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werevulvi · 3 years ago

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You know how often I ask myself, why can't I just be normal? It's quite a lot. I wanna talk about something I've never told anyone before, aside from a few strangers online. I've suppressed this my whole life, since childhood. I've acted with anger towards others with the same thing as me, told them how it's offensive and awful. Refused to allow myself to even think about my own urges and desires. It worked for a long time, until I wrote my book this summer, a fiction story about a couple who end up disabled from their dangerous work as assassins. My intentions were just... to try to give good representation and explore something I knew very little about.

So I did a lot of research into my characters' disabilities, and even briefly pretended to have those specific disabilities at home alone, just to get an idea of what it's like to manage daily life with them. It was just a writer's thing, just being a dedicated writer, I told myself, as I researched those disabilities far more in-depth than I did about assassins...

At one point, I would cover my eye with a makeshift eye patch, as one of my main character's loses an eye, and I... it brought forth what I had suppressed my whole life, and I can't suppress it anymore as a result of that. The bottled feelings have escaped and I can't put them back in again.

I think I have Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID.) There, I said it.

It's a very rare mental illness that makes you want to become disabled, usually in some very specific way. Most are males, and most desire amputation, but it can pertain to wanting blindness, deafness, or I guess, any conceivable disability. There's only been a few thousand reported cases, but it's also said to be a very secret disorder, so numbers are probably not accurate. It's very poorly researched, poorly understood, and still not recognized as an actual disorder. So you can't be diagnosed with it currently, and there are no set criteria for it. However, it will be in the upcoming ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases.) It will then also be re-named to Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) as it's being recognized as a form of dysphoria, and as a neurological condition.

And now for the obligatory life story:

I don't remember when it started, but as a child, I'd say roughly age 5 or 7, I was obsessed with fictional characters that had a distinct scar over one eye, and either blind in that eye or entirely missing it. I would on occasion play around with a hand covering one eye, and wished I could have that for real. For a long time, I didn't know why I was so obsessed with that. If I was just admiring that kinda physical feature, or wanted it myself, or both. Throughout my teens and adulthood thus far, I've made a lot of drawings of people with only one eye, and scarred faces. I wrote another book back in 2013 with one of the main characters being a woman with a large scar across half her face. I've always been a little too fascinated with facial deformities, having only one eye, and facial assymmetry. And I've tried to express it with assymmetrical makeup looks (not made to look like I'm injured) throughout my teens and 20's.

So it's been with me for a very long time, even though I've tried super hard to suppress it, and tried to tell myself that I should just be happy to have a mostly abled body. But that wish/urge/whatever it is, has never gone away.

When I first heard of BIID, back in 2016 or so, I was angry, and thought of people with it as despicable. I was in deep denial of how much I could relate to them. Didn't want to think of that. But since learning more about the condition, and listening to others who have it, and learning it is actually a real condition... I guess that has helped me eventually come to this point that, well fuck... it me.

Up until recently, I thought it was just a self-harm desire, as I used to be a cutter, but now I understand that the self-harm was not the intention behind what I want with that, but merely the means to achieve it. Kinda like how I wanted to cut my own tits off before I had my double mastectomy. It wasn't about specifically wanting to injure my chest, but to not have tits anymore, and I much preferred the much safer way of doing it, through proper surgery. However, wanting half my face re-arranged is a little bit harder to achieve through elective surgery, even if surgeons were allowed to treat BIID through surgery. So I do not think my desire to get rid of my left eye and surrounding tissues is about wanting to harm myself. It's about wanting to have and live with the result of such an injury. Although I get that might be very unimaginable.

So then, have I ever made any attempts?

Yeah... I have. Once, I think it was when I was 22, I took a blade to my face, but chickened out, and ended up only making a very superficial cut on my cheek, which I was then extremely ashamed of. I didn't want for people to find out I had made it myself. Since then, I've stopped self-harming and have no desire to make a second attempt. I'm scared I'd fuck it up and cause damage I don't want, or... not enough damage. And I'm worried I'd be beyond myself with shame if I would take out my own eye and then other people would show sympathy for my injury, knowing I'd have caused it myself. I just kinda wish it would happen accidentally somehow.

So, to clarify, my BIID targets my left eye and left side of my face. Why left? Honestly because I'm deaf since birth on my left ear, so it would be extremely inconvenient to be deaf on one side and blind on the other. Much more manageable to have one side be blind-deaf and the other fully seeing and hearing. But at first it didn't matter to me so much which side of my face would be affected. I have no desire to become an amputee or fully blind. I also don't have a fetish for disabled people.

Would I date a disabled person?

Yes, but that's because some attractive people just so happen to be disabled, and I wouldn't think I'm particularly judgemental, not that I find their disabilities in and of themselves attractive.

I try to quell this desire, to lose an eye and half my face, by on occasion wearing an eye patch in secrecy. I know it can worsen my vision, but why on Earth would I mind that? It's kinda what I want. But my mom almost caught me wearing it today as she came by for a quick visit, and I have worn it at the grocery store, and out and about in my village. It feels so damn right, yet so fucking wrong...

Let's tackle this question as well: Do I feel like an ass towards disabled people?

Yes and no. Thing is, I'm already disabled myself. I'm not an abled person to begin with. I live on permanent sickness compensation, classified unable to work, for life, with little to no chance at improvement, due to my autism and adhd. I have the energy levels of an old cellphone that drops to 2% battery ten minutes after being fully charged every time. And I hate it. I hate that there's so much in life that I'll probably never be able to do. So disability, is already part of my life, and always has been. So why then would I want to become more disabled, instead of less? Well, yeah that is what I want...

I've faced a shit ton of ableism since childhood, and I actually think that's why I got BIID. Because my actual disability is invisible and not taken seriously in society. And I think that's what I deep down want: to just have my disability be visible and taken seriously. Physical disabilities are taken more seriously. I've even heard that straight from the mouths of people who have both mental and physical disabilities. How often have I not been called lazy for something I've been literally unable to do, just because I "look" capable? How often do I get to hear I "don't seem autistic?" How often do I get told that autism is not even a disability, but merely a personality trait and being socially awkward? How often do I get told I would be able to work if I just tried harder? All. The. Fucking. Time.

I think that's why, ever since I was a child, I've wanted to have a physical disability, which is fully visible, and cannot be ignored. And what's more visible than the face? We interact with it the most. Because I don't really want to be less capable or lose a lot of movement, I just want for my already disabled existence to be visibly disabled.

So that's a big reason for why I think I have BIID. Which is to say, I don't feel like I'm being an ass towards disabled people, because I'm already disabled to begin with, merely wishing I was more disabled and in a more visible way. Had I been abled to begin with, I think that would have been different, but even abled people with BIID don't choose to have this condition. I read a quote from a person with BIID, who got the amputation he wanted, and he said basically that he didn't know what's worse, having BIID or being disabled. I can relate to that. And I think that is the irony here, that simply having BIID is like being disabled in and of itself already.

That said, however, I do understand why disabled people would be greatly offended, angry, or otherwise insulted, by people with BIID. Honestly I cannot understand why they would not be. I'm greatly offended by people who say they wish they were autistic! And I'm offended at myself for wishing I had a facial deformity and only one eye. Why do I want this!? I keep trying to shake sense into myself. It's what's causing my shame and wishing I could just be normal. No disabilities, and no wish for disabilities I don't have. That'd be great.

There is one more aspect I also feel the need to tackle: Transabled.

BIID has recently been rather often labeled as "transabled" in the same vein as "transracial" (wanting to be another race) and transgender. As a transsexual, this comparison is of course something that I have not missed. I'm painfully aware. This is how I see it, alright: Although I do feel like my body integrity dysphoria is incredibly similar to my sex dysphoria, I feel like it would be extremely rude and tone deaf to identify as for example vision impaired, deaf or an amputee, without actually having those disabilities. And I do not know if anyone actually does this. As far as I've seen, some people with BIID may pretend to have the disability they want (like with me walking around with an eye patch despite having no medical need for it) but they don't lie about it, or they try hard to avoid ending up in a situation where they'd feel pressured to lie. So I dunno how much validity there even is in anyone with BIID genuinely identifying as transabled. But regardless of that, I think it's absolutely abhorrent to identify as disabled in ways you are not. And I'd never tell anyone that I'm missing an eye when I do not.

So, I really do not like the term "transabled" and much prefer the BIID and BID terms. I do not like BIID being conflated with being transgender, although I want to very carefully say that the two conditions are so incredibly similar, that... I think that's another big reason I ended up with both. That I've always felt a strong disconnect from my body, which has merely expressed itself in a wide array of ways, ranging from sex dysphoria to body integrity dysphoria, dissociation and even having previously identified as otherkin. I don't think that's a coincidence at all. But then what caused all of that? I don't think there is a simple answer, but a multitude of reasons, and it may even connect with my autism as well as my trauma.

So, I'd say most likely it's caused by a cocktail of neurological and social issues. I was just clearly meant to be a broken person, making the most of my life with the sucky cards I was dealt, and on good days... I guess I'm kinda okay with that. At least it's not boring. Let's end on that not super tragic note. Feel free to ask me anything, if you’ve got any questions.

#biid #body integrity dysphoria #body integrity identity disorder #finally accepting i probably have this #im not happy about it but it is what it is i guess #ok to rb #transabled #im only adding that tag bcos i know many dont know what the condition is actually called

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redantsunderneath · 4 years ago

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DC COMICS: Incoherence as Not-a-Bug-but-a-Feature (Spoilers for Batman 89-100)

Due to the emergence of the new Batman villain character Punchline, I wound up buying the last 12 issues of Batman and reading them in a single sitting. I’ve had trouble following DC comics for a while, constantly feeling that they were in trouble since back in the mid 2000s (with a glimmer of hope here and there). The act of reading DC comics has been a frustrating experience, where individual good stories and runs were laying around in the context of a lot of things that didn’t make sense while the company’s thrust felt chaotic and ideas not well blended. Every status quo change seemed hard to figure out the rules of enough to parse the context. We’ll get into the background of this, but my reading today of this extended stretch of comics that keeps losing the plot in favor of a fever dream of what’s happening at the moment with specific characters that refuse to cohere, it became obvious that what I had been looking at as subtext or critique was actually the text. I could see the messed up trees but was missing the the forest the universe was trying to describe.

What happens in these issues (Batman current series 89-100, I missed the beginning of the first of 2 arcs) is rolling war between the major Batman villains and the heroes (plus Harley Quinn and Catwoman), which shifts into a Joker and Joker adjacent vs. all as the Joker double crosses everyone then manages to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortune. We meet 3 new baddies – Underbroker, whose schtick is putting ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the legal system (with an explicit line to rich globalists drawn), the Designer, who back in the day offered the four A list Batman villains plans to achieve what they most wanted, and Punchline, who is your toxic ex’s new millennial GF who really has it in for you (there is also a new good guy Clownhunter, which is a whole different thing, and a new costumed detective that predates Batman). This doesn’t convey the chaotic nature of what is happening issue to issue, but there’s more than one Batman hallucinogenic spirit quest, dead characters ostensibly walking around, a plan revolving around the Bat’s origin story that tells some version of it several times, and a no-nonsense declaration that the Joker, as the Devil of the Batman spiritual system, cannot die. The whole thing has the effect of convincing you there is no definitive sequence of events, only versions.

Alan Moore’s Killing Joke is not a favorite of mine, for a number of reasons. But the ending holds up. The Joker has done terrible things there is no antecedent for, and Batman wonders aloud if this never-ending dance they do ends in anything but both of their deaths; can they uncouple from the unhealthy duality the cycle of which simply repeats. The Joker responds, well, with a joke about two lunatics trying to escape an asylum. One jumps the roof to the next building, while the other is too scared to try. The escapee offers to hold a light while the other crosses on a beam but he says no, no you’ll just cut the light while I’m half way across. This not very funny joke nonetheless has a bunch of resonances – BM and Joker as conspiring co inmates, BM wanting to break out, a commentary about their natures (almost a reversal of the frog and scorpion story where the scorpion won’t go because he knows how this ends), but mostly it implicates BM as the one who is enabling the cycle, the reason why it won’t end. They both laugh uproariously, and the ambiguous final panels can be read as the fundamental realization of his complicity causing BM to kill J. A lethal joke indeed… except, next month, we see the both of them again. In broader context, the ceaseless cycle of the diad is reaffirmed. This has been hellaciously sticky as an idea in the Batmen universe.

My realization of what DC has been doing is pretty banal in its pieces. Marvel has “ground level” heroes while DC has a mythos, a pantheon. Their archetypal makeup is strong, the seven JLA members lining up with the pantheon of Greek gods and the Chakras weirdly closely. DC has big characters that are somewhat flat which they can use tell big bold individual stories that are cool the way legends and fables are cool. But these stories require bold strokes that a bit incompatible with each other. People get attached to these iterations. Meanwhile, Marvel trucks in soap operas where the characters give you an empathetic stand in and are narratively flexible. Marvel events are usually about the writer vs. the company, asking you to sympathize or deconstruct the creative impulse amid efforts to impose control or order. DC’s events are about editorial vs. the audience, the shapers vs. the forces of the world. It may seem obvious, given this description, that DC’s focus is on an archetypal tableau though it may be less obvious that this tableau is under extreme pressure from expectations when trying to tell ongoing tales month in, month out (or semi-monthly in some cases). The stories are constantly compared against the big stories that have gone before, and the audience’s ideas of the characters exert pressure to push them in directions that capture “the” version they believe in. This circle is not possible to square.

DC and Marvel both have a multiverse of sorts. DC used to tell “Elseworlds” stories which were later tucked into pocket universes. DC invented crossing over between “realities.” DC’s continuity is heavy baggage and they began to have “Crises” to resolve the narrative incompatibilities. These only made things worse as you can’t get rid of the past people have a relationship with – it will come back. Now you have to explain that away too. Marvel just lets it lay – forget about the iffy stories, they count, sure, just no one is ever going to talk about them unless they have an angle. Marvel continuity is all angles and amnesia. This is just easier to do with dating and rent and your ancient aunt’s medical bills than with Gods. Marvel’s multiverse is about sandboxes that you can always dump into the mainframe if they work (and never really mention the sandbox again).

There is a shift that occurred in the industry in the 2004 to 2005 era that is less remarked upon than many upheavals in comic’s history. Marvel had gone through a period of incredible new idea generation in the early 2000s after a late 90s creative cratering but had just fired the pro wrestling inflected soul of that moment (Bill Jemas). DC was coming off of a period of trying to do moderately updated versions of what they basically been doing all along. The attitude was “yeah we’re under stress from the combined history of these characters, but we got to keep telling the stories.” Geoff Johns was one voice of DC over the 99-04 period that showed potential - he seemed to get how to find the core of characters and push them into a new in sync directions if they over the years have lost a clear identity. But mostly he had internalized a basic schism between something mean that the audience wanted, and something good and wholesome about the characters themselves, and figured out how to mess around with this in a equilibrating fashion.

Interestingly, the ignition point of the main forces that were going to blow DC over the next decade and a half was a comic that had virtually nothing to do with any of those main forces. Brad Meltzer, a novelist, was hired to do a comic called Infinity Crisis, which sold extremely well and was, justifiably or not, recognized as an event. At the same time, everyone also kind of hated it because the dark desires of some DC fans were pushed forward just a bit too much for comfort and for a comic with Crisis in the name it didn’t do a whole lot other than “darken” things. Nonetheless, this lit an “event” fire at both companies. Marvel chose a shake up the status quo for a year, then do it again, pattern and was off to the races (I have written about this, and more, here) while continuing its Randian framing of beleaguered do-gooders opposed by rule making freedom haters.

As this was playing out, Dan Didio quietly took power in DC Editorial. His outlook was more Bloomian – he seemed to spark off of writers who exhibited anxiety of influence. He recognized Johns was the one person they had could be promoted into something of a universe architect, starting work on two key projects from which the rest would evolve. The first, was bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and diffracting the GL universe into its own symbolic system, with parts frisson-ing other parts, and almost a Magic the Gathering color scheme of ideas. The other was to build up to Infinite Crisis, which would become the model for most of their universe changing events until the present day.

The basic frame is this: DC heroes want to be good (in a sense of their inherent nature) but forces outside form a context that makes them fall. It’s a very gnostic universe, DC. They examine reflections of the concepts, invent scapegoats for certain tendencies (see Superboy Prime as entitled fanboy, Dr. Manhattan as editors that try and fail to mend things, etc), make characters violate principles, rehabilitate them, then show that the world if anything is more broken than before. This is kind of Johns’ thing and it fits Didio’s narrative as historicval tension fetish. But then came Scott Snyder (not to be confused with Zack) who began to work on Batman in 2011. Since then, as much as Justice League is pushed as the central title and Lex Luthor has been pimped, Batman has been the core of the universe and the Joker the core villain.

Snyder had the same continuity conflict wavelength but was significantly more meta and able to contain multitudes than Johns. He was the first to make an explicit mystery of how there could be several Jokers around at one time (who are the same but not, he posited 3 – man, Christians!) that seems prescient given the near future coexistence of filmic Jokers that are not able to be resolved. I believe he was the first to begin to tease out an idea – that different versions of things in comics are not a diffraction or filter effect, a using the set of things that work best for that story and leaving the rest, but are a matter of the archetypal system of the audience coming apart. From an in story perspective what appears to happen is that multiple versions of incompatible things exist in the collective unconscious of the continuing narrative, and this is something that the characters may become conscious of.

The run I just read is written by James Tynion IV building on the above trends. The trick seems to be going all in on the Jungian aspect (at Jung’s most religiously epiphanic). The Designer was a progenitor and adversary to Batman’s predecessor and his intellectual approach eventually defeated the detective… broke him. At some point in early Batman history, the Designer brought the top four Bat-baddies together and offered each, in turn, a plan to achieve what they most desired: the Riddler, a way to achieve an empire of the mind; the Penguin, power; and Catwoman, money. They are all elated as they await the Joker to come out. The Joker emerges with a furious Designer on his heals and promptly shoots him dead. He explains that he didn’t like his joke in the form of a fable – the devil offered four people the path to their greatest desire: the three chose earthly things, but the Joker’s wish was to be him, to become the devil. The story proceeds to suggest that the Joker just exists, he is present as a necessary component in the system. You can kill him, yet he is alive.

DC has been using physics metaphors for the nature of their reality since Flash of Two Worlds in 1963. The multiverse as a continuity concept was their idea and the holographic universe of the hypertime was a thing. It seems like since Dan Didio took over, they’ve been heading towards a concept of broad superimposition, of measurement effect being weak, of the universe being like a quantum computer with all possibilities coexisting and the story instantiating not one reality but a path through all the possible ones. By making Batman trip balls through quite a few issues and relive his origin from different angles, the story is one of its own instability and the heroic task that confronts our hero is attempting to actualize the world. The Joker is the Devil in the sense of lack of fixed meaning, of relativistic chaos, of the world not making sense because it’s unmoored nature with ultimately no knowability. Batman, in this story, functions as a postmodern knight crusading against the impossibility of epistemological grounding.

