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straighttohellbuddy · 4 years

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how the light gets in {Corpse Husband}

2. you’ve gone way too fast for way too long.

Summary: Supernatural Creatures AU. Them/Them Reader. After the success of your first stream, you find yourself wanting to get back to your YouTube roots, and what better way to do that than with a cover by one of the bands who holds a special place in your heart? And maybe you’re using it to distract yourself from thinking about how coming back to YouTube means coming back to the things - the people - you’d left behind.

Maybe it’s selfish, but Corpse kind of wishes you hadn’t come back to YouTube; honestly, if anyone else had taken the world by storm, he wouldn’t complain half as much, except it’s you and he’s still mostly convinced that you might be an angel like him... Except better. Because of course you would be a better angel, you’re talented and driven and personable and essentially everything an angel should be, and - bar the talented bit, Corpse at least knows some of his worth - you’re everything he’s pretty sure he’s not. Except it seems like everyone loves you, and he doesn’t exactly have a good enough reason to be bothered by you the way he is, so he has to act like he isn’t. Which is a lot easier said than done, when you barely say a word to him and it feels like all of his suspicions are confirmed.

A/N: 8471 words. Reader in the fic is stated to be 24. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SUPERNATURAL THE TV SERIES. me, trying to walk the line between 3rd person omniscient narrator and trying to make the narration feel like its somewhat coming from the POV character?? it’s more likely than you think! as always, i really appreciate feedback.

{ m a s t e r l i s t }

Taglist: @nanasort @meme-lord-and-savior-sebastian @theboywhocriedlupin @taikalinna @jaychirps @bingusmode @divine-artemis @realmejay @lovemelikepercy @balla-deer @miniritzcrackers @loraleiix @ppopty @easygoingtheatre @insanedeathwish @siriuslystupid @losvertown @janiathecat @wineandionysus @moonlightsimp @allylyew @chokingonflxwers @sicnesa @xxniksxx @mishisamess @preciousskye @yashinosakura @meleekabenjamin @whatamievendoinghere01 @lxurxn-02 @liljennyx3 @the-fusionist @benjaminka @lilysdaydreams @a-lonely-bic @letsloveimagines @melmachh @tama-chan-suneater @shio-yuki @fairywriter-oracle @easygoingtheatre @pixelbxtch @dreammoutlouddd @abysshaven @mediocrearistophanes @tsukishimawh0re @inkbyajm @jordiee95 @honkcorpse @kaiihaan @takenbyheartstrings @mrtony-stank1 @dangeroustreebread @xibrokensunriseix @corpseglider @artsyally @ellsbells2143 @machine-gun-casie @marvelsmurphy @bigmac-papi @danielle143 @fivedicksinatrenchcoat @starstruckllamapuppy @youretheonlyonewhomakesme @fee-btheweeb @parkerpeanuts @fanfictionenthusiast @evans-dejong @pancakebinnie @minbunbun @sabrinarahaman @thefangirl05 @jades-bullshit @fo-love @roses-and-grasses @thirstyfangirl @lovelysmp @325575 @wrongcielo @lukathecrime @lunariasilver @delicrieux @rebloogggs @kookiesandtae7 @mizxkii @effielumiere @happyyyandcrazyyy @teenageguitarist @prettylittlealiengirl @aroyalharknessblr @kylie-writes-stuff @annshit @haunteddeputymugpersona

taglist is always open! message me if you’d like to be added xx

----

The day after your song drops, it’s on Spotify’s Top 50 Viral playlist, it’s charting on iTunes, it’s splattered across the internet, according to your manager, who sees fit to text you, congratulating you on what she assumed to be a masterful marketing tactic; releasing the song and immediately streaming alongside huge YouTube creators who have a wide and diverse fanbase, all plugging your music. She thinks it was a carefully calculated move, which makes you feel all kinds of scummy, like you were using your new friends. Thankfully, when you fire a somewhat defensive response about how you had no ulterior motive, that all you wanted to do was have fun and make friends, your tone apparently reads loud and clear, as you receive an apology a few moments later. Backtracking, she simply mentions that, even unintentionally, you had great timing, and she’s glad you had a good time, which is better, and you try not to dwell on your initial assumption. Years of your life had been spent worrying that the people you were close to just thought you were using them for views or fame; her words did little to quell that worry, so instead you tried to distract yourself, or at the very least, focus on the good that yesterday had brought about.

The best, of course, was Sykkuno, the hellhound who’d endeared himself to you almost immediately. Something about him makes you feel safe, though perhaps it’s that you’re unused to someone feeling so familiar; you like to think you’re a good judge of character, so for now, you’re trusting in your instincts, trusting in Sykkuno. The next best thing was a tie, between friends and freedom. Yesterday you’d been doing what you wanted to do, not what you thought you should be doing, not what was on brand, or carefully scripted; you were messy, stumbled over your words, and you laughed and deceived your friends as was the aim of the game, it was so freeing to be unfiltered. People kept saying it was nice to see you smile, to hear you laugh again. Huh. Part of you really doesn’t like that you know exactly what they mean, and more importantly, why people are saying that at all. But things are different now, are freer now; your brand was built on you, it’s nice to get back to that.

By mid-morning, you’d been sprawled out on your sofa for almost an hour, glad to be alone, to not have to worry about being seen, as you’ve phased your tail back into reality, and have it holding up your phone as you scroll through Twitter with one hand and fidget idly with the other. More and more you’re seeing supportive comments from people gushing about the few bars you’d sung of 5 Seconds of Summer’s Youngblood on stream yesterday. First your chat had loved it, now it seems the general consensus was that people would love for you to cover more than a few bars. While you tried not to listen too much to what other people wanted, you couldn’t help but admit that it was something you definitely wanted too.

When you text your manager, new idea already taking hold of your focus, your earlier unsavoury text conversation seemingly forgotten, your manager reminds you that you should be working on your new album, putting together the tracklist for your EP. Ugh.

It’s not that you didn’t have ideas, quite the opposite; you’re exploding with ideas, brimming, overflowing with them, for songs you wants to write and feelings you can’t express any other way, but the songs and collaborations you’ve already completed, their mp4 files sitting neatly on your desktop, you wanted to save them for the full album, like it was some sort of penance for getting to collaborate, getting to become friends with people you looked up to, people who inspired you. To you, their contribution was worthy of your full album.

Well, that was part of the reason, the other part was that the songs you had designated for the album had a different vibe to your EP songs; albumtouralbumtour and imposter syndrome had both been written in lockdown, about very specific concerns you were having at the time. The EP was shaping up to capture a very specific moment in time, while the album was so much more than that. You couldn’t put read at five am on the EP, the collaboration you’d done with Troye, a lyrical-lament with a dissonant, upbeat melody, an apology for when you’re the one who cuts off contact with someone you’re close to and don’t know how to say why, and don’t know how to come back; yes, the fact that you and Ethan are talking again means that the song is technically relevant to this period of time, but it’s three years of regret and indirect apology compressed into in three minutes. It’s going on the album.

But being stuck at home all day for months had made you all nostalgic for your roots, for when you’d started uploading all the way back in 2012, at 16, with no idea what a few videos would lead to. You missed covering songs you loved, the songs other people had written and that you had still connected with, the songs that made you want to write your own. Yes, you loved your own content, obviously, but from idea to video publishing, you knew a low-effort cover would take you maximum a day and a half if you were particularly inspired, which you clearly were. By now, you’d been doing this for so long that you knew the legality of it all like the back of your hand, and were in a stable enough place to be more than happy to pay royalties to the band you’d co-headlined alongside for your first international tour.

“What if I call the boys and ask them?” You decided to just call your manager directly, tail curled securely around your phone where you’d put her on speaker, pottering around your kitchen trying to find something to eat. Alison, on the other end of the line, sighed deeply, having been fielding these sorts of calls from you about once a fortnight since lockdown had started.

“Have you finished moment before impact yet?” She countered, and you wrinkle your nose; its as if she can hear the expression through the phone with the way she continues on, not giving you a moment to cut in, “listen, I won’t tell you what to do, but you need to make a decision about your EP tracklist soon, okay? The label’s breathing down my neck, you know you have more than enough songs for it.”

“Alison, the vibes -”

“The vibes, Y/N, I know,” she sighed deeply, but you could hear the faintest smile in her voice.

“I promise I’m working on my own stuff; I think moment before impact is gonna be a collab, but I’m not sure who with yet, but if it makes you happy, once I record this 5SOS thing, I’ll work on a demo of moment for the EP,” you concede, and you hear her hum in approval, “I promise I have all the songs in my head, I just gotta make sense of which ones are the right ones for now, you know?”

“I really don’t,” you could hear her actually smiling now, so you let yourself relax for a moment, hands braced on your kitchen counter as you looked to your phone, “but I suppose that’s why you’re the musical one and I’m the manager.”

“My favourite manager,” you told her sweetly, and her answering laugh is more of a snort.

"Call the band, maybe they can work something out for you regarding royalties, if you plan to monetise it," she suggested, and you hummed, "keep me updated, okay? Make sure you're still working on your own stuff though."

"Alison you're a national treasure," you tell her feelingly; you don't even have to see her to know she's rolling her eyes.

But you take her advice, sending 'what if I covered Youngblood and posted it to YT? I'll pay you royalties' to the mostly dormant WhatsApp group you have with 5 Seconds of Summer, despite it being about six in the morning in Australia. Callum sends back a thumbs up almost immediately. Its all the confirmation you need to get started.

As you’re hunting through your house for a pick, turning over cushions, looking through junk drawers, you hear your phone go off, and you take a moment to check, surprised by what you see. A message from Sean. Huh.

[I see you’ve finally decided to join us in the gaming community, took you long enough 😊 If you ever wanna play something, just gimme a yell, you know Id be glad to have ya on my team.]

Considering the fact that it had been three years since you and Sean had properly been in contact, you find the message both surprising, and strangely heartwarming. There were a few people you’d purposefully fallen out of contact with, plagued by your own fears and self doubts. The people who you’d seen in person almost daily were the ones who you’d felt the absence of the most, but Sean, just by his close association with those people, along with a few other international friends, had been regretfully left behind also. Here and now, you can feel just how much you’ve missed him, how guilty you feel for giving in to your own anxieties and the negativity spewed by others.

But you know you can’t dwell on the past, on your mistakes, all you can do is be grateful for the opportunity to reconnect, and take it.

[ID: A tweet and reply conversation between @yourtwitter and @goldeny/n, followed by a single tweet by @ZeRoyalViking, and a tweet and reply conversation between @yourtwitter, and @5SOS.

@yourtwitter: someone yell at me for doing another cover instead of my original stuff. quarantine got me feeling 17 again. might do the cinnamon challenge next. or finally do that Roast Yourself trend 4 years too late. | @golden_y/n: BRUH YOU BEST NOT BE PULLING OUR LEGS | @golden_y/n: I would empty my bank account to see you roast yourself. | @yourtwitter: Please Don't Do That YouTube Is Free | @golden_y/n: 😳💀💖

@ZeRoyalViking: stream today with some familiar and not so familiar faces!!

@yourtwitter posted an image of Griffin McElroy from the My Brother My Brother & Me TV show. Griffin is a Caucasian man wearing glasses and a blue checked shirt. He is visible from the chest up and is sitting behind a desk with one arm in front of him, with his thumb out, as if counting. The image’s subtitles have been edited, now reading ‘My friends are very much into the following: Bullying me on TikTok.’ | @yourtwitter: @luke5SOS is just mad im gonna sing his song better than him. he doesn’t use twitter anymore so i have the upper hand here. | @5SOS replies with a gif of Jason Momoa, who is incredibly muscular, with dark hair down to his shoulders, a black tank top, and sunglasses on, holding a microphone, standing in a confrontational manner, captioned ‘No, no, no. By all means, speak your mind. You got a problem with my boy?’ | @yourtwitter: HE WENT LIVE UNPROMPTED TO TELL PEOPLE ABOUT HOW I WROTE NOTIMETOSLEEP IN THREE DAYS WITH NO ACTUAL SLEEP, OPENED FOR THEM IN ARIZONA, AND IMMEDIATELY PASSED OUT FOR 16 HOURS AFTER WALKING OFF STAGE | @5SOS: we just miss you tho... and it is kind of funny. | @yourtwitter: the minute im allowed to safely leave lockdown im coming to australia to german supplex the lot of you. ❤️

End ID.]

Corpse’s whole ‘not thinking about you’ plan goes down a lot smoother when you’re not actively stealing his friends- what kind of Angel goes around stealing another person - another Angel’s, no less - friends?! Except, right, he doesn't actually have proof that you're an angel, just a hunch he’s apparently committed to... and, okay, you don't know you're stealing them... Sykkuno and Rae are allowed to have more than one friend. Obviously.

"Honestly, I'm still kind of riding the high from yesterday's stream," Sykkuno’s all kinds of elated in the voice chat, and Rae's quick to chime in, matching his tone, his energy, as she agrees.

"I cannot believe Y/N played with us! I’m sorry you missed it, Corpse, I think you'd love them," Rae is adamant, to which Corpse, from behind the safety of his monitor, makes a face.

"What makes you say that?” Even as he says it, as he tries to keep the negativity from his voice, his nose wrinkles, the expression shifting his eyepatch just a little.

“I don’t know, just something about...” Rae’s voice turns thoughtful as she considers, though Sykkuno takes the chance to pipe up, voice brimming with his trademark sincerity.

“You guys have weirdly similar vibes, like kind of a similar energy?” He tries to explain before a faintly embarrassed laugh escaping him, even with Rae humming in agreement, “not the exact same, obviously, but like, I don’t know, I think you’d really like them.” The problem with having Sykkuno for a friend is that he’s almost always trying to be genuinely kind or helpful. The problem is that Corpse can tell he believes what he’s saying.

An angelic ability that often goes overlooked, even by angels themselves, is the innate ability to tell whether or not someone’s lying. It’s like a faint buzzing, low grade tinnitus, at the sound of a lie, something that can actually be pretty effectively ignored and forgotten, but right now, the lack of buzzing with Sykkuno’s words is frankly irritating. Not that Corpse can say that, he has no real reason to be jealous of your fast forming friendships with his friends, well, not any reason he can admit to on stream.

"You know what,” Sean muses, finally joining the conversation, “It’s been a while since I properly spoke to them, but I totally get what you mean,” fucking great; of course he agrees, “did anyone invite them to play; would love to have them here if they’re up for it.”

"I think they're working on a thing today, but I can message and ask?" It’s Sykkuno who speaks up, the barest hesitation in his voice, and to that Rae makes a proud little noise in the back of her throat.

"You met yesterday on the stream that I organised, and suddenly you're all best buddies? Gonna be honest, I’m a little jealous,” she admits, to which Sykkuno huffs a soft laugh, uncertain of what to say, though Rae’s tone is fond and she continues on, “seriously though, good for you, dude, finally getting the recognition you deserve -"

And on the one hand, yes, Corpse would agree that Sykkuno deserved infinitely more recognition and praise than he currently received, but on the other, the speed at which you two had aparently become close - a day! It had been a day! - sets Corpse’s teeth on edge. It was all he could do to keep quiet as the others chimed in, all their sentiments mirroring Rae’s.

All this frustration and resentment was almost definitely unhealthy, he was more than aware, but something about you had fixed in his mind; if it had been anyone else, anyone less talented or personable or productive, he could have probably handled it, but you...

All he gets is two games worth of peace before Sykkuno announces that he’s gotten a reply. Aparently you’re in the middle of recording a cover. Something about knowing that fills Corpse with discomfort, with envy, like he should be working on his music instead of being here.

"But they say they're gonna take a break in an hour or say, so they might join us for a few games," Sykkuno’s tone betrayed his bright smile, and suddenly the voice chat was flooded with excitement from almost all in attendance.

"Wait, really? Just like that, we'll be playing with Y/N?" Leslie sounds disbelievingly hopeful, but thankfully it’s only a few moments until the next game beings. While none of the others had picked up on Corpse’s silence, his chat seemed confused. Purposefully ignoring their questions and comments on the matter, he instead gives a few comments on the game, trying to come off lighter than he was feeling.

He’s not quite sure what he’s going to do if you join the stream, he’d never actually considered that he might one day talk to you, have to confront the person whose very existence got under his skin, who might very well be the only other person like him on this side of the world. Unsurprisingly, his head’s not in the game.

"Did you get enough sleep last night?” Rae feels the need to ask when whatever response he’d given in a meeting had just come out as an incoherent mumble. Of course he straight up laughs at her question, which is answer enough, and she clicks her tongue disapprovingly, “you’re impossible.”

“Have you drunk any water today -?”

“Sykkuno you’re dead,” Sean interrupts Sykkuno, who had broken one of the main rules of the game simply to question Corpse about his health; he’s far too caring for his own good, but moments like this make for good entertainment, “dead people can’t talk,” Corpse is grateful for all of five seconds before Sean turns on him, reiterating Sykkuno’s question like a traitor; “Corpse, have you drunk water today?” In lieu of a proper response, Corpse groans, playing at being annoyed.

“I say we vote him out because if he is the imposter, we win, and if he isn’t, he has time to go drink a glass of water,” Rae proposes matter-of-factly, which just leaves Corpse spluttering with disbelief.

“That’s fucking stupid; I’m not the imposter, you’re basically throwing the game -” but the votes are already popping up, and unfortunately, for the first time all stream, everyone seems to be in agreement.

“Drink water, Corpse,” Rae, clearly the leader of this mutiny, orders, as Corpse watches his character get flung into lava, and very begrudgingly heeds her words. He takes his sweet time drinking a full glass of water and refilling it to take back with him, intermittently glaring from his kitchen at his computer, despite the game still going on; he’s got several tasks left, if they don’t catch the imposters, they’re doomed, and honestly he doesn’t care. Once the game ends, with the crewmates’ loss, as he’d suspected, they all find themselves back in the lobby. Maybe they’re waiting for him. They can wait longer.

As he settles himself back into his office chair, he pulls on his headphones in time to hear -

“- earlier than I thought because of a whole thing on TikTok and then Twitter, and then my manager texted me telling me-” It’s like he’s turned twenty again at the sound of your voice; you, bright, earnest, rambling to probably Sykkuno or Sean or Rae, probably not even aware of him, but he’s never been more aware of you. Not that he’d ever admit it to anyone, but your second EP, hyperfocus, had been in heavy rotation on his Spotify since he’d discovered it, since he’d listened to the crack in your voice, the exhaustion with which you spoke on i’m going through some stuff when Lofi had just been taking off as a genre. He’s... conflicted, going through an internal crisis while you keep talking, blissfully unaware, “- anyways, I think she’s just worried that I’ll end up threatening to German Supplex Harry Styles, or the late, great, Prince, and I’ll end up cancelled.”

“Y/N,” your name sounds equal parts amused and concerned as Sykkuno says it, with the air of someone who’s been privy to you and your antics far longer than just one day. The response you give is just as bright and cheery as your rambling had been, assuring him that you wouldn’t threaten to German Supplex Prince.

“You sure about that?” Sean was obviously grinning, judging by his fond tone, “sounds like something you’d try -”

“I’ve changed, Jack- Sean- fuck,” your muttered swear undercuts your attempt at earnestness after you correct yourself, clearly not used to calling him by his actual name. To that, Sean gives a fond chuckle, before going right back to ribbing you.

“I’m pretty sure there’s still video evidence of you trying to square up with Mark in person,” Sean points out, to which you grow huffy and defensive, playing up your frustration.

“Well, that was for a completely reasonable reason!”

“Which was?”

“I thought it would be funny,” tone flipping completely, the words come out so sincere and bright it’s almost tooth rotting; if he didn’t know any better, Corpse would probably find himself being endeared by it, “and it was! Plus,” though here you give pause, and something about the tone of the conversation shifts as you chew on the words you’d almost said without thinking, “it was funny,” you said, softer this time. Sean, sensing the shift, does his best to pick the mood back up, reminding you that both you and Mark lost the competition you’d been taking part in anyways, and asking if you really had changed.

Before you had time to answer, however, Rae spots Corpse’s avatar moving ever so slightly, and immediately jumps on him.

“Corpse! Did you drink water?” She asks. He unmutes so they can all hear his deep, beleaguered sigh. “I can and will bully you into taking care of yourself,” her heart’s in the right place, and it is mostly a bit, so he can’t be too put out by the fact that she cares.

“I can’t believe you all voted me out because of it,” he chooses to respond instead, and Rae’s cackle echoes through the voice call.

“She also was the imposter, so...” Ze trailed off, a little sheepishly, to which Corpse rolled his eyes, not that anyone can see. Of course she was. But he’s not even given a moments before -

“You must be Corpse!” The moment the words leave your lips, every single goddamn nerve in Corpse’s body feels like it’s alight; everything overwhelming, unfamiliar,. white-hot, he’s suddenly desperately trying to keep his various abilities in check, since he really doesn’t want to short out his whole system, end the stream early, and probably cause his building to go into a blackout, just because of whatever this is. The whole world has changed with four words; better and worse and more more than anything. It’s... it’s a confirmation of some kind, and he tries to hold onto that vindictive feeling in his chest. You are familiar, you are something he recognises like no-one else he’s ever met before; you are like him. Is it better or worse now he knows it’s the truth?

“Must I be?” He manages to respond, keeping his voice as level as he’s able, shooting for vaguely amused and trying not to let any of the past few seconds sudden overwhelming panic and triumph bleed into his voice. But the moment you hear him, there’s a sharp gasp; that same something, understanding, recognition he’d felt, you feel it too.

“Y/N, you okay?” Ze had asked, and you made a vaguely muffled noise of unconvincing confirmation. Out of sheer, idle curiosity, Corpse opened a new tab and searched up your YouTube channel where you were streaming.

“Maybe we should have warned ya’,” Sean offers with a light laugh, before lowering his voice, immitating and announcer as best as he could, “warning! Corpse is about to speak!” Which at the very least got Corpse to laugh, though he refused to give anything away as your stream loaded, and the banter continued in his ears.

“Har har,” you muttered sarcastically into the voice chat, right as the stream finished loading, and - you. Well dressed, face in your hands, heels of your palms pressed against your closed eyes; honestly, he doesn’t exactly have any prominent initial thoughts about you, watching you scrunch your face up in your hands, dealing with the same thing he had to, though your face was live to thousands. Beside you, the text chat for your stream was going almost too fast to read, but he managed to follow a few threads of thought here and there.

