#its on paper because digital art was pissing me off

[kaisollisto]

[istherewifiinhell]

were back to our (ir)regularly scheduled bullshit!

[ID: Splash page with the issue title and creative credits. Megatron is bound up in cables, some plugged into him, effecting repairs. He speaks: Remind me to thank you when i get down from here, Shockwave. Meanwhile, resumption of my command must begin now. Shockwave: You don't seem to understand. These autobots you see lying dead on the ground are there because I put them there. The Decepticons you see barely clinging to life are in that operating mode because of you. Until I intervened, Autobot victory over us was assured.* The evidence says your leadership was faulty, Megatron. Logic says I must assume command of the Decepticons. Editor's Note: *as seen in issue 8 END]

back to the USmarvel, The New Order, issue no. 5! (22-23 UK reckoning) from feb 1985!

Script: Bob Budiansky Art: Alan Kupperberg Letters: Rick Parker Colour: Nel Yomtov Editor: Jim Owsley EiC: James Shooter Digital Re-master by Digikore Studios Limited. Collection Edits by Justin Eisinger and Alonzo Simon. Editorial notes and assistance by Mark. W. Bellomo

now... welcome back digital re-master. just in time for me to rip you a new on... bare with my folks...

so this issue opens with new king bitch in town, shockwave, conducting research into humans via television. so uh.., they put honeymooners in my transformers comic?

[ID: Both images of a Full page B&W illustration, two men stand behind a table, one asking "Whatsa matter Ralphie-boy?" Ralph, staring wide eyed, dead ahead, grips a chair saying "Homina-Homina-Homina!" A woman looks in through a window, with a scowl. 1. The illustration uses blocked inks, and half-tones for the characters, but the background and objects have mid and dark halftones added in an almost painterly fashion. 2. The art now with most of the tones and shading removed, everything left either black, midtone, or stark white. END]

surely. one of these images is higher definition. but which one looks BETTER? now its possible this is actually about which master copies they were working from. perhaps a rights issues? (the uk printing replaces this page with a different image) but i note here ALSO. they removed the artist, Kupperberg's, signature form the bottom left corner. a hateful affair all told.

though, this doesnt just piss me off to see an artist works edited, and made to SUCK! (tho boy does it...) my friends... comrades, fellow bloggers. lend me your eyes. DO they see this the way mine do? cause ill eat my fucking hat if that's not DUOSHADE paper. the infamous medium of many a B&W indie. not familiar? check out my previous blogging on the friendly neighbourhood martial reptiles. but i digress.

if this. this INSULT to my very being wasnt enough. they also recoloured shockwave from a perhaps accidentally stunning shade of magenta to a cool lavender... which i personally just found quite boring. well. most of the time

[ID: 1. UK printing, Shockwave seated on throne like seat, coloured very warm toned purple. He listen to a sports broadcast and says "These humans are even more primitive than I thought." 2. Digital remaster, Shockwave's profile visible, coloured red, as he watches a news reporter. END]

the very first image of this post has another, red shockwave, btw. I suppose, they could be printing or colouring errors, but they could also be lighting/compositional choices by Yomtov (its not uncommon for his foreground characters to be done in monotone, particularly, purple) either way they corrected for it. and to me, this instance just comes of that whatever work flow being used, doesnt even flag the second figure AS shockwave, so a redwave remains...

i stress. i never blame any individual who does this work. its to them, just a job, and why should it not be? my ire is with IDW, and why they enact these "restorations" anyway, and why the fuck people ought to pay new money for old art that has been given so little respect...

anyway reading the print version meant a lot of tabbing between the us and uk printings. which is why i noticed this

[ID: The crediting for the colourist, Nel Yomtov. In the US printing the say "Colors" and in the UK "Colour", the S removed, and a U added. END]

im just amused by the effort taken... surely the kids dont care that much? and yes apparently they do this every time.

JEEZE CREESY WHO CARES. LETS SEE SOME ROBOTS

[ID: Shockwave watching the news, off panel dialogue Reporter: Ms. Beller, you have been called a computer genius even though you're only a few years out of high school. What is your role in this? Beller: It's true I designed the secondary and tertiary oil recovery systems Reveal of Beller, a very young looking woman in a jacket and a hard hat. She continues: --the semi-automated defense system, the refinery's non-polluting digitized micro-scrubbers. But I consider it all just a part of my job. END]

shockwave learns the alarming news that a new female character is being introduced!

[ID: 2 page spread, the bodies of almost every single introduced Autobot are hanging from the ceiling, damaged and "bloodied". Shockwave scrolls under them, saying "Indeed" END]

also. check this shit out

anyway WHATS going on between shockwave and megs?

[ID: Shockwave pointing to the still bound Megatron: You will explain now how you permitted our position to deteriorate so drastically, Megatron. Megatron, mostly off panel: As… Commander… it is your right to demand anything of me. It is my privilege to oblige. END]

OH. its like that huh?

[ID: Shockwave offpanel "--Should logic so dictate." A close on Megatron, he thinks "Talk, Shockwave..." A close on his repairing hand twitching "...talk while you still can!" END]

well maybe not for long...

anyway... turns out the WAS a reason we saw ratchet helping those EMT's

[ID: Ratchet driving into the hospital parking lot. Buster calls out "Ratchet!!" who responds "Greetings, Buster Witwicky how nice to see your carbon-based face again!" Buster asks "Ratchet, where've you been?" END]

I hope your all ready to become extremely endeared by ratchet, or else just put up with it. cause...

[ID: Buster and Ratchet, still in alt mode, continue to speak, while EMTs are searching for the source of this mysterious voice. Buster: If they attacked the Autobots they should all be broken-down junk-heaps by now! Ratchet: Wonderful! I knew your father was a human we could trust EMT 1: I'll look behind the grill, Mel! EMT 2: I'll check under the seat cushion, Gus! Four people react in shock as Ratchet shouts: Do you organic creatures mind? I don't go poking around your mouths to see how you talk, do I? END

my beloved....

[ID: Ratchet on the road, stopped at a red light, as Buster rides inside. Ratchet: Listen, friend traffic signal, we're in a hurry, so if you could please turn green… Buster: It doesn't hear you, Ratchet, it's only a machine. Ratchet: I'm a machine, and I hear you, Buster! Buster: Yes, but you're different, you're-- Inside view as the light turns green. Ratchet: Ahh, he changed! Thank you, friend traffic signal. May the rest of the day find you in proper working order. You see, Buster, you have to learn how to talk to people. Buster: I… I'll try to keep that in mind, Ratchet. END]

this is so charming can we get corey burton and uh. well rest in peace don messick.., so just corey burton twice will do, to record his.

oh and anyone interest in timeline of when tf lore gets introduced (me... thats... mainly just me)

[ID: Shockwave points to Megatron: As always, you underestimate Optimus Prime, Megatron. No, he will not be cut up into wires and microchips. His value is far greater to us if we keep him functional, for it is logical to assume that an Autobot of his stature contains within him--The Creation Matrix! Megatron thinking: By the divine weld! The Creation Matrix is the computer program that allows its possessor to construct new transformer life! Its power is the stuff of legends! Shockwave continues: It is said once every ten millenia a new Autobot leader is chosen and encoded with The Matrix. END]

MATRIX MENTION? everyone have their lore bibles out? someone WRITE THAT DOWN.

[ID: Buster stumbling through the Ark in shock, "N-no… it can't be true! There must be some explanation! There must be! Wait a second… I didn't see Optimus in there…there's still optimus… there has to be--" He walks into a room with Optimus Prime's severed head, plugged into grand machinery. Buster yells "--Optimus!" Prime, weakly: Buster Witwicky… You must help me… you are… the Autobots… last hope…" End card-- Next: Oil Rig Assault! END]

OH MY GOD!

[jamieprimack]

Oookay, so I know it's kinda weird that I posted an illustration of Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa, and then the very next day, I started drawing a new one, but there WAS a reason. But, uh, first things first... yaaay, I drew Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Despair and the yas queen of killing. Materials used: Black ink, fineliners, watercolor brush pens, Copic markers, and gold paint pens on 9"x12" Bristol board. Anyway, why the second Junko illustration? Well...

Look, I'm self-aware, and I know I have a very distinct style. I'm a traditional artist who draws high contrast designs on black backgrounds with limited shading. I draw disturbing imagery, but I make it glamorous. Body horror draped in jewels, cyborgs in sparkles, Eldritch horrors glittering in the cold vastness of space... But the thing is, I only ever REALLY draw in that style when I'm doing my own thing. The second I try to draw fanart and commissions, a mental wall slams down. My knee-jerk reaction is to immediately drop my style and conform to the source material, or to the particular audience I'm drawing for, or to try and "step up my game" in unnecessary ways because I assume what I normally do isn't good enough. And yes, I'm aware of how stupid that sounds because if somebody didn't want my style, why would they come to me in the first place? And the whole thing pisses me off because I don't even drop my style voluntarily. It's like a genuine compulsion I can't break free from. And for a while, I toyed with the idea of doing some Danganronpa illustrations because the series' anime art style is so different from my own, yet the subject material is PERFECT for what I do. So, I drew Junko knowing I'd be sharing it with Danganronpa fans, and what did I do? I nuked the freaking thing like I always do!!! I drew it digitally, I drew it all crisp and clean, and I stripped it down to the most "accurate" Junko possible. And then it was pointed out to me that what I created didn't even LOOK like I drew it, and suddenly, I was FILLED with rage. Where's the horror? The glamour? The pointless jewels and decorations? It's JUNKO FUCKING ENOSHIMA. She is LITERALLY called the Ultimate Fashionista and the Ultimate Despair, yet I STILL couldn't bring myself to draw her with ANY of my own flourishes. WHY?! Is it because I think people will mock me if something's inaccurate? Because I think it'll be too creepy for its target audience? Am I worried I'll be judged just for being my own damn self? I HAVE NO IDEA!!! Anyway, realizing I couldn't even draw the Ultimate Despair in my own style was so rage-inducing, I said FUCK THIS and grabbed a piece of actual paper so I could start over. This is the result. And I don't give a shit if Junko's outfit isn't 100% canonically correct, and I don't give a shit if this drawing is garish and ostentatious and creepy. I DON'T CARE. I drew Junko Enoshima the way I wanted to because a billion other artists have already drawn her their way, and this one is MINE. Anyway, I feel better now that I got that off my chest. I'd like to do a few more of these in order to keep forcing myself out of that stupid comfort zone I kept trapping myself in. I think I might tackle Gundham Tanaka next.

[ritualcaster]

I don't know how to cope with the fact that I'm just generally a better artist with penccil and paper than ibs paint on my phone.

I feel like i constantly practice how to use the tools and the layers and the brushes and it seriously slows me down

My shading with pencil is, ok, at best. But its instictual. I can do it without significant effort.

How the fuck do you shade digitally?

Like i can cross hatch and use a no. 1 pencil / q-tip and hatch to match and angle and create depth. Not well of course, but the product always at least shows what is should have been

I can't instictually use online tools the way i can use a pencil and it pisses me off because being able to draw in layers, seperate pieces of the art and easily undo any mistakes i make, is something i just can't replicate irl, at least not perfectly (i see you mr. wax paper maniac)

Ugh anyway thats the rant post toodleloo

[argiopi]

ramblings about music, very stream-of-consciousness and perhaps incomprehensible. nothing of value is buried here

Do you ever hear something so stunningly beautiful it makes you feel physically ill? It is just overwhelming? I’m not going to link it here because it’s not mine, but there’s a remix of the Greenpath theme by RebeccaETripp on Youtube named Goldpath and it blew me away.

She describes it as “muggy and glistening,” which is precisely right, but how can music feel like textural and visual adjectives? The worst part is I know what she is talking about. The muggy parts are the long, roomily reverbating low notes and the glistening parts are the pointedly brief and tinny high notes. I hate that I understand this. I do not know how I understand this. Is it a lifetime of subconscious cultural audio associations? Is it an innate association between a glistening -> sparkling light on moving water -> small points of high value[in art terms] -> like little white spots scattered across a painting -> the high value is like the high pitch (I had to look up this term. how to translate value to terms of note highness/lowness) -> you sprinkle the tiny high notes across a track like glittering dew upon a landscape. The little reverb on those high notes is like the bloom around bright lights...

Sometimes listening too closely to music frustrates me deeply. In the sense that when I see beautiful art, I look closer to understand “oh, that’s how they did that, I should keep that in mind.” And I find satisfaction in being able to break down values and shapes and everything. I have the same desire to understand beautiful music but the underlying structure is opaque to me. So I fear I need to learn how to make music in order to not be pissed off about its incomprehensible beauty. As a visual artist, music terrifies me like the great unknown. It exists only temporally, there is no “whole” in the sense that you can take in the entire picture at once. It is a series of moment after moment after moment. There is no physicality, like generating 3D scenes and objects in your head to guide you while you put them on paper, no light source to visualize. How tenuous, how does one create such a thing without becoming lost? I appreciate audio softwares for letting you visualize the piece at least in translation. I suppose visualizing the piece has been standard practice for a long time - but I don’t know how to read sheet music. How towering and obscure, to hope of learning music while not knowing how to read, barely knowing the terminology, not having an ear trained to identify notes. I am feeling reminded of when I started trying to learn art seriously, and I’d look at a beautiful piece way above my level, and not understand why it is good. Except this is so much worse because I am starting from nothing.

I was watching a video about tone color the other whenever because I thought yeah I understand color. This will help. Yet it described textures like as above and I felt despair at how it is so infuriatingly subjective. People talk about color like it’s a nebulous thing but it is so exact. Value, hue, and saturation, or red/green/blue for the RGB digital colorspace: these things make up every color and can all be described numerically. You can do math with colors! If I use the notation hue/saturation/value, I can describe one of my favorite colors, a brickish red, as 6/186/122, and another favorite, a mossy green, as 51/230/115. I can average those colors into 29/208/119, which is a surprisingly lovely golden-orange! Can timbre be represented as a number? How can I hope to get it if it can’t be so precisely defined, if I can’t say “this sound is rougher than this one because X is lower”? Pitch is relational (higher-lower), and I know from toying with softwares in the past that certain qualities like reverb are determined by number inputs (though seemingly unstandardized), but there’s so much... undefined-ness. how do people swim in this water with so few footholds to grasp.

On a related note: I can’t listen to Pale Court. I’ve listened to it maybe three or four times and it short-circuited my brain every time. Every part of it is so rich with visuals and emotions (how??), and the sound is so viscerally tense, that it is a completely overwhelming amount of information to receive. There is a clear-as-day story in that music and how do you construct such a thing, damnit.

mindboggling.

[bonvoyagenoona]

Matchmaker (M) | 02: Create Profile

Matchmaker | Masterpost

Word Count: 9,873

Rating: 18+ / Explicit / Mature

Content Warnings: Hard smut ensues -- you’ve been warned!

Summary 

Based on your analysis, Namjoon and Jungkook seem to be quintessential day traders and nightlifers. You can smell the booze on them when they reach your office. How are you supposed to help find Namjoon the perfect match when Jungkook keeps sneering at your state-of-the-art, well-researched system? Then again, there’s nothing that your science can’t fix. Even if Jungkook keeps trying to ruin you.

Chapter Excerpt

“These are just questionnaires,” you say gently, smiling at Namjoon. “There are no right answers.”

He raises his eyebrows. “But they’re going to determine everything that happens from here on out,” he says earnestly. Maybe even fearfully.

“Not everything,” you remind him.

Namjoon lightens a little, but you get the sense that he’s still feeling pressured.

“Yeah, calm down, Joonie,” Jungkook replies.

To avoid having to engage with him, you look at your desk whenever Jungkook talks, and you see his fingers bubbling in his own scantron, like a child who’s coloring in their kids’ menu while the adults are talking.  

Jungkook shrugs. “Fill it out honestly, and just dive dick first into the unknown, bro.”

02: Create Profile

“KOOK!”

Jungkook whirls around in his chair to face Namjoon, who sighs and reaches into his desk.

A Monday morning mischievous grin is plastered onto Jungkook’s face, and he excitedly starts to explain. “So, this week, I changed all of his dashboards to Swedish, and then---”

“Unh-uh,” Namjoon says, stopping him, and pulling out his headphones. 

“But then I---”

“Leave me out of it,” Namjoon says as he slaps his headphones over his ears and turns on his music. 

Two weeks ago, Jungkook had created a script that made Hobi’s computer play fart sounds whenever he typed the letter “E”.  One week ago, Jungkook reprogrammed Hobi’s office digital assistant to call him “Loser”, and to say the word “loser” whenever anybody said Hobi’s name. Jungkook even changed the digital assistant’s password so that Hobi couldn’t fix it before his next client meeting. 

Namjoon is never really interested in the specifics, but he knows Hobi will be pissed.

The office door swings open, and Hobi walks in, making a beeline for Namjoon. He yells at him while gesturing angrily at Jungkook, who’s just spinning in his chair slowly and laughing. 

Namjoon just taps his headphones. 

Hobi sees that Namjoon will be useless to him, so he directs his attention to Jungkook.

Namjoon can’t help but watch Hobi, who looks like an inflatable tube man in front of a car dealership. His arms flail in the air wildly, his tie swinging as he moves, having come undone from its silver clip. Jungkook just keeps shrugging and saying wiseass remarks. Namjoon can tell that they’re wiseass remarks because Jungkook says them through a smirtle, and Hobi’s face just keeps getting redder and redder while his mouth shrinks smaller and smaller. Hobi angrily gestures over to the board room on the other side of the floor, and Namjoon pieces together that Jungkook’s prank must have affected some sort of meeting or presentation. Jungkook confirms this by howling and laughing at the sky. Namjoon pauses his music and gets the impulse to intervene when Hobi starts picking up things from Jungkook’s desk and throwing them at his face.