There’s more going on, sure. One plot is, literally, defund Batman. There is rioting, people brainwashed by being exposed to toxic ether, people paid to go to theaters even though they will die as a result, and questions about neoliberalism similar to that one Joker movie. Punchline has no personality yet (Tynion’s not the best at that) but she serves well as a generational foil for Harley – a rudderless ideological vacuum susceptible to Joker-as-idea-virus rather than an unfulfilled MD who felt alienated due to the structures of her life and was seeking escape into structureless possibility. The Designer stuff is both continuity play (See why they changed from goofy villains to more “realistic” ones! Look how pulp heroes informed superheroes!), a comment on the nature of a longstanding narrative (strong intentions die out as Brownian motion overwhelms momentum), and a lawful evil/chaotic evil setup of the dualism of apocalypses (overdetermined authoritarian vs. center does not hold barbarism). But the thing that ties this to the past decade and a half of DC is the sense that the reality is fluid and susceptible to change or outright s’cool incompatibility.

This is different than other flavors of meta in superhero comics. Grant Morrison believes the archetypes are stronger than the forces that seek to bend them. Alan Moore wants you to deconstruct your sacred cows and probably hates you personally. Marvel might play with self-awareness, but effortlessly resolves inconsistencies after it’s finished playing. DC, at this point, allows you to watch the waves solidfy into symbols and dissolve, and the constant confusion and lack of grounding is more of a choice then I thought this time yesterday. The conflict theory of DC reality has been in full swing but this looks to be turning towards a kind of Zen historicism, holding contradictory things in your mind at once. Warren Ellis’ JLA/Authority book is the nearest comparable text I can think of. I need to call this, but I didn’t even talk about Death Metal, DC character multiplicity as meta-psychosis event extraordinaire. Comics just keep getting weirder.

#DC comics #batman #joker #punchline

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chaoswillfallrpg · 3 years ago

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ORLAITH MACMILLAN is TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD and a MAKEUP ARTIST AND BEAUTY ADVISER for the FASHION AND EVENTS COLUMN at WITCH WEEKLY. She looks remarkably like JOSEFINE FRIDA PETTERSEN and considers herself NEUTRAL. She is currently OPEN.

→ OVERVIEW:

Strong willed yet naive, Orlaith MacMillan is the brash brush of paint scrawling across a canvas, girlish giggles echoing down a chandelier lit marble corridor and the crackle of a sparkler in the dim of the night; beautiful yet longing for attention. With a name meaning ‘golden princess’, Orla fittingly lives up to the title. Born to PATRICK MACMILLAN and FIONA O’HARE on the coast of Ireland in County Wicklow, Orla grew with primroses adorning her hair chasing fire flies that whispered tales of romance. Longing to be a princess of her own happily ever after, creativity exuding from her fingers. Primping dolls with her mother’s beauty potions, to scrawling hearts of fuchsia lipstick across walls and tying ribbons into the stray cats tail, everyday she decorated the world to make it just as beautiful as she dreamed. While members of the Sacred Twenty Eight, the MacMillans were deemed blood traitors by many in Wizarding society due to Fiona’s liberal views. A reputation salvaged only by the lingering respect gained from the union of MELANIA MACMILLAN to ARCTURUS BLACK. Today, the MacMillan name lingers in fields rather than the grand manors Orla’s grandmother KATHLEEN spoke of that their ancestors once frolloced. Money dwindling in comparison to many other Pure-Blood families with their father abroad studying magical creatures, the family secluded themselves to a quaint cottage with crawling vines. Living a charmed life, there was never a moment that the home wasn’t filled with laughter, warmth and starlight found not from magic but in the love that they all shared.

Adored as the baby of the family, Orla grew spoiled. Attention seeking, she graved affection like oxygen; leaving sunken features and wails of tears for those that didn’t comply. Batting eyelashes and pouting lips gained sympathy from her mother and siblings MARIANNE and FIONN who were quick to smother the girl in adoration. Equally as stubborn as her sister SAOIRSE, while her family dotted around her, Sersh was left exasperated at how easily people fell to Orla’s feet. Similar in more ways than one, the sisters were equally passionate and hardheaded. While Sersh dreamed in ink swirls, Orla longed for a spotlight; pleading to play fairies dressed in shimmering golds in Sersh’s tales that they performed. While the two girls fought, Fionn and Marianne grew exasperated from pulling their siblings aside to make amends. Despite their differences, the four loved each other dearly. From rolling down hills to whispering secrets under blanket forts, they shared a golden childhood. While content in their little group, none knew they were waiting for the last missing piece. Handsome with a boyish charm, the day she caught the boy next door AUGUSTUS ABBOTT’S eyes Oralith swore her heart skipped a beat. Falling deeply, she’d spend nights scribbling their names in locked hearts with her pink feathered quill and hiding scarlet blushes of embarrassment behind soft giggles. Eventually it became difficult to remember life before Gus’ laughter and music filled their lives. An honorary MacMillan, the five dreamed in childhood nostalgia of ghost stories around campfires, ice skating on frozen lakes and whispering dreams to fireflies.

When it came Oralith’s time to join Hogwarts, it was of surprise to none that as the sorting hat graced her blonde locks, she’d too find a home amongst intellectuals joining her sister Marianne. Akin souls and the sibling she was closest to, Orla was overwhelmed with relief to share the experience with Maria who was more a secondary mother figure in many ways. Though it wasn’t long before she found chosen family. A charismatic girl, HEATHER BROWN was a fellow Ravenclaw with starry eyes, an affection for rabbits and natural gift for divination. Dorm mates since their first year, the pair joined arms and quickly became best friends. Whispering over boys, adorning their nails in glitter and gossiping about the latest Hogwarts love stories, Orlaith confided in Heather as she pined after Augustus who only grew more captivated by her sister daily. Left with fleeting jealousy, as she watched forlorn as Gus’ grew captivated by Saoirse, Orla grew green with envy at being second yet again; particularly when Sersh showed such little interest in the notion of love. Left aching in the knowledge she was begging for attention from someone who could not return it, instead of growing sour in her misplaced affection Orla turned her hand to playing popular politics longing to bask in the same glory as the elder witches she admired. Aspirational and powerful, GENEVIEVE AVERY, ANASTASIA DUPONT, ANDRESSA PARKINSON and CAMILLE ROWLE were renowned fashion icons all who easily commanded a room with a poised beauty and grace. Watching with astonishment, Orla dreamed of shining in the same light as the magnetic women; knowing even then that she was destined to befall the same glory.

Attentive when it suited her, while Orla held great intellect, she instead spent her time swooning over the handsome features behind THE WEIRD SISTERS with MARY MACDONALD. Paying little mind to PROFESSOR MCGONAGAL who scorned them both, warnings that boys would hold little value if they held no convictions. While most professors deemed her gossiping a bother, one teacher who took a shine to Orla was PROFESSOR SLUGHORN who eagerly welcomed her into Slug Club for her renowned excellence in potions. While a sought after talent; it was her skills outside of the classroom that set her apart. Brewing beauty potions that outshined those on the commercial market, Orla became known for her craftsmanship of colour, shimmer and pigment. Once the protesgue of FLORENCE JONES, the older witch had acted as a mentor, showing with a gentle hand how to achieve the perfect potion that shined like star light. Highlight that sparkled like the sun, lipsticks that never faded unless willed and eye shadow changing according to mood, sorcerers begged Orla for her secrets and paid in sums for even a glimmer of the beauty she bottled. While her business had started small, it wasn’t long before her name was praised around the school for her creative hand not seen since the likes of SACHARISSA TUGWOOD. Decorating features with a golden shine, Orlaith basked in the praise she received as lines of witches pleaded with her to decorate their features to attend infamous parties hosted by the Marauders; JAMES, SIRIUS, REMUS and PETER. Twirling hand in hand with Heather, Mary and MAREN LINWOOD, Orla danced into the night decorated in tulle and shining like a rare gem with the rest of those adored in her makeup.

A rare beauty, Orla’s delicate features and warmth wasn’t lost by the likes of best friend DEMETRIUS MCLAGGEN who looked upon with a longing wishful eye unbeknownst to her. A ravenclaw who held a similar need for attention as she, GILDEROY LOCKHEART was a handsome charismatic boy who had an affinity for the ladies. Free with his compliments of others and himself, while at first his flirtatious advances were met with dismissal, over time his propositions began to get her attention. Catching Orlaith’s eyes following Gus, he teased that getting under someone was the best medicine to get over a broken heart. While she sneered at first, a drunken night led to interlocked lips. While popularity hindered their love affair a secret, they quickly became the aspirational couple; leaving them both basking in the attention they acquired. Though nothing was ever so simple for the MacMillan women. A wealthy ambitious widow, Orla’s grandmother, while once wished Marianne would become the adored actress she’d once dreamed, she knew the likelihood of that was slim and with Sersh a lost cause entirely, she turned to Orla; looking upon her to raise the family name high. Explaining how she’d seen the MacMillan name turn to disarray at her mother’s hand, Kathleen praised Orla as the last hope for the MacMillan name; a responsibility she took onto delicate shoulders driven by need to protect her family like they had her for so many years. Growing to believe she holds power over who she loves, marriage is more of an economic proposition than ever before in Orla’s eyes. With Kathleen insisting there would be little the family could do if Orlaith is unable to secure herself highly within society and establish strong connections.

With a growing obstinate desire to be great or nothing, Orlaith is evolving out of her once foolish ways to become a valued member amongst the elite. A sought after witch, her talents were quickly scouted by founding editor of Witch Weekly TOBIAS MISSLETHORPE who’d seen her artist hand adored the features of none other than famed actress RUBY GOLDSTEIN. An esteemed makeup artist, Orla takes deep pride in her work and excels across the covers of her favourite magazine. Approached by the famed Tugwood family to launch her very own line of beauty products to run alongside her once idol Sacharissa, Orla is working tirelessly to secure her name in shining lights. Booked solidly by sorcerers as they prepare for the parties of the season, though her name isn’t the only thing people are whispering about as her relationships reigns public gossip thanks to RITA SKEETER’S column. While Orlaith and Gilderoy play the adoring couple to the masses, behind closed doors tell a different tale. With her widely adored boyfriend’s fleeting attention, their ‘relationship’ has come under large public speculation; claiming they are simply using their love as a means to fame. Aware that the rumor could tarnish what she’s so diligently built, Orlaith is trying earnestly to tame a free willed male with little success. Openly scorned with boiled anger by Demetrius for her frivolous love, he pronounced claims that she deserved better than someone who holds such fleeting disinterest. Followed by - to her shock - frustrated harboured words of love. Caught between Demetrius and Gilderoy, Orla is left desperately trying to find an answer to what matters most; a legacy, family security and her dream or the possibility of happily ever after if only she let it in.

→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Blood Status → Pure-Blood

Pronouns → She/Her

Identification → Cis Female

Sexuality → Sexually Fluid (closeted/yet to understand in self)

Relationship Status → In a relationship with Gilderoy Lockheart

Previous Education → Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Ravenclaw)

Family → Fiona MacMillan (mother), Patrick MacMillan (father), Marianne MacMillan (sister), Fionn MacMillan (brother) Saoirse MacMillan (sister), Kathleen MacMillan (grandmother)

Connections → Heather Brown (best friend/room-mate/potential love interest), Demetrius McLaggen (best friend/potential love interest), Augustus Abbott (close friend/past object of affection), Mary MacDonald (close friend), Kirley Duke (object of affection), Camille Rowle (idol/work colleague), Florence Jones (close friend/past mentor), Felicitania Tugwood (friend/work colleague), Maren Linwood (friend), Gilderoy Lockheart (close friend/romantic liaison/potential love interest), Sacharissa Tugwood (idol), Cassiopeia Kim (friend), Emilia Grey (friend), Cressida Abercrombie (friend)

Future Information → Aunt of Ernest MacMillan, adopted mother of Lavender Brown (subject to change), Wife of Heather Brown (subject to change)

ORLAITH MACMILLAN IS A LEVEL 5 WITCH.

#orlaith macmillan #josefine frida pettersen #marauders rp #marauders rpg #hp rpg #open #open neutral #neutral #open witch #witch weekly #magic #open lgbtqia+

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junifm · 4 years ago

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excuse me as i scream on main for a minute . [ and , scene ] hi everyone i’m kofi , 23 , prefer she / they pronouns , and i’m so happy to be here ! i chickened out of applying for this amazing group the first time around and uh .... def screamed when i got accepted 🥺 . i stanned a new girl group , thus sparking my luv for miss yoo jimin ( pls go stream aespa’s ‘ black mamba ’ 😌 ) . i will admit that juni is a newer muse of mine , so she’s got plenty of room for development ! that being said , i’m gonna try to keep this intro short and i can’t wait to write with everyone !

* ◜ yoo jimin , cis woman & she / her ◞ * according to school records , that’s jyu - ni ‘juni’ yang walking on campus grounds with their usual vanilla sweet cream cold brew from the ancient grounds cafe . they’re known for sleek black hair never out of place and are often spotted at the versailles garden reading their much ado about nothing . almost everyone knows their family is worth like twelve billion dollars , so we suspect they’re a member of a labyrinth , you know , the one for new money . do you know where they were the night that the scholarship student died ? they claim they were on their way to an off campus gala , must be a international relations thing , right . and hey , don’t you agree that the junior reminds you of a burning desire to leave you with a broken heart , the overwhelming pleasure that rakes through your body when she kisses your neck , & a melodious laugh in a most inappropriate setting ? you better watch out peitho before something dangerous happens to you and life ends at twenty one .

name : yang jyu - ni . nicknames : juni . date of birth : june 19th , 1999 . zodiac : gemini . birthplace : gangnam-gu , seoul , south korea . current location : ocean county , new jersey . language(s) spoken : korean , english , mandarin & proficiency in japanese . love language : receiving gifts , quality time & acts of service . orientation : bisexual & biromantic . father : hwan yang ( 43 ; real estate developer & investor ) . mother : dasom yang ( 41 ; beauty editor for vogue korea / skincare and makeup brand chief creative officer & chairperson ) . major / activities : international relations / student government & honor society .

𝟎𝟎𝟏. 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 .

the yang family , comprised of father , mother , & daughter . a picturesque family worthy of a vogue cover ( & has been achieved ) , worthy of an oil painting hanging over a modern fireplace . her parents , both born into poverty , raised in cramped homes with too many family members & with ambitions that meant being the best of their peers . hwan finds solace in working odd construction jobs & manages to land a job with the right developer at the right time . dasom , hundreds of miles away , finds her calling in the brightly lit department stores , wishing for better solutions to the beauty that’s advertised . both have ambitions , ambitions that are soon fulfilled & they’re the pride & joy of their respective families .

after a chance meeting , a whirlwind romance & a modest wedding , they’re married . business is going well for the couple , building their respective brands without ever accepting any adversaries that come their way . dasom’s desire for people to feel beautiful expands as she becomes pregnant with their only child & despite the unplanned nature of the pregnancy , the couple are overjoyed . first comes love , then comes marriage , here comes dasom and hwan with a fendi baby carriage . with the zeroes adding on in their bank accounts , it’s a move to manhattan at thirteen years old when their daughter comes into her own .

with access to funds that seem never ending , as a naturally gifted student academically , socially & athletically , an affectionately nicknamed juni was the definition of an ace . never — not once , did her mother have to tell her to straighten her back . to be the most sought after woman in the room . to command respect . to quote mrs. yang , ‘ my jyu - ni will never be second best . ’ oh , how right she is . juni never encounters the word no , often casting longing gazes until someone fills her time , her glass , her bed with their presence . she floats on a cloud reserved for herself , silently demanding a spectator’s full attention as if a princess has come to town . have you heard of the curse ?

who is to be a yang without experiencing a lapse in perception ? to suddenly have a fall from grace that has you spiraling & afraid . love had never been in her vocabulary until her final year at her prestigious high school . it’s whirlwind , uttering those three little words before the fourth date & sharing strawberry milkshakes in the plaza hotel . three months in & like a scene straight out of your favorite horror film , melted butter pecan ice cream drips from her waffle cone & down her knuckles as she witnesses her love love another woman . ‘ my jyu - ni will never be second choice , ’ her mother echoes . then , she vows , to seduce & destroy . to never let herself be vulnerable ( let alone to a man ) ever again .

enter clemonte university , a place with like - minded students & the best place for mental stimulation after finding harvard to be exhausting . she develops an interest in the scarlet woman . to use her ‘ feminine wiles ’ to be wined , to be dined , to break & to leave wanting more . ‘ what do you see when you look at me ? ’ honeyed words drip from plush lips in the versailles garden , a warm but methodical simper spreading across features at the lies she’s told . ‘ is it me that you desire or the proposition ? ’ she takes & takes , leaving a trail of broken hearts , angered souls and empty wallets in her wake . the curse of the yang family has reared its ugly head again — do you dare to break it ?

𝟎𝟎𝟐. 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 .

best described as the independent woman , as the better version of a popular television teen who thrives on manipulation & elitism . gets what she wants with the point of a finger & the bat of a lash . has a strong interest in people . jealousy is a bitch , but they’re best friends . finds comfort in the swipe of another’s credit card & the freedom of freeing herself from their sheets before her spot in the bed has a chance to warm . would easily be cast in a clemonte production if her theatrics were reserved for the stage & if there were tears , she wishes for them to be diamonds .

easily burns bridges as if holding the match . don’t start a habit of telling her no & gets strangely horny for confrontation . will back you up in a fight even if you’re wrong , finds pleasure in seeing a face turn red & will never hide her disgust for anyone . is genuine in her speech & has facial expressions that speak before she opens her mouth . an ice cold demeanor that has been completely impenetrable for the ghosts of a lover’s past & plans to keep it that way .

𝟎𝟎𝟑. 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 .

will share link to the page soon !

#cruel.intro #i hate this binch IEWIQUIWQ

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edgythought · 4 years ago

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Strangers in the Bar II

Part I | Part III

Alex Turner x OC (I guess??)

Description: Two lonely people observe each other in a bar. It leads to something nice. Word count: 2,982

Warning: swearing, alcohol consumption, smoking.

A/N: Nobody wants the second part but I am posting it anyway. Maybe, you'll enjoy. If you do, let me know!

The time flew by like a super-modern spaceship through the deep void of silent space and my stay in LA was coming to an end about just as fast. I still didn't know if I liked the city or not. It was totally different from what I'd seen before, but the aftertaste wasn't that pleasurable as I thought it would be. Maybe I was a prisoner of my own superstitions and prejudices, but I will never know. Moreover, Californian weather is just not my cup of tea, I would prefer something a lot more northern than constant heat and melting asphalt. But I must admit the city has its own unique vibe you cannot casually pass by, it wipes you away with its simultaneous boldness and sneakiness.

