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yoo-jeongneon · 1 year ago

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the sticky tab series | sticky tab four: 4B

× minors/ageless/empty blogs dni. you will be blocked. ×

× series masterlist × main masterlist × × <- previous × next -> × seventeen (ot13) x gn!reader genre: thriller, mystery, drama warnings: journalist!reader, unknown occupation!vernon, explicit language, vaping, reader kinda gets called out, two undisclosed member mentions, written as a journal entry in the first person, dates given in dd/mm/yyyy word count: 1.6k taglist: @hipsdofangirl × @strawberri-uyu × @asyre × @minhui896

"How about I phone him and let him know his master plan worked?"

Joshua said the two words so sarcastically I almost snorted. We had talked about the message, and I even gave it to him to read. Joshua wasn't surprised, but he also couldn't believe it.

His suggestion put me at odds. Aside from the man from 3A, the guy who wrote the message was the one I felt most worried to be confronted by. Joshua recognised this in my expression. "Trust me, Vernon's not a guy to be scared of." He unlocked his phone and tapped a few buttons.

Vernon.

The dialling tone rang so loudly I could tell Joshua had it on speaker. Eventually, a low voice spoke. "Joshua? What do you want?"

"You actually decided to run your smart mouth off in a note and leave it on the desk at reception, didn't you?"

Vernon cackled at that. "I told you I would, didn't I? Nobody believed me, well, apart from Soonyoung."

Soonyoung?

"Yeah, well your attempt at being funny has kinda cost you a bit."

The whole world seemed to go silent. Vernon didn't speak until he muttered a genuinely perplexed, "What?"

Joshua looked at me with a smug grin on his face. "Leave the door to your apartment open, you'll see why in a sec."

My face grew.. unamused at this. It was clear to me that at least some residents here were no strangers to playing games and pulling pranks but, to be pushed as a mystery to be revealed didn't feel so great.

I suppose at that point I realised just how some of them felt.

Before Vernon could reply, Joshua ended the call. He set his phone on the table and stood up, inviting me to leave the apartment with him and go downstairs to meet Vernon. I shoved my journal and pen back in my bag and followed him out of his home.

We headed down to the fourth floor. Music was coming from 4B, and 4A was comparatively quiet. I wondered if the Soonyoung that Vernon had mentioned on the phone lived in 4A..

Joshua waltzed over to 4B, but before he could knock, the door opened, and Joshua let out an, "Ah!"

"The fuck is going-" When he noticed me he jumped. "Fucking he- who the fuck-" I myself flinched at his reaction. He pointed towards me and spoke to Joshua between gritted teeth, words I couldn't make out, but I knew they were no short of bewilderment.

Joshua waved a hand. "Calm the fuck down, they just read your note and y'know.. everything you put in it."

Vernon looked as though his entire life was going to shatter. "I just put that note there to be funny! I didn't think anyone was gonna come here and read it!"

"Well, someone has! You've got a lot to answer for. Have fun!" Joshua waved, then passed me by with a smile before going back up to his apartment.

Vernon and I stood in the hallway at a distance that seemed like acres apart. I didn't want to take a single step forward, visions of the floor collapsing running rings around my head. He clutched his short, black hair and muttered something to the effect of, 'you've gotta be fucking kidding me..'

His words came back to me - 'I just put that note there to be funny!' - and told him that we didn't need to talk about it if it was all just a joke that I took way too seriously.

He let out a long, drawn sigh and said, "Do you have the note?" I confirmed and took it out of my bag to prove it. "Did you.. actually go up to 6B?"

I explained about the phone ringing at reception, and how it was 6B - Junhui - that called. I went on to tell him what subsequently happened, and he nearly disintegrated into the carpet.

"So that's the noise I heard not too long ago? Junhui and Wonwoo arguing again because.. And now you're here because.." I hid my lips and stared at the floor. "Fucking hell, Junhui."

"Again, I can leave if you-"

"No- No, um.. I guess.." He stepped to the side. "There is something I'd like to say."

name: hansol vernon chwe

date of birth: 18/02/1998

date moved in: 06/05/2019

The first thing Vernon did was turn the music off. It was 2000s indie rock, a band I probably knew but couldn't place. He exhaled and turned back to me. "I still cannot believe you read the fucking note."

I answered him honestly, "It caught my attention. Reading through it I could sense frustration. I didn't know anyone lived here, I thought it was empty just like everyone else. Finding this note is what told me differently."

