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blueberry-sunghoon · 4 years ago

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"#welovejay" | jay park

*in this story, you are also a member of enhypen. you and jay are the main characters (though the other members are there as well). minor swearing warning (one "hell", one "ass", one "shit"). the story is 4,357 words long. i really hope you like this story. if you do, leave a comment if you want😊*

The time was 8:45 PM. You and the other Enhypen members were at the dorm, sitting around in the living room. You were all exhausted after a particularly long day of practice.

“I’m starving but I’m too lazy to get up,” Ni-ki groaned.

“I’ll make us some ramen,” said Heeseung as he got off the couch and headed to the kitchen.

~~~

At 9:05, all of you were eating the ramen Heeseung made and you had broken off into conversations. Jake and Heeseung were talking to each other, Sunghoon and Sunoo were talking to each other, and you were talking to Jungwon and Ni-ki. In the middle of your conversation, you realized that Jay was the only one without anyone to talk to. Not only that, he wasn’t eating; he was just staring at his food and picking at it.

You tapped on Jay’s shoulder. “Jay,” you said. No reaction. You tapped his shoulder again. “Jay?”

“Huh?” he said, startled, and turned to look at you. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“That’s alright,” you said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“Are you going to eat?”

Jay sighed. “I’m not really hungry.”

You could sense that something was wrong with Jay, but he obviously didn’t want to talk about it and you didn’t want to pry any further. “Okay then. Let me know if there’s anything you want to talk about.”

After that, the mood was somber and quiet for a few minutes, but eventually you all returned to your conversations. You were still worried about Jay, but you pushed your worries to the back of your mind.

When all of you (except Jay) finished eating, you decided you would clean up today since everyone was tired. As you started to collect everyone’s bowls, Jungwon stood up and said, “I can help with that.”

“No, that’s okay,” you said. “I can do it myself. You had a long day; you should rest.”

“But you’re tired too. You also had a long day,” Jungwon protested.

“Rest or I’ll take your elbows,” you said finally.

Jungwon chuckled to himself. “I guess if you put it that way. Are you sure you don't need any help?”

“Positive.”

~~~

Some time later, at 10:30, you were still cleaning up and washing the dishes when everyone (again, except for Jay) walked up to you. “Are you sure there’s nothing we can help with?” said Jake.

“100%. I’m completely fine,” you answered.

“Okay. Well, in that case, we’re all going to bed.”

“Okay. Goodnight guys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Everyone waved to you, said goodnight, and walked out.

“Wait, Jungwon,” you whispered to him before he could go anywhere. He turned to face you. You motioned for him to come over and he did. “Have any of you tried talking to Jay? I think something is wrong and he isn’t telling us,” you said as you kept your voice at minimum volume.

Jungwon sighed. “Yeah, I thought so too. Sunoo and I tried talking to him but he wouldn’t even look at us. I think it’s best if we leave him alone for now.”

“I think so too,” you said defeatedly.

The room went silent for a few moments. Eventually Jungwon broke the silence and said, “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Goodnight.” Jungwon walked out of the kitchen and you kept cleaning the dishes. Eventually you finished, but you looked over at Jay in the living room and sighed in frustration when you realized you had forgotten to take his dish. You walked into the living room and you found him sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone. You then went to the small table where his food was and quietly asked, “Can I put this away?”

He didn’t look up from his phone; he just gave a silent nod.

So you took his dish back to the kitchen and put it in a food saver. Then you washed the bowl and went back to the living room to retrieve your phone. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Once again, Jay didn’t acknowledge you, and you felt absolutely defeated. You were about to head to your room when you heard Jay say something.

“I can’t do anything without being made fun of.”

You paused for a moment to think about what he could have meant. Who was he talking about? You sat down next to him. “Was it something I said?” you asked softly.

Jay shook his head. “No, it wasn’t you.” Jay handed you his phone and said, “Look.” Confused, you took his phone and you saw the selfie he had posted on Twitter earlier that day. He was in the practice room and he was making a peace sign. “You see it?” he said.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Look at the comments.”

You realized what was making him so upset when you scrolled through the comments. All the comments were making fun of his double-jointed fingers. “Oh my god,” you said in complete disbelief. “I’m so sorry, Jay.”

“Whatever,” Jay huffed. “It is what it is.”

You were at a loss for words, so the room went silent for a few moments. “I mean, does anyone take me seriously at all?! Literally everything I do, they find something to laugh at. I really spent three years as a trainee just to be someone’s meme.” Hearing his voice laced with sadness and anger broke your heart.

“Jay, you can’t focus on those comments; those aren’t real fans,” you tried to encourage him.

“I don't see anything else to focus on,” Jay said as he continued to scroll through the comments. “Do I even have real fans?”

“Jay, of course you do-”

He didn’t bother to let you finish your sentence. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. Jay’s voice was shaky and you could tell he was about to cry. He didn’t want you to see him shed any tears, so he said, “I gotta go.” And just like that, he left.

The living room was now empty except for you, and all of a sudden your emotions hit you like a truck. You felt mostly angry, though. You were angry at those commenters, angry at the fact that Jay felt like he had no real fans, angry at yourself because you didn’t know how to make Jay feel better… tears formed in your eyes and you didn’t try to stop them. You just stared into space as they fell down your face.

You had to prove to Jay that he had real fans. Did you know how? No. Were you going to rest until you did it? Absolutely not.

~~~

The time was now 1:28 AM. Following the vow you made yourself that you wouldn’t rest until you found a way to make Jay feel better, you were still wide awake, laying on your bed in your room (you had a separate bedroom from the boys). Your mind was racing trying to come up with an idea, but unfortunately you were in a constant cycle of coming up with a new idea and then throwing it away once you saw a flaw in it.

“It’s useless,” you thought to yourself. You took your phone from under your pillow and logged in to your secret Tiktok account. Belift let you have a secret Tiktok account, and you were grateful for that. Your page looked like a fanpage like any other, but being able to communicate with your fans without them knowing it was y/n from Enhypen, becoming mutuals with them, and participating in the trends they made really made your day. These days, the Sunoo cult was going around, and it was funny to see that pretty much everyone had the same profile picture.

All of a sudden, a lightbulb went off in your head. What if I started something similar for Jay? You ran to Twitter to find the selfie Jay posted that day and downloaded it. Then you opened a photo editing app, added heart stickers and sparkles all around it, and put some text that said “We love Jay”. Going back to Tiktok, you switched your profile picture to the one you just made.

It looks good, you thought, but how am I going to spread it? It wouldn’t be an easy task, especially since the Sunoo cult was still raging in popularity and you didn’t have much of an audience on Tiktok (71 followers to be exact). The only way to quickly spread the word was to post a Tiktok and expose yourself as y/n from Enhypen… expose yourself as y/n from Enhypen? said your head. No way. You’ll get in hella trouble and you know it. You probably wouldn’t be allowed on your secret Tiktok anymore.

Do you have any better ideas? said your heart. This would be the fastest way to spread the message. You’re y/n from Enhypen for goodness’ sakes, the fans would listen to you in a heartbeat. Besides, you aren’t doing this for yourself. You’re doing it for Jay.

What your head said made sense, but you would rather help Jay than help yourself. Like you did most of the time, you took your heart’s word for it.

You tried to think of where to film your Tiktok. Your room was definitely not suitable. Unless you wanted to film yourself whispering, the boys would definitely hear you. Your room was adjacent to theirs, and the wall between the two rooms was thinner than a piece of paper… well, not that thin, but thin enough.

You also considered the living room, but that was also a no-go because anyone could just walk in and see what you were doing. Eventually you decided to film it outside on the porch. There’s no way anyone would be going outside at this time (except you, of course). You slowly crept out of your room, into the hallway, into the living room, careful so as to make as little noise as possible, and eventually out the front door. You took a deep breath of relief and waited for your pounding heart to return to its normal rhythm.

You turned on the light next to the door so you could see, and then you pulled out your phone and started to record. “Hey everyone, it’s y/n from Enhypen,” you started, but before you could continue you heard the front door open and there was Sunghoon.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

You panicked and your heart started to rush again. “I think the real question is, ‘What are you doing out here?’” you said, trying to laugh it off.

“I asked you first though,” Sunghoon said with a smirk. “But I’ll answer your question to humor you. I woke up and I was thirsty, so I made my way to the kitchen to get myself some water. But then I saw that the light outside was on, and I went to check it out. Then I saw you and asked you what you were doing out here.”

“Oh.”

“So what are you doing out here?”

“Well, um, I, you see, see I couldn’t sleep, right?” you answered, stumbling over your words. “So I came out here and started to record a -note video.”

You were sweating bullets and you could feel your heart going 100 miles per hour. By some miracle, though, Sunghoon couldn’t see how anxious you were and he said, “Okay then. Don't stay out too late. Don't forget we start shooting our music video in the afternoon, and we have to get some practice in before then.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”

“See ya,” said Sunghoon as he waved goodbye and closed the door behind him.

That was way too close, you thought to yourself. I should hurry up and get this filmed before someone else sees me. Even though you were a K-pop idol and you were constantly in front of cameras, you still sometimes felt weird about recording yourself. It took a few takes, but you finally finished filming.

You turned off the light and quietly made your way back to your room so you could edit the video before posting it. You plopped yourself back on your bed and added subtitles to the video. Then you went to add a caption and some hashtags including #welovejay. Your thumb hovered over the “post” button and your head tried to interfere once again. y/n, before you post that, think! is it-

But you didn’t care for any of that; you posted the video without hesitation. Feeling better than you had all day, you decided it was time to get some shut-eye. You put your phone back under your pillow and let your eyes drift to a close.

~~~

Your alarm, which was “Fairy of Shampoo'' by TXT, went off at 7:15. You groaned because you didn’t want to wake up, but you liked the song so you didn’t turn off your alarm. Instead, you laid there with your eyes closed because you didn’t feel like opening them.

Then, all of a sudden you remembered the Tiktok you posted five hours earlier. You opened your eyes and feverishly opened Tiktok to see how the post did. You gasped when you saw that your Tiktok received 150,000 likes and over half a million views. Still in shock of how well your post did, you scrolled through the comments.