It was a challenge for me not to think about the dancing dude I met the first night. Let's be clear, I hadn't fallen in love, but there was definitely a spark between us, even if it was a result of drinking too much. Some nights I even wanted to google him, but my drunk ass never asked for his name. His face looked familiar, like I've seen him before, but I couldn't remember for shit when and where. So, I gave googling up and continued with doing my stuff, which was a lot more important than some random guy I popped into at some bar. I thought it was a drunk adventure and this gave some assurance it will not happen again and I can move on. But I'd be lying if I said what happened didn't bother me in a way I didn't want it to.

I was always very sensitive to vibes and energy people are emitting. That feature brought a lot of pain, but also a lot of understanding, so I tried to develop it as much as I could. And what I saw and sensed that night made me think about it way too much. I saw a lonely person trying to enjoy a simple moment of happiness, but I also saw a sharp mind and a visible ache in his eyes. I totally understand it may sound like an absolute bullshit, but I got the impression we were vibing at the same frequency in some way and it would be stupid of me not to admit I would do it again without thinking. And this fact was bothering me a lot. It was something I couldn't accept, like, how can it possibly be real — to meet a guy and have such a connection with him without even speaking to one another? Bear with me, I told my friends a lot, while sharing this story with them. But could I bear with myself? The answer is not really.

My time in LA is coming to an end, I thought, it would be nice to say goodbye where I started. To finish the adventure properly and leave for good.

It wasn't much later when I saw some familiar spots I observed while smoking near the bar on my first day in LA. Those palm trees were actually fascinating in a pastel background of the twilight sky, warm and so close you may have had a chance to touch it. There was no clouds whatsoever, so I took a pic of tree silhouettes to remember this beautiful view when I'm back home. What if Los Angeles becomes my home? I thought to myself strolling down the road, searching for a sign indicating a spirit-scented place. Soon enough I saw it on the other side of the street and rushed there. It wasn't as crowded as I remember it to be, but I guess that's going to change in an hour or so. I came too early, but I desired to get wasted and nothing was standing in my way so I just followed the waitress into the bar and crawled on the stool with all the grace I managed to find in my body. The bartender asked me what I'd like to have and I ordered "Orgasm" without thinking. Dude tried to make a joke out of it but unfortunately I wasn't impressed since I heard it way too much throughout my whole cocktail-drinking life. It was only funny the first couple of times. Anyway, I came to drink and I got what I wanted in 4 minutes. I spent the time glaring around, but there was nothing unusual for my eye to catch, just a bar, millions of them around the world. The music was on point, though. I thought it was a jukebox, the one you pay to put a song on, but I was wrong. Turned out, it was one of the bartenders who was in charge of music for the night and they took turns to be a DJ. At least, that's what I heard from the bartender, when I made a remark on the music. I was quite impressed, since it's mostly jukeboxes I saw in this kind of places. I found it pretty authentic and also very encouraging for the personnel to try their chances with music. What is more LA than that?

My cocktail was tasty enough for me to distract myself with it for a while. My head was almost empty and I felt I achieved what I was striving for, so I needed to think what to do next. I was alone and a little bored. Maybe I can try to talk to someone? Just for the sake of having a conversation… - I thought - People are probably thinking I am a weirdo, I came alone and I drink alone. Well, this is who I am now and bitches shall accept that. Anyway, the drink was so delicious I finished it without realizing it. I ordered another one and decided it would be nice to smoke.

When I got out I saw the last couple of minutes of the hot Californian twilight and was left to enjoy the early night. Cicadas were singing their oddly rhythmic song and I was inhaling smoke like it was my last cigarette on earth. It was nice to feel the relaxation spread from my chest to my hands and then knees. It felt nice having nothing to worry about for a night and just do whatever your heart tells you to, even if it's totally stupid. The smoke twirled in the air above my head in irregular spirals. I watched it slowly dissolve in thick warm air, traffic noise making the whole experience a little bit ambient. I took out another cigarette and lit it from the previous one, as I had lost my lighter a few days ago and hadn't bought another one yet. I know, I know. My mind was in a weird state, I felt very calm and very nervous at the same time and I couldn't say what exactly caused it. I should probably stop drinking and smoking so much. But not today.

My cigarette was quickly coming to an end as I watched people gathering near the bar entrance for a small chat or a smoke. I went back inside to continue my contemplation with a cocktail in my hand, but I was also determined to get to know someone. Maybe, that cute bartender who served the "dancing juice" will be back? I could talk to him, at least I did last time and it wouldn't be that awkward. But I haven't seen him today yet and I wasn't sure I will, therefore I decided to concentrate on people, cruising back and forth between table area and the bar itself. Everyone seemed very comfortable and friendly, but not a one familiar face in the whole room. Suddenly, I heard a phrase that made me jump on my stool and rush to the dance floor, occupied by two young men in weird shorts.

Get on your dancing shoes!

I cannot explain why the indie tunes from 2000s made me so eager to dance, but they did and I was fine with it. I wiggled my ass to the beat, shook my head and pretended to sing the song to the boys in weird shorts. They somehow agreed to take part in my performance and the three of us had a very nice time dancing and jumping around for the next couple of songs. Soon I was very hot and went back to my place at the bar to take a sip of my drink and order a refill and some water. I went to the bathroom right after I saw the bartender nod at me, letting me know he heard what I told him, as the music was getting louder.

I was surprised to see there was no queue to the bathroom, so I used my chance not to hurry and take my time to fix my makeup and hair. I was even more surprised to see the bar crowded when I finished and I was absolutely flabbergasted to find my place at the bar occupied by some dick! Can you tell I went from 0 to 100 in a couple of seconds? My mood wasn't so great before but now it was pretty much spoiled. I saw the guy talk to the bartender and put my drink aside and my ass went off. Somehow in such situations I have a resting bitch face, which may serve an impression of me being unbothered, but it's not exactly how I felt then. I was furious because there was no other place to sit at the bar and it was just rude of the guy to sit on my stool, cause there was my drink, signifying it was occupied.

I came up to the dude and touched his shoulder to catch his attention. He turned around with half a smirk quickly changing into a look of surprise. I could feel my eyes grow in size when I saw who it was. "Is it fucking real?" - I asked myself, trying to be less shook. What an amazing coincidence, my stool at the bar was occupied by the dancing dude! - Who would have thought, am I right? — he said, fully turning to face me. — Not me, for sure. Get off my stool. — I shoo'd him from the stool but he didn't move a muscle. — Nope. You weren't sitting here when I came in, so it's mine now. — I raised my eyebrow in disbelief. — Don't be a little dick, you've seen my glass standing right here. — I will buy you another one if you get off my dick. And once we are talking about that…. — he chuckled a bit. — You can sit in my lap if you fancy. My eyes widened, I was astonished by his bold move. — Are you flirting with me? — Who knows. So, mardy bum? Are you climbing in my lap or …? — he asked, looking attentively at my face with a wide smirk, pleased with himself.

I threw my hands in the air silently and turned my back on him. I didn't fancy sitting in a random dude's lap, even if the dude was kinda hot and not actually random. Oh God, FUCK! He looked a bit different this time; his beard was trimmed and his hair was gelled back, black shirt and pants so tight I could probably see the outline of his underwear if he wore any. What a dweeb. I guess I'd recognized him instantly if I saw those pants.

Why is this so embarrassing? I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I wanted to sass this bitch out, but I couldn't come up with anything merely appropriate for the situation, so I decided to ignore his questions and turned to take my glass. At this exact moment a very familiar and a really slow song came on.

I somehow lost my breath and fell into a spiral of memories I had associated with the song playing for a second. I was watching people dividing into pairs on the dance floor and it broke my heart a little. I remembered my ex-sweetheart holding me tight to him while this exact song played quietly in our apartment, right after the final fight we had. I remembered the emptiness I felt then and my eyes became too watery. I am not going to cry at the bar today, I told myself. No one was going to ask me to dance today anyway, I thought, and it stroke me pretty hard. I turned to go out of the bar to have a cigarette when the dancing dude touched my hand. I looked at him, struck by the sensation. He was offering his hand to me.

"Shall we dance a little?"

I had no time to think properly and the whole situation felt a bit like deja vu. He was waiting for me to take his hand, eyes on me, wandering from hair to eyes, to boobs and back. I accepted his almost silent invitation and followed him to the middle of the dance floor.

When I'm around slow dancing in the dark Don't follow me, you'll end up in my arms

We were surrounded by different couples and that's one of the reasons I loved LA. It was just beautiful to see people simply dancing together. No one really cared what people might have thought of them, this is how it should be. He held my hands in his and as we're almost the same height I almost touched his long nose with mine. We remained silent while we were swirling in a very little space we had among all the people. His palms were soft and warm and I enjoyed his touch, even though I didn't want to admit it.

Soon enough we got even closer and danced way slower. My lips were almost on his jaw as we were almost hugging each other to a sad song. Him being so close yet so far made me puzzled in some way. I didn't want this to happen and yet here I am, staring at dude's earlobes and gelled strands of wavy hair on the neck. Pretty view, should I say. He smelled exactly the same as I remembered and I found the smell heavenly complex. This sparked an idea to spend as much time in his arms as possible, but I shooed the thought away. It would be inappropriate.

I turned my head a bit to see his face clearly. His eyes were closed, but I could sense something going on in his head. He moved easily and graciously, even with me by his side and I was pleasantly surprised to realize he led me all the time we were dancing. I smiled a little to myself. It felt good to be in his arms and I decided it won't hurt to put my head on his shoulder, so I did. I took a deep breath, inhaling his cologne and smiled again. He tilted his head a bit, so it would touch mine. I thought about how we looked like on the dance floor seen by others. We probably look like two sad people dancing to a slow song, I sassed myself and shook my head a bit. Dude asked me if I was okay and I responded "sure". That was it, the whole conversation during the dance.

Can't you see? I don't wanna slow dance In the dark

As the song was reaching its climax, we almost stopped moving at all. My hand that was placed on his shoulder slid down to his waist. He did the same with his hand, still holding mine. I liked him not pushing anything on me and appreciated the effort to be nice. It felt right to be this close to him somehow. I saw him lip-synching a little to the song and felt his warm breath on my cheek. I kept smiling as I watched his private performance. With the final phrase we stopped completely and just stood in each other's embrace for a couple of seconds longer than necessary. I didn't want to let him go. He seemed to feel the same. I blushed a bit, because it was getting awkward. Eventually, we split and I followed him to the bar.

He sat on a stool next to mine which appeared to be empty and gestured a bartender to come over. I sipped my cocktail, which I completely forgot about, to be honest. I was watching the dance floor and the dude turned to me and asked "Whatcha gonna drink, mardy bum?"

I did not expected that and took some time to proceed with the question. I looked at him, confused. "Nothing for now. Excuse me" i said and rushed to the bathroom. I didn't want to use it, however, I felt an urgent need to get away from his deep dark eyes inspecting my face. I turned on cold water and splashed some on my neck and chest to calm myself down. I guess I shouldn't have left like this, I thought, maybe I need to go back and try to have a normal conversation? I wanted to talk to someone less than half an hour ago. Oh no, there would be no conversation, darling, you will just stare at his face for an uncomfortably long time until he finds you creepy and leaves, I told myself. Well, this sucks but I have to go back anyway. I'd fancy a smoke, after all it was an experience and I definitely needed some nicotine in my system. I went out of the bathroom to finish my cocktail at the bar and found the dude's stool empty. It made me a bit sad, but I didn't say goodbye either, so it's only fair. I knocked my drink down and headed to the exit.

#alex turner #alex turner fanfic #alex turner fanfiction #arctic monkeys #the last shadow puppets #miles kane #do i wanna know #los angeles #la #oc #original character #short story #strangers in the bar

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glitterians · 4 years ago

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Pairing: Jungkook x Jimin / Namjoon x Seokjin / Hoseok x Yoongi / Past Jungkook x Yoongi | Genre: Adult / Cyberpunk / Dystopian / Non-idol AU | Rating: Explicit / 18+ | Word Count: 4k | Warnings: Explicit sexual content in later chapters / Violence / Drug Use / Slut shaming / Explicit Language / Mental Health Issues / Morally Grey

(Crossposted on AO3. I’m on Chapter 8, if you prefer to read it there.)

Chapter 1: Body/Prison

Seoul, 2113

Outside always smelt metallic.

The boisterous sounds from the illuminated highway. The tall-as-the-sky buildings. The ever changing holographic ads, displaying in the walls whatever was in vogue. - A new Tesla car. A haute couture brand. - Everything that could satisfy the frivolousness from those living at the highest district. A simulation of a perfect world. A world with perfect looking people, perfect hairstyles and makeup, perfect clothes, perfect homes. Everything was good. Everyone was happy.

The lone figure standing in the roof sighs. Unconsciously running a hand through his neatly combed dark hair. His sparkly jacket reflecting the neon city lights. Tailor-made. Everything about his life was like that. Privileged. The 1%.

In the distance he could hear the faint sound of sirens. That was the other side. Outside from politicians and businessmen, no one from his social hierarchy was allowed to go near that part of Seoul. It was imperfect.

“Park-nim”

Jumping slightly after being surprised, he turns his head to the source of the voice. His bodyguard. A relatively young man, no older than 25. He wore a black suit, not as high quality as the clothes everyone else wore. After all, he wasn’t part of their world, he was just a worker for them.

“Your father is searching for you”

Nodding, he walks to the rooftop door. The bodyguard standing behind. That was his place. Never in front.

Both were walking silently through the highly illuminated hallways leading to the office. The sound of their footsteps echoing. It was almost midnight, everyone inside their rooms already. The young man stops suddenly, turning towards the man behind him.

“Namjoon” He was high class. There was no need for him to use honorifics. “Have you thought about what I asked?” Turning off his holographic monocle, the addressed man nods.

“I can’t. It’s risky” He answers crudely. Wanting to end the conversation as fast as he could. He had a task at hand and the boy was taking time from it. “Everyone knows your face”

“So? I can dress-up. You know how. You’re from there”

“Your father awaits, Park-nim. You already know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting” Motioning for him to keep walking, he turns on his monocle again. Pouting, the boy turns to the front.

“You promised” He says lowly. An uncomfortable silence accompanying them the rest of the way. They stop in front of a tall, metallic door. The bodyguard, Namjoon, tapping a code on a panel next to it, taking a step back as the door opens.

“Thank you, Namjoon. You can retire for the night” A voice says from the inside. The dark haired boy steps inside. His father was sitting at his desk, typing on a tablet. Motioning towards the chair in the front, never taking his eyes away from the screen. “Jimin, your 21st birthday is coming. You know what that means?”

Jimin was well aware that his father never expected answers. He did all the talking by himself. But this time the silence got too long. Was he actually expecting him to answer? The man looked up from the screen. Getting up, he walks across the room, towards the tall windows facing the streets.

“One day you will be the one in front of this corporation. That is, if you’re ever ready. The council doesn’t believe you will ever be ready, and son, I don’t believe it either” Jimin cringes at his words. His father had always been harsh towards him. Whatever he does, it never seems to please him. “You aren’t man enough to take over, but letting the corporation go to someone else…” He grimaces. “Next week, after your 21st birthday, you will be enrolled in the military. No ‘buts’, no excuses from your mother. You need to toughen up. Become a man” He says, roughly grabbing his son’s face in between his thumb and his index finger. “Understood?” Jimin nods with difficulty. His father smiles, content with the answer, or by the pained expression in his son’s face. “Now go to the entrance. I’ll call the driver”

Feeling tears welling in his eyes, Jimin blinks rapidly. He couldn’t allow his father to see him being weak. He had enough knowing already how his father hated his soft voice, his small frame, his delicate features. From the outside they were the poster family. The Park family, owners of the biggest corporation in all United Korea. Looking perfect in magazine covers and fundraising galas. Inside their lavish penthouse is where the masks came off. To say his parents hated each other was an understatement. Jimin has wondered since a young age if his parents ever loved each other. Screaming. Infidelities. Long periods ignoring each other. At least his mother loved him. She had always been his shield. The one to tell him he was beautiful whenever his father told him he was a disappointment. All he knew was that a mother’s love couldn’t be faked.

The entrance was dark and cold. Sitting in a leather couch, he gets out his phone. Notifications illuminating in front of him. A lone message awaiting him.

KNJ, read the sender.

He had to keep it in secret, knowing there was the possibility of his father having his phone monitored.

Opening the message, just a single word.

네 . Yes.

He smiles. He knew he would change his mind.

Hearing the footsteps from his father nearing, he puts his phone inside his jacket and gets up. That’s what was expected from him, the perfect son.

🐇🐇🐇

Park Corporation owned the entirety of United Korea. They were even bigger than the government; playing an important role in the reunification of South and North Korea in 2070, it was the least they could do for them. From the security, technology and the food industry, to banks and universities, almost everything had been owned by the Park family for nearly 5 decades. At least everything that was important. Minor corporations took care of transportation and entertainment industries.

Park Sr. had to be the biggest figure in the country. Respected by everyone. Whatever he said, it was rule. Whoever was the president in turn only had to comply to the whims and wishes of the Park family.

After the reunification. Park I had promised to minimize the increasing crime rates in Seoul, thus introducing the segregated districts by income. After the devaluation of the won, anyone with a an income lower than 7,000,000 won had to be sent to the mockingly called District 7 , to remind them of the number they will never reach. Keeping safe the figures and estates of only 1%, the”valuable part of society”. Park II , despite being in front for a short period, managed to introduce the cruelest rules. Being an extremely religious person, he deemed homosexuality illegal, reintroducing inhumane practices towards those that “lived in sin”. As well as introducing the food rationing for those living in District 7, or the inability to move towards a higher social class. Park III, the current head of the corporation, had been a little bit more lenient, allowing few individuals from District 7 to start working for them, mostly doing all the work no one from the upper class wanted to do, like teaching or cooking. Still no social mobility.

Jimin was his only son. The future senior, Park IV, if things went well and he manned up at the military. He was the spitting image of his mother, an ex-model with a nice butt and full lips, as Park III had described her when he met her. His son was soft spoken and lacked character, that’s what made his father feel like his son will never be at the level. Fearing he will ruin everything his family had worked so hard to achieve for so long.

The young man was aware of everything. The cruelty from his family. How his father looked down upon him and had zero expectations about him.

He didn’t want to be sent to the military, up in the north. He wasn’t cut for that. After eavesdropping months before, he had learned about his father’s intentions, and he started devising a plan. Luckily for him, his new bodyguard was near his age and talkative, hailing from District 7. Jimin managed to gain his trust, hinting at his plans many times, until he dared to ask him to take him to his world. At least for one day. He never went deeper on his desire to run away, in case the young man refused and went as a whistleblower to tell his father.

