy each other, as well as political ones, where the soulmates might try to be romantic, or friends, but their connection really only grows when they work together as colleagues and nothing more. Surely the different types of soulmates had been studied and the people in the caravan should know if he could tell just what he was heading to having.

He had kept asking those questions while blindfolded and being led from the room with a rather bland looking lockets and even while sitting with the artist as the tiny thing had his soulmate painted inside it. None of the staff replied or even spoke to him beyond gentle words to guide him through the process, no matter how many times Remus insisted they could throw him through the areas if they wanted to.

It wasn't until a week later than Remus looked at his locket and found the spider webs and checked patterns engraved into the locket, only visible in some lights. It at least made him more interested in the soulmate that was supposed to be portrayed within it, with dark eyeshadow showing from beneath a long fringe. At least it wasn't any of the emos he'd been through school with, none of them had worn eyeshadow underneath their eyes and almost all of them hated his rebellious punk style.

Virgil wasn't going to go out socialising to try and find the guy with a wild smile, a fringe bleached white and green-brown eyes, but they could just about cope with a retail job, so long as the shop was small and wouldn't insist he speaks to people as they enter. That would at least give them a change to people watch in case someone similar to their portrait wandered through.

Well, that and they could hopefully watch for anyone causing a scene because whomever the locket represented definitely would grab attention quickly. Virgil wasn't quite sure what they were most amused by when looking at the locket, just how gaudy it was or how intricately made  it was. The main body seemed to be made out of a dagger, cut in half width ways and blunted just enough to be safe to wear, although still functional if they wished to stab someone. There was even a hilt instead of a normal ring to attach it to the chain.

Remus had tried visiting all the normal areas he'd heard of emo's hanging out in, making a scene and sometimes getting into fights at all of them. They might agree that the police needed to be shut down and capitalism was a burden but apparently got very protective over the bands they claimed. It wasn't Remus's fault he sometimes was looking for something with a bit more of a dancable beat to it.

He only decided to try to shops in local towns that emos might visit on a whim, or rather after Roman had gone on a long speech about “It's not merely fashion Remus, any fool could follow that, it's about aesthetic and truly reflecting the prince within me.” All he had asked was just why his brother was dragging them around shops that seemed to sell mostly steampunk accessories when his brother usually preferred swords, leather and ruby jewellery.

Seriously, Remus could and would make anything his style within a day of climbing around in it. A few tears, a bit of dirt and perhaps some thorns from the bushed he scrambled through and the jobs done, but it definitely made sense that someone who's locket reflection hid the details probably wouldn't be out around the town regularly.

When he first entered an out of the way shop, Remus had been torn between making a scene and just trying to steal a couple of the spiked piercing they had in a display case. It was always more fun to steal things that were locked to normal shoppers, but he actually knew the words to the song that was playing so obviously had to make a display table his stage and sing along. Checking the staff out for patchwork clothes or under the eye eyeshadow could wait a while.

He made it halfway through the song before someone caught his arm and essentially through him to the floor as they yanked him down. “If you're going to dance on the merchandise you had better get to cleaning it up right the hell now, Maniac!” The store assistant who'd yanked him down demanded, glaring and waving a hand at where he'd been dancing a second before.

Remus would have argued, except he could recognise that long fringe anywhere. They eyeshadow just underneath them only cemented that his was his soulmate, and the shaking in their hands was probably because they were realising the same thing.

“Hi, I'm Remus, he/him, and sure thing. You gonna give me instructions on what to do, Spiderpatch?” He asked instead, bouncing up, as close as he could to the other, pouting a little when he was still looking up at them.

“Virgil, they/them, and if that's what it takes then yes, but I think you're smart enough to figure it out yourself.” They growled out.

Mentally Virgil was still freaking out. Usually when people started making a scene to that degree they would actually wait until they finished and then clean up after them. This was way too close to a confrontation for them to be comfortable with, but the man was more accurate to his mental image of his soulmate than anyone they'd ever seen and it at least gave them something to say without bringing that up.

“Smart enough, sure, willing to do it without my soulmate or some kind of threat to motivate me, yeah, I don't wanna.” Remus teased, not expecting a knife to be pulled from Virgil's hoodie and held up towards him.

Virgil smirked at the blink that flickered between their face and their hands. “Well I've got both thanks to your locket, so how about you get folding?” They asked, gesturing once again to the ruined display, although thankfully there were no footprints on any of the tops. Glancing around they saw why as Remus had apparently thrown his shoes across the room while climbing onto the table.

“It's a knife locket? Oh my god, I have the most awesome reflection in locket form ever! I'm in love with this locket even if you're making me fold shirts to get a date with you.” Remus was bouncing even as he finally turned to start tidying up the display, already rattling of other thoughts and well aware Virgil was stood watching him.

“So what's mine like then, if you're so enamoured with the one for you?” They hadn't decided about going out with Remus yet so decided to ignore the offer when they finally spoke up again.

Remus barely paused, grabbing the locket from his pocket to shove into their hands. “Really interesting. The best light to look at it in is like night club strobe lights. They bring out the designs on it perfectly. I bet in here you can barely make out there's even any pattern on there. Seriously, date? Hang out as friends? Phone number? Can I have something to say I'm seeing you again? Hell if you'd prefer just to make me work here I'm down for it.”

Virgil snickered at the ideas but shook their head playfully horrified when Remus mentioned them working together. “I'm not giving you more chances to damage the merchandise. How about we text for a while, get to know each other and see what we'd like from there?”

“Phone number then.” Remus turned around pulling his phone out only to pout and exaggeratedly deflate when his realised they were no longer holding the knife locket out at all. “Come on, I liked having you ready to cut me. A bit of pain is brilliant.”

“Not what I meant when I said getting to know you, but noted, if we ever get to a sexual relationship, you have a pain kink.” Virgil remarked, quickly typing in their number before waving towards the staff area. “I can't have my phone out on shift since I got too grouchy with my co-workers so text me and I'll reply when I get out of here.”

Remus took his phone back with a grin, “Sure, I'll go and see what mischief I can get into before I come to walk you home.”

“Didn't agree to that.” Virgil tried to call after him, but Remus had already turned to race out of the store.

[hauntedflxwers]

Two People You Never Piss Off

Or as I like to call it: Luka rips Lila a new one

This is the first story I’m posting on here and it’s very Lila bashing and takes place after the season 3 finale has happened so spoilers!!!! just in case

Word count: 2965

With all that out of the way, I hope any of y’all who read it enjoy it!

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Luka sat some distance away from his sister and her friends, perfectly content to listen to them having fun while he played his guitar and watched. Something nagged at his mind, however: he recognised everyone there - Juleka, Rose, Alix, Mylene and Alya - except one girl. With two ugly sausages on the side of her head - he really had no clue what type of aesthetic she was reaching for with those, but either way she failed miserably - and a meek expression on her face as she spoke that seemed too carefully crafted to feel real, he could already hear what sort of melody he associated with her. It was sour and impure, a garbled mess of everyone else’s melodies and, quite frankly, it made him feel a little bit queasy. 

That wasn’t the main problem, however. He couldn’t help but be painfully aware of Marinette’s absence, and the way no one seemed to care about it either. Ever since Chloe had been akumatized on her parents’ anniversary, he’d been worried for her. He’d spoken with Juleka a few days after Ladybug had set everything back to normal, and he’d asked her if she’d noticed whether something was wrong with Marinette. Her answer hadn’t been very assuring. 

“Well,” he remembered her starting, dragging out the word as she thought. When she spoke again, her words had been slow and careful. “Marinette has had something against Lila since she came back from Achu, and she never normally hates someone that much. She keeps saying she’s lying but whenever she does Alya just dismisses her and says that she’s just jealous because Lila is close to Adrien. I always thought that was a bit weird, because she helped Adrien go on that date with Kagami even though it hurt her, but that’s not the point. I don’t know if Lila did something to her, but I think Marinette has a point, even if Alya would kill me for saying that - I mean, she knows Jagged Stone personally.” Juleka looked out of the window nervously before continuing. 

“But ever since Chloe and her parents got akumatized, she’s been acting really strange. It’s almost like she’s mourning someone, she’s been that upset. Whenever we ask her to hang out she either blows us off because she’s so busy or she comes but she ends up on her own. Alya asked her why she was so upset once and she just said she’d lost something important. Alya assumed it was because Adrien and Kagami were getting closer. But Rose thought she meant she’d lost something valuable, like an earring or something.”

Since then, he’d seen Marinette once or twice when he had to deliver something to the bakery. Every time, she seemed well. Happy, but reserved. Her melody was more subdued, but it also seemed more mature, like she herself had had an experience that made her wiser. It was unusual, but he’d just been happy that she’d been handling herself well. 

So seeing her friends without her, he was inclined to believe that she was just busy again. He was also inclined to believe that the sausage-girl was the Lila that Juleka told him Marinette didn’t like. The girl who could be lying. He focused on his guitar again and began to strum Marinette’s new melody softly. 

He didn’t know how much time had passed when he was interrupted by someone holding their hand out to him and quietly saying, “Hi.” He let his final chord finish playing before he looked up to see Lila in front of him, a warm albeit nervous smile on her face. “I’m Lila, and you must be Juleka’s brother Luka. I’ve heard a lot about you, you know. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Before he replied, she scooped up the skirt beneath her legs and sat next to her, making a point to flash him another smile. “The others have just gone to go and get some stuff, but they were so considerate of my arthritis that they told me to just wait up here so I didn’t injure myself! So I thought I’d come and introduce myself to you.”

As unpleasant as her melody was, he didn’t have any reason to distrust or dislike her yet, so he pushed those feelings aside in favour of watching her very carefully. “Well it’s nice to meet you too, Lila. Although, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before.”

She laughed with a wave of one hand. It was a pleasant, bubbly sound but there was something slightly off about it that he couldn’t place. “That’s because you haven’t seen me here before. See, Juleka has invited me here a lot but I’ve always been so busy fundraising or talking with leaders of charities or catching up on schoolwork I’ve missed while away for my mama’s business that this is the first time I’ve been able to accept it,” she explained. Immediately he noticed that she was someone who spoke with her hands, gesticulating and gesturing in random directions to make her explanations seem larger. Whether it was natural or something she’d learned to manipulate people, he wasn’t sure. She hadn’t done anything to indicate she was lying yet. 

He tried to hide his skepticism as he spoke, opting for a neutral, “Well, I’m glad you could make it this time, Lila. I’m sure you must have been upset to miss those first few times.”

Her face dropped and she gathered her hands in her lap, staring down at them pointedly as she replied, her voice quivering as she spoke. “Oh, I was really upset about it, but Juleka and the others were so nice about it, they didn’t even get mad when I told them I already had plans. You’re so lucky to have Juleka as a sister, you know. I’d kill to have someone as understanding as her in my family, but you know how it as an only child - you can only emulate those sorts of relationships. It makes me sort of envious of you and Juleka. You guys have always had that, while I’m going to have to search for someone who will trust me the same way I would.” Then she looked up at him, eyes going wide as if she realised she’d done something wrong. “Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry for unloading on you like that, especially when we don’t know each other that well!”

“It’s fine,” he reassured her, despite the conflicting feelings in his chest. On one hand, if she was genuine, he knew he would feel sympathy for her - a mixture of guilt due to inadvertently upsetting her and worry due to how scared she was of upsetting him - but if she was a liar like Marinette said, he knew he would be furious with her for trying to manipulate him into feeling bad, probably to butter him up for a lie. Both mindsets fought the other. “We all have something we need to take off our chest sometimes.”

She sniffled, head in hands before she looked up, cheeks pink and eyes wet around the edges and stared up at him for a moment before her face split into a wide grin and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Oh, thank you Luka!” she hiccupped, tightening  her hold on him. “How can I repay you for being so kind and understanding?”

“Repay?” he asked. Where was she going with this?

“Well, you- you like Jagged Stone, don’t you? I could get you a ticket to his next concert!” she offered, pulling away and clasping her hands in front of her chest. Her voice was hopeful. “It wouldn’t be hard!”

His gut squirmed as he contemplated what to do next. This is it, Luka, he thought. This is where you find out whether she’s lying or not. “How would you do that? I don’t want you paying money just because I listened to you rant about your feelings.”

“It’ll be no trouble at all!” Lila waved him off, her change in mood a little jarring. “I don’t know whether Juleka told you or not already, but Jagged loves me - I’m like his . honorary daughter! He even wrote a song for me once!”

“Really? What song?” There was something suspicious about the way she paled. “If you say it, I’ll know which one you’re talking about.”

“Well,” she spluttered, picking at her nails sheepishly. “I said he wrote a song for me,  but I didn’t mean he published it. It would seem a bit weird to praise a 15 year old girl…”

“Actually, that depends on what he’s praised you for,” he countered. “Jagged Stone loved Marinette’s designs so much that he wouldn’t stop promoting her for another two months at least, but no one thought it was weird because he praised her designs, not her. Was he praising you for something you did or was it in a creepy, ‘this random girl is nice, she’s a minor, I’m an adult’ way?”

“I’m guessing Juleka didn’t tell you then?” she asked forcefully, eyes darting to where Juleka and her friends had gone. He shook his head and her shoulders tensed. “Well,” she dragged the word out as her melody began to go even more sour in the back of his mind. “Well, he made the song for me because I did something for him.”

“What did you do?” he asked curiously. “It must have been something dangerous if Jagged has had to keep quiet about it though, because he’s never mentioned you before on any of his social media.”

“I saved his pet from being run over at an airport once,” Lila admitted after what felt like ages, getting visibly nervous - tapping her foot against the floor and hunching her shoulders so that she was smaller, both of which were red flags for him. “My mama and I were on our way to another country for her work and I saw his pet nearly get run over by a plane so I saved it. I’ve had really bad tinnitus ever since.” As if to prove a point, she cupped her left ear with both hands and whimpered slightly. “It hurts, but I’m trying to be brave for everyone.”

“That doesn’t make sense though,” he mused out loud, watching as Lila froze. “Jagged loves Fang so much that he would never let him get anywhere close to somewhere he could be run over, so unless Fang escaped this would have never happened.”

“No, no!” Lila interrupted him hastily, waving both hands in front of her. “It wasn’t Fang, it was his kitten.”

He blinked in disbelief, then any sympathy he had for her was lost. She really had been lying to him and Juleka this entire time, without a care in the world. He took a deep breath before he said anything rash. Once he was calm, he continued. “Jagged is allergic to kittens, he said so in one of his interviews.”

“This was before he realised!”

“He said in his interview he found out about his allergies before he was an adult, and I’m pretty sure you weren’t born early enough to save his cat while he was a teenager.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “There’s no reason to lie to me, Lila. Not if it’s just to impress me.”

“I’m not lying!” she protested, voice raising in volume. “I don’t know why you’re attacking me like that!”

He shuffled away from her, raising his hands in the air to prove a point. “I’m not attacking you, Lila. I told you that you shouldn’t have to lie to impress me, that’s all. I’d much rather know the real Lila over the Lila who lies about Jagged Stone.”

“Oh, why do you care so much?” she snapped, meek demeanor disappearing. “It’s one lie!”

“Yeah, and that’s one lie you’ve told my sister, her classmates and Marinette. For all I know, you could have told more,” he countered evenly, struggling to contain his anger. “I’m pretty sure you were on the Ladyblog as well, with an interview about Ladybug being your best friend. Was that a lie too?”

“It’s only what Alya wanted to hear!”

“People want you to tell the truth, not get their hopes up.” He stared her down. “I want my sister to know that everything she’s being told is genuine. I want her friends to know that everything you say is the truth-”

“They all think it’s the truth anyway,” she hissed. “What’s the difference?”

“The difference is you’re lying,” he said cooly. “And if you’re reacting like this to me knowing, god knows how you reacted to Marinette knowing.”

“It’s always about Marinette, isn’t it?” Lila all but yelled at him. Her eyes glared daggers at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “I bet with your crush on her, she convinced you into believing I lied and you just went along with it, didn’t she?”