“changed my profile picture! #welovejay”

“OMG ALL THIS TIME I’VE BEEN MUTUALS WITH Y/N FROM ENHYPEN”

“b00sting so more people see this!!!”

You also saw that many of the people in the comments had the same profile picture you made. And #welovejay was used in over one million videos. It worked, you thought to yourself. It really worked! You were so happy that you started doing a little dancey-dance around your room. I can’t wait until Jay sees this.

~~~

At 10:45, all eight of you were in the practice room, taking a short break from practicing. You watched as Sunghoon and Sunoo made a Tiktok. They were doing the dance of “Me gustas tu” by Gfriend (Sunoo wouldn’t leave Sunghoon alone until he agreed to do it with him).

“Do you like this take?” asked Sunoo.

“It’s definitely better than the last one,” answered Sunghoon, “I think it’s okay to post.”

“Yeah, I think so too.”

Sunghoon wrote the caption for the video (“Just so you all know, Sunoo made me do this”) and posted it.

“Did you post the video already?” said Jake. “I want to see the comments. Engene's comments crack me up.”

Sunoo motioned for him to come over. “Yeah, we just did. Come and see.”

Jake walked over to where Sunghoon and Sunoo were. Sunghoon pressed the “comments” button, and all three were shocked by what they saw.

“How come everyone in the comments has the same profile picture?” asked Jake.

“I don't know, but it spread pretty quickly. It hasn’t even been 24 hours since he posted this picture,” Sunoo remarked.

“What are you guys talking about?” you asked. You walked over to where the three were standing and looked at Sunghoon’s phone, and then you realized what they were talking about. A smile came across your face. “Wow, that’s really cool,” you said as if it wasn’t your doing. “Guys, you gotta come see this, this is really cool.”

“What is it?” asked Heeseung as he walked over with Jungwon and Ni-ki.

“Everyone has the same profile photo here,” Sunoo beamed.

Jay didn’t even bother walking over. If everyone has the same profile picture, there’s no way it’s me. It’s probably someone cute like Ni-ki. I’m the last person it could be. He stood aloof as he watched the seven of you gush over the picture.

“Jay-hyung, come see this!” said Jungwon.

Jay sighed and he reluctantly walked over. At least he could be happy for whoever’s picture it was instead of standing there jealous. Nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to see. The second he did, his smile was so huge and it wouldn’t come off his face even though he tried to hide it. “Oh my god,” he said in utter disbelief. “Sunghoon, can I see your phone?”

Sunghoon handed Jay his phone, and Jay kept scrolling and scrolling through the comments. “This is insane. Everyone really made me their profile picture.” Maybe I do have real fans.

“The text on the picture is so small though, I can’t read what it says,” said Jungwon.

“Me neither,” said Ni-ki, and everyone else agreed.

Without thinking, you blurted out the answer. “It says ‘We love Jay’.” The seven boys immediately looked at you, and you realized your mistake.

“How do you know? That text is way too small and none of us can read it,” Jungwon inquired.

You hesitated for a moment, and then you replied, “Well if you click on one of the profiles and click on the picture, you’ll be able to zoom in and see what the text says.”

“Is that how you found out what it says? Because none of us clicked on any of the profiles.”

Oh. You didn’t think about that. There was no way around it now. Guess it was time to tell them the truth. Just as you opened your mouth to speak, you heard the sound of your least favorite manager storming through the hallway and screaming, “PARK Y/N!!!”

“Holy shit, y/n,” said Ni-ki. “What did you do this time?”

You knew exactly what was about to happen. The manager burst through the door, anger scribbled all over her face. She walked over to where you were, and she pulled out her phone, revealing a screenshot of your Tiktok. She pointed the screen in your direction. “Park y/n,” she yelled in lower case, trying to calm herself down, “What. Is. This.”

The other seven pairs of eyes in the room were on you, expecting an answer. But you stayed silent.

The manager couldn’t keep her cool anymore. “Do you not understand Korean?? I asked you WHAT IS THIS???”

“A Tiktok,” you mumbled.

“Oh my goodness, y/n,” she started as she took a deep breath. “I’ve known you for eight long years, and of all of the ridiculous things you’ve done, this is by far the most audacious! What possessed you to do this, huh?! Do you remember the day I agreed to let you have a secret account?!”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Last I remember, the secret account was to be SECRET! Not known or not seen by the public. How could you go directly against our agreement?? Look at this - 700,000 likes! This was when I screenshotted it. Who KNOWS how many it could have now!”

700,000 likes? Wow, it blew up so much since I last checked. When I woke up it only had 150,000. You were so excited that your plan worked, and you didn’t realize that a tiny smile crept up on your face.

“YAH!” screamed the manager. “How can you be laughing right now?! Is that what you have to say for yourself?! Why did you even do this?!”

You took a deep breath to calm yourself down before you spoke. “Mrs. Choi, did you watch the video?”

“y/n, I don't give a rat’s ass what’s in your video. It's probably something stupid. There’s no reason you couldn’t have posted it on Enhypen’s official Tiktok.”

“I believe if you watch the video, you’ll understand why I posted it.”

“Nonsense,” she huffed as she opened Tiktok to find your video. “Let’s hear it.” The video started as she turned her volume all the way up.

“Hey, everyone, it’s y/n from Enhypen. Um, this has been my secret account for a while. I guess it won’t be much of a secret anymore after I post this, and I’ll more than likely get in trouble for it, but I don't care. What I need to say is that important. You guys know Jay. Well, he’s having a tough time and I really wanted to encourage him. Do you guys see my profile picture? I made it myself. If you guys want to do me a favor, you can change your profile picture to this so we can show Jay how much we love him. I’ll put the picture at the end so you can crop it. If you don't want to change your profile picture that’s completely fine; you can also help by boosting the video so more people see it. Like, comment, share/copy link, use the hashtag #welovejay, whatever you need to do. If I don't post again on here, it means I got in trouble. Engene, I’m counting on you. Hwaiting!”

As the video ended, Mrs. Choi’s anger faded away. “Oh,” she said softly. “Did any of you know about this?”

“Yes and no,” answered Jake. “Sunghoon and Sunoo just posted a Tiktok, and we saw that all of the commenters had the same profile picture, but we didn’t know that it was y/n who started it.”

“I need to see this,” said Mrs. Choi. She searched for Enhypen’s most recent Tiktok on her phone and looked through the comments. “You know what y/n?” she said as she looked up from her phone to face you, “I respect you for this. I’m sorry that I got so angry at you.”

“It’s okay,” you said.

“While I respect what you did, that doesn’t change the fact that you broke the agreement you and I had. I can’t let you go without consequences. Consider the secret Tiktok thing over. From now on, the only one you use is @enhypen. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” you said.

“Good,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Well, I’ll see the eight of you later at the music video shoot.”

You all bowed as you said bye, and Mrs. Choi took her leave.

After she left, the room went silent. You could tell that everyone else was thinking about what just happened and you tried to divert their attention to something else. “Well, we should get back to practicing.”

“Not so fast,” said Heeseung. “y/n, you’re the one who started the Jay profile picture thing?”

You looked at him and nodded.

“Respect,” he said. He extended his fist and you gave him a fist bump, and you smiled.

Out of nowhere, Jay gave you a back hug and rested his head on your shoulder. “Guys, can I talk to y/n alone for a minute?”

“Yeah, of course. Take your time,” said Heeseung. At that, the boys left the practice room, leaving you and Jay alone.

“You really did that for me?” he said softly.

“Of course,” you said without hesitation as you turned to look at him. “That’s what friends are for. I saw the way your face lit up when you saw all those comments. That moment was priceless. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

“I suppose so.” You noticed that Jay’s voice was a bit shaky. Then you realized why when you saw tears roll down his face.

“Jay-ah, why are you crying?” you said as you wiped his tears away.

“It’s my fault your Tiktok got taken away,” he said regrettfully. “I remember how excited you would get when you made a new friend on there. I really took away your greatest joy.”

“No you didn’t, Jay. I got my Tiktok taken away because I broke a rule,” you assured him.

“But you wouldn’t have had to if I-”

“Shhhh,” you interrupted. “You’re being too loud. I don't listen to Jay slander.”

Jay laughed a little and tried to hide his smile by looking away. “I see you smiling, Jay, don't try to hide it,” you said playfully.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are!”

“Okay, you got me,” Jay said as he pulled you in for a hug. “You best believe I’m going to bug Mrs. Choi until she lets you have your account back.”

“You can try, but don't be surprised when it doesn’t work.”

“It will. I’m her favorite, so she’ll have to listen to me,” Jay said confidently.

“Boy, since when are you her favorite?”

“Since forever.”

“You wish.”

“No, you wish.”

~~~

Two weeks later, you knocked on the door of Mrs. Choi’s office.

“Come in,” she said.

You walked through the door and bowed.

“You needed to see me?” you said. She was sitting in her desk and she didn’t look at you.

“Yeah,” she said. “Take a seat.”

You did as she said. Her eyes were still glued to the computer and she was typing something. You were worried because you had no idea what she was about to say, so you sat there nervously as your hands started to sweat.

Finally Mrs. Choi looked away her computer and turned to face you. She took a deep breath and said, “I regret to inform you that I’m allowing you back on your Tiktok account.”

“Regret to inform you”? You wanted to ask why she would regret that, but you didn’t want to say anything that might change her mind, so you simply said, “Thank you.”

She turned back to typing on her computer. “You should be grateful your friend is so annoying. Jay would not leave me alone until I agreed to let you have it back.”

“Oh,” you said. You had completely forgotten that Jay had said he would do that.

“Know this: you are on very, very, very thin ice. One more slip-up and it's over, no matter how much your friends annoy me. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. That’s all I have to say to you. Go back to whatever you were doing, and don't you dare forget what I said.”

Standing up to leave, you said, “I won’t. Thank you, Mrs. Choi.” You bowed once again and left her office.

Once you closed the door behind you, the first thing you saw was Jay across from you in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face.

“I told you it would work.”