A paper clip. “Change it back.”

“No.”

Another paper clip. “Change it back.”

“No.”

The entire dish of paper clips. “Change it back.”

“No.”

Hobi reaches for a stapler, and Jungkook scrambles to block the hit, causing him to fall out of his chair.

“OK,” Namjoon says, rising to his feet and sliding his headphones off his ears, letting the band hang around his neck. “Let’s all calm down. We’re surely past the days of The People of the Republic of Jeon Jungkook v. Jung Hoseok, aren’t we?”

What Namjoon is referring to is an actual civil case that was opened by Jungkook against Hobi in college. Hobi accidentally hit Jungkook with a banana that they were arguing over during a study break. Hobi had already relinquished claim on the snack and was tossing it to Jungkook for him to eat. It was a bad, slightly angry throw that bruised Jungkook’s nose just barely. Jungkook had his family’s lawyer on it by the end of the day. After a months-long process, Jungkook hobbled into court on crutches, wearing a neck brace and nose splint, to take the stand and detail how the argument and ensuing injury played out. It was complete with reenactments and a stand-in banana submitted to evidence, referred to in case documentation as “Exhibit B, for Banana”. Jungkook even legally albeit temporarily changed his last name to “The People of the Republic of Jeon” for a more dramatic case name. In the end, Jungkook agreed to pay all court and legal fees, with the condition that Hobi submit a written apology to him, and to all bananas, for causing extreme emotional and physical distress, as well as that he pay the cost of the original banana, which was 89 cents.

The good thing was that they could laugh about it now.

Hobi fights a smile. He reaches out one of his long limbs to help Jungkook off the ground.

“Please change it back,” Namjoon says to Jungkook.

“The settings are locked until the end of the day,” Jungkook explains, a little scared.

Hobi sighs and rubs his face with both his hands. “Jungkook, I swear to fucking god---”

“You can use my spare laptop,” Jungkook offers. “Or even move my desktop in there. I don’t have anything real to do today anyway.”

“Clearly.” 

Hobi glares at him but accepts Jungkook’s peace offering. He turns and walks back toward the door but stops short of grabbing the doorknob.

He turns around to Jungkook and scowls. “This doesn’t have porn on it or anything, does it?”

Jungkook pauses to think. 

“Aw, grow up, Jungkook,” Hobi complains, setting the computer down on a nearby bookshelf and leaving unceremoniously.

There’s a pause before Jungkook walks over to the laptop, picks it up, and says, “I’m glad he didn’t throw this at me.” He looks over at Namjoon, suddenly gravely serious. “By the way, this is the one you need to destroy if I die.”

“What kind of shit is on that thing?” Namjoon grimaces.

“Just promise me that you’ll destroy it,” Jungkook says, his voice low.

Namjoon groans and grabs his jacket. “I’m taking an early lunch,” he says, making sure to lock up his things before leaving.

Jungkook laughs to himself, wondering what the hell everybody’s problem is before realizing that he’s been left alone.

It’s been happening more and more lately. Namjoon hasn’t been out since the last time they got drinks. Jimin, Taehyung, and Hobi are usually down to hang, but instead of ending nights with utter life-questioning debauchery, more and more of their evenings end with video games at Taehyung’s place. Jungkook has had to go it alone, though he’s proudly kept his numbers stable. 

Maybe that’s why, later, when he and Namjoon are waiting for their train home, he says, “I can go with you at the end of the week. If you want.”

“I don’t think Dr. Secretary and her team will let you back in there,” Namjoon says, rolling his eyes. “I paid upfront, so I’m not taking any chances.”

“On the off-chance they do, then. I’ll even wait outside.”

“Why do you want to go so badly?” 

“I never said I didn’t want to go with you.”

Namjoon frowns and nods. That’s technically true.

“Will you be on your best behavior?”

“I will. Scout’s honor.”

“And could you stop giving me such a hard time about it?”

“I didn’t realize I was,” Jungkook says, feeling obtuse.

Namjoon glowers at him, and Jungkook rushes to add, “But I’ll try to ease up. Promise.”

As Namjoon mulls things over, their train comes.

They board and move to the track-side door, facing each other and leaning back against the partitions behind them, watching as more fellow commuters bleed into the train from the platform.

Namjoon adjusts his messenger bag so as not to inconvenience the person beside him. 

Jungkook reaches up for the overhead rail, elbowing an older man in the temple by accident and not noticing.

The train starts moving.

“It’s the personality stuff, right?” Jungkook asks. 

Namjoon winces in empathy as the older man rubs his head, irritated. He wonders if the man is OK. He wants to say something, but the train is too crowded, and the man is facing away from them.

“Right?”

“Huh?”

Jungkook scoffs. “Pay attention, bro.”

Namjoon sighs, finding it too complicated to explain the irony.

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

“I was asking about your next meeting. It’s the personality stuff, right?”

“Yeah. There’s a test and some questions.”

Jungkook nods and shapes his lips into a duck bill pout as his eyes wander to the windows. He watches as the train moves above ground and the sunset-lit city rushes by them.

“...Maybe it’ll do me good to learn about that personality stuff.”

Namjoon looks at Jungkook and tries to decipher what this means. 

“Are you interested in dating now?”

“Fuck no,” Jungkook laughs loudly, making a couple of other passengers sneer at him. “I just… well, I was thinking… About what Hobi said.”

“What did he say?”

“You know. When he told me to…” 

Namjoon remembers. “When he told you to grow up?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Jungkook looks wounded.

“I just mean that it’s good to think about,” Namjoon reassures him. “To reflect on oneself.”

Jungkook nods, processing Namjoon’s wise words.

Namjoon feels a little sorry for Jungkook. He and the rest of the guys often forget that Jungkook is measurably younger than all of them. Jungkook is a bit of a wunderkind, having finished his studies quickly and ahead of time so that he could start working on his career, all of it part of the preparation plan before inheriting his father’s massively successful fragrance company.

Then again, weren’t they all in the same position? For Namjoon, swap “fragrance company” with “telecommunications company”. For Jimin, swap it for “entertainment brand”. For Taehyung, swap it for “fashion house”. For Hobi, “restaurant chains”. 

And yet, none of them had ever named the others in ridiculous torts cases or changed each other’s dashboards to Swedish. But they had had at least two or three years where they could have without anyone truly caring.

“Listen, if one of us says something like that, we mean it in the best way possible,” Namjoon says, softer. “We’re always going to have your best interest at heart, just like you do for us.”

Jungkook grins. “Thanks, bro.”

“Anytime. Bro.”

Jungkook laughs. “Y’know, you’re actually gonna make a really good dad. You’re not like all of ours were. You listen and shit. And you care. That’s pretty cool.” 

Namjoon’s heart swells. 

Coming from Jungkook, who would truly know best, it means the world.

At this stage of your research career, being a researcher is less about the actual data collection, though that is extremely important. It’s more about critical thinking and theory construction. It’s formidable and poetic. You’ve spent all those years training in order to play freely in this amazing, confusing, vast sandbox. And you absolutely love to play.

Whiteboarding is one of your ways to play. On the surface, it looks like you’re just standing around, drawing a bunch of words, shapes, numbers, and lines, Yoongi in his designated red, Jin in green, and you in blue. But there are so many layers in the work. Even just externalizing the thoughts bubbling in your minds is a mighty challenge. Then, there’s hypothesizing about and examining the relationships between the variables that you’ve defined, which requires a unique language that only Jin and Yoongi can understand, a mix of symbols, boxes, beta weights, past data, and terms that the three of you have coined in order to describe a phenomenon. 

That’s where the three of you are now, fully buried in your own, secret language on the whiteboard, heads tilted, frames slouching, brains playing. 

“Here’s a nice little finding. Once I made the tweaks accounting for geographic location, the algorithm increased to 97% accuracy in identifying successful sexual matches,” Yoongi says. 

He turns to you and smiles. “That was such a great suggestion, by the way.”

You laugh. “I’m not going to drive two hours just to have sex.”

Yoongi winks at you, and Jin’s ears turn pink.

“I think we’re ready for a white paper,” Yoongi continues, “maybe even a publication in a data science journal. I’ve already drafted a manuscript.”

He looks at you. “Just need your edits on some stuff that I integrated about romantic dyads versus sexual dyads---”

He looks to Jin. “And your edits on marketplace longevity.”

“What are you calling the metric?” Jin asks, tapping the dry erase board marker against his chin. “It’ll need something spicy to catch attention.”

“Technically, it’s meant to reflect success in Sexual Activity Goals.” Yoongi underlines the S, A, and G.

“SAG?” you ask, making a face.

“You can’t call it SAG,” Jin agrees, frowning. “That’s not sexy.”

Yoongi grimaces. “Hmm. You have a point.”

“How is it defined again?” you ask.

“It’s seven-day metrics on numbers of partners and incorporates the Similarity and DIfference indices that we have so far,” Yoongi replies, “though those still need to be ironed out. Still not getting as great of a fit as I’m hoping for.”

“Wait, seven days?” Jin asks. 

“Yeah.”

“Call it the WAP coefficient!” Jin says.

The three of you burst into laughter.

“God, that’s perfect,” you sigh.

“We can’t do that!” Yoongi cackles. “Wait, can we do that?”

“Why not?” Jin asks, the three of you giggling throughout the conversation. “I mean, we are talking about people fucking, right? And if you’re measuring in seven-day increments, then say it officially stands for, I don’t know, Weekly Average Partners or something. We’ll even give Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion acknowledgements in the articles, if you like. Get some nice PR.”

Your eyes light up. “Yoongi, fantastic work. Jin, you’re so good at this that it’s insane.” 

Yoongi’s already writing “WAP” above his algorithm in red.

Jin beams with pride.

You love that this is how science can be sometimes. Moments like these are your versions of The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth. It’s one of the hidden joys of your career, getting to do meaningful research while having fun with it. 

“Enough about our brilliant brains,” Jin replies, turning to you. “How are things on the social science side of things?”

“We’re almost ready to close down this phase,” you say, grinning. You project your laptop screen on the TV next to the whiteboard, split-screening between your syntax (so that Yoongi can follow along to double-check your analyses) and your output (so that Jin can help confirm patterns). “The asynchronous protocol for the Aron study questions seem to be working. The group that answered them as part of the profile creation step have significantly more successful matches and significantly fewer app deletions six weeks out with no app re-downloads as far out as two months after that. I’ve sent out the surveys to assess if that’s because they’re still with the matches they made, or if that’s due to some other uncontrolled-for variable. Waiting for the rest of them to come in, and I’ll need to re-run the analysis once all of them are submitted, but things look pretty great so far.”

“Y’all.” 

Jin stands, pressing his palms on his desk. 

“Do you realize what we’ve done?”

You and Yoongi exchange glances.

“We figured it out. We solved dating.”

Jin’s eyes grow wide.

“My god. We can take over the world.”

“Hang on just a second,” you laugh, switching screens. “Yoongi, I agree that we still have a bit of work to do with the Similarity and Difference indices. I think I’m seeing the same thing you are. There are anomalies in the data for the group being analyzed with the new algorithm. Once we figure that part out, then we can say we’ve got something pretty awesome on our hands.”

“Sounds good. I’ll take another look,” Yoongi replies. “Also, I wonder what I can do with some additional text mining to help inform the indices. Maybe it’s not just similarities and differences in actual content but also emotional valence, or some other aspect.”

“I have an even more important question,” Jin replies. “Do we have any more of the pastries you brought in this morning?” 

“I hid them in here,” you laugh, rolling your chair back to your desk and pulling out a small parcel. Having a shared break room with other co-working space renters has you convinced that people are evolutionarily at least part raccoon. More than just a handful of the treats and food you’ve brought for your team has disappeared over the years, despite clear rules, branded labeling, and twenty-three formal complaints about this very issue in the communal customer feedback box.

Jin walks over to your desk, tickling your shoulders before digging in for a strawberry strudel. He picks up the box and gets Yoongi’s attention. 

“You want one?”

“Aren’t we about to head over to the restaurant?” Yoongi asks.

“No, I’m not going. I’ve got an investor liquid lunch, and I need a good bread base if I’m going to make it out of there alive,” Jin says, biting into the pastry and using his free hands to gather his things. “But have fun, nerds!”

Jin leaves, and you and Yoongi start packing up your recording equipment. Another starter date is upon you, and you and Yoongi are heading across the street to your standby restaurant, where one of your newer premium clients is going to go on their first “starter date”.

The process is simple. Clients meet with an actor that at least preliminarily matches the kind of person that your system would push to them, and they go through the motions of a first date to help them get into the groove in a safe environment. It also serves as an opportunity to establish a lot of the operational variables that you need to define for your research. What does the client think a successful match is? What does the client consider to be a successful date? And, if needed, what kind of gentle coaching can you provide to help them get there? 

To save that information, you record the session with a small camera and some microphones to pick up on certain interactions, as grand as particular conversations and related body movements, and as minute as a facial twitch here or there. 

You kind of miss having a whole lab of research assistants to go and collect the data for you, but this is the part that made you fall in love with psychology in the first place -- the opportunity to touch and feel the data with your own hands, experiencing changes in your learning as phenomena unfold before you.

As Yoongi starts to set up the camera at your usual table in the back, careful to be as discreet as possible, you can’t help but smile at him. He smiles fondly back at you. This always reminds you of your days in the lab or out in the field, but it’s been quite some time since the last one of these sessions. You know he’s thinking the same thing.

Your client shows up, and as Yoongi gets them mic’d up, you walk them through the process. It’s just a conversation, really, you explain. You hope to soothe their nerves, which are on full display.

They’re fidgeting so much that Yoongi has to reposition the mic. “I just haven’t been on a date in a while,” they say.

“Same,” Yoongi mumbles, making you and your client chuckle.

“It’s just a conversation, really,” you say, hoping to soothe your client’s nerves. 

“Even that seems a little daunting, to be honest,” your client answers. “I kinda like to stick to my routine.”

“When you think about all of it at once, it’s definitely a big step,” you agree, “but it started with the four of five little steps you took from that door to this table, didn’t it?”

Your client smiles, and you feel Yoongi’s eyes on you, watching fondly.

The actor shows up, an actor you’ve worked with before who knows the process well. And then you and Yoongi sit at the table silently, having perfected the art of paying attention without intervening so much that the conversation can’t take a natural flow. 

After their awkward but cute introductions, the actor and your client are soon chatting about interests and hobbies. The actor kicks things off by mentioning that they just came from a Dungeons & Dragons game, something they picked up from your client’s profile. The conversation moves from tabletop role-playing games and world building. They order some appetizers and drinks. By the time their plates and glasses are empty, they’re going through the motions of setting up their next date.

“Actually, you should come play D&D with me and my friends,” the actor suggests.

Your client smiles and laughs. “And then I guess this is where I’d say absolutely yes and fall in love, right?” they say to you and Yoongi.

The actor smiles genuinely. “I mean, maybe. But honestly, I actually really am into D&D, and we’re always looking for people to join us.”

Your heart is full. You love bringing people together, whatever form that takes.

The actor and your client exchange information, and your client confirms that they’re ready to start receiving matches. They seem pretty excited, fidgety in a different way than before. 

You and Yoongi happily start packing up, and your favorite waiter at the restaurant hands you your usual order, a to-go bag of all your lunchtime favorites that you bring back to the office to eat while you upload the video to your servers and hard drives for safekeeping. 

The lunch hour is usually pretty dead, so while your computers work, you and Yoongi decide to watch the video for fun. 

“I know we keep telling these actors not to be too physical so that they don’t set up unrealistic expectations for our clients, but damn, that was a good move,” you reply.

“What move?” Yoongi asks, furrowing his brow and biting into his sandwich.

“This one.”

You rewind the video and show the actor comfortingly patting the client’s upper arm as the actor arrives at the table. The actor lets their hand linger on the client’s shoulder as they both through their introductions, the actor glancing off-camera at you and Yoongi to apologize for being a couple of minutes late. Then, the actor takes their seat across from the client, but instead of letting go, the actor runs their hand down the client’s arm slowly as they take their seat across the table. You see the client visibly brighten and blush.

Yoongi smirks. “Oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?” you ask playfully.

Yoongi’s smiling now, his cheeks full of food. “I mean that for all your pragmatism, you still get caught by the little things.”

“I’m pointing it out because it’s good to mark as an indicator of attraction on the client’s part,” you insist, turning back to the screen. 

“Mmhmm.”

You scoff. “Besides. You’re one to talk.”

“That shit doesn’t phase me one bit,” Yoongi replies in his lowest, coolest voice.

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah. I’m immune.”

You set your sandwich down and fix your gaze on Yoongi. He’s absent-mindedly checking some other analysis that’s running on a different screen.

You smile to yourself. You get up and silently lock the door, noting that no one is in the hallway. You look down at your blouse and unbutton the top two buttons to show just a peek of cleavage.

You sit back down in your chair. You’re about to have some fun.

“So you’re telling me that that move wouldn’t work on you,” you reply, wiping your hands on your napkin.

“I’d see it coming a mile away,” Yoongi replies, rolling his eyes, and you laugh about how blind he’s being right now.

“So if I did that to you, right now, you wouldn’t feel a thing?” you ask.