“Of course she didn’t. Marinette doesn’t like liars but she’s not cruel like that. I drew my own conclusions based on your inconsistencies. Besides, if Marinette wanted people to know you were a liar, she’d go about it in a way you wouldn’t expect her to. She’s not dumb.”

“Of course she’s not dumb!” Lila shot back. “If she’s smart enough to see through my lies she can’t be as dumb as this class! It’s why she’s so annoying!”

He folded his arms. “I’m guessing Ladybug doesn’t like you either?”

“How the hell do I know?” Lila shrugged viciously, expression getting more and more sour by the second. “She’s a bloody superhero, she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve! I don’t even know if she has one! She has a brain where her heart is and a cavity in her head that makes her dangerous, because she could hate me and I’d never know because it’s stuck in her stupid head and not on her face! All I know is that she hasn’t called me out yet and every time she sees me she just encourages me to be honest instead of yelling at me, like she realised her mistake.”

“Mistake?”

“Doesn’t matter. But no, we’re not friends. There, you happy?” She was so angry that it was almost amusing, but he shoved that feeling down. “I hate her, she ruined my chances with Adrien and then gave me a half-assed apology like I was supposed to just accept it? Does she think I’m an idiot?”

“What you’re missing, Lila is a crucial piece of advice if you’re going to continue playing this stupid game.” He ran his fingers over the strings of his guitar as Lila opened her mouth, then closed it, then glared at him expectantly. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re an idiot or not. There are two people in this world that you never piss off.”

“And who would those people be?”

“I think you already know,” he smiled in vindication at the way her expression fell. “But just in case, I’ll remind you. There are two people you never piss off, and they’re Ladybug and Marinette.”

“And why might that be?” Lila was tense as she waited for his answer, eyes darting to and fro. They both knew Juleka could return at any moment. “What’s so special about them?”

“Ladybug has her mind, her Lucky Charm, her word and Chat Noir on her side, while you don’t even have your own word, you just have a reporter who blindly follows you, but even she’ll believe Ladybug over you. Marinette is your class representative, it wouldn’t be hard for her to expose you, especially considering she can contact Jagged Stone whenever she wants.”

“She can?” Lila spluttered. “But she’s a minor! Isn’t that illegal?”

“Not when it’s purely professional, or when his number is on her parents’ phones, or when her parents consented to it.” Lila paled. “Besides that, Marinette is as smart as Ladybug, maybe even smarter. If she wanted to, it would probably only take a day for her to take you down, like you did when she nearly got expelled, except she knows how to cover her tracks.”

At that, Lila scowled. “They still believed it.”

He shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, it was circumstantial at best, you just had so many disabilities people had to cater to that there was no way you could have stolen the papers, or planted the necklace to anyone who didn’t know. Besides, if they believed that, who’s to say they wouldn’t believe Marinette if she did the exact same thing to you, but with real, indisputable proof?”

“They haven’t believed her yet!”

“They haven’t, I’ll admit it, but what has Marinette done to you besides say you’re lying? She hasn’t even begun to gather evidence because she’s playing nice, god knows why.” Lila swallowed at that. Then her eyes widened as she looked past his shoulder. 

“Well, I hate to cut this short,” she said, gritting her teeth into a smile. “But Juleka and her friends are back, so I have to go now. It was nice meeting you, Luka.” She stood up hurriedly, brushing any dirt off her skirt before she hurried over to his sister and her group of friends.

“It was nice meeting you Lila,” he murmured with a smile, knowing he’d won. Closing his eyes and leaning back, he returned to playing Marinette’s melody, noting somewhere in the back of his mind how similar it was to the one that played in the back of his mind when he met Ladybug when Desperada attacked as the sun shone across his face. 

There were two people he knew to never piss off, and their melodies were so similar he knew exactly why that was the case.

[soft-luke]

Spot the girl | Calum Hood

Request : Hello, lovely! I was wondering if I could please request a Calum x reader where he always finds a way to hide the reader in music videos? He makes it a game where you have to find them in the video. Girls Talk Boys, Amnesia, Old Me, Don't Stop, No Shame, and etc. Its okay if you don’t want to or can’t! Stay safe! Thank you! 💕

A/N: Such a cute idea!!

Word count: 1.2k

When Calum had first suggested to you to appear in one of the band’s music videos, you had looked at him like he had just revealed that the Easter Bunny was real. After more thoughts, you had agreed though. You didn’t only love Calum, but you also loved his music and the way he and the other boys had done such a good job with their songs. There were no words to describe how proud you were of the band. You had met Calum shortly after they had actually formed their band, so you have been there for all big changes. Despite some people doubting the boys, you had always believed in your boyfriend and his friends that they could make it very far. And they did. The first music video you ever got to appear in was Amnesia, a song you also loved with all your heart. Sadly, you didn’t get to be in the main focus of the camera, because what would be the special thing behind it if you were so obvious in every video? It had been a lot of fun filming the Amnesia video. You remembered Calum throwing you into the pool once when you both had a break, but you really couldn’t be mad at him, because it had been a lot of fun.

The next video you appeared in was “She’s kinda hot” where you got a bigger role as one of the girlfriends that the band sings about. You remembered how you had removed your make-up after leaving the set and Calum taking you into a tight hug to tell you how you did a good job. It was surprising to you that still no one had figured out that you had appeared in two music videos already, even though there were some pictures of you and Calum together for a long while now. You appeared in “Jet Black Heart” again, just from behind though. By then, Calum had already gotten the idea of making it a game, so it would be too easy if you were properly shown to the camera in multiple videos. People would be able to recognise you and there was no difficulty to the game anymore. Yet, he decided to not ask yet if anyone spotted you in all the videos you appeared in. He wanted to save that for in a few months or years. In “Girls talk boys” you got to appear as a lady who had requested the help of the boys because of a ghost in her room. You wore a wig though and a lot of make-up, which made it a little harder to recognise you, but still easier than in “Jack Black Heart”. In “Youngblood” you got to appear in the background again, but in “Valentine” it was just your eye in one sequence. Calum always told you how much he adored your eyes, so he went along and suggested to put your eye into the “Valentine” video which was supposed to have a more aesthetic and freaky look. Whenever he came up with a new idea to include you into a music video, his eyes lit up and you could see how excited he was to have you included in his work. You were always excited as well, since you loved the little game that you two were starting to set up, but it was also amazing to work with the boys. It wasn’t rare that you just fooled around on set or you sang the song loudly while Calum watched you, sometimes even filmed you and kept it in his personal collection of videos he had of you. Whenever he was on tour and couldn’t have you with him, he watched the videos, looked at the pictures and felt a bit closer to you. Most of the times, he called you over FaceTime afterwards. It took a while until you appeared in a music video again, but then, you were properly shown in it. In the “No Shame” video you got to stand there at Luke’s funeral. It was first discussed that you get to play Calum’s wife in the video, but you decided against it at the end and went with playing a guest at the funeral.

The “Old Me” music video meant a lot to you and Calum. He had come very far over the span of the last few years. You had stuck with him the whole time and would continue to do so, which made definitely gave you the right to appear in the “Old Me” music video. When the sequence came up of Calum playing football, hinting at his talent in the sport, you sat in the grass, watching him and also receiving a smile from your boyfriend. By now, people had started to recognise you more often in videos, but there no one went back to the older videos yet or found out about the “Valentine” one. You also appeared in the band’s most recent music video of “Wildflower” where it was just a quick moment of the green screen moving to the side and showing you watching Cal. It was still enough to make the fans go crazy. It was also the moment where Calum definitely decided to make it a game and tell everyone that you had been in the older videos as well and if anyone could find you.

You sat on the sofa with your boyfriend, sitting between his legs and leaning your back against his chest while Calum had his phone in front of you, arms wrapped around your torso. “Someone spotted you in Amnesia. Not too hard,” he chuckled, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to your neck, before looking at his phone again. “They won’t get behind the Jet Black Heart one,” you shook your head, before leaning your head back and looking at Calum. “I am also not too sure about Valentine,” you added, making Cal grin a little. “They should be able to recognise your stunning eyes,” he smiled at you, leaning down and kissing you softly. “I always do, to be honest,” he admitted, his voice a lot more quiet. A small chuckle escaped your lips anyway and you nodded, before sitting up properly again, climbing off the sofa and getting the donuts you had bought earlier this morning. The challenge had been up for a day now and people were getting closer to finding you in every music video you had appeared in. While you stood in the kitchen and made some tea for yourself as well, you heard Calum laugh loudly in the living room. “Someone did it!” He screamed and jumped over the sofa rest, almost running up to you. He showed you his phone where one fan had found your eye and recognised you in the “Jet Black Heart” video. “How?” You just asked, frowning and leaning against the counter. Cal leaned against it next to you, his arm going around your waist and holding you close.

“We just weren’t clever enough,” he shrugged, leaning in to kiss you, but you chuckled and shook your head. “You weren’t clever enough,” you teased him, watching him look at you very confused, before he laughed and grabbed your hands. “Careful, babe,” he warned you and spun you around for a second. You laughed happily, but couldn’t help it and teased him again. “Get a bit more creative, Cal,” you chuckled, aware of that you were also responsible for a lot of the appearances. But you didn’t have to admit that.

[the-queer-look]

Queer Uber Fund

Name: Gloria Demillo Age: 25 Location: Melbourne Occupation: Digital Copywriter/Poet Sexual Orientation: Pansexual Gender: Non-Binary

I used to really care about how I presented, especially in the workplace because I work in both a corporate environment, and in art spaces, people expect you to look a certain way if your gender is a certain way. Sometimes I think people expect me to be more masc, which I find strange in art spaces, I said I was Non-Binary, not that I was masc y’know? People will send me audition callouts for acting with “identifies as trans-masc” on them which is always weird. Honestly I just wear what I feel comfortable in, or for the weather, which is a statement in and of itself. Before I realised I was non-binary it was very performative – I really did dress for other people, or how they perceive me, or how I want them to perceive me. But now I just don’t care, as long as they perceive me as hot.

I’ve always had a feeling about not being straight, but I’ve never had the language for it because I grew up in a very conservative christian church. It was like “gay is bad” but all of the language around it was centred on men, with nothing to say about women being with women, or both. Like… what’s the grey area there? I was raised and socialised as a woman so… was this only a male centric sin? I started to have a language for it at uni, which helped because I found ways to discuss something I’d always felt, but didn’t know how to explain. When I look back at my childhood and how I expressed myself it just… makes sense. I had this favourite shirt, just a really dark shirt with a lion on it, and I’d always wear it with these little pink shoes with pom poms on it, and that aesthetic of really daggy clothes with really nice shoes is really the modern queer aesthetic.

It was mid 2019 when I realised I was non-binary and then I came out in October of that year, but there was such a long process. I was thinking about gender in uni, and then when I was experimenting more with how I presented myself and letting go of a lot of the ways in which I was socialised to behave. Being socialised as a woman was really violent for me – I don’t know how else to describe it – I had a lot of expectations put on me about my body, and how I should act, and how I should be in relationships, and when I was dealing with all of that gender stuff, it was very freeing to no longer have to live up to this arbitrary standard that was forced upon me. It was also much easier for me to talk about it because I was surrounded by so many lovely trans and non-binary friends, but of course talking to my cis friends about it was very… ugh...

I think when I found the language for my sexuality not much changed in the way I presented myself, it wasn’t until I found the language to express my gender as non-binary that there was a change in the way I thought about myself and how I was being perceived my relationship with my body. I really felt it, It was such a different transformation, I was so genuinely happier in my body, and stopped caring about how other people perceived me, and whether or not my presentation made sense to other people. I’ve stopped wearing clothes that are really tight. I don’t know why, but everything I had before coming out about being non-binary was very tight, very fitted, and now everything is very loose and flowy. It isn’t that I don’t like my body, I love my body, but now mostly what I wear is loose and billowy and doesn’t hug me so tightly.

To me the term Queer encompasses a description of my gender and sexuality that isn’t just one thing because its such a broad label. The way it was introduced to me was like a very radical and subversive way to refer to ones gender and sexuality, and I love that it’s been reclaimed by the community as a whole, though I completely understand those parts of the community that are uncomfortable with the term being used at all due to the way it was used in derogatory ways for so long, especially when used by persons outside the community. I’m sure that there’s going to be a generation coming up that will have no negative associations with that word, in the same way that I have younger queer friends that refer to each other using the F slur as a term of endearment, when I wouldn’t use it with most people.

I’ve always had a lot of queer friends, but I don’t think I started going to a lot of queer specific parties until the last three or for years. Queer events too, drag shows, musicians, poets and artists and other queer specific events. It hit a point where I just didn’t want to go to another straight club. They don’t feel safe, and I cannot just sit there and listen to another Ed Sheeran or Drake song when I want to dance y’know? I’m not a huge fan of the fact that queer events always focus around a party or something, I just want a quiet queer event like a queer book club or something. I’m going to join a queer climbing club or something, just be more involved.

I love being around other queer people, but there’s also a lot of racists around. Just because the event is queer does not mean the event is safe. You’d think that we would have dealt with intersectionality by now. Genderqueer people are more aware because we live on the margins of society and have for like… ever. But I find it really frustrating when people create queer events that aren’t accessible – people with different sensory needs, comfortable for people of colour, accessible for people with physical difficulties etc. I remember the first time I went to a queer club event with a quiet room and I lost my mind, like I wanna be at the club for six hours, but I want to sit down and have a break with just a little noise for a while y’know? It was so beautiful and safe.

K: What challenges do you see still facing the queer community today? Gloria: Racism

There are so many things, being trans-non-binary and a POC I get to see it all but like. People within the community that just straight up hate trans people? The phobia is coming from inside the house! Unlearn that shit queers! Some people in the community get rights? Like they can get married, get recognised, and then they turn around and say “us? we’re the good gays” shut the fuck up. Yeah, internalised phobias within the community? We need to unlearn that as a group, that’s a group effort.

Racism, ablism etc, we need to get rid of those because intersectionality is a thing. I also think that there’s so many laws that are trying to literally kill people in the community so like… I don’t know if we need to crowd fund some community lawyers or something, but we need to get some protections from these people who are out here doing their most to keep us down. I also think that cishet people really need to do better, even the ones that say they’re all about allyship will say that they’re on your side and then take you right to a straight club and like hey, what’re we doing here? I think cishet people don’t understand that there are certain spaces that, for non cishet people, are just inherently unsafe y’know? There isn’t any thought as to how their queer friends are safe going somewhere, or how they’re presenting is safe. When cishet people come into spaces that are meant for queer people yeah it’s just a party and a grand old time, but queer people don’t have that same privilege or concept of space y’know? At a straight club I could just disappear because some homophobe clocks me as queer and has a problem and what would y’all do about that? Cishet people walk around like life is this RPG that they’ve unlocked all parts of, and are free to go anywhere, and just don’t realise that there are places that they perceive as totally safe that are completely unsafe for any queer person to be in. We can’t even go to certain countries? We can’t live in certain suburbs of Sydney! People get bashed in fucking Newtown for being gay. Cishet people, especially if you say you’re an ally, or go into our spaces to have fun, why don’t you take a few seconds to think about the safety of your queer friends? Why don’t you pay for our Ubers and shit, make sure we get home? don’t just text me “are you home safe?” be about it!

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[smolbeandrabbles]

Middle Distance Runner - Vince Kovac x Reader (Tangle)

The Honey / Back on Love / Chaser / Want to Want Me / (Love The Way You Love Me)

@wltz-bby​ @happyskywhale​ one day I swear I’ll remember 

GIF CREDIT: X

Author’s Note: Based on conversation with @crawlingmist​  Thank you so much for this one Joss - I very nearly died mid-conversation but I’m happy to have carried it off! (No pun intended)

I dunno, I just... I really like writing Vince soft but then overlaying his actual personality on that. And as you already know I REALLY love this reader. 