[an eye thing! they’ve got an eye thing!] [someone @ y/n_creature_spec on twt!!] [who has an eye thing??] [lmao love that they were so shocked hearing corpse that it set off their eye thing] [hello!! vampire here!! we have eye things!!] [u cant be a vampire it’s the middle of the day] [THERE ARE COUNTRIES OTHER THAN AMERICA YOU KNOW] [i am willing to put MONEY on the idea of them being fae of some kind.] [^^yeah they just didnt want us to see their eyes sparkling like an anime character.] [that feels like smthn corpse could bring out in people]

And then you’re blinking back to reality, bringing him from his thoughts as for one terrifying moment, it’s as if his gaze locks with yours. Expression so bright and inviting, despite the way your eyes were watering just a little, you hold eye contact with your camera for a moment before looking at your screen, mumbling something about an eyelash in your eye; Corpse lets out a shaky breath. Chat seems unconvinced, but at least the other streams take you on your word. For a few more moments, he quietly watches you, watches the way your eyes roam your screen as you order your thoughts, and for all that he’s thought of you, he’s never properly looked at you. It’s taken him until now to acknowledge that there was definitely a reason for your success beyond just your talent; certainly you could have become successful from your music alone, but your career certainly wasn’t hindered by the fact that you’re actually quite- suddenly, Corpse is overcome by the sense that he’s intruding, exiting out of the window immediately, even going so far as to push back from his desk, fingers spread wide, braced against the edge, trying not to think too hard about... any of it. If he thought too hard about what it meant to have another angel in LA, he would drive himself mad.

“Well, Corpse, it’s good to meet ya, been told great things,” to him and him alone it’s so clear you’re trying so hard to play it cool, though Corpse couldn’t fault you for that, doing the exact same thing; again, when you speak to him, it’s like his whole being is hit with a rush of warmth; it’s less overwhelming this time, somehow scalding but bearable now.

“I see Sykkuno’s been spreading lies about me,” Corpse fires off instinctually, to which Sykkuno splutters protests at the implication, despite your bright laughter, and Sean’s shout to the contrary.

“Don’t be mean, Corpse, Sykkuno would never lie about you,” Sean is adamant, and Corpse can tell he’s being honest, just as the tell-tale ringing in his ears knows the next words from Sean’s mouth are utter lies; “me on the other hand? Y/N whatever you do, do not listen to Corpse’s music, it’s just the worst.” Before the implication, the reality of what he’s saying sinks in, for just a moment, Corpse feels a rush of affection for Sean, so clearly and earnestly plugging his music, right before your voice re-joins the chat and Corpse remembers exactly who Sean is plugging his music to.

“Fuck you, J- Sean, I do what I want,” while you played along, amused and light, Corpse himself was at a loss for words. You ask him - him specifically, he knows, he knows with absolute certainty you’re asking him - if he’s a musician, and everyone else chimes in before he can even think about finding his voice.

“Don’t search him on Spotify! Don’t do it!” Sean, on the verge of laughter, seems delighted by the turn this conversation has taken as the sound of aggressive typing fills the chat from your end. What the fuck. What the fuck?! No matter his thoughts and opinions about you and your possible supernatural origins, you were still Y/N, literal Grammy winner and Golden Child from the Golden Age of YouTube, playing along as Sean used the world’s worst reverse psychology on you to get you to listen to his music. Oh fuck, this is not how today was meant to go.

“I don’t wanna hold up the game, I’ll listen as I play,” you tell them, almost painfully polite, though Ze agrees to start the next game. If Corpse’s mind wasn’t in the game before, there’s no way in hell it was now.

Three minutes into the first round and he’s failing miserably at card swipe when he chances a look at his chat; people were spamming lyrics from Miss YOU! and Cat Girls Are Ruining My Life! which was sweet but nerve wracking, since he’s pretty sure it means you’ve already listened to one and moved on to the next. If you’re an angel, and you know he’s an angel, what in the hell would you think of his music? Honestly, even if you weren’t an angel, you’re still you, and his music was... well...

When the first meeting is called, and it’s discovered that you’ve been murdered, there’s a strange sense of relief that comes with it, even as he’s being accused of your murder. He’s got a solid alibi, so they end up voting out Sean, and the game continues. Despite the brief reprieve from your possible judgement, his heart still feels as though it’s skittering erratically around his ribcage.

Rae comes along when he’s doing Simon Says, and shoots his little avatar. The moment he becomes a ghost, he lets out a long breath, giving himself a moment to relax, to collect his thoughts, catching back up with some questions with chat he hadn’t quite realised he’d been holding, and chances a look at his chat again.

“Of course I’m tense,” he finds himself musing quietly to his chat while the remaining players were arguing over the top of each other in a meeting, “pretty sure most of hyperfocus has been in my Spotify wrapped every year since it was released,” for a few moments, it doesn’t even occur to him what he’s said, or that he’s said it out loud, but when it hits him- oh, oh no, it feels like too much to admit, and he has no idea what to say next, how to backtrack, how to at least pretend like he doesn’t think about you or your music any more than any other person would. However much he may resent certain aspects of it, he still knows he has a reputation to uphold, and panic and denial have never been a part of his reputation.

So he keeps his mouth shut, bites down on the half-hearted excuses and explanations that keep springing to mind, keep pressing against his teeth. He does his tasks quietly, thanks the people donating, and pretend it never happened until the round ends, heart in his throat. He knows, the same way a human survivor in a zombie apocalypse movie knows, that he’s just putting off the inevitable, and that someone’s definitely already clipped it and is probably uploading it to Twitter or Tumblr faster than he could protest.

“Y/N I’m so sorry!” Sean’s the first one to talk when they’re back in the lobby, which leads to your laughter filling the voice chat, telling him it’s okay.

“I didn’t even care, honestly I was just vibing,” the smile in your voice is almost enough to distract from the strained edge to your words, something not quite right, but so faint Corpse isn’t sure if it was really there, and he’s not quite sure anyone else heard it either. Except -

“Y/N?” Sykkuno says your name like it means something that no-one but you and him can decipher, something concerned, almost a question, checking in without being too obvious.

“Yeah?” There’s that strained tone, just a little more audible this time, before you process who’s talking, how he’d said your name, and - “yeah,” firmer, calmer, a reassurance.

“Vibing?” And he says it like that was his question all along, like the two of you hadn’t had a full conversation in three words. When the others started asking about what you thought of the music, it’s clear none of them have picked up on the hint of strangeness that had been in your tone, and you deliberate before answering.

“Am I- is it- it’s weird if I quote it, isn’t it -?”

“Jacksepdicy how I whip that!” Sean practically yells into his microphone, cutting you off and somehow making the line sounding even more Irish than he himself did naturally, which startles a laugh from Corpse, “it’s my name in a song, I think about it daily,” he announces, voice oozing pride, and despite the situation and headspace he found himself in, Corpse feels his heart grow warm knowing that even a line like that had brought Sean joy.

“I thought,” you pause for a moment, presumably to double check which song you were about to reference, “I thought Miss YOU was a whole mood,” you admit, the faintest smile in your voice, and something tightens in Corpse’s chest at that.

“You not gonna quote it?” Rae teased.

“Too nervous to follow Sean,” you fired back.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get there one day, Y/N,” Sean laughs fondly, and you all joke around, playing up the bit, while Corpse’s mind is stuck on the fact that you never once addressed him when talking about his music. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it meant he didn’t have to deal with the sudden, fiery sensation your voice brought with it, so not bothered, persay, if anything he’s glad to know you liked it... But it’s weird that he knows so acutely -

“Hey,” and you don’t even say his name, but there’s that feeling again. Each time it grows less intense, like he’s been inoculated, and no instead of his nerves being ablaze, it’s as if he’s suddenly sitting beside a bonfire, each and every time you speak to him. The others voice their confusion at your sudden vaguness, but Corpse answers without even thinking, because of course he knows.

“Yeah?”

A few moments pass, while the others carry on amongst themselves for the moment. The two of you sit in this one moment together, neither quite sure how to feel about it.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” you point out, though there was only the barest him of the earlier strangeness in your voice, now overpowered by something that made it almost sound like you were pleased. At this, however, even more confusion arises when the others figure out that Corpse had ‘guessed’ correctly, that you’d been talking to him. But he can’t really hear them, or, well, he finds himself tuning them out, swallowing hard before he pushes to talk.

“Am I not allowed to enjoy the moment?” He asked, trying to ignore the weirdness of it all, keeping his tone light.

“I’m just surprised; it’s your music after all.”

“You like hearing my voice?” Despite the surprisingly cocky way with which he speaks, he regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth, wincing internally. Of all the people he could have said that to...

“I never said that,” and though your own tone matched his, something teasing, something that could almost be misconstrued as flirty in the right circumstances, he’d heard the faint thread of discomfort, feeling it all too much himself. But your words, and thankfully your tone, was overshadowed by both Sykkuno and Sean jumping in to assure Corpse that they enjoyed hearing his voice.

“If you and Y/N ever collaborated, you know it’d break the internet, right?” Rae interjects, all kinds of smug and knowing, followed by a chorus of approving voices all broke out in unison as the rest of the lobby considered the possibility.

“Rae, you know our Twitter mentions are going to be going off for the next month now, don’t you?” You groaned.

“Maybe it’s a sign!” Rae exclaimed, delighted, before her tone turns teasing and fond, “and besides, aren’t your mentions always going off?”

[ID: The first four posts on Y/N’s Tumblr dashboard.

blueheart-anon hearing y/n and sean interact again after like 3 years unlocked memories like im a fucking sleeper agent. having war flashbacks to 2017′s ‘y/n is septiplier’s kid’ phase. how do i lock the memories up again im going to die of embarrassment why were we like that [tagged: #y/n #y/n y/l/n #jacksepticeye #sean mcloughlin #i WILL NOT add the ship tag i mentioned #blue talks] [7 notes] [▶️🗩↪️🖤]

fangloriousbastard ↪️fangloriousbastard fangloriousbastard Rae: Y/N & Corpse Collab When? Y/N: 🔪 - fangloriousbastard Y/N IMMEDIATELY MURDERING RAE AND THEN CORPSE I- - fangloriousbastard Y/N MUTTERING THE JACKSEPDICY LYRIC WHILE MURDERING HIM WTF IS HAPPENING?? - fangloriousbastard SYKKUNO NO BBY IM SO WORRIED - fangloriousbastard Y/N IM BEGGING U TO STOP SAYING CORPSE LYRICS BEFORE U KILL UR FRIENDS - fangloriousbastard WAIT WHAT Y/N AND SYKKUNO BOTH VOTING FOR THEMSELVES INSTEAD OF EACH OTHER - fangloriousbastard “ride or die guess im gonna die” y/N PLEASE U MET HIM YESTERDAY - fangloriousbastard y/n’s still listening to corpse’s music we love to see it - fangloriousbastard WAIT NO ZE KILLED SYKKUNO IN FRONT OF THEM AND THEY WON OMG SO MUCH IS HAPPENING DID THESE MOTHERFUCKERS QUOTE AN ACTUAL THE OFFICE MEME AT EACH OTHER - fangloriousbastard Y/N: YOU KILLED MY BOY Ze: you’ve known him A Day! Y/N: you don’t have all the facts Ze: which are? Y/N: I love him. Y/N: Not in a weird, shippy way tho, but like, come on, man, look at him! Sykkuno’s avatar: 🌱 👁👄👁 Sykkuno irl: 🥰 - fangloriousbastard ahem anyways corpse & y/n collab when? - y/n 🔪❤️ - fangloriousbastard 👁👄👁 - fangloriousbastard aren’t you supposed to be streaming?? [tagged: #HEWWO??? #among us lb #why do i only remember they’re following me when i post outrageously stupid content #btw y/n if u kill sean again i’ll cry] [43 notes] [▶️🗩↪️❤️]

fyahproof-y/n ↪️ selkiey/n selkiey/n y/n’s explicit ‘i love him but not in a weird shippy way’ is the LOUDEST fandom vague i’ve ever heard in my life [286 notes] [▶️🗩↪️❤️]

crpshsbnd ↪️ 221b-theres-a-bee crpshsbnd hope corpse is feeling okay he’s been kinda quiet this stream - 221b-theres-a-bee if someone suggested i make music with a grammy award winning artist i might be kind of quiet too - crpshsbnd asjdskldfjkdsf u right, still, hope that’s the reason. [tagged: #how do i always forget they won a grammy #actually i know why i keep forgetting #because every time i remember they won a grammy i remember the video where they jousted corndogs with joe sugg #and the winner had to deepthroat theirs for the camera #and y/n won but felt like an asshole for making joe deepthroat his corndog alone #and they ended up almost throwing up because they went too far with it #so hot #so talented #so very stupid sometimes] [3 notes] [▶️🗩↪️🖤]

Twitter is kind of a hellscape, Corpse decides, scrolling through his notifications as the stream’s winding down, seeing about a thousand different people tagging both you and him, asking for a collab, or seeing fit to show you both every single time one of you had mentioned the other in stream. Or had simply interacted. He’s not quite sure how to feel about hearing you mutter ‘make it rain, leave her wet, like a snowflake’. Unsurprisingly, a considerable few people had thought to clip the interaction where he’d apparently instinctively known you were talking to him, which he thoroughly regrets. There’s enough speculation about him online already, he doesn’t need people cluing into the fact that he might not be entirely human as well.

So now, he’s sitting idle in the lobby of the game as everyone’s thanking each other, discussing when they might get together to stream again; he’s quiet, disconnected from it all even though he knows he’s still live, he can’t help but stare at his phone, frown at your Twitter profile. You’re not following each other. A lot of his friends follow you, are mutuals with you, but you and he are not following each other, and he’s not sure if he’d like to change that. But it would make sense, right? It’s what’s expected.

Your pinned tweet is the single you released yesterday, which he still hasn’t listened to. The cover is cute; you’re - fuck. He refreshes the page. In the few moments since he’d clicked on your profile and now, you’d tweeted, thanking everyone for joining the stream, while you’re still in his ear, alongside everyone else, distinctly not addressing him. Maybe he should DM you, be upfront, ask about what you are, if his suspicions are true.

He hits the back button and goes back to scrolling through his mentions.

“Hey.” Your voice, soft and earnest despite that warmth that crackles through him; he’s half distracted, hand moving instinctively to push-to-talk, and -

“Yeah?” God fucking damn it. Not again. He’s really gotta stop answering on instinct just because he knows you’re talking to him. He hates that he knows.

“Good to meet you, Corpse,” and there was a strange sincerity in your voice, and he responds in kind, but his heart’s not in it. There’s too much on his mind, too conflicted in his heart to tell the truth; his own words makes his ears ring. He can’t even lie to himself.

So he says his goodbyes, waits for the lobby to clear out and chatters away to his stream about when he might be on next. Upon ending the stream, he immediately opens the latest email from his producer, his latest project glaring back at him from the screen.

Yes, his various ailments have his body aching, but the interactions he’s had with you are giving him a headache when he thinks too hard about them, and he feels woefully unproductive. Never Satisfied stares back at him, so close to being finished, mocking him. Scowling harder, he listens to what he has so far, making tweaks and notes, glad for the distraction, glad that his producer had as chaotic of a sleep schedule as he did. This was the home stretch; one more all-nighter and it would finally be done.

He texts Heartful that he’s getting to work.

It’s four in the morning when he finally stops for a break, his good eye starting to itch from staring at a screen for so long. With a yawn, he leans forward, out of his chair, groaning as he straightens up to a mostly standing position. Hands braced against the edge of his desk, he lets out a resigned sigh and wills his wings into existence. The weight of them curled up tight against his back, as was customary for them to be when non-corporeal, has him leaning a little further forward. Another yawn and he lets them uncurl, lets them stretch out behind him, knocking over an empty microphone stand as they went. He’d get that later. A grateful groan escapes him, it’s been far too long since he’d even had a half-assed stretch like this, wings helping to stretch all the aching muscles in his back that were simply impossible to stretch otherwise, no matter how much he’d twist. Even so, his studio wasn’t big enough to properly stretch them, and he really didn’t feel like laying on his living room floor right now; he’s kind of concerned he’d just fall asleep there. Instead, he kicks his chair to the side and hits shuffle on one of his Spotify playlists, doing what he can for himself in the limited space, and finally going to forage through his cupboards for something resembling a meal. Maybe drink water, Rae’s damn voice in his head.

At least with his wings around he didn’t need to bother turning on any lights; he’s gotta find joy in the little things.

Today, or well, the past twenty-four hours, was a series of cruel jokes, he decides, all leading to the moment he curls up his wings and sits back down at his desk. The moment he puts his headphones back on, he’s greeted by your voice, and he almost jumps a foot in the air, concerned that you’d called him.

"- who I became, dreading when the music stops, what if I just fade away?” In the split second he’s realised that it was just a song, just your voice, crooning, gentle and sad against a soft beat and the sound of rain, as i’m going through some stuff playing in his ears, it’s too late. Already his aura had gone off, and his computer cuts out, as his monitor cuts to darkness, so suddenly all he can see is his own, exhausted reflection in the monitor, backlit by his own wings... Not exactly flattering.

Thankfully, it was only his computer that was affected, as he can still hear his refrigerator humming in the other room, so he wedges himself beneath his desk to reset the breaker for the power board that his whole system was connected to, grumbling to himself the whole time.

If he was being honest, however, he was glad he didn’t have to hear more than a few seconds of your song. For a long time it had been one of his favourites, though at this point he’d rather die than admit that. Yes, it’s a good song, but it’s the last thing he needs to hear right now. If he listened to you voice half the fears he still tried to ignore, well right now it may kill him, and he was so close to being finished with Never Satisfied. So close.

Instead, he gives himself the moment in which his system is rebooting to scroll through Twitter and Instagram on his phone, checking his mentions for good fanart to appreciate, only to stumble across one of your stan accounts tagging both you and him in a clip that he hadn’t seen earlier. He’s not sure what possesses him to click it.

“Don’t follow me baby, swear I’m going to hell,” Corpse’s own words leave your lips as you’re focused on the game, on being imposter, leading Sykkuno into electrical to fix lights, and something about it sounds wrong and he can’t quite put his finger on it. He’d heard other lines of his leave your mouth, clips from the stream he’d been tagged in, and it always manages to surprise him. When you sing his songs, even just a little bit, something in the back of his mind, something that had appreciated you as an artist all this time, it’s grateful, it’s excited, it’s overwhelmed. He wouldn’t deny that part of himself, he couldn’t, it didn’t feel right, but upon hearing this line, that grateful part was overshadowed by a visceral bitterness.

The line had been a moment of self deprecation, the only Angel he knew of who, granted it was by some of his own choices, was almost certainly going to Hell, if you believe in that sort of thing of course. But you? Every single part of you seemed to be the exact antithesis to him; you’re what an Angel should be, and him? Well, the line said it all really. It’s just... it feels like you’re mocking him at every turn now that he knows, or well, strongly suspects. With evidence. Which you’re probably not; if you’re an Angel, you wouldn’t go out of your way to mock another angel, so now he’s all in his head, frustrated at himself for being frustrated at you for just... liking his song?

He really should message you about earlier, clear things up, get out of his own mind and stop jumping to conclusions. Finding another angel was big, no matter his personal reservations, he should try and take this opportunity, right? Except that you hadn’t reached out to him either.

Damn it; he knows he needs to stop thinking about you and focus on his own shit. He turns off his phone and gently tosses it to the floor, out of sight out of mind.

Maybe he’ll feel better when he finishes his song, feel more productive, feel... complete for just a few moments. Maybe he’d stop comparing himself to you. Maybe.

[ID: Two tweets, one from @sp00kybihh, and one from @yourtwitter, followed by a retweet and reply conversation between @ashton5sos, @yourtwitter, and @y/nirwin.

@sp00kybihh: why did y/n’s smile every time corpse just knew they were talking to him without them having to say anythign make me feel things?? u no we love day 1 ride-or-die y/nkunno, but corpse & y/n just seem to get each other wtf 🥺🥺

@yourtwitter: australians are asleep post forbidden youngblood cover

(Thumbnail of Y/N sitting in front of the camera, dressed casually, visible from the chest up. There is a black microphone on a stand in front of them that they’re holding. Their mouth is open, as if halfway through singing, their eyes are closed, their background is a simple, white wall. Above Y/N, in black, VCR font, is the word ‘youngblood’. There is a large play button in blue and white in the middle of the thumbnail, to indicate that it is a link to a video.

Link: youngblood - 5 seconds of summer | y/n y/l/n cover i miss my boys. i miss people. thank you 5sos for being cool about me covering this <3</i> twitter: @yourtwitter 🔗youtube.com)

@ashton5sos retweeted the link and commented: Y/N you said it was gonna be low effort, this is killer! All it’s missing is some drums. Reminds me, I’m still sad we never got to record that thing we wrote in New York. | @yourtwitter: ASHTON IT IS 8AM I HAVE HAD NO SLEEP AND WAS NOT EXPECTING SUCH A QUICK RESPONSE I WOULD DIE FOR YOU | @yourtwitter: also lmfao i forgot about that ny thing that was good, from what i remember. do u still have that recording of us?? i may or may not have forgotten everything about that night apart from it being a blast #bringbacknewyork | @ashton5sos: Calum has it but also its 2am and he’s asleep, which you should also do. You know the boys are gonna love this... #bringbacknewyork | @y/nirwin: thank u both i have decided to pass away effective immediately #bringbacknewyork

End ID.]

#corpse #corpse husband #corpse husband imagine #corpse imagine #corpse x reader #corpse husband x reader #sykkuno #jacksepticeye #valkyrae #how the light gets in #shut ur pretty mouth #cyltlanp

305 notes · View notes

jikookuntold · 3 years

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Jungkook and His Cover Songs: Is “10000 Hours” about Jimin?

Disclaimer: The following post includes theories, lyric and numeric analysis, plus my personal opinions, so please don’t take anything seriously. I’m too lazy to upload photos and videos for the moments I mentioned here, but I’m sure you know about them all. Any Jikooker must know. And I’m not Korean or a Korean culture expert, I just know as much as any Stan Twitter ARMY knows about their culture.

Anyone?

Maybe one of the biggest Jikook moments of 2021 so far, is where Jimin jumped into Jungkook’s hug, in Lee Hyun’s Vlog. But the other moment on that Vlog was even more significant; Jungkook was singing “Anyone” from Justin Bieber’s new album, and Jimin was harmonizing with him while holding on his shirt. I don’t want to mention their interview moment singing “Peaches” because I know this song is super popular in South Korea right now and somehow it doesn’t count as a moment. But it’s safe to say that Jikook has something special with his songs, and JK in particular always was invested in him.

JK & JB

The reason behind Jungkook’s devotion to Justin Bieber was always a big question for me, and I got my answer not long time ago. Jungkook’s playlist for Melon Radio Station included a song from JB’s new album named “Lonely”. This is one of the most personal songs any artist can ever make, and JK recommended it to his audience. Here are the lyrics of “Lonely” by Justin Bieber:

Everybody knows my name now

But somethin' 'bout it still feels strange

Like lookin' in a mirror, tryna steady yourself

And seein' somebody else

And everything is not the same now

It feels like all our lives have changed

Maybe when I'm older, it'll all calm down

But it's killin' me now

What if you had it all, but nobody to call?