Jimin was sitting in his bed, a large jacket hiding the clothes he was wearing underneath. Namjoon had sneaked them two days before, after simply saying “two”, letting him know how long until he took him.

His father wouldn’t know. He was in Japan taking care of businesses. His mother always took sleeping pills, so she would be dead to the world for many hours. He turned off all his devices as precaution, in case his father had set extra security while he was away. But as far as he knew, no one would look for him. Namjoon was the one in charge of him after all.

Hearing a knock on the door, he immediately turn off the lights of his room, knowing that was his cue. Sliding the door open, Namjoon stood in front of him, out of the suit he always wore. He had a leather jacket on, black cargo pants with reflective stripes at the sides and boots. Stepping aside, he let Jimin walk out, before locking the door on the panel.

Muttering “Garage” towards the smaller boy, letting him know where they were heading. They walked in silence, keeping their hierarchy even then. Jimin kept pulling the fishnet peeking under the sleeve of his jacket, feeling nervous at what he was about to do. once they reached the garage, Namjoon walked straight to a motorcycle, handing Jimin a purple helmet while getting his on.

“Hold tight” He said, revving up. The garage door opening after the sensor detected the sound of a vehicle. Circling his arms around the waist of the taller man, Jimin started breathing deeply. “No second thoughts, Park-nim”

“Not at all” He said, trying to reassure himself.

Living all his life inside cars and planes, being in a motorcycle gave Jimin a sense of freedom he had never experienced in 20 years. He was seeing the city under a different light. The lights flashing by with the speed. The metallic smell stronger than ever.

After almost 30 minutes, Jimin could see the distinctive shape of the wall that marked the entrance of District 7. From the panel on the motorcycle, Namjoon projected an holographic code, the large door immediately reading it and opening. The motorcycle never stopped moving. Entering the doors, Jimin noticed the lights becoming an amalgamation of pink and cyan. The streets weren’t as neat. The sound of sirens becoming louder. Sounds of screaming and drunkards could be heard in the distance. A group of boys near his age were circling around a car, probably stealing parts.

Namjoon stopped outside an apartment building, a large billboard displaying instructions of what to do in case of a robbery.

“Before I take you… sightseeing, we need to make you blend in” He said, fishing his keys and opening the apartment gate. Jimin became fascinated at the sight of keys, growing up in a world filled with holographic panels and controlling things through the phone. Walking up three flights of stairs, for the first time Namjoon took the lead. This was his world after all. Most of the doors looked rusty, but the one they stopped in front looked almost decent, at least it had been taken care of. Taking out the keys again, Namjoon opened the door.

This placed looked way too different to what Jimin was accustomed to. No leather couches and marble tables, or pieces of decoration that could belong to a modern art museum. This place was modestly decorated, a worned-out couch and pallets working as a coffee table. The kitchen space, the dining room and the living room were the same room. Not as cramped as he would have imagined, but long enough to let each space differentiate itself. A small hallway led to the bathroom and where he imagined was the room, or rooms.

The small hallway lightened at the same time a door could be heard opening, surprising Jimin. For some reason he believed Namjoon lived alone. A girlfriend?

A really handsome man walked towards them. Medium bleach blonde hair, he was wearing a bright pink, fuzzy sweater with sequined black stripes, checkered shorts and fishnets, but what caught more his attention was the colorful makeup: turquoise eyeshadow running outside of the eyelid with a soft pink eyeshadow under the eyelid. Jimin had heard before how in District 7 colorful makeup was a staple, and he imagined that’s what Namjoon meant when he said he was going to make him “blend in”.

“This is Jin. He’s my… friend” Said Namjoon nervously. The tall boy laughed, sounding like a windshield, making Namjoon seem more nervous.

“Right, your ‘friend’” He walked in front of Jimin, showing him a medium-sized makeup bag. “Sit there, the lighting is better” Taking him towards the small dining table, he set down the bag next to the helmets.

“I’m Park Jimin, by the…”

“Of course I know who you are. Everyone here knows, and that’s why you’re here, to make you less you. What should we do?” He says, thoroughly looking at his face. “I like your eye color, is that natural? I’ve never seen a korean with naturally hazel eyes…”

“Sorry, he speaks a lot” Namjoon interrupted, sitting at the couch, clearly embarrassed at Jin’s antics. “He’s a stylist, so you’re in good hands” Jin nodded, feeling proud. “And no, Jin, those are clearly contact lenses”

Whatever Jin was doing to his face, Jimin could tell he was feeling in his element. He could only see brushes in front of his eyes, colors he wouldn't normally see in his side. Bright eyeshadows, glitters and eyeliners, a bunch of decorative pearls, rhinestones, gems and tiny fake colorful crystals.

“Done!” Jimin opened his eyes, Jin holding a mirror in front of him “What do you think?”

The makeup was bold. Purple eyeshadow with specks of sparkly blue eyeshadow in the middle and the corner of the eye. Long, black eyeliner starting at the middle of his eye, under the eye he had done glittery blue tears, decorated with different sized pearls and some crystals. Whatever this look was, Jimin was in shock looking at himself.

“I look… different” Jin laughed his windshield laugh again.

“That’s what i intended. If we’re taking you outside, you better not look like yourself. Now take out that jacket, we’re going drinking”

“NO, JIN, NO” Screamed Namjoon, getting up immediately “We’re only taking him around. That’s what he wanted”

Jin took away his stuff, going back to the room, looking slightly disappointed.

“Excuse him, we normally go out for drinks on Friday’s”

“We could go. I won’t drink, if it makes you more comfortable” Jin pops his head out of the room, smiling.

“You heard the kid. We can give him the tour of our lovely neighborhood if you want, but the three of us won’t fit on that motorcycle” Jimin takes off his jacket. He was wearing a short sleeved, bright pink satin shirt. Leather pants with lace up sides, and a long-sleeved fishnet undershirt. “Huh? Those are Yoon’s?”

“They’re the closest in size. He didn’t ask that much” Feeling satisfied with the answer, Jin opened the door.

“How should we call him?” Namjoon stopped in his tracks, staring confusedly at Jin. “We can’t introduce him by his name, how should we call him?”

“Uhm… what about Minnie?” Offers Jimin, feeling his face reddening. Jin smiles.

“Minnie sounds good. I’ll head straight to the club, you take him touring. Message me so I pick you both at the entrance”

🐇🐇🐇

When he had learned about District 7, Jimin had pictured a gray, sad-looking place, lost in time, like a city from the 2000s. Instead he was received by a colorful neon-filled place, a mixture of the last century with the high-tech of the 2100s. It was lively outside, mostly young people partying, couples hiding in alley’s illuminated in red. They seemed to live normally. none of the curfews he had read about.

Namjoon was driving slower, explaining a little about the history of some places, historical buildings that had survived the passage of time. Jimin knew that on his side of Seoul there had been historical buildings before, but they had been destroyed in favor of skyscrapers and highways, so seeing these buildings from centuries ago was fascinating.

“Shit” He heard Namjoon say under his breath. Jimin could see he was attempting a sudden U-turn. Staring ahead, he could see a bunch of men in motorcycles adorned with colorful led lights. Before he could complete the turn, a motorcycle stood in front of them, stopping Namjoon. The person on the motorcycle removed his helmet, the shield illuminated with leds that resembled a bunny face. The lights were glaring near his face, making Jimin unable to see his face. He could only see slightly long, messy hair, not as long as Jin’s, but still long.

“Long time no see, Namjoon. Thought you had ditched us for the fancy people”

“Fuck off, JK” Says Namjoon, his bodyguard instinct kicking in immediately, grabbing Jimin’s side, a sad attempt at hiding him. The young man in front leans his head to the side, trying to see the boy behind Namjoon.

“Where are you taking the whore?” Jimin could feel Namjoon tensing. Whoever this JK person was, apparently Namjoon didn’t like him.

“It’s not him, and don’t call him a whore. Ever” The boy gives a step to the front, making Namjoon grab Jimin harder.

“Well, he’s definitely not Jin, and he’s wearing that whore’s, sorry, HIS clothes” He says, pointing with his helmet towards Jimin, finally allowing him to see his face. He was striking.

“He’s just a kid that needed a ride. Now let us go, his mother is worrying...” Jimin gets up, forcefully removing Namjoon’s hand from is side, and takes off his helmet.

“I’m Minnie. I work in a house on the other side, Namjoon kindly gave me a ride because I couldn’t reach the subway on time. My mother is really worried, so if you could…” He could feel JK’s stare. Maybe he was bad news, based on Namjoon’s reaction, but there was something about him that attracted Jimin. He had a mysterious aura.

“Okay, take the fairy home” JK says with a smirk, getting his helmet on again. He makes a sign towards the group in front. “You’ll tell me later why he’s wearing that whore’s clothes” He revs up towards the group, leaving together.

“You shouldn’t have done that” Namjoon says coldly.

“He wouldn’t leave us alone, and you saw the size of that group?!” Namjoon revs up, not wanting to hear anymore. He was tense, driving angrily. Jimin was wondering if what put him on edge was the person or what he said. Back in their apartment, Jin had mentioned the clothes belonged to someone named Yoon, and that JK had said repeatedly he was a whore. Whatever it was, it had angered Namjoon a lot.

They stopped in front of a highly illuminated building. Loud music making the floor rumble, a long line outside. Jin spotted them immediately, signaling towards a spot Namjoon could park his motorcycle. Getting off from the motorcycle, They walked to where Jin was standing, on the other side of where the line was standing.

“Hobi already got us a table… What happened?” He asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

“JK” Jin made a sour face hearing the name. Whoever that person was, he was definitely no good news, Jimin concluded. They got inside. Loud electronic music pumping. People were dancing, kissing against walls, getting drunk out of their heads. They walked to a more secluded area. Namjoon plopped down immediately, Jin sitting next to him.

“Our friend Hoseok, Hobi, he owns this place. We get preferential treatment” Jin explains, taking a small tube out of his pocket. Opening it, he takes out some colorful pills, depositing them in Namjoon’s hand. “You look like you need them” He whispers on Namjoon’s ear. The taller man nods, staring ahead, behind the pink curtain dividing them from the rest of the club. Jimin pretended he didn’t see anything.

“JINNIE, JOON” A high voice screams on top of the music. A man with a bright heart shaped smile and auburn hair appears, holding a bottle on one hand. Pink tinted, hexagonal shaped glasses adorned his face. He was wearing a purple and cyan jacket, and some ridiculous looking sneakers.

“This is Minnie. He’s Joonie’s friend” Says Jin, taking the bottle out of his hands. “Minnie, he’s Hobi” Jimin waves his hand. The man smiles again.

“I love your makeup, I already know who the artist is” He says, pointing with his head at Jin. “Want something to drink, Minnie? It’s on me--”

“He doesn’t drink” Namjoon says immediately, interrupting him.

“You’ll keep Yoon company then. Jin, whatever you’re carrying, give me” Jin throws the small tube towards him. Hoseok takes a two pills out. “He’s been clean for almost two months, you know?”

“Funny how you say that while taking molly” Says Namjoon smirking.

“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him”

Jimin was looking somewhere else. He knew what they were doing, but not staring gave him a sense of protection. He still was from a different world. He was just visiting. Tomorrow he would be back on his perfect palace. He didn’t feel that brave anymore.

“HERE!” He hears Hoseok’s high voice screaming. A blue haired boy gets into the area, bright pink eyeshadow draping, melting with a softer shade of pink blush and slightly red glossy lips. If Jimin was sure about something, is that everyone around here was obsessed with bright pinks. The boy was pretty, with chubby cheeks and a button nose. He looked quite thin, but not in a healthy way. His long sleeved, graphic black shirt making him look even smaller.

“That’s Minnie, Joon and Jin’s friend, he isn’t drinking tonight either. Sit with him” Says Hoseok at the blue haired boy, who nods in return. “Minnie, he’s Yoongi, my boyfriend” Hoseok says proudly. Jimin’s eyes widen. Boyfriend?! But that wasn’t allowed.

“The whore?” Says Jimin without thinking, the blue haired boy visibly flinching, stopping before sitting. Noticing his mistake, Jimin’s face reddens. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, really” He says rapidly.

“The clothes… they look good on you…” Says the boy timidly. Jimin didn’t know if that was his usual demeanor or his carelessness had broken him so fast.

“Please, sit” Says Jimin, trying to make amends with the boy, moving to the side. “I’m truly sorry. I spoke without thinking” The boy sits next to him, looking visibly uncomfortable. Hoseok was saying something to a waiter.

“Boys. I ordered water for both of you. Keep it cute” The other boy, Yoongi, nods. Jimin felt really bad, it was clear whatever mood he had arrived with, he had ruined it.

“Don’t worry about it… nothing I haven’t heard before” He says in a small voice, playing with the border of his sleeves. The other three were deep in conversation, completely ignoring the awkward pair next to them.

“How old are you…?” Jimin asks, trying to break the ice.

“21” The boy says quietly. Immediately grabbing the glass the waiter was giving him and drinking. Jimin grabs his with a ‘Thanks’.

“I’ll be 21 too in 5 days” Jimin says with a smile, trying to appear friendly. Yoongi just nods. Whatever chance he had at some sort of good time with the boy, he had ruined it completely. They sat there in silence for what felt an eternity. Whatever trance Yoongi was in, was broken the moment Jin took Namjoon’s hand, leading him towards the dancefloor. Hoseok stood too, visibly drunk, circling his arms around the smaller boy and kissing his neck.

“Dance with me” He whispers wetly against his neck, making Yoongi smile. He gets up and both follow the same path as the other couple. Being left alone, Jimin started reflecting on the biggest piece of information he had received in the last hour. In his world being gay was wrong, it was banned and penalized. Why they were so open and free about it. Didn’t they know what they were risking? What Namjoon was risking if that information ever leaked in the upper side?

Jimin felt someone looming over him. Turning behind him, Jimin is met with JK standing there. His handsome features more visible now.

“I suppose you gave a fuck about your mother after all, fairy” He sips from his bottle of beer. Jimin gets up, facing the taller man.

“You followed us?”

“Don’t think the world revolves around you, fairy. This is still a free country… Unless your father is thinking about removing more things from us” Jimin didn’t notice at which moment the man had cornered him to the wall. He knew.

“How…?”

“The other dumbfucks may be naive enought to not realize, or they’re just playing along for Namjoon” He grabs Jimin’s chin on between his thumb and his index finger. “Everyone knows your face. Your family is the reason we live like this” He lets go of his face. “But let me tell you something, fairy. You’re not like them. For some reason you decided to play dress-up and come see our misery. You’re above the pieces of shit you live with. Now you’ve seen, you can actually do something” He caresses his cheek. Jimin feels electricity running through his veins. JK turns towards the dancefloor. “Look at them. This is the only place we can be who we truly are” His fingers go down to his neck, whatever space between them was nonexistent. “No societal expectations” Jimin could feel his lips nibbling his ear. “No rules” Jimin closes his eyes. The close contact making feel things he had never felt before. “You belong here, fairy” And just like that, he goes away, leaving Jimin breathing heavily. Confused. Staring at the bodies dancing in between the colorful lights. The music in sync with his heartbeat.

Whatever had happened between them, he wanted more.

Next Chapter

#bts fic #bts fanfic #jeon jungkook #park jimin #min yoongi #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #jung hoseok #kim taehyung #cyberpunk au #read the warnings #multichapter #play/destroy au #mature topics #strong language

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moonlightreal · 5 years ago

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Winx Club Season 8/18

You’re right, all the episodes were gone from Raiplay! Dang, now I wish I’d watched til the end when they were all up. This was the last episode I have; now we’ll have to wait until the next batch drops on @winxclubcomics. Go send her a nice note wouldya? She is a true load-bearing member of this fandom. And I hope her sources deliver the rest of the season soon!

Shameless plug: I also write fiction. Very long fiction. If y’all need more Winx while you quarantine, I’ve got a story that’ll probably last you ‘til we can all go out again!

In the meantime...

In which Palladium teaches a spell and some lumens lay down the law.

18 Valley of the Flying Unicorns

Yay flying unicorns! Bloom seems just as enthused as I am when she voiceovers the title.

In Palladium’s class. The girls take notes. Bloom draws a picture of Sky. Love it when the writers remember that she draws.

Palladium announces they’re going to learn to make a perfect hair and makeup potion! He sounds totally thrilled about it, heh. Is that how Palladium keeps his hair lookin’ so good? Is it normal in elf society for dudes to be all about the perfect hair? Or is there something we should know about our favorite elf? Well in the comics he has a girlfriend, Athris, so I guess the only canon we have for Palladium in love says he’s straight.

Stella is enthused too, of course. She squees about how she adores cosmetic potions, and leaps to be Palladium’s assistant for a demonstration.

But these potions are very delicate and require “maximum concentration and minimal excitement.”

Stella deflates. Dang, there could’ve been a callback to season one where we hear Stella blew up the potions lab trying to create a new shade of pink.

Palladium decided Bloom is a better choice for assistant. But she’s distracted by mopily drawing Sky. Tecna pokes her and says, “Are you offline?” which I have never heard to mean that but I think it’s great. Like Tecna’s “achievement unlocked” thing I think Rainbow is trying to get her back to a unique (nerdy) way of speaking. I kinda would have preferred the real season one’s “I am logical and don’t understand normal stuff” Tec rather than “Nerd is the new cute!” Tec, but either one is an attempt to make her unique, so props to Rainbow!

Bloom mopes. Palladium growls. Bloom pops up and has no clue what she’s supposed to be doing. She drops things in the cauldron.

Ingredients: five drops of liquid beauty, three petals of a young lily, and a teaspoonful of lunar essence. Hmm, so if I were going to make this… the lily petals are easy, and for lunar essence you put a quartz crystal in a bowl of water and leave it in the light of a full moon. The “liquid beauty” is a red liquid in a test tube, so… lemme get Cunningham’s… where the heck is my Cunningham’s?!… well, none of the plants listed under” beauty: to attain” are plants that would create a red liquid. So I’d use some kind of pomegranate juice drink, because pomegranates are associated with Persephone whose beauty was so great that death himself fell in love with her.

Next Bloom has to visualize the final effect of the spell. But since Bloom is distracted there’s a poof and then Palladium’s hair is a bird’s nest, with an egg and two parent birds in it! He is very grumpy, but still cute! The rest of the class laughs and Bloom apologizes. Stella snarks that her excitement didn’t turn out to be the problem here!

So it’s not a potion for drinking, so you could totally cast this spell. Just not if you have cats; lilies are toxic to cats so they shouldn’t be in the same house just in case.

Great outdoor shot of Alfea. In the courtyard the girls ask Bloom what has her so distracted. It’s Sky, of course it is, he hasn’t been in contact for days! Bloom knows he’s on a secret mission, but she can’t stop worrying that he’s in danger. A rather sensible worry with the Trix and Valtor out there. But Bloom was worried about Sky getting caught by “Eraklyon’s royal condors” which resulted in the bird nest.