“Nope.”

You place your fingers on his shoulder, squeezing it just a little to say hello, just like the actor did.

Yoongi shrugs, pushing your hand up. He smiles. “Nothing.”

“OK.”

You slowly and lightly run your hand down his arm, watching your fingers smooth the little folds and wrinkles in the sleeve of Yoongi’s black button-up. You look up at him with a wanting gaze, and you see that Yoongi is looking at your hand around his wrist.

Yoongi gulps.

“...Still nothing,” he replies, not looking up.

You smile devilishly.

You get up and bend down to him, letting your ass jut out and placing your breasts in front of him. He looks up at you as you do the same thing to his other arm, letting your fingers trace down his arm, and placing your weight on him slightly as both of your hands come to rest on his wrists on the arms of his chair.

“Still nothing?” you ask.

Yoongi bites his lip. “N-nope.”

You hover by his side, your cheek so close to his, your lips tantalizing near his earlobe, and you sigh.

“Not even now?” you purr.

You hear Yoongi suck some air in through his teeth. He leans his temple against your cheek. You place your hands on his knees and run your hands up to his waist.

He raises his head to face you, and he looks at you blankly.

You pull away a little, dragging your hands with you, down his thighs, but you catch him glancing furtively at the door. When he sees that you’ve already closed it, he smiles and turns back to you. Just as your hands leave his knees and you pull away, he jumps up, grabbing you by your waist, and moving you toward the far wall, pinning you against it.

You’re breathless with hushed laughter, and Yoongi chuckles along, kissing your neck, kissing your chest, and mumbling, “Fine, you win, you always win”, his voice growing softer as he grabs your tight skirt and pulls it up, his hands feeling so good against your skin.

You don’t know it, but Jungkook has the same idea.

He can’t remember her name, of course. She’s almost unnaturally gorgeous, the kind of attractive that makes people stop in their tracks and turn their heads. He’s only seen her once, and all he knows is that she’s a barista at the coffee shop at the co-working space where Matchmaker is located. He and Namjoon smiled at her when they arrived at your offices, but Jungkook wiped the smile off of Namjoon’s face when he told him that he’d like to stick his dick in her so hard and deep that it comes out of her mouth. 

And now, he’s attempting to do that to her while fucking her in the coffee shop bathroom.

She almost pulled her apron off when they were making out, but Jungkook instructed her to keep it, and only it, on her body.

Her clothes are torn in the whirlwind and thrown haphazardly onto the floor.

She’s facing away from him, straddling him in the accessibility stall, Jungkook sitting naked on the toilet and the barista stretching her legs to each of the metal poles on either side of him, her hands reaching back for his shoulders for support, which his solid frame easily gives.

His strong hands are gripping her waist, bouncing her up and down on his hard cock.

He watches in amazement as his dripping length disappears into and reappears from within her. It doesn’t matter if it’s this barista or anybody else. He never gets tired of seeing it.

“Holy motherfucking goddamn shit,” the barista whines, her sweat forming stains on her cheap, branded visor.

She starts to wobble.

“Don’t fucking come yet,” Jungkook replies, almost angrily. 

She groans, and Jungkook holds her up, slapping her ass to shut her up.

“I’m not fucking done with you.”

She can’t help it. It’s all too intense -- he’s too intense, and she’s never done anything quite like this before.

Jungkook sees wetness spill onto the floor, droplets reaching as far as the opposite wall.

“Shit!” she yelps.

Jungkook pulls her off of him and spins her around to face him. He stands and wraps her legs around his torso, walking her to the opposite wall and pressing her bare back against her own juices.

She looks drained, her eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline, her visor off-kilter and nearly slipping out of her curly hair if not for the ponytail keeping it locked onto her head. Her mouth hangs open as she continues to have the most intense orgasm she’s ever had. Her limbs are going limp, and her apron has bunched in on itself, her huge tits popping out from either side.

Jungkook wraps his lips around one of them and bites down on her nipple, and she would scream if she had literally anything inside of her body to unleash. It seems to wake her up, and she starts to move her hips against him.

“I said I wasn’t fucking done with you,” Jungkook sneers, starting to pump into her even faster and rougher.

It’s seemingly impossible, but Yoongi’s dick feels even thicker because your skirt is so tight that you can’t fully open your legs.

He’s pumping into you harder and harder, and you’re starting to lose the wherewithal to keep your moans quiet enough that the small law firm next door won’t hear you. It matters less and less to you. You’re pretty sure they’re the ones eating all your food, anyway.

Yoongi kisses the back of your neck, and presses his entire weight against you, up against the wall. Your arms splay out in front of you, searching for something to hold onto, but Yoongi just hooks his elbow around your armpit and throat, not so tight that he straight up puts you in a chokehold (though it wouldn’t be the first time) but just enough for you to feel stable, like you won’t lose your footing.

“Harder,” you whisper, and Yoongi obliges.

You hear your skirt rip a bit. 

“Shit, sorry!”

“I don’t care. Harder.”

You hear Yoongi’s smile crackle as he licks and bites your earlobe, and you feel the waves starting.

“Oh, fuck, I’m so close.”

“I can feel you. Take it.”

Yoongi moans his words into you, and you turn toward him. He kisses you, his tongue running over yours so wonderfully, exploring your mouth like he would your pussy if you were at home, and you suddenly wish you were there now. 

It’s more than enough to send you over the edge, and though your knees give a little, Yoongi holds you as he fucks you harder and harder, until his knees also start to give. 

“Don’t,” you whisper, as you feel him start to pull out of you.

“Really?” Yoongi asks. “We still have---”

“Don’t,” you repeat, clenching him tighter and reaching back for him.

He isn’t expecting it, so when you do, his eyes roll back, and he comes, hard, pressing his forehead into your back and moaning.

You lean against the wall, smile, and take a deep breath, feeling incredibly full and warm.

He lets out a soft whine, and then he drops to his knees.

“Are you OK?” you ask, puzzled by the sudden whoosh of air that follows him and hits your sweaty back.

And then you feel his tongue on you, kissing your lips, licking your thighs, and sucking his juices out of you.

You lean forward and hit your forehead on the wall by accident, but not so hard that it takes you out of the moment.

“Shit, Yoongi!”

He carefully and deftly cleans you out, and in the process, draws one more fantastic orgasm out of you. You both grow more and more silent, your panting slowly turning into sighing, and your sighing slowly turning into breathing. Soon, the only sound in your office is the sound of Yoongi kissing your pussy lips softly, and him sliding your underwear back into place.

The bathroom tile is anything but friendly to the barista’s knees, but they’re nowhere near in as bad of shape as her throat, given the way Jungkook is ramming his dick into her mouth. 

To anyone else, the sounds that she’s making would be embarrassingly primal, but Jungkook is getting off on the sound of wet muscle and tissue squishing against each other. And if there were any doubt if the barista were not having a good time, Jungkook can’t see it. All he can see is the barista rubbing her clit so hard that he’s almost afraid she might hurt herself.

She takes in him just that much deeper, and Jungkook’s hips still.

“Fuck!” he exclaims. “Yes!”

He shivers, and he comes, and it’s amazing.

Suddenly, the barista is standing and leaning against him, saying something in her cloyingly sweet but temporarily raspy voice.

But Jungkook is already eyeing his clothes hanging over the stall door and wondering when he can get them back on.

He leaves the barista to do whatever she needs to, and he smooths his hair back as he re-joins Namjoon at the bar to wait for their drinks.

Namjoon is completely disgusted with Jungkook, evident by the judgmental expression on his face.

“What?” Jungkook asks innocently.

“Did you at least wash your hands?” Namjoon asks.

Jungkook purses his lips. And then he goes back to the bathroom.

You and Yoongi are smoothing your clothes and hair, playfully poking at each other and kissing  as you slowly return to the world. 

“Damn. You had me good,” Yoongi chuckles.

“So I guess you’re not as immune as you were.”

“Seems like it.”

You think about the moment that got you here. That soft touch of your hand.

“Honestly, though,” you say, picking up the conversation as if Yoongi has not just fucked your brains out, “do you want to date?”

Yoongi’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Huh?”

“I mean, like, is that something that interests you?” 

“Dating? In general?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never really dated.”

“Me neither,” you remind him. 

“I know,” Yoongi laughs. He obviously knows that, given your arrangement.

You look at each other.

“I guess I shut that part of myself down for so long to focus on all this,” Yoongi reflects. “I haven’t really thought about it much.”

“...Me neither.”

He sighs and stretches, kissing you tenderly and quietly as you start buttoning your blouse back up, the two of you still chuckling.

“I forgot how much fun we had doing these,” you say.

“Our fuck sessions?” Yoongi teases. “I never forget how much fun we have during these.”

He grabs your ass with both hands one more time, running his hands just under the cleft of your cheeks and feeling your still-wet pussy.

You hit him on the arm playfully, and you both pull away from each other to finish straightening up the room. “You know what I mean. Our data sessions. Going all the way back to the media lab.”

Yoongi smiles fondly. “Ooh, the media lab has some of our best moments. Remember when we tried sixty---”

You hear a key in the door, and you and Yoongi share a frantic look as you check each other to make sure you don’t look like total heathens as you finish cleaning up your desks. You feel simultaneously naughty and relieved when you think about the fact that any real evidence about what has just happened is down Yoongi’s throat.

Jin appears with a flushed face. His liquid lunch seems to have been incredibly successful for the moment, though Jin will definitely regret it in a couple of hours.

“Your next appointment is here,” he laughs.

Namjoon pokes his head in behind him. “Hey there,” he says, smiling.

“Hey, Nam---”

And then Jungkook appears.

“Joon.” The syllable lands dully in your throat.

The sight of Jungkook is enough to force you to come crashing down from your sex high. 

You exchange glances with Jin, who is way too drunk to think anything isn’t funny, and with Yoongi, who is way too blissful to think anything isn’t fine.

“Brought you these,” Namjoon replies, holding up a coffee carrier. “Thought maybe you all would like a pick-me-up for the after-lunch slump?” 

“That’s really kind of you,” you admit, reaching out for one of the iced lattes. 

Jungkook grabs the one you’re aiming for, and you’re about to screech the words, “What the actual fuck is your problem”, but he holds it out to you, daring you to take it.

You roll your eyes and opt for one of the other coffees instead.

Namjoon moves from you to drunk Jin to let him choose a coffee, but while this is happening, something in Jungkook’s eyes stops you. He holds your gaze.

He’s poring over your rumpled clothes. The bit of sweat on your forehead. He looks over to Yoongi, who’s attempting to secretly stuff his shirt into the back of his pants, adjusting their fit on his waist before he sits back down at his desk.

“Honestly, they’re also apology coffees,” Namjoon replies, moving from Jin to Yoongi, both of whom pick black, iced Americanos.

Jungkook smirks, takes a sip of the iced latte that he was going to let you have, and says, “Yeah, he’s apologizing on my behalf because I tossed your salad.”

Yoongi chokes on his drink, and Jin laughs loudly.

Namjoon rolls his eyes.

Your face flushes angrily with color, and Jungkook smiles even wider.

“What the actual fuck is your problem,” you mutter so that only he can hear.

“No problem here,” Jungkook whispers back. “I fully support what you and that tiny man were doing. I was just downstairs doing the same thing with that hot barista.”

He glances over at Yoongi, who’s packing up the recording equipment and leaving the room with Jin to give you some privacy. 

Your eyes settle back on Jungkook. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please. I can smell your horny pheromones from here.”

You twirl around and decide that Jungkook is officially dead to you. 

Despite the last rays of your fun tryst with Yoongi still fading, you switch into professional mode. You prep the materials that you need for Namjoon to create his profile: a personality inventory, and an explanation of your intimacy-building questions.

Jungkook is staring at Namjoon’s booklet and scantron and distracting him, so you hand him a blank copy to give him something to do.

Namjoon is the most nervous you’ve ever seen anybody filling out a scantron. And you’ve taught university classes, so that’s saying something. 

“These are just questionnaires,” you say gently, smiling at Namjoon. “There are no right answers.”

He raises his eyebrows. “But they’re going to determine everything that happens from here on out,” he says earnestly. Maybe even fearfully.

“Not everything,” you remind him.

Namjoon lightens a little, but you get the sense that he’s still feeling pressured.

“Yeah, calm down, Joonie,” Jungkook replies. 

To avoid having to engage with him, you look at your desk whenever Jungkook talks, and you see his fingers bubbling in his own scantron, like a child who’s coloring in their kids’ menu while the adults are talking.  

Jungkook shrugs. “Fill it out honestly, and just dive dick first into the unknown, bro.”

You scrunch your face up at Jungkook’s attempt at a platitude, but it brings a full smile to Namjoon.

“Dick first, huh?” he asks, amused.

“Dick first!” Jungkook exclaims. His rapscallion-esque grin catches you off-guard when he looks up at you.

You stifle the smile that itches at the corners of your own mouth.

Namjoon finishes his scantron and hands it to you, and you transition to your computer screen. 

“OK, so now, you’re going to go home and answer these questions in the app,” you explain, showing Namjoon the interface that he’ll start to use when filtering through his matches.

“Thirty-six questions?!” Jungkook exclaims, furrowing his brow. “What the fuck? Is he creating a profile or writing his fucking memoir?”

“It’s part of a rigorous protocol,” you say, focusing only on Namjoon. “These questions come from a famous study known as the Aron study. It’s a study about intimacy.”

Namjoon is clearly absorbing all of this information, but he’s watching you with a grin, completely familiar with the process of digging deep for patience when it comes to Jungkook. 

“Joonie’s been intimate with people before,” Jungkook replies, somewhat proudly. “He doesn’t need to fill that shit out. He can just do a play-by-play. Hell, I can do a play-by-play for him.”

“The questions are about interpersonal intimacy. Not just sex.”

“Boring.”

You take a deep, deep breath.

“Jungkook, why don’t you go wait outside?” Namjoon asks.

“Also boring.”

Jungkook reaches over and starts scrolling through the questions without your permission. 

“Question 1: Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as a dinner guest? That’s easy. Me,” Jungkook says, flashing his brilliant smile again and making Namjoon laugh.

You want to bang your head against the wall. 

“Question 2: Would you like to be famous? In what way?” Jungkook continues. “Also easy. For that enormous cock. Question 3: Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?”

“That’s an interesting one,” Namjoon reflects. “I do.”

“You do?” Jungkook asks.

You can’t help but chime in. “It’s clear that you just let whatever crass garbage pops into your head tumble out of your mouth, but some people like to plan things out.”

“You mean like your office fuckfests?” Jungkook teases, narrowing his eyes at you, finally catching you and reveling in the victory. “I bet they’re every Thursday. I bet you have the time slot blocked off in your calendar. I bet you have a cutesy nickname for it. Something like, Long Lunch with Short Man.”

If you were a cartoon character, smoke would be blowing out of your ears.

“Actually, I do rehearse my conversations,” Namjoon replies, quickly diffusing things. “I do it because I want to make sure that whatever I’m saying is clear and makes sense to the person I’m about to speak to.”

You decide to follow his lead and ignore Jungkook’s jabs and refocus on your actual client. “That’s great!” you say. “That’s the kind of detail we need in these answers.”

“Why?” Jungkook pipes up. “What do you do with them? Is it like some girly magazine thing? One of those online quizzes? Add up the points at the end, and if you’re a Capricorn with a score of 22, that means your best match is Gemini?” 

“So once I fill out this profile,” Namjoon barrels through, overlapping with Jungkook once it becomes clear that he’s spouting more nonsense, “then I’ll start getting matches?”

“Correct, but they’ll stay hidden until you complete the starter date. In fact,” you say, pulling up your actual calendar, “when would you like to schedule that?”

Jungkook starts reading the details of your appointment blocks. You wonder why he’s so fucking nosy.

“I guess Saturday night? Does that work?”

“It seems to,” Jungkook spits out. “Doesn’t seem like you have anything going on at all this weekend.”

“Of course it seems like that, because this is my work calendar,” you mutter, as you enter Namjoon’s details into a new event.

“Wait, so you have an actual social calendar, too?” Jungkook asks, feigning a laugh. 

“No, I don’t have a---”

“Where am I meeting you?” Namjoon asks. 

You sigh and refocus, yet again. You tell Namjoon about the restaurant across the street, and you describe what to expect.

Jungkook blinks at you in disbelief. “So you’re just going to sit there the whole time and watch them like some weird science pervert?” 

“Kook,” Namjoon sighs, finally giving Jungkook the attention he so wants.

“It’s part of the protocol,” you say, sizing Jungkook up. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand. And if you want it to be successful, it is absolutely critical that you do not come.”

Jungkook scowls at you.

“I’ll see you Saturday evening,” you tell Namjoon. 

“Thank you so much. I’ll finish those questions by then.”

“Oh, we’re definitely finishing them tonight,” Jungkook boasts, still scowling at you.

You shake hands with Namjoon, and when Jungkook goes to do the same, you dodge his arm and walk over to the door, unceremoniously opening it for them to leave. They do, and a few minutes later, Yoongi and Jin reappear.

“We saw Namjoon and Satan’s Spawn leave, so we figured we’d come help repair the damage,” Jin replies. “How’d it go?”

You’re over by the scantron reader that’s hooked up to Yoongi’s computer. When he sees you there, he goes over to his desk to pull up the data that you’re feeding into it.

“Namjoon was perfectly pleasant to talk to, as always,” you share. “He was actually nervous while filling out the personality inventory. And then Jungkook said that Namjoon should calm down and dive dick first into the unknown.”