Disclaimer: Tangle characters not mine / lyrics not mine but this is another googling ‘songs to do with...’ thing. But it’s a running love song (sorta...love song) so such things exist! / gif credited as appropriate but not mine Premise: With you having injured yourself running, Vince Kovac decides to treat you to his best hospitality. 

Words: 3326

Warnings: Sexual banter / Injury, but it’s only a sprain / swearing

_______ Well I'm so sad tonight And the words won't come out right It's been a long day on the track And its stamina that I lack So won't you run to me tonight? Tonight could turn but we're just lovers But I'll only ever be a middle distance runner Well my heart is beating hard And I'm off with a shot at the start And my legs tremble from strain But by the finish line I'll drain So won't you run to me tonight? Tonight let's not talk about next summer Cause I'll only ever be a middle distance runner But you'll have to run to me tonight Tonight I will love you forever But I'll only ever be a middle distance runner

---

Today you were going easy on him; a gentle jog down the road path. You wanted to talk, you wanted to flirt, to listen to the sound of his breathing - fluctuating sometimes into a delightful half-pant that gave you just the right kind of shiver: not hard to guess where you recognised that from. You, being the faster of the two, and with the most running stamina, found a gentle jog pretty easy. You’d breathe a little harder than normal, but Vince was the one taking shorter, deeper breaths.

In some places the path narrowed and he’d let you run ahead, always giving this small head flick with a smirk: Go on, after you. And you would simply give one back: I know it’s just so you can look at my ass! And I’m gonna enjoy it-! As he grinned, sometimes even laughed.

 But you liked that the path had trees to one side - although the bank rolled down and the running path was certainly not something that you’d want to stray from, it was nice for there to be a little bit of nature. In autumn, when the leaves fell, was when you enjoyed this path most - as long as it wasn’t wet - although sometimes when it raining or had just rained it was as fun to dodge rain drops as it was gold and orange leaves. Laughing when someone happened to be hit in the face by one. Sometimes it provided a slightly romantic aesthetic, jogging to a rhythm together with a swirl of colour cascading around you.

  This morning though, it wasn’t autumn but midsummer, and it was early. You would like to point out that you’d leapt out of bed this morning and dragged Vince with you - surprisingly strong considering the height difference - despite his complaining. “Y/N it’s too early. It’s practically the middle of the night!” “You do understand how hot it’s gonna be later, right?! Vin, if we don’t go now you’re gonna get heat stroke-!” “Why am I gonna get heat stroke!? Why can’t you!” “I probably could, but seen as I’m the more “experienced” runner I’m pretty sure you’d succumb first!!”  Anyway, he’d enjoyed watching you get dressed - that had certainly enticed Vince out of bed; hands on your hips, on his knees placing kisses across your stomach and begging you if he could just relieve you of your running gear right now. The answer was an obvious no, but maybe he could beg on his knees for you later, and only if he went running. That had Vince up and moving, and you got to lie on the bed propping your head up as he slipped out of his shirt. Groaning loudly on purpose as he stretched out, watching the movement of his spine and muscles in his back and arms; “Oh... baby...” and the way all he did was turn with a smirk and a wink. “You can have me later.”

 An energy bar for breakfast wasn’t exactly your idea of a good time but you suspected that Vince would want to make you lunch later, or perhaps he’d make you what he would call a proper breakfast. You guessed you’d wait and see, right now you were in the middle of running and the sun was shining as the heat of the day came up. Vince was telling you about the latest building project he was working on (complaining.), and about the day he had planned for going out with his kids. Ally was very good about letting him see them and Romeo & Gigi thought you were cool enough to sometimes come over and hang out. Romeo especially liked seeing his dad. And you liked Vince telling you all his half-baked ideas when he would sweetly ask you for suggestions. He was a good father, if not a little misguided... and you would think that his cheating days were over. Well, if they weren’t, he’d soon find out about it. You’d dated your fair share of assholes; you weren’t about to let him become just another one. And he was working at it, harder than you might have given him credit for.

“I have to earn you” that’s what he’s said, and Vince had. He more than had.

You couldn’t help but be in hysterics at all his contractor stories; he was doing an office block in partnership with another construction firm, in return for sharing a housing contract in a part of Melbourne that his little company really had no business being in. Both were using the other for their own means. But apparently this company’s contractors were fairly useless and, although funny, you were also a little concerned for his project. Vince was assured that things would still go well though, flashing you a beautiful confident smile to prove it. Still, it didn’t abate your concerns and you turned into the conversation. You knew he would have, but you needed to triple check that your boyfriend had vetted their contractors as well as his own.

 Not something you should have done; the path was a little uneven and you staggered, tripping first on the tarmac and then on yourself and Vince. He was a little more solid so hardly budged; even worse Vince slowed and pulled up. If he’d have stayed put you probably would have just knocked into him, he’d have moved about a pace out but you’d be okay. Instead you continued to move forward and found yourself heading over the edge of the path and down that steep hill. Fear and adrenaline immediately spiked; you wouldn’t survive that. People had died tripping down here before and you were already acutely aware of that. You didn’t fancy joining them; the irony of your last conversation being concerns over building safety was not lost on you!!

 Vince reacted quickly; hands shooting out to grab your arm, leaning back into his pull to make sure that the pace of your run didn’t drag him with you. Your body allowed you to let out a small shriek as his tug jarred you, but that was it, all your weight supported on your arm and your precarious balance on the side of the path as it fell away. Vince looped his other arm around your waist; feeling the pulse of your heartbeat, almost way too fast, understandably. That was almost a life or death situation, yet he didn’t allow himself to dwell on it. “It’s okay, you’re okay.” He lifted you back and onto the path gently, “Y/N, you’re okay...” Vince’s voice was soothing, instantly toned that way to calm you down and stop you from freaking out immediately.

Except he was wrong; you could already feel the twinge in your ankle and as he set you down on the path, pain shot through it. You bit your lips together as you complained to stop from crying out. “What? What? Baby what is it?” Vince changed from soothing to concerned as you tried weight on it again, no. No that wouldn’t do. “Shit!” You crouched and then sat, clutching your ankle. You’d had sprains before, and you knew it wouldn’t be long before this one settled in and the best you’d be able to do was hobble, for a week at least. You cradled your leg, making sure that the ankle, nor foot, had to take any pressure. No more running for you today. Vince placed his hands on his hips, looking from you on the floor to up and down the running path. You were miles from anywhere, home was back the direction you’d come, town was ahead of you but still a good distance. It’d take him a while to reach it even at his best pace, and he wasn’t about to leave you alone out here.

“Babe... can you even walk on it?” “I don’t think so...” You didn’t want to end up doing more damage for a start! But sometimes on sprains you’d managed to walk even with a complaint, this one was deciding to set in straight away. There was no way you were walking anywhere on this, not that wouldn’t take you hours. “Are you kidding?! Out here miles from house or car, and you manage to get a sprain?! Only you, Y/N!!” He kept looking about as if something was gonna help him out. “Vince! What’s the first rule of running-?!” It was something you’d always been very specific about, just in case he went alone and ever got into a situation like this himself. “Always take a... phone!!!” He unzipped his track pocked and pulled his out - bars weren’t too good but he’d be able to call you a taxi. “Okay, baby, just... let’s get you off the path and to a lay-by okay?” “Vince, I can’t walk!!” He chuckled “What, you think I’m an idiot!?” Vince dipped one arm under yours and the other under your knees, before lifting you from the ground. “I don’t think you want me to answer that-!” He scoffed “If you weren’t injured, I’d be droppin’ ya for that!!” Vince began walking and handed you the phone, “Call a taxi babe, it’s all gonna be okay...”

 **

 Vince carried you back inside and laid you out on the sofa. You sighed; “God, I feel so pathetic!” “I hate to be dramatic, but it could have been WAY worse.” Vince helped you get comfortable; “You’re lucky I’m a runner too and know what to do here - but just to check, what do you do when you get a sprain?” You chuckled, folding your arms and nudging him with your other foot as he removed your running shoes carefully. “You’re instilling me with SO much confidence, Mr. Kovac.” “Ohhh, I got a Mr?” But Vince smiled, if you were back to calling him sassily by his last name instead of trying to hide the panic in your voice then you were going to be just fine. “Don’t push your luck!” He kissed you, “Ice?” “And ibuprofen...” “I’ll make you something.” “Man, I didn’t even think about food!” You murmured quietly, watching him move your calf gently, so as not to touch your ankle, and grab a few cushions to elevate it. You weren’t about to tell him you were impressed, but he was certainly ticking the boxes. “You think bananas will help? They aid recovery, don’t they?” “You hate banana!” “It’s not for me is it!” He ran his fingertips gently to your foot; “Does it hurt?” “It’s throbbing but it’s not... painful until I put weight onto it.” Vince smiled, glad of that. “Guess I can’t get you of that gear, huh?” You laughed, but indicated to the injury; “Well you can, but it’s going to be considerably less sexy than you want it to be!” His face pulled into a frown, potential disappointment, but he nodded; “I’ll get you a change of clothes too, okay?” He stood and didn’t waste any time exiting the room or coming back with a bundle of comfortable clothing, he eyed your tight running leggings: “You think you need help?” You swatted him away, “Touch the ankle and you’re dead, Kovac!” “Okay-!” He put his hands up and started toward the kitchen, “Just shout if you do need me to get you out of those clothes-!” “At least I know you’re capable-!”  His laugher echoed down the corridor making you smile, “Vin?” “Yeah?” You listened to him opening cupboards and draws and clattering around for a few minutes before answering, “You’re an angel sometimes, you know that?” His laugh this time was considerably more wicked, “You won’t be saying that later.” You chuckled to yourself as you wriggled out of your shirt and carefully took off your leggings - before resetting your leg on his elevated cushions, slipping on a sweatshirt and tracks. Baggy, and comfortable, and warm.

 It wasn’t long before he came back through, changed himself and carrying two plates. “Ohh-! Is that bacon and eggs?” “Mhm...” He handed you a plate and knife and fork, and you noticed that whilst you had pancakes his plate was void of them. “Oh! Are they banana batter!” “They are!” He smiled, “Hence why I’m not eating them, let me get your ice. And a drink-!!” Vince set up water and juice - whilst pointing out the vitamin content - before wrapping your ankle in an ice pack, “Alright, there you are, now come here...” He sat up on the sofa next to you and gently shifted your body so you could nestle your head on his chest - it wasn’t the most practical angle for eating, but it sure was comfortable and you commended him on his cooking effort. Vince was an “only the basics” kinda guy, but you couldn’t fault them. “Ohhhh! I could kiss you right about now!” “Oh god no, you’ll taste like banana!”

When you were finished, he tidied away and put the TV on before sliding his body back beneath yours, cleverly working it to give your ankle a little more elevation. “That good baby?” “Mhm.” You nodded “Good.” And you couldn’t help but beam as Vince pressed a kiss to your forehead, looking up to persuade his lips to find yours - without much difficulty. You lay cuddled up like this for a few hours as he periodically checked your ice pack and made sure you took medicine. “Ibuprofen, huh?” “It’ll take a bit to kick in but at least I’ll be able to walk on it... I’d swear by it.” Looking through your box of tricks he also found an ankle support, which you’d definitely need. But eventually Vince settled back down with you and kept very still, making sure that he didn’t have to move your body yet again. You were fine with him doing so, but Vince said he didn’t want to hinder the healing process and you weren’t about to argue with the look on his face - even though you were more than capable.

 You were both absorbed in the show you were watching before you noticed him shift again, and this time only because his hand was resting on your bare skin, and was dangerously low on your stomach. You eyed it for a few minutes, daring him to move again, it couldn’t even have been an inch from your waistband. And if you weren’t careful your body was going to want to forget about the injury for a little while on account of having that hand a little lower. Instead you narrowed your eyes, and kept your voice firm; “You try anything Kovac and a sprained ankle will be the least of your problems!” Vince chuckled and you looked back to him, his hand didn’t move but he was grinning: “Oh no, baby, we gotta get you to full fitness before you go a round with me.” You scoffed, smirk of your own in play, “I told you before, you’re the one with worse stamina here.” He surprised you, and didn’t try anything; that hand remained flat on your stomach, with only the tiniest movement being brushing his thumb over your skin soothingly. Instead, you moved your own hand and laced your fingers with his, holding him tight. Neither of you said anything, but Vince responded to your affection by pressing kisses into your neck and shoulders. You fluttered your eyes closed against them and just let yourself enjoy the trail of his lips grazing your skin, with a soft hum of content.

 Vince didn’t really stop his trail of soft, soothing kisses - but they did graduate from your shoulders to your temple and ear. The only thing to break him away from this was the occasional stolen kiss from your own lips, and the beep of his phone. At first you were about to jokingly ask what was so much more important than your injury, but then he smiled. You knew that look; it was one Vince only reserved for his kids. “Aww!” His smile grew wider, “The kids both wish you well!” “Ah, you told them!?” You covered your face with your free hand, “No! Vince that’s so embarrassing!!” But he protested, handing his phone over; “NO! No! But look how sweet they are-! Look how well raised my kids are-!” “I think I’ll let Ally take the credit there-!” “Owch!” But you were only teasing, and he knew that. You read them, your smile growing wide and his cry was triumphant: “See!!” You weren’t about to let him win this, either, and as you read you quizzed him on that big day out again; “Figured out where you’re taking them yet?” “Yeah, I think so...” He nodded, confident smile in play that had you nearly swooning - God he was so annoyingly gorgeous sometimes. “Good.” You pulled him back into another kiss; “Just not running-!” He laughed, “Yeah well, I think I’ll learn my lesson about running up on that path the hard way-!”

 As Vince wanted you to keep resting, he scheduled you to stay on the couch for the rest of the day; he knew you’d want to recover fast, not only so you could run again but so you could stay on your feet whilst drawing or prospecting. Your job had you standing far more often than he’d think; but Vince supposed that could be just your preference. He insisted on supporting you - or carrying you - whenever you did need to move, although more than once you told him you could do it alone and pridefully hobbled around the downstairs floor. It was getting late now, and probably a combination of medicine and your body’s need to recover meant you had fallen asleep on him. Vince wasn’t about to complain: despite the fact that the arm trapped underneath you was going numb, and he knew he was in for a bad case of pins and needles soon. He wouldn’t move; your body was resting and Vince knew how important that was, give it a few more hours and he would slide from under you and carry you up to bed, but right now he was fine right here, with the sound of your breathing and your hand still holding desperately onto his (though because of the arm it was getting a little difficult to feel your fingers curled around his).

Vince cuddled you closer with a gentle hum and smiled, how someone like you could somehow become this calm and peaceful he didn’t know. He loved your attitude; that feistiness that wasn’t about to give him up or give up on him - you were the boss no question, even though you still let him have control.  And yeah, he knew you would take it back when you had to, but Vince enjoyed pushing you to see how far he could go. Right now, snuggled in his arms and sleeping, and injured, he couldn’t believe you were the same woman who would sass him constantly, give that look and call him by his last name.

It was the juxtaposition he’d talked about when he’d first proposed the idea of dating to you - a real thing, not a one and done... it was something he craved even now. Vince would never tell you, but he’d never get enough. No matter how much you gave him. You kept him chasing, and he was good at it. He chuckled to himself, brushing your hair back; you stirred, smiling to yourself in your sleep and he smiled back - pressing a single delicate kiss to your forehead. You’d be out there running circles around him again soon, he was sure - you had that determination. And Vince would keep chasing you, as he always did. His only prayer was that you’d never get tired of waiting for him to catch up. I’m coming, you just keep running...

---

Thank you for reading!!! 😁😁💕💕

[crisisengine]

review: TEENS OF STYLE

Teens of Style was Will Toledo (aka Car Seat Headrest)’s 2015 major label debut. However, rather than being a paradigm shift into new, polished studio-recorded material (which would come on the next record, Teens of Denial), it was instead a laptop-recorded look back at the Will’s lo-fi Bandcamp days, compiling together older songs from different projects (mainly his first non-numbered album My Back is Killing Me Baby and the relentless but captivating breakup record Monomania). Now that Will has a firmly established musical reputation outside of the world of Bandcamp and people are enjoying all his work, both new and old, I thought it would be a good time to explore whether this record holds up in its own right. It is more than just a greatest hits compilation? (short answer: ABSOLUTELY YES!)