"And then Junhui decided to phone reception and.. here we are." He took a seat on a bean bag chair in the corner of the room near a widescreen TV and pulled something out of his pocket. Right away I could see it was a vape. He told me to take a seat on the sofa across from him, and so I did.

I unfolded the piece of paper in my hand and decided to read some of it aloud, "'You are kind of a nosy fucker though.. And you're probably a journalist. Even worse.'"

Vernon snorted a laugh and took a hit of his vape. "I said that 'cause really, who likes journalists?" I hummed to myself; it is true, journalists aren't particularly loved. "But I don't really mean anything by it. Honestly, I was kinda freaked out that someone would genuinely visit this place and wanna write a story about it. I figured if someone did turn up, they must've done a lot of digging to work out there were people living here."

That was exactly what Wonwoo had said. I looked up at him. Vernon asked me for my name, so I told him. I then mentioned the footnote he added about not going to 3A.

"Okay, that was a bit mean of me, I must admit," he said. "He's not rude, he just doesn't like journalists. He probably won't wanna listen to whatever reasons you have for showing up. That's why I mentioned Junhui. If there was anyone who would actually wanna talk to a journalist, it was him since.. he was one, y'know."

We sat quietly for a while. I was unsure of where to take the conversation. By this point I was in way too deep, and understood more about Drawbridge than I ever thought I was going to, or cared to know for that matter.

Vernon eventually questioned why I even showed up. I explained, and I did think myself a broken record, but I knew if I ended up meeting all of them, they were all going to be curious.

"So.. you thought this building was completely empty?" I affirmed this. "Nowhere during your research of this place did anything turn up that there were people living here?"

"There have been theories, but I dismissed them as speculation." Which was true; people had wondered for months whether or not someone had actually taken up residence.

"You fell into the narrative of the 'Silent Dweller'."

My jaw clenched.

"Seriously.. who could really actually believe that no one had lived here at all?"

My heart stopped.

"I'm kinda glad you picked up the note, even if I did just leave it to be funny. Proved my point that if someone wants to go snooping, they'll latch onto any kind of evidence."

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Vernon hopped up to answer it, and I was left frozen to the sofa, head emptying of any and all thoughts.

Upon opening the door, I heard one name, "Wonwoo."

"Is that journalist still here?" It was quite muffled, but I still picked up the words.

"Over there." I could feel both pairs of eyes boring into my back.

"N, is it?"

When Wonwoo called my name, I felt compelled to stand up and face him. Out of shock more than anything, but in retrospect it's no surprise that he learned my name; I think it must've been from Junhui.

"Can I.. have a word?" Vernon shot him a look, but Wonwoo ignored him. I rolled my shoulders back as best as I could and promptly left 4B. Behind me the door slammed shut, which startled both of us. Vernon had nothing more to say to me.

"Junhui and I have had a.. chat. You wanna know some things about Drawbridge, huh? You're not one of those.. shady journalists about to put us on billboards?"

Vernon's words stuck with me. At the end of the day, I did read the note. I did pick up the phone. I did answer Junhui's call to go to 6B. And now I was standing here, in front of Wonwoo, having met five out of thirteen men already and thinking I've understood more than I ever bargained for.

I shook my head before I could even think.

Wonwoo nodded once. "Let's go up to 6B. By the sounds of things, Minghao might want a word too."

I knitted my brows and followed him back up to the sixth floor. Who was Minghao?

Details of note from our discussion:

vernon shared nothing with me about the apartment, except the fact that it's hard to believe anyone fell for the 'silent dweller' narrative

he himself admits that he was mean with his note about 3A

× yoo-jeongneon ×

#seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seventeen au #seventeen fanfic #seventeen x reader #vernon x reader #⚡yoo jeongneon⚡#the sticky tab series📑

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cloveroctobers · 4 years ago

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• TALIA NASCIMENTO•

IG info/bio: @/callmetalia333 | 524k followers | Journalist | TALIA. but u may have formerly known me as user: brdf0rdsvasquiff—rip!!!1! so don’t even think about it 😌

(23) 25 going on (26) years of age

I’ve read a canon that her name is just Talia and not short for anything & I agree with that + she’s always quick to correct someone if they get it wrong too

Her hometown is Watford, England

but she was originally born in Maidenhead in the backseat of a car during a severe rainstorm

Nonetheless watford taught her all she needed to know when it came to music

She found her first love when she heard the sound of music soundtrack for the v first time as a young girl but is often nervous to admit that?