Bloom shifts to the next worry: either Sky isn’t able to message, or he’s choosing not to. Flora rather shallowly tells her not to think about it, but here’s Twinkle to shift the scene by crashing into Bloom!

There’s no trouble, Twinkle just came to visit. But then the star case appears. “The third prime star waits on Monocerous, not far, look beyond the clouds and higher, you’ll find the trust that you desire.”

Monocerous?! I- I- That is a dumb name! Yeah I know it means one-horn, it’s still dumb sounding!

Stella doesn’t know the place, but Twinkle has visited and tells them about the unicorns. She’ll take them there!

Valtor’s watching. He sends the Trix out. Darcy says following the Winx is getting annoying. Stormy says the riddle was about trust and she trusts—herself! She wants to go alone! can’t say I disagree, Stormy, with sisters like yours.

Icy jumps on her about how finding one star doesn’t make her the strongest witch in the magic universe and how SHE’ll get the star just time. Stormy snarks back. Lovin’ Stormy this season! Valtor gets bored with this and snaps at them but he does show off his green star, he’s keeping it in a bubble with a sort of pink thorny vine grown around it.

Cut to winxboarding over a green land of lakes and rainbows and waterfalls, just the kind of place winged unicorns like to live. This realm also has floating islands, what I think are called “earthmotes” in D&D, they’re a terrain feature I’m fond of. The girls enjoy boarding. Twinkle says it’s “starsome” here.”

Tec says she’s read that winged unicorns don’t trust strangers and maybe they should “prepare some kind of speech.” but Stella and Flora are sure they’ll be fine.

And then Diaspro plummets out of the sky. Wait, what? It looks like the same world but clearly not exactly where the Winx are. Sky is flying with his Specialist suit and Disapro has similar metal wings-- NOT her fairy wings—and she’s flailing around unable to fly straight. “I hate this flying gizmo! Sky, can’t you just carry me?” she asks in the most smarmy voice ever.

Sky says that’s not an option, in the most utterly done voice ever.

Why isn’t Disa using her own wings?? Is she for absolute not a fairy since the timeslide??

Sky says they need to get past the floating rocks to reach the lost locket of Eraklyon, which they’re apparently still looking for. Was that temple on Monocerous? Why would the locket be on an uninhabited world that’s so out of the way Stella hadn’t heard of it even though it has unicorns and I’m sure Stella went through a phase when unicorns were the greatest thing ever, since every girl goes through that phase! I’m not sure I ever left that phase!

We see some flying unicorns, white with wings and colored manes and tails. I think the sight of them does Sky some good because he questions if they’re really going to find the locket—but Diaspro’s walked away.

Then she… startles a unicorn and it tries to take off but Diaspro floats into the air for no discernible reason and she falls on Sky. Did her wings malfunction? Do the unicorns have a flight field around them that she got caught in? It was a very weird little moment.

Because this is not an anime, she does not land with her boobs on Sky’s face but I’m sure she wishes she had. Sky gets up, growling, and Disa says, “I can’t imagine what I’d do if I were alone, among such fierce creatures!”

“Yeah. Very fierce.” Sky says with all the skepticism we’re all feeling.

He flies off into the sky with Diaspro wobbling after. He asks Diaspro if she’s sure they’re in the right place. She unrolls her ‘map’ again—still emojis of her and Sky in a heart!--and says the medallion is on one of the floating rocks. But there are a lot of them. Sky suggests splitting the party but Diaspro is too scared.

But they’ve got company! Unilumens! With pink hair and unicorn horn headbands. They say the floating rocks are just for unicorns and their friends.

Sky starts to ask about the medallion but Diaspro says, ‘We’re on a special mission for the king of Eraklyon so we can go where we please.”

Disa, these lumens are not Eraklyon subjects…

The lumens attack! Ahahahaha! Yay unilumens! They shoot pink blasts and Sky and Diaspro jump into the air to dodge. Diaspro drops her map, which unrolls on the ground. Sky sees it!

Sky: “But this is not a real map! it’s a fake!”

Diaspro; “Um, uh, I, I can explain, well actually...” she admits she made it up to keep their mission going as long as possible.

Sky yells at her.

Eventually he realizes there is in fact no medallion to find. Disa admits to this too.

Lumen: “I think she deserves to be punished! Can we handle this?” She sounds delightfully eager to lay some karma on Diaspro, it’s a wonderfully delivered line.

But Sky says, “No thanks, lumens. We’ll just go back home.” He throws the map at Diaspro’s feet and walks off, leaving the crowd of lumens disappointed.

Diaspro: “Ooooh! My plan has failed! And it’s all your fault!”

Unilumen kicks the map and sticks her tongue out at Diaspro. Ahahahahaha! Love it!

Back with the Winx, more boarding, gotta sell those toys! They land and watch the three unicorns, but every unicorn they approach flies away.

They’re talking about looking for the prime star when up rumbles… a stampede of unilumens!

“More uninvited guests! Are they all coming today?” Heh. Unilumen attack!

But Twinkle stops them. The unilumens recognize her as a fellow lumen and she explains the mission. Unilumens consult each other and decide to trust the Winx.

Cute scene of everybody sitting on the grass as the unilumens give them flower necklaces. The head unilumen introduces herself as “Esteria, leader of the Monocerous lumens tribe.” I would’ve gone with “Epona” because I’ve always liked that name, but Esteria is prettier.

Bloom tells them about the mission, and Esteria says the prime star may be in “the horn” but only the ubnicorns can fly there; a magic barrier blocks anyone else. Stella despairs.

But Esteria says the unicorns just don’t trust them yet. She whistles and color-coded unicorns fly down. Purple, blue, pink, green, more-pink, and yellow. They’re… boring designs. Your basic winged unicorn, nothing special.

Esteria says winged unicorns are kind, but they choose who can ride them. Stella’s keen to give up after just being snubbed by a few unicorns, but Aisha gets her back on target for the mission.

Esteria says they just have to walk slowly through the group and the unicorns will choose them.

Bloom steps on a twig and it scares her unicorn, but they make friends anyway. The other girls and unicorns pair up in short order. Aisha is adorably enthusiastic, I knew she’d be the most keen on riding.

Stella is the least interested, which is weird. I’d think she’d love everything about unicorns. Her unicorn takes a bite out of her skirt and sniggers at her.

Then the unicorns grin in a way unicorns should never do, and their horns light up and the girls get new clothes! Cowboy wear! With short layered skirts that are super cute but probably not practical for riding, boots, and cowboy hats. The unicorns gave themselves hair decorations at the same time, heh.

Esteria confirms that the girls have made another bond, I guess the new clothes are a sign of it. Could this be a transformation? Without wings, because a transformation granted by a winged creature wouldn’t need them. We shall call it… Cowboyix! ...or maybe we won’t.

Everybody mounts up, the unicorns kneel to let them, except for Stella’s who makes her chase it.

Now the unicorns will take them where they want to go… if “he” allows them through.

Everybody’s off! Twinkle stays with the unilumens.

Flying! Stella’s unicorn bucks her off but then catches her. Stella screams a lot in general. Stella really doesn’t like riding, or unicorns. Do we have any precedent for her not liking horses? I don’t remember her having any trouble riding Shiny in Tynix form, and they all ride horses in season 4, right..? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen season 4. So maybe not being good at riding is a new quirk the riders gave her, or maybe it’s just part of her general Usagi-ish comic relief-ness.

On the other side of wherever, Sky is giving Diaspro some well deserved grief. Good grief Sky, just haul her home and dump her already. Diaspro sits and pouts while he rants about how she noticed his fight with his father and sprang the mission knowing Sky wouldn’t check with Erendor since they were on the outs.

Diaspro: “Oh, lay off! Was it really so terrible to take a tour of the magic universe in my company?”

Sky: “Of course it was terrible!” Heh.

Sky rants how he hasn’t been home and hasn’t seen Bloom, Disa says if Bloom really cared she’d understand it was an important mission, Sky points out that it was not in fact an important mission.

A scary wind blows! “He” is coming! Unicorns and unilumens, who were totally watching Sky and Disa fight, flee!

It’s… it’s…

The baddie from the My Little Pony movie?

(which I haven’t seen since I didn’t get around to getting it out of the library.)

It’s a big black unicorn with a silver horn that’s broken off halfway up. He rears and trumpets, then dives at the two humans. Sky drags Diaspro out of the way. The black unicorn chases them!

Sky leaves Disa on a small floating island and flies off, leading the black unicorn away. Oh no, he went the wrong way! Dead end! The unicorn blasts him with fire from its horn and he falls down, his suit sparking. No more suit powers!

The unicorn advances menacingly… cliffhanger!

Hmm, this unicorn has fire colored eyes, just like Diaspro’s. I’m glad we got more from Diaspro this episode, I was so looking forward to seeing more of that “map.” Hehehe.

#winx club season 8 #winx club

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b-kitsune · 5 years ago

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Many ways to say I love you: Day Thirty-one.

Kidge-a-palooza 2019 Prompt: Happily Ever After. Pairing: Kidge (VLD) Universe: Post canon. Status: Part 7/7

''It's amazing you still keep those old glasses of your brother.'' Collen commented more disgusted than surprised when she saw the dirty old frame on her hands, Pidge just shrugged without giving too much importance.

''I put them on Chip when I finished it, and I needed something old after all.''

''Haven't you brought that robot? I thought I was attached to you with some kind of strange technology, it's always closed when I go through your work.''

''Nah, while I'm out Chip can take care of my work, it serves more on earth.''

She tried to stay still as soon as her mother pulled a few strands more than she should while doing an elegant hairstyle over her head. Her hair was already falling on her back like when she was fourteen, vaguely reminding that smiling and innocent teenager who barely understood the world around her. For a moment, Pidge thought she was being her again, at least that day she felt more dreamy than usual.

She wondered internally if were hormones.

Her mother hummed curiously when Pidge tightened the frame with more force than she should.

''Be careful, you will break it before the ceremony.''

''I can't help it.'' She said barely, the nerves began to return, making her hands tremble slightly. Colleen smiled sympathetically, reminding herself as scared as her daughter was on the most important day of her life.

''Everything will be fine, sweetheart. Remember that this day is to celebrate your happiness, nothing has to go wrong. Unless you change Keith's name on the altar.''

''Can I?'' Inquired worried, Colleen laughed slightly.

''Unless you want to marry someone else, it is very difficult to happen.''

''No, I think that's impossible.'' Both smiled as Colleen continued her work, watching as her daughter's hands began to relax on the old frame she still held with longing.

''Are you sure that is what you want to sacrifice for tonight?'' Pidge smiled warmly, staring determinedly at her mother through the large mirror in front of both. ''Even Matt was surprised when he knew.''

''Completely.''

The lens mount was bent and somewhat damaged by the passage of time, feeling strange on her hands as a time ago when she used it frequently to cover her feminine features with the pseudonym of Pidge Gunderson, and as part of a secret promise to her family where she would find them where they were, if she had to cross the entire universe for it.

In effect, Pidge succeeded at sixteen. Being the first teenager to be part of a group of legendary heroes made up of an archaic legend that was almost lost as a simple fairy tale. Those lenses were one of the few possessions that accompanied her throughout the trip that felt so strangely distant, although only ten years had passed since the end of the war, and the reconstruction of planets was almost complete, Pidge still felt it like a dream too far away, almost alien to her at that moment.

She remembered with longing the years in which she piloted the green lion with her friends to stop the Galra empire from the devastation of the universe, naively believing that they would achieve it without losing anything in return provided they had the lions by their side. But to this day, seeing through the window how the statue in memory of Allura rose imposingly in the distance, part of her heart ached for her sacrifice.

She didn't remember her as Lance or Coran, who still mourned their loss when they thought that no one saw them in the halls of the new castle, but was her friend and a vital figure to keep rope when her forces faltered during the war. Who never gave up on any of them and supported her at all times, even if she herself hadn't been too kind to Allura from the beginning.

That is why Pidge and Keith, after a deep conversation, decided to celebrate their marriage on the planet of the new Altea. So, everyone, both body and soul, would be in the ceremony to be partakers of their union as husband and wife.

Pidge thought it was still a dream and that she would wake up on her desk in Garrison as part of her active imagination. She never thought much about the idea of marriage, her life in the search for her family at an early age, being a champion for almost all her adolescence and later becoming captain of the land defense force and training new defenders of the universe, made her desire to be part of a relationship or a family not being a high priority. Almost considering it as something that wasn't for her and that only technology and her friends at her side Pidge could find eternal happiness in her life. And possibly she would have died with the same idea.

Until her feelings for Keith grew as her relationship with her progressed even after the war, making her feelings change, and she wished had something else in her life. Something that she thought wasn't for her, and even to think that Pidge would simply not find anyone who loved her as she was in the way her family and friends did.

But he found that person precisely whom she considered vital in her life.

It was like a ghost, keeping around her silently, whispering a desire over her ear when she saw him walking at the Castle of Lions. When he supported her during the battles against the sentries and they synchronized uniquely as a team. Pidge thought those feelings died when Keith left with the Blade of Marmora, but it was still present when he came back with Lotor's truth and a new image.

Pidge remained ignorant of what she really felt for his leader and faithful friend until she realized that she could no longer hide it like a teenage interest.

One night where everyone gathered to spend a new year together on the planet Daibazaal, after alcohol loomed over their senses and the dream hit all their friends, Keith proposed her.

It took five years to start living together because of their jobs, and another five years to set a date for their marriage, partly caused by pressure from their friends to want to celebrate a marriage between the traditions of the Earth and Daibazaal.

The process was difficult to coordinate, even with the help of Lance and Kolivan who remembered in detail how the unions were made before the Galra empire took control of the universe.

But there was Pidge, looking at herself in front of a mirror with a completely white dress, as part of the Earth's traditions. She didn't want to be a princess, much less wear a dress too heavy to wear as Coran and Lance suggested, so she opted for a simple fall that fits elegantly on her waist, and sleeves that opened at the end giving her an appearance almost fancy as Krolia's suggestion, being the way traditional Galra dresses wore for a marriage ceremony. It felt like a fairy, almost thinking that it had come out of Tolkien's classic books.

But it was also a gift from Keith. And a way to show her that she was completely committed to both parts of his blood.

When her mother finished decorating her hair in a large braid that fell from the side of her neck, she saw that Colleen's eyes began to flood with tears.

Pidge's heart was compressed with happiness and sadness when she saw her mother so excited.

''Please don't cry mom.'' She asked in a groan, holding her own tears. ''If you cry, you will make me cry and Nyma will have to put on makeup again.''

''I'm not crying, I promise.'' She smiled giving her a warm hug, being careful not to ruin her hair. ''I never thought that this day would come, I am so happy to know that you will not die alone.''

''Mom!''

''What? It was a valid fear.'' She chuckled as she dried the tears that escaped her eyes. ''We will never be forever, and I know you love your friends very much, but is not the same, Katie, and even matt found a lovely relationship with that girl Nyma. I know you are a person strong enough to be alone, but your father and I are very happy that you have found someone who loves you as much as we do.''

''I will consider it as the way you tell me that you are proud of me.'' Pidge answered, answering her hug. Colleen hummed in affirmation.

''I've always been.''

...

''You know? If you keep moving, you will make a hole in the floor.''

''Can you leave here?'' Keith inquired irritated as soon as Lance took it to stop him. ''I don't remember inviting you.''

''You didn't it, Pidge did it! I didn't know you still hated me with everything we've lived together.'' He groaned with one hand on his chest and another on his forehead, in a dramatic pose. Keith sighed heavily as he moved again to walk around the place. ''Come on man, it shouldn't take long.''

''She had to be here twenty minutes ago.''

''Hey.'' They heard a greeting that both caught their attention, Shiro came with an outfit that Keith vaguely reminded him of the role-playing paladin that Coran used to make them play when they visited him, giving Keith a warm hug as soon as he saw him. ''How are you?''

''It could be worse.''

''Lies! Shiro, Keith just kicked me out of his marriage.'' Shiro raised an eyebrow at Keith to explain himself, he just made a gesture with his hand downplaying the matter.

''I'm worried, Pidge had to arrive many minutes ago.''

''Well, I ran into Nyma on the way. She told me that Pidge arrived late at the Hotel during the morning to be put on makeup so she will surely be late a few more minutes.''

''Did you hear Keith? Pidge will come, it's not as if she regretted eternity with you or something.''

They both realized how Lance's poor choice of words made Keith pale completely, sitting on the side of the altar to hide from the few guests who were sitting inside the chapel. Shiro shook his head avoiding hitting Lance for making Keith's nerves increase dangerously.

''You are amazing.''

''Sorry, I didn't know that could affect him. I mean, it's Pidge! She will not regret a courtship of years a few minutes after getting married.''

''But it's still Keith, Lance.''

Shiro said as if the answer was completely obvious, sitting next to Keith who had his head held between his two hands. Shiro looked sideways, watching carefully who was inside the chapel. He could see Curtis talking to the MFE pilots next to the entrance. The old commanders of Lotor observing the Renaissance paintings on one side and Krolia next to Samuel sitting in the first ones talking animatedly about some random subject of not enough to listen.

Shiro took a couple of cigarettes out of his inner pocket, which Keith didn't expect his friend to light, eagerly placing his lips as he approached the fire Shiro held between his fingers. Lance gasped as soon as he saw him, but preferred not to say anything at that moment. He knew that Keith really needed to relax even at the cost of that disgusting vice he had acquired during his years of humanitarian aid work.

After a few minutes and a couple of whiffs, Shiro broke the silence.

''You know Lance is playing.''

''What if she really doesn't come? What am I supposed to tell my mother? Or Kolivan?''

''You're overreacting much more than me in my marriage.'' Shiro replied laughing at his paranoia.

''That's because you knew Curtis loves you.''

''So you think Pidge doesn't?''

''She could find someone better. What kind of future can I give her? I spend most of the time traveling through the universe than with her.'' He looked down dejectedly. ''I wouldn't be impressed if she got tired of me...''

''Keith, I think you've let Lance's teasing get under your skin. Katie is as in love with you as you are with her.''

''… Do you think?'' He looked up at Shiro, he nodded smiling warmly, releasing another puff of smoke.

''I think so, she wouldn't have agreed to marry you if she wasn't because she was completely sure of what she was doing. It would be an offense on your part that you doubt her feelings. Don't you think?''

''I think you're right.'' He answered thoughtfully.

''Besides, I can attest that in marriage you often think if you chose correctly or not. Feelings change, but as long as you trust each other and can support each other there will be nothing to separate you from her.''

''Do you think we are able to support each other in spite of everything?'' Keith questioned putting out the cigarette. Shiro laughed openly.

''Well, you were the arms of Voltron, there is no one else in the universe that is able to support you as you two do.''