I like how the refrain from SUNBURNED SHIRTS closes and opens Car Seat Headrest’s first trilogy of major label albums. It’s cool to see how, on this song and on ‘Twin Fantasy (Those Boys)’, the same words and melodies are used in totally different contexts (though, here, we also get the eargasmic “People here bang on the walls late at night…” part). This one oozes dreamlike, summery vibes. I love the psychedelic sound collage at the start and, from there, it’s a pleasure to watch the song build up into the final rock-out ending. 

The opening riff of THE DRUM is perfectly produced. Whenever it appears, sometimes without warning, I get total chills. The guitar tone cuts through like an ice pick. The verses build on this in a muddier fashion but, by the time the vocals come to a head (“The Drum’s in debt!!) I am absolutely won over. Andrew Katz’s spritely drum fills add a fitting contrast to the breakdown and final verse really does give off a bizarre sense of triumph (“he’s got his flag unfurled or something”). I enjoy how, after the opener has gradually drawn us in, this song feels like a decisive overture, a setting of the scene for the album.

SOMETHING SOON is a brilliantly put-together pop song. The verses’ lyrical vignettes of cabin-fever turn into outright desperation in the chorus. It pinpoints these feelings really accurately. The skittering breaks in the verses release themselves into the crashing choruses and outro.  Each section is bookended by the same repeating electric piano chord. The explosion from this pared down moment into the final burst of energy just seems so right.

Like ‘The Drum,’ NO PASSION also rests on an exquisite moment of production. In the final chorus when Will sings “I” in his high register, it’s like a shot through the heart. The sarcastic image of failure in the verses compliments this so well – a succession of half-formed images that seem to suck away all feeling. The comparative earnestness of “I just needed more money, more time, more love” hits home. Our generation often try to rationalise things through sarcasm when really there is something more deeply lacking in our lives. The line “All my desires are so poorly drawn” also really resonates with me.

TIMES TO DIE adds to this album’s incredibly strong selection of opening moments of tracks. The wandering bassline interlocks with the chug of a delayed guitar followed by a single note. There’s something incredibly satisfying about it, especially when you are aware of the sound bath you are about to enter. The psychedelic vocal and guitar interplay in the verses is a highlight – in the first, they mirror each other but, in the second, the guitar skirts around the vocals, carving out new crevices. Their two melodies collide at the end of said verse, in a really affecting way (“but he just keeps singing this song”). The use of horns and cut-up vocals enlivens the sound palette. It feels like a series of ancient rooms with each section or lyrics (“and when they took him to the temple…”) leading somewhere new. A light seems to shine through as the melodies cascade upwards. The “most of the time” section provides nice segue into the “divine council” part which feels like an explosion, with the “is it harder to speak?” section as its fallout. The intermingling of imagery or religion and the music business (“got to believe in the one above me, got to believe that [Vince]Lombardi [head of Matador records] loves me”) is playful and dreamlike.

PSST TEENAGERS is a fun interlude that adds some more immediate energy into a generally fairly meditative album.

The opening verses of STRANGERS leave you inquisitive as to where the song is heading. All becomes clear when the tension of the exclamatory chorus is released in the lovely, picked instrumental break that follows (again enhanced by some inventive drum rhythms). The second section is the real stunner though, starting off cocoon-like and vulnerable but leading into a volatile crescendo. The line “I won’t last too much longer” and its raw delivery convey a sense of enigmatic fragility that I find very affecting.

The keyboard riff in MAUD GONE swamps the mix in the best way possible. I love its distorted, wet tones. The sax solo at the song’s crescendo provides the perfect counterpoint to it, too. Its muscular, sinewy texture cuts through emphatically in the context of the album’s drenched sound palette. As the notes reach up, the instrument seems to become an incredible, cathartic pressure valve, leeching out a lot of confused unspoken feelings as the notes reach up. The metaphor of “a full moon every night” is enticingly simple but also utterly apt for the feelings it describes.

LOS BARRACHOS has an infectious opening synth lick. As it bubbles under the verses, I’m just waiting for it to return with its full force. The wry but combative tone of the song’s opening (“let’s […] crush the grapes beneath our feet/ like some heartbroken Bacchus”) reflects Will’s desperate attempt to rekindle this relationship, to change his situation, to turn sadness into hedonism. These illusions can’t last, however. The riff does not return. Instead the song melts into a kind of broken, abject despair. “I miss you.” The disintegration of the song’s subtitle to just “Don’t have any hope left” is heart-breaking. It’s the most visceral portrait of a breakdown I’ve ever heard.

BAD ROLE MODELS, OLD IDOLS EXHUMED is my favourite song title ever. The track (the only new song written for Teens of Style) feels like a self-aware reflection on the nature of this album. The images of a figure from the past who once meant a lot but is now insignificant in the life of the narrator seem to tally somewhat with the way in which the album is made up of songs taken from previous projects. Past relationships, and the hurt they have caused, are dismissed and rationalised into triviality and insignificance. The horns and the final refrain make for a strangely celebratory ending, like a forced annulment of regrets (“You probably looked like an idiot in that hat!”) in the face of a resolve to move forward. This forced, performative break with the past, however, seems only to emphasise how the wounds are still very much open, just as the songs here, despite their pre-dating of the album itself, lose none of their emotional potency.

The chorus of OH, STARVING! is deliberately contradictory but also feels very comprehensible. The boredom of a life that seems superficially better as, opposed to a past delineated by clear highs and lows, is a recognisable feeling. Sometimes things being superficially ‘ok’ just makes you painfully aware of how far away you are from the things you really want in life, while impending pressures can obscure this, making any brief moments of solace much sweeter. In the context of the album, this also seems to imply a sense of nostalgia with regard to the events and feelings laid out in these songs. Even though this album deals with confusion, depression and heartbreak, in hindsight, the potency and simplicity of these feelings (given the separation of time between the writing and re-recording of these tracks) could almost seem preferable to the confused present. Yet, by the end of the song, Will seems to finally be able to let go. Saying “goodbye” to all his “secret files” seems almost ritualistic, like he is purging himself of the confusions of the past and moving on. I like this version of the song best because of the moment, at the very end, when the delicate piano chords and doo-wop harmonies are replaced by raw, shredding guitars and a single voice singing “goodbye” so distortedly the word is almost incomprehensible. The raw power of this moment seems to work up a head of steam, like an exorcism of the kinks and bruises of the past, in favour of something.

There isn’t Car Seat Headrest album I’ve heard that I don’t love. However, I think Teens of Style undoubtedly ranks among the best of them. It might just be one of my favourite albums of all time. It does lack the conceptual charge that powers Twin Fantasy, Monomania, Teens of Denial and even, to some extent, How to Leave Town. However, despite their lack of a heavy overarching theme, these songs flow together really well. The album feels cohesive thanks to its spring-reverbed production aesthetic (which reminds me of being indoors on a hot summer day) and the smaller themes that recur throughout (resentment of the past, confusion in the present, getting signed to a major indie label). The tweaks to the lyrics of many of these songs make the creative intent yet more apparent.

I also think this album definitely does not negate the albums from which these songs are taken. I love Monomania and My Back is Killing Me Baby and, if you haven’t listened to them you should definitely do so right now! There are bunch of essential songs on both albums that are not on this one (‘father, flesh in rags,’ ‘Souls,’ ‘happy news for sadness,’ ‘Sleeping with Strangers,’ I could go on…). However, for me, the songs on this album benefit from being recontextualised and, in certain cases, from being rerecorded. It’s great to be able to experience the stronger standalone songs from these previous records in the context of album that lets them breathe a little more, outside of context. 

The most obvious example is ‘Los Barrachos’ which I think works amazingly well as the climactic track for this album. On Monomania, placed somewhere in the middle, it felt more like a just another rung in the downward spiral of heartbreak. On Teens of Style, it has room to breathe and can finally reach its full potential. Similarly, ‘Maud Gone’ benefits hugely from its re-recording. The crisp yet bedraggled sound palette of the new version feels much more fitting than the original and, in the context of a more emotionally diverse album, the catharsis it brings is more powerful (especially coming after ‘Strangers’).

Teens of Style might be made up moments from the past, but it more than proves its worth as a cohesive album that is great in its own right.

[nytreecx]

Marinette is not a Bad Designer

Alright… I’ve seen one-too many bitter posts by fans of Miraculous Ladybug disappointed by Marinette’s deep-down costume choice to not put my thoughts on the matter forward.

When considering a design in textiles, we are taught to critically observe it through two lenses: functional and aesthetic. Simply put: how it serves its purpose and its overall appearance (usually how visually appealing it is). Despite often clashing and getting in the way of one-another, they sometimes are easier to see as concepts that blend into one another. In water colour, if you paint red and blue next to each other, they are going mix to create purple. (I blather when I explain these concepts, so if you wish to get to the analysis of Marinette and Adrien’s designs skip ahead to ***)

As an example for this outlook, I’ll use a cushion on a lounge. Its functions are to provide lumbar support; help maintain good posture; filling the gaps of a comfortable sitting space the lounge may have missed; to last continuous uses; and to complement and accentuate the design of the lounge. This means function will control the shape, size, density, and – to a degree – the fabric choices such as category and type (e.g. woven and cotton respectively) of the cushion, and provide a starting point for the aesthetics via the lounge’s aesthetics. The cushion’s aesthetic purposes on a plain lounge are to create interesting and appealing focal points; on a patterned lounge, they provide plain yet grounding points to bring focus and calm to an otherwise busy design. Aesthetics therefore controls the shape, fabric type and pattern (e.g. cotton or plush, and floral respectively), and notions such as piping and buttons. I have most likely missed a plethora of points, but I am aware I am usually long winded and am an amateur.

Of course, some designs need to heavily lean to one side of planning. A wall-hanging is a piece of art using textiles mediums; therefore it will have dependence on aesthetics planning to be successful. Its function is simply to look good. A tent taken on a camping trip, however, is going to be all purpose. It wants to keep you safe from the elements, and not take up too much room in your car or weight in your backpack. If the tent is made from chiffon, with bolts of cloth dedicated to frills and decorative drapes, it will be bulky; be even more difficult to stuff into its bag than your sleeping-bag; tear easily on the first bit of nature it comes in contact with; and metaphorically take on the properties of fairy-floss when it rains, not only drenching you, but keeping you wet and trapped as the delicate and light fabric becomes heavy and collapses on top of you and whatever unfortunate soul tried to foolishly take refuge in it. One may even say its aesthetic purpose it to look durable. The only acceptation I can think of is a camouflage design, where a specific pattern and frills that mimic leaves are necessary.

***

Through this, I have hopefully illustrated that the relationship between function and aesthetics is one of give and take. Adrien does not give a damn about this. His father may be a famous designer, and whether or not he has shared a few tips of the trade, this boy grew up on manga. He is going to hit this super-hero costume with as much magic-girl that his kawaii desu ne heart possesses. He’s got cuffs; a long-ass tail that has its own pose in the transformation sequence; paw prints on the boots; unnecessary seams and piping; morphed pupils (that may be an automatic change to give him night-vision); and a big bell that rings, for crying out loud. The only functions I can see are steel-caps, pockets, removability of the tail, and claws. Even then I suspect these were mainly chosen for the aesthetics. Even his seams are what you would call aesthetic seams. It’s a suit made from magic. You don’t need seams.

Marinette, on the other hand, is focused on the function of this being a superhero costume. She knows she will be going into battle. Taking leaf out of Edna Mode’s book and then the whole library, she forgoes the iconic billowing cape and anything else that would hinder or even put her in danger her while fighting. Seams, zipper tags, cuffs, tails, and bells can be exploited by getting grabbed by a villain or accidentally caught on an edge or pointy debris while dodging or escaping. She only has an allusion to antenna as ribbons rather long poles sticking out of her head will basically become handles for whomever she is fighting. The only fault I can see is keeping her pigtails (*SPOILER* which we know she can change from the leak of Kitty Noir *SPOILER OVER*). Even then they may serve to create some kind of barrier from the back for her miraculous. She doesn’t need such things as steel caps because her magical fabric is already all the armour she needs.

I’ve had fun creating alternative costumes for Marinette. With function in mind, and wanting to reference the beetle, I added plate armour to the front to mimic the underside of the ladybird; angled spikes on the arms and legs like many beetles have to catch blades and cause damage; white spots like on their head on a black helmet that conceals her identity better; and the red and black shell only as a detachable shield on the back. Apart from being a design more appropriate for an AU, I forgot one important thing that all these features I wanted as tributes to the source material took away. Marinette knew that a superhero needs to be recognisable. Hence, this is the goal of the aesthetics.

The simplicity of the fabric’s pattern is to be iconic. What’s the most salient part of a ladybird? The black spots on their red shell. What pattern has she chosen? Exactly that. She is supposed to be a hero of the people. Someone every citizen can recognise as she swings by so fast she’s a blur. Parisians are going to be attacked so often that the red with black polka-dots needs to inspire feelings of safety, so that when they see her they don’t instantly think she’s akuma they need to seek shelter from. When she rescues terrified and flustered citizens, or toddlers crying for their mother, she needs to be recognised immediately; to create a focus point for the panicked mind; and to inspire peace and a sense that it will all be okay now that she’s here. A plain pattern in bold colours is the easiest way to do this. Adrien has even done this with the almost unanimously black outfit and silhouette alluding to a cat with the ears and tail. Her simplicity is necessary BOTH functionally and aesthetically.

*SPOILER*

In the event they swap kwamiis, they retain their design philosophies, and yet are influenced by someone they love and care about’s take on it. They need to hold onto the established iconic design the other has come up with, yet express they are someone else with their own unique take on it. Adrien keeps the iconic spots as the main feature, but adds panels of black to accentuate the pattern; give a nod to the actual ratio of black to spots on the ladybird; suggest armour; and to add depth and accentuate muscle anatomy. Marinette turns the bells and whistles into lines on the fabric to remove the danger of them while honouring them. Her plat imitates a tail instead of a more-easily-grappled belt and the collar tells of her Chinese heritage. In the event of the mouse fiasco, she needs to alter her design philosophy from hero to “omg please don’t find out I’m Ladybug”. Her colours are the usual palette she wears to inspire Marinette thoughts for Chat; her hair resembles mouse ears and are definitely and defiantly not Ladybug’s piggy tails; and her stripes and spikes, and tail create the farce that she is an inexperienced hero by forgoing the ungrabblable and to be easily recognised as the animal of their miraculous holder attitude Ladybug adopts.

*SPOILER OVER*

Being a designer isn’t just “Ima add frills for days cuz that shit’s tight”; knowing that busy patterns next to each other clash; making things look visually appealing or stunning; or even knowing what’s hot this season. It’s about making something for and around a purpose. And through this, Marinette can indeed retain her title of “good designer”. Thank you for reading my one thousand and five-hundred word essay. I hope this has enlightened some confused and vexed fans.

[lucyreviewcy]

An Ode to Taylor Swift’s Approach to Self-Branding

In his book Stars, Richard Dyer discusses the way that movie stars’ personas are built and developed both within and outside of their films. Dyer suggests that the kind of characters that stars play feed into the overall narrative of their career. Taylor Swift isn’t a film star, unless you count a few brief cameos, but her persona is unique in that her personal presentation (Instagram, interviews and anywhere where she is pretending to be herself) and her performance persona (in photoshoots, music videos, live performances and arguably her music) are so nakedly constructed.

While she once may have claimed to have something in common with the girl she plays in the videos for Picture to Burn or Tim McGraw, these days, Swift is no stranger to drawing attention to how her image is created. If you don’t believe me, just look at the video for …Ready for It. She’s literally making a new Taylor.