#enhypen x reader #enhypen imagines #enhypen blurbs #enhypen fluff #enhypen reactions #enhypen timestamps #enhypen headcanons #enhypen soft hours #enhypen scenarios #enhypen writers #park jongseong #enhypen jay #jay x reader #kpop #enhypen angst #enhyphen #belift

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gwoongi · 5 years ago

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best years

jeon jeongguk / reader genre: best friend au, bff-to-lovers au, fluff, angst, guk is pining rating: general words: 2.6k warnings: its a short little fic, sort of like one chunk of a big chocolate bar and im gonna slowly feed u one chunk at a time until you’re sick and full a/n: a squint into the mind of bff jeongguk who will star in an eventual “idol best friend” series that i routinely dream about but have always felt it disrespectful to write about but at the end of the day everything i write is fiction and jeongguk would probably be less offended by a “canon divergence bff au” than he would reading my drug addicted rockstar au so :-) read it & weep folks

Jeongguk’s always been scared of the rejection he might receive from you. He might be a dream for fans across the world, but there’s a split second where Jeongguk feels like he might not be good enough for you. He’s the world to other people. But you deserve the whole galaxy, and he’s afraid that’s something that he might not ever be, even with the money, and the fame, and the doubts he tries to hide.

Jeongguk was taking a pretty big risk, he knew that. It was risky taking any step out of his house at any moment, even on the days where it was pouring outside; he’d think he was safe until he made it to the end of the road, earphones snug in his ears, and the flash of a camera behind the shrubs in the corner of his eye blinds him back to his front door in a twisted shame.

Granted, he’d expected it to be worse as he booked a plane ticket and made a rather hasty, in-the-moment journey to the airport and on a plane with no layover. Usually when Jeongguk takes a journey overseas, there’s at least one or two fans hiding in the corner of the suites waiting for him, or someone on the plane who’d recognise his face. For this, he’d suck it up and take a photo. It was better to have good PR, and be a little bit pissed off that he’d been discovered, than to have bad PR and to be known as the member of BTS who didn’t give a damn when the ‘real’ reasons for travel were taken away.

But Jeongguk thought the risk was worth it this time. The plane touched down in Manchester, and from there, it was an hour long train journey to a station he didn’t know anything about to meet a friend of yours he’d only seen in Instagram pictures. You were at University now, a face he saw on a screen rather than a face he quite literally woke up next to months before. It had been four months since Jeongguk had seen his true best friend, and fuck anybody who was going to make him wait a second longer before seeing you again.

You were his greatest risk, but it was worth it. You were worth it.

“Fuck, it’s insane to actually be meeting you right now.” Frank is a good guy, ginger with circle glasses rested on the end of his roundish nose. He led Jeongguk out of the train station, offering to pull his suitcase for him. “I mean, I’m a huge fan.” Followed by a sigh and a quiet, “Who isn’t…?”

Jeongguk smiled at him, squinting in the sun as it hit his eyes in the direction of Frank’s face. “Thanks. I hear a lot about you, too.”

Frank grinned, whipping his head towards Jeongguk. “All sexy and scandalous things, I hope. You know, none of us believed Y/N when she said she knew you. We thought the pictures were Photoshopped, you know how she is.” They both paused by the side of the road going one way only, “Shit, she’s gonna freak out when she sees you.”

That was three minutes ago, but Jeongguk’s still playing that sentence on a loop. He walks alongside Frank down one of the streets, past a redundant furniture store that quirks his brows. A man stands in the doorway, a cigarette out of his mouth and ash dropping to his toes bare in sandals. It smells like doughnuts, and weed, and he smiles brightly. He’s missed the UK, and how unbelievably shockingly awful it is when you’re not looking at picturesque photos of London online.

“I thought you’d know that Y/N’s my best friend,” Jeongguk says thoughtfully. He pauses as Frank does as a car zooms past when they’re about to cross. “I mean, people know. The photos got leaked, all of them.”

“Hey, give me a break,” Frank says dramatically. “I only became a fan three months ago. And yeah, I figured. Finally, I understood why all the white girls studying Korean here wanted photographs with her and to be her best friend…”

Jeongguk frowns. “Is it bad? She doesn’t tell me this stuff on the phone. I mean, they go crazy on Twitter when she posts pictures and we interact, but I didn’t…”

Frank shakes his head and grins at Jeongguk until the words die out. “Nah, don’t panic. It’s not that bad. If anything, she might get a kick out of the fame. Trust, there’s always gonna be the girls who hate her because she’s friends with you and that’s like, what, threatening to their fantasy? But she loves you a lot, and a friendship like yours...it’s kinda like family, you know?”

Jeongguk feels his stomach flip, kind of like butterflies. These butterflies are sour, his heart racing that extra bit quicker. He likes the sound of family. He doesn’t like the way Frank implies it, because if Jeongguk is ever going to consider you as family, it won’t be as his sister. You’ve never been his sister, even when you were part of his family growing up. There were times you came to all of his Korean family events, the times his family called you their own, but you were never his sister. It was different to that, you both knew it but never acknowledged it.

Frank makes small talk until they make it to the student accomodation you currently live at, and because Frank knows basically everybody, a student comes to the gate to let them both in. They’re nice, big and pretty-skinned, wearing an Aston Villa shirt that Jeongguk remembers looks a lot like your Dad’s back in the day. Might be the same, might be a vintage.

He smiles at him, because maybe this guy knows Jeongguk, but the guy just turns back into the common room and doesn’t come out again. Frank doesn’t live here, he lives in a flat of his own around the corner, but Frank might as well be a resident here. He lets himself in towards the lift and shoots a text to one of your flatmates.

“Apparently she’s in the shower,” Frank says casually. He locks his phone, taps his foot as the lift rises, “Let’s hope she doesn’t stride out completely stark naked as you’re in there.”

He almost blushes, “Ha, yeah.” He declines to mention the times you two have showered together, the time you went skinny dipping together when you were fifteen. Those were things that might end up getting misunderstood, and those are his memories he’d like to keep hidden and secret. He says nothing, nothing but a thank you when he enters your flat with Frank and takes a different turn to the left as Frank goes right, towards the kitchen.

Your room is at the very end, your name on the door in stickers from a set you got from the 99p store, and from inside, he hears the music in the bathroom. The door opens silently and closes with the same volume, and Jeongguk manages to wheel his suitcase to the end of the bed and plonks himself down. As expected from pixels on the screen, your room looks better in person- white walls and a bed set that’s white with a peony pattern. Above your desk, Jeongguk recognises all your photos together, new polaroids of you and the friends you’ve made at University who Jeongguk always felt kind of threatened by. He smiles to himself, and rests his neck at a strange angle against the wall your bed is literally attached to. From here, he can see the bathroom door in the mirror on the opposite wall, but he knows you’ll only see his feet when you come out.

Speaking of which; the Fleetwood Mac song ends suddenly and the shower water has stopped running. Jeongguk hears the toilet flush and his heart starts to race. Four months of falling asleep on Facetime and texting when there was no time left in the day, and now, here he is, on your bed, waiting for you to step out and...and, then what?

Maybe you didn’t even want him here. Maybe you were happier now that Jeongguk was in Korea and you were still at home, in a new city with new friends and a new life. Maybe the memory of Jeongguk was burdensome. Worse, maybe he was something you felt you had to remember but didn’t really want to.

The bathroom door opens and in two seconds, the light is shut off and he hears you sigh.

“Frank, you gotta stop letting yourself in here without telling me,” your voice says. “Good thing I’m semi-decent. Usually I’m not.”

“No fun,” Jeongguk teases, and silence follows. There’s a pause in the room, and Jeongguk cocks his head with his left cheek on his shoulder, waiting for you to click and appear in front of him. Suddenly, there’s small but quick thuds across the carpet and Jeongguk feels his chest tighten with a nostalgic feeling as you come into view with wide eyes, damp hair and nothing but a bra and those stupid black worn leggings you refuse to throw out.

The grin that reaches Jeongguk’s eyes now aches as he laughs at you, at the way you gape in his presence. It takes a moment, a moment of what feels like could be the rejection that Jeongguk absolutely fears, but then you smile so wide that Jeongguk feels it in his stomach.

“Holy shit!” you exclaim loudly, bringing a hand to your mouth as you hurry towards the bed. It dips beneath your knees and Jeongguk rises up to a sitting position. “What the fuck!”

He laughs out loud, and when you’re next to nothing away, Jeongguk wastes zero time in bringing you into his arms, tightly hugging you.

“Careful, my hair’s all wet,” you squeak.

“Don’t care.”

He really doesn’t. There’s probably going to be a damp spot on his clothes after, but that’s okay. You groan loudly with happiness as you hug him in return as tightly as he is hugging you, your weight on his lap and your arms around his neck. Jeongguk smiles so wide, sighing with content into your neck. Here, he smells the marshmallow wash on your skin, the fragrance of your hair that kind of reminds Jeongguk of cabbage patch babies.

“You smell good,” he mutters. You laugh quietly, squirming when his nose sniffs across your neck like one would kiss. “I don’t.”

“You do, you always smell good,” you reply. One sniff, he laughs, “See!”

“Mmm,” he plays along, “the sweet smell of planes and trains and jetlag.”

That makes you laugh, and at the mention of jetlag, Jeongguk realises he could probably fall asleep like this given the chance. He has missed this, missed you, so fucking much. The emotions are overwhelming.

Jeongguk kisses behind your earlobe, and just underneath your jaw. That’s new. Jeongguk was a cheek-kiss kind of best friend, but never this. You’re not complaining. Your head drops to one side, almost giving him more access to the space free, and he occupies it. Those fucking butterflies; Jeongguk feels sick with nerves as he kisses you, under your chin and across your neck, on that spot on your collarbone you found out tickled after Seven Minutes in Heaven in Year 8. Maybe your fingernails in his hair are a way of you telling him to stop- it’s something he can think about tonight if he can’t fall asleep, something he doesn’t care to think about when he kisses on your actual jawline, to your cheek and the corner of your mouth, your cupid's bow.

He moves away with a blush that matches your own, but maybe you can’t see his in the colour of your fairy lights. He plays with the confusion as he moves the hair that's across your face around your ears, smiling and raising his eyebrows. Jeongguk convinces the role of casual to perfection and bites back a sour taste when he notices you’re the same. Casual, unmoved, maybe even like it didn’t mean a thing.