Maybe then you'd know me

'Cause I've had everything

But no one's listening

And that's just lonely

I'm so lonely, lonely

Everybody knows my past now

Like my house was always made of glass

And maybe that's the price you pay

For the money and fame at an early age

And everybody saw me sick

And it felt like no one gave

They criticized the things I did as an idiot kid

What if you had it all, but nobody to call?

Maybe then you'd know me

'Cause I've had everything

But no one's listening

And that's just lonely

These lyrics made me think of one specific thing, the thing that JK and JB have in common: They started their careers at a very young age, and their lives have been under the scrutiny of so many people. These people judged and criticized them but never tried to understand them. The lyrics are straightforward and leave no place for interpretation. By recommending this song, JK showed that he had (and probably still has) the same experiences in his life, and I think the reason he recommends or covers JB’s songs more than any other artist is that he has many things in common with him, and feels connected to his songs.

This can lead us to another theory: By covering a Justin Bieber song, Jungkook shares something about himself with us, something that he can’t express directly.

Jungkook is interested in JB’s songs, but he is not the only one. As I said earlier in this post, Jimin shares the same taste with Jungkook, and my receipt is not just that “Anyone” or “Peaches” harmonizing moments, but also Jimin’s Spotify playlists. Since 2017 (or earlier, I’m not sure about this part) he has added some JB songs to his official playlist, and even his current playlist (July 2021) has two JB songs. And also let’s not forget the fact that Jikook as a subunit started in 2014 with a JB cover. Yes, I’m talking about “Mistletoe” and as you may know, Jimin translated the lyrics of this song to Korean.

10000 Hours

Nearly 700 words and I haven’t started yet! The subject of this post was supposed to be the connections between “10000 hours” cover and Jikook but this prelude was necessary to clarify all the aspects of the topic and we find out how JB is special for JK and Jimin and how they (especially Jungkook) feel connected to him. Anyways, back to 10000 hours:

Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber released this Grammy winner song in October 2019. Here are the lyrics:

Do you love the rain, does it make you dance

When you're drunk with your friends at a party

What's your favorite song, does it make you smile

Do you think of me?

When you close your eyes, tell me, what are you dreamin'?

Everything, I wanna know it all

I'd spend ten thousand hours and ten thousand more

Oh, if that's what it takes to learn that sweet heart of yours

And I might never get there, but I'm gonna try

If it's ten thousand hours or the rest of my life

I'm gonna love you

Do you miss the road that you grew up on?

Did you get your middle name from your grandma?

When you think about your forever now, do you think of me?

When you close your eyes, tell me, what are you dreamin'?

Everything, I wanna know it all

I'd spend ten thousand hours and ten thousand more

Oh, if that's what it takes to learn that sweet heart of yours

And I might never get there, but I'm gonna try

If it's ten thousand hours or the rest of my life

I'm gonna love you

Ooh, want the good and the bad and everything in between

Ooh, gotta cure my curiosity

Ooh, yeah

I'd spend ten thousand hours and ten thousand more

Oh, if that's what it takes to learn that

Sweet heart of yours

And I might never get there, but I'm gonna try

If it's ten thousand hours or the rest of my life

I'm gonna love you

And I'm gonna love you

As you can see, the lyrics are 100% romantic, and the singers including JB, have dedicated this song to their lovers. Also, their girlfriends/wives have a cameo in the MV, which leaves no place for speculation for the context of the song: Even though the uncertainties always exist and no one knows about the future, our love is strong and will stay strong regardless of time.

The Cover and the Theories

Nearly one year later, on July 28th, 2020, Jungkook surprised ARMYs with a short video he tweeted at 11:56 AM. That video was a 49 seconds cover of 10000 hours. A few minutes later, he deleted the tweet (apparently with the advertisement excuses, because it was tweeted from an iPhone and they have a contract with Samsung). Later that night, Jungkook released the full version on Sound Cloud and tweeted the link at 11:47 PM.

Jikookers discovered numerous theories that day about the times of both tweets; if you add the digits of the time, the result is “13” for both tweets 1+1+4+7=13, 1+1+5+6=13, and as you already know “13” is Jikook’s magic number. Also, the first video he tweeted was 49 seconds and 4+9=13. But in my opinion, this theory is not strong. I know that numerology is very popular in Korean culture but still, all of this can be coincidences, but the other things I’m going to bring up are most likely not.

28th July 2020 was the 7th anniversary of the first Jikook selca posted after debut. This also might be a coincidence and to be honest, it cannot be a strong link to make a connection with Jikook, but worths sharing.

The next thing that many Jikookers also pointed out, was related to the title of the song. The lyrics say “10000 hours and 10000 more” and 20000 hours after the 28th of July is 8th November 2022. As you may know. Jikookers believe November 8th is a significant date for Jikook. I believe this can be a coincidence either, and it’s very unlikely of Jungkook to do such calculations (Koreans are interested in numbers when it comes to days and dates, but counting hours is not usual in any culture. Other than that, I’m still doubtful about the origins of the November 8th theory because we have nothing other than two tweets and G.C.F Tokyo release date and their hotel room in Tokyo which still can be coincidental). But I don’t deny these theories because even as a coincidence, it’s still very interesting.

And the next theory is connected to the “Red Moon”. On 27th July 2018, a total lunar eclipse happened all over the world, which became known as the red moon. At that time, BTS were in Malta, and on the same night, Jikook were watching the red moon on a boat. They shared plenty of photos and videos of that moment and I’m sure as a Jikooker you have seen them all and you know that night had a very romantic mood (BigHit words, not mine) for Jikook. So, a second anniversary for that night and the day after that night can be a significant date to release a very romantic cover. Is this a coincidence too? I think we had many of them already.

And last but not least is something connected to Korean culture. You probably know that 1000 days anniversaries are very important for Koreans and they celebrate them along with real anniversaries of the important dates in their lives. And guess what? 27th July 2020 is 1000 days after 31 October 2017. This day is the day Jikook’s travel to Tokyo ended and they posted their couply mirror selca on Twitter with flower bouquet emoji. Despite the one-day difference (the same case for the red moon anniversary), this is not a minor event or small coincidence. I believe Jungkook posted “10000 hour” cover for this reason and based on this, the other theories I mentioned earlier can be true either.

The lyrics hit different if you read them again, after knowing this fact. Right? I don’t want to make this post much longer but before wrapping up, I want to talk about the lyrics of “Anyone” by JB (the song Jikook were harmonizing in Lee Hyun’s Vlog):

Dance with me under the diamonds

See me like breath in the cold

Sleep with me here in the silence

Come kiss me, silver and gold

You say that I won't lose you

But you can't predict the future

So, just hold on like you will never let go

Yeah, if you ever move on without me

I need to make sure you know that

You are the only one I'll ever love

(I gotta tell ya, gotta tell ya)

Yeah, you, if it's not you, it's not anyone

(I gotta tell ya, gotta tell ya)

Looking back on my life

You're the only good I've ever done (ever done)

Yeah, you, if it's not you, it's not anyone (anyone)

Not anyone

Forever's not enough time to (oh)

Love you the way that I want (love you the way that I want)

'Cause every morning I find you (oh)

I fear the day that I don't

You say that I won't lose you

But you can't predict the future

'Cause certain things are out of our control

Yeah, if you ever move on without me

I need to make sure you know that

You are the only one I'll ever love

Only one (I gotta tell ya, gotta tell ya)

Yeah, you, if it's not you it's not anyone

(I gotta tell ya, gotta tell ya)

Looking back on my life

You're the only good I've ever done (I've ever done)

Yeah, you, if it's not you, it's not anyone

It's not anyone, not anyone

Oh, oh, oh, oh

If it's not you, it's not anyone

Oh, oh, oh, yeah, whoa

Yeah, you are the only one I'll ever love

(I gotta tell ya, gotta tell ya)

Yeah, you, if it's not you, it's not anyone

(I gotta tell ya, gotta tell ya) gotta tell ya

Looking back on my life

You're the only good I've ever done (ever done, oh, yeah)

Yeah, you, if it's not you, it's not anyone

If you read the lyrics, you will notice that the context is very similar to “10000 hours”. It talks about the uncertainties of a beautiful love or in other words: No matter what the future brings to us, this love will last forever.

This context of uncertainty and unknown future for a romance is a common concept in many of the songs Jungkook has covered and it’s not limited to the Justin Bieber covers he has done and maybe this concept can be the topic for my next analysis.

#jikook #jikookanalysis #jimin #jungkook

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cardentist · 4 years

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I’m relatively new to the marble hornets fandom, but one thing I’ve noticed is that people don’t seem to realize just How affected jay was (by the operator and by the investigation in general) and how early on it started. which I really think is relevant when people point out some of jay’s apparent Poor Decision Making. this is Definitely because of how deemphasized it is in the show itself (Especially season 1) but you really can get a feel for it when you go digging.

I’ve talked before about how it’s Very Likely that jay already had some form of ptsd by the start of the series (Link) but what gives us the clearest picture of jay’s health is actually his twitter account. (Link) If you’ve never taken the time to read it before then I Highly suggest scrolling down to the bottom and working your way through, it’s a surprisingly fast read! but for the purposes of this post I made a Highlight Reel of really anything I saw that was relevant to either jay’s mental health, his physical health, or his obsession with the case that you can see in full here: (Link)

I’ll be using the most Pressing screenshots from that post to make my point here, but you really do get the full Effect scrolling through.

putting a readmore down to hopefully not spam people with screenshots ljksfad Warning for spoilers, talk of chronic illness, eating issues, difficulty with unreality, and other various mental and physical health issues

just as a note: this is going to have a Lot of focus on season 1 because this is where a lot of jay’s issues are established. I definitely have a Lot to say about the other two seasons but I won’t report on every instance where he’s paranoid or sick, I’ll be focusing more on the extremes!

looking through the whole series, videos tweets and all, it becomes Very apparent that jay has a Consistent pattern of behavior where he fixates on the investigation (and the people affected by it) to the detriment of his own health and safety. from the more mundane (digging through hundreds of hours worth of footage to exhaustion) to the more Extreme (following alex into the abandoned building Knowing he’s dangerous and that he’s probably going to hurt him because he Might find some answers).

(which on that note, while it’s definitely due in no small part to the influence of the operator and the extreme stress of the situation, you could pretty easily interpret jay with adhd, hyperfixating on research and video making.)

while I knew I’d find that going in, but I wasn’t expecting it to be hammered in so Quickly. this was posted the Second Day after his twitter had gone up

this continues, with jay occasionally mentioning how tired he is from compiling entries, feeling disorganized, and not being able to sleep in between him actively posting about sifting through tapes on a near daily basis. Then in july he starts actively getting Sick

104 fever, not well enough to work for Three Days. and there’s no telling how long it’d been building up without him noticing until then. he mentions being sick throughout august for long stretches of time (at least a solid week once), and it only gets worse from there

And something of note here, while he Does mention when he’s feeling particularly awful sometimes, for the most part he mentions his health when it affects his ability to go through and post about the tapes. there’s no telling just how frequently he was sick or exhausted when it Wasn’t worth mentioning. He only mentioned the results of the doctor’s visit a week later after he was specifically asked about it

and it’s Very apparent that whatever’s going on is Pretty Severe

it’s after this point that he largely stops giving us specific updates on how sick he feels, but it’s also still very clear that he is sick. he mentions how out of it he is or how Bad a week’s been after he goes long stretches without updates. and he’s still going to the doctors in November

that leaves me with the impression that things haven’t improved, he’s just stopped mentioning it. he tried getting help for it with no luck, the sickness didn’t stop so there wasn’t much more he could do about it besides adapt. while I’m certain that his health would fluctuate over the course of the show, I don’t believe he stopped getting sick. tim’s sickness never really went away, and jay was bad enough by the end of the series that he was having seizures like he was (there’s really no telling if that was his first or if it was just the first time it’d been Caught).

so from here on out it’s a safe guess that everything jay does is with backdrop of sickness and exhaustion.

then, of course, this is where jay starts being more open about his paranoia (which has certainly been an undercurrent for a while now)

also of note: this isn’t the first time he’s mentioned having a difficult time trying to keep things straight in his head and it won’t be the last. he was already starting to doubt his memories and his senses back in 2009.

moreover, paranoia and fear (and possibly fixation) about the situation has him holling up in his house, to the point that he’s running out of food. how long has this been an issue? and if it’s an issue in 2009, then just how bad is it going to be when he’s running himself in and out of hotels too afraid to stay in one location? how often has he been forgetting to eat while burying himself in tapes and fear?

whether it’s from the operator, his slipping memory, the results of fixating on his work for as long as he has, his frequent sickness, the paranoia, or any combination therein, we can add brain fog to the list

and again, a case for jay’s fixation on finding answer. he wakes up in his house with no memory of how he got there, confused and in pain, digs through the footage on his camera, and has the entry up the same day. this was the point where he’d visited brian’s house again, only to be teleported around and meet the operator face to face. he says in the entry that he’s never going back to the house again, that he’s done with the case, but well.

much further down the timeline jay would say that he had no idea what he was doing with his life before he started down this rabbit hole, that he was miserable and directionless and alone. He didn’t know what he would do with himself when all of this was over, he just knew that while he was taking the case on he was at least doing Something. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this was always true, that part of his obsession with it was tied to feeling absolutely nothing for his life without it.

and sure enough, a week later and we get the idea that his paranoia is only getting worse, followed by him breaking and going back to search through the footage.

He posts more about his paranoia in february, but it’s in march that he’s scared out of his house by totheark only to have his apartment burned down. he only seems to learn about this march 24th, and he uploads the entry with the news footage on the 25th

while it’s true that he seemed to have taken a break after that upload, he’s back again on 4th with the cryptic text message. It’s between then and the 18th that he’d start his Long tradition of hotel hopping.

the final entry for season 1 is up the next day. We can’t know for sure exactly how truthful jay was when he said he was feeling better in entry 26, operator sickness tends to fluctuate with exposure just like any other mental illness. what we Can say is that jay got exactly 10 days of quiet between his apartment burning down and alex contacting him again, and after he was contacted he was afraid enough to start hotel hopping.

if 10 days is what jay merrick describes as a break, then my god. the implication that in an entire year jay merrick hadn't gone a 10 day stretch without looking at the tapes is, Something.

this is where things take a real shift, both in the narrative and in jay’s tweeting patterns! this is the period where jay went radio silent working with alex for 7 months, only to forget everything. the only insight we have on how he was doing at this point is what came before, and the tapes he’d uncover in season 2. my best educated guess is to say that he is doing Not Great.

it’s of course after the operator wiped his and jessica’s memories that he starts up tweeting again, he doesn’t remember why he stopped at this point after all. but he’s also far less talkative between entries. in the beginning especially we’d Hear when he was sick, when he wasn’t sleeping, because he’d update frequently enough that he felt the need to explain when he wasn’t able to. this change is most likely due both in part to not feeling safe enough to be as talkative publically anymore, and on his focus on figuring out what’s going on.

that’s not to say that we don’t get Anything from this time period however.

we get quite a lot of talk about lack of sleep, exhaustion, etc throughout the beginning of the year. insomnia and jay staying up late to work on entries is to be expected, but this is the first time that we hear about jay Oversleeping. I’d say he’s long overdue for it considering how much he’s gone through at this point (and for how long), though it’s Also notable as possibly being a symptom of either illness or depression that we Aren’t hearing about.

this one just makes me sad

it’s Relatively quiet after this, with jay making light commentary here and there. the general vibe is that he’s hard at work when, of course, entry 32 comes along.

jay just Stops after jessica is taken. he doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t even start looking through the tapes for over three weeks. he couldn’t keep himself away from the tapes for that long after he was face to face with the monster or after his house was burned down. that says more about his state of mind than anything else could have.

there’s some mentions of possible sleep issues and jay feeling paranoid (more specifically, not feeling safe anywhere at all), but things don’t Really pick up until march

jay tries to upload entry 37 throughout the day, but no matter what he does he can’t remember the password for the account. this continues on into the 22 Until

“enttry #37“ is uploaded the next day, the footage of alex’s birthday, it’s linked on his twitter, and then six days later

He posts about how the footage he’d found earlier was deleted on his laptop and how he needs to get back Fast. he takes a rest stop on the 30th to charge his laptop and look through the red tower one more time to make sure he didn’t miss anything. and then Nothing until

he doesn’t get back for nearly an entire Week. now, it’s important to mention that there’s been speculation that this was going to be where the original skully reveal would take place, which is believable enough. but whether or not that’s what it was Going to be, the implications with what we have Now are, troubling to say the least. we’ll probably never know exactly what happened here but It’s Not Good. what did he eat? what did he drink? how did he sleep? Poorly, I’d Imagine.

this may also be what his earlier brain fog was leading into. losing track of the days of the week turning into losing track of the days entirely. but we’ll never know for sure

after this we actually get quite a lot about jay’s general discomfort, paranoia, memory loss, and regret scattered over the months. none of it is specific but a lot of it is tied directly to his discomfort with the tapes, which has turned into a constant with every upload. we can certainly tell that he isn’t doing well, but this message is particularly notable because it mentions a specific symptom that we haven’t seen before.

at this point jay’s paranoia and anxiety is bad enough that he can’t sit in silence anymore, and if he’s mentioning it so casually now it’s likely been an issue for a while. jay doesn’t tell us everything, and there’s almost certainly worse that hasn’t been said.

jay has Significant problems with sleeping throughout august that seep into september, to the point that he calls it “worse than usual.” but this is overtaken by his horror at entry 49. jay censored alex beating a man’s head in, but he had to watch it unedited, and it clearly took his toll. he didn’t even want to share it but ultimately decided that the world needed to have it if anything happened to him. but that wasn’t the end of it.

he spends nearly the entire month trying to find Any sign of who this man was. this is a specific aspect of jay’s personality that I think gets overshadowed by the perception of him as stupid. what he is is overworked, over his head, and impulsive, but he’s not stupid. but this is an Excellent example of jay’s dedication (bleeding into obsession).

this is obviously speculation on my part, but I think you can read this two ways (or a mix of them both): either jay is worried that something about the operator wiped away the man’s existence (like being taken made people forget about him somehow). Or he’s motivated by guilt, feeling responsible for having been there the day the man got crunched only to run away, desperately looking for any sign that Somebody had bothered to care about him.

things are relatively quiet after this until just after entry 50

something jay’s mental health really doesn’t need: more evidence of people breaking and entering while he’s asleep. what’s interesting here is that he went much quieter after this, just a handful of tweets relating directly to the next entry. I think you could either read jay being less open about how he’s doing on twitter as him being Well Aware that the people who want to hurt him (or who he Thinks want to hurt him in the case of hoodie and masky) have access to it, and in part because he’s doing so much Worse now.

the end of season two that the start of season three, of course, brings tim back into jay’s life and with it a Much needed distraction from his fear and paranoia. we’ll never know how jay reacted to the news that alex had tried to kill him in the moment, but we do know that it shifted his mindset from passively digging through the old tapes to actively trying to hunt alex down. tim was a Living Breathing lead, something he could actually Grasp Onto. and in light of what was likely something Very horrific that became a new fixation for jay.

he’d live blog about looking for tim from november 28th to march 8th, this was the most active he’d ever been on twitter and I think it absolutely speaks to how desperate he was for this to go somewhere. he even got to do some breaking and entering ! that said, having a distraction didn’t mean that there weren't a few noteworthy.

jay’s Current lack of trust is what’s going to lead to his and tim’s blowout later on. we can’t know how tim would’ve reacted if jay had been honest from the beginning (and it honestly would’ve gone poorly anyways), but tim’s confrontation with jay was honestly using his anger at being lied to as an outlet for the horror he felt at learning the truth of what’d been going on. he definitely would’ve still been angry and hurt, but he wouldn’t have had a direction for that anger. they might’ve started working together sooner.

however at this point jay doesn’t know who wants to hurt him and who doesn’t, he doesn’t feel safe talking to strangers on the street, let alone someone he already knew stalked him for two years. both of their reactions are understandable, and you can see the collision course coming when you step back far enough.

jay is Very quiet about what’s going on with him at this point. there are a few updates about his general paranoia and fear as well as him live tweeting about things relevant to the plot (thinking about coming clean to tim, posting tweets and pictures of trying to find tim after hoodie stole his medication, solving the totheark code that troy forgot to post a key for), but there’s only a handful of standout tweets that give us something new about his mental health scattered throughout the series.

this absolutely does not mean that he’s in a better place of mind, but what it does mean is that he’s being less open about it. tim didn’t know just how bad jay was and he’d been living with him. the fact that we have less to work with at this point is more an indication that he doesn’t feel safe sharing anymore (he hasn’t for a while) and a possible sign that he’s already gone into denial about his health (not wanting to connect it to the operator because of what that’d mean for him).

that said, we can take a look at what’s left for us.

this is from after jay had tim take him to the abandoned hospital for the first time and before the entry of it went up. this is notable because it’s one of if not the first time that it’s been directly stated that buildings associated with the operator can cause sickness. that or we can infer that the operator was actively strengthening its influence on them at the time (which might’ve also contributed to both of their irritability in the entry itself).