Yoongi laughs at his computer screen. “He said that?”

“Yeah,” you say, slightly disappointed that Yoongi found the humor in it, but realizing that you’re more disappointed that you also found it to be a little funny. And seemingly, albeit oddly, encouraging to Namjoon.

Yoongi reads your expression and walks over to you. He takes the scantron and walks back to his computer. 

He turns the computer screen to show you and Jin a mapping of Jungkook’s scores. He holds up the scantron next to it, the bubbles making a similar image.

Whatever Yoongi is trying to show you is completely going over your and Jin’s heads.

Yoongi turns the scantron on its side. 

Jungkook has bubbled in his answers in the shape of a thick dick, complete with full and massive balls. He’s even drawn little hairs in the spaces between the bubble lines and illustrated jizz spilling out of the tip and into the name line at the top, drawing his name in bubble letters with little sperm tails.

“God-motherfucking-dammit!” you exclaim, picking up Namjoon’s actual scantron and re-doing the scan. 

You march over to Yoongi and grab the scantron, quickly ripping it up. 

Jin crosses his legs uncomfortably as your fingers eviscerate the paper.

“We should analyze Jungkook’s scantron anyway,” Yoongi says curiously, sitting at his desk and spinning the computer screen back to him. 

“I bet you’ll find his narcissism scores are off the charts,” you mutter. “Probably the entire dark triad.”

Yoongi raises his eyebrows. “Actually, he already has a 95% match in the database.”

“Off the personality inventory alone?” you ask, getting up from your desk and marching over to Yoongi’s desk. “Who is it?”

Yoongi and Jin have clown-like grins on their faces as you discover that it’s you.

“What--- why--- how is my picture in there?” you sputter.

“It’s leftover from the baseline questionnaires that we filled out,” Yoongi says, trying to keep a straight face as Jin is flexing every muscle in his body to keep from giggling.

You stare at them, dumbfounded. 

“Now we have definitive proof of your love of dicks,” Jin jokes, and he and Yoongi erupt with laughter.

“These questions are fucking ridiculous. Listen to this,” Jungkook complains, looking around at the group.

Thursday night dinner has finished, and they’ve moved on to beers and snacks. Jungkook is so engrossed that he’s reading the questions off his own phone, inadvertently giving Namjoon the space to actually finish his profile.

Jungkook clears his throat. “Question 4: What would constitute a perfect day for you?”

“Sleeping all day,” Jimin offers.

“Shopping all day,” Hobi answers.

“Gaming all day,” Taehyung replies.

“Reading all day,” Namjoon answers, already moving onto the next question.

“You’re all wrong. It’s fucking all day. Here’s Question 5: When did you last sing to yourself or to someone else?” Jungkook rolls his eyes. “This is such a waste of time.”

“You’re really good at singing, Jungkook,” Namjoon replies.

“I know, I’m the best singer here, but that’s beside the point,” Jungkook replies. “What does singing have to do with relationships?”

“I like singing,” Taehyung says, smiling. “I sing in the shower all the time. That might be something someone might want to know?”

“You’re good at it, too!” Hobi exclaims. “Whenever we go to that one karaoke bar, people always want you to sing more.”

“What about me?” Jimin asks.

“Your voice is so pretty, Jiminie,” Taehyung says dreamily.

“Thank you,” Jimin smiles. “That’s all I needed.”

Jungkook scoffs. “Or this question, Question 6: If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?”

“Body,” Jimin, Taehyung, and Hobi say in unison.

“Mind,” Namjoon replies, alone.

Jungkook looks at the hard line just drawn in the sand. “OK, that’s actually pretty interesting. DIscuss.”

“Body?” Namjoon asks, incredulous. “Wouldn’t it be more amazing to be able to cognitively perform the way you do when you’re younger and be able to retain more as you get older as a result?”

“But don’t people always say that youth is wasted on the young?” Taehyung points out.

“Yeah, wouldn’t you feel trapped in a body that couldn’t do what you wanted it to do?” Jimin asks.

Namjoon shrugs and looks back down at his phone. “I guess I just feel like I exist more in my mind than I do in my body to begin with.”

No one else notices except for Jungkook, but Hobi is becoming quieter. They share a meaningful look.

“That actually kind of links to the next question,” Namjoon says, picking up the conversation. “Question 7: Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?”

Jungkook shoots Hobi a regretful glance and says, “Uh, maybe we should move onto another---”

“Too much sex,” Jimin jokes, and he and Taehyung high-five.

“I’ve always had a hunch that I’m going to die in a clumsy accident,” Namjoon replies sheepishly.

“Believable,” Taehyung says.

“What about you, Tae?” Jimin asks.

“I can’t explain it, but I’ve always thought I’d go out in a blaze of glory, like in some heroic act, or some crazy stunt,” Taehyung postures.

“Hobi?” Namjoon asks, starting to catch on to Hobi’s silence.

He looks crestfallen. “Lung cancer,” Hobi replies.

Everyone stares at him in confusion, except for Jungkook, who watches with concern.

Hobi looks around at them. 

“Whoa, what makes you say that?” Jimin asks.

“Sorry,” Hobi replies, his eyes watery. “The drinks must’ve just all hit me at once.”

“Look, Jungkook, all your needling is getting under Hobi’s skin again,” Jimin sighs, taking another swig of his beer.

“Though it is nice that you have something to focus on destroying other than Hobi’s reputation at work,” Taehyung adds.

“But I like the pranks,” Hobi protests. 

Namjoon furrows his brow. “You like them? This morning, you were screaming at me about how Jungkook completely emptied your desk and filled it with paper clips.”

“Technically, that wasn’t a prank,” Jungkook replies. “That was revenge.”

“They give me something else to think about,” Hobi says.

“The paper clips make you think?” Taehyung asks, confused.

“No, the pranks.”

“What are you trying not to think about?” Namjoon asks.

“Yeah, what’s going on, Hobi?” Jimin asks, cutting through the weirdness.

“Well… I…”

Hobi looks at Jungkook, who just nods.

“My mom has lung cancer,” Hobi says finally.

Everyone grows quiet. 

“You’re sure of it?” Jimin asks, his eyes quickly brimming with tears.

Hobi nods, and he details the events of the past few months. The day she collapsed and said she had some trouble breathing. The scan. The diagnosis. And each day since then, Hobi has only been provided a brief respite of having this horrible cloud hanging over him and his family when Jungkook decides to do something like fill his desk with paper clips.

“I didn’t want to bring it up,” Hobi replies. “And I didn’t really know how.”

“You know we’re here for you, Hobi,” Taehyung whispers.

“I know,” Hobi says, placing his hand on the back of Taehyung’s neck and smiling. 

“What can we do?” Namjoon asks.

Hobi smiles sadly at the group until his eyes settle on Jungkook.

“Tell us about fucking that hot barista in the bathroom again.”

Namjoon and Jungkook sit silently as they wait for you to show up to Namjoon’s first starter date. It’s extremely rare for them to go a minute without falling back into their banter, and you’re already five minutes late.

“Wait, what is he doing here?” you ask, in a huff.

“Believe me, I didn’t want him to be here either,” Namjoon replies.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Jungkook asks. “From the day you decided to do all this, you’ve been asking me to give you support and come to all these meetings.”

“Jungkook, I literally asked you just once to come with me, and I have literally been asking you to back off since you made a fool of yourself,” Namjoon replies, glancing up at you apologetically.

“I thought I made that clear as well,” you mutter.

“Well, tough tits, assholes. I’m staying,” Jungkook replies defiantly. 

Namjoon sighs, more annoyed than you’ve ever seen him.

You’re annoyed on his behalf, as well. And, if you’re being honest, you’re also cranky because Yoongi couldn’t come because of some class that he’s taking. Or so he says.

“Then make yourself useful, at least,” you tell Jungkook, starting to unpack the recording equipment.

You brace and prepare to start fighting off his remarks, but Jungkook just silently helps you set up the camera tripod and offers to help Namjoon put his mic on. 

Namjoon chooses to do it himself.

“Are you guys OK?” you ask, less out of actual concern for them (or at least Jungkook in particular), and more out of concern about the success of this data collection session. 

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Namjoon replies, shrugging Jungkook off of him.

Jungkook stares at him before flopping down in his seat and folding his arms.

You explain in the time remaining between now and the time that the actor is set to show up that these actors were picked according to certain characteristics that seemed to suggest best predictors for matches. Then, the actor shows up, a different one than before, and introduces themselves to Namjoon before sitting in the chair across from him and kicking off the friendly banter.

Jungkook sits across from you on the opposite end of the table and mumbles something under his breath.

You glare at him.

“I said, this is a waste of time,” Jungkook expresses.

You squeeze your eyes shut.

“I didn’t want to know what you said.”

“Then why were you ogling me like your cunt was about to explode?”

“I wasn’t---”

You sigh.

“I was glaring at you because I was trying to get you to shut the fuck up,” you whisper, your eyes boring holes into Jungkook’s face. “These mics might be picking you up.”

“I really couldn’t care less.”

“Then why are you here?” 

“I’m trying to be supportive, but Joonie won’t fucking let me.”

You look over at Namjoon and the actor, both of whom are seemingly having a wonderful conversation.

“He certainly doesn’t look like he’s in want of your support right now.”

“Well, he definitely doesn’t need you,” Jungkook replies, tapping his foot.

“No one needs anyone,” you say.

You swear it makes an impression on Jungkook, but you’re not sure why.

“What, you think I’m some sort of princess waiting for her savior to come?” you snap.

“Less a princess and more of a priss,” Jungkook says, smirking.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“And you don’t know anything about me.”

“Oh, I know plenty,” you claim.

“Yeah? Enlighten me.”

“Aside from the obvious issues that you have with commitment, intimacy, trust, abandonment, jealousy, and just plain ol’ decency, aren’t you a day trader?” you ask. “You model human behavior mathematically and use that to predict future human behavior and decisions. That’s your whole schtick.”

“So?”

“So why are you constantly busting Namjoon’s balls? And why do you keep giving me and my team a hard time? I don’t come to your office and slap the dick out of your mouth.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “I day trade to make money. I don’t use my schtick to fuck.”

He smirks.

“Or, well. Not that one.”

“So you think this is all about money?”

“You’re a business, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, we’re serving a need, and we’re doing it in a way that adds to an extensive body of social psychology and data science research,” you brag. “You just fellate rich cocks all day.”

“Sure, you’re literally whoring people out to each other, and I’m the fluffer.”

“Then you tell me,” you challenge him. “What would you have Namjoon do?”

Jungkook looks at you. “I don’t know, but it definitely wouldn’t include tricking him into paying me to talk to people who were paid to be here, only to force him to talk to other people who were tricked into being here.”

“No one’s forcing anything.”

“Are you shitting me? There’s a fucking video camera on the table. You’ve used the term ‘operationally defined variables’ three times since we’ve been here.”

You want to punch him in the face. “People find it helpful to identify patterns to build relationships. Our research is solid.”

“So that automatically means that whatever relationship Joonie wants to cultivate will be solid, too?” 

“No, the rest of this field of research has already established that.”

“Bullshit. All relationships inevitably crumble,” Jungkook replies. “People leave, or lie, or move on, or treat you like shit, and it ends.”

You smile, and he knows you’ve got him pinned down. Your list of his traumas was exactly right. 

“And what if he wants to build a relationship with someone anyway?” you ask.

Jungkook looks at you. 

“I’m just saying that if he does, and that relationships get messy, isn’t all this setup, the compatibility calculations, all that shit, setting up too clean of an expectation?” he asks. 

“Well, the field has tons of research that---”

“I don’t care about your field. I care about Namjoon.”

“Well, thanks for saying that you care,” Namjoon replies. “And if either of you actually do care, we’re done here, and I’m ready to go home.”

You and Jungkook look at Namjoon and realize his starter date is over. The seasoned actor walked him through the rest of the protocol before leaving a few minutes ago.

Namjoon has been standing over you, watching the two of you volley strikes back and forth. 

He looks at you.

“So, I should expect some matches in the app soon?”

“Yes,” you reply. “Thanks. And sorry about that, he---” You look over at Jungkook. “He just kept talking.”

“He tends to do that.”

Jungkook is about to unleash insults at both of you, but Namjoon places a hand on his shoulder. 

“I called us a rideshare. Let’s go.”

Namjoon shakes your hand before walking outside.

Jungkook rises from his seat.

“Well, this was…” 

He looks at you, the table, the camera, everything. He circles his hands around it all.

“…Something.” 

You watch silently as he scampers over to Namjoon. They jump into the backseat of a black SUV, and they’re gone.

When you get home, you find that Yoongi is still gone. You’re riled up and desperate to debrief. You stop short of calling Jin and interrupting his evening.

Instead, you shower and get ready for bed. 

As you climb under the covers, for whatever reason, all you can think about is Jungkook.

You hate to admit it, but it does feel like your cunt is about to explode.

← 01: Sign Up | 03: Update Status →

Matchmaker | Masterpost

[awilddreamermain]

Hi, Chels! Congratulations!! I'm so happy for you! You deserve every follower and more! That is a threat, I'm holding everyone hostage 🔪

I would love to get a MHA matchup, I wanna see who you'd match me with! Got me so curious! SFW & NSFW if you'd be willing!

My name is Chloe but I prefer May, nicknames include May-May, Maybell or Chlo.

I'm 25, pronouns are she/he, Cancer Moon, Aries Sun and Virgo Rising. Quite the weird mash of zodiacs, huh?

My favorite colors are pink (that soft pastel kinda baby pink), red (especially blood/garnet red) and...can I add pink again? Any shade of pink this time. Bubblegum or hot pink.

Favorite AU's include A/B/O, Mafia, Historical, Fantasy and does Mythical Creatures count?

Oh...oh boy, I gotta look deep for some fun facts that aren't just...facts but I'll do my best!

1) My sneezes are so short and high pitched I go "chu".

2) I have vitiligo, makes me look like a dog because it's mostly around my mouth and my right eye so I have a spot!

3) I have atrocious balance, my knees and shins are always banged up because I cannot for the life of me walk correctly.

4) I have a stutter, on top of speaking so quickly it turns into a jumbled mess. So good luck understanding what I said because I have no idea either.

5) I have a growing unicorn plush collection. My favorite is Cupcake, one that's actually taller than I am. Big chunk.

My likes are pretty simple. Cute & soft sweaters, blankets, warm coffee and strawberry milk, pastries and the cold! Winter is my favorite season. History, particularly the Medieval and Victorian times.

My interests revolve around creativity and you could say they're my hobbies as well. Drawing in particular, I used to do digital but I'm stuck with traditional pencil and paper at the moment. I'm dipping my toes into painting and its very fun! Obviously writing and reading and if I'm not doing of those listed then I'm definitely playing video games.

Personality I might say I'm quite split down the middle. At first, to a complete stranger I might come across as cold, stoic, with a resting bitch face, that just wants to get whatever I'm outside for done so I can leave. I'd create a witty or sarcastic comeback if I was given sass by a Karen but with my speech issues? I'd be lucky to get one coherent word out at her...and spend the rest of the day fantasizing what could've happened. So I'm rather quiet, agoraphobia hits hard in large or crowded places so I'm an anxiety riddled mess on the verge of a panic attack. In private or with people that I'm comfortable with? Complete opposite. Happy, bubbly, cracking puns and jokes so get those groan worthy reactions. I try to be the "mom friend" and get over my issues if someone is having it worse, I'll march up to a counter and ask for ketchup if someone wanted it but was too scared to do it themselves. The shoulder to lean and cry on, I'm highly empathetic and understanding, compassionate at times. But I have to actively try and keep myself positive and say good things about myself because I do fall into the pit of self-loathing and hate.

For appearance I'd say I'm average height, pale with white splotches that are inching larger due to my vitiligo, chubby, ashy blonde, blue eyes, button nose. I'd say I'm decently cute? I don't know if I can rate myself.

Okay I know I said I'd be looking into Zodiac compatibility for this but— I literally just screamed internally "KIRISHIMA" when I was reading this. You two would be perfect omg. This Libra king would do anything for you. For this you're an artist and the daughter of a mafia boss :) I like to think of ship names sometimes so like, yours would either be like Eijmay or Mayjirou or Kiriloe— that last one and first are awful I know so lets go with the second? I can't write a proper stutter for the life of me so I tried to keep your dialogue to the minimum.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ Pairing: Eijirou Kirishima

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀AU: Mafia

⠀Theme Song: You're The One That I Want - Alex & Sierra

How you meet (his point of view):

⠀⠀The gallery was full of black and white suits, tight, floor length dresses with the sounds of laughter and clinking glasses meeting his ears. It was a joyous evening, celebrating the wonderful art work created by the boss's daughter. He had never met her before but he had heard whispers, all good as no one would dare slander the name of their leader's precious little girl. You were the boss's pride and joy, thus he kept you as far away from the darker side of the family business as possible.

⠀⠀Kirishima was still a new hire, a bodyguard of sorts and would consider this his first gig. He had an idea of who he was looking for as he walked further into the mass of people admiring your work but didn't expect what he would eventually come across. You were as far away from the crowd as you possibly could be, guzzling glasses of wine and over all appearing to be a deer in headlights. He couldn't fugure out for the life of him why you seemed so frightened until he watched people approach you to talk, noticing the stutter in your voice when you replied to questions and greetings,your body language telling people to stear clear of you.