her father is Brazilian and is a firefighter

her mother is Bulgarian and works as a secretary in a elementary school

her mother is more traditional than her father when it comes to their cultures

I originally felt like she gave only child vibes but I can deff see her giving off big sis energy since she did mention she has a younger brother

V protective over her little brother

there’s a three year age difference

her parents have separated multiple times before which caused a riff in the family dynamic

The constant coming and going from her dad became quite irritating

And Talia was the most vocal by wanting them to figure it out and NOT get a divorce

Which led to talia’s commitment issues when it came to relationships herself

was born with blue eyes yet they shifted to brown once she grew

“Tom-boy” growing up & still is

netball was her sport and man was it something to see her play?! She was quick on her feet and can definitely shoot far-range with ease

Always down for contact sports too

She lost count how many bruises and scrapes she would come home with much to her mother’s horror but she would always brush it off—it was never that big of a deal to her

yet she takes time in healing her scars with homemade treatments or purchases from beauty stores when she wants to show her legs off

she didn’t get into “girly” wear until recently, she never thought too much of her body or when she started to get curves...she always hid that behind big tee’s, fitted jeans, and kicks—that’s what she was used to

she’s got broad shoulders and toned arms

had thick bushy brows that almost formed a uni brow growing up

her mother used to have her hair always plaited since she is very superstitious, believing that “the devil lives in the woman’s hair”

yet talia’s hair texture was much different than her mother’s, maybe due to the fact that her mother always had her hair up and out of the way? Talia’s hair is much bigger, heavier, and naturally curly

+ her mother used to say some harsh things in Bulgarian about her hair — that says a lot when you’re taught to hate your hair trust!!!

when she got a little older and able to manage her own hair + afford it, She learned how to love it herself and that’s all that mattered. Her hair became v important to her, it was her source of comfort

that’s the only thing she’s high maintenance about tbh

she spends a lot of money on her hair but devacurl can still piss off

diffusing is one of her fav things to do to her hair—besides washing it, and deep conditioning, after a night of letting her hair air-dry

loves rose jam

has a embroidery machine, along with a collection of her work but only one piece is showcased in her flat. She didn’t want her place to look completely like her bába’s (Bulgarian: grandmother)

her closet is filled with many Havaianas, they’re all piled up in a wicker basket and ready to tumble over on her top shelf... if she moves one of the ceramic pots her mother left in her flat for luck, that whole shelf might come crashing down

Swears drinking guaraná the next morning cures any hangover you may have

commonly sleeps in big t-shirts and panties or not or booty shorts depending on her time of the month—it’s freeing to her

Has torn her achilles due to whatever contact sport she decided to join in on during a beach vacation with her mates

has a touch of arthritis in her shoulder

this is where her love for massages came from due to injuries she’s faced

+ It’s always a good sign when you can make someone else feel better ya know?

She’s been told she’s great with her hands ;) it all takes practice

bi mami *cringe* but she likes what she likes, and feels what she feels

she kinda has a type but doesn’t want to admit that

her mother doesn’t understand this but her father easily accepted her preference/orientation

her little brother was the first she came out to, “alright!...you still suck”

always wants to fix situations WHEN it comes to HER friends but is oblivious when it’s come to her own issues whether its in relationships/friendships +

was called out by one of her friends who she often argues/butts heads with from time to time “you’re always sticking your nose in people’s business but can’t solve your own shit!”

maybe it’s the journalist in her? she’s not afraid to ask questions or look at things from a outside perspective

her group of friends are all from different ethnic backgrounds to Indian to Ethiopian

has been in and out of relationships...maybe had one stable relationship? Outside of mc but that relationship failed after a year and she feels it has something to do with her parents and how she watched their relationship unfold but won’t openly admit that

Doesn’t like to argue in relationships and often is a little undermining with how she responses to her partner’s feelings...she’s trying to be better at being understanding and listening, her mother is like this with her father

Aquarius girl + Scorpio moon + Taurus rising

loves the water + watching water sports rather than playing them since she almost drowned once by letting her confidence get the best of her

used to be a directioner and isn’t ashamed to admit that!

take me home album stan 100% bitch there’s no point in arguing!!! Buh bye!!!