I don’t think this is notable because this is jay’s First nightmare, but rather I think it’s notable for him because his memory of it is totally gone. it’d make sense why this’d scare him at this point considering well, the entire series of marble hornets. but it does raise the question of how many more nightmares Weren’t worth sharing to him and how often they contributed to his sleeping problems.

next it’s worth noting that entry 67 messed jay up a lot. likely because it was solid evidence that alex was out there actively hunting them down (and just how close tim had gotten to being taken after he’d been throttled by the operator). He ends up posting about it Twice, as opposed to his previous strategy of not at all.

now finally, Finally. I’d like to talk about jay’s state of mind leading into his death. lets start with the timeline

jay doesn’t say anything at all between entry 74 and entry 75. tim had been running the account while jay was out of it, but jay had come to at least by august first, entry 75 was posted august 23rd. this is jay, and he has absolutely nothing to say.

he’s only just come out of his zombie state, he’s stolen the tape from tim (after trying to give him the chance to come clean), and he’s run off. we don’t get anything else out of him until september 3rd.

jay’s waited almost 2 weeks not only to watch the tape, but to even say anything at all. in my opinion? I think he’s afraid to not have anyone left to trust, let alone tim. he wouldn’t have given tim so much time to come clean himself otherwise, he wouldn’t be afraid of even looking at the tape otherwise. part of it is the sting of having his trust betrayed before, of closing himself off, and then trying to trust again. part of it is that he genuinely cared about tim. he wants to believe in tim, and he’s making it absolutely clear here.

it took him another 9 days to work up the courage to watch the tape, a full 20 days since the entry showing he got the tape was posted (and possibly longer, since we don’t know how long the video took to make). he was That afraid of not being able to trust tim anymore. of course, we know now that what’d actually get to him was realizing that jessica was gone. he’s mentioned before that he blamed himself for jessica being taken. that was what’d kept him going for years at this point and now she’s just, Gone. Gone For Good Gone.

the specific timeline here is a little harder to sus out. the gaps between some entries are too long to really make sense and what we’re getting on twitter aren’t as overt as they have been before. but here’s my best attempt to straighten it out.

jay sits on this for roughly a month, likely trying to process something that he’d used as a crutch to help him keep going bursting into smoke and grieving for someone he doesn’t really know but that he’d cared deeply for anyways. it eventually reached the point where the events of entry 82. he desperately goes back to the tunnel, the last place he saw jessica go in the video, for any last trace of her, any sign that she could still be alive, and doesn’t find any. he tries to reach out to tim, he tells him that he’s seeing things, that the world is shifting around him, that he’s sorry and that he understands why tim did what he did.

we don’t get an insight in what this month was like for jay, but it’s clear that he had a steady decline. he’s scared, he’s alone, he knows he needs help. and then the operator takes him. we never see exactly what happens to him after the seizure, and with the montages we’ve seen from tim’s titty cam it really could’ve been anything. but whatever it was it was enough to change jay’s entire attitude.

this is the last thing that jay posts before entry 77 goes up. it’s hard to say when this was posted for sure, because 77 was up 3 days later on the 16th, but I think it has to take place after jay was assaulted by the operator. jay thought he could call tim beforehand, we saw him try on video, and there’d be no reason to try to contact him through twitter if he knew he had an easier way. what this tells us is that jay woke up after the operator attack, tried to call him an unknown number of times, failed to reach him because the operator was still blocking his calls on tim’s end, tried to reach tim through twitter, and Then went out to try to confront tim likely believing that tim was intentionally trying to avoid him.

that mental image alone hurts me, but this means that even after everything jay was still trying to reach out to him.

at this point jay was in, some kind of denial just like everyone else. it hurt to feel like he was responsible for jessica’s death so he had to believe that she was still out there, he had to believe that it was someone else’s fault. he didn’t want to hurt tim like alex did, he didn’t want to push tim away like brian did, he wanted tim to laugh and pull jessica out of his closet where she’s been hiding this whole time. he wanted to believe the truth wasn’t real because it hurt.

the desperateness that he begs tim to leave his camera Also gets to me. jay’s mentioned for years that the point of recording and uploading footage was to make sure someone would know what happened if “something happened to him.” he pointed the camera away from jessica for 30 minutes and something Did happen to her. that's been weighing on him for years but never more than it has been for the past month.

then when hoodie comes for him, lets him free himself, and runs off one of the first things jay did was go to tim’s medicine cabinet and make a noise of frustration at finding all of the bottles empty. he knew that something was wrong, he knew that he wasn’t thinking straight anymore, and on some level he still believed tim. but there wasn’t anything there, everyone was gone, and he was running out of time.

now, I wanna paint another picture here. according to tim, the footage he found on jay’s laptop was dated the day before jay came to confront him. jay tried to reach tim through twitter at 8pm so it’s safe to assume that it was posted the day before he decided to meet him in person. jay spent october 13th getting his shit kicked in, he was hogtied on october 14th, and the entry showing their confrontation was up on october 16th.

jay follows tim, he searches through the school, and then chooses to keep watch in the building overnight.

jay’s had issues with food since the first day of marble hornets, Literally. it’s possible he snacked before he came to confront tim, or on the way to the school. it’s possible the upload dates are one off (the timeline certainly gets wonky going off of upload dates after this). but even still, at the time he was getting shot he was on at least day two without food (and likely much much longer), and at least 48 hours without sleep (again, almost certainly longer). On Top Of Everything.

jay merrick didn’t stand a chance

there’s so So much more I could get into, especially if I started poking more at the entries themselves or the Implications of some of the things I’ve talked about here. but that’ll have to come another time, I’m very tired jfklsd

#marble hornets #mh #jay merrick #slenderverse #creepypasta #spoilers #meta #god I hope tumblr doesn't block this from the tags again

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foodbytesback · 4 years

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Society Has Progressed Passed the Need for Bon Appetit

Oh great, another think piece about Bon Appetit.

For the first time since the scandal broke, Bon Appeitit has begun posting videos to their Youtube channel. The first video, meant to address the elephant in the room, was framed around a Zoom meeting between the newly-christened Editor-in-Chief Dawn Davis, Executive Editor Sonia Chopra, and “Global Brand Advisor” Marcus Samuelsson.

They talk in empty circles for 7 minutes about the importance of “telling stories,” being “culturally relevant,” and “learning together,” addressing that there is, in fact, “a conversation” happening without addressing what that conversation is.

However, this promise of telling new stories was almost immediately cut short when they uploaded their first new cooking video later that day, starring veteran White Guy™ Chris Morocco. The bulk of the video itself was just Morocco making (and overcooking) a basic meatball recipe, bookended by even more vague buzzwords about “joining the conversation” that get even more muddled and confusing as the video progresses. Many were also quick to point out that Morocco, as the Test Kitchen Manager, played a part in many of the hiring practices happening within the Test Kitchen, including the mad scramble to hire new POC to make up for all of those who had jumped ship to try to maintain their “diverse” reputation, so starting off the new wave of videos with one featuring him seemed in poor taste.

Not wanting to end their hot streak, BA uploaded a third video later that same day, this time featuring a new black chef, Chrissy Tracy. As she made fried oyster mushrooms (in lieu of chicken, since she is vegan), collard greens and cornbread, she explained the history of these soul food dishes and the stigma regarding whether or not eating them was “stereotypical.” It was fine. They have not uploaded any videos since.

I could say that watching these new videos has been like watching a garbage fire, but that would imply a certain level of excitement. These new videos are clunky, soulless, and awkward, with many people in the comments sections of all three urging the hosts to blink twice if they are being held at gunpoint. (It’s also worth mentioning that, with the exception of Morocco as already mentioned, everyone in these videos is innocent in the systemic problems within Conde Nast, and you really can’t blame them for wanting to have a job during a pandemic.)

Meanwhile, Sohla El-Waylly, the powerhouse behind much of the shakedown, has been out there, living her best life.

After quitting BA entirely, she’s joined forces with Andrew “Babish” Rea, creator of the Binging with Babish Youtube channel, to create what is now the “Babish Culinary Universe.” Her series, “Stump Sohla,” features Babish trying to do just that, by putting her skills to the test in challenges such as “make mac n cheese from scratch, as they would have in the 18th century,” or “prepare a full 7-course tasting menu with things you found in a bodega.”

youtube

Simultaneously, she started a video series/column with Food52 called “Off-Script with Sohla,” an ad-libbed guide to mastering basic, yet versatile kitchen techniques.

youtube

On a similar note, a few weeks ago, Claire Saffitz, arguably THE face of the Youtube channel, announced that she had no interest in renewing her freelancing video contract with Conde Nast, which had originally expired in May. She openly criticized the company’s failure to commit to equal pay for its workers, and declared that she would be “going to do her own thing,” most prominently her new book, Dessert Person, that comes out on October 20th.

Similarly, Molly Baz has also announced that she has cut ties with BA. She did her best to be amicable towards everything that has happened over the past few months, wishing the new leadership the best of luck, and teased new and exciting upcoming projects that she has been working on.

This is pure speculation on my part, but perhaps one- if not both- of them may be getting their own spot in the Babish Culinary Universe?

Watching the Sohla videos feels so much more like the old BA videos than any of the three new BA videos did. They’re lighthearted, creative, and off-the-cuff, much like the BA videos that cultivated their original cozier, friendlier reputation. People didn’t watch BA videos to feel woke, or watch people have “conversations,” they did it to watch Claire struggle and triumph (or, some people just… really liked the struggle part…) as she remakes classic junk foods from scratch, or to watch Brad be an absolute himbo as he goes off on ADHD-riddled tangents and mispronounces things. It was never meant to be anything more than entertainment, and with the “one big happy family” illusion broken, it has ceased to be that.

This isn’t even really a question of “can Bon Appetit recover from this?” anymore. They had their 15 minutes of fame and squandered it, and no amount of performative wokeness is going to bring back their former prestige. At the end of the day, BA is still a multi-billion dollar corporation that chose to maximize profits by not paying their employees equal pay for equal work, not your friend who all your other friends are mad at because they got drunk and said something kinda mean but is otherwise redeemable.

It’s time to move on.

This is probably going to be the last time I revisit Bon Appetit. Or at least I hope it is, I can’t imagine things blowing up any more than they already have.

#food #Bon Appetit #Sohla El-Waylly #Claire Saffitz #Molly Baz #Binging with Babish #Babish Culinary Universe

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brinaedwards · 3 years

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Hi, my name is Brina... and I’m a workaholic

As the above title states, my name is Brina and yes, I am a workaholic. I don't think of that as a bad thing since I enjoy the self-motivation and the feeling of accomplishment when I get tasks done. However, my boyfriend thinks that I should focus some of that time getting more hours of sleep, haha.

I attended Valley Central High school and graduated in 2017. High school was an okay experience, if I wasn’t apart of the band program I feel that I would have disliked it more and would not have an interest in the things I do now. I’m not trying to shit on the school, but I feel that it needed a deep cleanse on administration staffing and just an overall re-look on how to spend the funding. Just saying, I think the asbestos issue should have been handled before the bleachers and locker rooms. But, not my problem anymore, Thank God.

When it came to deciding colleges and all that jazz, my high school was zero help in the whole process. Yes, they talked about it but at that age things should be more simplified to understand what needs to be done. I’m 22 and I just finally figured out how to build up my credit score? Like, HELLO, start teaching kids about loans and all the other financial shit that goes into college. Not to mention the absolute lack of help I got when picking my major. I knew I wanted to go into the music or media industry and of course, none of my advisors had a clue what I was talking about. I decided on OCCC for the pricing and that cushion of still figuring out what I wanted to do. I attended SUNY Orange Fall of 2017 as a liberal arts: music emphasis major. Fast forward a year later to find out that they actually have a music program! Got to love the help advisors give you right? More so, the help wrong advisors give you. That following fall I was a full Music: Performing Arts major and loved every second of it. I met amazing, talented people that I am very glad to still be in touch with. When I was on my last semester and was on the edge of graduating I had the moment of “Oh, God.. What the hell am I going to do after this”. I decided I wasn't ready to move on from SUNY Orange, since I had no idea what direction to go. I started looking into another major and that's when I found New Media! I was always interested on how content was made and what went into making a film. I remember my cousin and I used to make these little movie clips with the windows movie maker. We thought we were going to be these big movie-making hot shots at 8/9 years old haha.

I am grateful that I took my time with school and by the end of this OCCC journey I will be graduating next Fall with two A.A.S degrees and a clear idea of where I want to go.

Aside from anything media related I’ve been on this reading kick. Genres from fantasy, horror and some history. This summer my boyfriend and I got really into reading/collecting comic books! He has way more comics than I do but at least once a week we’re at Middletown Comics seeing what new issues came out! Now with the fall/Halloween season fast approaching I have been planning some great ideas for this year! I know I may catch a lot of eye-rolls/ mini-hate from those not wishing summer to be over but I can’t wait for fall. Besides, halloween is everyday haha. I’ve been looking at Pinterest ideas on how to DIY some awesome decorations. I guess Pinterest is somewhat media related though? Ah well, since I'm back talking about it, I might as well talk about the last movie and TV show I watched. The last movie I watched was actually what had to be watched for COM 105. It was the 1995 movie Kids and uh.. it was definitely something haha. I understood the point of how it related to youth culture but I would not want to watch that movie again. As for the last TV show I watched, was again what I had to be watched for COM 105. It was Euphoria season 1 and that was a really good show. I know I only had to watch the first four episodes but I binged the whole season. The way the story was told was creative, I enjoyed the narrative back a forth style and how each character had their own stories. It made it worth getting a month of HBO Max.

Being on the topic of last things done, I suppose the next order is the last book/video game played or finished. The last book I finished was A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis. I got that book from Thrill Club. It’s basically a horror/thriller/anything dark and creepy book subscription. I canceled thrill club awhile ago and just now getting into the books I was sent. Anyway back to this book that I read. I found it a little empty. I just wanted more from it, it was very predictable and dry. I wanted more character depth, more suspense and just more of everything. The book is in the corner of my room at this moment because I’m going to donate it, that's how unsatisfying it was to me. But HEY if anyone is interested in a dry thriller let me know! Haha. As for the last video game played it would have to be Assassins Creed Valhalla and that was a few weeks ago. I do love to game but when I’m getting into a project or assignment, more of my focus goes into that rather than a video game. But my goal this semster is to take more time to myself and have self-care days, so Valhalla here I come!

Going down the “Lasts” list I have to my right here is, the last thing I created. Um, I guess the last thing I created was a make up look, that I will post a pic of at the bottom! I do have ideas I wish to create such as uploading my podcast and YouTube videos! Im a really big planner so when it comes to things like that I want to have clear, organized agenda. I do have a date that I want things done and released so there’s that! I will probably mention more of my podcast in future posts but for now things are in the works.

Which now brings us to the last thing of the “Lasts” list. Im sure there is a tongue twister in there somewhere but I don’t have the brain capacity to think of one. My last meal on earth would have to be what I had for dinner last night. I ate cheese ravioli with a side of mozzarella sticks.

I know this assignment was supposed to be a minimum of 500 words and I believe I exceeded that. I look forward to these blog assignments since I can let my mind go and word things as if I was actually speaking. Well with a post this long I guess it’s safe to say I was ranting.

To future rants and of course the required MLA formatted references!

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sherlolly-siya · 4 years

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Magnum P.I. S02xE18-20 spoilers and tidbits

I thought i’ll give a prologue first 😅 Remember i pet project where i was trying to decipher the episode names? yea i didn’t get very far on that.. but i have come to a conclusion, that each title is a convention for what the clients in that episode, and/or our P.I. is going through. Eg. S02xE16 : Farewell To Love

Episode starts with Gladys and Bert who had given up on love but eventually found it in one another. The fact that Gladys narrated this part makes it poetic in a sense that she was the one who had to say bid farewell to Bert.Then TC and Teresa, they found the one that they always loved. The one who made them happier, but TC had to let her go go, he bid farewell to his love, instead of ruining 3 lives.In the beginning of the episode, we see magnum all in for online dating, but after what happened with Dylan, we see him coming to an abrupt conclusion that online dating is just isn’t the thing for him, also adding to the fact, the girl who met through an app (Abby) had just recently broken off with him. So magnum kind of bid a metaphorical farewell to finding love online.

Spoilers for S02x18, S02x19 and S02x20 under the cut if you wish to continue. Warning: My rant got hella long, longer than i planned and there are lots of pics and links below. Thanks @maggiesoa and @lizzysfavs for providing some food for my thoughts 😊

So.. lets begin with S02x18 : A world of trouble I’m just grouping together the pics that I’ve found so far which seem to be related to episode 18: Perdy and Bobby discussed about having a scene together ignore jay’s comment here, I’m all for #TeamJin and I will riot if they ever kill him. I believe the episode starts with Jin, showing up at Robin’s nest, where he ends up in a situation where he has to change in magnum’s clothes (note the t-shirt magnum is ironing... (Edit: DIDN'T HAPPEN!!?? I MEAN!! This could have been cute.. didn't have to be a total BTS for once!!) Where we get this scene, All i can guess right now is that is a tab in Jin’s had, and he’s being a fair judge for miggy while they prepare for their visa interview, or he could be here with today’s case

Which takes us to to the primary promo for 2x18, where they solve the case at hand. Now my guess is that the case doesnt take up entire 47 minutes, because this promo also exists. What this secondary promo also shows is them at a office(?) guessing visa or may be its a school where the current client works? where magnum/higgy blurts out that they’re marrying and some lady says that they don’t look like a couple. We also see Katsumoto warning Higgy about the consequences of marrying their business partner. (Edit: this did happen and fueled Higgy’s resolve to back out.. nothing wrong there..but as Jin said.. may it be with Magnum or TC, u’re still breaking the law Mrs. I can figure out how pretending with TC is going to get good results? if anything.. it only comes out of nowhere) I’m sensing a connection here again with the title of the episode: A world of trouble: - The current client, the case was definitely given to them by some one else because they approach the lady coz Higgy says “You’re in trouble, we just want to help you.”, which means she might have refused help at one point. - Literally 2 people in a 2 min worth promo have commented on their wedding, does this not sound like trouble to you?

When magnum is possibly heading out to go to La Mariana, (Edit: DING! DING! DING! This was indeed before the bar scene.. which kinda broke my heart.. but we’ll talk about that in detail later) she tells him that she’s reconsidered her decision that she will be marrying TC instead (which is weird, but for the sake of it, OK). Which also implies that she’s going to have a heart to heart with TC how she had one with Rick before in 2x13. (Edit: Umm.. i would have liked to hear the entire convo here.. but i guess its going to come back a flashback some day?) Magnum than heads to the bar, with Jin where he meets up with his friends and we get this, going by past experiences, this is going to be the last scene where he’s with his friends. Now what leaves me confused is this guy below, the one that magnum rescued and now has a food truck (Rem S1x01, they got him all the way from there now). He’s not listed for 2x18, but the actors caption says 2x18? So is he like the caterer for the wedding? (i thought kamekona was doing that?) or he’s there for entirely other reason?

Now this all leads up to S02x19 : May The Best One Win Again the title is the synopsis here,

Magnum and Higgins are each hired by a different spouse who are in the middle of a contentious divorce to dig up dirt on the other, and Thomas and Higgins soon find themselves competing over resources.

But i don’t think them competing again each other is the only thing here, remember this gem from TV guide magazine? - Jay mentions there being an odd jealousy there, and there is something percolating between the duo which magnum doesn’t want to address just yet. I think the competition is not just between Magnum and Higgy, for magnum it is also between him and TC. May be he’ll be still trying to show her that he is the one she should be marrying, even if that’s fake. - And for the implied element we also have this garage fight, where they’re up against “just one guy, but a very big guy”. This again i don’t think takes forever to solve since, there’s an upcoming wedding everyone has to attend, we’ve all seen the famous pics, but this:

Him again!! And looks like he is in fact catering the event. Now since S02x19 and S02x20 are to be merged into one mega episode, lets slip into: S02x20 : A Leopard on the Prowl

Magnum and Higgins help Rick when his father figure, Icepick , just out of prison and battling terminal cancer, gets double crossed on one last score. Also, Magnum makes one last bold move to help Higgins stay in the country.

This is the rick centric episode the viewers were promised, Adding pics of Zac coz he looks great here:

But do you see anything missing here? My sleep deprived brain does. Icepick seems to be have fallen pray to something on the run, nothing pre-planned, the guy has terminal cancer, he’s dying any day now, why would someone spend any time to plan something against him? (He’s probably going to die in this epi..he only had few months.. the article says “reluctantly try to help him” seriously guys why do you have to be reluctant? And below pic is probably of the same related fight scene Jay talked about in the TV guide snippet:

And if the video Jay uploaded is even close to the actual scene, it could be because the guy hit Rick/Higgy and Magnum picked up another fight with him.. or that’s just for insta.. I’ll leave it open. There’s a fight scene with TC as well i suppose. Now what does the title have to do with the episode? Here’s my theory: - Remember Dr. Kim i already mentioned twice above. He’s gotta be here for more than just “catering the wedding”, magnum said he was a code breaker, he was mentioned in one of Robin’s books, he instantly identified the co-ordinates which Nuzzo left for Magnum, (which is duh! u’re telling me that magnum was a navy SEAL and can read waves but cant piece together actual co-ordinates?!!). Magnum was kidnapped by Ivan’s people coz he needed something from him which was in the books, later Ivan had magnum delivered to himself on a secret mission of retrieving Hayek, who was a weapons dealer but he got away with drones instead.. I think this is all related somehow, there has to be something in this episode that points to this.. I thought may be its in Robin’s books.. but they have never mentioned the same book twice.. I’m still looking for answers though.. But going ahead, see this ,

“ Magnum makes one last bold move to help Higgins stay in the country.” “You see Higgins in a unexpected position, which magnum is very uncomfortable with and where he is not sure about his place”

Soo.. the wedding didn’t happen? So that’s not helping her stay in the country?

It didn’t bother me much before.. but think about this, what if since the wedding plan backfired, she has to go back to London until her visa is renewed/reapplied for : an unexpected position since she has found something in Hawaii she doesn’t want to loose. Which leaves magnum as the in-charge of Robin’s nest and Zeus and Apollo and part of the deal [I can almost see my HC at the horizon]. An uncomfortable position where he has to manage the estate and the hounds of hell without his “professional better half”. I think there is a beach good-bye scene on this day, may be an actual hug between miggy? Supporting evidence as follows:

Now the last attempt Magnum makes, does he offer her a job? Does he confess? But that wouldn’t automatically land her in an unexpected situation , that would be magnum putting her in that situation while being full aware of his position. I bet lenkov has got pretty good plan for this to play out. Now this doesn’t back up my crack where Higgins leaves, because

This story was posted along with the one where magnum is boating.. so they’re probably from the same episode.. where the last ditch effort has paid off but Magnum and Higgins roles have now been shifted a little and lenkov’s quote makes sense “Nothing really changes”.. has anyone ne noticed that there are no Juliet pics from 2x20 yet?

I cant wait to see that though.. and for a 100% i know there is a season 3, its a gut feeling i have. Thank you for stopping by.. sorry it was too long 😘

#magnum pi spoilers #magnum pi #my crack #deductions #miggy #lenkov-verse #thomas magnum #uliet higgins #orville wright #theodore calvin #the ohana thread

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renorasims · 5 years

Photo

Sooo you've arrived at the post where I'm lining up some of the alternatives you can use instead of adfly! Missed my first post? It's HERE! Let's get to it shall we? =) before we continue I'd like to express my gratitude to a group of people who helped me out in lots of ways! <333 English is not my first language so their help has been highly appreciated!

Patreon.

In my opinion the best method to monetize CC if you want to be sure you get something in return for your time and effort! Patreon has become a widely accepted way in the community to donate money towards some of their fav creators. As a creator, it does not cost you a dime in advance! Their fees will be extracted from the donations you received. I am very pleased with what you get on their site! You can go all out; upload HD images, video's, create goals you can reach with you patron's, etc. The interface is easy to use and the best part is (to me) that you don't have to spend any time worrying about collecting payments, etc. It's all taken care of. You have to find a workflow, balance that works best for you and your followers. Some creators release their cc after patreon every week, 2 weeks, and some once per month. This is completely up to you. I personally try to release stuff not later than 2 weeks after Patreon. This is what works best for my personally.

NOTE: Patreon Exclusive CC tends to get re-uploaded by other people since it's locked behind a paywall then. It's also against EA tou but hey... it's all up to you! Best way to avoid all this (In my opinion!) is to be transparent about when you will release your work and don't go exclusive.