Whenever T Swizzle releases new music, her fans are chided for combing through the lyrics and accompanying images with a fine toothed comb to find hidden clues or references to other parts of the Swift Mythos. Swift’s music videos are rife with call-backs, her lyrics shot through with veiled (and sometimes…not veiled at all) references to events in her personal life or previous work. As she proved with the Look What You Made Me Do video, you don’t need a cast of thousands of Hollywood stars and decades of comic books to create an extended universe; she did it with one name, one persona, reinvented over and over.

YouTube film academic Lindsay Ellis has pointed out that any text or product exclusively targeted at teenage girls (Ellis refers to the Twilight franchise of books and films) is received by audiences as being universally poor quality and worthy of spades of parodies and mean-spirited hot takes. A lot of media that is cherished by and targeted at young girls is considered extremely low art, and Taylor Swift, despite being a prolific songwriter and a consummate performer, is often dropped into this bucket with a loud, gangly thud. Regularly commenting on how much she loves Tumblr (a site often associated with the obsessive, single-minded fandom (you can read my Timeless reviews on this very blog btw)) as a way of connecting with her fans, Swift makes a big point of trying to connect on a personal level with the hordes of young women who connect with her music.

EM Forster wrote: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”  Swift seeks to connect with her fans who connect with her art. She’s attempting to turn a one-sided exchange into a kind of contribution triangle, whereby she’s inspired by her fans who are inspired by her work, and both contribute in the resulting music. By creating this pseudo-give-and-take, Taylor’s music and images become something more than a disparate set of marketing images and tunes, but one mythology – “fragments no longer.”

I think it’s admirable for any star to try and do this. As I mentioned at the start of this article, Swift’s persona is fully constructed. Her desire to connect with fans is extremely marketable and played up in interviews and even the way that she speaks to the literal thousands of audience members at her concerts. However, Swift’s detailed, complex mythos, full of symbolism and self-referential intertextuality is the net result of all that connection. It is a mad and brilliant scheme that ultimately acts as a cultural studies training level for her fans.

It starts when Taylor’s hidden a clue to her album title in her latest music video. Her fans interrogate the text, which is a CGI ridden 4 minutes that is so unreal in its aesthetic that every element has been consciously constructed. They dissect, they discuss, they write about their findings. You know, just like when a big controversial movie comes out. That’s right, I’m saying ME! is the Roma of the Taylor Swift world.

I’m a fan of Swift’s music (eye-roll all you want, she writes good tunes, bite me), but I recognised literally none of the symbolism that fans and super-fans and beleaguered entertainment correspondents across the globe are writing adrenaline-fuelled blog posts about. I’m 25, I work in media and I’m doing a masters in film – did I notice that the seven suitcases represented T Swizzle’s albums or that the whole damn video takes place inside a cocoon? No. I did not.

While the details that fans are going nuts about might not be ground-breaking or important in the oeuvre of film and cultural studies, it is so important that these fans are being encouraged to explore and interrogate these texts. They’re sharpening their teeth for tougher meat. Not every Taylor Swift fan will grow up into a film studies academic (although I would read a sci-fi short story where this bizarre phenomenon happens and somehow brings down society) – but the fans that engage on this level are learning how to explore media as constructed work in the context of its creator. THANK YOU TAYLOR! She’s not the hero that media studies wants, but she’s the hero it deserves…

We live in a media dominated age. Our politicians fight in snarky twitter battles, news breaking across the world is available to us pretty much as it happens, and our sexy looking lunches are tiny headlines broadcast from our social media accounts. Interrogating media is a really important skill in this age. Young women and men reading “too much” (don’t get me started) into Taylor Swift videos are learning three things:

1)      Sometimes there is more to a media text than meets the eye, subliminal messaging is a thing.

2)      Taylor’s persona is constructed and she’s consciously creating each new incarnation.

3)      You can question the media that’s put in front of you, even if it is put there by someone that you like.

The way that people often dump on media studies and related fields as “reading too much into things” and “all bullsh*t” is frustrating. Not only is this argument kind of rude, it suggests that there really isn’t much more to a text than meets the eye. There is! Films, movies and music influence us every moment of every day, having the curiosity to ask how they’re doing that is not a bad thing. You’re not “making it all up” if you say that the way that Harry Potter valorises unrequited love is actually quite dangerous, or if you point out that the 2017 Baywatch manages to gently reinforce all the bad gender politics of the 1980s original (WOAH SHOCK) or if you want to write a gosh-darned 7,000 word essay on the bit where the snake bursts into a cloud of butterflies. That curiosity is empowering and exciting and exploring texts this way is fun.

There are caveats to this. Not everyone likes reading texts this way, and it is important to maintain your love for the movies, music videos and other texts that you explore even while you hit them with some cold hard theory. So here is my message to any Taylor Swift fan and budding media genius, stepping out into this wild world of media. Keep these things in mind:

Not everyone will share your passion, but that doesn’t mean your passion is bad - it just means that you might need to have other topics of conversation up your sleeve for when people just aren’t interested. 

Be sensitive to your friends and don’t dump on all their favourite movies and musicians.

Be aware that a lot of people might not share your opinions.

Be quiet in the cinema because shouting “Dutch angle” every time there’s a Dutch angle will make people really mad.

But don’t ever be embarrassed to read into a text and ask questions about how and why it was made.  T Swizzle has felt the brunt of a media age that says what it wants and airs your dirty laundry. She writes songs about how it feels to have a reputation you have no control over. Then she says to her fans “Hey, I’ve reinvented myself, come see if you can figure out what I’ve done! Dissect every frame of my video and every lyric of my song, and every damn pixel of my Instagram.” She sets up the media world as a puzzle which can be pieced together, and if not solved, then thoroughly explored.

Taylor Swift actually wants her fans to do this, and so do I.

[filmista]

Gone Girl (2014)

“When two people love each other and they can't make that work, that's the real tragedy.”

The first time I watched ‘Gone Girl’ was before I had read Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name. The film gripped me so much the first time, that one of the first things I did after was read, or better said devoured Flynn’s novel in about a day.

Flynn’s novel is not only an interesting look at a female psychopath (people have compared Amy Dunne to Patrick Bateman; though I think Bateman is more perverse) as scary as it sounds at least with Amy Dunne, we see things in her character that don’t justify or excuse what she does but that can make you understand her.

There is, however, a scary similarity between the two: both are seen as “perfect Americans" in a way, women find Patrick Bate hot and men admire him at his job because he’s the man that’s got everything at first sight and nothing seems to ever affect him; it shows that scary notion that being emotionless is the male ideal.

And Amy’s literally a children’s idol, she signs autographs for children and becomes an American heroine, “America’s sweetheart” she’s hailed on the news even after she has committed cold-blooded murder and vicious, sickening acts. 

So what does that mean? Is too much perfection craziness? Or does striving for perfection drive us crazy? Or is it the pretense the trying to project a perfect image towards the world?

Both are characters that seemingly are perfect and they seem to at first glance have all the ingredients for happiness, but once you look underneath, well the only thing that really prevails is a killer boredom and an emptiness, both feel like they aren’t present, like they’re not there, or in Amy’s words: “I feel like I could disappear”.

The first time I read Flynn’s novel I was enthralled, Amy Dunne is one of the most interesting and complex female characters I’ve ever seen in anything, but I was also very pleased that Fincher had done Flynn’s work so much justice.

He actually worked with Flynn and allowed her to contribute to making her own book into a screenplay, and as a result of the essence of the book really transfers onto the screen.

However, Fincher’s adaptation of the book is interesting because of many reasons, not just because it is one of the best literary adaptations I’ve seen but also because it’s well made. It’s beautiful on a simple aesthetic level but it’s deep too, it’s the kind of film that’s gonna make you think after and that you can bet will stay with you for a few days after.

And most importantly it’s got respect for the audience there’s no hand-holding, it’s assumed you’re smart enough to follow what’s happening, and so no unnecessary flashbacks to remind you of what happened earlier, you’re supposed to still remember. 

This does make ‘Gone Girl’ into a film that you have to pay attention to, it’s not the kind of film you can continue to watch while you’re doing say your dishes.

Before delving into further detail though, I’ll leave the storyline here:

On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne reports that his wife, Amy, has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?

The most interesting thing about the film though, is the titular Gone Girl, Amy Dunne. Amy Dunne is an incredibly complex and compelling female character, she’s unique, because she gets to do what a lot of women in films often can’t do without being held accountable or locked up in an institution: she gets to go utterly insane and she triumphs in the end, she’s a villainess of the first degree.

She’s impossible to run away from and to outsmart, she’s at the top and there she stays, she’s not superhuman either, because she has weaknesses and she can be vulnerable, as a few moments in the film illustrate, but when she’s not vulnerable, she can't be stopped by no man or woman.

There’s no doubt that Amy Dunne, is a monster, but she’s ultimately more interesting than Patrick Bateman and I said I think less perverse, yes she has a method to her insanity and it’s safe to assume she’s conscious and aware of her action and knows exactly what she is doing.

But unlike Bateman, external events shaped Amy; she was made into a monster by the world around her and those that were supposed to care about her, it doesn’t justify that she killed a man and that she staged her own disappearance.

But it can make you understand it to some degree, and to some degree, you sympathize with her at certain points, because underneath the layer of insanity, there’s still human emotion and vulnerability left, maybe she would never have snapped had she not been pushed.

I’ve now watched ‘Gone Girl’s more than once with different people, and I always notice something very interesting: people usually divide both the main characters Nick Dunne and Amy Dunne in two categories: he’s a good guy (that’s done nothing wrong) and Amy’s a psycho bitch.

When I watched the film though, I obviously did recognise that Amy is not normal and that she clearly has mental problems, but to a certain degree I could understand (not justify) why she did what she did, I can see the reasoning behind her actions, why she decided to do what she did.

Amy Dunne’s a brilliant woman, with an obvious eager mind, as illustrated by the various degrees of hers on the walls of her bedroom, but she became a housewife, not that, that is what drove her insane, because a woman like her would have something to do, had it been studying or whatever.

But she was not used to being ignored, she’s never been used to feeling like she doesn’t matter. Amy was the only child of her parents, she had always been made felt like she was unique and a miracle, something worthy of admiration, something that had to excel and preferably honor them.

Amy’s parents turned her childhood and adult life into a series of books, the heroine of which is Amazing Amy, Amy is essentially a literal Amy, but this Amy never disappoints and is always perfect. And more importantly, she is adored by millions of kids in America.

You wouldn’t think that this would be the kind of thing that would mess someone up, but I think that in the case of Amy it does, I think her parents created a split personality in her; in many ways Amy is trying to adapt the Amy amazing persona, she tries to be Amazing Amy, as she says at one point: “Amazing Amy has always been one step ahead of me”. And she feels that it’s her duty to walk into Amazing Amy’s shoes.

Because what she wants really is nothing more than to be loved, or receive what she thinks to constitute as love, her parents seem to adore her but they come across as very fake and cold people.

How much do they care about their daughter? (perhaps this makes fun of those people in America that force their kids to participate in atrocious television such as ‘Honey Booboo’, I honestly think that should be considered child abuse).

Perhaps they care more for the literate version than they do their own daughter, which would be a messed up thing, but then again what parents turn their own daughter into a product?

At one point Amy’s father at an event for one of her books (in which Amazing Amy gets married while real-life Amy has not yet taken that step, her mom even wants her to wear a wedding dress, just how crazy is that woman?!) forces her to go socialise and mingle, what if Amy doesn’t want to? What if she doesn’t want the spotlight?

That doesn’t matter to her parents; all they seem to care about is Amy the product, and perhaps she strives so much to become Amazing Amy because all she really wants is love from her parents like any child should receive.

And then she meets the perfect man, her dream guy. Finally, a man that seems to admire and care about her seemingly just for the person she is. Though there’s a catch, perhaps Amy’s childhood messed her up so much, that her entire definition of love became messed up.

She literally says “ I forged the man of my dreams.” She saw a guy that she probably sensed was manipulable and could be rebuilt into the kind of man she likes; and isn’t love about not changing the person you love, unless it’s in their self-interest.

Like helping them get rid of an unhealthy habit such as smoking? But Amy sees this man, and she probably is physically attracted to him and she did recognize good personality traits.

But she felt that she could make him into a better man, a man that would make her look good, a man that would fit amazing Amy. And so she presents a persona to lure him in (I believe we all do this a little though sometimes) I feel like I should include the famous Cool girl speech here:

Nick loved a girl I was pretending to be. "Cool girl". Men always use that, don't they? As their defining compliment: "She's a cool girl". Cool girl is hot. Cool girl is game. Cool girl is fun. Cool girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner. And then presents her mouth for fucking. She likes what he likes, so evidently, he's a vinyl hipster who loves fetish Manga. If he likes girls gone wild, she's a mall babe who talks for football and endures buffalo wings at Hooters. When I met Nick Dunne I knew he wanted "Cool girl". And for him, I'll admit: I was willing to try. I wax-stripped my pussy raw. I drank canned beer watching Adam Sandler movies. I ate cold pizza and remained a size two. I blew him, semi-regularly. I lived in the moment. I was fucking game. I can't say I didn't enjoy some of it. Nick teased out in me things I didn't know existed. A lightness, a humor, an ease. But I made him smarter. Sharper. I inspired him to rise to my level. I forged the man of my dreams. We were happy pretending to be other people. We were the happiest couple we knew. 

And it works, he’s dazzled and falls for Amy. And while that might seem despicable to some degree, I don’t argue that isn’t. it’s always said that we should be ourselves.

But Amy has got a certain point: society’s not always content with women just being themselves, society wants amplified women, women who her always at their best.

And she knows this better than anyone and refuses to let being a woman bring her down, or believe that it gives her any less right to anything. I mean how can you as a woman (I admit that I did to some degree) or even as a man if you believe men and women are equal, not cheer her on for that belief?

She knows, better than anyone that society’s unfair and it pisses her off, she’s very very angry, and it  seems to become her mission to not only get her personal revenge but in a way for every woman: 

“And if I get everything right, the world will hate Nick for killing his beautiful, pregnant wife. And after all the outrage, when I'm ready, I'll go out on the water with a handful of pills and a pocket full of stones. And when they find my body, they'll know: Nick Dunne dumped his beloved like garbage, and she floated past all the other abused, unwanted, inconvenient women.”

She knows how to use every advantage that being a woman could offer you: she can go from being a man ’s literal fantasy of what constitutes his perfect woman to his worst nightmare in the flinch of an eye.

She uses her sexuality to her advantage and when she benefits from adopting the tired and cliched female victim role to appear sympathetic and inspire pity she does that without blinking an eye.

Still, it begs the question, why did she stage her own disappearance and wanted to frame her husband for murder? Just to get back at him? It took her a lot of creativity, a crazy kind of creativity but still, she made her diary into a testament of an abusive relationship and she even provided the weapon she was supposedly assaulted with, I mean you need a lot of dedication…

As I said earlier Amy craves attention and love, and in her own fucked up way she thinks she’s now found that with Nick, and that she’s now finally on par with Amazing Amy, she has the perfect husband, the perfect life, she’s become the Amazing Amy fantasy.

The first few years of her marriage are wonderful, although it’s difficult to establish if Amy ever was in love (or if she was telling herself she was) but as I said she’s someone that craves loves and attention, or at least a simulation of love, and she absolutely can’t have it when her husband starts to ignore her and only pay attention to her when he sees fit.

Amy is someone you don’t put into a corner and that you simply don’t ignore. Now you could say there is such a thing as talking to someone and explaining how you feel, but all the times we see Amy trying to do that in the film, we see Nick brush her off, and you can feel her anger building, you understand why she is pissed off.

Not that it justifies taking revenge, but in a way you can understand Amy. Nick often is seen as the “good guy, who did nothing wrong” and well he’s not a murderer and he didn’t beat Amy, but the profiteers off of her.

She bought him the bar he works in, and all the expenses are on her own, if something has to be done he leaves it to the wife. He’s maybe not even attracted to her anymore at this point, Amy’s a security that he takes for granted, he also makes decisions without her: moving somewhere entirely new, without okaying it with her, you don’t do that… and if that’s not enough he has an affair too.