Keith smiled wistfully, those words echoed in his head vaguely recalling those days of the war in which he and Pidge were able to fight against ships full of enemies, with a facility and displacement that seemed to be made to be together.

Suddenly, people began to enter, claiming that the car in which Pidge was coming was already on its way.

Keith took a deep breath before getting up and being hugged by Shiro, much more confident and determined than he was minutes ago.

''Ready?''

''Ready.''

They placed themselves in position, waiting for the bride to enter through the main door. It was the first time that Keith wore a Galra suit like that, a black suit where he joined together with a violet-colored armor that gave him the impression that it was to honor the combative blood of his people. His mother watched him nostalgic from the front row, perhaps thinking about what it would be like if his father were there to see him marry the woman he chose to spend the rest of his life.

But Keith didn't feel sad at all, his father accompanied him at all times, as part of the energy of the universe that connected with each being even if he had left a long time ago.

Like Allura.

He heard the music begin as soon as he saw Samuel carrying the most beautiful woman the world had ever observed. Pidge wore a suit that seemed to have mixed both traditions, causing his heart to compress with bliss. He saw her laugh nervously as she approached enough to appreciate her better, her hair fell on the side of her neck, reminding her of the photo she was holding with her brother before the launch of the Kerberos mission.

Years ago, Pidge and Keith realized that, in one of those photos, he and Shiro were on one side watching some of the missiles that would be used for the flight. Pidge had laughed alluding that they were perhaps destined to meet. And at that moment, as soon as he received a warm hug from Samuel Holt and took his daughter's hand, he knew it was a reality.

Both were destined to be together, in whatever way.

When Pidge approached him to stand in front of the altar, she grimaced for a moment, drawing Keith from a strong movement that confused more than one person.

She gasped away in disgust.

''You smoked!'' Many people hummed worried, the discomfort of Pidge's face was evident and Keith felt he was in serious trouble until he remembered an obvious fact.

''You were thirty minutes late!''

''… Yeah, you're right.''

The panic disappeared as quickly as it came when both were placed in position, making more than one person laugh at the unique and honest dynamics of both.

...

''Keith was so nervous that it seemed that at any moment he would pass out, and Pidge looked like she would never have worn such high heels, but everything went well. I didn't know that the Galra were in the habit of burning their past possessions during ceremonies, it was quite interesting to see Pidge decide on Matt's glasses and Keith for his father's jacket.'' A slight sigh left his lips as he continued playing with the grass. ''I wish you were there to see it.'' Lance placed a new junyberry next to the statue, as part of his tradition every time he visited Altea. ''But I know you were there, proud of both.''

He swallowed the lump that stuck in his throat for a few moments at the thought that, somehow, he was convincing himself that his presence through life was the way he was satisfied to be close to the person that loved. Lance was happy for his friends, but a small part of herself felt full of envy when they started the first dance as husband and wife. He wanted to accompany them, but he needed a moment to remember that he was still there, beside him, recalling the beauty and grace that characterized her so much.

''I miss you so much Allura.''

A strong current alerted his senses so quickly that he relied on the marble not to be carried, Keith and Pidge who were laughing on the outskirts of Hunk's jokes were shocked when they saw how the blue lion descended from the sky, which he undertook flight to an unknown place in the universe almost a decade ago.

Everyone ran to the Allura statue where the lion seemed to have descended. There, like a lost dream, the white hair of two people welcomed a new future that they thought they would never be able to have for the cruelty of a few.

Lance ran as soon as he recognized the first figure who visited him almost every night, her promise had been real, she would never stop being by his side.

The blue lion began a new flight, her mission was accomplished and the future of their paladins was now in their own hands.

Happily ever after.

#peith #kidge #kidgefanfic #monthofkidge #kidgeapalooza #kidgeapalooza 2019 #keith kogane #keith (voltron)#keithkogane #keidge #katie holt #pidge gunderson #pidge holt #lance mcclain #allura #allurance #takashi shirogane #voltron #voltronship

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sweetbunnykook · 6 years ago

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I have an insecurity that I wanted to share with you.Because you seem to know so much, so I thought I'd take your opinion. This may sound a little inappropriate sorry. But my boobs look nothing like other women in porn(comic/video/pictures). They're 36c, thus sag a little, and since I'm Asian I have big areolas which aren't pink like shown in the magazines.I got laughed at once(he called me bologna or something)so haven't been able to get over it since.Do you think all men would find it gross?

Let’s be real, women’s breasts usually look nothing like they do in comics/videos/pictures because it’s unrealistic! Boob meat is attached to the armpit so of course they’re not perfectly round unless supported by a structured bra. Sure there are a few women who are born with an hourglass figure and naturally gain weight in the desirable places, but that’s not the case for most women. And, that doesn’t mean your body is any less beautiful. Beauty standards ARE meant to be unachievable on some level (or difficult to achieve) because that’s how people garner attention/make profit off of it. Do you think plastic surgery clinics operate by telling people they’re already okay just the way they are? Do you think makeup companies strive to diversify the women that they advertise as beautiful? Of course not. They wouldn’t make any money off of it. Even with plus-size women advertising, there isn’t much variety (you always see plus-size as women with big boobs, butt and thighs but almost always a flat-ish stomach).

I have the same insecurities so I completely understand where you’re coming from. As an Asian woman with small breasts and large areolas, I always found them unflattering compared to the full-breasted women with small, pink areolas. I even held a damn quarter to my nipples to see if my areolas were bigger (they were) because I was so obsessed with finding ways to reduce the size. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Beauty standards are almost always going to target your insecurities so you might as well live your life; these standards come from opinions of people who are purposely trying to make you feel terrible about yourself. That’s how they make money, get fame or attention, etc etc...

As for the man who laughed at you for having large areolas, he’s one of those people who enforces that beauty standard and is part of the problem. Do you really need his validation, this asshole with asshole opinions, to appreciate your body? You have a healthy body and that’s what matters; a lot of people don’t have that privilege. Men who laugh at your body are not worth your time and you are better off ignoring their existence and find comfort in your own presence. Also, like people, physical appearance changes with age. If a man can’t appreciate your body now, how do you think he’s gonna act when it changes? There will be people who will love you for the way you are so be intolerant of such ignorance. Breasts are just breasts - it’s just a feature on your body used to feed infants. There should be no shame in loving something that nourishes life, no matter how big or how small your areolas are.

- 🐰

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justtanninglotion · 3 years ago

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tanning but Were Afraid to Ask

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tanning but Were Afraid to AskWe’ve all seen these beautiful models on television with those gorgeous tans. How, you wonder, are they able to acquire such a perfect tan? Surely they must have a ton of makeup artists working on them 24/7. Well, not necessarily. It is possible to get a perfect tan if you know how. So, if you’re envious of the super models and you’ve been struggling for years to get a perfect tan, but as yet have been unable to do so, then these 10 tanning tips will show, once and for all, how to get a perfect tan. - Make sure your body is free of dirt and dead skin cells - Shave bikini lines before tanning - Moisturize your skin thoroughly the night before - Try not to get sun tan on the palms of your hands - Do not miss any spots - Apply tanning lotion smooth and evenly - Avoid washing your hands before the tan is complete - Keep the tanning period within the tanning lotion’s directions - Wear loose-fitting clothing during the time immediately after tanning - Touch up the hands and face periodically Before applying tanning lotion, make sure your skin is free of dirt and dead skin cells. This may require an exfoliation process. There are a number of exfoliating creams out there, one of which is Kiehl’s Photo-Aged Deep-Action Cleanser, for you to choose from so don’t worry about that. For best results, it is recommended that you exfoliate your skin in the shower since the hot water will assist in dislodging the dead skin cells from your skin. Once this process in complete, dab—not rub—dry with a soft towel. To protect the sensitive skin that results from shaving from the harsh rays of the sun, allow at least 24 hours between shaving and venturing out into the sun. Since the hair in this area is usually coarser than anywhere else on the body, it is a good idea to soak the area with warm water and use a shaving gel. In addition, try stretching the skin so that it presents a leveler surface to prevent nicks. Shave with the grain at first until the hair is shorter; then against the grain for a clean, close shave. Run cold water over the area to close up the pores and then apply moisturizer. exfoliation and shaving processes since you don’t want to wash off the moisturizer before applying the tanning lotion. There are a number of fine moisturizing lotions, like Jergen’s Natural Glow, out there so just choose the one that works best for you. For best results, apply the moisturizing lotion liberally to your whole body, being careful not to miss any spots. The moisturizer will serve as a foundation for the tanning lotion to help prevent the sun from drying it out so bad. Some people prefer not to get tanning lotion on the palm of their hands since it tends to darken the palms, if only temporarily. If you’re one of those, you can use latex gloves to apply the tanning lotion, though this may interfere with the application somewhat. If you choose to go this route, you’ll have to apply tanning lotion to the back of the hands once you’ve finished. Better is to go ahead and use your bare hands and then use a tanning lotion remover for the palms later. When applying the tanning lotion, make sure you don’t miss any spots. Don’t worry about going over the same area more than once; it won’t have any effect on the outcome of your tan. Missing spots, on the other hand, will result in splotches and a botched tan. This is certainly not what you had in mind, so be liberal with the tanning lotion. However, do not rub the tanning lotion into your skin as you would do with a moisturizing lotion. Instead, use gentle, smooth strokes and let your hand glide across your skin’s surface. Rubbing tanning lotion deep down into your skin will have no effect on how the product works. On the contrary, rubbing it in will could have the opposite effect and produce blotches in the tan. To protect the integrity of your hand’s tan, avoid washing them for at least 2 hours after you’ve finished your tan. Nothing could be worse than the tell-tale signs of discolored hands after a tan. If you must use your hands for something like eating and you are germ conscious, use a hand sanitizer instead. Contrary to popular belief, your tan will not get deeper the longer you leave it on. Once it has done what the packaging says it will do, that’s it. So, stick to the time frame prescribed on the package. If you want a deeper tan, then you should repeat the tanning process on consecutive days until you achieve the desired results. Avoid wearing tight clothing immediately after tanning. Instead, wear dark, loose-fitting clothing. You should also avoid wearing tight underwear. Wearing tight-fitting clothing immediately after tanning could result in splotches in the tan. Since the hands and face will probably lose their tan quicker than the rest of your body, a touch-up may be required between tannings. There are products, like Rapid Face specifically designed for this, so you shouldn’t have any problem finding one. Simply use it every few days to keep your tan looking even.

Where to tan

Now that you’ve mastered the necessary preparations that lead up to the tanning process itself, it is time to learn how to get that perfect with the least amount of discomfort as possible. As you know, getting that perfect tan could require you to lie out in the sun for hours. Of course, this doesn’t bother some people, but for those of you who do find this a bit uncomfortable, there are ways to make tanning less of a job. Some companies have manufactured lawn chairs that are specifically designed with the tanner in mind. The Cooling Sunsation Misting Lounge comes equipped with features that take the heat out of sun tanning. Special arm and head cavities into the lounge chair to permit freedom of arm movement, and make lying face-down more comfortable. This feature has the effect of lessening the likelihood of neck and back pain usually associated with lying on your stomach. Conversely, when you flip over, the specially designed lounge chair has a convenient pillow flap that you simply flip into position when you turn over. But that’s not all. Lounge tanning chairs come with a built-in sprinkler system. Simply hook to a garden hose and the chair bathes you with a gentle sprinkling of water, keeping you cool while you tan. However, some people prefer to tan the old fashion way like lying on a towel on the beach at mid-day.

Tanning beds

Many people have chosen what they consider to be an easier way to tan: Tanning beds. Tanning beds are indeed a convenient way to get a tan, especially for people who like to wear that golden glow year round. But, for those who have never used a tanning bed before, there are some things you should know. Before getting into a tanning bed, make sure you know where all the buttons are. One of the salon’s employees should be able to help you with that. The tanning bed is equipped with buttons that can be shoulder operated. By using your shoulder, you can increase the fan speed, turn the radio volume up or down, and control the facial settings. When you enter the tanning bed, you can lay with your hands by your sides, or above your head. The position you assume depends on how thorough a tan you want under your arms and along your sides. Similarly, lying with your legs up permits more thorough tannin of your bottom than lying with them flat. However, not all tanning beds are the same. For example, the bulbs in some tanning beds are different than others. If the bulbs are new, they’ll tan quicker. In addition, some tanning beds have bronzing bulbs which are a lot stronger and can give you a longer-lasting deep-brown tan. Others have twister bulbs which are even stronger than bronzing bulbs which can give an all-over tan, even in those hard-to-reach bikini areas. There is another type of tanning bed that may be considered unorthodox by some: The stand-up tanning bed. This design is predicated upon the belief that you can get a better, more even tan in the standing position. In part because many people insist that, no matter what they try, they always end up with white lines along their torso when using the lie-down version. However, for the stand-up tanning bed to be effective, you must remain standing with your arms raised above your head for half the time you’re in it. But, don’t forget to lower your arms or you’ll end up with white stripes on your shoulders instead. To prevent those annoying white circles under your under arms, it is a good idea to remove your deodorant before tanning. Deodorants contain SPF which interferes with the tanning process. Stand-up tanning beds are perfect for preventing smiley faces on your rear you oftentimes get with flat beds. Simply stand with your legs spread slightly apart and that should do the trick. Before entering the tanning bed, however, it is important that you discuss procedures with the salon personnel how long you plan on staying in the tanning bed. The length of time spent depends largely upon your skin type. Some people have the misconception that if there is a change in coloration, the tanning process is beginning to take. However, if your skin turns red, then you’re burning, not tanning. But, whatever you do, do not go back into the tanning bed until your skin has healed.

Spray tan tips

A spray-on tan is an even easier way to tan than the tanning bed. It is a great way to get a golden tan with the risk of skin damage. And, since it is applied as a fine mist from a sprayer, it goes on smooth and evenly and it only takes about 25 minutes. Spray-on tanning products contain DHA, a colorless sugar extracted from plants like sugar beets. It works on the principle of what happens to an apple when it is cut in half and is exposed to air. Dermatologists use it to treat pigmentation disorders. Many people who use spray-on tanning products today are not old enough to remember but Coppertone invented the procedure back in the 1960s, though with less than desirable results. However, the science has come a long way since then and the tan you get from spray-ons is comparable to other measures. Like with normal tanning, you should wash and exfoliate before applying the tanning product. The more dead skin cells you remove, the longer your tan will last, and it will look more even. If you’re going to shave or wax, be sure to do it the day before you apply the solution. In addition, do not wear any deodorants, perfume, of body oils. The spray-on tan should last for about seven days, depending on the user. And, just like with standard tanning procedures, avoid wearing tight-fitting clothes immediately after the tanning process. Give it at least six hours for the process to fully take hold. Remember, when you to get your spray-on tan, wear something that you don’t mind throwing away, like some old boxers or shorts. Girls can wear an old bathing suit or something. So, remember these spray tan tips the next time you go for a spray-on tan. Tanning has been in vogue for about a generation now, and millions of young people flock to tanning salons in search of that perfect tan. Others prefer to take a different route and frequent salons and let the tanning bed do for them what mother nature wouldn’t. Still others have learned that they can get a golden, even tan in less than a half hour by having it sprayed on. These standard, tanning bed, and spray tan tips should help you decide in which direction you want to go come next spring. Read the full article

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anneedmonds · 4 years ago

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Foundation Review: Pat McGrath Labs Sublime Perfection

I don’t think I’ve ever had so many questions and comments about a foundation as I have about the Pat McGrath Labs Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection. I photographed myself oh-so-casually wearing it on Instagram stories and it has made background appearances in some of my videos; each time I’ve mentioned it I’ve been inundated with DMs about how long it lasts, how good the coverage is and which shade I wear.

And so here’s a proper, in-depth review. I’ll start out with the same warning regarding the price that I gave on Instagram: it’s £60 in the UK. Incredibly pricey, but I have to say that very few people I spoke to seemed perturbed by this quite considerable financial outlay. Surprisingly. Which makes me think that Pat McGrath and her marketing team have done an epic job of carving out a niche in the highest end of the cosmetics market – if you can establish yourself to the point where beauty-aficionados don’t flinch too much at a sixty quid face base then I’d say you’re doing pretty well!

The brand showcases clever formulations in luxurious packaging and is most definitely powered by Pat’s reputation as one of the world’s most successful and inventive makeup artists. I’d say that the Sublime Perfection foundation is one of the hero products, but then I’m really into “skin looking like skin” and so I’m possibly biased.

But Sublime Perfection is more than your standard kind of “real skin” foundation – it has a few tricks up its proverbial sleeve that I think sets it apart from the rest when it comes to achieving the holy grail of makeup – a flawless finish that still looks believable. It has the sort of finish that looks supple, dewy, bouncy and fresh yet still manages to blur imperfections and create a perfect canvas, but there are some very notable bonuses, which I’m going to come to after another disclaimer.

I have good skin.

I say this not to brag, but to be helpful, because a foundation that I love, that makes my skin look visibly perfected and dewy, might not feel so magical if you have blemishes that need a full coverage to be concealed. This Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection potion is sheer. Yes it’s buildable, as I’m about to delve into in more detail, but the medium coverage is almost a perceived medium – as in minor imperfections are cleverly blurred and veiled – rather than the solid coverage you might get traditionally.

So, the notable bonuses – what sets Sublime Perfection foundation apart from the rest?

Well as I said, it’s buildable. And I mean properly buildable, not just “let’s see what happens if I tap a bit more under the eyes because I can’t be bothered to look for my concealer” buildable. You can go from sheerest sheer, which Sublime Perfection handles impeccably because the formula is so hydrating, right up to a medium-ish coverage.

Now loads of foundations are buildable; the difference with this one is that it retains its freshness and increases its sheen as the coverage builds. Which is quite a feat. Usually the more you apply, the more you start to look a little flat, but here we have a coverage that is comprehensive but a finish that is expensive, glowing and bouncy with the same feeling of sheerness as with a light application.

You never get a blanket, opaque coverage, so full coverage-hunters will be disappointed; it’s almost as though the pigment is suspended in a kind of pliable, flexible sheen, so the more you build the more sheenier it gets.

Pat McGrath calls this a “customised couture finish” and I really couldn’t think of a more apt description; it’s the classy, non-obliterating type of finish that you get in a Vogue editorial or at a Paris show. It’s about good skin and not creating a mask. It screams expensive – the blurring particles that give an almost soft focus effect, the “lit from within” glow. But then I do think that the finish somewhat also pivots on the user having relatively blemish-free skin, too.

The most surprising thing about this foundation, though? It’s longwear! Name me a dewy, lighter-than-light base with the texture and comfort of a tinted moisturiser but the elegance of a high-end, finely-formulated foundation that lasts for the whole day? I’ll wait.