PayPal / Ko-Fi.

a completely different way of trying to get something back for your time and effort since it's an optional donation. I used (still use) PayPal a lot in the past / present and it's a very safe way of getting something back. Ko-Fi is very similar and friends tell me lots of positive things about it.I use both of them a lot to donate to creators I love! I really hope I can expand my donating ways to Patreon as well! I know that it is a non-committal way of monetizing CC which can make it less attractive for some creators to use but the donations I got from when I started with it (when I was a smaller simblr) till this day far exceed the $0,02485 dollars you get per click (highest payout rate, USA) on Adfly.

I personally do not donate to a creator that uses adfly-only links. My mindset behind that is; you're apparently satisfied with the funds you raise with Adfly. I'm not going to support you on that. What I mean with this sentence is; creating goodwill towards your followers is sooo much more valuable! It has definitely paid off for me, from when I was a smaller simblr, till now.

Adsense.

Last but most definitely not least! Adsense can have 2 scenario's depending on your tech levels I will explain both of them;

You're unable to code your own website (me too!). I mean, I know html a little but I'm far from able to create my own website! If you're like me, you most likely have to purchase a package at one of these companies; Wix, Wordpress. There could be more options out there but i'm only talking these about 2 since I have experience with those. You need to purchase a paid package to be able to run Adsense on your website, the free packages do not allow you to do that. The fees are very different between Wix and Wordpress! I believe that Wordpress is cheaper(!) than Wix. I've been at Wix from the beginning and moving a website out of their company is made really hard for customers (to prevent them from leaving of course) + I would loose my URL. That being said; Wix has a drag and drop html editor that lets you customize your site endlessly. Wordpress however provides better care for wordpress sites via plugins etc. Pro's and con's you have to decide whats best for you!

NOTE: Blogger is also an option. I have no personal experience with it unfortunately but loooong ago I looked into it and i thought it also has a free option + running Adsense? This is speculation at best! I'm not sure about this! Though it's worth mentioning it. Google is your friend in this case =) Add-on infoby Jennie, thank you! <3 Adsense for Blogger is free, but you need to fit the criterias set by Google to be able to use it (Blogger is owned by Google).

You're a solid coder that can code your own website. I've looked into this in the past and to me it seems that you only have to purchase a domain in that case. With Adobe Dreamweaver or other coding softwares for websites you then create your own website and include the main code for Adsense. Along with the codes for the ads itself (where you want them, which size, which sort of ads, etc)

From this point it's the same for both scenarios! To be eligible for the program your site needs to be around for a few months and have generated some traffic (visitors)! I don't know the exact numbers Adsense expect to see before letting you into their program. I also read on their forums back then it depends on more factors than just pageviews. It depends on what kind of website you have, what kind of content it hosts, etc. But when I started I had maybe 2000 followers on Tumblr? So its definitely not 100,000 pageviews in a month or something like that. Sucks that I installed my Analytics account only a year ago otherwise I could look up what my monthly traffic was back in the days. Bottom line of Adsense; In the long term this will generate income even if you're not releasing stuff everyday. Which is why I am so fond of Adsense. You need to put in so time and effort + money in my case but it has paid me back every penny I put into it! some months I generate 50 bucks and sometimes more or less. It depends on your own activity and factors you can't always control. For example; I just saw (in Analytics) that my Chablis Coat Product Page has spiked yesterday. This can be due to; Tumblr picking up on my Chablis Coat post or someone on youtube doing a CC haul video. These are estimated guesses tho! In 99% of the cases I have no clue why something gets flooded with visitors.

Some perks of NOT using Adfly / Short.e / Shorteners

Create sustainable bond with you followers for the long term.

Increase chances of people donating / supporting your work.

Increase your download count.

Increase site visitation levels & possible Adsense revenues.

Indirectly; increase you're followers count.

which leads to; more people who will likely support you / donate.

this upwards cycle does not have an end to it if you make the right choices! points 2. till 7. can repeat itself endlessly.

Meaning; every positive change you make affects the next step in this cycle. Same as it works for a downwards spiral I guess. One thing for sure; Adfly users won't experience the perks above to its full extend than users that don't use it. Adfly stagnates blog growth in general.

Sorry for the long post but I really hope I was able to give you guys some insights on other alternatives for Adfly / Short.e / Shorteners in general. Most importantly; it's all up to you! Do as you see fit. All I wanted to say with these 2 posts is, try to be mindful to your followers when you make a decision. Only they made it possible for you to monetize your CC in the first place!

#ts4 #s4 #ts4cc #s4cc #alternatives for adfly #no adfly #adfly

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somekindoftuber · 6 years

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vld youtuber AU part two (klance)

part one

Lance gets home from spring break with his raw footage and gets right to editing. He’s pretty pleased with how it came out, but he still waits a few days to post it, worried he’ll seem overeager. Shiro posts the video that Lance is in the next week, and he’s so thrilled, it came out great. Keith had been working the camera a bit and Lance sort of wants to thank him for capturing some flattering shots. He quickly posts the video of his song and links Shiro’s channel.

He contemplates sending a follow request to Keith’s locked twitter, but doesn’t. He just met the guy and he doesn’t seem to be the type that opens up easily, and Lance doesn’t want to push his luck.

Flashback to when Lance left Shiro’s garage after filming. Keith is cleaning up and getting ready to lock up the garage when Shiro gives him A Look.

“Lance was nice, don’t you think?”

Keith pauses where he’s sweeping the floor. “He’s alright, I guess.”

Shiro just grins at him.

Things go well after that. Shiro follows Lance back in twitter, and they chat about videos and cat memes. Lance has noticed that Shiro will sometimes disappear off the internet for a few days at a time, but doesn’t pry.

Lance keeps streaming, and starts to occasionally post videos of his streams. He uploads an Overwatch clip where he sang a stupid song over the mic that had his entire team rolling with laughter, and it gets a lot of hits. A few days later, he gets an email, and has to blink a few times. Because it’s from Keith.

Lance,

Thanks for posting that Overwatch video. Shiro was feeling down and it really cheered him up.

-K

And that’s it. And it puts the biggest smile on Lance’s face.

Months go by and things are normal. Lance keeps finding himself looking at Keith in Shiro’s videos, but who can blame him? The guy is hot, and there’s nothing wrong with admiring the view. He hasn’t really spoken to Keith beyond that one email exchange - Lance had sent him a reply that was probably a little too long-winded but whatever - but he doesn’t mind. Too much. That’s what he tells himself.

Pidge calls him out on his bullshit. “You are absolutely crushing on Shiro’s brother,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing ever.

“I am not.”

But then he mentions it to Hunk on Discord and his oldest friend just laughs at him. “You so are,” Hunk accuses. “Even I can tell.”

Lance just glares into his webcam. So maybe he is. So what? He’s allowed to have a crush. Crushes are harmless. Besides, the guy lives five hours away and Lance doesn’t even know his last name. He’ll eventually get over it and that’ll be that.

Lance gets another opportunity to film with Shiro and he absolutely jumps on it. Shiro invites Lance to stay with them since they have a furnished basement he can stay in for the weekend and he is so excited. It also means he’ll be getting out of Pidge’s hair, since she has some intense projects to finish before the semester is over and needs to focus. So he puts in a time off request at the cafe where he works part time.

Lance packs his bag, his guitar, and all of his filming gear and makes the five hour drive on Friday morning. He only makes one pitstop for snacks and a bathroom break in some tiny town with absolutely no cell signal, then is on his way again.

When he parks on the street in front of Shiro’s place, he checks his phone and panics. Tons of texts. Emails. Twitter DMs. Missed calls. He hadn’t seen them because he was driving, and the one time he stopped, there was no signal. The most recent text is an unknown number:

>Lance this is Keith I got your number from Pidge please call me asap

Shit. Shit shit shit. He calls the number and it picks up after one ring.

“Hello?”

Wow, his voice even sounds nice over the phone. “Uh, Keith? This is Lance.”

“Lance.” There’s a pause. “Um. Where are you?”

Lance looks up at the house. “In front of your house…?”

He thinks he hears Keith curse under his breath. “Okay, I’ll be out in a second.”

Keith sounds tense and Lance is out of his car immediately, shutting the door just as Keith comes out of the small house. He definitely looks tense, shoulder hunched as he marches towards Lance.

“Hey,” Lance greets. “Is everything okay?”

Keith glances around, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “Um. Shiro isn’t feeling well. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to film this weekend.”

“Oh.”

They stand there on the sidewalk awkwardly for several minutes. Lance looks down at the phone in his hands. “Sorry,” he tells Keith. “I was driving and didn’t have a signal, so I didn’t see any messages until I stopped just now.”

Keith rubs the back of his neck. “How far did you drive?”

“Harborville,” Lance shifts his weight. “It’s about five hours from here.”

Keith curses again and fiddles with his phone. Lance is starting to panic because he just drove across the state and the place he was supposed to stay is sounding like a no-go and he’s too tired to drive back he doesn’t really have money for a hotel right now —

“Grab your stuff,” Keith says, “and follow me.”

“Uh. You sure?”

Keith’s expression is blank. “Shiro said you could stay, so you can stay.”

Keith ends up helping Lance carry his stuff inside, down to the basement apartment. It’s small but nice, with a tiny bathroom and a back porch that opens up to a wide yard of weeds and grass. Keith gives him the wifi password, then shuffles awkwardly.

“Sorry. You came all this way for nothing.”

Lance looks up. “Oh! Uh, no, it’s okay, things happen.” He puts on a smile. “I’ll find something to occupy myself, and I can get out of here tomorrow.”

The atmosphere is so, so awkward.

“Um.” Keith motions at his phone. “I was gonna order a couple of pizzas. What kind if toppings do you want?”

Lance perks up a little. “Oh man, I’ll eat literally anything. Get whatever you want, I’m good.”

Keith just nods and goes upstairs. Lance uses the bathroom (holy hell that last energy drink was a mistake, he’d been holding it for so long), then answers all the texts he got from everyone that wasn’t Keith. He assures Pidge that he’s fine, explains what happened, and says he will be back tomorrow.

Keith comes back downstairs about a half hour later with two pizza boxes and a couple of bottles of beer. Lance helps him and they go out onto the back porch, where he finally get to meet Kosmo. His mood is instantly lifted, Kosmo is huge and unruly but sweet as can be, and Lance alternates eating pizza and throwing a drool-covered ball across the yard, watching Kosmo dart after it like a freight train. Keith laughs softly.

“Are the cats around?” Lance asks as Kosmo rests his giant head on Lance’s thigh.

“They’re upstairs,” Keith answers quietly. “With Shiro.”

Okay. Guess he’s not meeting the cats this weekend.

They finish off most of the pizzas, Keith saving several slices for Shiro. It gets awkward again. It’s barely sunset and Lance has no idea how he’s going to spend the next twelve hours. Sleep?

“Wanna play some Overwatch?”

Now there’s an idea. “Yeah! I brought my laptop.”

Keith gives him a little half smile, though it seems forced. “I’ll go get mine.”

They set up their laptops in on the coffee table of the little sitting area in the basement, sitting on the carpeted floor. Keith brings down another beer for each of them and they start playing, Lance using an external drive to record because why not. Keith adds him as a friend so they can play together and it’s stupid how much that pleases Lance, even if he gets the feeling that Keith is just humoring him out of guilt. Keith is also a Genji main and that’s not surprising in the least, though he sometimes plays a pretty effective Mei and a devastating Doomfist. Lance sticks to Widowmaker and Ana, and though it takes them a few rounds to find a groove, the end up working surprisingly well together, each getting Play of the Game a few times.

They take a break and Lance ends his first recording to start another while Keith goes upstairs for another round of beer and a box of cookies that they put between them, and then it’s time to really have fun. Lance invites Hunk into the game and they find some gag servers. Lance starts singing his joke songs, making everyone laugh. At one point he darts back to the room where his stuff is to grab his guitar and play it while he sings. He makes up little jingles about player’s screen names until Keith finally chokes on his beer a little, then throws back his head laughing.

And holy shit, Keith has an amazing laugh, his face lighting up and the corners of his eyes crinkling as he snorts a little. Lance keeps singing just to keep hearing him laugh, and finally Keith is hunched over his laptop covering his face because he’s in tears. It’s incredible and Lance thinks that this, right here? This made the five hour drive worth it.

His voice gets too tired to keep singing and Keith looks sleepy, so they agree to call it a night. Keith takes his laptop and says goodnight with a smile that looks genuine. Once he’s in his sleeping clothes and settling into the guest bed, he’s messaging Hunk to gush a little about Keith. Hunk just sends him several eyeroll emojis and tells him to go to bed.

Lance wakes up disoriented and takes a full five minutes to remember where he is, dehydrated and groggy with a headache forming. Right, he’s in Shiro’s basement. He gets up and brushes his teeth, then looks at the stairs. Can he go upstairs? He can smell coffee, and he would do just about anything for some caffeine right now.

He hears a chirp and looks up again. The basement door is open and there’s a fluffy red tabby at the top of the stairs, looking right at him. One of the cats! With a giant grin, Lance creeps up to the top. The tabby backs up, and Lance is out of the basement before he realizes it, crouching on the floor to hold his hand out to the gorgeous cat that sniffs at his fingers.

He’s been petting the cat for several minutes before he realizes he’s in a kitchen, and he’s not alone. Sitting at the little breakfast table in the corner is Shiro, and he looks like hell. Hair a mess, face scruffy, bags under his eyes and wearing rumpled sweats with a blanket draped over his shoulders. But what Lance notices the most is that his prosthetic arm is gone, his right bicep tapering in the middle before it just stops, covered in webs of scar tissue. His chest is dotted with more scars.

Lance stands up. “Shiro?”

Shiro doesn’t respond right away, his eyes sort of vacant as he stares at the wall. Then he turns to look in Lance’s direction and seems to snap to attention.

“Lance,” he says and his voice is rough and tired as he pulls the blanket around himself with his left hand. He looks over to where the coffee maker is on the counter, at the opposite side of the kitchen. “I was just getting some coffee--” Shiro goes to stand but he looks like he’s in pain, favoring one leg.

Lance jumps. “I’ll get it!” he rushes over to the coffee maker and is sort of relieved to see Shiro sit back down in his peripheral. There’s a bunch of mismatched mugs in the glass door cupboard just above the coffee maker, so he pulls out one and fills it.

“Uh.” This is super weird. “Do you want sugar?”

Shiro gives him this tiny little smile. “There’s some hazelnut creamer in the door of the fridge.” he fidgets a little. “You’re welcome to have some too, if you want.”

Lance thinks that might be the best thing he’s ever heard and pours himself a cup, then goes for the creamer in the fridge. He brings the two mugs to the table and sits down across from Shiro, passing him the mug that’s printed with instructions on how to moonwalk. Shiro mutters a thanks and takes a few sips.

Lance nervously drinks his coffee and tries not to freak out. This is definitely not how he expected this weekend to go. The Shiro in front of him was so far removed from the one he knew online - the cool, confident Shiro was a million miles away, replaced by a man that sat at the table and sipped his coffee like he was expecting the roof to collapse on his head any second. It was unnerving, and Lance feels horribly out of place, like he was intruding on something meant to be private.

Before he can say anything, Shiro speaks up. “I owe you an apology.” he looks like he’s struggling. “You came all this way, and I can’t even film with you. I’m sorry.”

Lance does his best to smile. “It’s okay, really, it’s not your fault you got sick.”

Shiro frowns, then slowly lifts a hand to rest on his right shoulder. “I’m not sick,” he says. “It just... Bothers me sometimes.”

His arm. Shiro is a veteran. The pieces click into place.

Shiro explains a little, that his time in active duty changed him. That sometimes he remembers things he doesn’t want to and it’s hard to get past it. He says he’s better now, with therapy and medication, but it’s still difficult sometimes. Sometimes he still shuts down, gets phantom pains.

Lance doesn’t really know how to respond to that, so he just reaches out and pats Shiro’s hand where it’s resting on the table.

The sound of tapping claws makes them both turn, Kosmo rounding the corner panting happily, followed by a half-asleep Keith. And Lance can’t help but grin, because it’s an adorable sight. His hair is wild and poofy and all over the place, shirt slipping off one shoulder and wearing sleep pants that are printed with cats playing jazz instruments. Keith rubs at one eye with the heel of his hand and doesn’t really seem to register either of them, going straight for the coffee maker.

Lance learns that Keith takes his coffee black.

He’s halfway to the table with a steaming mug in his hand before he even realizes Lance is there, then Keith pops awake with a squeak.

“Morning,” Shiro says. Lance shrinks a little in his chair before muttering a “good morning.”

“Uh.” Keith keeps glancing between them. “Good morning.”

Shiro looks unfazed and takes a drink of his coffee. “Lance and I were just having a chat.” He smiles. “What did you two do last night? I heard a lot of laughing.”

Thanking all that is holy that he finally has a conversation topic to break this intensely awkward silence, Lance tells Shiro about their Overwatch game and the songs he made up. Keith snorts a laugh or two over his coffee and Shiro is wearing a genuine smile.

The conversation lulls. “I should probably pack up and hit the road,” Lance says. He tries to hide his disappointment. But Shiro shakes his head.

“No, please, you’re welcome to stay. We can probably get a little filming in tomorrow.”

It’s the best thing Lance has ever heard.

An hour later they’re all showered and dressed and Shiro looks significantly better, his hair combed and face shaved. He’s wearing his prosthetic again, even if he still has dark circles under his eyes. They pile in Shiro’s truck and head to a local bookstore with a cafe attached, and Shiro introduces Lance to Allura, one of his oldest friends.

Lance is struck a little speechless at first because Allura is so beautiful she can’t possibly be real. But she shakes his hand and Lance can’t place her accent but she’s sweet and cordial, sipping on a coffee with a book next to her elbow that’s in another language.

They spend several hours in the cafe just talking about college, YouTube, cats, and their shared friends the Holts. Allura is in grad school studying sociology or something like that (the title was long and complicated and sounded super difficult). Shiro gets up to get another muffin and Keith goes to the restroom, and Allura puts a hand on Lance’s.

“Thank you for caring for Shiro,” she tells him.

Lance is confused. “I didn’t really do anything…?”

But Allura shakes her head. “He’s told me about you and your videos. You make him laugh and have been a friend to him. It means more than you know.”

Lance blushes hot and doesn’t know what to say.

They return to Shiro’s and have a small barbecue, just the three of them and a small charcoal grill, a pile of meat, and a cooler of beer and soda. Lance plays happy songs on his guitar while Keith plays with Kosmo in the yard. Shiro looks so much better than he did that morning, and they trade stories until sunset. Shiro goes to bed and leaves Lance and Keith alone.

They talk into the night as they pick at the last kebob. Keith is still stoic and secretive, but he’s loosened up after a couple of beers and speaks more candidly than Lance has ever heard. About how he and Shiro aren’t related by blood, how he had it rough before Shiro found him. About adopting his dog from a shelter. Little things, too - Keith hates spicy food, is ambidextrous, and is a crossfit trainer. Lance files away all these little bits of information like precious treasure and goes to sleep with them bouncing around his brain.

The next morning, they head to the garage to film. Shiro doesn’t do an intro, still looking sort of tired, but assures that he can do a voice-over later. Lance and Keith trade camera duty as they work on the old chopper. It’s in bad shape and Keith has to bust out the welding equipment at one point. Lance swallows hard and tries to keep the camera steady because that shouldn’t be hot. Keith in a welding mask with a torch shouldn’t be hot but wow. Lance is definitely in trouble here.

They film for hours until Shiro says he’s too tired to keep going, then they pack up and head back to the house. Lance helps cook dinner and Shiro looks relieved, saying that he and Keith can’t cook very well outside of barbecue. They sit around the table and Lance can’t believe he’s there, in Shiro’s kitchen, trading stories with him and his brother like they’re old friends. A few months ago they seemed so untouchable, like celebrities that he looked up to. Now Shiro is laughing so hard he snorts at a story that Lance is telling him. Lance catches Keith’s eye a few times, smiling when he does.

Lance has to head back on Monday morning, and Shiro pulls him into a hug. It has Lance sputtering a little before he hugs back. Shiro whispers a thank you and it’s so sincere and heartfelt that Lance feels his eyes water a little. Keith just clasps his hand, squeezing it tight. No hug, but the look he gives Lance says a million things that he’ll have to sort out later.

For the drive home, Lance puts on his Florence + The Machine playlist and sings until his throat is sore, so happy he feels like his heart could burst.

Continued in part 3!

#text #AUs #youtuber AU

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autisticmight · 4 years

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how does someone who knows little-to-nothing about it get into sanders sides? i saw thomas' vines, and i've been sort of tangentially aware that the facets of his personality that he portrayed in the vines have since become characters, but there's a whole bunch of new ones??? what the fuck is a janus???? HELP. tldr where do i find The Lore? plz obi wan ur my only hope

it’s very simple!!! you hyperfixate on thomas sanders’s content in, like, 2016? and then he uploads a video called ‘my true identity’, which is a bit weird, but you love those vine characters. then he uploads more, and it becomes a trend. apparently people in the comments are shipping the prince guy and anxiety. you rewatch the new year’s video an embarrassing amount of times with your dog

i had a whole paragraph here about why i like the series, and why i dropped it and then picked it up again, but it was just a block of lowercase text and i guess it’s kind of hard to read

anyway, here’s the playlist of every episode, but i’m going to put a summary of the series and individual episodes under the readmore, while also ranking them, because i am Special Interesting and i like being useful. and i guess i’m gonna write using. like. actual grammar. if the readmore doesn’t work, then. have fun reading my infodump

here we go

Sanders Sides: A Summary

Fictional Version Of Thomas Sanders (known as Character!Thomas, and will be simply referred to as ‘Thomas’ henceforth) has ‘Sides’, which are parts of his personality that have been exaggerated and personified. It’s a nice little series set in some kind of semi-urban fantasy world, but mostly in Thomas’s living room. It mostly uses the idea of ‘Sides’ to represent the inner schemata of an individual. In simpler terms, you know when you’re conflicted, and you end up arguing with yourself? Yeah, it’s that.

Also, don’t read the comments, unless you want to disregard the care I’ve taken to not put spoilers in the Season 1 Summaries.

Season 1

I’d like to split this into parts, because there are a lot of things in earlier episodes that conflict with later characterisation. However, it’s also fun to watch them, and then rewatch them after some of the longer episodes, and feel your heart shatter!

This half of Season 1 was made solely by Thomas. It tends to be a bit more scattered, and can be watched out of chronological order, or completely skipped. Yes, I’m telling you that you can skip literally all of this section, if you want to. However, these are also the easiest videos to watch, and offer a taste of Silly Sanders Sides Hijinks without the emotional commitment.