And that drives Amy mad; she forged the man of her dreams, but he slips back into a man she didn’t agree to be within her own words, but what bothers her most of all is maybe not what she sees as weak personality traits, it’s the being ignored, the being taken for granted, and being used as a commodity. She senses that it’s not ok, and it really isn’t, she feels that he sucks everything out of her, she’s not a person of her own anymore, there’s no dignity left.

And yet Amy has dignity because she sees this and doesn’t think it’s okay, she compares it to being murdered; and in a way that it is a fitting description, Nick killed her spirit, she feels wronged, scorn.

Only she has a more extreme reaction to it; she’s not going to let him just ignore her, she’s going to remind him who he’s dealing with, put him back in what he believes his place, but she even goes further than just a sharp reprimand, she’s going to make him fear her, make sure he’s forced to pay attention to her and forced to play happy family.

And while what she did after, essentially make it look like she was kidnapped, frame and murder a dude is definitely not okay, it’s messed up, it’s evil, Amy’s evil. But you can’t help but feel a little sorry for her.

She’s definitely mad, but how much of her madness is her fault? How much did what was demanded of her mess her up? Amy’s ruthless; but she comes across as vulnerable at times, almost as if she believes that doing what she’s doing will really make everything alright again, that she can get the man she loved back, it’s her own completely fucked up version of a romantic gesture.

And Amy and Nick are a very fucked up couple, now at first in the film, they come across as the perfect couple, but then you see the flaws and cracks in the design and there’s many.

And still when Amy disappears the way he screams “Amy!” implies the notion to some degree that they may be right for each other, that he cares about his wife somewhere, but he got lazy and didn’t show it often enough.

Which is again a reminder that romance is not always easy to work, you can’t be in a relationship and then think it’s gonna upkeep itself, and not nearly everyone has the strength of character for it. Which in a way maybe makes it a cautionary tale for the modern romance: don’t ignore your partner, because they may just go Amy Dunne on you.

All of what I’ve written doesn’t mean that I agree with Amy’s actions I don’t, not at all. But I think she’s far more complex than just psycho bitch.

she’s actually a very tragically complex character, she’s someone that was never shown how to be happy, never told that she has the right to be happy, and so she does everything to fabricate it in her own desperate way.

Say what you will about Amy as a female character; that she’s crazy, that she’s the devil in female form; dressing up as suburban housewife, but she is absolutely not boring, she’s a scary woman, and scary women exist, it’s just that we don’t often see them in television.

‘Gone Girl’s had to deal with plenty of misogyny claims, that it’s just another women are crazy film, but Fincher does care about Amy as a character, we do see moments that create empathy and sympathy towards her, you see and understand her pain.

She’s not just a spoiled, rich girl that goes on a feminist crusade, she’s not a good woman, not a role model and that’s fine because not all women are good. ‘Gone Girl’ deals with a lot of topics though.

It’s amongst many things a satire on the media, on media circuses and the mob mentality of it sometimes. People feel like they have the right to shred someone to pieces, without proof at times, hell as long as it makes them feel good and provides entertainment.

How it demonizes and destroys people sometimes without proof, there’s no proof that Nick killed his wife yet the whole of America hates him and they’re already tearing him apart. Or the way that Amy who killed someone and framed and ruthlessly plotted the demise of multiple people is heralded as “American heroine” because no one knows, she’s just made everyone fall into his web.

And how one moment the media tears you apart and the next moment it adores. It reminds me of what Ingrid Bergman once said:

"I've gone from saint to whore and back to saint again, all in one lifetime." 

Nick in the film, is at first hated, because it’s instantly supposed that he is a wife killer, just because of the way he uncomfortably smiles (my wife says he’s a killer).

How many times have people said, when they see a photo of a killer I knew it, he/she looks evil! At another point in the film, Nick basically admits publicly to being a shit husband and everyone loves him because admitted he’s an asshole, it shows that people can make or break someone’s reputation on a whim, without it necessarily being true.

These ideas are all present in the book too, but Fincher really adapted them well to the screen. ‘Gone Girl’ is truly a very cinematic film, seemingly very simple and low on special effects, but he really does do some interesting, visually impressive stuff.

The sequences that depict instances Amy describes in her diary, the films in a brilliant att way, these also have impressive use of voiceover, Rosamund Pike narrates in a way that’s chockfull of emotion, and that’s why it works so well.

Fincher’s shows us what she’s describing, and in a way, these scenes have a different feel than the rest of the film, they seem entirely rooted in reality, but at the same time there’s a sort of nightmarish haze them, something’s inherently disturbing in these scenes.

There are moments in her diary when Amy describes violence, her husband pushing her when Fincher shows it to us, it becomes a truly shocking moment, not that a woman being pushed on the ground isn’t shocking.

But here it truly feels realistically violent, he makes the violence of the scene stand out more by using a slow black fade, he makes sure that you’ve really seen it and that it’s burned on your retina for a while.

And the moments that depict the whole media circus are incredibly well done too, there’ s a scene in which an entire horde of journalists, is literally running behind Affleck’s character until he gets to his car, it’s a scene that still kind of stresses me out every time I see it, you really feel how stressful that is for someone.

Fincher does a fantastic job at placing the way a character feels into his film visually, when Amy first meets Nick, they kiss in outside a bakery that’s having its sugar delivered, and there’s a storm of it, and this scene really has something magical about it.

You buy the love story and the passion, shortly after this scene; Fincher cuts to Nick going down on Amy, apparently also controversial, people are still shocked about seeing a woman receive oral sex in a film, a little change is nice us for us ladies too sometimes, the opposite has been shown millions of time.

But Fincher does a fantastic job with this scene, not only is it’s lightning amazing, it’s dark, yet urban light streams into the room creating a very lovely effect. But he really shows the pleasure in the act of both characters, Amy lifts herself up and gaspingly says: Nick Dunne, I really like you. And you absolutely buy it.

The fairytale days are pictured fantastically, they’re not sickeningly sweet, it’s just two people very in love, we all recognize it, we’ve all been there. And then slowly the deteriorating sets in, passionately becomes emotionless, empty.

In a contrasting, brilliant sequence he shows us Amy’s heart is broken, she sees her husband outside of the bakery where they met, doing the exact same thing that he did with her on their first date, to this other woman. And you really get the sense that it’s not so much about the act of cheating, it’s that he’s sharing something personal, that was between the two of them with someone else, we feel Amy’s heartbreaking in that sequence.

Fincher’s famous yellow light is present in this one too (it bothers me with his work sometimes, after a while it seems to all have the same feel visually) but the whole of Gone Girl is incredibly vibrant when it comes to the colours and lighting, it’s seemingly simple, but when it uses dramatic effects, it’s done brilliantly and paired greatly with affecting music, that further strengthens the emotion of a scene.

However, I feel like I should say that the real star of the film is undoubtedly Rosamund Pike as Amy, the girl, woman that it’s all about. Her presence is not always that obvious in the film; throughout the first half of the film, she’s present for only a bit, and then it’s basically just Affleck and flashbacks of Amy, but even then it’s her film, her presence predominates every scene in the film.

It’s got to be said that Affleck also does a good job, Nick Dunne’s not an easy character to play, and while he’s a character that’s not instantly likeable you do after a while become to sympathise with him, he plays Nick perfectly; he’s difficult to read, he seems to miss his wife, but there also seems to be some indifference present. 

He’s weary, tired, and seems lethargic throughout the film, exactly like you think a person that’s being persecuted and whose wife has disappeared would act. I definitely think it’s some Affleck’s best work. But Pike steals some of his spotlights.

Now Pike’s talent has been recognized, before this, she was always good in all the roles that I’ve seen her in, but she never had that much to sink her teeth into. Amy’s the character that has really allowed her to display her talent, not only did she put lots of work into the role: she read all the books Flynn recommended she read, and she also put work into adopting a handwriting that would fit Amy’s character.

Pike can transform here both physically and emotionally, and she does much more than the classic gaining or losing weight although she does that, and it’s not simply letting herself go either, there’s a pre disappearance and after disappearance Amy.

Amy’s an elegant stylish woman, yet in her anger and as part of her plan, she just completely lets herself go, she eats junk food, barely takes care of her physical appearance and just has a general air of sadness.

And in one scene she’s sweet when she tells Nick about her parent’s money troubles and what it will mean for them, or when she tells Nick she wants a child, these are all touching moments.

And then she snaps, and just brutally kills a man, she’s methodical, efficient, merciless, like a Greek goddess, she can be perfectly sexy one moment, and then she can literally annihilate anyone that stands in her way or that makes her feels threatened. 

It’s a truly shocking image, and Pike is perfectly unpredictable throughout, the best thing about her performance is that not only does she manipulate and set other characters to her will, and in a way scarily enough, she manipulates us too.

‘Gone Girl’s scariest message, is that everything is about perception, we see things, they seem a certain way and then we come to our own conclusions, sometimes we may be right and other times we may be right, at other times if we jump to conclusions too quickly, we might create terrible consequences. 

And then the scariest of all, even when we’re with someone and we love them, and though we feel like we know them inside out, they’re still a completely different person, they’re own person, with their own world inside of them and ‘Gone Girl’s seems to insistently whisper that it’s all advised to forget and disrespect that.

“When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, trying to get answers. The primal questions of a marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?”

[captain-ross-poldark]

Poldark returns: Aidan Turner on nudity, being single and why he's a technophobe

As the famously ripped and glowering Cornish copper miner, Aidan Turner has put the sex back  into Sunday nights. Over a large vodka, he talks about getting  naked, those pecs and playing Poldark Just before I am due to interview Aidan Turner, his PR sends me an email to let me know that he has grown a beard – presumably in case I fail to recognise the actor fully clothed or not wearing a tricorn hat. Poor old Turner is so defined by that scything scene that he likes to grow his beard when not committed to playing Ross Poldark – which doesn’t happen very often, given the BBC has just commissioned a fourth series and Turner says they are all tied in for five. ‘I’m not a big fan of shaving,’ he explains to me when I finally find him – fully clothed in a bomber jacket, T-shirt and jeans, minus tricorn, hiding in the corner of a dimly lit hotel bar in Mayfair. ‘It sucks. What’s the point? What is the point?’ I mention something about it being uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of a man with a beard.

‘Oh yeah,’ he smiles sympathetically. ‘I can’t imagine it’s a lot of fun for you guys. But not shaving works lovely. I can walk into the street and literally nobody [will recognise me], which is kind of cool. It’s nice for me.’ He doesn’t seem to have noticed the two well-to-do women at the other end of the bar, trying hard not to gawp into their martinis. Perhaps he has simply grown used to it. I have interviewed Turner before, about a year and a half ago, and that day we met in a similarly murky venue, an underground restaurant in Bristol, him arriving with a beanie hat pulled down low over his forehead. The sense I got then was of a man acutely embarrassed by attention, a regular guy from Dublin who happened to have acted standing in a field with his top off because, as he puts it, that’s just how chaps used to scythe back in the day. ‘It [the “nudity”] has always made sense. The bathtub thing,’ he says, referring to the scene in series two where Demelza kisses her naked husband in a tin bath, ‘I mean, I can’t be wearing a T-shirt in it, can I?’

By the time he got round to shooting the 2015 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, in which he stood with a towel draped perilously low on his hip bone, he had begun to have fun with the whole objectification thing. ‘That was my fault. The towel was initially up quite high and then I said, “That’s not going to work. Why don’t we put it down a little bit because it just doesn’t feel comfortable.” And then when they weren’t looking I pulled it down and it looked ridiculous but…’ He starts to laugh. Is there a similar standout scene in the third series of Poldark? ‘I think there might be one scene, but by then I  had probably put on a bit of weight. I don’t think I was ripped for it. It was towards the end of the shoot and I didn’t bother. For the last month I didn’t hit the gym at all, I was just too busy. And then we had some scenes in the bedroom. There’s one where I’m lying down talking to Demelza and the towel is up here,’ he motions to just above his waist, ‘so I pull it down a little bit. ‘I thought it was funny and on that day Eleanor [Tomlinson, who plays Demelza] was laughing. I went “a little bit more, a little bit more”. I was joking around and thought it would look OK. And then recently they showed us the clip and it’s very much not OK. I am not in shape at all.’ I am pretty sure that the ladies across the bar would agree with me when I say that this is in no way true.  


The 33-year-old seems genuinely perplexed by the fuss caused by his body. ‘I’ve never got it. You watch Game of Thrones and other shows, it’s constant sex. It’s not like we’re doing crunches and then trying to find a reason to get topless. Maybe because it’s a newer version of a show that happened in the 1970s? Maybe it seems racier? I have trouble joining the dots in my head.’ Why does Turner think that the travails of an 18th-century Cornish copper miner are so enduring? ‘Well, that’s a tough one. If you could sort of bottle what it is that makes a show work… I don’t know. It’s always surprised me, Poldark. When we were shooting The Hobbit, we knew a lot of people were going to watch it. But with a show like this we weren’t aware of it. It was sort of a shock for everyone. And it’s continually surprising. We did a thing at the BFI last week, and it was mad, the amount of fans who showed up. It was a bit of a frenzy. And it’s not the demographic that I thought it would be. It was young people.’ 
If I’m not working I’m having to go to the gym because you have to look a certain way and I can’t afford to get, like… bald and fat'
What demographic was he expecting? ‘You know, anything from 40 up.’ Forty isn’t that old, I say. ‘No, no, not at all. You said old. I said demographic. There were a load of young girls and lads and it just kind of surprised me.’ He thinks part of the show’s success is that ‘aesthetically, it doesn’t look like a lot of other British shows. It’s quite calming because of the Cornish setting. And the stories still stand up. Those things that Winston Graham wrote, they still seem to ring true for people.’ The book that the team are working from for series four features a significantly older Poldark. ‘I’m not going to age up for it. Grey hairs and that,’ he shakes his head. ‘No way! I’ll go grey in my own time. It’s happening anyway.’ Again, we agree to disagree. In interviews, Turner often comes across as cagey on account of his reluctance to discuss certain topics, such as his love life or whether he will be the next James Bond. In reality I think he is just a bit shy and politely insecure, and keen not to rock the boat too much (he tells me he once said something in an interview about what his brother did for a living, which upset his sibling). On the subject of Bond, he simply thinks it’s rude to discuss a role that someone is already signed up for. ‘Imagine if somebody was talking about a show that I was doing and the possibilities of replacing me.’ He looks aghast. ‘I just don’t think it’s cool to do that. It seems slightly unkind and a little disrespectful and a bit weird, so that’s why I’ve never wanted to speak about it.’ What do we know about Turner? Born in Dublin to a shop worker and an electrician, he was a ballroom dancer as a child and worked briefly with his dad before deciding, aged 17, to enrol at the Gaiety School of Acting. He graduated in 2004 and immediately started working in theatre, before landing in television via the Irish soap The Clinic. There was an uncredited role in The Tudors, and then cult success as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the BBC’s Desperate Romantics, and as a vampire in BBC Three’s hit Being Human.