Estée Lauder’s Futurist comes pretty close, with its plumpy-bouncy texture and ultra-hydrating finish (review here), but it’s not quite on the same level in terms of refined coverage and glow. Zoom right in on the Sublime Perfection –

– and it’s genuinely almost undetectable on the skin, whereas the Futurist has a slightly more visible dewiness. In terms of hydrating finish, they are on a par, but the Sublime Perfection has been specifically designed to be buildable and tweakable to your exact coverage desires, whereas you wouldn’t want to go silly overboard with layering up the Futurist because it’s so moisturising – you’d just go for a higher coverage foundation.

I have to say though that the Pat McGrath base, even at its sheerest, gives such a heady dose of soft-focus glow that you rarely need to build it up unless you’re going “out out”. I hate the phrase “a little goes a long way” but this really does, especially if you apply with fingertips as you would skincare, rather than a brush.

Here are the before and after photos, although I think that moving film captures the glow best. In fact I almost wish I didn’t have to post the comparison pictures, because it’s in real life and when the light is moving that the skin really comes alive! Nevertheless here we are:

There’s no dramatic total-wipeout of the facial features, but the overall skintone is more even, more glowing whilst retaining the nuances of real skin.

You can probably tell that I like this foundation a lot, even with its couture price-tag. Many would want a better return on investment – a more dramatic transformation – but for those who seek the ultimate “my skin but better” finish, it’s a viable option. It comes in a whopping 36 shades with different undertones well catered for and it’s suitable for any skin type. Though you might want a spot of primer beneath it on oily parts of your face, if you get them. After a full (hot) day I might get some minor slippage on my nose, but at certain times of the month my nose becomes a grease factory and so that’s really splitting hairs.

Apply after moisturiser and/or sunscreen (Sublime Perfection doesn’t contain any, which I kind of like because if I’m out then I always have a standalone SPF on underneath anyway) and use fingertips to sheer out and blend or a brush to build up slightly heavier coverage. I wear a mix of shade 13 and 8 (those were the samples sent out, I didn’t go drunk shopping!) with about two parts 8 to one part 13. So I reckon I would be a 10 or 11 if I actually went out IRL and got matched at a counter.

You can find the full Pat McGrath Labs range at Selfridges on the brand website. The Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection foundation is £60 at Selfridges here*.

If you like that fresh glow effect then take a look at Clinique’s Even Better Glow here or the aforementioned Estée Lauder Futurist foundation, review here.

The post Foundation Review: Pat McGrath Labs Sublime Perfection appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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lunaschild2016 · 7 years ago

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Worth Fighting For Chapter 21 - Eyes On Fire

Rating: M (violence, smut, language, references to abuse and violence)

Romance/Tragedy

He was ruthless, cunning and completely committed to protecting his city but her arrival to Dauntless called everything he ever thought he believed into question. Duty and following orders were no longer enough. They both found more than they ever thought possible. They both found something worth fighting for. Eric/OC AU M Tragedy/Romance

@kenzieam@ericdauntless@jojuarez26@jaihardy@iammarylastar@captstefanbrandt@badassbaker@readsalot73@fuckthatfeeling@dani5102@beltz2016@beautifulramblingbrains@affabletimelady@irasancti@meganbee15@meganbee15@lauraaan182@gylisaa@scorpio2009@bookgirlthings@pathybo@violetsonthelam XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Chapter 21 - Eyes On Fire

Kat

I am stalling and I know it. I have been as dressed as I can get before I know I need to let Eric be aware I am ready. During the shower I had run a million possible excuses through my head that I could give him as to why I didn't really need any medicines or help. All of them were feeble and made me feel weak for even thinking of trying to use them.

Then there was the fact that something told me refusing him would be a bad idea. He seemed to be teetering on a razor’s edge with his anger right now. Me not allowing him to help or just not doing what any sane person would do might set him over it. I was still resolved to not let him give me any kind of pain killers. That wasn't about making myself suffer but about the lack of control I felt with them. He could be mad all he wanted but I wouldn’t give in on this point.

Even having resolved that I was going to let him help me, I was still procrastinating. I took my time combing and braiding my hair. Using the lotion and moisturizer that Zach had seen to buying me. I toyed with the idea of using the little bit of makeup he had also apparently decided to pick up but with the condition of my face it was a useless task. I sat staring at myself in the mirror for minutes, turning this way or that and trying analyze myself. Trying to see myself through his eyes when he came in. Trying not to think too hard about who picked out the underthings they had set out for me or not let my knees go weak at the thought that it was Eric.

I have never thought of myself in terms of pretty, plain, ugly or anything of that nature. I heard lots of comparisons or adjectives yelled at me by others from different factions. But honestly I had never given much thought over my looks, other than wanting to break out of the Abnegation mold. My focus from the time before the incident had been just being free from the confines of my faction. Then after the incident my sole focus had been on making myself stronger and a better person.

Even when Four had shown...interest..in my early teens, I hadn’t put thought into if it was because of my looks or not. Honestly, I have always been convinced it was because he thought he should be with me. Who he thought I should be anyways or someone like that.

I sigh at that thought because that is a whole other slew of worries that I didn’t have the wits to contemplate right now. I would ponder about Four and Tris later.

My worry was the young woman before me now in the mirror and the man, the first man, I wanted to notice me. He never would but what I was seeing in the mirror was not enough to measure up to the women I am sure he could have in a second if he wanted to anyways.

My hair was a lighter shade of blonde than my sisters. Dull, in my opinion, compared to the mixes of tones in hers. Where hers had blonde, brown and bronze all mixed together in way that could be stunning; my blonde hair was almost the color of bleached wheat with hints of gold in it. Not the shimmering locks I had always been slightly envious of.

We had the same general shape of nose but mine turned up just the slightest at the end. Making it more cute instead of strong or striking like hers.

My lips were bow shaped and annoyingly pouty.

My eyes a little too wide making the overall girl like appearance of my combined features even more like a child instead of an alluring woman.

Combine that with my short and petite frame and I could be mistaken for a boy if I weren’t wearing clothes that showed off the curves I did have, centered around my hips and ass. That I had plenty of. It was what Lynn liked to jokingly call my junk in my trunk.

Not enough by half to compete with the women I saw eyeing Eric in the dining hall or Pit. Those were women with a capital W. Figures encased in skin tight clothing, ample cleavage and perfectly groomed for the art of seduction. Nothing I had the first clue about achieving.

Through with my reflections and my reflection, I went and opened the door then called his name. Then, because I didn’t want to look as ill at ease as I was feeling, I hoped up onto the bathroom counter and hoped I looked casual about this all. Sitting in jeans, boots and a sports bra.

I shook my head at the drama I was causing myself at the moment and look at my hands. I hear his steps as he approaches the bathroom and keep my head down, playing with my hands and nails.

“Did you leave any hot w…” Eric stopped in the middle of a chuckled question as he came in the door and stood there.

I only knew where he was and that he had stopped because I saw his feet from where my eyes were still glued to my hands.

“Did I leave any hot water?” I smirk a little and shrug. “I might have left a tiny amount.”

He clears his throat and steps forward, his boots thumping on the tiled floor. I hear the thudding of my heart sounding in my ears, three beats for each pause between his steps. His intake of breath sounds in my ears and brings to my attention the fact that my own breathing is at least two times faster then his. He may be barely breathing at the moment but it seems I can’t take enough breaths.

One of his large, warm and wonderfully calloused hands takes both of my clasped hands in his while the other slides along my jaw for the second time today. He tilts my head up gently so that I once again am looking into his eyes while his thumb strokes my cheek softly.

Before his eyes had been filled with anger and worry. The worry was still there but there was something else that I couldn’t determine.They were a deeper blue and seemed to burn even more into mine. His lower lip was trapped between his teeth before he released it and a breath at the same time.

“Are you ok, Kat?”

I nod and smile a little at him. “I hurt a little but the shower did help.”

The side of his mouth quirked up in a side smile and he shook his head. “That isn’t what I meant...Kat…” He asked in a husky voice, pausing before he said my name. As if he almost said something else before it. “Are you ok being here like this...with me?”

No. But not for the reasons you would think, Eric. Not for any reasons I could admit without ruining our friendship, and I don’t want that to happen.

I answer that honestly in my mind before I take a breath and smile with a nod. “I said I trust you Eric and I do.” My answer is just as honest as the one in my mind.

He sighs but doesn’t break his gaze or let me go. He looks to be searching my face or eyes for something until they move over my to my injuries. Then the look in his eye changes. This one I can recognize from how his face starts to transform to the tightness from before. The next few minutes leave me breathless as not only his gaze but his hands start to move over me.

I close my eyes and try to keep my breathing normal while the rough fingertips from both of his hands start to go over those areas, my injuries, that he is cataloging and evaluating. His look was one of worry but went to nothing but clinical in how it moved over me.

His hands and eyes might be moving over me in a non sexual manner but my body and mind didn’t give a shit. He was touching me and it took everything in me to fight back the moans that wanted to erupt from me. I kept my eyes clenched shut tight and internally scowled with every soft whimper I didn’t manage to hold back.

“Tell me if you need me to stop or back away, Kat.” His voice was strained and deep. Deeper than I had ever heard it before and I imagined it was from the anger and worry as he saw first hand how badly I had allowed myself to be hurt.

I could only nod my answer but he must have been too absorbed and didn’t see it.

“Answer me, Kat.” He demanded of me, the deepness of his voice and command rumbling from his chest and straight into my core.

The wetness from earlier was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. It was liquid desire just pooling there and causing me to hold in the squirming I wanted to do to try and find some kind of….something. Relief maybe?

His voice and his touch were creating a whirlpool in my core and stomach.

“Yes Eric, I will. I’m ok though.” I gasp out slightly, still keeping my eyes closed tightly. “Don’t...I...please...I mean you don’t have to stop.”

I cringe internally because that was me practically begging him at this point, moaning even. His fingers had been moving along my sides, one hand on each side. What started out as just faint presses of his fingertips along my ribs became even more delicious contact.

Near my hips his full hand slid across the bare skin, a whisper of the heat of his skin against the goose bumped flesh of mine at my waist. Then his fingers slid a slow progression up, almost caressing each rib until with a gasp and my head falling back, his fingers skimmed the ribs just under my breasts causing my nipples to go hard and goosebumps to break out all along my body.

His hands stilled and I cursed myself in my head for letting that gasp out. My skin was flushing red from embarrassment and I felt tears burning behind my closed eyes. I expected him to pull away, step back and address the situation in an awkward manner.

He didn’t pull away though, in fact he moved even closer until I was forced to open my legs a little and my knees brushed along his hips. His hands had moved from my sides, up my arms until they traveled across my shoulders, up my neck and to either side of my face. There they stopped and he cupped my head gently.

“Kat, look at me.” It wasn’t until he spoke that I became aware that his own breathing was hard, seeming to match my own, and his voice was a deep tone but husky as well.

I frowned and opened my eyes, more worried if he was ok than I was about my own embarrassment at the moment. I almost wish I hadn’t. That I had denied his demand because what I saw couldn’t be real. In his eyes I think I saw the same desire I knew to be coursing through me. His lips were also tilted up at the corners in what was, confusingly, a smug smile.

Then his face was moving closer to mine and any rational thought fled my mind except one.

Please, oh please, let him be about to kiss me.

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cynthiadshaw · 5 years ago

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Perspective & Advice for Those Facing Insurmountable Odds

Throughout our journey with Voyage, the one thing we have learned over and over is that hidden within every challenge is a blessing or opportunity. It’s up to us to determine whether a challenge we face will be a step back or the catalyst for a step forward.

We had the honor of connecting with some of the city’s brightest female leaders and role models and we asked them our question of the month: What is the best advice you have for someone who feels like they are facing insurmountable odds.

Below, you’ll find their advice and links and other info so you can learn more about them, their work and how to connect with them. We’ll be interviewing many of these amazing women in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

Tereney McDowell | Logistics Pro , Yoga Instructor/Mental Health Vlogger

Pause, take a few deep breaths, and take several mental steps away from the situation. You may just be standing too close to the picture to see all of it. Once you can see the full masterpiece (or mess), you can start to differentiate all the different parts that make up this one big thing. Find the parts that are easiest/fastest to work on, then move through the more difficult parts until you make it to the end. Nothing is impossible, sometimes you just have to change your perspective in order to get a better idea of what is in front of you.

@alana_not_graceful youtube.com/channel/UC-SNYD_UsV_gMpfjxvD67LQ/featured?view_as=subscriber

Ocielia Gibson | Former Miss Black USA, Model Coach & Founder, More Than a Pretty Face

@moderndayqueen

Hit it from EVERY angle possible. As I share with my clients, conquer complex problems with complex solutions. Brainstorm and strategize how you will address it spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, etc. Make every effort to take powerful, wise actions that move you forward in conquering the challenge – no matter how big.

morethanaprettyface.org @ocielia

Leena Snoubar | Blogger & Labor and Delivery Nurse

I believe God wouldn’t put you through any challenge that you wouldn’t be able to handle! Do your best, stay positive, and leave the rest up to Him.

withloveleena/ youtube.com/channel/UCFlVeT7oDLA2JhU57Ed3JKA?view_as=subscriber withloveleena.com

Paige Kuykendall

My best advice would be to trust Jesus. God already knows. He holds our tomorrows because He’s the only one that’s already seen them. If you’re facing something and you feel like you can’t see the end, give it to Him. He knows you and He is absolutely in love with you. Find peace in that.

@paigekuykendall

Melissa Lynne | Makeup Artist

@theblerd_

My best advice to someone would be to look at that challenge and ask yourself why you think it’s insurmountable and think about what small steps you can take to overcome it. Sometimes it isn’t a one take. Usually achieving some kind of goal or getting to a “place” you want to be means taking on obstacles one by one to get there. Everything is how YOU perceive it. If you keep telling yourself it’s too hard, you may never get there.

@_messylynne/ @melissalynnemua/

Suzy | Fashion & Lifestyle Influencer

@meganmweaver

Try to see it as an opportunity for growth. Gather your courage, and run toward it, not away from it. No growth comes without struggle.

EmptyNestBlessed.com @emptynestblessed Empty Nest Blessed @Empty Nest Blessed @EmpTnestBlessed @EmpTnestBlessed

Tatiana De Forteza and Gaby Poggi | owners of Papertate Design

Take one step at a time and identify opportunities in what seems to be chaos.

@papertatedesign papertatedesign.com

Ginaz Dream Hair | Entrepreneur, virgin hair seller ,certified permanent cosmetic professional/ make up artist

The best advice I can give to someone who feels a challenge is insurmountable is to have faith and determination in what they believe in no matter what obstacles come their way, you have to believe what you can’t see. The finish line is waiting on you to cross into your passion and destiny.

ginazdreamtouch.as.me/ @ginazdreamhair @ginazdreamtouch

Kimberly Scott | Entrepreneur, Dementia Awareness Advocate & Practitioner

@bthebeerguy/

Nothing is insurmountable except death so breathe. Be grateful for challenges, they are experiences that make you grow and get to the next level. Most importantly, doing what makes you happy, is better than any alternative.

@thatkimscott @thatkimscott @thatkimscott @thatkimberly

Jenniffer Navarro and Kimberly Harris | Educators/ Moms Helping Moms

As mothers, we constantly face challenges that affect not only our lives, but the lives of our families. When insurmountable challenges come our way, we rely on our faith first and foremost. We listen to our survival instinct and we lean on others to help us. With challenges, comes vulnerability. Vulnerability allows us to become open and to listen to others’ advice. So, embrace the challenge, accept that you are a vulnerable being; and that will allow you to overcome the struggle.

@Dallasyummymommies Dallas Yummy Mommies

Audrey Grasman | Lifestyle blogger & Fashion Stylist

I think it’s really important to trust your gut when you feel like you have obstacles coming your way. Being kind to yourself and trusting that you can do it even when times are hard is so important- You’re your biggest cheerleader!

theblondetrip.com @theblondetrip

Stephanie Cortes | Dual Language Teacher & Patisserie chef/Baker

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about an insurmountable challenge is this phrase that we always hear: “don’t give up” … easy to say, hard to do. But then, after spending a while thinking about this, what my heart tells me is… have some compassion for yourself. And before I explain this a little bit more, I just want to clarify that compassion is totally different than having pity. Pity won’t take you anywhere. But compassion will. Accept the fact that you might not have it all together yet, but focus on the fact that you will, give yourself some slack and enjoy the process. You can do this by having these little habits that help you enjoy and smile while you are doing something, as opposed to just feeling anxious for the result. I personally love to play music and even dance a little while I am cooking. Of course, I love when the result is yummy, but by enjoying myself in the process, makes me already feel like a top chef. And when things go wrong (in my case would be, for example, a muffin without a fluffy top) always ask yourself… what did I learn from this? I guess that question comes from the fact that I am a teacher and can’t stop thinking like one, but it is helpful for me to think that battles are just experiences that we can learn from and make us stronger.

@thenewcakeontheblock/ @thenewcakeontheblock/?hl=en thenewcakeontheblock.com

Liz Vidrine | Owner of Loved and Found Gifting Studio

If I am looking at big goals and/or challenges that are especially daunting, I start small. I start with small tasks/goals first that require less brain power. The second I start checking tasks off my list is when I gain the momentum needed to tackle the big picture.

lovedandfoundbox.com

Rani Alfers | Insurance Agency Owner, Entrepreneur, Blogger

My advice to someone who is facing a challenge that they are having difficulty working through is, it is okay to ask for help. We have all been at a point in our lives when we’ve felt overwhelmed or as if our goals were unattainable. Your results are only driven by the amount of effort that you put into something. A quote that comes to mind is “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are correct”. I’ve also found it beneficial to have a strong support system and circle of positive influence around, to help at need. If you are facing a challenge, think of it as just that, and keep MOVING!

RaniAlfers.com WorkingWomenTravel.com @ranialfersagency @ranialfers

Kayla Erwin | nail technician/artist

Going through with nail technician courses in September 2018 to get my license was extremely hard. I was set back about 4 months from my goal if finishing in four months and ended my courses and tested in June 2019. It is the best feeling ever when you know you did your best you could and still persisted on the days when you’re glued to your bed. Lots of people didn’t think I’d finish but I had faith I could do it. Faith is big believer in YOU! You have to trust yourself. Even with another hobby of mine, skateboarding, people are afraid to fall when practicing tricks, but what’s the worst that could happen? You fall and get back up:) and that’s all you can do in like you fall, you get back up and try again till you land on your board.

@three6kale

Taylor Jacobs | Health and Wellness Enthusiast

The best piece of advice I have for someone who is facing a challenge they feel is insurmountable never think negatively and always look at the positive side. Tell yourself this is happening for you and not happening to you.