⠀⠀So, he did what he was hired to do. "Kindly step away from the lady." He said with a smile, approaching with his large arms crossing over his broad chest as he towered over the guests. They looked at him as if he were a giant shark looking to devour them before scurrying away, leaving the two of you alone. He stood quietly, listening to the voices on the other side of his ear piece as his ruby eyes scanned the area around you. He made sure to not stand so close and avoided in letting his gaze wander.

⠀⠀He couldn't help but admire your skin in quick glances, finding the spot over your eye to be quite adorable. Your silky, ask blonde hair was all dolled up for the event, light make up on your face but not enough to cover the vitiligo. You were stunning and his heart hammered against his chest. So the rumors were true.

⠀⠀You thanked him, voice quiet and careful as you set down your wine glass and clasped your hands together. Out of the corner of his eye he watched you twiddle your thumbs. You didn't want to be here, did you? This obviously wasn't your idea, how could it be? A girl like you, timid as a mouse, didn't want to be surrounded by strangers. "Miss..." He began, thinking carefully because the last thing he wanted to do was piss off the boss and likely get himself killed. But this was his job wasn't it? Making sure you were happy and safe? "Would you like to leave here for a bit? We'll come back of course, but you look like you need some air."

Extra.

He ended up taking you to a drive thru restaurant and got you whatever you wanted, letting you talk about whatever you wanted or sat quietly if you chose not to talk at all If it was quiet in the suv then that was fine too, he just wanted to help you in any way he could. Eventually the silence becomes small talk and then leads to a rather deep conversation about whatever the hell was going on inside that beautiful brain of yours. Kirishima wasn't the smartest man but he wasn't stupid, he wasn't as clueless as most thought he was. You told him how your father made you do this as an attempt to get you out there, to socialize and possibly find a suitor. This was the mafia after all.

The Confession:

⠀⠀It was a tradition now, every Sunday you and Eijirou would go to your favorite café to have coffee and enjoy the early day weather before it got too hot. You sit at the same table, in the same chairs with him facing the door. You get the same drinks and food and just overall enjoy each others company. After that night at the gallery you two became fast friends, which your father obviously had to approve of but thankfully he did. Kirishima was a good man, he's trustworthy and puts you before himself.

⠀⠀The day he approached your father and asked to speak in private was the day he knew he was likely to get thrown in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean. He has confessed his feelings for you to your old man, who listened intently with a blank face behind his desk. "Sir, I'm in love with your daughter, and with your blessing I'd like to... court her." He was utterly terrified when your father cleared his throat and sighed, shifting where he sat so he could stand and move around the desk. He reached out for a handshake which Kirishima looked up at him with a questioning look.

⠀⠀Your father gave his blessing and now... He just had to tell you, his best friend, that he loved you. God he loved you so much— "Kiri," you interrupted his thoughts, bringing him crashing back to reality," a-are you alright? You seem nervous." He swallowed hard in response but cleared his throat, taking a sip of his cappuccino.

⠀⠀"Oh yeah— definitely." He breathed with a laugh, moving a hand to the back of his neck to scratch. How was he going to say it? "So, uh—" he licked his lips, adjusting himself in his seat multiple times until he groaned and leaned forward. "Fuck, I'm just gonna say it— Maybell, I love you. I have for a long time now and I talked to your father and he said—"

⠀⠀"Said what, Eijirou?" Your eyes widened at his confession and he felt like a complete idiot. Should he had said something to you first? Was this a mistake? What if you didn't feel the same way? God his mind was going to explode—

⠀⠀"That I could... court you. With your permission." You were quick to nod and smile to his surprise, which prompted a grin if his own.

Extra.

Kirishima HAS to be facing the door in any public place you go to. I don't make the rules.

He never let's you walk close to the road, he has to be between you and it at all times when you're walking.

He oders your food and drinks for you when you can't but is there for moral support when you do. He wants you comfortable and happy. He wouldn't ever dare get in your way though, you're a lot stronger and braver than most may think you are.

The Relationship:

⠀⠀On days like this, Kirishima can't help but admire you. He catches himself staring wuite often but he just can't help it. What did he do to deserve such a beautiful partner? He looks at you and all he can think about is how much he loves you and wants to see you smile. He watched you from the kitchen island, leaning against it as you waltz around the kitchen in your pinky fuzzy slippers and one of his shirts that's much, much too big on you. He remembers your surprise when you found his clothing was actually too big on you and how happy you were.

⠀⠀"Maybell?" He hums, adjusting his stance and crossing his arms on the counter. He listened for you to him back in response, a smile on his lips. "You look so cute in my clothes.

⠀⠀You giggled, shaking your head and continued putting the dishes away until Eijirou appeared behind you, arms wrapping around your waist and his forehead coming down on your shoulder. "Need somethin' baby?" You turned your head just slightly, a brow cocked inquisitively. He squeezed you in response, swiftly lifting you and making you squeal. Thankfully you didn't have anything in your hands at the moment. He peppered kisses all over the side of your face, setting you down only to lift you again bridal style.

⠀⠀"I've got all I need right here in my arms." He chuckled and you playfully smacked his chest, letting him carry you to your shared bedroom.

Extra.

TICKLE FIGHTS.

He thinks your sneezes are the cutest thing in the world.

He loves your god awful puns, they crack him up every time.

Adores the fact you're a nurturer, especially with your friends. He thinks you'd make a great mother but if that's something you don't want he respects that.

You take care of everyone, but who takes care of you? Eijirou is always there to be your shoulder to lean and cry on, he's your sound board and is always happy to let you talk about your feelings with him. You're allowed to not be happy and bubbly all the time, he realizes how staying positive all the time can actually do more damage than goof, especially if you bottle everything up.

If on a particular day you're struggling with your speech he's happy to be your voice as well. He understands you better than anyone, even your own father.

Speaking of your father, he can't wait to make Eijirou his son-in-law! He's a good man with a good heart and treats you right, what's not to like?

He has trouble saying no to you and spoils you quite a bit.

The Fights:

...

Extra.

There's nothing, what you say goes and all he can say is "yes dear". He knows better than to argue with you, however when he's right and he knows he is, he finds a way to prove it without making you mad.

The Sex:

⠀⠀"Fuck baby—" he hissed, hands finding your hips and guiding you as you rub yourself on his cock. Your hands are on his thighs and your head is tossed back, giving him the perfect view of your tits. God he loves them, he loves the plush skin of your stomach and your thighs, your ass too, he loved seeing all of you. He was so happy that you allow him this privilege of seeing you, granted you've been dating a while now but still. Your sounds are music to his ears and all he wants is to make more, make you feel so good you're calling his name and making a mess.

He wanted— no, needed, to feel you, to feel inside your warm and wet cunt, to feel it squeeze him and milk him dry. He was quick to flip the two of you over, careful to not hurt you as he did. You gasped and giggled, reaching up to hold his face as he smiled, leaning down to capture your lips in a searing kiss. He loved your taste, he could go on and on about all the things he loved about you all day if he could. "You want it baby?" You nodded excitedly, lip caught between your teeth. He smirked and reached between the two of you, thick fingers tracing a line between your lips and slipping inside your soaked pussy.

"D-Daddy—" you whine, a slight pout on your lips as your face morphs into one of pleasure. He chuckled, pumping his fingers in and out a few times before removing them and grabbing his cock. He coated it more in your slick, guiding it between tge lips of your cunt before slowly pushing inside, groaning at how tight you are. You squeal of course, gasping for breath because Kirishima is an impressive size, you still struggled to take him sometimes but like a good girl you always managed.

"That's my good girl." He cooed, moving so his forearms were on either side of your head. He gave a couple test thrusts, waiting for you to adjust u til you nodded for him to continue.

Extra.

Terrified of activating his quirk while he's fucking you, but he keeps himself under control.

He loves his hair pulled and he loves to be bitten, he especially likes it when you scratch his back when he hits that good spot.

Eats you out for his pleasure mostly, but for yours as well. He loves when you grind on his face and moan his name when you do it. Speaking of, please sit on his face, he loves that shit. He knows how to be careful of his teeth!

If you have pets they CANNOT be in the same roon when you're doing the do, it's just weird.

He'd happily bend you over in the kitchen and do you right there. Hell, he'll fuck you anywhere you deem suitable.

He likes to do a mixture if praise and degradation with you, and edging and overstimulation is a big go-to. He just loves seeing you squirm under him, hr loves hearing you beg and say you need him.

[lycomorpha]

Drawing paper review: Strathmore medium surface drawing paper 130gsm

Hello lovely people, here’s my next drawing paper review. This time it’s a Strathmore medium paper, one of three kinds I’m trying from this brand. TL;DR review is at the beginning of this post, full review is after that.

[Content warning: profanity]

STRATHMORE MEDIUM SURFACE DRAWING PAPER (OFF-WHITE)

Source: Jackson’s art online

Description: acid-free medium finish paper for dry media, creamy off-white colour, says “heavy weight” - but at 130 gsm? Mate... This is drawing paper not printer paper, so I think the fuck not.

Price: £5.70 for 24 8x10 inch sheets (mid-range)

TL;DR review: does what it says on the tin - good with dry media for sketches/finished work. I liked it, but for me personally; I prefer brighter white paper for work destined for print. It’s not as all-round-amazing as the Stonehenge from last time for detailed commission work. So I’m going to keep it as an affordable paper to draw less finicky-detail-heavy work, and for sketching. It’s still good for the price, and it’s the kind of paper that stops me obsessing TOO much over tiny details (well, as much as anything can) because it’s too rough for any of my bullshit.

Blue tack test: 3 out of 3, no tearing.

Shading test: survived 8 colours well. But by the end there was some fluffing (of the paper fibres, get your minds out of the gutter you dirty sods) where the pencil point started to distrurb things.

Strathmore medium paper tests; the blue tack and shading tests determine how well the surface of paper keeps its shit together. Details of tests are here

What did I draw? A teeny illustration of the hawkmoth species Pergesa acteus, in polychromos oil-based pigment pencils. My Patreon patrons will find a digital print of this moth in their May round-up post. More WIP for this piece is below along with the drawing experience notes.

Drawing experience

This paper is not as smooth as I usually use, but it’s a good middle ground for pencil work between a smooth/hot press, and cold-press paper. It’s rough enough to hang onto pastel/charcoal/carbon black pencils, as well as graphite & colour pencil. But it’s not sooo rough that I end up sharpening my pencils every 30 bastardtittyfucking seconds (which really gets on my nerves.) And I mean fair enough if we’re talking about something like a cold press watercolour paper - those papers weren’t designed for colour pencils. So I can’t be too tetchy about them being a bit cheesegrater-y on my pencil points. But given a fuck of lot of us drawing types often find we only have hot and cold press papers to choose from... It’s nice to find something different, and if you’re looking for a surface between hot and cold-press for drawing, this might be for you.

However, it’s not as easy to render extremely small details on rougher paper, and you know me, I tend to over-obsess about those. So my first impression was; this is an ideal sketching paper! But this paper doesn’t take so kindly to layering very fine lines by repeatedly using a pin-sharp colour pencil, or my beloved 0.3mm mech pencil. Unfortunately for this paper, I do like layering. Also it is SOMEWHAT cheesegrater-y relative to Stonehenge fine art paper.

That said, I enjoyed using it; it feels comfortable enough for drawing on the go, because it has a good sturdy hardback on the spiral-bound pads (I also have a tiny 4x6″ pad of this for graphite travel doodles). And because it isn’t too spendy - or too heavy - I was less worried about getting bends/creases in it (something which really pisses me off about some heavier papers that I otherwise love.) Also… It’s not a bad thing  to have a paper that encourages me to draw more loosely. I need to remember I can draw in the moment, and not every gahdammed thing has to be detailed down to the tiniest dot!

My overall feeling about this paper; it’s good for what it says it’s good for, but don’t expect too much, y’all. It does what it says on the tin; it’s good for dry media for sketches/finished work, but with the caveat that you really can’t overwork your layers/detail on it.

[clevercatchphrase]

2019 year in review

So… The 2010’s are almost over. Huh. What a decade it’s been. Hard to comprehend how much has changed in 10 years. I can barely believe that I was in high school at the beginning of this decade, and now I’m a college graduate with 2 degrees who’s been working at the same job for the last 3 years. But trying to summarize the past 10 years in a single post is a good way to give myself an existential crisis, so let’s not do that! Instead, let’s just focus on 2019 because there has been more than enough shit that’s happened to me in this year to talk about.

PART 1 OF 2: 2019 AND 2020 GOALS AND RESOLUTIONS

Huh, looking back through my archives, I apparently didn’t make a tumblr post about my goals this year. I definitely had some, though. Lemme list ‘em off real quick, and then we’ll go through them point by point.

1)      Pay off all my student loans 2)      Finish some song comics 3)      Make art for my Redbubble account 4)      Finish the first rough draft/script of a game I wanted to make 5)      Practice ASL 6)      Sew some stuffed animals 7)      Finish some fan fictions 8)      Work on Ghost Switch 9)      AMVs 10)   Do some original writing 11)   Make illustrations for my fan fictions

Okay, first off, the student loans. I was actually SO CLOSE to successfully completing this one bUT THEN MY CAR HAD TO BE A WHINEY PISS BABY AND HAVE ITS ALTERNATOR DIE ON ME WHILE I WAS ON THE HIGHWAY AND THEN A BLOW OUT THREE WEEKS LATER.

GOD, if I had to summarize this year in two words, for me it would be “Car troubles”. I swear I spent more on auto repair in the first third of this year than I ever have just freakin’ OWNING a car. All four of my tires had to be replaced, my alternator failed and my car literally just SHUT OFF while I was driving, and I was barely able to coast into a gas station. Both my front breaks and rear breaks were worn down the metal and I only learned this when my car was barely able to stop after I had to slam the petal down full force!  I went in for an oil change, and they found some problems and then I didn’t get my car back for three days! I don’t even like owning a car! I hate driving! I hate my country’s refusal to provide universal, free public transportation! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!

Oh-kay… number 2. Finish some song comics. I didn’t finish any. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t work on them. I have made tiny progress, but that’s certainly better than no progress. One of these song comics I hope to be realizes is going to be a collab with one of my friends. It’ll be a long-time coming as it’s pretty low priority for the both of us, but if anyone else out there was disappointed with KH3’s ending, we’re gonna have ya’ covered… With SONG!

3. Make some redbubble art. I actually did this one! Not in the way I expected, but I added (technically) 3 new designs to my redbubble in the middle of the year. If you like butterflies and dragons, I got some product for you~!

Number 4, finish a script for a game I want to make. I… thought about this. I thought about this a lot, but I never put pen to paper, so… oops. It almost happened! I debated making this my main writing project for NaNoWriMo this year, but ended up having more inspiration for another story. Maybe next year? (god, I hope not. I don’t want to wait a full year just to write something)

Number 5, practice ASL. I just straight up didn’t do this and I only have myself to blame. Still keepin’ up that Danish Duolingo streak, though. 4 years going strong and not a day missed yet.

Number 6, sew some stuffed animals. Again, another one I just straight up didn’t do, but I have an excuse of trying to save money while my car crashed and burned in every other sense except literal this year. Hopefully 2020 will be different. I’ll definitely be able to pay off this last loan within the first half of 2020, and then I can start saving for whatever I want to buy.

Finish some fan fictions was number 7, and I did this! Well, I only finished, 1, but it was a story I’ve been working on for over 3 years, and it came out to over 200 THOUSAND words long, which is the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I’m quite proud of myself. Now that the big story is out of the way, and I’ve gotten into a good rhythm of working on Ghost Switch, maybe I can squeeze in some short writing sessions more frequently. (either that, or just wait for my car to break down again and then go on a writing spree in a pepboys. The lord and the fan fic discord know that’s solely why I finished my other fic this year)

Speaking of Ghost Switch, working on it was a goal this year too, and I did that! I kept it up all year and took a vacation in November and it was wonderful. While the major plot points have been in place since before I started drawing, I still need to script each arc beyond Snowdin, but hey, by the time we get there, it’ll be 2022 so I got time. (Note, don’t do this, kids. Script your stories and comics thoroughly before publishing. The road I’m on is paved with misery and pain and it will only end in tears unless I change lanes soon)

Number 9, amvs. Do people make AMVs anymore? Idk… the last one I made was... Jesus, 5 years ago? (it was a gravity falls/fall out boy crossover, if you were curious) I’ve been wanting to do 2 more for just as long, but in order for me to do that, I’d have to spend time re-watching the shows to find the footage, and then actually edit them together, and I just don’t…. feel like it. Maybe someday, but not any day soon.

10; do some original writing. I did this! For nanowrimo! I wrote the first draft of some original fiction I’ve been planning for a year or two now and it completely sucks! But it’s on paper now and I’m happy. Will I revise and edit it? Sure, but not for a while. I want to let it sit and forget about it and look at it with new eyes months from now so I can be sure I can make it better when time comes to rewrite.

11, make illustrations for my fan fics. Now that You Monster is done, I want to go back and add pictures to it. I didn’t do any this year, but I did keep a list of scenes I wanted to draw, so I have plenty of ideas to do as warm up sketches next year~ I kinda want to stream them~

So, that was 11 goals, and I successfully fulfilled 4 of them! That’s! Not a very good ratio… QmQ So, goals for 2020. Some I’m gonna keep from this year, some I’m gonna drop and some I’m gonna add. In short I would like to,

1)      Finish paying off that last student loan 2)      Put more stuff on my redbubble 3)      Illustrate my own fan fics 4)      Sew at least one stuffed animal 5)      Make an enamel pin 6)      Read one new book a month 7)      Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic 8)      Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make 9)      Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch 10)   Boost my patreon

Most of these I think are pretty self-explanitory, but I’ll go into detail just a bit because I’m on a roll and typing my thoughts helps me feel less alone in the middle of the night when you’re super tired and you know you should probably go to sleep, but the toddler in you is throwing a tantrum and doesn’t wanna go to sleep just yet, but you can’t fight the progression of time either way.