“Your hair is so fucking wet,” he sniggers boyishly.

“I told you,” you shrug. You shrink, relaxed, “Fuck, Guk, why are you here? I mean, I’m literally so happy, but...Are you gonna get in trouble for this?”

“I dunno,” he admits. “Maybe, probably. I mean...the guys know I’m here. Hoseok drove me to the airport with Jimin.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Jeongguk sighs loudly. “Yeah, I know. Frank told me all about the girls.”

“Little fucker. Is he here? I’ll punch him for mentioning it to you. It’s honestly fine. Girls will be girls.”

“You’re my best friend for life, it’s important to me that you’re not uncomfortable by it-”

“I’m not,” you assure him, hands trapped in his hair. “Damn, this got long. Didn’t look long over the phone.”

“Was growing it out,” Jeongguk replies. “Heard you fancied Keanu Reeves, couldn’t handle the competition.”

“Ha!” you retort. “Simp.”

“For you,” frowns Jeongguk dramatically.

Conversation fizzles comfortably, to the point where you both forget that Jeongguk’s underneath you and your legs are wrapped like a koala around his middle. The fact that this is normality for you both is ignored. You’ve done worse things together. Jeongguk even knows that the bra you’re wearing now is one he bought for you. That could be why Jeongguk feels the way that he does, why this confusion wraps around his body and traps him. Jeongguk knows that the butterflies in his stomach don’t just appear because you’re his best friend he hasn’t seen in a while. He knows what they mean when they flutter when your name pops up when you’re calling him, when an interviewer tries to catch him out by bringing you up in another interview that you don’t need to be mentioned in.

Jeongguk knows that coming here was worth the confusion, and the nerves, and the fact that this will be a headline when it gets out. JEON JUNGKOOK GOES TO UK TO VISIT HIS BEST FRIEND...BUT ARE THEY MORE? Or worse, NETIZENS HAVE PROOF THAT BTS JUNGKOOK IS DATING HIS BEST FRIEND Y/N…

He doesn’t want to hurt you. That’s how he feels scared. For you to be scandalised by an article online that caught him out in his feelings, he knew it wasn’t fair. Jeongguk might be too afraid to say he’s in love, and too afraid to find out if you feel it too, but he’d risk those feelings and the headlines if it meant spending one more day with you.

Jeongguk’s got a week and a half with you. Something’s gotta give within this week. He doesn’t want to go back to Korea with more regrets than he came with, and for now, he’ll just have to swallow those butterflies back down when they pour out of his mouth. Right now, he can’t afford to be caught out. It has to be known on his own terms, when the timing is perfect. It has to be perfect, because it’s what you deserve. It has to be perfect, because if it isn’t, then Jeongguk doesn’t think it will be worth it.

Losing you to a headline and a butterfly is out of the question. One tries to escape when you hop off him and shrug on a jumper from out of your wardrobe. If you noticed his unease you didn’t mention it. He wants to cry, wants the confusion to go away for the night so he can enjoy it.

Fuck.

For now, he thinks as he follows you with an arm around your shoulders out of your bedroom and towards the kitchen to meet the others, he’ll just have to fake it til he makes it. Just like always. Put on a face, put on a show, until it all feels worth the spillage. He can’t let the butterflies escape yet.

It has to be perfect, and he’ll have to be patient.

#jeongguk scenario #jungkook imagine #bts imagine #bts #bts scenario #jungkook #jungkook x reader #jeongguk #jeongguk x reader #jeongguk imagine #jeon jungkook #jjk #jeon jeongguk #bts x reader #bts fluff #jungkook fluff #best friend au #idk what this is its shit

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years ago

Text

Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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maya-tl · 6 years ago

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Slice of Life

Author's Note: This fic is inspired by @altruistic-skittles and their Slice of Life Sanders Sides AU, which can be found here. All worldbuilding credit goes to them, I only stitched the ideas together in writing.

Author's Note #2: Due to Tumblr restrictions, the story has been split into three chapters. Next chapter will be posted on Sunday.

Language warning: There's swearing, but it's only a small part of the chapter.

Link to my Ao3 profile will be at the end! Tag list will be in the replies! Enioy!

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3

"Roman."

Virgil can hear Patton enthusiastically greeting their neighbour outside, and then Thomas' equally enthusiastic response carries into the house through the wide open front door.

"Get your things, we're going to be late."

He picks up one of the pillows on the couch, brows knitting together tighter when he doesn't find what he's looking for, and he runs another hand through his hair, further messing up the strands that he had tried to brush down earlier. Logan doesn't even acknowledge him from where he's sitting, same book still in his lap.

"We're driving the boss, pops. It's literally impossible for me to be late." his son is in the corner of the room, cooing at the tiny bird perched onto his finger while the other, larger one stares at him from the back of the armchair with what could only be described as contempt.

Much to the despair of both himself and his youngest, Roman had persuaded Patton on the very day they moved into buying him not one, but two pets, albeit on the promise that he would be the one to take care of them.

Of all the things he could have gotten, his eldest had to choose birds.

Virgil would sooner swear off coffee altogether than admit that the feathered troublemakers have actually grown on him.

"Okay, I'm going to be late, which means I'll have to work late, which dad won't be happy about and you know that if he's upset we're all going to be upset." his fidgeting is probably giving off bad vibes, because Baby Blue lets out a particularly pitiful chirp and flies over to proceed making a nest out of his hair, like it does to anyone who ever seems even remotely down.

Baby Blue. Because 'the birds in Snow White totally count shut up Logan'.

"And here I was hoping I could actually turn up to work looking normal for once." he sighs, while Roman pouts like a kicked puppy.

"Guys, Thomas is waiting for you outside!" Patton lets them know as he peeks out from behind the door, eyes darting immediately to his husband's head.

Baby Blue tweets and makes itself more comfortable. Virgil snorts and cracks a smile, trying not to flinch when Patton squeals, taking a picture with the flash on; he's probably running late anyway, might as well indulge.

"Ugh, fine, have it your way." Roman relents, arms crossed and pout firmly in place. "But Zazu will be jealous if I don't give him a proper goodbye!"

Zazu. Because 'I know a macaw is not the same as a hornbill shut up and let me live Logan'.

Zazu, who Virgil is sure would have raised his eyebrows in the most condescending way possible if birds had eyebrows, glides over to the couch, perches himself on Logan's shoulder and pick at his feathers, as if Roman weren't even in the room. His eldest splutters indignantly, and a twitch of the lips is the only sign his youngest gives of finding it amusing.

Virgil doesn't think Zazu is actually capable of showing any emotion other than indifference—he's not even sure if that is an emotion—but the bird tolerates Logan the most and it drives Roman up a wall.

"Roman." Virgil says, handing the tiny blue bird to Patton, who's making eyes at it like it's the cutest thing he's ever seen next to maybe that dog down the street. "Things. Car. Now."

Roman huffs, marching out the room like he's been told to do the impossible, and if he wasn't his kid Virgil would have called him a childish brat the moment he opened his mouth. Spoiled too, because Patton does spoil him and he seems to think himself a prince thanks to it.

Luckily he loves his kids, even if they sometimes drive him up a wall.

"You were looking for something, dad?" Logan's voice pulls him out of his thoughts. His eyes haven't moved from his book and he sounds about as bored as Zazu looks.

"Oh, right." he snaps his fingers, remembering that he was supposed to be scanning the room. "Have you seen my keys?"

***

Thomas very nearly drops his phone and falls over when a tiny bird flies into his face with a trill that sounds suspiciously like a greeting. He chuckles, and he could swear the little thing actually smiles back.

"Aww, aren't you the cutest!" he holds out his finger and is surprised when it lands on it as if it's the most natural thing ever.

"Oh, it likes you! Roman's the only one who's got it to do that so far!"

He turns to Patton, who's wearing one of those smiles that bring out the green in his eyes. There's no shortage of those, that man is such a bright ray of sunlight it's a wonder Thomas didn't go blind when he showed up on his doorstep with a grin and a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the day the family moved in.

"Really? Well, then I'm honoured."

The bird twitters, looking straight at him, like Thomas is expected to tweet back. No wonder Roman talks like he's in a Disney movie—Thomas waved at him from the window once when he saw him picking up the mail and got 'greetings and fair morning, neighbour!' in return.

Honestly, he loves that kid, Roman often reminds him of himself. If he were to shave off about twelve years they would be almost the same person.

Patton nods proudly, as if he's reading his mind. He didn't say that out loud, did he?

"I usually hold it like this." he cups his palms together and the bird instantly glides into his hands, nestling into the warmth. It's the most precious thing Thomas has seen all month, next to maybe that cute dog down the street. "Sometimes it sits on the spine of the book Logan's reading and tries to read with him, it's adorable!"

Thomas laughs, running a finger over its tiny back, and they both practically swoon when it tilts its head back and happily receives all the affection.

"What about Virgil? Do they get along?"

It was the middle of the day the first time Thomas met Virgil, but Virgil looked as if he'd only been awake for about half an hour and had loathed getting out of bed so much that he had to drink five cups of coffee, straight black, just to be able to stand on his own two feet.

Thomas had swallowed his words and the encounter had been beyond awkward; the only consolation was that Virgil had looked just as uncomfortable.

Patton's entire face softens at the question, and it's safe to say Thomas would sooner give up pizza for a week before he told Patton that his husband doesn't seem like the friendliest person.

"He acts all grumpy about it, but he loves them really." he runs his fingers over its wings and the bird definitely smiles. "He joked about getting a haircut because apparently his hair is perfect nest material, isn't that right, Blue?"

He coos at the little bundle of feathers, and Blue has the gal to be so adorable as to look sheepish. Thomas blinks more times than is necessary and thinks that maybe he's been watching too much Disney.

"Nest...?" Patton pulls out his phone, unlocks the screen and shows him a picture. "Oh my goodness that's so cute!!"

Roman suddenly comes stumbling out the front door with two dress bags in one hand and a stack of papers in the other, a backpack hanging from the crook of his elbow and a pen tucked behind his ear. "Good afternoon, Mr. Sanders!! I hope the day finds you in good grace?"