My True Identity (6 min) - Thomas delves into the three aspects of his personality; his Logic (Teacher Guy), his Creativity (the Prince, also called Princey), and his Morality (Dad Guy who is Not Thomas’s Dad). At this point, the characters are far more similar to their Vine counterparts, and the characterisation clashes with later episodes. (3/5 - A nice way to see if you’ll enjoy the humour of this series)

Way Too Adult (5 min) - Thomas is asked by his family to help cook Thanksgiving dinner. Dad Guy pops up and discusses with Thomas how he can better learn to take care of himself. Features a talking stove, which is part of the reason why I classify this series as urban fantasy, and the start of a running joke. (2/5 - A fun, albeit rare, look into Dad Guy being responsible. I actually prefer this to My True Identity, but ranks lower due to conflicting with later S1 characterisation.)

Taking On Anxiety with Lilly Singh (6 min) - Thomas hopes and dreams to get rid of his Anxiety, who is a sassy, snide guy, sitting on the staircase. Princey, as the embodiment of Thomas’s hopes and dreams, is... Usurped by an imaginary version of Lilly Singh, who helps teach Thomas how to cope with feeling anxious. (3/5 - Introduces some secret tools that will help us later. The tools are Thomas being able to travel to various places in his head, and also Anxiety.)

A New Year of Lying to Myself... In Song!! (7 min) - The first video wherein you realise that this is A Thing. Thomas welcomes in the new year, hoping that 2017 will be better than 2016. Logic shows up to help him figure out some New Year’s Resolutions, accompanied by Dad Guy and Princey. Anxiety joins in to point out that Thomas has rarely, if ever, kept to his resolutions before. Through the first musical number of the series, the Core Sides and Thomas figure out simple, achievable resolutions that Thomas can use to improve his wellbeing. (4/5 - Unintentional foreshadowing in the form of a bop.)

The Dark Side of Disney (6 min) - Princey, not for the last time, enthuses about the wonders of Disney. However, Anxiety also appears, insisting that Disney is not as wholesome as it first appears. They argue and bond, despite the fact that Thomas still hasn’t redacted his statement regarding his hopes and dreams to get rid of his Anxiety. (2/5 - I have strong feelings on the meaning of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’, both of which are shrugged off in favour of the tryhard-edgy ‘blegh stockholm syndrome’ and ‘blegh change yourself to get your man’. Still, it’s a fan-favourite for a reason, and the endcard always makes me smile.)

I’m in a Disney Show!! (6 min) - Princey enthuses about the wonders of Disney, because Thomas is in a Disney show. He talks about what happened, while the Sides (mostly Logic) suggest clickbait titles in order to entice people to watch the video. (2/5 - L*gan P*ul is mentioned, as he was also in the episode.)

The Mind vs. The Heart (6 min) - Thomas finds himself split between following his mind, Logic, or his heart, Morality. Features onesies, and looks further into the characters of Logic and Dad Guy. (3/5 - Pretty calm and peaceful, to be honest. It’s nice.)

Then we move onto the second part of Season 1. This is when Thomas’s friend, Joan, began to offer their input into scriptwriting and directing. They’re most of the reason why Sanders Sides is an actual series, instead of being silly skit characters in short vlogs. From here on in, episodes become more complex, and work on an actual timeline.

Alone on Valentines Day (9 min) - Thomas is rather upset that he will be, as the title says, alone on Valentine’s Day. The Sides try to help him figure out how to get a date with an imaginary version of his friend Valerie, but each of them has a weirder way of going about it than the last. (4/5 - Far more cohesive than previous videos, but Thomas still wasn’t fully out as gay, so his hypothetical date is a woman. Yes, I took points off because of that. Yes, I’m about to erase the 3/5 to make it 4/5 because Valerie is a delight.)

Losing My Motivation (9 min) - When Thomas finds himself procrastinating, Logic takes it upon himself to find out which side is causing it. In order to get into a deductive mindset, Logic dresses up as Sherlock, while Dad Guy joins in as Watson. Once the case is solved, an important piece of information is revealed: the Sides have names. (Logic’s name is revealed) (3/5 - It’s just a fun little video, and I can’t keep giving every video from here on in 4/5, or that’ll ruin the whole thingy.)

Sanders Sides Q&A (9 min) - Exactly what it sounds like. There’s not much else to say. (2/5 - I love it, but it’s not really necessary to understand the whole series. It’s just extra characterisation.)

Am I Original? (12 min) - Thomas finds himself in a creative rut, trying to think of a completely original idea. Princey requests full creative control - “full-on Daydream Mode” - in order to rapidly consider and enact many different concepts, all while trying to make something that has never been seen before. (Princey’s name is revealed) (4/5 - Important characterisation for Princey. I originally rated it lower due to Thomas’s inability to rap, but upon rewatching, i found that the ending dialogue between Princey and Thomas was worth two points, rather than the single one I gave it previously.)

My Negative Thinking (13 min) - When Thomas messes up in an audition, his ego - Princey - is out of commission and being cared for by Dad Guy. Therefore, the only Sides available to aid him in this situation are Logic and Anxiety, neither of whom can help Thomas in the way he wants to. Anxiety is worsening Thomas’s mental state, so Logan proposes a debate in order to combat those cognitive distortions. (4/5 - A fan-favourite episode which offers a lot of insight into Logic and Anxiety as characters. It is useful as a tool for identifying cognitive distortions in real life, which may help with the individual’s mental health. Even though it introduces another running joke, it’s educational and fun, and it develops their relationship in a positive manner, I just don’t particularly enjoy it.)

Growing Up (15 min) - It’s Thomas’s birthday! He’s in his late twenties, and he’s still a kid at heart. He hasn’t done his laundry, he's silly and immature, and he feels like he isn’t at the point that he needs to be in his life. Therefore, all the Sides, except for Dad Guy, who ironically embodies Thomas’s inner child, work on trying to make him more mature. (Morality’s name is revealed) (3/5 - Features the concept of Voltron Shirt. I love this episode, but there is a noticeable change in audio quality at the end which affects how enjoyable it is.)

Making Some Changes (15 min) - Back in Thomas’s living room, and in opposition to his view from the last episode, Anxiety is worried about how life changes in unpredictable ways, and especially about losing contact with Thomas’s friends. Therefore, in order to keep Thomas’s friends permanently by his side, Princey gets them all to shapeshift. (3/5 - It might be skippable, but it’s just really, really fun.)

Becoming A Cartoon (10 min) - Adding to the whole urban fantasy thing, it turns out that animators can literally, physically turn people into cartoons. Thomas wants to be a cartoon. Princey catches Anxiety in his arms and says “everybody loves the villain,” and I think that’s all you need to know. (1/5 - Co-stars B*tch H*rtman, known for Fairly Odd Parents, Danny Phantom, and Being A Bigot, who did the character designs for the Sides, if not the actual animation. And the designs are kind of. Eh. Just watch some fanmade animatics.)

Accepting Anxiety (23 min) - Part 1: Excepting Anxiety (10 min), and Part 2: Can Anxiety Be Good? (14 min) - HOO. If the musical number or the animation didn’t clue you in, this video confirms that Sanders Sides is A Thing. Remember how Thomas hoped and dreamt to get rid of his Anxiety? Remember how he never redacted that statement, or even expressed a bit of remorse? Well, here, his wishes come true, and he doesn’t feel bad about it at all! That’s because he has absolutely no shame, caution, or fear of death. Yeah, he’s a mess. Therefore, the Sides make him take them on a magical quest to Anxiety’s Room, in order to un-mess-ify Thomas. (Anxiety’s name is revealed) (5/5 - The team really went above and beyond with this one. Like. Hoo. That’s it. Just. Hoo. Hoo. I’m an owl.)

And that’s Season 1!!! I’m going to add Season 2 in a reblog, because this has taken roughly three hours and it’s been really difficult to not spoil their names!!! which i did anyway because their names are all easier to type from muscle memory!!!

#helen stfu #asks #sanders sides tag da lee lay da lee loo #Anonymous

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fearfearer · 4 years

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more thoughts about the magnus archives as i reread the transcripts

i was thinking about how gertrude robinson was really an extraordinary person (not extraordinarily Morally Sound, but extraordinary) just because of who she was, whereas the only extraordinary things about jonathan sims are things that have been arranged for him (i.e. his role). i don't mean this as a diss for jonathan, as i'm not extraordinary either. it's just striking that gertrude was so driven and confident compared to jon. of course, now we know that basically everything she did was in the pursuit of a moot goal (i.e. killing people in order to stop rituals that were already doomed to fail) so maybe my point is somewhat moot as well.

i've been doing some rereading of episodes on my phone (i.e. away from this text document on my computer) and i'll have a realization like "right, i should note that down when i get back to my computer" and i have forgotten all of them now that i am back at my computer. suffice it to say there are quite a few things i misheard/misunderstood on the first listen, unsurprisingly.

reading through the first 20 or so episodes i'm surprised by how well i remember each of them, considering i was listening like 4 episodes a day when i started. then again, it was only a month or two ago that i even listened to them, so one should hope my memory is at least this good. anyway the first episode i'm re-listening instead of rereading is 22 bc that's the first one where we hear martin's voice, i'm pretty sure

i've also noticed some errors in the official transcripts, which aren't a big deal because obviously what matters most is the audio, but still... some of them have been simple typos. magnus archives hire me as your official transcriptionist and i'll make all your transcripts 100% error-free bc im smatr

(reading through the rest of the transcripts and my standards went way down in terms of grammar/stylistic consistency, as most of the later ones are fan transcripts by several different people. i found quite a few mistakes, but obviously i have no particular way to help fix them short of sending an email to the tma transcripts fansite person like “hey there’s all these mistakes. upload my good version instead?” bc i’m not that much of a dick)

the whole reason martin went to the spider guy's building was because he didn't want jon to be disappointed in him for not doing Due Diligence. he says so twice. then he went back for the same reason. it seems the fandom joke is "jon asks his assistants to do crimes for him" but in this case martin is like "oh no maybe i didn't do enough crimes to satisfy jon"

jon was doing his archivist voice HEAVILY in season 1, huh?

tim's first appearance is so jovial compared to how he ends up...

if this boat lady is speaking spanish in brazil, then it doesn't matter if it was "bad spanish" or not. anyway now i understand why we already knew peter lukas was serving the lonely by the time jon mentioned offhand that peter lukas was serving the lonely. it was my whole “let’s not bother noting down any FREQUENTLY RECURRING names”

well i guess robert smirke was a real person. should i feel dumb about this? idk. it’s such a fictional-sounding name, to be fair. but i guess that set the precedent of using a real person as an important historical figure in the fiction that we see happening again when edmund halley is referenced later on. also episode 35 has foreshadowing for the separation of 14 powers, and people thought it was 13 because they mention 13 halls PLUS the one they came through.

totally forgot about tim goofing around in episode 39... he was really not having the worst time at this job before bad things started happening and he realized he was trapped, huh

the worms were trying to make a doorway into the Worm Wealm

ep 40 jon's like "I need to hear it. I need to record it. Or else I can't finish." (lightly abridged)

listening to the season 1 Q&A for the first time and EARL BIGMAC

also good to know there's only going to be 5 seasons. very good to know. this seems like a good kind of series to write with a fixed endpoint in mind, as it's very easy to do an episode that has effectively no bearing on the MetaPlot but which is still a short story in itself and therefore doesn't count as "filler"

jonathan sims performs with a mythical space pirate music cabaret. so he IS a ham

jonny says, "no rude words. i could say bums, maybe..." (alexander j newall does a laugh while i do the exact same laugh irl) "...but i won't."

some dumbass writing into the Q&A to ask if the background music is diegetic... get a podcast brain, ya fool. though for my part, i have to say that one of the most striking things about this podcast when i first started listening (though i never made a note of it before) was the Too Spooky Music, and i didn't like it at all. the reason was that i am, and have been, vulnerable to Getting Spooked about irrational things at night, such that it becomes really hard to fall asleep... and one of the things that has an outsize effect on my level of Spookédness is spooky audio. so if i was watching a video at night and i was worried it would Get Me Spooked, i would just turn the sound off, and it would turn out fine. but obviously you can't turn the sound off on a podcast. and i've been listening to podcasts after work, i.e. after 5pm, and i go to bed at like 8 or 9pm because i'm old. so the way it turned out was that even if the actual subject of the podcast wasn't that scary to me, the music would amplify it in an unpleasant way and make me more likely to have trouble sleeping. also i think most of the episodes would have been fine without the music, or maybe with some less intentionally-disconcerting background music.

this just in: i seem to have totally missed episode 50 on my first listen-through, despite having gone in linear order. bc i'm listening to it now and i've definitely never heard this before. fortunately it doesn't seem to have much of a bearing on the rest of the series, so it's not like i missed any crucial information. tbh the only worthwhile bit was a brief moment of tim being a ham, which was good. i hope i didn't miss any other episodes the first time... still don't know how i managed to miss this one.

the official transcript said [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] ...

so gertrude and leitner WERE played by jonny's parents <:3c i'd thought as much when i saw the cast names but i like that it's confirmed. his mom is a really good actress too. i always find the gertrude episodes to be striking in a certain way

"it's Fine working with your parents. it's Fine." as someone who worked with my mom for like a year i can confirm this

i'm tickled to find that the official transcripts have a sense of humor. i wonder who is behind them. i also wonder, what is the excuse for not having a full set of official transcripts when it is a script-based show? surely you know what is going to be said beforehand, and you have it written down, and if someone ends up saying something different in the final recording, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to give the original script a little edit, and bam! that’s a transcript. i wonder if this approach is not feasible for some reason.

whenever martin reads statements, he says something about jon... whenever he talks to someone, he says something about jon

i think episode 110 is an instance of the tape recorder turning ITSELF off... at the end of the episode. because they walk away, and they say something distantly, and then it turns off. lots of other times, there had to be a diegetic reason for the tape recorder to turn off at the end.

i noticed something which i missed last time, which was that there is a rumor between melanie and georgie and basira that implies that jonathan is asexual. worth noting, i think. [side note added in later: yeah it’s canon. cool]

also i listened to episode 103 again and yes. i had thought-- i had been SURE-- that the person interrogating the traffic cop (using the asky ability) was martin. but it was actually jon. how did i possibly manage that mistake? i'm not great at distinguishing voices, but i'm not THAT bad. the only possible answer: when i was listening to the episode for the first time... i must have been eating a crunchy snack.

"it doesn't have to make sense! alex has to make it sense." (jonny sims re: writing the spiral)

glad to know that jonny sims regrets using his own name for the protagonist. doesn't make a difference either way at this point but yeah

YES i knew episode 100 was improvised. and i see, all the statementers had actually had supernatural experiences, but because the archivist was absent, their statements didn't have the coherence and clarity normally lent to them by the eye (in exchange for becoming cursed). i think melanie or basira actually said pretty much that in the episode itself, but i still couldn't be sure that all of those people had something real to talk about.

"in the same way that tim is dead, michael is helen." good shit

the archivist is canon a bit of a drama queen. the first bullet point in my first tma notes document is vindicated

jonny sims mentions another podcast (apocrypals) that sounds 100% up my alley, so that is appreciated, i will add that to my list i think. (listened to episodes 0 and 1 of apocrypals and i'm heavily struck by how VERY clearly i can hear the smiles in chris sims's voice. i did not know smiling could be so audible, truly.) (listened to quite a few more episodes of apocrypals and it’s certainly entertaining at times. i should’ve been reading along though. maybe some other time)

I DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE SEASON 4 TEASER THE FIRST TIME AROUND.........................................

i must confess something that people who know me well may already know: i hate when stories have a bad ending. an unhappy ending. a painful ending. a hopeless ending. bittersweet is the furthest in that direction i can tolerate. my perspective, which is pretty deep-seated, is that there's no point in getting to know and love characters if you're only going to be hurt by that connection to them when the end turns out to be bad. if i have even a mild inkling that a story is heading toward a bad ending, i make a conscious effort to regard all characters from afar and not develop any strong attachments. this is not so much "how i think all stories need to be," but rather, "the characteristics a story needs to have to appeal to me personally." so i understand that my view is very subjective and mostly based on my own mental weakness. but i can't help but apply it to the media i consume. and the idea that someone would do something like "make characters very human and strongly developed" IN COMBINATION WITH "heading toward a bad end" makes me upset. like, picture a horror movie. think about the characters in a horror movie. with the exception of a main character, if there is one, there's no guarantee that anyone is going to survive to the end of the film... BUT... the characters generally aren't fleshed out and very sympathetic. i wouldn't go so far as to say they're disposable, but you're not SUPPOSED to cry when they die; you're just supposed to get scared. their purpose is as objects of fear, and you never expect or even hope for a happy ending. but in the magnus archives... all i'm saying... is that i would cry if any of the remaining members of the main cast died. and it seems clear that we're not heading to a happy ending. so i'm somewhat afraid, and not in a good way. i don't know how much i can trust jonny sims to give me the story i want, and obviously, i'm not entitled to it.

if your name is jonathan and you want to shorten it, the short form is jon. it ain't john, no matter what the official transcripts say. where'd you get that h, huh? stole it from someone else's name? are you shortening it like JOnatHaN? you can’t just be that sneaky!

i listened to scrutiny again and it hits so hard. now, in heart of darkness, when manuela begs jon not to force her statement, it's really heavy given the direct context of the previous two episodes where we see how compulsion works and how it hurts.

also when jon was talking about how to destroy the dark sun and he was like "i just need to see it," when i first heard it, i assumed he meant something along the lines of, "by seeing it, i will learn how to destroy it." but now i understand that the mere act of the eye seeing it destroys it, because being known is what the darkness is weakest to.

the magnus employees who work in the library probably at least have a LITTLE BIT of a feeling that they work in an almost normal place, given that jon and all his assistants were able to have that impression before transferring to the archives. so i wonder how the magnus library people feel about their institute's director getting arrested for double murder and now the big boss is a completely unrelated ship captain who seems to want nothing to do with the place but simultaneously is trying to continue business as usual

on second listen, listening to jon ask helen when the guilt stops (wrt hurting people in order to feed one's patron fear) is pretty chilling. because it seems like he's definitely accepting that he will have to hurt people, and what he's concerned about is how bad it makes HIM feel. of course, helen then answers with precisely what i just wrote, so...

i should've read the transcript for episode 159 instead of relistening because i forgot that peter lukas's actor got so gravelly and hard to listen to in this one. anyway, time to re-listen to the season 4 finale... then i'll listen to the season 4 Q&As and stuff... and then the new episode. (DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI)

i heard in the Q&A that the voice of peter lukas did multiple takes for episode 159?! but it was because of technical difficulties. right. because i can’t imagine the way it turned out being deemed the best take. sorry

ok, things i missed last time i listened to 160: daisy and the other two hunters are missing. also jon mentioned "magnus's body" and martin mentioned "an old man's corpse" and at the time i took this to mean (somewhat unthinkingly) that when jon and martin returned from the lonely, they killed elias/jonah's body. which would be a weird thing to happen "off-camera," so to speak. so i think i must have been wrong? slightly confused. ok, no, i'm now sure that elias survived, so i must have misunderstood. definitely alive.

as martin leaves and jon is about to begin the statement, he sounds so peaceful and satisfied. that's good acting.

by the way, in one of the previous few episodes, i noticed that jonah seems to have body-swapped by switching out his eyes into his preferred body, which i'm pretty sure i missed the first time.

i like that jonny sims checks reddit to see whether people have solved the mystery. that's just a really funny way to do things, sneaking a peek like "hmm how mysterious is my mystery? let's see who has figured it out..." and for the record, i wasn't even close to figuring it out. but to be fair to myself, i didn't try. like i said from the beginning, i started listening with the intent of going along for the ride. plus the mystery had already been solved before i started listening to the series, so it's not like i had a lot of time in between updates to contemplate whether elias was jonah, etc.

JON'S AMERICAN ACCENT FOR THE IONIZED YEAST AD

ALEX WAS THE VOICE OF JARED HOPWORTH?! i mean it was so messed up it could have been anybody but god

ALEX DIDN'T LET GERTUDE CACKLE

i've listened to the bloopers (including a gertrude cackle?) and the season 5 trailer (martin seems slightly cavalier about the end of the world but maybe he's just trying to keep his shit together for jon) and i'm going to listen to the new episode Soon.

final conclusion on rereads/relistens: i had pretty poor comprehension of some important happenings. i’m realizing just how easy it is to mishear/fail to hear exactly what is happening in a podcast when you’re doing other stuff at the same time. there are still a couple things i don’t quite understand, but i think i’ll have a look around the wiki one of these days.

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niallismymuse · 5 years

Text

Chapter 2

Tessa went to bed that night feeling happy and content, even with the knowledge that she would have a wicked hangover the next morning. It was all worth it, just for the look on his face when she had kissed his cheek.

Yet when she woke up the next morning to a splitting headache, it didn’t matter for long. Because her feed was filled with texts from her mother and sister and some of her colleagues, all with links to various articles online. Articles written about her.

She clicked on the one her sister sent, ignoring the other messages. It opened up to pictures of her and Niall hugging inside and outside of the bar, and one showing her kissing his cheek. The headline was ‘Popstar Niall Horan and YouTuber Queen Tessa – Dating?’

She blinked about eight million times, despite how crusty her eyes felt, and let out a groan that would have woken the dead. She couldn’t deal with this. She could not. And Niall – he must be embarrassed right now. She hadn’t seen any messages from him, but surely someone had told him that he was in the pop-culture articles once more. Especially over something like this.

Dating? No. Did she wish? Yes. Was it likely to ever happen now? Mm, probably not.

They hadn’t been spotted out and about together before, not that they had gone outmuch before. But of course, the one time she decided to have balls, someone took pictures.

With a sigh of utter despair, Tessa tossed her phone aside and buried her face into her pillow. Tears burned at her eyes, and she sniffled, her bottom lip quivering. Sure, this wasn’t the first ‘story’ that had been sold about her, but this was by far the largest. She would be lucky if it didn’t affect her friendship with Niall – unless that was already screwed. He hadn’t messaged, after all.

Neither had Jess. So much for having a best friend.

Tessa reached down and yanked the covers over her head, blocking out the light of day streaming through her curtains.

✩✩✩

After wallowing under the blankets for at least an hour and pushing back tears a majority of the time, Tessa decided she had to get up and deal with the trials of the day. She took it slow – she emerged from her cocoon and got some Advil and a glass of water to ease the headache pulsing through her skull. Once the pill was swallowed along with the rest of the water, she rummaged around her fridge for some breakfast. She found some leftovers to eat, not in the mood to cook; that was sacrilegious, because Tessa was always in the mood to cook. Today, though, she let it slide.

She munched on some cold quesadilla’s from the other night and filled the ache in her stomach. Yet the ache in her chest was still there, pulsing beneath everything else. She couldn’t believe someone had taken pictures of her and Niall. Wait, yes, she could, but what she couldn’t believe was that they were all over the Internet. How had her fun night out turned so sour?