Number 1- I should be able to reach this goal by the end of March. End of June at the absolute latest. Once that goal is met, my secret new year’s resolution will be unlocked as well!

Number 2- I want to put more art of my OCs on redbubble. These OCs are tied to the game I want to make. There’s already some art of them up there, but I want at least one piece for each character.

Number 3- Mostly for You Monster. Embrace the cardinal rule of fan fic and apply it to fan art. If you want to read about see art about certain ideas, scenarios, or what-ifs, you gotta make it yourself.

Number 4- I have 3 potential ideas to sew. One is definitely leagues easier than the other two and will probably be chosen if/when I have the time and materials.

Number 5- This year I got really, REALLY into the idea of making enamel pins. Unfortunately it’s a pretty big investment (like, $350 to make 100 pins you  might not even sell). If this happens, it’ll probably be towards the end of the year, and if I get enough interest. I’m currently torn between making an original enamel pin and one based off Undertale. We’ll just have to see where this goes.

Number 6- Back in 2018 when I paid off one of my many student loans, I rewarded myself by spending over 200 dollars in used books. All these books had a theme; they were focused on dragons because I have a problem. I have not yet read a single one of these books I have bought, and I would like to fix that. I have, like, 20 unread dragon books, and even if I only read 12 out of 20, I would consider that an amazing accomplishment and money well spent.

Number 7- I currently have about 8 different WIPs I could work on. (well, I don’t know if I can even call them wips. More like, a general idea and a title written down.) I want to build good writing habits, and if I can write just 200 words a day, hell, even 200 words a week and just one of my 8 stories done, I would consider this goal met.

Number 8- I’m torn between making my game in unity or ren’py. I know jack shit about both. Ren’py is more user friendly, but unity will allow me more customization. (Lol, can you guess what kind of game I want to make yet?)

Number  9- I really just want the full story to be done and written incase anything goes horribly terribly wrong in my life and I find myself unable to continue making ghost switch in comic form. Then at least I can finish the story by other means, you know?

Number 10- It always surprises me every month when I get that patreon email saying I got paid. Sure, I don’t even make double digits on it, but it still awes me enough to know that people out there like my work enough to throw me a tip. I can’t thank my patrons enough for supporting me and I hope to one day be in such a good place I can update my comic/song comics/writing frequently enough without need for goals or milestones. But until that magical day arrives, money is always a great incentive for anything, I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 ALRIGHT. PART 2 OF 2: SHIT THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN 2019

Cheesus crust what a year. This year started off great! Back in late January Kingdom Hearts 3 FINALLY released, and let me tell you a little story. Back in the summer of 2006 I was a 13 year old middle schooler with no way of making money other than by doing house hold chores at a rate of 25 cents a task. A few weeks ago, I had a sleep over at a friend’s house and they let me play this weird game called “Kingdom Hearts” and god, I was instantly hooked on it. That summer, I did over 800 chores, enough to earn myself 200$ and buy myself a playstation 2 (just in time for the ps3 to come out, gg me) The only games I had for the ps2 were KH1, 2, Re:CoM and Okami, and I beat them all… except Okami. Miffed that the PS3 wouldn’t allow for backwards compatibility, little 13-year-old me made a promise. I looked myself in the mirror and said “I will not buy the next playstation console until KH3 comes out, AND BOY that was probably a good choice for me to make with my level of gaming. I’m even less of a casual gamer than the average casual gamer, but I have been waiting 13 years for this piece of closure, and I even told my friends and family that “the day Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out is the day I will buy a playstation 4”. My dad apparently thought this was the funniest shit, because he literally took the day off from work that Friday to drive me on base to get the game and console (he thought it would be less crowded than a regular walmart, I suppose). I paid $400 on a ps4 pro while he bought me the game. Again, I have an impecible sense of timing seeing as the PS5 is now right on the horrizion, but just like before, I’m not buying a new console until the next KH game is released. See you in 2045, sony~. While I was at the gamestop on base, I also picked up Okami HD and The Last Guardian. For all of February and even early March, I took my time playing through KH3. And…! It was the best disappointment I’ve ever played. After a month away from gaming, I started The Last Guardian and finished it in a couple weeks. I love trico and would die for him, but trying to get 100% completion on that game is udder insanity. Okami, HD, however… again after a month break after finishing TLG, I started replaying Okami. I think I had only managed to get about halfway through the game before I just… stopped playing it on my ps2 version. I am currently SO CLOSE to getting a 100% on the ps4 version. In fact, I’ve beaten the game. I only (techinically) need 2 more trophies to be done; 1st, escape the water dragon without being eaten, 2nd, I need to beat that dumb stupid race with Kai, in order to get the last bead on my rosary, as well as the top dog trophy. I hate her so much. I hate this race so much. It’s awful and bad.

Flash forward to December! Earlier this month I was at Barnes and Noble, buying myself a planner for 2020. I exit the store and notice that there’s a gamestop across the street. For shits and giggles I go inside to look at their game selection, and I find KH 1.5 and 2.5. Now, my PS2 died a few years back (it just won’t read my discs anymore, I don’t know why) and I haven’t been able to replay any of my other kingdom hearts games since. If you had seen me the day I finished kingdom hearts 3, after the ending credits rolled, you would have heard me say “Man…. I wish I could play kingdom hearts 2 again”. AND NOW I CAN, ALONG WITH BBS which I had never even played yet, but knew the story of. I’ve restarted playing kh1, and I was so happy to hear that familiar music when I booted the game up for the first time. While at the game stop, I also picked up Rime and Tearaway, two games that had looked interesting to me. At the time of writing, I’ve finished Rime and am 25% done with tearaway. Rime was…. An interesting experience. I learned about it through Jacksepticeye’s channel a couple years back and thought the art style was enticing. For a super casual gamer like me, I found the puzzles just the right level of challenging and exploring was a blast! The music gave me VERY strong Princes Mononoke vibes, but the overall story left something to be desired. Overall I had fun, and enjoyed completing this game to 100%. Now for tearaway. Can I just say this game is super fucking adorable? I know the original was on the ps vita and the gameplay there was arguably more diverse and imaginative, but this game is just so fucking cute I don’t care?? ALSO, this game’s sound track is ABSOLUTELY incredible and I’ve only heard the first fourth of it! Listen to The Orchards, Pig Riding, and Gibbet Hill Pilgrimage for a taste of their wonderful beats and fantastic use of string and woodwinds! God, I’m so excited to get some more games in 2020. I’m proud to say I currently own more ps4 games than I ever did with my ps2 (and now the majority AREN’T Kingdom Hearts titles!), and I’m still hoping to play Journey, The Witness, and Abzu before everything becomes ps5.

What else happened to me this year. Oh, I went to a doctor for, like, the first time in seven years. I also had my blood drawn for the first time ever, and the nurse said the most disturbing thing to me while she did it. Now, whenever I get shots, I refuse to look. I did that here. So she thought it would be appropriate to say to me “Can you feel your blood leaving your body?” Lady… You can clearly see I am uncomfortable with what is happening here. Why, of all the things you could say, did you choose to say that. Unfortunately, while my doctor is nice, she keeps wanting to run tests on me, that I just cannot afford with my current salary, and my monthly insurance is about to go up to 200$ a month, so I’ve cancelled my next appointment with them, and don’t plan to go back until it’s absolutely necessary. Capitalism is fun, guys. Preventative healthcare is for wusses.

I started going to a chiropractor on a monthly basis. Story time- I don’t know when it started, but sometime late last November I began to notice that I had a headache that just... wasn’t... going away? And each day it was starting to get a little worse. It made it hard for me to find a comfortable position to sleep, it made it hard for me to be in bright areas or move fast. So I said to myself “Okay, if this headache persist through the month of december, then something is proooobably wrong and I should go see someone about it. And hoo-boy were thing wrong with me. By the time this January rolled around, I couldn’t even stay on my feet for more than a few hours without it physically hurting to just BREATHE. So I started going to this chain called The Joint (A+ name, I know). THey aksed me “How are you doing?” I said “I’m in pain” and they said “We can help fix that!”. I’ve only been to a chiropractor once before in my life a few years back after my freshmen year of college because I began to notice my hips weren’t able to support me? LIke, I would lie on my back, and I couldn’t push my hips up when my feet were flat on the floor. I also couldn’t climb anything steep, because my legs just couldn’t push me up if my knee had to bend more than 90 degrees when I lifted my leg up. (Turned out both my hips were apparently out of place). This time only one of my hips were out of place (which they fixed. they said one of my legs was an inch “longer” than the other because I had been leaning all my weight on one leg when I stand). But two of my ribs were apparently “Stuck” which was why it was hurting for me to just breathe, and one of my shoulders was missaligned too, causing one of my trap muscles to constantly be streched, which was pulling on my skull, and causing the headache. Anyway, after they popped all my bones back into place, I still felt terrible, but by god, that night was the first time in weeks I was able to sleep without a migrane. A chiropractor can’t magically heal your arthritis, or fibro, but I definately think they have merit to keeping your posture good and helping your body with things like circulation. 10 outa 10, would recomend. It’s all the fun of getting your neck snapped without the dying!

Earlier this month I got together with two of my friends and we baked Christmas cookies. It was a lot of fun, as well as a great learning experience. A member of my family has a gluten allergy, so we used rice flour for most of the cookies. We learned this is a bad idea! The cookies will just fall apart! A few member’s in one of the friend’s family have nut allergies. Other friend and I knew this and were careful to avoid cookie recipes with nuts, bUT THEN COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT ALMOND MILK AND ALMOND EXTRACT COUNT AS NUT. IN FACT, ALMOND EXTRACT IS PURE CONCENTRATED NUT JUICE AND WE FELT SO BAD FOR ALMOST ACCIDENTALLY POISONING THE FAMILY.

Earlier this year me and these same friends took a field trip to Hobby Lobby and just dicked around the store for a couple of hours. It was super fun, 11 outa 10, would recommend, a great date idea for your artsy S.O.

Back in May I went to a wedding for the first time in my life. (well, not true, but the first one I could remember) we left at 5am, drove 5 hours to get there, hung out at a zoo and spent the night in a la quinta before the wedding day. I slept on the bathroom floor because my mom was snoring too loud in the main room and keeping me awake, and the rest of the day was just spent me trying to keep myself together because I was pissed off and tired.

Other than all of that, nothing really major happened to me this year. I guess one more thing I’ve tried to do this year is started the process of breaking certain internet addictions so I can use my free time for more personal projects. Seriously, I found myself watching way too much youtube and following blogs that didn’t even make me happy. I had a personal intervention with myself where I sat down and asked myself, “why do you watch these videos and youtubers? Why do you follow these blogs? Do you really enjoy their content? Do you really care? If you stopped watching/following them, would you even notice?” After critically thinking it over, I’ve found myself unfollowing several channels and blogs and suddenly I feel so much happier. I thought I would miss it, but I realized I didn’t really care if I saw their content or not. I wasn’t missing much. And now I feel like I have more time to draw, read and write. If you think you spend too much time consuming and not enough time creating, I suggest you try and de-clutter your internet habits as well. It’s done wonders to un-fuck my headspace.

And… well, that about sums up my year. How are your holidays going? Anything fun, exciting, dramatic happen to you this year? I hope your new year is warm and safe! Good night, everybody!

[luc1xx0]

This is kind of a long story, so buckle up kids!

I’m pretty sure that I posted a backstory to my comic that Imma delete, but here is an updated version:

 First off: What you already know about the Ink Machine and other details which btw is not my portion of the story, but actually goes to thebbros (that's not a link)

Basically, the ink machine was used to cure people of the ink illness a very long time ago. Once people didn’t need it anymore, it was considered useless, therefore people just allowed the ink machine to slowly but surely break down. 

Fast forward to several centuries later, two fools who were known as the Cup-bros make a dumbass bet to the Devil and lose. They had the choice to either die or to bring back the ink illness. Of course, they go with the second option, and a lot of people start dying because of them. The devil’s power was limited to 50 people a year, so he started spreading it. A lot of people were catching ink illness and dying. Chaos arose and everyone was losing their minds.

 That’s like literally the most inconvenient time for the ink machine to stop running.

 People needed it, but even though they knew its position, nobody knew how to actually repair it. Then, you meet B-bros. Bendy and Boris: Two mechanics and non-blood related brothers who knew what pieces were required to make the ink machine to operate properly. The only problem is that the pieces mysteriously scattered all throughout the land. Bendy gave up and tried to ignore it until he got the ink illness; coincidence I think not! After a lot of crying and praying, an angel gave Boris a map that would assist him while looking for the pieces. Only he and Bendy could see it so there was no point in asking for help. They both went about on their quest to find the pieces, but they didn’t know that they pissed off the Devil. He had no power to stop this, but still had a connection to the Cup-bros, so he lied and told them that he would kill them if they did not stop Bendy and Boris. So then THEY went to complete their task.

And done! With the first section of the story which was just a review for y‘all babtqftim fans. Now, this is part of my story:

Aniya was walking through the park, as she always does during her work breaks. The trees remind her of a forest; Aniya really likes forests because they could be holding any secret in there, like what kind of mystical or non-mystical creatures could be roaming around. She walked to the table closest to the trees and sits there for a few minutes. As she is about to leave, Aniya noticed something on the ground; it was round, smooth, and seems to be glowing. Just out of curiosity, Aniya picked it up and took it with her. 

But what was it?

Answer: Aniya unknowingly took a piece of the Scepter with her. What she found originates back to over a millennium ago. Four sisters shared a medieval kingdom, surrounded by a huge forest where people have believed mystical animals lived there. The Scepter was placed in the heart of the kingdom to show that they claim this land. The Scepter had a beautiful gem that consisted of multiple colors, and at some point of the day, the sun would be perfectly aligned with it.

 The sisters fought all by themselves against demonic creatures, day and night. At the time, they were at their worst, flying and crawling around giving people the most traumatizing horrors that would make them want to just end it all and forget everything that ever happened in their memories. 

At some point in time, they became weak and did not have enough strength to defeat all of these beasts, so they scattered throughout the kingdom, and into people’s heads. The rest of the story goes that people killed themselves and the princesses were kept as hostages. It was a corrupt age, but ultimately, most of the demons died off, and it is very uncommon to see one now. Yet if you did, they are much tamer, and you could not blame them for what their ancestors did. Today, nobody knows what happened to the four siblings, and that will probably remain a puzzle.

The Scepter is still in its place, and is actually now a bit of a tour of the kingdom! Of course, its gems were damaged and fragmented. They went darting in every direction as they molded themselves into amulets. It’s like they have been waiting for the right person ever since. Soon enough there will be the chosen ones, who will help restore harmony and bring people back home. It’s basically like being a superhero; it could be anyone in the world, or they could be standing right in front of you.

Let’s fast forward again!

Aniya has gone home and still doesn’t know that she is not just holding a weird toy.. until it starts gleaming red again. The glowing was not prominent in the middle of the day, but by the time Aniya got home it was night and she did not know what to do when this happened.

She pushes this all aside after she starts coughing a lot. 

At first, Aniya just thought she was seeing things, but then she realized that she was coughing up actual INK. She got very scared because she did not want to feel pain. To bad for her because every last second of that night was a never-ending hell for Aniya. The poor thing was home alone with a dead battery on her phone. She even built up tears, and she never cries.

 Suddenly somebody thrust open the door, and it’s Evey (thank god!!!!). She hears wailing from upstairs and runs as fast as she can to find Aniya on the floor, choking on ink. Holyyyyy shit is how you would describe her reaction. She panicked, but then grabbed a bunch of towels and water and proceeded to clean up Aniya. The ink faded off, and Evey calmed her down put Aniya to bed.

Edit: Even though there were only four sisters who possessed the crystals, part of the power from the tiny broken pieces of them could possibly be inherited by other people. That’s what could possibly make a whole team of heroes that will end the threats.

And there you go! A refreshed version of the backstory! I swear to god I am deleting the original one because this one is so much better! Damn this took like an hour to make. Anyways, I’m so sorry I could not make any art right now. I could try to make paper art, but digital art is just so much better quality. You guys should let me know what you think. If you made it to the end of this post, I hope you have a good night!

 BTW the start of the comic takes place the day after all of this shit.

[proyectotaco-blog]

The birth of a Taco

Sometimes you just need to do something. Something that was urging inside you and at the starting point of that new adventure, you regret not having started before. But it might have not been the time for it. A few months back I received my first graphic tablet as a birthday present, and something snapped in my brain.

(or what I’ll call the First Impact)

While I was searching tutorial after tutorial on YT, it dawned on me that I kept seeing more and more the words “concept” and “video games”. That was the point where I started to doubt if deciding to go back to drawing and designing would not be too simple, or at least enough. If I would be able to take a step further. I still don’t know how I ended up watching Shaun Spaulding’s tutorials and they showed me the potential of Game Maker Studio, discovering games such as Hyperlight Drifter… And my brain changed gears, there was no turning back:

My flux diagram has been the following one:

I can draw > Now I can draw DIGITALLY > I’ve been a pen and paper player all my life > a DM half of it > I have a certain easiness building up puzzles and riddles > I have studies as a movie script writer > I have played more games that I can remember…

(bull****, I remember them all, and so do all of you)

What was missing? What triggered the epiphany that took me down this path? Learning that it was no longer “necessary” to know coding in order to develop video games.