"You know, you don't have to call me that, Roman." Thomas replies while Blue flutters over and tries, to no avail, to help the poor kid.

"Pfshhfpff!" Thomas avoids mentioning that his vacuum cleaner made that noise once. "Nonsense! Manners are underrated!!"

"You need help, Ro?" Patton asks, taking the bags before his son can answer and folding them neatly.

Thomas seizes that moment to ask Roman about the papers, because he doesn't remember the script he gave them having that many pages, and Virgil shows up just as Roman is struggling to explain to him why he deemed it necessary to make some improvements to the dialogue without sounding like he's insulting his writing skills.

It's not very successful.

Virgil puts one foot on the doormat, pauses and then swears, very loudly, throwing both of his hands up.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?"

It's a warm outside for an autumn day, with beautiful weather, barely a trace of clouds in the sky. Virgil's car is still in the driveway, all black and shiny except for a few rainbow stickers plastered on the doors, but only half of it is shadowed by the leaves of the tree in the front yard.

Which means the other half has been sitting in direct sunlight the entire day.

Which explains the giant python currently lounging on the roof of the car, sunbathing like there's no tomorrow and looking extremely bored.

Roman takes one look at the car, shrieks and jumps back about two whole feet, startling both Thomas and the bird, while Virgil promptly loses every ounce of chill he may have possessed in his body.

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE—I'M SO FUCKING DONE WITH THIS BULLSHIT!!" he gestures so wildly at the snake that it's a wonder his hands don't spontaneously combust. "CAN I HAVE JUST ONE FUCKING DAY WHERE EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT?!?"

Patton sighs, crosses his arms and mutters 'language' in a defeated voice, before leaning into Thomas' space. "Has it been there the entire time?"

"I think so, yeah." Thomas shrugs, like he's just having a casual conversation about politics with his friendly next door neighbour while his husband initiates a one-man shouting match with a snake; the usual. "I mean, it was already there when I got here."

"It looks really tame, for a snake... oh, like a puppy!!" considering Patton's eyes light up like beacons Thomas safely assumes it's the first time he's made that comparison. "Do you think it'll come if I call it??"

"No, I don't think so. I tried that a while back and it didn't work, pretty sure Mr. Slimy Boi doesn't train his snakes." he says, as Patton giggles behind his hand at the silly nickname.

He honestly can't remember where he got it from—he said it once in front of Logan and received a whole lecture about how snake scales are just smooth and they don't secrete slime—but it's stuck with him since childhood.

At some point Thomas forgot the guy's actual name so, he officially became Mr. Slimy Boi to him and everyone who was unfortunate enough to ask him who the unsettling man was and how many snakes is he hiding in that house and why is he wearing a bowler hat that's so weird.

He may be all about loving thy neighbour but he really didn't have it in him to argue with Virgil when he claimed they have a cryptid living next to them.

Thomas has lived here his entire life and could swear that man looks exactly the same as he did twenty something years ago.

"I'm also pretty sure he wouldn't listen to you anyway, that slippery old bastard. I accidentally kicked my favourite football over the fence once and it came out of nowhere and just... ate it. And refused to spit it out."

"Huh." Patton says, brows furrowing in thought. "How long ago was that?"

"Uh..." Thomas drags the syllable, scratching the back of his head. "I... don't remember? It could have been a different snake that just looked exactly like it, actually... how long do snakes live?"

"Morelia Amethistina, commonly known as the amethystine python." Logan, who probably heard his brother's manly scream of terror, declares as he pokes his head out the doorway. "In captivity they tend to have an average lifespan of fifteen to twenty years, but if provided with ideal conditions they could live to about twenty five."

"Aww, thanks Lolo!" Patton clasps his hands tohether and grins at his youngest with so much pride that Logan actually ducks his head, presumably to hide a blush.

"Oh my God, Pat, don't encourage him." Virgil pinches the bridge of his nose and the python, who has ignored every single word to come out of Virgil's mouth so far, looks awfully smug. "Soon he'll want to do studies on it or something and a pet snake is where I draw the line. And we're not going any closer to that house than is necessary either!"

Roman makes a vague noise somewhere between agreement and disgust. "Dad, it's staring at me with its creepy snake face and I don't like it, make it go away!!"

"And how, pray tell, do you propose I do that??"

"Poke it with a stick, throw it over the fence, I don't know, you're supposed to be the adult here!!"

Virgil takes a deep breath and analyses the nest of pure muscle engulfing half of his car for a solid ten seconds. "Lo, how much does this thing weigh?"

"About ninety pounds on average..." the boy adjusts his glasses and squints. "But this one seems to be quite a large breed, so I would place it around one hundred and twenty four."

"Yeah," Virgil says, hands on his hips, "not happening."

"Um, excuse me?" Thomas is staring at his phone, finger raised to get everyone's attention. "I hate to interrupt and I don't wanna seem ungrateful, but we're running a little bit late?? The rest of the group's already there."

Roman lets out a distressed whine, the kind that would end an argument with Patton immediately and earn him multiple of whatever it is he was asking for.

Exhibit A: if Virgil hadn't put his foot down at two birds his son would have turned their entire house into an animal shelter and Patton wouldn't have done a single thing about it.

And they just moved.

"Virgil, sweetheart, maybe it'll move if you ask nicely?" Patton walks up to his husband and puts a hand on his shoulder, and Virgil visibly leans his entire weight into the touch.

Thomas doesn't know them enough to judge yet, but he gets the impression that Virgil is a completely different person with Patton around.

"Perhaps Roman should attempt to talk to it, since he so vehemently believes that Disney princes are real." Logan suggest in his driest voice, which isn't too many tones away from his regular voice.

Roman twists his head around so violently Thomas swears he heard a snap.

"DID YOU JUST BESMIRCH THE NAME OF DISNEY?!?!"

"Now kiddos, what did I say about playing nice—"

"You mean the company tasked with creating fictional characters? I sincerely hope you know the definition of that word, Roman."

"HOW DARE YOU, YOU HEATHEN!!"

"Ro, calm down now—"

"You take creative writing, surely you must have the vocabulary."

"YOU ARE NO BROTHER OF MINE!!!"

Thomas takes turns to stare, first at Patton, who's trying to talk his kids out of getting into a fight, then at Virgil, who looks like he's praying to every God from every religion to take pity on him and end his suffering, and then at the python, who calmly slithers off the car, over to the yard next door and into the house through an open window.

Blue lands on his hand, next to his phone, and watches the screen as Thomas enters the group chat and writes a message announcing that they're going to be late.

Or, well, later than they already are.

***

My Ao3 profile.

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #anxiety sanders #morality sanders #creativity sanders #logic sanders #deceit sanders #remy sanders #emile picani #romantic moxiety #platonic lamp #familial lamp #slice of life au #swearing

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deer-coder-blog · 7 years ago

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Why I Don’t Switch to Windows 10

On twitter, I made a comment about the coercive and deceptive nudge Windows 7 has to push users of 7th-gen processors to upgrade to Windows 10. Because of the limitations of Twitter, I won't be posting a whole lot about it there. Also, I realize that my opinion is a little bit controversial, and I want to avoid getting into some lame chain of commentary arguing with someone on Twitter about something as asinine as your choice of operating system. That said, here are the reasons I won't be upgrading to Windows 10 (or at least, not just yet.)

The software loaded onto Windows 10 computers is tantamount to bloatware for my use. For starters, it seems Microsoft has taken to installing third-party game applications like Candy Crush for you. This is so bizarre. The developer, King, uses a heavyhanded mixture of microtransactions and ads to monetize the game. I can't say I blame them for trying to make a buck, but that does -not- need to be installed on a computer. People will download shit like that if they really want to play. Another big application that I have a gripe with is all the bloatware included in the new "start" system. Microsoft uses this to push their marketing schemes for their softwares like Skype, Office, and X-Box. Windows updates also include ads like these - stuff that you don't necessarily need, like Office, OneDrive, Skype, and Windows Phone are now advertised directly through your compulsory updates.

Oh, yeah, and they are compulsory. Windows 10 removes the capability to control updates, breaking the functionality for many older machines. One of my laptops uses a network card made by a company that only released ethernet-port support for its driver in early August 2017. I used to use Windows 10 and even used the tech preview, but because of Microsoft's continuous updates without regard for specific user issues, I had to roll that laptop back to Win 7 or lose my ethernet capabilities. And apparently, I was far from alone here. Some people lost their machines! Similar compulsory updates can prove to be a nuisance with aggressive shutdown scheduling and popups. While security updates might be important for a push, compiling a big project or completing a slow FTP download take precedence for me. Removing the capability to control which updates are installed on your machine or when has already proven to create massive security risks that are completely unnecessary.

To jump around a bit, I'm also not very trusting of Microsoft with my personal data, including biometrics such as fingerprint and iris scans. The reasoning for this on a personal level dates back to the days of the Technical Preview. While I realize that I opted into sharing my usage data with Microsoft for the purpose of furthering development, the extent to which my data was collected was... Shocking! The operating system collects keyboard input data including keystroke data through many micorosoft apps including Edge browser. Edge is a whole nightmare of its own, and frankly I'm appalled that Microsoft wouldn't be more forthright with the fact that it collects data about absolutely everything, and openly publishes that data, even bragging about it. I mean, how nifty are these facts?

"Over 44.5 billion minutes spent in Microsoft Edge across Windows 10 devices in just the last month" - they track your edge use time.

"Over 82 billion photos viewed within the Windows 10 Photo app" - I hope you're viewing these on OneDrive!

"Gaming continues to grow on Windows 10 – in 2015, gamers spent over 4 billion hours playing PC games on Windows 10" - Microsoft knows what apps - ALL APPS - you're running, for how long, and whether or not they have focus.

Of course, Windows 10 users do consent to these things. But ask them about whether or not that makes them comfortable, and the answer... probably won't surprise you all that much. I mean, I'm not happy about all the hours I spent on e621 in the Edge browser during my stint with the Technical preview. I mean, along with my financial information collected from the store, my contacts and addresses stored in my OneDrive account, and all the media conveniently backed up as a convenience service, Microsoft likely knew my sexual interests better than I did! And on boy did I love that Metro interface, offering me sweet convenience and gloss at a trade-off of giving away what images I look at, for what amount of time, where my cursor hovers, what videos I watch, and even how I procure those pictures and videos. Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare, and if you think you can change some settings in the fragmented, awkward settings and control panel menus, you're mistaken.