This led to a short period of typecasting, though not altogether unwelcome typecasting, given that it involved roles in a couple of Hollywood blockbusters: as the dwarf Kili in the Hobbit films, and then as a shadowhunter-turned-werewolf in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Turner loves collecting art, does a bit of painting himself, and has just bought a house in east London (‘I’ve got a big back garden!’ he beams, before his face turns to concern. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with that’). For all his handsome ruggedness, I find him quite boyish, sweet even. He shows me pictures of himself at the christening of his first godchild, the baby of his best friend. ‘You can put this in the interview. He’d love that. I’m a very proud godfather. His name is Luca. I have no business in churches at all – I thought I was going to melt when I walked through the door – but it was amazing.’ Turner spends so much time dashing around the place for work that he sometimes forgets what day it is, so being able to go home for the christening felt like a real boon. ‘It’s Friday, isn’t it?’ he says, about halfway through our interview. ‘We could have a drink.’ We order large vodka sodas and head outside to smoke his cigarettes, where he tells me about how much he loves watching boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA). Does he box himself? ‘I’ve done a little bit on the bag when I’m training and stuff. But I can’t spar. Can’t hurt the face,’ he says, a hint of cheekiness in his voice. ‘The face is the business, isn’t it?’ I think his reluctance to give too much away means that sometimes people confuse him with Poldark. Ross is… quite moody, I say. ‘Yeah. You can just say it. He’s a bit of a grump. He’s a bit of an arse. I hope that doesn’t run too deep. I like to think I don’t bring him home from set every day.’ Turner broke up with his last long-term girlfriend, the actress Sarah Greene, two years ago, and has since been photographed snogging a couple of beautiful brunettes, but claims he isn’t dating anyone at the moment. ‘Nobody, actually, as it stands. It’s not like I’m crazy private about things, or that I’m being difficult. I just find it makes the job a bit difficult, because I want to be able to fool people that I’m somebody else.’ He sits and ponders this for a bit. ‘If I was, and this might be a bad example, but if I was a musician or a singer-songwriter it might make more sense to know the person better, because you’re investing in them musically and lyrically. But as an actor I have to change masks so many times and allowing people in isn’t very beneficial. I don’t want people to figure me out – certainly not people I haven’t met and I don’t know.’ In an age of social media-savvy celebrities, he is an anomaly. He is not on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. ‘I’m all for open talk when it’s a room full of friends or people you trust. But I don’t like the idea of having a platform where I would have to read comments from people I don’t know. Do you know what I mean?’ I do. ‘I see no advantages from something like that. It would only aggravate me, and I might respond and I might say things that are unkind. So apart from the fact that it gets me out of a lot of trouble, I don’t feel the desire or the necessity for it. I’m barely coping with this.’ He holds up his iPhone. ‘Emails and text messages… I’m terrible at that kind of thing. It’s phone calls that I’m better at. I don’t screen calls. I pick up, and then we have a chat. People tend to drift out of my head when they’re not around.’ That’s such a male way to be, I say. He laughs, sips some more of his vodka and soda. The towel was initially up quite high and then I said, 'Why don’t we put it down a little bit.'
I don’t think that Aidan Turner is difficult. I think he’s just a bloke from Dublin who has found himself in an unusual set of circumstances that happen to include the need occasionally to take his shirt off for work. ‘I just have this weird feeling knowing that people who don’t know me are reading private things about me. There’s something quite unnatural about that, to walk down the street and somebody knows who my favourite musician is.’ Who is his favourite musician? He laughs. ‘Nick Cave. I’m liking the Gorillaz at the moment.’ He says that his life is ‘quite dull’.  I raise my eyebrows at him. ‘It is! It really is. Obviously having a good time is important, being able to relax, but the work is kind of intense and if I’m not working I’m having to go to the gym because you have to look a certain way and I can’t afford to get, like…’ Fat? ‘Yes, bald and fat.’ Is he looking forward to that, I wonder. To the day when he can be interviewed and not asked about his torso? He drains his drink, grins hard. ‘Oh, I can’t wait.’ 
 May 19, 2017 the Telegraph Byrony Gordon 


Sorry, I didn't add all pictures! Tumblr and iPad didn't like it!

[spamzineglasgow]

SPAM Digest #5 (Feb 2019)

A quick of the editors’ current favourite critical essays, post-internet think pieces, and literature reviews that have influenced the way we think about contemporary poetics, technology and storytelling. 

‘Terminology’ by Callie Gardner, Granta

I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve recommended Callie Gardner’s astonishing piece, ‘Terminology’, to friends and family. Sometimes you read something and it’s as though the world decided to refashion its atoms around the text, wear it like a brand new garment. I had to cry a little, admittedly, to realise this. I guess I was reading the essay in darkest November and found myself astounded by its honesty and light. It’s not all sunshine, but it’s definitely a form of waking up, of gradual awareness and loosening. ‘Terminology’ begins with a sleeper train, a world where people wake up in carriages and put on what they want to, unbound by the violent constraints of our usual distinctions. These people keep their differences, but the differences are no longer scars of history, privilege.

The sleeper train is going somewhere. This future is open, potential; this future is based on care. This world, this place we drift towards on the train (I say we now, because I too want in on this world), is named Iris, ‘after the Roman goddess of the rainbow’. Iris, perhaps, is without terminus, the people that live there ‘speak a language with a hundred pronouns’. If this is a utopia, it is ‘an unscientific utopia’ that nevertheless glows with what already exists, what is within our reach: the charge of a ‘queerness in everything’. It is a mantra, a lullaby world and ‘a wish given flesh’. I wish every essay began with a world like this, a speculative projection towards where we could be when we open up, seek some generous expanse to sink into, flexing our selves afresh.

‘Terminology’ is about the body. It is about appearance and disguise, about survival, performance, expectation. It is about the precarity of the genderqueer person in public space, the social ties they might make out of safety, necessity. It draws attention to the everyday actions the genderqueer person might make for the sake of their own survival. The fact that we occupy space radically differently, depending on how society chooses to stratify our identities and consequent vulnerabilities. ‘Terminology’ moves from the hypothetical experience of the genderqueer person to the author’s own encounters with daily microaggressions, media representation and social relations in public, creative and professional space. Gardner describes, acutely, the violence of misgendering, intentional or otherwise: its physiological effect on the body, akin to a kind of dissociative paralysis, abjection. ‘Maybe this makes no sense to you’, Gardner writes, ‘It doesn’t make much more sense to me’. This is an essay of admission, working through, coming to terms, learning respect.

The reason I constantly recommend ‘Terminology’ is that it states the fundamentals with absolute clarity: ‘language is not ours to use without consequence’. It asks for an ethics in which we question what our words might do in a certain context, how we make and shape reality with discourse. Recently, the songwriter Kiran Leonard put it so eloquently in an interview, arguing that tenderness and cultural responsibility is ‘about thinking through when I’m speaking in the world, speaking against a thing, what world am I looking at, what world am I creating when I say these things, and what worlds are other people creating’. The world of Iris is a world we might make with a more commodious language, one which permits an expanded, plural sociality.

Gardner tentatively imagines what Iris would actually look like, the features of its ecology and landscape. I am reminded of the work of Queer Nature, ‘a queer-run nature education and ancestral skills program serving the local LGBTQ2+ community’: a collective who make it their mission to make links between the survival skills queer populations have developed for themselves, ancestral wilderness skills and other forms of marginalised knowledge. Wilderness, conventionally the domain of dominant hetero-male, becomes a queer space in which collectivity and silenced forms of self-reliance map onto the terrain as an active, responsive, symbiotic space of wonder, vulnerability and healing: an ‘Ecology of Belonging’, as Queer Nature put it. There is, in queer ecology, a blurring of active/passive as a binary. Survival might be about avoidance or withdrawal as much as presence and action.

Walking through Gardner’s imaginary Iris, we realise we won’t reach this space without confronting questions of identity around capitalism, sexuality, culture and ‘nature’. What is it to feel something as natural at all? Since society likes to police what is considered ‘natural’, how do we frame queer subjective experiences of embodied reality in collective contexts, without essentialising? There is the beautiful admission that queerness is not just about who or how you do or don’t fuck, but also about how you live, how you need to live. The doing of gender and intimacy. And looking for a language, a vernacular, a cultural narrative through which you might play out that life, which is not defined essentially but perhaps intuitively, iteratively, interdependently. Gardner calls for the necessity for nuance in a world where the conditions of survival often confuse the bounds of romance or friendship. If ‘gender is only history’, then we have to really reflect on where we are here and where we are going. Sadly, we aren’t going to wake up from the sleeper train in a lovely, wholly unbound country. But this isn’t to say utopian thought is useless. For Gardner, wanting a place like Iris is not a weakness but actually ‘a resource’ for recalibrating the self within dead-end, heteronormative histories.

The question of queer futurity versus Lee Edelman’s ‘No Future’ is of course a complex and rich one, which I haven’t space to go into here. What’s more interesting is the fact that this essay celebrates the possible while recognising difficulties and limits within the imagining of a place like Iris, as much as reminding us what happens in lived spaces like queer communities. Ultimately, ‘Gender is at once a material condition and a psychical state’. This essay, ‘Terminology’, is one of those rare places where the actual extent of what that means is acknowledged. Nothing covered in this essay bears easy solution or simple resistance, position. Identity, standpoint, community and experience are entangled in questions of occupation, flux and, frankly, difficulty. I learn a lot within its gauzy bounds, I find clarity of a sort; I look at the world around me anew, and I feel an openness in myself that, for once, I lack words for. I realise this is okay, I just need to read on; there is so much more to understand.  ‘Citation’, as Gardner reminds us, can be used ‘as transfeminist practice’. As such, I encourage your own turning to ‘Terminology’: to follow its list of transfeminist writers, to think about your own version of Iris; mostly, to read and to listen, to drape this warmth over your shoulders, share it with others, without condition.

M.S

‘24 Hours Watching DAU, the Most Ambitious Film Project of All Time’, by Hunter Dukes and McNeil Taylor, Hyperallergic

This SPAM Digest might break the rules a little bit—it's a review of a review, and it has absolutely nothing to do with poetry—but do bear with me; I promise you I’m getting somewhere.

Last month, Mac Taylor and Hunter Dukes (yes, those are two real-life people; have you ever seen a better pair of names) went to Paris for the premiere of DAU, a film project of Tom McCarthian inclinations, and insane if not obscene logistic, aesthetic, and conceptual ambitions. Directed by the young Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, DAU tells the story of Soviet physicist Lev Landau; Khrzhanovsky hired thousands of actors—or “participants”— as he refers to them, and deployed them to a custom-built set in Ukraine reproducing a research-facility. As Taylor and Dukes report:

From 2009 to 2011, the amateur actors stayed more or less in character. They lived like full-time historical reenactors, dressing in Stalin-era clothes, earning and spending Soviet rubles, doing their jobs: as scientists, officers, cleaners, and cooks. The film set became a world of its own. In all, 700 hours of footage were shot; this was eventually cut into a series of 13 distinct features, collectively titled DAU.

Apart from my obvious fascination with this Reamainder-like gargantuan re-enactment (did I mention I love Tom McCarthy), what really struck me was the format this project was shown in at the premiere:

To enter the [sprawling] exhibit, which runs through February 17th, you must apply for a “visa” through DAU’s online portal, choose a visit length (the authors of this article opted for 24 hours), and fill out a confidential questionnaire about your psychological, moral, and sexual history. Respondents answer yes or no to such statements as:

I HAVE BEEN IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH AN IMBALANCE OF POWER

IN THE RIGHT SITUATION, EVERYONE COULD HAVE THE CAPACITY TO KILL

Downloaded onto a smartphone, this psychometric profile becomes your guide to the exhibition. In theory, your device can unlock tailored screenings, concerts, and other experiences. In reality, none of this technology has been implemented in the theaters or museum. But it does not matter.

The premiere organisers chose to design and explicitly articulate the experience of a world around the experience of the world of the film; and to tailor this experience, in turn, around the premiere’s visitor themselves. Apart from sounding like a lot of fun, this exploitation and amplification (if not redoubling)  of film’s world-building capacity made me immediately wonder: what would this practice would look like when applied to poetry instead of film? (I know, I have a one-track mind.)

One of the traits that poetry and film seem to me to share is the potential to conjure up alternative worlds that seems obey to their own logic and set of rules. Like film, long poems or poetry ensembles (pamphlets, collections, sometimes entire oeuvres, or to a lesser extent magazines) often seem to respond to aesthetic parametres of their own making, and to establish a certain unique space for experience that can only be accessed through the artwork itself. We all know what the world of David Lynch is, and what it is like—we know what it looks like, what it feels like, what is allowed and what is not allowed within its limits. And we know the world of Gertrude Stein or John Ashbery or Sophie Collins the same way; there’s not only a tone to this space of experience, but a also a flexible and entirely nebulous set of rules that seems to dictate—to code, if we want to throw in a sprinkle of the gratuitous post-internet buzzwords we SPAM people are suckers for—how the world behaves and how it responds to our attention.

Dukes and Taylor rightfully call DAU ‘a beguiling collection of moving images that call into question our basic assumptions about film production and consumption’, and I wonder what a poetry project with the same goal would look like. Apart from the cool re-enactment part, I imagine what it would be like if poetry could be tailored to one's history or personality; spending a day moving from venue to venue to take in bits of an orchestrations of poetry readings running 24/7. It probably wouldn’t work; it definitely wouldn’t work. But it got me thinking about what an alternative modality to deliver poetry IRL would look like. There has definitely been lots of experimentation (although never enough, IMHO) with the visual presentation of poetry: I’m thinking of Crispin Best’s pleaseliveforever, a poem that refreshes itself every few seconds into new L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E/lol combinations of words (what is the poem, then? The structure? The algorithm?); his poem that fades into lighter gray, only to darken into normal text as you keep scrolling down the page (what was it call? where did it go? Help @crispinbest). I’m thinking of video poems and surreal memes (yes you can @ me, those are poems). But readings are rarely stranger than a just a reading. We should get thinking about they could become weirder. Does anyone know how to make holograms?

D.B.

Image from Internet Machine by Timo Arnall (2014). image credit: Timo Arnall.

Always Inside, Always Enfolded into the Metainterface: A Roundtable Discussion Speakers: Christian Ulrik Andersen, Elisabeth Nesheim, Lisa Swanstrom,Scott Rettberg, Søren Pold

Having been fascinated by Søren Pold's writing on literature and translation in relation to the interface, I knew when I saw this new roundtable discussion that it would most likely be making SPAM's February Digest. This discussion, made available on the Electronic Literature Review website, brings together the above speakers to discuss many of the ideas explored in Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold's 2018 publication, The Metainterface: The Art of Platforms, Cities, and Clouds (The MIT Press).

Covering a diverse range of theorists, artists, designers and academics, the speakers take as their focus the idea of the metainterface, examining how interfaces have moved beyond the computer into cultural platforms, such as net art and electronic literature. Forming part of this analysis are considerations of how the computer interface, through becoming embedded in everyday objects such as the smartphone, has become both omnipresent and invisible. Through exploring the different relationships that form between art and interfaces, the authors note that whilst during many smart interactions the interface becomes invisible, it tends to gradually resurface, the displaced interface then creating a metainterface. Their argument is that art can help us to see this, with the interface becoming a site of aesthetic attention.

It is the question of aesthetic attention, in varying forms, that runs through this discussion, offering the reader a profusion of references of artists whose work examines the metainterface. One piece that stood out to me was Camouflaged Cell Concealment Sites by the Canadian-American artist, Betty Beaumont. This piece consists of a collection of photos taken of cell phone towers disguised as pine trees or Saguaro cactuses. As Lisa Swanstrom notes in the discussion, they're terribly disguised, but ones that you could still overlook if you weren't paying attention. Similarly, Nicole Starosielski's The Undersea Network, is a book that makes visible the materiality of the internet through mapping the global network of fibre optic cables that runs along seabeds. In bringing these works to our attention, Swanstrom notes how both examples are questioning the aesthetics of infrastructure, as both are trying to reveal something about the ways in which we experience it, not just know of it.

Responding to the question of what our role as critical users of the metainterface is, Pold draws our attention to the fact that we are always a part of the interface and have to work from the fact of being embedded, as there is essentially no outside. This invites the question of how the artists and writers can respond to the conditioning of self into the metainterface. As Andersen points out, whilst there is no safe haven 'outside' of the interface, there are certain tactics that can be developed as a user. The example given, a chapter entitled Watching The Med by Eric Snodgrass in his work Executions: Power and Expression in Networked and Computational Media (Malmö University, 2017), points to how real users operate in the Mediterranean Sea (now a highly-politicized landscape) by switching between different GPS technologies and Twitter to 'recombine media in a tactical way'. The key idea to take from this is that whilst a reconsideration of our approach to tactical media in the condition of the interface is necessary, it doesn't mean we cannot operate on platformed versions of tactical media such as Facebook or Twitter.