(or what I would call the Second Impact)

Proyecto Taco is born.

Who is “Proyecto Taco”, just me. But I’m not planning to keep at it like this, I want to build a team, but let’s not barge ahead, firstly I have to accomplish a dream and to achieve a feat: Design my first project solo. Ok, not precisely by myself, I will have aid in certain aspects of it, I want a challenge, not a crappy game. The monster is growing, to this point at least.

(the impacts are headbutts against the keyboard nowadays)

I’ve already faced many obstacles along the path, decisions to retake, software acquisitions too good to let pass by but that make certain paths impossible to take any longer and above all a lesson duly learned: WRITE A GDD (Game Development Document) and be loyal to it. Saying this I don’t mean that you need a gazillion-paged dossier and that you need to keep at it syllable by syllable. But you do need to take some hard decisions, you have to know where to stop thinking about new contents, and when to stop chasing rainbows and face the code.

(this is said by someone who doesn’t know how to code)

One of these decisions and before some of you face the walls I’ve encountered is the graphic aspect. You may think, “let’s do pixel art, it will be easier”, nope, big mistake. A few weeks of planning later you will see the numbers, and, in my case, it was more than 16.000 pictures to be drawn one by one in order to have fluent animations for the project. With that amount of work, you rethink your plan, your decisions, your faith, your breakfast…

Which takes you to a crossroad: -I could carry on with the pixel art and air the game by 2025 -I could research some animation software and be able to finish this before the decade’s end.

The second path took me to Esoteric Software’s Spine and a new graphic design for my project, because, could you do pixel animations with it? Yes, and no. Let me elaborate, you can, but it doesn’t look like it should and I’m no purist, but I don’t want to piss them off either. There is where I’m nowadays, changing the whole visual part of the project, redesigning all my concepts, gathering source material and back to a square I don’t dislike: Drawing with a bit more of freedom.

(translation: Pixel artists, you have my respect)

With this post I start what I hope is the first of many mussing like this one, mainly because is nearly Christmas and the first project of this one-person-studio will have its first real push and test flight.

Wish me luck.

En taro Tassadar, Executioners.

[domesticangel]

here’s a big ol dump of art thats been sitting in my folders for anywhere between 1-3 years that at this point ill probably never finish to accompany some Really Long rambling under the cut

im a junior in college now (””should be”” a senior/whatever that means/since i took a gap year but) but when i was in my like....sophomore-senior years of high school i drew like.....every. freaking. day. like literally i feel like i would draw like, 1 or 2 fully fleshed out, give-all-my-attention to type drawings every single day of my life, and i always had so much fun doing it.

after having a while to self-reflect though ive concluded theres kind of some layers to this. because i figure theres at least a little romanticization of the past going on, because i KNOW i wasn't a very happy person in high school; in fact, mental health wise, late high school into my freshman year of college was probably my very lowest point. i did lack motivation at these points, but not for drawing; i kind of put off school work and college prep, which wasn't good, but drew like HELL every single day, and pretty much all of it was fan art. thats one of the main differences between me then and me now; i used to dedicate so much of my time and energy to “fandom” and the media i was into, and it totally fueled my desire to draw, whereas now, i obviously still enjoy different series, but... my life doesn't really revolve around them like it used to.

the way i see it, i think i definitely used to use media and fandom participation as a form of escapism, but not really the good kind... i think it was more of a maladaptive obsession i failed to keep in check that i know for a fact really got in the way of my schoolwork, and i only doubled down when it came time to apply to colleges, because of course that stressed me out and scared me; during times like that, which was almost always due to my mental health issues at the time, i clung to fandom because its what brought me comfort and kind of shielded me from my responsibilities.

either way, that obsession with whatever media i was into at any given time is also what i think gave me that desire to draw all the time that i miss so much. i think being THAT invested in something is what actually gave me the constant desire to create, and being able to create something and feel accomplished in something without having to face anything uncertain or scary kept me totally hooked. so its weird trying to parse how i feel about that time period in my life.

on one hand, my mental health has gotten SO much better. obviously ive matured a lot since high school, so over time ive learned about much better coping mechanisms and ideas about mental health, ive gotten on a medication that works for me, and ive really gotten into my major so I'm really enjoying school as well. and obviously this is progress that i would never, ever, just want to give up or throw away. however, its also this progress that seems to have inadvertently influenced how often i draw, because I'm no longer fully diving into media/fandom because i dont need that escapism anymore, and therefore i don't have this like, feverish, obsession-fueled desire to draw like i used to. its kind of a double edged sword i guess and something i don't have a clear answer to.

i also think another factor i can't ignore is that i used to have a very large following in a lot of fandoms on tumblr, and if i remember correctly before i deleted my old tumblr i had around 12,000 followers that i had accumulated over probably the course of about 5 years. so that meant that my fan art got a LOT of attention. not to sound like hur-de-blur-social-media-is-evil but like at least in my personal experience, i kind of taught myself to think, “your art is only worth something if it gains a huge, instantaneous reaction, and peoples’ reaction to your art is the ONLY thing that decides its value.” and thinking like that really has hurt how i feel about my art over time! often times, after deleting my tumblr, i would find myself thinking, “well whats the point in doing any art, because nobodys going to see it anyway” so i honestly didn't draw or feel anything for art for a long, long time. in that time i channeled my feelings and energy into much more harmful activities, and i really could've used art at the time, but it had become such a worthless concept in my head since i could no longer associate it with immediate praise and attention.

i forgot a lot of important things about art, most importantly, how it could be fulfilling to just ME and that that was ok. i forgot that drawing regularly would help me improve, or give me something to focus on when i felt down, or give me the power to create something when i felt like i messed up everything else around me, or just make me happy because i thought of something i wanted to put on paper and then just put it on paper. and thats one of the main reasons i created this tumblr; i want to kind of rekindle that passion i had for art, but this time, without the maladaptive obsessions and without the need for approval from everyone around me. and i know this isn't a unique struggle; i know lots of artists who share their work online get discouraged by how little attention their work gets after they put so much time and effort into it, and like them, i don't have an answer as to how to “fix” this feeling either. but i can at least try. i want to prove to myself that the time i spent feeling hopeful and happy about something i created justifies its entire existence regardless of now many notes it gets, whether its OCs, fan art, digital, traditional, whatever. i just want to learn how to draw because it makes me happy.

that said, finding the motivation can be hard. however, i think I'm sometimes a little too hard on myself. I'm on winter break right now, and ive kind of defaulted to thinking “you haven't drawn enough, you've wasted so much time wishing the motivation fairy would visit you and make you draw that you haven't put in the time and effort needed to make yourself do it, youre pissing away every chance you have.” but when i think about it, i don't think thats true.

ive spent a lot of time thinking about OCs recently, which is kind of wild, because i haven't had the desire to make OCs in probably literally ten freakin years, so thats honestly huge for me--i actually really WANT to make original content despite the fact that i know it won't get as much attention as fan art, and i want to just do it for me, because i want to get it out. ive done a whole character sheet and I'm working on another! and sure, it didn't take me half a day like it maybe used to would've, but what does that matter? i thought, hey, i wanna get this out, and i got it out, and thats good enough for me. ive even written up storyboards in case i wanna ever make some small comics about my OCs just for fun, which is exciting cause ive never done it before. ive also been working on a commission for a close friend who wanted me to design her a fursona, and not only has it been a really fun process, but its the first commission ive done in a really, really long time, and it feels really rewarding. on top of that, I'm working on a painting for my dad as a late christmas present, and its my first really ambitious traditional piece in a while, so thats been pretty exciting too. and sure, ive done some fan art, but it feels like its coming from a better place; its less “please assign me value” and more just, really feeling something for the characters and wanting to try to connect with other people who feel something for those characters as well.

so, while it seems challenging, i also need to remind myself not to be blind to my own progress. i think i am doing better, and feeling better about art even if sometimes it feels like i spend way more time thinking about doing art instead of actually doing it. i think thats probably normal, and i think i can keep heading in the right direction.

ANYWAY this got really long but sometimes typing out how i feel about something and then reading it back helps me understand my own head a little better, so thats ok

[hamilton-one-shots]

How bout a thaurens au in which john starts sleeping with thomas to help alex's career (I've seen a great art by @f-kotik-y ) but then slowly falls in love with him? With prompt 38, 57 and any of sexual ones? Pretty please?

(38: “Isn’t this amazing?” 57: “Is that my shirt?” 177: “You’re so beautiful.”)

John Laurens had one wish. But there was no way it was coming true anytime soon. All he wished was that the guy that he woke up with every morning actually loved him back. He sighed and moved a strand of curly hair from Thomas’ face, enjoying his peaceful expression for a few minutes before getting up and going downstairs to make breakfast. After a few minutes, someone joined him, strong arms wrapping around his waist.

“Good morning, sunshine. You know you don’t have to do that.”

John shrugged. “Yeah, but I want to.”

“Thanks.” He kissed his cheek. “Is that my shirt?”

“Yeah. I can’t exactly wear mine anymore…” Thomas had gotten a little rough.

He chuckled at the memory. “Sorry.”

Now, this wasn’t what most people would first think. This wasn’t a failed marriage or a stale relationship. This was a lot more… Taboo… Than that, to say the least. And it all began because John’s friend, Alexander, had gotten himself in another mess and, once again, John had to be the hero and save his skin.

“Alex? What are you doing home so early?” he asked his best friend and roommate.

“I… Uh… I kind of got fired…”

John groaned and dropped his bag. “Again?! Really, Alex?”

“Hey! It wasn’t my fault this time! Jefferson’s pissed because I said that people who have maids and stuff who don’t pay them support a family are hypocrites who are trying to simulate slavery.”

“… And you thought that was a good idea because?..”

Alexander tutted. “I should be able to say what I think in my writing. This is censorship!”

“Chill out. I’ll talk to him tomorrow morning.”

The next morning, John made his way to the newspaper where Alexander worked and went up to his boss’ office. He hated sharing a name with his father, but it had its perks.

“John. Nice to see you in my office again.” This was far from the first time that Alexander had jeopardize his job.

“Nice to be here again.”

“Maybe we’ll be able to meet up for reasons other than your boyfriend’s stupidity once day.”

“Not my boyfriend, but I agree.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow and smirked. “He’s not? Tell me, then: why is someone of your status always in here begging me to give him his job back?”

John shrugged and crossed his legs, leaning back in his chair. “Because you enjoy paintings of yourself as payment and I have to live with him. He may not be my boyfriend, but he is my best friend.”

“I see.” Thomas nodded and crossed his arms. “Well, I’m getting tired of firing your friend. Paintings just aren’t cutting it for me anymore.”

“I knew this day would come.” John rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the chance.” He glanced up and saw the way Thomas was looking at him. It was probably the same way he was looking back at him at times- with lust and want in his eyes.

“Maybe we can arrange something else…”

“And what exactly do you have in mind?”

“The same thing you do.” John smirked.

Of course, Thomas understood right away. Still, he had a reputation to maintain, making him a bit hesitant. “How do I know this isn’t an attempt at getting some blackmail?”

“Please. My reputation is just as on the line as yours if we do this, not to mention my family name. I have no reason to spill. If we do this, we both win and Alexander keeps his job.”

Thomas seemed to think for a minute. “My only hesitation is the part where Hamilton keeps his job.” John raised an eyebrow and Thomas chuckled. “Kidding.” He scribbled something down on a sheet of paper and slid it to John. “Meet me here at eight tonight.”

John looked at the address and nodded. “Done.”

That night, John did exactly as he said, going over to Thomas’ mansion and being let inside immediately by the Virginian himself.

“It’s nice to see you again, Laurens.”

“Just John is fine.” He stepped inside. “So, where are we going to do this?”

Thomas tutted and wrapped his arm around John’s waist. “Saying it like that makes this sound dirty. At least more so than it is. And my bedroom’s upstairs.” He led the smaller man upstairs.

John imagined that Thomas was going to have a lush bed or something over the top, but he didn’t expect it just to be in the middle of a hallway. Granted, that hallway was in a room, but still. The placement alone made it strange. John didn’t say a word about it, though. He began to strip, pulling his shirt off, but Thomas stopped him. “This isn’t a regular hookup, sugar. Let’s take our time with this.”

That was something that John certainly wasn’t expecting. He assumed that Thomas only wanted sex, not anything passionate. But he wasn’t about to argue. Thomas was an attractive guy and he wanted to enjoy every second of it.

Thomas stepped forward and wrapped his arms around John, leaning down as he pulled him into a kiss. John sighed contently and placed his hands on Thomas’ chest as they kissed, letting him move them back towards the bed as he pleased and only breaking the kiss when they got to it. Thomas started trailing kisses from John’s lips down his neck and pulled his shirt off, putting his hands on John’s hips and smiling. “Just as I imagined… You’re so beautiful…”

John couldn’t help but blush darky at that. Nobody had ever called him beautiful…

(Sex scene below the line. It’ll be italicized and it ends above another line.)

Thomas ran his hands down John’s hips and hooked his fingers in the belt loops in John’s pants, looking up at him for permission.

John nodded and lifted his hips, making it easier for Thomas as he pulled off his pants. He watched as the other moved down the bed to do so, tossing his pants and his shoes aside, just as he had with his shirt, before taking off his own clothes. Somehow, Thomas managed to get even more attractive than before, his abs making for quite a view from where John was laying.

Thomas leaned back down and kissed John again for a few seconds, then pulled away to sit up again, this time reaching for his nightstand and pulling out a condom and a bottle of lube. He slowly pulled down John’s boxers, giving him the chance to protest that he didn’t need. He tossed his boxers down with the rest of their clothes and ate up the sight, committing every curve and every inch of John’s skin to memory. Once he had it down, he poured some of the lube onto his fingers and lifted John’s legs, the other helping him carry his weight as he pushed one of his digits in.

John let out a low moan and let himself relax. It had been a while, too long in his opinion, but he wasn’t a one night stand person. He couldn’t help but wince a bit as he felt the second and third fingers, but the pain quickly subsided both times, pleasure replacing it. By the time that Thomas scissored his fingers in him and stretched him out to prep him, John was in heaven, moaning and writhing in pleasure.

Thomas chuckled. “We haven’t even gotten to the main event yet, sugar.��� Still, he enjoyed seeing John react so well when they hadn’t gotten quite that far yet. “I think you’re ready.” Thomas pulled out his fingers and took a moment to put on the condom, John sitting up and watching eagerly. “Be patient, chickadee.” He kissed his forehead and pushed him back down against the bed. “Tell me if it’s too much for you.” He didn’t continue until John nodded. He pulled his legs over his shoulders and positioned himself at John’s entrance before gently pushing in, watching the other’s face for any signs of discomfort. There weren’t any. Just those of pleasure. Thomas smiled and started moving slowly inside of him, eliciting sweet moans and mewls. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting when he agreed to the arrangement, but this was much better. He slowly sped up until he set a good pace, groaning and panting softly at the feeling.

To say that John was in heaven was an understatement. He never felt pleasure like that before and he wanted it to last. At the same time, he wanted to get the most of however long that lasted and, for all he knew, Thomas was the type to finish and assume that John could finish himself off if he hadn’t. So, he started stroking himself and moaning louder, the pleasure unlike anything he’d ever felt before. John’s mind went blank and he forgot about everything else, simply enjoying the time as Thomas gave him the most mind-blowing sex of his life. It was maybe a half hour, but it felt like days before it was finally over. By then, John had orgasmed twice, a sticky mess covering his chest, and Thomas groaned loudly as he finished himself, cursing as he felt himself filling the condom.

“Wow… Isn’t this amazing?” he hummed as he looked down at John’s blissful expression. “You know, if all I have to do to look at this is deal with Hamilton, I’ll consider giving him a promotion.” Thomas chuckled as he pulled out of John. “I’ll be right back.” He kissed John’s forehead and pulled on his boxers before leaving the room for a minute. When he came back, John was already asleep, tired out from the intimate night. Thomas smiled and sat beside him, putting his boxers back on him and cleaning his chest with a warm washcloth before laying down with him and falling asleep.

That was the first night of John’s biggest mistake.

Six months later and John was in way too deep, emotionally speaking. Six months of waking up to Thomas’ arms wrapped around him and beautiful compliments coming from his sweet lips as they shared night after intimate night together led to John falling in love. It wasn’t supposed to be that way… It was supposed to be no strings attached sex to help John’s friend keep his job. He couldn’t just cut things off, not without any explanation. And he couldn’t tell this to Thomas. So, the only solution was for John to keep shoving his feelings down and just enjoy the sex.

But taking this route wasn’t all bad.

After all, John wouldn’t have been nearly as surprised when Thomas asked him out later that morning.