Microsoft can use the data they collect to throw you in jail, and they will - PRISM is a program that many tech companies participate in, where authorities can essentially request and receive otherwise private data. Microsoft has a big track record of doing this very thing, and I can see why. It serves their interests to do everything they can to fight software piracy. But before you start talking about how "criminals should pay" or that you have "nothing to hide," please take a look at this article for more information on why that's a load of bullshit.

Another thing I'd like to talk about is the convenient assistant Cortana! Cortana is a service that I have never used myself and never seen others use. Despite that fact, Microsoft is hopeful about its future and continually develops it. This service, aside from occupying 3gb of RAM in my test system, is a persistent service that cannot be stopped through conventional means. It collects and phones home about your searches, application launches, voice data, and more. By using these near-compulsory services, "you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content." This data can be sensitive, especially with the introduction of the omnibox that will conveniently open a Bing search with Edge if you want to search the web. This way, not only can Microsoft funnel you into their data collection pipeline, but they can also inject their own curated ads and sponsored content to pad their bottom line! What's more, new systems with Windows 10 S can't change their default browser or search. This has the effect of victimizing the less tech-literate and poorer crowds among us. I'm sorry, but I'm not of the perspective that it's okay to prey off the poor, elderly, and preoccupied simply because it's convenient to do so.

Some things I don't like about Windows 10 is the egregious dishonesty, implied risks, and hush-hush nature about motivation for getting people to upgrade. I'm not one to support the interest of such a profitable corporation if they give no real reason, but a lot of the "reasons" Microsoft has provided for motivation to get users to upgrade to Windows 10 have been... Questionable. For example, Microsoft pushed coercive, obtrusive updates onto users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. A "security update" for Windows 7 and 8.1 systems was actually an ad campaign. If you did this upgrade when it was free, you likely remember seeing a popup along the lines of "it's time to upgrade to windows 10" with a button that stated "Upgrade Now!" You may have even been interrupted from your Netflix binge or Counter-Strike competitive game for it. Important stuff! They're just trying to make sure their valued customer doesn't miss out! On my newest computer, I installed Windows 10 and found that a clever Security Update had installed a bit of "useful" deceptive information about support for my Kaby Lake processor! Apparently, Windows 7 does not support this hardware... Or, maybe that was a lie that got them into a lot of trouble? Call me paranoid, but this is just ridiculous. Microsoft has pushed it many steps further now, and asked Intel and AMD to drop support for integrated graphics in anything but Win 7. To account for this, I had to download a hack onto my computer that modified my system files to have the CPU update and operate like any other. It's not about support, it's about forcing people to switch. This "it's time to upgrade" schtick they've been on about is like when you go to a car dealership and get offered a new Mercedes for half the sticker price, and the dealer keeps calling you dumb for not taking the offer because it's an "amazing deal" and you "can't afford to miss this opportunity." You can usually check in in a little bit to find that the person who bought the car later found that it was stolen or flooded beforehand. It all kind of comes back to this term I've been throwing around - coercive. Microsoft doesn't even respect people who disagree and want to keep their operating system. Microsoft will flat out lie about risks to get users to switch. That's not some bitter medicine routine, that's interest-based coercion. And that's why I'm sticking to 7.

Addendum: Why don't you use Linux, Dakota? Simple answer. I would, but I'm addicted to Windows-only games that aren't being developed due to DX12 being a Windows-only thing for now. Maybe I'll switch if dev companies will actively work for it, but they don't seem interested in supporting less than 4% of the remaining systems out there.

#opinion #deertalks #rant #long post

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the100boston · 8 years ago

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VANCOUVER/UNITY DAYS 2017

Oh my goodness you guys. I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose from the start. I’ll post the story and pictures of the autographs under the cut.

I flew in last Wednesday (its already been a week since I flew in. WOWOWOWOW. The feelz.) and immediately went to meet the Bellarke fam for lunch. I hadn’t eaten all day, so I was starving. It was SO awesome to meet Gina and her friend Kelsey and my roommates, Sam and Jenny!! After eating, we walked around a bit, getting to know each other. We went back to our hotel room and continued chatting. I was EXHAUSTED by the end of the day thanks to all the traveling and the time differences.

On Thursday morning at around 3:30, I woke up sick to my stomach. Every half hour, I woke up to throw up. It was nothing I ate because I had eaten at 3:30pm with the girls and if it was the food, it would’ve happened a lot sooner. I think it was just nerves and exhaustion. Anyways, while the fam went to Granville Island that day, I stayed at the hotel trying to get better. A Clexa fan that I had been chatting with on twitter for the past few months reached out to me saying she was talking with the hotel bartender about my plight and they wanted to get a soda water and bitters drink up to my room to help my stomach, so I gave her my room number and we very briefly chatted. I really really appreciate Jen reaching out like that to help me. That’s what this con was always about. It wasn’t about who you ship, its about celebrating the show that has ruined all our lives with how much we love it. Jen’s a superstar and I will stand by that.

On Friday, we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge!! I was feeling MUCH better at that point. I’d be damned if I was missing that bridge. That was the number one touristy thing I had wanted to do there.

After that, we went back to the hotel to meet up with another fam member who had just arrived, APRIL!! We went to lunch to meet other fam members too! So many fam members were met all weekend, its kind of blurring together when we met which fam member when. After lunch, we helped April find Bactus for Bob.

Hung around for a little bit before registration. The lines were so long, but you also had to pick out which of the package stuff you were doing, like photo ops and autographs. They had the CancerGetsLOST auction set up right in the registration room. Jo had DM’d me saying she wanted a #MorleyForPotter pin in exchange for a CancerGetsLOST bracelet, so I went up to her for the swap. She’s so awesome! Jen was actually working(?) the auction table because Jo asked me how I was feeling and I was all confused until I saw Jen back there and I guess they had briefly discussed my illness.

I only caught the the meta panel at the very end because of registration insanity, but I did manage to give some pins out and then I introduced myself to Caitlin and Rogue (the Bellarke cosplay couple) and baby Laura, who were all sitting in the back.

The Unity Days Secret Santa was held between events that night. I got a Clexa shipper and she seemed very happy with the gifts I got her. Guess who got me? Jo Garfein!! I was so surprised! I had no idea she was even doing it!

Here’s the stuff she got me:

Friday night was the cocktail party, to which I did not attend because I was still slightly recovering from Thursday. My roommates and the rest of the fam had a blast though! Sachin, Jess, Chelsey, and Katie had all shown up to the festivities.

On Saturday, we all went out for breakfast and went to the welcome panel. Literally the second after we entered the panel, Jo was introducing Bob and I had a slight panic attack because he was RIGHT THERE. After the welcome panel was the Arkadia Boys panel with Jarod, Richard, Sachin, and Bob.

After that, most of the fam had a meet and greet with Jarod, yours truly included. We got a couple of pictures there. Pretty sure the pictures belong to Gina and Allison.

After the Jarod M&G, I was just waiting around for my Bob photo op because the Camp Jaha one I got was moved to Sunday because Lindsey was running late due to filming BECAUSE RAVEN MADE IT TO THE FINALE, YOU GUYS.

I was actually in line behind the really fantastic Kane cosplayer that was there and when Bob saw him, he just went, “Dad?!”, and Kane wanted to hold Bob in his arms and Bob was like, “Are you sure? I’m pretty heavy.” But they did it and I’m sure it came out AMAZING. I haven’t seen it anywhere yet though.

So then there’s little old me wandering into his arms. He’s so warm and sweet and Australian.

After Bob’s photo op, I went to get Eliza’s autographs. (For all autographs, I was getting 2. One for me and one for my sister, who couldn’t be there.) I actually got up to her relatively quickly. I gave her the spiel that my sister was back home in Boston and couldn’t make it up.

I then mentioned that, since I never did well with talking (Eliza said, “Its okay. Neither do I.” In my head, I’m saying, yeah no shit.hahaha) and saying what I really want to say when the time calls for it, I handed her my notecard to her. She was incredibly thankful and then I was on my way.

So next was my Marper photo op!! They were putting people on the spot to do different things in their photos. Chris said to someone in front of me, “We’re not very creative so we’re putting the pressure on you guys to come up with stuff.” I get up there and I’m like, “I don’t know what to do!” Chelsey grabs my hand and says we’re going to hold hands. Chris follows suit and then they interlock their fingers with mine. They’re so in sync like that. They’re so cute.

After the Marper photo op, I waited around until the Bad Boys photo op! I walked in knowing I wanted a group hug picture and really be smushed in there. I get in there and ask for a group hug and they say sure and just start closing in around me. I see Sachin sneak behind a curtain and get ready to jump in front. The flash went off and then he jumped in. I assumed he didn’t make it in, but he told me to wait to leave and he ran and checked the photo and told me to get another one, so I went back into smoosh formation with the guys and it was heaven. This photo is my pride and joy. It was nice and toasty in there with them.

After the Bad Boys photo, I had my meet and greet with Bob where I heard him say that its written that Bellamy is given the direction to look at Clarke lovingly. Like, that’s a thing in the script. Like we knew all along. We got to talking about many different things, which I’m sure there’s a post or two circling around. Someone brought up Roan and I said how I was devastated to lose him on Black Sails, but to have him on The 100 more than made up for it! Bob went, oh yeah! You know Vancouver is a lot closer to home for him than Capetown and when he was approached for the role, they had just had another kid so it was easier and better location-wise for him. He brought up Boston because there were two older women from Boston there, but I didn’t know, so I mentioned that I was from Boston too! There were actually quite a few Bostonians there, from my understanding!!

After the Bob meet & greet (which was the source of my stress), I had the Bellarke photo op! Eliza actually said she thought my shirt was cute, so then Bob took a gander. I died.

After the Bellarke photo op, I went to get some autographs. I only had time for Jarod and Bob.