@fittgirlfood ittgirlfood.com

Susan Hwang | Creative Director, The PN Event

Best advice for someone facing a challenge they feel is insurmountable would be to get the courage to get started to take action to face the challenge. Set a simple plan with sub tasks and feel the sense of accomplishment as you complete each little task on the way to overcoming the whole challenge. Facing the entire challenge as a whole may be very stressful, but breaking that down into phases can be much easier to work with and less burden on your mind. If you feel you cannot accomplish the challenge alone, then always feel conformable to ask for help. Talking with other people and receiving support can be very uplifting. That is why many clients reach out to us. The task of planning an executing a wedding or Korean birthday party they’ve never planned is sometimes daunting. We always look to provide that positive outlook for our clients and work with them to turn their ideas and desires into a beautiful reality.

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Tylan Wagner

“Overcoming or feeling insurmountable should be for the incompetent. If that isn’t who you’d define yourself to be, look at fear in the eye and face it without looking back unless it’s to say you did it.”

@Ty.Rykiel

The post Perspective & Advice for Those Facing Insurmountable Odds appeared first on Voyage Dallas Magazine | Dallas City Guide.

source http://voyagedallas.com/2019/06/25/perspective-advice-facing-insurmountable-odds/

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savagegardenforever · 6 years ago

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TO THE MOON AND BACK Rolling Stones Magazine - Australia june 1998

All Darren Hayes could think was "This is not happening!" It was a mantra the Savage Garden vocalist kept chanting to himself, but it wasn't taking. The nascent pop star went to take a sip of his Powerade, but then the Edge cracked a joke and Hayes involuntarily laughed, spitting purple liquid all over himself. Supermodel Helena Christensen giggled as the singer coughed and spluttered. The rain clouds were clearing in the aftermath of the Sydeny leg of U2's PopMart tour, and Hayes had climbed the various levels of celebrity patronage - the shitkicker VIP tent; the serious VIP tent where Midnight Oil were rubbing shoulders with Keanu Reeves and Samuel L. Jackson - to here: U2's dressing room, "The Bunker". He was on his own. The other half of Savage Garden, the calm, assured keyboardist Daniel Jones, was back on level two. "This is not happening! This is not happening!" he told himself. When Bono's assistant bought Hayes in, he walked past Adam Clayton and had to remind himself to be cool. But f**k it, there he was, sitting there in the corner wearing a boxing hood and those black wraparound shades: Bono himself. The Fly, McPhisto, the man who wrote "One", the man who'd just left 50,000 people enthralled. Darren Hayes's goldstar was sitting a few metres away. It was happening. Hayes was dripping wet. The Powerade had simply added to the downpour he'd already stood through, dancing at the tip of the catwalk, alongside the other true believers, lost in the music. He'd had the chance to meet Bono the previous August, when PopMart was in Los Angeles. Hayes had been transfixed bu the show but decided not to go backstage. He didn't want to be the millionth hand Bono shaked, another beaming face to be forgotten. It was different now. Over the last year Savage Garden had sold approximatley four million albums around the world - they were on the course to double that - including a phenomenal 800,000 in Australia alone. They'd scooped the 1997 ARIA Awards and had a number one single in America with "Truly Madly Deeply", the first Australian act to do so since INXS with "Need You Tonight" in 1987. But Darren Hayes didn't want to meet Bono because he felt successful. He would never dare compare Savage Garden's achievements to U2. No, Darren Hayes wanted to meet Bono because he was starting to realise the baggage that came with the success. Savage Garden were in the midst of a sold-out national tour and he was starting to feel like he had nothing more to give, that he'd been stretched so thin he would either break in two or simply dissipate. A few nights before, in Tasmania, he'd been asking himself before a show if he could go on, if not tonight, then next week, or next month in New Zealand, or the month after that in Asia, or the looming months beyond that in Europe and America. He was wondering why they'd become a teen sensation, if he could keep his marriage out of the public eye. All of these thoughts were racing through Darren Hayes's mind. And then Bono was looking at him, gesturing for him to come over and talk ...

Let it be said again: Savage Garden are a phenomenon. Together with the Spice Girls they have spearheaded the return of pop music to the top of musical charts around the world, giving focus to the desires and needs of a generation of teenage, on the whole female, fans. But behind all this is two young men from suburban Brisbane. Polite, inquistive young men who worry a lot about what's happening to them, how they should handle success, how they can prove that their brand of pop is one which will mature and grow, which will reach for resonance and a sense of belief. When I first meet Savage Garden they are preparing to have thier photo taken. It is a Saturday afternoon and Savage Garden are standing in a Sydney hotel suite, looking at clothes, prior to shooting new press shots for America. On the Sunday and Monday, with a show also scheduled on Sunday night, they're to shoot a high-budget clip for the US release of "Break Me Shake Me". Hayes is wearing all black, most noticeably a pair of jeans armour-plated with PVC. With his locks now cropped, his dewy features have lost some of their femininity. He moves around constantly, even if he fights the flu, breaking into snatches of song, delving off into varied topics of conversation without warning. Now he's appraising outfits. "How much is this stuff?" he asks the stylist, who's lacing up Hayes's boots for him. "$290 for the top and $220 for the pants, less 10%," comes the reply. Hayes pauses, then snorts. "Tell 'em to get f**ked," he retorts. Sitting on a bed, patiently having his makeup done, Daniel Jones laughs. The keyboardist is tall and rangy, with blond, spiky hair. Up close, you can see the handful of acne scars which pit the right side of his face. When he smiles, which he does often for someone so observant and low-key, his angular face becomes quite disarming. He watched the PopMart show at the mixing desk, standing beside Helena Christensen. "I said hello and then spent the rest of the show trying to smell her," he notes, grinning broadly. Because they own their very successful records - they only lease them to Roadshow Music in Australia and New Zealand and Sony Music for the rest of the world - Savage Garden have a degree of control most bands can only dream of. "There's not one cent spent, not one colour used on a front cover that we don't approve," Hayes later explains. "It's very comforting." Right now, Savage Garden are working it for photographer Robin Sellick's camera. Hayes is a natural, staring off into the middle distance while standing in the foreground, masking his face in the very definition of broodiness. Jones stands behind him, biding his time for a practice he clearly doesn't place a great deal of faith in (although he's never less than professional). As the shoot moves from hallway to penthouse, Hayes takes front and centre in every shot. "I'm always aware that I'm in the front in every photograph, but it's not because I step in front of him," he says. "Daniel takes two steps back. People just assume I'm an egomaniac." The first album that both Hayes, age 25, and Jones, age 24, bought was Michael Jackson's Thriller. George Michael is a name they both mention with respect. Out in the suburbs of Brisbane both youngsters were pop fanatics, giving vent to their obsessions. Jones was so taken with the video for "Thriller" that he and a friend started digging graves behind his house so they could recreate the video; he even began work on making the famous red jacket. Hayes went one better: he built a paper maché ET and rode around with it in the basket of his bike. But the divergent paths the two took towards Savage Garden illustrate the differences between them. By the time he was 13, Jones was more interested in making music than listening to it. He'd started buying keyboards and sequencers, creating musical beds for songs. On the New Year's Eve of 1989, aged 15, he did his first two gigs back to back, with a covers band, and walked away with $400. He never went back to school after that. Financially astute, by the time he was 17 he owned his own PA, which he regularly loaded in and out of every pub and club in Queensland. "I kind of miss those moments," Jones recalls. "I enjoyed some of those innocent pressures more than these serious ones." Darren Hayes had far more trouble realising his dreams. "My whole life," he declares, "being a singer or performer was all I ever wanted to do." But growing up in one of Brisbane's rougher suburbs didn't make this easy. There's an undercurrent of anger in Hayes when he describes those years, as if he's still upset at how people tried to deny his dreams. "Most people I went to school with had two babies before they were 20. One guy is in jail for armed robbery. Another one died in a car crash while on cocaine. Another one is a pimp. That was the level of my peers. I didn't know a single person who was even a singer. My family weren't that encouraging - which is not a criticism - but my career choice was the most alien thing you could do in my family." Hayes started studying journalism at university, but then threw it in. "My mission was to be a star," he remembers, speaking with an earnestness which can easily veer into melodrama. With his then girlfriend, a fellow Madonna fanatic, the pair auditioned for theatre college. "I got in, she didn't, so I gave it all up for her. And three months later she dumped me. I was gutted." Hayes started a Bachelor of Education majoring in Primary School Teaching, "something I did not have a drop of passion about." Still obsessed with his dreams of fame, he was sitting in a lecture in 1992, reading a Brisbane street paper, when he saw a "Singer Wanted" ad for a local covers band, Red Edge. Replying to the ad he found himself in a band room, being stared down by Jones and the rest of the band. Red Edge didn't know any of Hayes's favourites, while the prospective vocalist ("I always knew I could sing, I knew I had soul") hated their Oz rock/top 40 repertoire. He sang a piece from Little Shop of Horrors, and even though his voice broke halfway through, he was in. It was not an easy adjustment. Hayes is not technically inclined, and he perversely refused to learn the words to the band's set, relying on lyrics sheets instead ("I still don't know the words to 'Khe Sanh'," he announces with pride). The experience, he concludes, was "hideous". Hayes is walking down a corridor to a meet and greet. In the lounge, Hayes is joined by Jones, fresh from dinner. Five girls - before some shows the number has been as high as 50 - appear breathless and nervous. There's nothing studied about teen hysteria, it has an immediacy which distances it from the adult world. Savage Garden are comfortable with it. "So, would you like us to sign some stuff?" asks Jones genially. Tickets, CDs and a stuffed bear are produced. Photographs are taken. One of the girls is red in the face because she's not taking in enough oxygen. "You all go to school, don't you?" asks Hayes. The girls indicate yes. "Well let me give you a lesson about school. All the kids that were popular end up on the dole with babies. All the nerds end up pop stars." "Hey!" retorts Jones. "I was never a nerd." "Darren is brutally honest, even to himself," answers Jones when asked to describe his bandmate. "Sometimes he's his own worst critic. He's so honest that anything he's feeling comes to the surface, which really helps clear the air in the type of intense relationship we have. He reminds me of a kid, not in a bad way, but in his naivity." Asked the same question, Hayes replies, "He's probably the most intelligent person I've ever met in my life. He doesn't say anything unless he's thought it through and it's right. It might take him two or three days, but he'll come to you and say, 'I think you look really insecure when you do that. I'm just being honest.' And you'll go red because he's absolutley right. Intelligent. Calm and confident. He's devoid of insecurity." When U2 brought the Zoo TV tour to Australia in 1993, Red Edge was scheduled to play a residency in Alice Springs. Darren Hayes didn't have to think for long. He left the band. But the other thing he was pondering was writing songs with Daniel Jones. The two had slowly developed a rapport, and Hayes was impressed that Jones and several other band members already had a music publishing deal. The actual songs, however, he hated. "They were watered down 1927," he laments. "It wasn't really my thing," says Jones. "But then I hooked up with Darren and left that band." The pair began to experiment. Happily working by himself at home, Jones would create the musical backing, Hayes would suggest refinements and then add his vocals. The fourth song they wrote together was their astral retooling of "She's Leaving Home", "To The Moon & Back," and afterwards they knew they were on to something. "I turned around," says Jones, "and said, 'This is as good as anything out there. It's as good as U2, or a Seal song - the benchmarks.' That's when we became really serious." Savage Garden's five song demo - the duo envisaged themselves as a studio project and were heavily influenced by U2's Atchung Baby - was well-recieved, although the pair were disheartened by the amount of music industry players whose first queries to them were, "What do you look like?" and "Can you dance?" The duo eventually signed with veteran manager John Woodruff (Baby Animals, Diesel, Icehouse) in 1995 and he remains the linchpin of the Savage Garden organisation and their business partner. It was a relationship forged in adversity. Because they couldn't get a record deal (whether because no one could see the band's potential or because no one was willing to give Woodruff a deal for his own record label is unclear), Woodruff self-financed the album, bringing the pair to Sydney for eight months to record at the home studio of veteran producer Charles Fisher )Hoodoo Gurus, 1927). Hayes first choice for a producer was George Michael. Living in a Kings Cross Hotel on a diet of noodles and missing their families, Savage Garden struggled to finish their album. Their doubts were constant, their aims shifting each month. Woodruff licensed the album to start-up label Roadshow Music, whose early signings had been anything but auspicious. Their first single, "I Want You" - a Hayes tale about an extraordinarily vivid dream where he met and fell in love with someone so deeply that when he lost them upon waking he became depressed - was released in June 1996. "What makes me laugh about our record is that we couldn't get a deal, so we signed to the joke of the industry, Roadshow," Hayes explains. "We had dodgy artwork, dodgy videos. We had trouble getting airplay at the start. Basically, we fulfilled every criteria to be unearthed by Triple J." [Triple J is an Australian youth radio station that plays alternative music] "The day I realised how commercial we were was the day I realised that Triple J didn't playlist 'I Want You'. I was thinking that it would be an indie-pop hit that they'd play. Then it was like, 'Actually, you're the most played band on the Austereo network.'" He pauses, then smiles. "And I'll take that any day." The band did their first in-store appearance as "I Want You" climbed to number three on the charts. "All these 13 and 14-year-olds turned up, screaming 'Darren! and 'Daniel!'" remembers Jones. "I was like, "Oh f**k!' I didn't want to go through that." By the time "Moon & Back" and then "Truly Madly Deeply" had gone to number one, to be followed by their self-titled debut album in March 1997, Savage Garden had acclimatised to their new surroundings. Hayes and Jones make no bones about making commercial music, but under that banner they see a world of subtle differences. "I think the best pop is the one that shoots from the hip," asserts Hayes. "What troubles me sometimes is that we've always wanted to be completely true to ourselves, but people always assume that since we make pop music it has to be calculated and all about marketing. It was never that. There are a lot of pop bands and vocal bands which just aren't real. They're not coming from a real place." "What's so magical about the record we made is that it's so innocent and earnest. It went out there and said this is what we want to be. We didn't care about hip or cool. It was unassuming. I think we write really good pop songs, we have a great ear for a melody and we have a directness when it comes to emotion." Savage Garden's show is mildly choreographed, well-designed and given to U2 homages (which Hayes happily admits to) that the young audience (seeded with the over-30s brought in by "Truly Madly Deeply") scream along to. With just one album and a handful of b-sides to draw on, there are noticeable low points. But live, Savage Garden are a guitar band. Jones plays more guitar than keyboards, while their stage sound is fleshed out by a rhythm section, extra guitarist and backing singers. "I think we're a pop band desperatley wanting to be a rock & roll band and I think that's what's funny about us," claims Hayes. The strangest moment is when Hayes, who has so much desire and extreme emotion projected at him from an audience he works relentlessly, dedicates a song to his wife, Colby. Fans want their pop stars to be free and magical, not married with a home in the Brisbane suburbs. Hayes is vocal on every topic bar one: his wife of three years. "I think it's strange to be young and married," he says, choosing his words carefully. "Imagine being young and married and a pop star. It's tough. We refuse to be an example pf a happy marriage to anyone. The reason I very rarely talk about Colby or do a Women's Weekly spread about our new glamour house is that it's hard enough being married without being a celebrity couple. When you're happy together they love you, but Jesus, when there's problems they don't care, they tear you to bits. And I'm not ready for that." Both Hayes and Jones (who is also in a long-term relationship) decided from the start not to discuss their private lives with the media. On their first tour in May 1997 a tabloid journalist who wanted to follow up his interview with Hayes with a quick phone chat was directed by Woodruff to call him on his mobile: "His wife Colby has it." "The next day he writes some article in the paper: 'Exclusive: Singer Tries to Hide Wife!'" spits Hayes, recalling the spectre of John Lennon, who really did keep his first marriage a secret under management orders. "When did I ever say I wasn't married? When did I ever say I wanted to talk about my private life? What the f**k does it matter? Is my music different because I have a wedding ring?"

For one second I knew what it was like to be Savage Garden. After their solf-out show I leave the Entertainment Centre. Their road manager directs me out the door to the car park. As soon as I open it the 500 fans awaiting the band's departure scream in anticipation. It is electrifying, even a little scary. But when they see it's only an anonymous figure, 500 fans go, "Ohhhhh." Pop music is a cruel, cruel mistress. Last October, the flight to Sydney for the ARIAs, where they would clean up 10 awards, Daniel Jones told Darren Hayes that he couldn't take it anymore and that he was ready to leave Savage Garden. The music, which is all Jones really cared about, had been overtaken by promotion. Instead of being allowed to hide away in a recording studio, Jones was giving 40 interviews a day in America, traipsing across Europe miming on TV shows in every country. "It was pissing me off. Music was becoming more about talking about it than actually making it. I had to get back to the studio. I enjoy it and I miss it. The whole moster size of this machine takes it away from you," he notes. "The whole pep talk I now give video directors and photographers is that I don't want to be up the front. I've drawn a line for myself, and that's the compromise I had to make to deal with being in this band. Now everyone understands what it is about these two people. One wants to be here, the other wants to be here." He holds up his hands to indicate the difference, the gap between them is a metre wide. "That's the deal we made around the time of the ARIAs, but to be honest I think I've always done it," claims Hayes later. "I've always been lumbered with it because everyone assumes I love it. And lately I'm the one saying I want out, I can't do this anymore. If we ever broke up it would be because one of us wanted to be George Michael and one of us wanted to be Dave Stewart." Right now though, the topic the pair are focusing on is their next album. "We matured faster than the album," Jones says. In their mid-20s now, they're not always comfortable playing the songs they wrote as 19 and 20-year-olds. At the end of their concert Hayes tells the cheering crowd, "We have to go away now and think it all up again." "It's seriously not about chart position," clarifies Hayes. "I want a career, so if it sells half as well as this one, thank you, I'll take that. I believe a career is about ups and downs. It shouldn't be a steady gradient. The next record has to be true to itself. It won't be a knee-jerk reaction to critics. To turn around and make a Portishead album would be a big mistake. We'll f**k around with technology, we'll f**k around with drumbeats. We're courting William Orbit at the moment, because we heard the new Madonna record and I thought, 'I like what you added to that record. You added spice and flavour without taking over.' And that's what we're looking for. We want to grow up a little bit. And we're prepared to do whatever it takes." Darren Hayes was thinking that Bono was a wise old man, a wizard. The icon was talking about life, how he searches every day for new inspiration, music, their show, and Hayes was rapt, once more the little boy in love with a mysterious extra-terrestrial. And then he started to tell Bono how he felt, like a rag doll that had been twisted around too much. How sometimes after a show he considered himself a prosititute because he had to give so much from his soul to every person in the room. Bono leaned closer to Hayes and grabbed his hand, putting it to his chest. Hayes could feel the pulmonary kick of the Irishman's heartbeat. And then he spoke: "As long as the music comes from here," he said, pushing Haye's hand harder against his chest, "then it's going to scream louder than any of the kids will." And for the few seconds that followed, Darren Hayes felt at peace with himself.

#interview #savage garden #darren hayes #daniel jones #1998 #rolling stone

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