[lindwurm-prince]

ha ha im never going to be a real artist

i only really know how to draw shit on paper with a pencil? and like, it’s been great having the ability to use layers and undos and stuff with digital art but. i dont fucking understand digital art and idk if i ever will

like, i use ArtRage Lite which is apparently a “bad” program because it’s so simple and doesn’t have a lot of functions (the magic wand/select area tool doesnt work right, theres a lot of tools it doesnt have, the color selection is all fucky etc) but it’s worked fine for me because its so simple!! i just want to have a thing that will let me draw lines and ink and color them in etc! i dont need a whole lot of fancy tools!! but my brother says i need to learn Sai and he bought it for me and i feel really bad because whenever i try to use it i get frustrated because it wont work the way i want, i cant find anything, its confusing and ugly and everything’s so small and hard to see

like the other day i saw a speedpaint somebody did in Sai and i thought it looked cool so i decided to try Sai again, so i did a simple bg and a sketch and then i went looking for a way to lower the opacity of the sketch so i could ink it, and i was clicking a bunch of things and i clicked this button that said “layer masking” by accident and it made the sketch disappear, and i did a bunch of things to make the mask go away but the sketch stayed gone, and i couldnt figure out how to get it back, so i just quit and deleted the file

i learn stuff by banging around and trying different things, because ever since around my 18th bday ive had SERIOUS attention issues that i havent been able to medicate and i cant really look at tutorials longer than like...two minutes long because of that. usually i can figure stuff out eventually but Sai is pissing me off because all the (?default??) brushes look horrible and there’s no good pencil tool for sketching and i cant find the opacity and the selection doesnt work right and there’s no tool that does blood/fluids well and everything i make in it looks fucking awful. it’s not just one or two things that i can’t understand/don’t like it’s literally everything, i hate the soft visible steven-universe-looking brushstrokes and the gross fuzzy blur tool and the thick pencil lines and the weird curlicue at the end of every line and the fact that i cant fucking find the line smoother which i need because my hands are very shaky 

i hate this i just want something intuitive like ArtRage that has good tools and you dont have to be computer literate good at technology to figure out

[madstars-festival]

5 MINUTES WITH... JOACHIM KORTLEPEL, AD STARS 2020 JURY

We are delighted to welcome Joachim Kortlepel, ECD at Jung von Matt in Hamburg, to our Final Jury. Don’t miss his interview with Little Black Book.

As a former journalist on Capitol Hill, Joachim Kortlepel wonders if we’ll all look back on fake news and Trump & Co as a flaw in the matrix. He also dislikes the rise of xenophobia and one-hit-wonder marketing campaigns, but is passionate about music, experiential marketing and Jung von Matt’s ‘magnetic’ culture, where he’s been since 2001.

As well as being ECD, he joined Jung von Matt Holding in 2017 as a creative service provider for around 15 Jung von Matt agencies globally.

Joachim has won over 200 awards including a Graphite Pencil at this year’s D&AD Awards and a Grand Prix/Green Pencil at One Show 2020 for ‘For Seasons’ – a campaign that cleverly recomposes Vivaldi’s Four Seasons using climate data to raise awareness of the consequences of climate change.

You began your career as a journalist. Why did you decide to be a reporter?

I was always extremely into politics. From early on. I believe this is connected to my country’s history and its role in world politics ever since World War II. I was always looking for answers with regard to all of what happened before and after WWII. So politics became my major at University and together with my deep love for writing, I kind of made my way straight to the European Commission in Washington D.C., where I worked as a legislative correspondent and political analyst. I was allowed to report on US foreign and domestic politics. Pretty amazing to witness Senators and Representatives of the House on a day-to-day basis on Capitol Hill to be honest.

But as time went on, I discovered that rather than writing about something and running after the facts (facts meant something in those days) it would be more challenging and somehow more fun to create something that others would be writing about. That is when I switched, got back to Germany and worked at BBDO with a focus on copywriting.

As a former journalist, what do you think of the ‘fake news’ phenomenon?

Quite honestly: it pisses me off. The other side is pure disbelief that Trump & Co. manage to keep this going for them: disregarding everything, putting criticism aside by simply calling it fake news. How could that happen? To a little lesser extent this applies also to decision makers in other countries, i.e. Russia, Poland or Hungary, just to name a few. But what happens in the US is still worse. It will be interesting to see how we will look back on this in a couple of years from now; or maybe even after the next US election in November. Is this something we will be referring to as a flaw in the Matrix?

Anyhow, all of this asks us to be even more in love with every detail of a story, to be even more precise and responsible and even more reliable, because mistakes and flaws in our facts and stories will only foster and nourish the ‘Trump-way-of-doing-politics’ (if you can call this politics at all). My hope is, in the end, facts will win over.

You joined Jung von Matt in 2001. What does it do differently?

I feel the culture is magnetic. There is such a strong drive for non-conformity, a desire to break the rules no matter what. We always want to be unexpected, we like to surprise people and add some humour to our stories. Our campaigns entertain. And what I do like very much about our spirit: “No” is not an answer, whatever the obstacles are in bringing campaigns on air, creativity will find an answer. Together we can do everything. And if we fail to reach our goals, we come back stronger.

Wherever and whomever I did meet in the past: I never saw this creative spirit or experienced anything close to it again. So maybe they – as we say in Germany – will have to carry me out of the building because I will die here one day at my desk ;-)

In 2001, you set up Jung von Matt/relations – why did you become so interested in experiential marketing and ‘brand experiences’?

To me, experiental marketing is one of the most authentic ways to communicate. Brand experiences (specifically the combination of digital & non-digital) create highly emotional reactions. The way I see it, making brands tangible is one of the greatest challenges in marketing and creates some of the most emotional and credible ways to communicate with customers: everything is real. No editing, no post-production and no ‘let us do it all over again’. It is live. And you know what is really great about this? If you do your utmost to create something amazing and emotional, people will not only highly value the experience itself but also the amount of work you put in only to please them. That is a win-win scenario on all accounts.

You believe ‘creativity can solve every problem in the world’ and there are lots of problems to be solved this year in particular. Have there been any innovations in Germany in response to the coronavirus or Black Lives Matter movement?

In Germany, they managed to bring about a mobile app that every German can download. It tracks your way and if you got in contact with somebody infected, it is much easier to trace. And it is even in accordance with privacy rules, which are pretty tight in Germany.

As for Black Lives Matter: it is a global movement that is a long time overdue. And although racism seems to be a larger problem in the US, we too in Germany must be very aware of it. Not only because of our history, but also since we have our own problems to solve, racism being one of them but another big one is xenophobia. We still need to do everything we can to stand against this. In politics, in society and in advertising.

I am somewhat fed up with those one-hit wonder marketing and advertising stunts: I believe we need to engage something truly more profound and impactful. And yes, creativity can solve this! But first we need to address the problem and ask the right questions.

Do you have a creative process: how do you approach a new brief?

Everything begins with a white and empty sheet of paper. From then on it is the permanent search and the discarding of possibilities. Always and always further. I don't think that we are very different from others. It's hard work and we don't have that one elaborate process, except that we create the best possible framework so that creatives can fully focus on the task at hand.

Everything at Jung von Matt is designed to allow creative people to be as creative as possible. Then it takes a little luck and every now and then courageous clients. Because one thing is clear: just like in a Formula 1 race, to get to the top you have to leave the racing line and move to the battle line. Only then can you overtake. And to do that, you sometimes have to do the unexpected, surprise everyone and challenge the status quo. Equipped with these guiding principles, the goal is clear and the way is clear for all to see. For me it is living the breaking-of-rules. Non-conformity to the extreme.

What is your proudest achievement, professionally or personally?

Personally, it is a short answer: My three kids ;-)

Professionally, projects that involved music in one way or the other to solve a problem, to raise awareness or to create a meaningful impact.

As a standalone project, most likely the global marketing campaign for the opening of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg back in 2017. That has been a once-in-a-lifetime effort. Because it does not happen all too often that you have a building only for music and art like this one, and a client’s construction delay crisis like the one we faced when we began to work.

As the leading creative I spent some 1.5 years solely dedicated to this project. It was worth the effort and I can look at the Elbphilharmonie every day when I pass by it on my bike. That’s awesome and sort of a permanent reminder of my own work when you look at how it has become a concert house for truly everybody and how we managed to turn public opinion around.

Are you working on anything interesting right now?  

Yes, and it involves music. A truly global effort demonstrating yet again the power of music and creativity. What is remarkable is that we are cooperating between agencies and I am extremely happy to work with AKQA Australia on this. Public announcements are to follow sometime in the fall of 2020 and I can’t wait to tell more.

You’re joining AD STARS as a Final Judge this year. What are you most looking forward to?

Well, it is a great honour to be selected as a final judge for the AD STARS festival and I am so curious to see all the work.

What city are you based in, and how does it inspire you?

Hamburg. The city is located at the river Elbe not too far away from North Sea. Water almost surrounds the entire city, it is everywhere and the power of it is to be felt in every corner. The liquid force is something that I seek to achieve with ideas, too. Creating unstoppable power such as the strength that water can develop. And as for the tides, nothing stays still, it is a constant flow, day by day as it is with ideas. That asks for humbleness.

* Joachim Kortlepel is joining AD STARS 2020 to judge Brand Experience & Activation, Creative eCommerce, Direct, Media, PR. This interview was originally published in Little Black Book.

[dearyallfrommatt]

Alt-weeklies are dead. Blogs are dead. Bootlickers and the civility police won.

 The above story from The New Republic written by Alex Pareene was brought to my Twitter world by Radley Balko, superlative journalist and maybe the only self-described libertarian I’d let thrive after the Purge. In short, it discusses the recent emasculation of Deadspin and how it’s indicative of the death of the “rude press”. That is, the elimination of smaller, shall we say less respectful outlets like Splinter and Gawker, publications that would stick their fingers into they eyes of the rich and the very much richer.

 And it’s not just those web-based publications’ deaths that article warns of. It’s the slow extinction of the alt-weekly or alt-monthly, all to be replaced by boutique publications that won’t be so gauche as to upset their betters. In other words, they’ll be “civil” because “civility” might be the most important thing we’re missing in this cold, cruel world.

 The first writing gig I got out of college was at an alt-monthly and the only “regular job” I’ve ever had was with an alt-weekly, so I might be a bit biased on this matter. Twenty-some-odd years ago in Gainesville, FL, a pair of cats named Colin Whitworth and Mike Podalsky started MOON Magazine, maybe the altest alternative magazine that wasn’t a ‘zine that I’ve ever seen. I mostly wrote about music and Gainesville being what it was, there wasn’t much sticking-in-the-eye that needed doing.

 Though I do remember them pissing of a real estate guy so badly he started his own “alt-monthly” in competition. It lasted one issue as I recall. Every afternoon at 4:20, we'd have a “staff meeting” and the magazine run pieces from severely left-wing sources going after the destruction of the Everglades or the dangers of the Cassini probe. It was that kind of magazine.

 After I left Gainesville for Athens, I took up with Flagpole Magazine, a music/news/arts weekly in Michael Stipe’s hometown. Athens is a different town and publisher Pete McCommons was a different breed. An old school newspaper man contrasted to Mike and Colin’s “young upstarts”, Flagpole was a gentler poke that nevertheless contrasted well with the bought-and-owned-by-the-chamber-of-commerce local daily, The Athens Banner-Herald. He still gave a lot of room to his staff to go nuts, notably my direct editor Ballard Lesemann.

 When I left college in 1997, I had already worked in actual, for real newspapers for almost a decade. Furthermore, I’d grown my hair long and discovered Hunter Thompson, so I was by no means inclined to go back to covering school board meetings for some small town weekly. MOON went the way of the dodo sometime in 2001, and though I left in 2002, Flagpole’s still kicking.

 I rarely made anything close to a living at writing, but I’m thankful of my time with the alts and grateful to Colin, Mike, Pete and Ballard for letting me share the ride with them and have a little fun. So, again, grain of salt. One thing working on alternatives taught me was that “complete objectivity” was not only impossible but unnecessary so long as your cards are on the table, so I ain’t going to put no shuck on you.

 Now, I won’t summarize or really explore what the above-linked New Republic piece goes into. I highly recommend it be read and considered with much gravity. Even if you don’t agree with its conclusions - or even the need for the existence of “rude journalism” - do study on what it suggests. Do we really want a world where the extremely rich, either as individuals or as a group, can shut down publications that don’t show proper fealty and people who’re willing to tell the Boss Man to take this job and shove it?

 The responses to Radley’s retweet and others I’ve seen elsewhere are telling indeed, though. While there are plenty of sympathetic voices, not a few folks are saying “well, good, fuck ‘em”. There is a negative view of journalists, but if anyone suggests that it’s caused by recent events in the business are lying or stupid or ignorant or all three. For as long as there have been rich dudes willing to start wars for more wealth, there have been plenty of poor bastards willing to die for them. Nowadays, we have folks willing to pay Major League Baseball for what they used to get for free, and not even blink an eye.

 A lot of it’s political. Right-wing media doesn’t have the same problems in getting funding because, well, most rich people are quite fine with the nuts and bolts of conservative thought. The economic side, anyway, which spells less taxes or regulation; the social side, they have enough pull to not have to worry about anyone griping unless they piss off someone higher up the ladder.

 Which is extremely amusing, since these are the same folks who stay constantly stricken with the vapors about how much money Hillary Clinton (or Elizabeth Warren or Barrack Obama or Bernie Sanders or fill-in-the-blank-here) bring home. The “common people”, they’re saying, don’t need hoity-toity nerds who can string sentences together and count without taking off their shoes telling us that they’re favorite rich guy needs a kick in the nuts for being the type of bastard that needs kicking in the nuts on a regular basis. The hooting baboons that support digital frat houses like Barstool are happy to stick it to those PC creeps, man, rebelling in that way that hurts the actual elite not one tiny bit.

 They also hate the corporate media and social media sites, which they will tell you endlessly in the comments sections of corporate medias’ pages on social media while FOX and CNN have a special on it every other week. They hate “political correctness” trying to tell them that the “natural order” isn’t just boozy white dudes watching the Pats and gorging on chicken wings, making  cracks about the opposing quarterback being homosexual or making “hey-it’s-just-a-joke” jokes about Serena Williams or some WNBA playing being a “man, baby”.

 There is most definitely a place for big mainstream news sources like CNN or The New York Times or TIME Magazine. A professor of my in journalism school used to repeat the quote, paraphrased from memory, that “journalism is the first rough draft of history”. Despite what the right wing has been screaming for years, whoever the president is, the big papers are rarely out for his blood. Once you become president, you are a “Washington insider” and all the corporate media really cares about is making money. 

 Whatever he says about the “Washington Swamp” and “fake news”, Donald Trump’s been part of that world, as is every Washington politician or media figure. FOX News is the mainstream media and the Washington Examiner has plenty of backing to keep that so. Who funds The Federalist? That publication has its place but that question must be asked. To do otherwise is to tell the powerful that you’re just fine with them running things, thank you very much.

 But there needs to be a place for a small, scrappy paper speaking for the weird and shat-upon, flicking the earlobe of the rich and powerful and running ads for weekly drag shows. The dirtbag center - that’s what I’m calling the tedious middle-class bourgeoisie spawn that all voted for Trump because they hated Hillary but don’t want to admit it and were shocked as the rest of us, deal with it - wants to be kept fat and saucy while their kids joke about “learning to code” and they all grind themselves down in a miserable existence. Sticking it to the media and the elite, man, all up in the “intellectual dark web,” man, just like Peter Thiel or Bari Weiss, man.

 This is one of those things that shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does, because these people are that guy who started a one-run magazine to get back at Colin and Mike for saying hurtful things about them being crooked. In America, at least, there has always, always been a group of people who will kick down for the benefit of their upper-class betters and do it with a smile on their faces. It’s why dumbass country boys went to die for slavery and why thick-necked hardhats smashed picket lines and assassinated union leaders.

 Like the story notes, we all thought that blogs would be the new hotness, but that lasted just long enough for Google to deciding that “do no evil” was bad for the bottom line. People, especially wingnuts, boo-hoo about Facebook or Twitter without acknowledging or even recognizing that Mark Zuckerberg is a greedy little shit and Jack Dorsey is quite comfortable with cosplaying Nazis. Thanks to Ajit Pai’s bought-and-sold ass, Net Neutrality - about the only thing that keeps the internet from being anything other than a glorified Want Ads - is going to be that much harder to make reality.

A lot of this goes back to the “civility” thing, or lack thereof, NYT columnists bemoan whenever they get caught out being a dipstick. We’re too mean to each other, they say, we don’t know how to respect each other, they say. Rich people know how to run things better than the hoi polloi, so do sit down and be quiet like nice children. Or else. 

 Because here’s the thing, friends and neighbors: the rich, I mean really rich class in this country do not give a solid gold shit about you apart from how much more money they can squeeze out. Suck up to Elon Musk all you want and bemoan Bill Gates having to pay so much in taxes that he’s still a billionaire afterwards all you want. They are not going to let you on the space ship with them once they’re done fouling the waters and scouring the land.

 You can cheer the death of Deadspin all you want, hoot at the firings of journalist who say bad things about Trump or the cops or Tom Brady, and general be gleeful that the media all should “learn to code” to your heart’s content. Because it won’t end there. Conglomerations are already scooping up weekly and small town dailies, shuttering the superfluous and give everyone the same story in the same tone while kissing the proper butts.

 In the end, we need an antagonistic press. We need someone willing to piss off the deep pockets and old families and moneyed interests. We need someone that’ll give a voice to left-handed, bisexual, transvestite furries who love swing dancing. Or even just a little time, a slice of acknowledgement that the world isn’t just boozy obnoxious white dudes on barstools or bitter wine moms sniping on Facebook. You can cheer the downfall of such, but all you’re doing is putting the noose around your own throat and saving the Powers That Be a little time.

 You may not want to rock the boat, friends and neighbors, but have no illusions. When the rubber hits the road, the Wealthy Elite will throw you over. Don’t make it easier for them.