I think I did Bob’s first. I was super nervous because this is the most one-on-one time I had with him and I was stressing all over again. Thankfully, he was sweet and lovely. I gave the “my sister couldn’t be here” spiel and he asked where she was and I said Boston and he went, “Oh yeah! You were in my meet & greet!” I then told him that we were actually supposed to meet him the two times he was scheduled to appear around Boston, but he had cancelled so I had to come to Vancouver. He goes on to say, “You know, you sign all these contracts in hopes that you can go and then work or something comes up and you have to cancel.” I told him it was fine and that we understood. I just had to go all the way to Vancouver. I then gave him my note and asked for a hug and we both said thank you into each other’s ears and he was so smiley and warm. I love him so much. He’s the actual light of my life.

Here’s Jackie’s (my sister) autograph. I decided to get my Bad Boys photo op signed for me, so I’ll post that after I talk about Richard in a bit.

Next was Jarod. He asked where I was from and I said Boston. He said, “You know, I’ve always wanted to go to Boston.” I told him he should just come. No big deal. He wrote out Jackie’s autograph and then when he handed it to me, he said, “How’s that?” I looked at it and said it was beautiful. So he did the same thing on mine. I gave him my letter and it had a pug sticker on it. He said, “That looks like Sosa!” I said, “Yeah! I wanted to find one that looked like Sosa for you!”

That was the end of the con on Saturday for me. We all met up for pizza in April’s room and we talked about the show and the con for a few hours. It was probably my favorite meal/time we spent together.

On Sunday, I knew I had to get all the rest of my autographs in. Not going to lie, I didn’t think I’d be able to, but I did!

I started with Richard and Luisa, I think because I knew Richard’s line was going to be long and Luisa was leaving early.

I believe I started with Luisa because she was right there. I went up to her and introduced myself and said I was getting an autograph for myself and my sister. I believe we did my sister’s first. She asks me about her. I said, “She’s not really as into the show as much as I am, but she LOVES Murphy.” She writes her’s:

Then we go on to me. I say how I didn’t even really like any of the grounders, but I actually really love Emori and I’m really looking forward to seeing more of her. She gave me a high five. She signed my autograph and then I gave her my note for her. She was genuinely so surprised and grateful that people were giving her letters and art and other kinds of presents. It was so sweet. I told her to have a good day and went on my way.

I went up to Richard and I told him I had 2 autographs and laid out my sister’s and my photo op. He then started fussing with his hair, saying how upset he was. The autograph volunteer at his table was like, why? He said he was upset because his hair was clean. He was saying how he needed product. I said, “we’re in a room full of girls. Someone should have something.” He gestures vaguely to someone out of my eyeline and goes, “She doesn’t! Her hair is clean.” He puts his beanie back on saying, “I’m so upset.” He looks at my group hug photo op and I think he said something along the lines of how great it was.

Here it is:

So Richard wrote, “Sarah We’re a family”. Jarod did the “#BostonStrong” and Bob wrote, “Nothing but love, Sarah”

I then told Richard how my sister wasn’t there and I was getting one for her. I said, “We actually met you at Rhode Island Comic Con over a year ago. She was wearing a Team Murphy shirt.” He goes, “Oh yeah!!” and smiles. This is what he put for her’s:

So sassy. I then gave him my note and told him to have a good day and he told me to do the same.

I had to get my Grounders photo op and my Camp Jaha photo op.

I think I got Chris too that morning. I had so many autographs to get done. The timing kind of all blurs together. Chris was awesome. Probably one of my favorite interactions at the autograph table. On Sunday, he was having everyone write down their name, age, favorite album, and a pop/rockstar they’d want to be for a day. I wrote Sarah, 25, Hamilton, and Adele. He asked where I was from and I said Boston. He said, “I’m from Connecticut so we’re kind of close.” He wrote out my sister’s autograph as we start discussing Hamilton.

He asked me if I had seen Hamilton. I said, no. He said, “Yeah. Its funny how most haven’t seen the show, but are really into the soundtrack.” I said that I really wanted to try for the tour when it comes to Boston, but we’ll see. You basically have to know someone to get tickets and he agreed saying, “Yeah either you know someone or have money.” Basically. Then he goes, “So Sarah, what are you doing in Boston?” I’m kind of like, “What?” He goes, “So what are you doing with your life in Boston? Are you in school?” I said, I already graduated and I’m not really doing anything interesting or anything I really want to do just yet. I said that was fine though. That I have plenty of time.” He said, “Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it.” He went to sign my photo and he said, “Do you mind if I sign my body?” I said, “Its your body. You can do whatever you like with it.” He really liked that!!! haha. Chris was really amazing. Very personable. When I read back my autograph, I kind of realized if taken out of context, its kind of ominous. haha.

Then I think I waited around for Lindsey’s next slot because I just missed the cutoff for her first one.

Lindsey had a long line. They were basically fitting a day and half worth of guests into one day. She was taking her time with everyone, even though the time slots were so small. I didn’t really talk much because I was just kind of staring at her. She’s so gorgeous. She signed this for Jackie:

When she looked at my photo op (which I’ll post after I post Sachin, who was the last one to sign it.), she goes, “Oh this is a nice one.” (Back story: I had no idea what to do for mine. I just said, “Let’s do a super nice whatever one.” I could feel the guys standing taller beside me. I laugh when I see Richard’s face because he looks precious and happy.) I say, yeah I didn’t really know what to do for it. She said, “Oh its a classic pose!” I gave her my letter and wished her a good day.

Next, I believe was Katie and Chelsey. Both were super awesome and sweet. Not really much to talk about because I was quiet. Both were also shocked that I had notes for them too. Katie gave an “Aww, a puppy!” when she saw the sticker I put on her’s. My autograph from Chelsey can be seen up with Chris. My autograph from Katie will be seen with Sachin.

Here are my sister’s autographs:

Next came Sachin, I believe. He was really nice, but I was really quiet, I guess. I told him about Jackie and how she couldn’t be there. After I got the autographs, I handed him the note and he looked so surprised! These adorable nerds are so grateful for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING they are given by fans. My goodness. I wished him a good day and moved on.

Then I got Jessica’s autograph! We started with mine. I think it was also kind of quiet for this part, but it picked back up when we moved onto Jackie’s autograph (and honestly that kind of caused her to mess that one up, but its fine). I told her that I wasn’t as much of an active viewer in the iZombie fandom, but I really loved Dale and was wondering if we were going to see her again. 1)She was surprised that I call her Dale because apparently not that many do?? I said, “I like ‘Dale’.” She goes, “I do too!” 2) She said that season 3 of iZombie looks really good and they were kind of surprised by the amount of people that love Babineaux and Bozzio. I told her I didn’t really ship on that show, but that I LOVED them and she was pleased by that. The show loves their chemistry. I gave her the card and wished her a good day.

Here’s the mistake autograph:

As you can see, they did not actually meet. hahahahaha.

I got Tasya’s autograph next and I told her I was looking forward to seeing what goes on with Echo this season. I got the autographs and gave her the card. (Again, she was surprised!)

I think that’s it! If you have any questions, I’m reachable on here, but it might be easier to reach me on my personal blog, @sarahkomskaikru!!!

We said goodbye to a few members of the fam that night. Had to say goodbye to Sam on Monday morning. It was just me and Jenny for roommates and it was super sad. We moped all day on Monday.

I left Tuesday and here I am. Here we are. Two weeks until the season 4 premiere!!

#unity days 2017 #unity days #the 100 #bob morley #eliza taylor #lindsey morgan #richard harmon #christopher larkin #chris larkin #jarod joseph #chelsey reist #sachin sahel #Luisa D'Oliveira #jessica harmon #katie stuart #tasya teles

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holytheoristtastemaker · 5 years ago

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Today I wanted to share with you some advice on How to become a Frontend Developer.

The reason why I wrote this is because I received many messages in my social media and mail, asking things like: "How can I become a Frontend?", "When will I know if I'm ready or not to apply for a job?"...

And I thought I had to answer those questions publicly.

Before you start reading let me tell you: I'm just a designer who codes, but I have enough experience and I understand the industry needs, so here you have my advice on How to be Front.

This article was published in Spanish here.

🖐 Before we get started... What does actually mean to be a Front Dev?

If you've been around for a while you probably know each professional says a different thing.

Some people say design is not a part of Frontend area, not even semantic languages as HTML... They kind of customize their role.

I want to share with you the definition I think, by my experience, that suits a Frontend Developer: A professional who is familiar with semantic languages (HTML), styling languages (CSS) and web programming languages (JavaScript, PHP, Python), and is able to create a functional page.

The Frontend role must not be mistaken with other roles like Web designer, UX designer, or Graphic Designer.

📍 You start here: the 3 'ends' of Frontend

There are 3 languages you shall totally be familiar with if you're willing to join the Frontend Devs Fight Club, listed below these lines:

➜ HTML: Literally, every page you visit on the internet its been built with this language. The Internet's basically about HTML. It makes a webpage be a webpage. (And for those claiming "HTML isn't a language..." WELL, then what does the L in HTML stands for then?!).

➜ CSS: This language is the one building those fancy-really-colorful-amazing interfaces you're madly in love with. It's a VIL (very important language) here, you must TOTALLY understand how to use it.

➜ JavaScript: This guy makes the page and the interface work. Its the language you'll be building your web's functionality with.

🤔 I've heard about React? Angular, Vue... Which one should I choose?

I hear this question all the time in my mentorships. "I've seen x it's been asked a lot in job offers... Should I learn it?".

The answer is: it depends. Are you really good and familiar with HTML, CSS, and JS? Then go for it. You aren't? Stay way.

Either way, if you want to focus in Frontend I suggest you go learn Vuejs since it's a framework focused on the interface building (which is, pretty much, your job as a frontend).

🎨 How do I build my Frontend Portfolio?

Now, that's another really common question.

I've heard a lot of things like "your portfolio shouldn't be a sticker collection"... Now, WHY NOT? Painters don't organize expositions about their failures, but about their amazing drawings and pictures. Go ahead buddy, show 'em what you know.

On another hand, I suggest you to focus not only in your portfolio but also in your social media. I understand you'd like to remain "anon" but online presence has its benefits. Now, you don't have to write 100/posts a month, or have 50k followers, you could just follow and interact with those who inspire you, those who you admire and share their content.