She is ashamed however to admit that she used to write for them, mostly ziam fics with a touch of Harry thrown in the mix as well...take that how u will

has a few merch pieces as well, they’re mostly loungewear + that powdery perfume they dropped. YES she still has it, no she won’t sell it to u

still supports them on the low since you know, she’s a music journalist and reviewing songs is what she makes a living for so why the hell not? They will always hold a special place in her heart. She grew with those boys

she’s not in denial like Hannah that they’re get back together

If someone wants her to film a reaction vid to zayn’s new album or release a written review? She WILL. Her top 3? 1. When loves around ft Syd 2. Outside 3. Unfuckwitable

If someone wants to hear her thoughts on Harry’s mv’s + breaking down his lyrics, she’ll tell you what you NEED to know whether U agree or not she don’t give a damn lol

Can throw hands and stomp a bitch out if she needs too. Has gotten kicked out of clubs/bars for defending her friends mainly not because someone chatted shit to her, that’s whatever but once you cross her friends? It’s on

Allegra got lucky 🦶🏼☕️ and Lucy

remained super close with jake and tim as expected...Rohan’s cool too ofc! but she’s not here for their rapping shit sorry. She’ll hit them both with a quick side eye and snarl if they start or if jake wants to recite some poetry. She’s outta here

Talia hardly had issues making friends easily with the boys it was always harder with the girls :/

they hang out all the time!

she actually became close with sammi as well, which was nice to have another girl friend around even tho they weren’t together in the house long like the others. She’s spontaneous, cute, resourceful, and kind so talia had no issue reaching out to her first to see what she was about outside of the show

don’t even ask her about what she thinks of the new seasons, she’s not here to chat shit and have her words twisted like she’s watched many of the cast deal with. If you want to talk about the over kill use of pop as the soundtrack for each season, then yeah she’ll talk to you about that

doesn’t use social media much, she finds it funny how whenever she does pop back in people are begging her to post SOMETHING so that they know that she’s alive

Pretty private

she also can’t grasp why they want her to do the bussit challenge? Lmao like hey don’t get her wrong, some of them were pretty great but she’s barely got a bum to bounce and little booties matter ofc!!! but she can’t see herself doing it unless she’s drunk off her arse!!!

maybe mc can convince her...for the fans duh!!! “Give the ppl what they want! Talia! It’s not like you won’t be around music!” “I’ll think about it...nah.”

she’s been busier since the show, able to tour more and WRITE which is what she loves to do

Her secret pleasure is watching those nurse shows and firefighting shows in her free time and those singing shows you already know that’s a given

Wanted to be some form of a nurse growing up but knew she could help people in another way

*inserts* “music Is The best Medicine” overused but true quote here!!

I feel like she’s a r&b lover

listens to those hour long rain sounds on YouTube to help herself fall asleep

she‘s not the best cook but she’s a foodie and she’s down to try new food always

occasionally her and Tim are jake’s Guinea pigs when he’s whipping something up for his menu

and hates eating the same things all the time unless it’s breakfast! There’s not too much more you can do with that

that’s also her specialty, making breakfast for u in bed

Morning afters with her are intimate but humorous. She’ll poke fun if you’re both looking crazy, always joking and in the best mood whether things got physical or not she’s just happy to have you here 🥲

I think her love language is quality time

if you’re playing her route and Lucy is the ex, and you’ve decided to fully commit to each other I deff see Lucy still trying to pull some shit outside of the show just because she feels like she can but once Talia see’s that it’s really starting to get to you despite how much you try to brush it off or snap at Lucy or even Talia!!! Talia is on Lucy’s ass in seconds! She doesn’t need a ex to ruin her possible future , “you’re not gonna fuck up this good thing I’ve got just cause you’re flimsy at relationships babe, so go be a cunt somewhere else or you’ll be sorry. I promise.”

anthem: Snow Tha Product — Shut up

#litg #litg talia #litg jake #litg Tim #litg Rohan #litg mc #litg oc #litg Hannah #litg3 #litg2 #litg moodboard #litg headcanon #litg headcanons #she’s my fav along with sammi and this is my first time getting to know sammi since I’m in talias route #I’m going to try and reduce these to not making them as lengthy lol #this has also sat in my draft for about a week now #litg sammi #litg Allegra #litg Lucy

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jjk-biased · 4 years ago

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[hyungline pretending you aren’t dating]

requested by: anonymous (can i request that one idol! au from the special prompt list with jin or yoongi? paired to a fem reader, and somehow, dispatch discovered they were actually dating. Thank you!!)