Tessa decided she couldn’t dwell on it any longer – it would make her headache come back, stronger than ever before. She needed to get her mind off of it, so she would do the one thing she could: work.

And work she did. When she was about halfway finished with putting the Othello video together, she sent Niall a text, a simple ‘hey’, and then set her phone aside. She lost herself in the editing process, and when the video was complete and ready to be stored for uploading, the sun was westward in the sky.

Blowing out a harsh breath, she saw that Niall hadn’t texted back.

Okay, ouch, she thought, but I have better things to do than overanalyze that.

It could have been anything. He was likely dealing with fallout of his own. Now that she was back on her phone, she could see that her social media was blowing up. She was being mentioned in practically triple the Tweets that she was normally mentioned in. People were commenting all over her Instagram, and yeah, about half of those were nasty comments. Like, ‘why would Niall kiss her? She’s ugly’ and others in a similar vein.

When Tessa checked her YouTube account, she saw that her subscriber count had definitely increased since yesterday, which caused some mixed emotions.

Perhaps this wasn’t entirely bad, then. But then she felt guilty over the thought – she did not kiss Niall’s cheek for more views or subscribers, she kissed Niall’s cheek because she liked him.

Tessa could feel herself beginning to spiral, and her chest tightened. She set her phone down again and took a deep breath in through her nose, and then pushed it out through her mouth. After repeating the process for a few minutes and narrowing her focus until breathing was all that she could think of, her chest loosened. That tight, anxious feeling still lurked, but it was manageable. As long as she had something else to do, some way to keep her mind occupied, it would stay that way. Doing nothing would make it come back, full-force.

She turned the notifications off on her phone and ignored the several texts her mother had sent her. Maria Jenkins would have to wait for her daughter to catch her breath.

Tessa sat there in her desk chair and thought about what to do next, lacing her fingers together. She needed to get her car. She had taken an Uber home last night, which meant that her poor car was still sitting in that bar’s parking lot. That was a priority.

Mind focused, she ordered another Uber and worked on a script for a video while she waited.

✩✩✩

Driving in LA always took a lot of concentration, at least in Tessa’s opinion. The roads were crowded and full of traffic, and in certain tourist-trap areas, there was always at least one person who darted across the street when and where they weren’t supposed to. She didn’t mind; not today, anyway. It was just another thing to focus wholly on.

She stopped at Trader Joe’s and bought groceries for dinner, keeping her eyes down and her steps quick. She’d been stopped by fans before, and while she always loved seeing them, today was just not the day for it.

When she got home and unloaded, she took a moment to check her phone. She hadn’t checked it since the Uber had arrived and wasn’t surprised to see more messages from her mom (‘Are you ever going to message your own mother, Tessa?’), but she wassurprised to see a single text from Niall.

It read: hey…how are you holding up?

She typed back: I’m okay. You?

His response came a minute later. I’m okay, used to it. I’m more worried about you. Want to talk?

Not really. Not about the media and the pictures that were taken of them. But she did want to see him; Tessa realized that she missed him already.

Want to come over for dinner? I’m making spaghetti.

His response came a mere second later. Yes. Anything I can bring?

Tessa texted back no and sent him her address and apartment number. Then he was on his way, and she looked around her apartment and panicked.

It wasn’t dirty or messy, necessarily, but this was the first time Niall had ever come over. She had dishes in the sink, and the floor needed a quick sweep. She set about completing her chores quickly, all while the water for the noodles boiled and the sauce came together, and then she wiped down her kitchen table and the coffee table in the connected living room.

Oh God, what was she going to wear?

All too soon, a knock sounded from the door. Tessa glanced down at the yoga pants and thin sweatshirt she was wearing, and then shrugged. This was what it was, then.

She padded quickly to the door and opened it, smiling just because she knew who would be standing behind it.

Niall was dressed in a similar attire; he was wearing gray sweatpants and a comfy-looking blue t-shirt. He hadn’t shaved. A light coating of stubble decorated his jaw. He tugged at his shirt almost self-consciously. “Hope ya don’t mind my clothes…”

“Oh, pfft.” She waved his comment off. “Look at me. I work at home. We wear what we want in this household.” And with that, she gestured him inside. “So, this is the place where I live. Welcome. I’m still cooking the spaghetti.”

His eyes rested on each piece of the apartment that he could see from where he was standing. The kitchen, next to a large floor-to-wall window. The small wooden dining table, a few feet away from the kitchen, and the living room with its blue sofa and TV a few feet back. Her bedroom door was closed, and right beyond the kitchen with a bathroom connected. The second bedroom was on the other side, by the living room.

“I like your apartment,” Niall stated, and she could tell that he wasn’t lying or just saying it because it was the polite thing to say – there was a genuine warmth to his tone, and his eyes lit up when they landed on a tiny stone turtle knickknack that was on the kitchen counter. “You like sea turtles?”

“Love them,” she replied as she headed back towards the kitchen, giving the cooking noodles a stir. She added some parmesan cheese to the sauce and stirred it, then gave it a quick taste. She had already put some sugar in to cut the acidity of the tomatoes, but she had forgotten salt in her rush to clean. Tessa fixed that quickly before turning to look at Niall, who was watching her intently. “They’re my favorite animal. What’s yours?”

Niall looked a little nonplussed. “No one has asked me that in years.”

Tessa frowned. “Well, I think having a favorite animal says a lot about a person. See, my all-time favorite is the sea turtle, but I also really love meerkats. And sharks.”

He blinked, before coming closer and peering into the spaghetti sauce like it would have an answer for him. “Um…huh. I think giraffes are really cool. I kind of forgot that I liked them so much, actually. Especially when I was younger.”

Tessa nodded sagely, before grabbing a clean spoon and dipping it into the sauce. “Good choice. Want a taste? Be careful, it’s hot.”

Niall took the spoon and tentatively tasted the sauce, and his eyes widened. “Holy shit, Tess,” he chuckled as he shook his head, “this is good. Quite possibly the best red sauce I’ve ever had.”

She beamed at him. “Thank you. I love cooking, so I try to make the best food that I can.”

“I like cooking too. Is there anything I can help with?”

Tessa thought for a moment. She knew this wasn’t really why Niall had agreed to come over for dinner – it was obviously about the pictures and media attention – but this was a nice detour from that situation. “You can slice up that bread over there and make garlic bread, if you want.”

He smiled. “Cutting board?” he asked, gesturing to the cupboards. She grabbed one for him and handed him a knife, while he rummaged around in her fridge to find the butter and garlic. They worked separately on their tasks, but together. Tessa put her oven on to preheat, and Niall chopped garlic and melted butter before combining the two. It was nice. There was a comfortable silence between them.

Once the garlic bread was in the oven, Niall leaned against the counter and gazed cautiously at her. “Are you okay?”

She knew what he was asking. Self-consciously, she stirred the bubbling sauce, avoiding looking at him. She needed to get the noodles out of the boiling water, but it could wait just a little longer. “It was…a shock. I’ve never dealt with something quite this big, you know?”

He nodded, folding his arms across his chest. “It gets easier, the more ya deal with it. I just don’t comment on my relationships.”

“I haven’t been in one since my YouTube career started, so it’s never been a problem before,” she admitted before looking over at him. “But we’re not in one. So, it’s okay. We just won’t say anything…right?”

There was an odd silence, filled with a sort of half-tension. Niall swallowed harshly, and she saw his throat bob with the movement. Something inside of her was aching, just waiting for his response.

“Right. Won’t be a problem. Everyone’ll forget about it with the next scandal. We just have to wait it out.”

That ache plummeted inside of her, leaving Tessa feeling a little empty. He didn’t like her after all. If he did, he would have said something…right?

She forced a bright smile in his direction before grabbing the pot of boiling noodles and moving over towards the sink. She poured it into the colander, leaning back to avoid the steam, and let the heat and strain of staying still cleanse her mind. She shook the colander, trying to get rid of as much water as possible. When she turned back to face him, she was over it, as much as she could be over it.

“Spaghetti’s done.” She smiled, and Niall hummed softly in response, pulling open the oven to check the bread. When he said it needed just a minute more, she nodded and grabbed two plates, setting up the counter buffet-style.

She was fine. She was Tessa Love Jenkins, dammit, and she could handle an unintentional rejection. She compartmentalized it and shoved it in the back of her brain, making herself be ‘more fine’ than ever. The area of her brain containing her feelings for Niall was pushed wayback.

Niall plated himself some spaghetti, and when he was out of the way, Tessa pulled the garlic bread out of the oven and set it on the stove beside the spaghetti. With a flick of her wrist, she turned the oven off, and then began to serve herself. They sat down across from each other at the table. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and began to eat.

“Holy fuck,” Niall grumbled after chewing, “this is fuckin’ delicious, Tess. Damn.”

She grinned, unable to help being pleased. “Yeah?” She took a bite herself and then nodded enthusiastically. “It’s good!”

“Just good? It’s fuckin’ fantastic! Give yourself some more credit, love.”

They ate quickly, not because they were in a hurry, but mostly because it was that good. When they were finished, Tessa put the leftovers away and waved off Niall’s offer to help clean up. She would do it later.

“Want to watch something?” she asked as she sat down on the couch, remote in hand. She turned her TV on and pulled up Netflix before reaching down and grabbing a blanket from underneath the coffee table. It was chilly outside, and she wanted a bit of warmth and comfort, especially considering the day she’d had.

Niall sat down at the opposite end of the couch, which, ouch, definitely hurt a little, but then she threw the other end of her blanket over his feet and tucked that piece of information away to analyze later. He grinned at her and pulled his side of the blanket more fully over his lap.

“Absolutely, unless it’s a murder documentary. You mentioned you liked those. Whatcha got on?”

“No murder documentaries, this time.” Tessa side-eyed him. This next question could prove to break their friendship. “Would you be okay with Blue Planet?”

He dipped his chin, nice as ever. “’Course. I’ve never seen it.”

She gaped at him. “But it’s David Attenborough! Blue Planet II is what made Queen Elizabeth declare a war on plastic!”

Niall chuckled, looking just slightly sheepish. “Well, remember, I may live in London sometimes but I’m Irish and constantly traveling.”

Tessa shook her head, speechless, and started the first episode, which was about all of the oceans and habitats in some way. The documentary was beautiful and breath-taking, and Attenborough’s voice narrated it wonderfully.

Niall scooted closer, slowly enough that at first, she didn’t notice he was moving at all. Next thing she knew, his knee was bumping against hers and the blanket had settled comfortably over both of their laps. She swallowed, nervousness rising for some reason; she fisted the blanket before forcing her hand to relax.

This was nice. This was good. She liked this. All Niall needed to do was stretch his arms over her shoulders, and everything would be perfect.

They watched in silence as Attenborough described the mating habits of a particular fish. “He attempts to make with her and any of the dozen or so females that live in his territory, whenever he gets the chance.”

Niall snorted. “What a player.”

She giggled, dipping her head in agreement, and when she peeked over at him, he was staring in fascination at the screen. His lips were parted slightly, eyes wide but intensely focused, drinking in every word spoken. When the episode was finished, he shook his head in amazement and turned to look at her. Their shoulders brushed.

“I think you’ve gotten me on to something new to do with my time, what little I have of it.”

Tessa smiled gently. “I’m glad. I care a lot about our oceans and our water life. In fact, when I do my first charity livestream, I’m raising money to give to ocean conservation. I still have to put everything together, like who I’ll be donating to and what I’ll be doing, but it’s something I would like to do this coming year.”

His eyes lit up with interest. “Sounds cool, Tess. Keep me posted, I’m interested.”

“I will. I haven’t made a lot of progress with figuring it all out, since it’s just me on my channel so far, and I spend a lot of my time making sure I have weekly videos. I have to come up with a concept, script it as much as I can, get whatever I need for filming, film it, and then edit.”

“You do a lot of work,” Niall mused, looking at her steadily. There was a flash of concern in his eyes, and it gave her pause.

“Yeah,” she replied in an odd tone, “I do.”

It had gotten to the point where she rarely left her apartment, so consumed in filming and editing. By the time she was finished with something to a degree that she could be proud of, it was often late, and she was almost too tired to do anything. Tessa could recall going to bed without eating dinner more than a few times. “I guess…I’m something of a workaholic.”

“I get that.” Niall leaned back against the couch, gazing blankly at the coffee table in front of them. “When I get a song in my head…sometimes I can’t stop working on it until it’s as perfect as I can possibly make it. I’ll be asleep, and hear it in my head, and I’ll wake up, fingers twitching, needingto finish it.” He loosed a breath, shaking his head before running those fingers through his hair. “I love what I do, and I love creating music, but sometimes I can’t get out of my own head.”

Tessa understood that perfectly. Certain videos she had produced had been the result of hours upon hours of work, of 2am wakeups filled with the urge to do something, of rejections to go out with friends because she was worried that if she didn’t finish whatever she was working on soon, the concept in her mind would burn out and take the whole project with it.

“It sounds like you and I need to relax,” she told him because she didn’t know how else to process this, and Niall laughed a little breathlessly.

“I’ll relax when I’m dead,” he chortled, and she could tell he was only half-joking.

The thought she had yesterday came rushing back. “I don’t post a video or do any work the first week of the New Year as a way to reset and recharge. In fact, I go away every New Year’s Eve with my friends to a cabin in Big Sur Campground…would you like to come with us?”

Niall turned once more to face her, eyes calculating. She could see that he was weighing the pros and cons quickly in his mind, and she waited, breath baited.

“Fuck it. Yeah, I’ll come.”

“Great.” She exhaled, a wide smile breaking on to her lips. “We leave in two days.”

Niall grinned at her. “Awesome. I could use a good time.”

“Oh, it’ll be a great time. We basically just get drunk and eat junk food. It’s my favorite time of the year.” She paused, remembering the circumstances that had landed Niall on her couch in the first place. “It’s private, too. No one should bother us.”

Of course, no one should have bothered them last night either, but they always rented a cabin far away from all of the others, just so they could party and do as they saw fit.

He nodded. “Sounds good. I’m excited, Tess. Just text me what to bring.” He stretched slowly, loosening his muscles, and she didn’t pretend to not notice when his t-shirt rode up, exposing a thin sliver of his stomach. She didn’t pretend (to herself) that she didn’t want to see more. “I should get going. But I had a great time. You cook a fuckin’ delicious spaghetti.”

She smirked and led him to the door. Halfway out the door, after already saying goodbye, he pivoted and turned to face her. “Oh, and Tess? We probably shouldn’t be seen in public together for a little while…just to let things die down.”

Tessa blinked, before nodding her head in silent agreement. That funny feeling in her chest was back – like something was about to crack, but it wasn’t quite there yet. It hurt in an all-new way.

Niall smiled, waved, and then disappeared down the hallway of her apartment building.

She closed her door, mind whirling with every little thing Niall had said or done that evening – every note of disinterest, every smile or move that spoke of the opposite. She leaned against her door, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath in before slowly blowing it out.

What had she gotten herself into?

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callsignbaphomet · 5 years

Text

So I’m just gonna get right to the point. I love playing Skyrim, I love playing as my OCs in Skyrim. I especially love modding the living heck out of this game while playing as my OCs and pretty much living vicariously through them.

However, as much as I love this game IT IS SEVERELY LACKING IN LGBTQ+ CONTENT AND THE OPTION TO MARRY SOME CHARACTERS OF THE SAME GENDER AND ONE INSTANCE OF AN MLM COUPLE THROUGH A LETTER BECAUSE THEY’RE BOTH DEAD AF IN THE DRAGONBORN DLC IS NOT ENOUGH FOR MY QUEER ASS!

So what to do? Mods! It’s 2020 and a lot more people are openly accepting and open-minded, right? So finding LGBTQ+ mods should be a lot easier, right? Eh.........no. I’ve spent several days trying to find mods to make my Skyrim playthrough as queer as I possibly can make it, specifically for my High Elf OC who is trans (FtM), very effeminate, has a none muscular body and build and very gay. I think now, after several days of research, tutorials, testing and an endless amount of headaches I think I have the mods to make my play through true to how I imagine and have written this character as.

Bare with me for a few seconds, I promise I’ll get to the point and this is worth reading. I’m trying to get as much information in this as possible.

Disclaimer:

This mod list is only for the PC version of the game. Look, I’m super, super sorry but basically over 95% of all these mods are exclusively found online and even if they ARE on beth.net they aren’t used at full capacity from what I understand. Believe me, as a mainly console player, it breaks my heart that I can’t include the consoles for this list.

I won’t be linking to just Nexus. I’ve found a bunch of mods outside of the Nexus that are reliable.

I’ll only be working with the Special Edition version of the game. It’s the one I have and am playing on.

I will NOT be covering female body replacers. At freakin’ all. There are literal dozens of mods covering this. There will only be ONE and it is for very specific reasons only.

In my little venture into finding these mods I came across a lot of homophobic, transphobic and downright disgusting comments within the Nexus. I also found out a lot of queer mod authors were driven out of the Nexus because of said homophobic people. This is what happened to Vector and also why SavrenX refuses to upload anything other than weapon, item retextures to the Nexus. Nexus users and community overall is very homophobic and toxic so I’m very sorry if you see or read something upsetting. I advice you avoid the comments (known as posts on Nexus) tab as to avoid seeing some vile shit. Ignore them and don’t engage them ffs, they just want a reaction out of you. There’s no correcting these assholes much less educating them. They ain’t worth your time. Just report and move on.

The majority of the mods linked in this post have been tried by me, if I haven’t tried them out I’ll say so. Again, I’m learning as I go along and believe me this hasn’t been an easy task to find all of these working mods.

No, I won’t be searching or uploading any ports, texture, mesh or mod edits I myself have done. I ain’t confident in how well I may have or not have edited the mods and more importantly that’s as bad as uploading art that wasn’t done by you. Sadly, you’ll have to do these changes yourself. I’ll try my best to link tutorials. Also don’t go and harass the authors for a port or an update ffs.

I’ll most likely be editing this list as I learn more.

Yes, I will leave links from adult sites. A lot of these sites pretty much force you to sign up in order for you to download their content. It’s fine, just make some random account and you’ll instantly gain access to the mods. Just know there’ll be nsfw images, gifs and videos everywhere in these sites.

While I will be referring to male characters a lot of these if not all can also cater to non-binary characters too!

No, I will not be covering sex mods. I have no intention of adding them to any of my load orders and I really don’t care to. You’re on your own for that category. Try Lover’s Lab.

*Body Mods/Replacers/Races:

Schlongs of Skyrim (aka SOS). Not the only choice out there but the most current and fully working one. Pretty much mandatory for a bunch of mods so might as well have it, ya know?

Tempered Skins for Males. Was known as Better Males; pairs up beautifully with SOS. Super amazing work if you ask me.

Shape Atlas for Men (aka SAM). This is literally the god king of all male body replacers. Want a twunk? This mod will do it. Want a regular Joe? This can do it. Want a bear of a man running around in Skyrim? Yeah, girl, this can do it. Ever since I discovered it I have been obsessed with it! HOWEVER, the full working mod is only available for Old Skyrim, maybe for Legendary Edition but I’m not sure. Vector said he had plans to port the full working mod to Special Edition but confessed he was having issues with the scripts. Also afaik Vector’s last updates on working on the mod were back in late 2016 so I think it’s safe to say this beautiful mod will never be seen running on SSE. Sadly Vector just up and left the modding scene somewhere in 2018. It none of our business but from what I read he faced a lot of homophobic harassment from people not liking his body mod or giving him shit because he didn’t want to make a female body mod. He even faced harassment from our very own community.

Not all’s lost though. Some of the amazing modders in Vector’s site have made a working version for SSE.

SAM Light, SAM Morphs for RaceMenu, SAM SE Vanilla Armor Refit, SAM High Poly Conversion, SAM Light Texture Add-on, High Poly Head

The Ultra Femme. Title should be super self-explanatory. Super good if your character is really femme or non-binary or trans. I haven’t tried out this body myself and I’m not entirely sure whether this is compatible with SE or not. RefurbMadness has a lot of mods hosted in her site and still has some in Nexus that are being hosted by the site’s Care Taker. I’m actually gonna link a few later. I honestly suggest going through her site and reading up everything. She’s pretty clear when it comes to instructions, the only problem is she’s not exactly clear on whether her mods are compatible with SE or not. Maybe it’s written somewhere in there, I’m still new to modding and need very clear descriptions (you kinda gotta talk to me like I’m 5 when it comes to mods). I need to check more of her content and test a bunch of things. She also has armor and clothing mods.

Milkdrinker Male Texture and Slim Male Body for SoS (<3<3<3). Both by the same mod author. Sadly only available for Old Skyrim but the only reason why I linked it is because both mods are super easy to convert to use for SSE. Sweetie, if I managed to do it, you can do it too. Watch this, or this or this or try to Google it and see what comes up. Personally I tried the Slim Male Body and it was pretty good. Unfortunately you’d have to refit all the armors to fit either body yourself.

Transgender Race and NPCS SSE. Like I said before I wasn’t going to link or talk about any female body replacers except for one. This one! Look, there are a few out there but they’re extremely transmisogynistic and fetishistic and use a lot of outdated and transphobic language plus they’re mostly sex mods so I will abso-freaking-lutely NOT be linking them. Anyway, the people behind this port are back to working on this mod and have plans for adding transgender men. As of now the mod only has transgender women. They can’t add more genders due to the engine limitations and FYI they used “race” in the title because this isn’t a body mod, it’s actually a race. This is one of the few mods that won’t play well with SoS.

There IS one more body or better said, race, I tried but I really didn’t like it. Mod worked as it was advertised but--well, whatever, it’s for personal reasons that I didn’t like it and it depended way too much on a lot of more mods and it bloated up my LO something fierce so for that reason I ain’t gonna link it. Mod’s called Femboy if you wanna give it a try yourself.

*Extras (edits, armors, clothes and more):

Enhanced Character Edit SE. Tl;dr this is like RaceMenu but on steroids. It offers way more sliders and because of this it has fantastic potential to mold your character’s body to your personal liking. I used this instead of RM for my High Elf I mentioned earlier. He has a more “delicate” frame and is much thinner than my other OCs and this mod did exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve for a very long time now. Works like a charm.

SSE Luscious Locks for All - Unisex KS Hair. Makes it so that male characters can use all the hair options that comes with KS Hairdos SSE. Guys with long hair! Yummy! <3

Oooooooorrrrrrr you can just install ApachiiSkyHair SSE which has a bunch of long hair options for men to look fabulously yummy! This is the one I’m using.

Femfeet Redesigned SSE Port For Everyone. Look, it’s a foot texture mod, that’s it. Works with Better Males aka Tempered Skins and SoS, so yes, your guys will have pretty feet. Load this AFTER you body mod of choice.