Some of the benefits of having online presence are — ➀ people will know about you and your work faster than sending 55 CV's a day, — ➁ you'll meet people from inside the industry who are able to give you help and feedback, — ➂ you can help others, too!

You can build online presence around Twitter, Dev.to, or Medium, for example.

✅ The Frontend checklist

Another question I've been asked a lot is "How will I know if I'm ready to apply for jobs?"... So I created a very simple checklist so you know where you must work harder and what skills you already master:

❒ You're familiar HTML, CSS and JS at an advanced level. ❒ You're familiar and have experience with external JavaScript libraries. (Momentjs, Chartjs). ❒ You're familiar and have experience with CSS Frameworks. (Bulma, Bootstrap, Foundation, Materialize). ❒ You have experience with CSS Grid and Flexbox. ❒ You have experience with API's. ❒ You have experience with JSON's. ❒ You can connect an API to an interface. ❒ You have minimum experience with databases. ❒ You know how to deploy a web application. (For example via Heroku, Netlify or GitHub Pages). ❒ You're familiar with JS Frameworks. (Vue, React, Angular). ❒ You're familiar or have experience with authentication. (JWT).

You don't have to become a ninja-master-pro-jedi, you just need to be familiar/experienced with those techs listed above. Remember that you won't get the "professional experience" until you face a real project with a real client.

🕐 Some tools that may save you time

I wanted to share with you the most useful tools I use to organize my job and projects:

➜ Notion: To take notes and document all my learning and projects. ➜ Miro: To create useful flows and schemas. ➜ GitHub: All my projects are here, literally. ➜ Netlify: I deploy all my projects with this platform since I don't usually have a backend. If you do, use Heroku instead.

🌼 Last but not least

To end this post I'd like to share some useful advice that helped me develop my career up until now.

📌 If you want to test and learn new techs, don't learn all of them at once and in the same test project. Go one by one, make sure you're familiar enough with the current one to get started with the next.

📌 The sentence "this tech is better than that one" it's a lie, like the cake. There are newer and older techs and they all work and get the job done. The difference's about how they work and how simplified they are.

📌 Reuse. You don't have to create your projects over and over again.

📌 Comment your code and your projects.

📌 Don't forget taking notes of everything you learn or even creating a simple guide or tutorial for yourself. That'll help you retain what you've learned.

📌 There aren't any "gurus" or "magicians" out there, just people who practiced with the same tech as you but for a longest time.

That's it for now, hope this was useful.

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tigertyl3r78 · 6 years ago

Text

Curatorial Statement

Activism in the Digital Age

Activism once meant throwing rocks through windows, marching in the streets, boycotting, or holding a stand in. While all of these methods are still widely used, they all require ones physical presence in order to achieve the desired goal. With the advent of the internet and social media, activism has blossomed into something greater built on the shoulder of those who came before us. Similar methodologies are utilized, but from the comfort of ones own home or from the last booth in a coffee shop you can make just as great of an impact on the world by a few clicks and taps of your keyboard. Our culture has become one of accountability through social media. If you skip out on posting during a march or showing your sticker for proof that you voted, your later opinions may not be considered as valid. Staying quiet and watching things unfold from the sidelines is no longer an option when it comes to politics in the current state of our country so silence is taken for siding with the enemy.

Can you imagine being one of the people who didn’t participate in the bus boycott during the civil rights movement? Or someone who watched as the suffragettes were carted away to prison for fighting for not only their rights but your rights as well? We look back at it now with such clarity. “Of course I would’ve marched” or “Of course I would’ve said something”, but is that really true? What will future generations look at us for and say, “why didn’t they do anything?”. For this reason I have chosen to focus on activists using their voices through the internet or social media to enact change. This ranges from organizations to celebrities to people I had never even heard of previous to starting this project. This wide variety of people utilizing the internet to make changes for good shows that there is both a need and a desire amongst our society for this kind of involvement. Those who may not have felt comfortable enough to go to a rally or to march because they were afraid or didn’t feel they belonged now can find a space that feels just right for them and what they believe in.

Taylor Swift was long criticized for not speaking out about her political views after Donald Trump won the election and she didn’t make a statement or reveal whom she had voted for. For someone with millions of followers seeing her every day life, this was red flag. Ones political standings were often not talked about in years passed but again, with the advent of social media and the firestorm Trump has created, being silent meant that you must not want people knowing what you did or did not do for the greater good. Before the midterm elections this November, Swift posted to her now 113 million Instagram followers a simple black and white polaroid that may have not even garnered a second glance had people not stopped to read her well-thought out and articulated caption.

Her message was urging her followers (and anyone else who happened upon the photo because of Instagram’s algorithm) to register to vote and then to head to the polls to have their voices heard. Soon after posting, voter registration ages 18-34 skyrocketed and over 2 million people “liked” the photo she posted along with her lengthy caption. The mixing of linguistics and imagery has been a practice of contemporary artist for quite some time now, but social media allows everyone to be an artist in that way. Curating the perfect photo and then creating the right words to further depict you message takes creativity and thought whether your message is political or not. By choosing a neutral image, classic black and white, she appealed to the masses rather than a singular group. Although she stated whom she was voting for and why, she did so in a calm and non-vindictive way so as to not single out anyone or decrease her reach.

In An Xiao’s project titled “Nothing to Tweet Home About”, she combines the prominence of social media with the nostalgia of a postcard. Twitter gave people the platform to literally send out hundreds of 140 character messages per minute telling friends and followers everything and anything they want to. It also allowed people to feel as if they wee receiving these messages form people they follow regardless of if they were the intended recipient of the underlying message or not. Postcards were the way to do this in the past but could take weeks to reach the recipient and were mostly reserved for people on vacation or those in need of sending a short message to someone. Thinking about the women in the early days of feminism or the men and women of the civil rights movement makes you appreciate how big of an impact they made without the ability to spread the word through Twitter or Instagram. There is a certain excitement when receiving something in the mail now because it is so uncommon.

Receiving a handwritten letter from someone usually only comes from ones grandmother on their birthday with a five-dollar bill in it and even that becomes repetitive. People now dread looking in their mailboxes because all that gets delivered there are bills and taxes. Twitter holds the same sentiment as a quick note on a postcard but with the adaptation of instant retrieval and reaction. Xiao, who created this project right here in Connecticut, combined the nostalgia for the tangible with the recent requirement for instant gratification by sending out around 100 postcards with tweets written on them. By melding the two, Xiao taps into the excitement of receiving something handwritten in the mail with the mundane nature of a simple tweet, which has also now become unexciting to us because of it’s presence in our everyday lives.

The Benevolent Society, Reactive, & Designworks also utilized the power of Twitter in an exhibit in Australia called Hundreds and Thousands. They asked the people of Australia to utilize the 140 character count to tell their followers what they hoped for the future of Australia. They then took all the tweets that used the required hashtag to create a light installation tunnel. Tunnels are often thought of as roads to freedom, (i.e. underground railroad), and this one could be both enjoyed for its visual beauty but for its sentiment of hope for the future. Again, this melding of the linguistic with the visual helps reach a broader audience and makes the exhibit feel more collaborative.

Emma Watson is a UN Women Goodwill ambassador and has often given profound and moving speeches for and with them. She is not a huge presence on social media as she seems to be quite a private person but usually when she does speak out on any of the various social media platforms, it’s about fighting for social injustice. The picture and tweet I have chosen to feature shows her in the classic “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” shirt, again in black and white like Ms. Swift. Her tweet alongside it was simple, the hashtag and the magazine that took the photo for her. This is important not only because over 37,000 people had liked it before it was screen grabbed, but because this image was taken by a major magazine publications viewed by women every day. Whether inadvertently in line at the grocery store or if you were a subscriber/follower, you saw this image and read those words. By having the magazine take her photo in this sweatshirt and then tweeting it out with their watermark, she used her platform and the platform of the magazine to curate an image of herself that would catch people’s eye. Those who recognize the sweatshirt would be pleased to see the magazine advertising it, Watson reaffirms her strong political voice, and those uneducated may have been prompted to research the slogan further.

Lastly, after Trump’s election to the presidency, there was a march held in Washington and around the world to protest his inauguration and election. The Women’s March logo is now an image that is seen an instantly recognized along with the pussy hat and the various slogans chanted and held in the air on that day. Their Instagram account currently has 1.1 Million followers and they continue to schedule events and offer aid and words of encouragement to their fellow feminists when they see an act of injustice. Their entire website and Instagram page is a carefully curated set of images and words that was sparked by the fury felt by many after Trump’s election. We saw this same kind of outreach used after the Parkland shooting this year. There were hashtags, celebrity involvement, and even a concert and march held in D.C. We are seeing an uptick in the oppressed or marginalized fighting for themselves, using the tools of social media, rather than waiting around for someone “higher up” to do it for them. Women in countries who were being harassed on buses have created their own all-female bus system; kids are demanding gun control, as the adults haven’t been able to reach a resolution. Things are changing for the better because of this sense of community and communication through social media and the internet.

Many felt helpless, alone, or trapped and had no way to release these emotions and the founders of the march gave those people an outlet and a voice. For days before the march in January, you could not go on any social platform without seeing someone posting about the march and sharing their logo. Creating community and conversation has been seen through all of these artistic endeavors and is the basis for any strong activist movement. Without the support of a team, people who have a common goal and the drive to execute it, change cannot be accomplished. Whether these people are friends you share these posts with or followers you’ve never met and may never see in your life, these words and images spark a fire in people.

Bibliography

·http://www.anxiaostudio.com/art/nothingtotweethomeabout.html

·https://www.womensmarch.com/

·https://www.bustle.com/articles/73803-9-celebrity-activists-whose-twitter-accounts-are-changing-the-world-one-tweet-at-a-time

·https://econsultancy.com/four-examples-of-digital-activism-using-art-and-digital-to-fight-a-cause/

·https://daily.jstor.org/what-parkland-tells-us-about-teens-and-social-media/

·https://www.jstor.org/stable/43496487?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

·https://www.jstor.org/stable/2781286?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

·https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

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