Another point of focus in this discussion I found especially captivating was the consideration of the posthuman machine in relation to the reformulation of labour, in particular Scott Rettberg's consideration of the interface as an intermediate layer between humans and machines. In questioning whether we are moving towards a system in which the interfaces themselves generate human labour for the benefit of corporate entities, Rettberg poses the question of whether we can be alienated from our labour if we are not conscious of being laborours? This leads into a contemplation on the condition of cultural tiredness, an awareness that a certain media platform, such as Facebook, is packed with problems regarding social interaction and data protection, but still we continue to use its service.

Cautious of covering more than needs to be said in this digest, I will close by returning to the fundamental question that Pold and Andersen put forward in their work: the role of art and literature in shedding light on the behaviour and ontology of the metainterface. I find it interesting to learn that Pold started out by studying literature, before moving into a study of digital aesthetics. Perhaps it was the combination of these two domains that allowed him to see the act of reading the everyday interfaces of life as a literary act. This seems to be echoed in Andersen's response to the question of art and literature's role in an age of environmental crisis and metaintertface, whereby he looks to Walter Benjamin's definition of an author as a producer. To see the artist or writer as 'someone who produces not only the narrative, but who is a realist in the sense that he or she reflects what it means to produce in the circumstances that you are embedded in. So, the role of the author in the 21st century is to 'not only to use the interface as a media for the production of new narratives, but also use the interface, and reflect the interface as a system of production'.

With questions such as 'how are we being written by machines?' and 'how have we become media?' still yet to be answered, I encourage anyone interested in posthumanism and digital aesthetics to make their way through the full discussion.

M.P.

[typologycentral]

IxTP - Unable to identify whether I am N or S

Hey, I've taken numerous tests online, looked at the personalities and behaviours of people of certain types and read through profiles on the types but I can"t seem to reach a conclusion as to whether I'm ISTP or INTP. I always test as either one or the other, and both seem to fit me and not fit me equally. I'm pretty certain about the IxTP part but the S or N has me stumped. INTP appears to fit pretty well in almost every way except for the fact that I am not blind to my surroundings and I enjoy physical activity and experiencing things myself. I love the outdoors and love high energy, skill based individual sports like swimming, climbing and my passion, horse riding (though the individual aspect of that is debatable). I enjoy pushing myself, I enjoy the rush of adrenaline and I like to explore. (I have a reputation for wandering off if something catches my interest) I'm not satisfied with just talking about or gathering second hand information, I like to see and experience things for myself (this has a lot to do with my natural cynicism too though.). I also enjoy video games, tech and computers, and have a keen interest in engineering and science though Im an expert on none of those things. I'd like to think Im curious, resourceful, creative and inventive. I'm a creative problem solver, I like to design solutions to problems, whether they be things I view as social issues or more concrete things like flaws in the design of physical things. Im studying Architecture which requires me to be acutely aware of my surroundings and real world applications of my ideas but also requires that I explore opportunities to bring theory to life. I need to be able to imagine things that are theoretical and that do not exist and might never exist in the context of real things like social reception, site, physics, aesthetic, pratical application, cost etc. I'm not all that wacky or quirky with the way I dress, I like strong but subdued clothes that don't attract too much attention. I don't follow trends but I don't purposefully dress to go against it either. Clothes aren't really a form of expression for me (obviously the way someone dresses says something about someone, but I don't do in consciously). I need my clothes to be comfortable, practical and well made. I don't have a lot of clothes, I've got two pairs of shoes, and don't really care for brandnames but I like high quality stuff. Value is important to me in everything I buy, and I put research into any large purchase I do make. (I think this is probably symptomatic of over thinking things in addition to being kind of stingy. Its not that i admire money or aspire to have a lot of it, greed is the root of most of the world's stupidity after all but I'm a student and i recognise I still need it to get by.) I've been told that I am emotionally distant, and I tend to either repress or try to explain away the things I feel because they can cloud my judgement or cause me to act irrationally. I don't know why or where it originate from either but I always see it as a weakness in myself or as being stupid even though I know it's just part of being human. I don't really let other people in and try to handle things on my own, I find this to be the case even when I know someone very well. I'm not shy but I'm not exactly social either. I won't reach out to people unless I have a reason to. I'm kind of cold and pragmatic but polite and friendly when it comes to people I don't really know or don't really want to know. I tend to be suspicious and reluctant to trust people but I enjoy hearing peoples stories and their sides of an argument, but I will analyse every inch of what they say and take it all with a grain of salt. The little voice in my head likes to point out patterns and inconsistencies in everything, including people. Everything has to have a point or a reason I see as valid for me to enjoy it, even things like songs or movies. (That reason can be for fun or for experimentation but still, a valid reason.) I cam identify that someone else might like it or agree with it and the potential reasons they might but I wont think any better of it. Ill accept something once there is a solid argument and solid evidence to back it up, if it is proven to be the best and most beneficial way possible in that context. In this way I am open minded but skeptical. I love to theorise and explore crazy ideas but they are rarely just random thoughts, my ideas always start somewhere definite and then start branching off. (Ive visualised it as sort of like a family tree, branching out infinitely until I forget where I started). I also like to play devils advocate and push ideas that may be unpopular but that I believe in. I have a strong sense of justice but its based on my own morals rather than actual law and societal norms and what is generally accepted (of course these things will influence me subconsciously, no man is an island and all that, but I will press ideas that go against that if those laws or societal norms stop making logical sense to me or do not seem to have a beneficial path for the future.) I'm also atheist if that makes any difference. I get excited by ideas and possibilities but then quickly find that I rationalise away that excitement. I follow through with projects (though I like to do this in my own time. I abhor deadlines) and tend to have a one track mind. I can focus intensely for hours but simple things can break my concentration and once its broken i find it hard to get it back. I'm easily bored unless I'm interested or passionate about something, then I can be completely devoted. I tend to jump to a decision, but then start picking it part and viewing it from the other side. I'll also do things sometimes just to see where it goes if I think something could be gained from it. This is a goddamn essay, so sorry about that but if you managed to read through all this bull and still need more information I've got plenty. http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/myers-briggs-and-jungian-cognitive-functions/88552-ixtp-unable-identify-am-new-post.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[aestheticallyheightened]

Types of Attraction

Late last year I was asked by someone if I could help them learn more about the different types of (human) attraction which exist in the world. It’s a bit wordy, but here as follows is my response to their request for help

What is attraction?

There is a common misconception that humans only experience two types of attraction: sexual and romantic, though some people aren’t even aware of this much, or further lie under the false pretences that sexual and romantic attractions are one and the same thing.  Fact of the matter is that these ideas are false, humans are not limited to one or two types of attraction, nor are they restricted to being in such a state that one cannot occur independently of the other.

So what exactly is attraction?  Attraction, simply put, is when you look at someone or something and experience a sense of appeal or desire for the individual or object of your attention.  That’s right, contrary to popular belief, attraction is not limited to interactions with other people (something we will see later), however for now we will focus on people as being the focus of affection.

Experiencing attraction usually result is thoughts, behaviours, and sensations occurring which reflects the type of attraction being experienced for the individual.  That is, reflects the type of interactions and relationship you want with that person.  Using the previously mentioned sexual and romantic attractions as examples, if you experience sexual attraction for someone you might think about how much you want to sleep with them.  You might behave in ways which are (physical) attempts to impress and seduce the individual (such as making yourself appear bigger and more attractive, especially to that person).  And of course sensation-wise, you would likely feel a sense of arousal whenever you do look at or think about them.  With romantic attraction your thoughts are more than likely to be inclined towards what you would like to do with that person if you were dating them (thoughts about dates, being a couple and spending time together).  Physically you would still be all about trying to impress them, but more so in a way which is meant to get you two closer together and more personal.  Sensationally, being in the same room as that person can cause low level anxiety and insecurity, or nerves, and potential heartache for that person (also known as a crush), or if you already know them well, a strong connection with them.

Types of attraction

Currently there have been 5 primary types of attraction recognised, and defined, as existing in humans.  They are:

Sexual - Sexual attraction is the desire to have sexual interactions with another person.  Sexual interaction does not necessarily mean full blown sex (i.e. intercourse), it can refer to softcore interactions, such as oral sex, or hardcore interactions, such as use of sex toys or engaging in kink without intercourse.

Romantic - Romantic attraction is the desire to form and have a romantic relationship with another person.  This could be either short term dating or a long term relationship, and is not inherently sexual.  In other words, just because you are dating someone does not mean you need to have sex, especially if you are there for the companionship and cute good times.

Aesthetic - Aesthetic attraction is simply being able to appreciate the appearance and beauty (and in some cases skills) of another person or thing.  It is not sexual.  Have you ever looked at a rainbow, landscape, building, piece of artwork, or an animal and though about how amazing/beautiful it was?  If you said yes then congratulations, you have experience aesthetic attraction.  If you identify as a specific orientation (such as straight) and you look at someone of the sex you are not attracted to (in this case a male) and you think they’re attractive, that does not mean you are gay, you were just appreciating their aesthetic beauty.  Likewise, if you identify as bi, poly, or pan, feeling aesthetic attraction for another individual also does not mean you are into them sexually.  The way to distinguish between whether you are experiencing sexual or aesthetic attraction for another person lies in what you feel and think at the time.  Look out for language such as “they’re handsome” or “cute”.  Ambiguous language, relating to appearance, often indicates nothing more than aesthetic attraction, but once the language becomes more focused and detailed (such as “hot”and “sexy”), chances are there’s something more going on there.  Also keep an eye on the sensations you experience.  If you feel anything towards that person, resembling desire (outside of envy/jealousy or insecurity, etc., over your own appearance) chances are what you experienced was not aesthetic attraction, as since aesthetic attraction is only appreciation of appearance, you should feel limited or no pull towards that person (of course that doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with using that person as aspiration for goals relating to fitness and skill development).  Having said all of this, however, ultimately in the end you need to have a good understanding of your own interests and body in order differentiate between aesthetic and sexual attraction, since everyone is different.  Your cute could be another person’s sexy.

Sensual - Sensual attraction is nothing more than that desire to be intimate in non-sexual ways with another person.  It usually goes hand-in-hand with romantic attraction, but it can also be a separate entity.  Sensual desires can include desires such as the desire to hug/cuddle, kiss (in a non-sexual way, such as pecks), hold hands, and give/receive non-sexual massages, etc.  So just to reiterate, sensuality is NOT sexuality.

Platonic - Platonic attraction is the desire to formulate friendships with other people.  In other words, after meeting or getting to know someone you experience a want or need to the develop a stronger relationship with that person, so you can hang out and have fun together.  It can be similar to romantic attraction, except where romantic attraction might have you thinking about how much you want to go on a date and be cute with someone, platonic attraction would have you thinking about how chill it would be to hang out and have fun with them.  Like how romantic attraction has the opportunity to cause the experience of a crush, a strong platonic desire (that is the strong desire to be friends with someone, sometimes to the point where it hurts) is known as a squish.

Outside of these 5 primary types of attraction, there are also 2 secondary types of attraction, which have been identified.  Both of these are mental/cognitive, focusing less upon the physical and more upon the personal, and serve more as a way to contribute to developing your relationships, with others, further, as opposed to grounds upon which those relationships are built.  They are:

Intellectual - Intellectual attraction is, as the name suggest, the pursuit of establishing an intellectual relationship with another person.  It is attraction based on the intellectual nature of the relationship.

Emotional - Emotional attraction is the pursuit of establishing a strong, personal relationship with another person.

Attraction is separate

As was mentioned before, a common misconception is that all types of attraction go hand in hand, and that everyone experiences all of them (and that if you don’t there is something wrong with you mentally or physically).  This is false, and here is the way to prove that:

Hook-up Culture - The hook-up, online dating, nightlife, and swingers cultures are all proof that romantic, sexual, sensual, platonic, and in some cases aesthetic attractions are all separate.  While some people do find long or short term relationships (of all kinds) from indulging in these lifestyles, most people are there for one thing: to get their rocks off.  So the next time someone tells you that you can’t not experience a particular type of attraction, respond with statements such as “if you can have sex without love or aesthetic appreciation, you can have love and aesthetic appreciation without sex”, and ask questions about their last one night stand and how that went for them.

Further proof exists in the previously mentioned aesthetic attraction example.  Chances are every time you see a rainbow you can’t help but appreciate it, but I also sincerely doubt that you want to take it on a date or get right on down and busy with it in bed.

How it links to the asexual/aromantic spectrum

The question of attraction is usually raised in response to the asexual and aromantic community.  The a-spectrum is simply a spectrum on which some people either don’t experience the attractions of sexual and/or romantic varieties, full stop, or they only experience them occasionally or under specific conditions/circumstances.  Most asexuals, aromantics, and grey-sexuals will still experience sensual, platonic, and aesthetic attraction.

Asexuality - Asexuality is the lack or absence of sexual attraction.  Asexuals still experience romantic attraction towards one or more/multiple genders.

Aromanticism - Aromanticism is the lack or absence of romantic attraction.  Aromantics still experience sexual attraction towards one or more/multiple genders.

Asexual Aromanticism - Asexual aromantics experience neither sexual nor romantic attraction to any genders.

Demisexuality/Demiromanticism - Demi-folk experience attraction to their respective affix (i.e. sexual attraction or romantic attraction), but only in the event they have a strong relationship, or emotional connection, to their partner.  This does not mean they are picky, it just means they are unable to experience romantic or sexual interest towards other without knowing them well first.

Grey/Gray-asexuality/Grey/Gray-aromanticism - Grey/Gray-asexuality and aromanticism is the circumstance in which an individual spends the majority of their time, for the most part, experiencing a lack or absence of sexual/romantic attraction.  However every now and then they may go through a period where they experience a spike in that type attraction, usually lasting anywhere between a few days to a month or two, before returning to their prior state (where they do not experience it).

Above listed are the primary identities within the a-spectrum, however there are a dozen more identities which serve to help a-folk find a place in the world, and help themselves not feel like there is something wrong with them.

What sexual attraction is not

There are a few things which people often associate or confuse sexual attraction with, in that sense of them being one and the same.  This is understandable, however they are seperate things, and people who lack certain types of attraction, such as sexual attraction, can still experience some, or all, of these.  They are the follow:

Sex drive - Sex drive, or libido, is the need to have sex or be sexual.  There is a spectrum of non-existent/low to high sex drive, and where you sit on it influences how much/often you need/want to be sexual with either yourself or another person.

Sexual arousal - Sexual arousal is a purely biological process which is sometimes influenced by your train of thought.  All it is is your body preparing you for the prospect/possibility of having sex soon.  This is why arousal can strike at extremely inconvenient times.  It does not reflect your attraction to another person (though it can be relate).

Sexual desire - Sexual desire is, as stated earlier, the desire to engage in sexual activities.  It is not the same as sex drive, however.  You can have a low sex drive and have the desire to engage in sexual intercourse.  Likewise you could have a high sex drive, but no desire to do anything sexual.  For comparison: Hunger and appetite.  Hunger (sexual desire) is the physical need to eat, and appetite (sexual desire) is the desire to eat, regardless of how physically hungry you are.  Theoretically if your hungry enough you will seek out food, however if you don’t have an appetite then food becomes less appealing to you, therefore meaning you are less likely to eat.  The same is also the opposite, where if you aren’t hungry, you won’t seek out food because you don’t need to, but if your appetite is present/heightened chances are you’re going to make that Maccas run.

Resources

If you are interested in learning more, here is a list of resources which may be helpful:

AVEN (The Asexuality Visibility & Education Network) - http://www.asexuality.org/en/

AVEN Wiki - http://asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Asexuality Archive - http://www.asexualityarchive.com/

Asexual Explorations - http://www.asexualexplorations.net/home/extantresearch.html

The University of North Carolina LGBT Center - https://lgbtq.unc.edu/asexuality-attraction-and-romantic-orientation