Apachii Divine Elegance Store. This store has so much to offer. Really beautiful clothes and armors, exceptional jewelry, wonderful accessories aaaaaand your male character can also use the nails that are offered by the mod. So if you want your male character to have some stunning and colorful manicures done this mod offers it. They also offer actual claws that also comes in different colors so you can have both styles. Look, imo this is a must for femme male and enby characters. Your guys are going to look beautiful!

Immersive Jewelry - Earring for Male Characters. This enables Immersive Jewelry earrings to be wearable and visible on male characters.

Light Elven Armor for Men, Light Glass Armor for Men, Light Daedric Armor for Men. Tired of women being the only ones to get skimpy outfits? Ja, me too! Here’s some of the armor mods RefurbMadness ported to SSE before she left Nexus. There’s more available for Old Skyrim but you’ll need to convert them over to SSE yourself.

Slof’s Lair. Slof has a collection of skimpy armors, some accessories and even modern clothes (if that’s your thing). They have a link to their Nexus profile on their page but instead of adding all the links I just figured to leave the link to their site so you can check everything they have to offer. I haven’t tried any of Slof’s mods myself though I’m super interested in the Just For Men collection of mods and the Goth Shop (chill, it’s mostly Tera armors without the need to download that massive Tera mod).

Tera Armors Collection - Special Edition. And here’s that massive mod I previously mentioned but it’s actually a really good one. I’ve tested this out on both pc and Xbox One and it looks gorgeous on both!

The Well Dressed Mage. Not exactly skimpy but kind of revealing. Idk, these look lovely af and I wanna try them on my Altmer. Maybe someone else will want to try these too.

Modular Bandoliers and Pauldrons for Males. Pretty simple and to the point. Haven’t tried it since it wouldn’t go with my elf’s more refined bitchy tastes.

Bad Dog’s Skimpy Clothes SE. Some skimpy outfits for guys that were converted over to SE apparently not too long ago.

Bodyslide and Outfit Studio. So none of the stuff listed above is to your liking. That’s where this comes in. Thing is you actually CAN convert female armors and clothes for male use. So download the armors and clothes you wanna use and throw them and the body meshes you use into Outfit Studio. I myself am still learning how to go about doing this and the tutorials out there are kinda hard to come by. Try this video. I followed it and managed to convert a female outfit to fit on a male body I was using. Still need a lot of practice though but am working on it.

As far as makeup goes you can edit the colors of your character’s eyeshadow, eyeliner, cheeks and lips but with ECE or RaceMenu you can edit the colors further. May need to do some extra hard tweaking some choices though, not gonna lie. If I find a much better option I’ll post it.

I’m currently trying to find how the heck to get male characters to wear heels or if there’s a mod that has it. Like, that’s the last thing I need to make clothes complete. I’ll get back to this when I find it.

*Animations:

FNIS PCEA2 - Player Exclusive Animations (Dynamic) SE. So you got your character, you’ve dressed them and done up their hair and all that and to this point it’s all come together perfectly...until your femme male/enby character or your butch female/enby character starts walking and standing idly by and the poses and animations are completely and utterly wrong. Why is he walking like an angry gorilla? Why is she walking like a Victoria’s Secret model down the walkway? Can you switch their animations?

YES!!!

PCEA2--and yes, you will need FNIS to get this working--allows you to make animation changes to only your character. You can even add and/or remove which animation packs you want your character to use! I’ve just barely begun testing this mod as well as adding some specific packs for my Altmer and the pretty female idles works like a charm for him. I downloaded FNIS Sexy Move SE to try this out on him and see if it works but according to Fore it should work as long as you installed everything correctly and ticked the appropriate box to activate the animation pack you want. I’m not entirely sure if you can customize the choices given by each animation pack, probably something as simple as deleting the animations you don’t want and leaving the one you do want. I’ll have to test this further.

*Gameplay and Voices:

Simply Gay Letters. Simple and sweet little mod that adds some letters in certain places all over Skyrim tying certain NPCs to other NPCs. The hinted at couples are all the mod author’s headcanons so if that bothers you I suggest moving on.

Queering Skyrim - Blueflower Necklace. Basically it stops female NPCs from showing interest in your male character when wearing an amulet of Mara. Queering Skyrim - Lavender Menace Necklace does the exact same thing but for female characters.

Same Sex Perks - A Lover’s Insight - Agent of Dibella - Allure. Y’all remember Confirmed Bachelor from New Vegas? Remember how no Beth game has put it in their games again but are totally adding some lazy attempts to include us LGBTQ+ folks? The author has a pretty clear and easy to understand description of the mod in the page. There’s also Gay Insight - A Lover’s Insight Tweak which does the same as the other one but much simpler. I guess it’s up to you and your tastes when it comes to which one to use. I myself am using Same Sex Perks since it adds other perks.

Player Voicesets for SSE - Custom Voice Version. I downloaded this but I haven’t installed it yet. If I understood correctly this lets you change your character’s voice to any of the in game voices. My advice? Go into the page and read everything.

PC Head Tracking and Voice Type SE. The reason I haven’t installed the previous mod is because I have THIS one installed because of the head tracking but it also comes with an added voice feature so this might clash with the other one. I still need to test whether they do the same thing or not.

Skyrim - Player Re-Voiced Series. CaseyTheVA was kind enough to make a bunch of voices for your character. Just your character. I’ve tested these on Xbox and they are legit really freakin’ good! They seem to have added a lot more since the last time I checked. Unfortunately these are only available on beth.net or for Old Skyrim on the Nexus. You could just download them from the game’s mod page and remove the files and upload them back into the game using whatever mod manager you use. I did this with Cheat Room. Or you can port them yourself from Nexus. Honestly the quality alone is worth all the trouble.

#skyrim #skyrim mods #modded skyrim #queer mods

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years

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Holiday Card Project 2019

Oh would you look at that; I’m participating in the deviantArt Holiday Card Project again this year! Just like last year, my crafty efforts aren’t really done proper justice by scans or photos, so I’ll be uploading a short video...somewhere (probably Instagram but we’ll see) and then link back to it to hopefully show it off a bit more. It’s funny though, I’d almost forgotten about HCP until I got the notification that it had opened for this year. And yet I was so concerned about having it in the mail on time that I got this one done pretty much in one day. I think last year's card took me closer to 2 days and I was pushing my luck that it would get there in time. My process for this year went as follows: I browsed around on Pinterest for a while, as I hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do. During that process, I latched onto a concept I saw a few times; Christmas lights and the phrase “merry and bright,” and so I went with that. Already I had the idea of the lights being across the top of the card, with a real piece of thread (which would later be changed to wire as the idea occurred to me while I was digging for some other supplies) connecting them. After some thought, I decided I wanted to add some cotton to the bottom to add a little more pizzazz. Because if last year’s HCP taught me anything, it’s that I like to go big or go home for the occasion. And I knew where I could get some too; the fields next to the house have already been picked for this year, but there was still a good amount of cotton leftover on the stalks near the edges. Let me tell you, I have a newfound appreciation for whoever invented a mechanical way to take the seeds out of cotton, because gosh darn it if that process is not far more tiresome than you’d think! I think I finally did manage to get them all out, but now I know why it’s probably just easier to buy cotton or polyester fiberfill. XD Anyway. With my mind made up and a handle full of cotton at the ready, I started on the actual card part. In the past, for my card needs I’ve usually used some of the pre-folded & cut cards my mom has on hand, but this time I didn’t feel like bothering her about it. So instead I grabbed a piece of my gold-shimmer cardstock and cut it down so that once I folded it I’d have a 5” x 7” card. (As that’s what Google told me was a fairly common size for greeting cards and would fit comfortably in most standard envelopes.) Then I used my trick from my book-making endeavors of using the edge of scissors to “score” the folding line on one side of the card to make that process easier. In trying to make some stamps I didn’t end up using magically appear from whoever they were hiding, I found some metallic gold stripey paper in my stash and had the idea to cover the outside of the card with it, maybe. At the time I was a little bit skeptical if I wanted to do that, but I pulled it out and set it on the desk anyway so I could have the option if I wanted it. And as you can see, I ended up deciding to go for it, though at this point in the process I simply measured out and cut it as needed; I wouldn’t attach it until later. Then I paused and used the scrap cardstock pieces to test some pens and such, only to find I was only minimally (at best) interested in using any of them. I had some ideas to incorporate certain things but they were things I couldn’t really try out until I had more of the card finished, and some things I couldn’t figure out solutions for until then either. So I swatched out some marker colors and started practicing on some print outs of the Christmas light shape—which is fortunately had the foresight to do the said printing out before I got into the thick of everything else—only to find that I just really was not happy with the blends I was getting. I think the main problem is that I just didn’t have certain colors I needed, but the glowing/fade effect I was trying to get was also totally new territory for me and I seemed to only get worse the more times I tried it. In the end, I picked out a “base” shade for each Christmas light color from the markers and then selected a dark, a “true color” and a highlight from my Prismacolor pencils to do the shading instead. There were still challenges to be had, but this system worked a lot better for me. Benefits of being a mixed media artist: if one medium just isn’t doing it for you, you can bring in others to level the playing field The lights then got bright shine spots courtesy of my white Gelly roll pen and their little silver bits I did with a silver Art Philosophy watercolor. Even though I was already anticipating the silver getting kind of lost against the gold in the background. I had a vision and I was sticking to it. In addition to that vision, once the lights were safe to handle I glued them to a piece of foam and then left them alone to dry, figuring it would be easier and simpler to cut them out if I only had to do it once. As such, the edges aren’t super smooth, but otherwise, I think that was the right call. While they dried, I then attached the gold-stripe paper to the card surface and started thinking about where and how I would implement the text parts of the card. (And at some point I took a break to figure out the full inside and outside please, as originally all I was going on was “merry and bright,” though I don’t remember when exactly in the process that was.) Here, I had the idea that black paper might look cool. The only black paper I have is a pad of Crayola stuff that I think is actually for practicing calligraphy or hand lettering or something? My original plan was to take one of the pages out and use the blank back, but as I filled through I saw some of the cut out frame-y things and took a look to see if any of them would work for what I wanted/needed, and you can see the two I picked out. Though the one on the inside of the card had only the black and gray/silver originally; the colors I added by hand with my gel pens since it felt like it really needed it. The black paper on the inside also needed a little more attention than the one on the outside. I didn’t cut either of them perfectly straight, but there were a lot more distracting elements that were going to be on the outside, so it was far less noticeable there. On the inside, I ended up going around the edge with some gold and white washi tape that when well with the outside of the card to camouflage the uneven edges. By the time I had all the various papers properly attached to each other and the top edge inside of the card decorated with a strip of glitter tape and a repeating stamp of Christmas lights to tie in with the outside, I felt the lights were dry enough to cut out, so I did. And that meant that the /real/ card assembly could begin. I punched little holes in the tops of the lights for the wire I’d add in later and then fiddled with their placement for a bit before gluing them down...which I then I had to wait for about twenty minutes before I could proceed if I wanted things to dry mostly flat. So while that took its sweet time to dry I went back to the Crayola black paper pad to one of the pages with a grid on it to practice writing out the words for both the outside and inside of the card. In doing so, I discovered that the uni-ball Signo white pen, while bolder and brighter than the Gelly roll, made my cursive almost illegible by virtue of having a thicker tip. Which is why I went with the Gelly roll instead. Just printed handwriting didn’t feel right; I really wanted the fancier look of the cursive. However, I also wanted whoever gets the card to actually be able to read it too. Eventually, the lights, while not fully dry, were dry enough that I could comfortably move on with the assembly. And hindsight, perhaps I should’ve tried stringing the lights onto the wire before gluing them down. The main issue I had was that once I got the wire poked through the hole, it’d bump into the card on the other side and then not want to go anywhere at all. I had to play with it each time to get the wire to come all the way through so I could pull it to the next one. Or maybe that would’ve made the gluing process more difficult than it was worth? We’ll never know. And then I got to attach the cotton. That actually ended up being a much smoother process than I anticipated, as the cotton doesn’t really separate from itself unless you pull it apart, so once I had parts of a clump glued down they were pretty stationary. This was also the first time I dared use my crafting heat gun since I purchased it (which was a while ago; after reading the warnings the first time I’ve been too chicken to use it for fear of catching something on fire by accident ) as I originally thought I’d need more glue and I’d need to glue some clumps on, dry them, and then glue some more. Fortunately, I seemingly put my big girl panties on for nothing as, after the initial layer of glue, I really only needed to glue a couple of other clumps down separately, and as I mentioned the cotton stick to the wet glue well enough on its own. But I had psyched myself up and gotten the thing set up, so once all the cotton was glued down I used the heat gun to dry the glue faster anyway. I was amped up the whole time but I, fortunately, did not burn anything in the process! I did end up going back and adding some blue gel pen to the black paper on the inside, as that was the only color not there and it felt sorely lacking, giving the lights elsewhere on the card. But other than that, once the cotton was all squared away, the card was done. And I’ll be honest; I still like the card I made last year, but I think I’ve really outdone myself this time. There’s just something about the style of this card I enjoy so much more.

It’s equally over-the-top (as is my crafting specialty ) but it’s more refined, somehow, I think. Either way, all that’s left to do now is mail it off and hope that the recipient is as pleased with the card as I am. I can’t believe I’ve actually finished with it this early though! That’s so unlike me; I’m usually the one sneaking things in right on top of the deadline. But hey that means now I have one less thing on my to-do list so I can focus on other things...which may or may not include a holiday-themed kitty drawing in the works... ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

#holidaycardproject2019 #christmas #christmascrafts #handmade #holidaycards #merryandbright

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saysomethingspiderman · 5 years

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Something Wonderful (Pt. 1)

In case you’re unaware, I have uploaded this story from the reader’s point of view, but thought I’d upload with an OC too. Reader version can be found here.

“Questions? What sort of questions?”

The light breeze blew a curl in front of her hazel eyes as she looked up at Carter, the cameraman in charge of the behind-the-scenes snippet for the latest British GQ shoot. Grace placed her camera gently on the sunlounger beside the pool, brows slightly furrowed. The Californian sun burned into her fair skin, but being used to shooting in locations where temperatures dominated even this, sun cream had become a part of her daily routine no matter the area. One could never be too careful, she had learned that the hard way.

“I don’t know, one’s that are a bit… Out there,” Carter replied, receiving a roll of the eyes from Grace. “Here, this is what I’ve put,” he said, handing her one of the pieces of paper from the baseball cap.

“‘If you could meet anyone from history, who would it be?’ Wow, very out there.” Grace folded the paper back up and grabbed another, shaking her head at the mention of a penis. “Alright, I guess I can come up with something. When’s he getting here anyway? Don’t tell me he’s being a drama queen.”

Grace had done enough shoots where the cover star had been quite the diva that it had gotten to the point where she always half expected it. Of course, a great number of people had proven her wrong, but judging was a hard habit to break. She had never been introduced to Tom before and from what she’d heard, he was a lovely guy who hadn’t let fame go to his head. Yet.

“No, Warren’s just doing the last touches I think,” Carter said, leaning over his petite friend to read the question she was writing. He laughed and took his notebook back after her piece of paper had been ripped from the book to be folded into the hat. “That one’s gonna cause a stir with the fans if he answers it!”

“Well there’s nothing wrong with a bit of drama,” Grace grinned wickedly and gave Carter a wink as he headed back into the rented house to set his own camera up to film the short video once she’d finished with Tom herself.

The sound of laughter made her look up a few minutes later and she hastily tossed a shirt over one of the sunloungers, finishing off her touch to the set. Carter made his way back over, followed by Tom. She had to double take, caught slightly off guard by the sun hitting his golden tan, making him shimmer slightly. Well, there was no denying he was gorgeous.

“And this is Grace. She’ll be the one bossing you about for the day.”

Grace shook her head and gave Tom a warm smile. “Just look good for the camera and no bossing about will be needed,” she smirked. “I’m sure you won’t struggle with that anyway. Right, let’s get started.”

Tom was a complete natural. He eased into the shoot in no time, effortlessly pulling off his poses. In fact, it was quite distracting. During her time as a professional photographer, she had come across incredibly good looking men, but there was just something about Tom that stood out. His personality shone through in the photos and she took some great ones of him laughing. Those were her favourites.

“You wanna have a break before the next outfit change?” Grace asked, wiping the sweat from her forehead. She loved the heat, but boy was it scorching. She put her camera down next to her laptop and found the snack table, grabbing a plate to fill with sliced watermelon. “I think we’ll go inside for the next ones,” she said, glancing up at Tom who had come to take some food too. “I don’t know about you, but I’m just about dying in this heat.”

Tom laughed and nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think photos of me drenched in sweat will look that great.” He reached over to pick a handful of strawberries and Grace’s cheeks warmed at the sight of his chest in front of her face, very much dripping with sweat.

“Well, I beg to differ,” she found herself saying, then gave a chuckle to brush her comment away. “There’s towels inside if you want to wipe yourself down.”

“How long have you been doing this?” asked Tom as they made their way inside, instantly feeling the cool air from the fans in the corner. He popped a strawberry into his mouth and swiped one of the hand towels from a table. “You just seem a bit young, no offence.”

Grace shrugged a shoulder and told him no offence was taken. “I’ll actually be twenty-one this weekend. You’re not the first one to question my age,” she hummed, joining him on the couch. “I’m just lucky to catch a break so early, I guess. I’m sure you can say the same.”

His face lit up and he smiled softly. “I’m just waiting for it all to fall apart,” he admitted and, catching Grace’s small frown, quickly added, “I know I’m lucky and being Spider-Man is… Well it’s awesome! It doesn’t seem real sometimes, is what I’m saying.”

It was refreshing to hear his humbleness. “Are you used to the attention yet? I think just about everyone wants a piece of you. I mean, we had to fight to shoot this cover!”

The comment made him laugh and he shook his head. “Well I better make it worth it!” He pulled a leg up onto the couch as he relaxed into the cushions. “I don’t mind it actually. It’s part of the job, isn’t it? I’ve had moments where I’ve freaked out and I start to question how I’m going to live this life,” he told her, eyes a little wide. “But I’ve met some great friends on set, like Zendaya. The amount of times I’ve rang her in a panic! She’s so good at handling it and is so good at talking me through all this.”

“Are you and Zendaya…?”

“What? No! She’s just one of my best friends.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone answer a question so fast,” Grace teased, unable to hide her smirk. She raised a brow and laughed softly at his flushed cheeks. “I’m just messing with you,” she snorted and gave his shoulder a gentle shove.

His smile made her stomach flutter and she focused on her snack to try and hide the way her cheeks reddened, but she could still feel his dark eyes lingering on her freckled face.

“You’ve got a bit of…” Tom gestured to his chin. “Juice.”

Her head shot up and she frowned before wiping her chin quickly with the back of her hand. “God, remind me never to eat melon again when there’s company,” she muttered, almost entirely sure her skin had turned as red as her hair.

“Maybe you should be the one with the towel.” His laugh was infectious and she found herself easily joining in.

The photoshoot soon picked up again before they lost the light from the setting sun. A golden hue illuminated the rooms, only making it harder for Grace not to get distracted by the man she was photographing. A part of her wished it was the middle of winter just because it would mean Tom would actually have a top on. He changed into a few different outfits, from a deep blue, loose pyjama style suit to a proper shirt and jacket that he must have been roasting in. She continued to snap away when they took another break to munch on the Chinese takeaway one of the guys had ordered, taking some of her favourite photos of him joking around with everyone.

Eventually, when Grace ran out of charge on both her spare batteries, the camera was put down and they all settled in the living room to start recording their special snippet with Tom.

“You look so worried,” she noted with a smirk as the actor got comfortable on the couch in front of the tripod. She leaned back against the dining table just behind the camera and sneakily looked him up and down. Blue was definitely his colour.

“Alright, just introduce yourself whenever you’re ready and we’ll go from there,” Carter nodded and gave Tom a quick thumbs up to let him know the camera began recording.

It was clear that Tom had done a lot of videos like this before, coming off at ease with the introduction and then he began to pick the questions from the hat on his lap. Carter’s was the first to be answered and Grace couldn’t help but smile at his answer. She wasn’t expecting Winston Churchill. He kept finding her as he spoke, barely looking at the camera.

“‘Kill or keep’,” Tom read aloud after picking another piece of paper and visibly cringing at the question. “‘Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield?’ Who put that one in there?” he asked, scanning the small amount of people in the room. His eyes found Grace and she gave him a sheepish grin, her own eyes sparkling. He shook his head and returned her smile as he stretched his arm over the back of the couch. “Oh, that’s a tough one… I’m gonna have to say Andrew Garfield because… I love him and he’s killing it right now.”

A few more questions were picked out and answered, one particular response going off on a tangent about not being able to chop off a nipple-sized penis. She wasn’t in charge of editing the video, but she knew for sure some of his explanation wasn’t GQ-friendly and would have to be cut.

“I can’t believe you made me pick between each Spider-Man,” Tom said, coming up behind Grace as she packed away her laptop. “I still feel so torn about it!”

“Yeah, well life’s full of tough decisions. I just don’t know how Tobey will take the news you think he’s a shit Spider-Man.”

“If I’d said Andrew, he would have killed me,’ he replied, chuckling gently. He watched her zip up her bags and nibbled lightly on his lower lip. “What are you doing this weekend? For your birthday, I mean,” he said, trying his best to sound casual.

Grace pursed her lips to hold back a smile. “No idea. I was supposed to be going out with my flatmate for a few drinks since I go back home tomorrow, but I don’t know how long it’ll take me to edit all these photos. Deadlines aren’t put on hold because it’s my birthday,” she shrugged and pulled her bag up over her shoulder.

“Oh. Right. Well you should definitely go out for drinks,” he nodded, running his fingers through his soft curls. “I just thought… Well if your flatmate’s busy for whatever reason, I could always, well, take you out. I’m flying home tonight so I’ll be there for a few days and it’s a big birthday after all and you don’t wanna waste it editing some shit photos- Not that I’m saying they’re shit, I just mean-”

“We can go for a drink or two,” Grace interrupted, his rambling giving her those damned butterflies again. “How about I text you and we’ll sort something, yeah?”

Was she really asking for his number? Was she that predictable to do what pretty much any girl around her age would kill for?

“Yeah, sounds great to me,” he nodded quickly and took the phone she offered to type in his number.

“Well we’ll sort something out, but I’ve got to get going. If I plan on getting drunk with Spider-Man, I should start on these edits as soon as possible.”

Grace resisted the urge to lean up to give his cheek a kiss and instead went with an incredibly lame wave on her way out of the house. The thought of seeing him again in just a few days got her incredibly excited. Saturday really couldn’t come quick enough.

A\N: Set during 2019. Credit for photographer idea goes to Anna. Read her fics, they’re bomb.

#tom holland #Tom Holland fanfic #Tom Holland fiction #Tom Holland x oc #marvel #spiderman #Spiderman fic #Spiderman x oc #Spiderman homecoming #Spiderman far from home

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