also requested by: anonymous (The idol! au where they pretend to not be dating but somehow perceived as enemies by the public with namjoon, paired with a female reader, and how the public reacts when they find out when they were actually dating)

a/n: first of all, i apologize for the long wait!! i was quite unwell these past few days because of stress from school and so i couldn’t work. also, i forgot to add more of the public’s reaction in the fic itself so to the anon who asked, and whoever wants, please tell me if you want me to do a continuation (i was thinking fake text form)

genre: fluff

words: 2.5k overall

synopsis: having to hide your relationship, you tried your best not to make your long-time relationship obvious to the world. you did so well that they thought you were enemies.

masterlist | events masterlist

Your relationship started before the both of you even entered BigHit, so management couldn’t really ask you to break up-- or else they’d lose you two to other companies who could also see the potential. Albeit loose, their only rule was for you two to pretend that you weren’t dating until they see it fit for the two of you to reveal the long relationship you two had.

Apparently, you two did well. In fact, you did so well that the public perceived you two as rivals.

Enemies.

Oh how wrong they were.

kim seokjin

“This is so funny… They believe you hate your s/o, hyung! Look,” Namjoon snorted as he showed one of the posts he saw in his secret twitter fan account. (yes, i swear that guy has one)

“Why do you guys ship Jin and Y/N? It’s obvious they hate… each other,” Jin read aloud, falling to the floor as he laughed.

Jin supposed it was because of the limited aired interaction between you two. But he could never hate you, boy was too whipped to even be angry at you. He loved you so much.

You were just as whipped as he was and were facing quite a similar predicament in the dressing room next door with your manager.

“When we told you two that you couldn’t reveal your status, it was never part of it to let the public think you two hated each other,” Your manager jested, too amused to see that this is how the people saw you two.

You sighed as your manager continued to voice out their thoughts.

“Honestly! They should see how you two are in undocumented events�� Like horny teenagers who couldn’t take their hands off of each other! It’s like you’re almost havi-” You shut your manager up before they could even say anything else and embarrass you further.

“But seriously, if anything goes out… I think management will allow it now.”

You mull over the words of your manager before you left, thinking about how convenient it would be to finally scream to the world that you love Kim Seokjin, and that he loves you back.

I mean, who wouldn’t?

Jin met up with you at the parking lot, hidden from any prying stalkers and media that wanted to get a scoop of whatever was inside the world’s best artist’s company. You returned the bear hug he gave, albeit distracted, and remained in his arms. To get you to notice him, Jin poked you on the cheek and giggled internally when he saw your confused look.

“What are you thinking about?”

You sighed and relayed what your manager had mentioned, “I don’t think they plan to say anything about us but if word goes out, they won’t deny it either.”

Jin hummed, “I suppose it’s because of the ongoing discussion on whether we’re enemies or not.”

“But they are right about that. I hate you, especially because you cheat on Mario kart,” You grin, sticking your tongue out.

Jin faked offense, playing along and saying that you should stop dreaming about beating him.

At that moment, Jin looked so irresistible that you couldn’t pass up on kissing him. As you reached up and connected your lips, you two heard something.

A click of a camera. In the most guarded parking lot. Where you two were kissing.

Ah shit.

Jin sighed, annoyed that someone was ruining your moment, and chose to break your intimate moment so he could cover you with his broad shoulders. He was always a gentleman and would always prioritize your well-being even if he’s also uncomfortable.

Dispatch finally got something from sneaking in and they were sure to post those photos as soon as possible because it would gain a lot of clicks. And a lot of clicks meant a lot of moola. For them, that is.

The next day, Dispatch released your photos with Jin, causing a plethora of reactions from the community. Your manager was prepared enough that BigHit could post its response two hours from the start of the fiasco.

While it wasn’t the most ideal way of going public, the thought that the world finally knew you’ve loved Seokjin for a long time brought you ease.

min yoongi

The world knew you as one of BTS’ producers and owner of some of the hidden vocals in a few songs. Unlike Adora and the rest, you were very open with your friendship with the boys and would be often seen in the background of some music videos for the fun of it.

Somehow, you were also included in some “ships” as fans liked to call it. While you never minded being paired off to the guys who you’d always see as friends, you were more than bothered that the world decided you and Min Yoongi hated each other. You? And your long-time boyfriend?

They should see how he is when he’s alone with you.

Just like right now. You were comfortably laying on the bean bag you brought to Yoongi’s studio so you could have some sort of time with him before he got too busy with their comeback. This is how you two would spend your time-- when one of you is working on new tracks, the other would be loitering about in the studio, ready for when the one working wants to cuddle to de-stress.

You were scrolling on your phone, using your fan account to keep yourself updated on whatever was going on in stan twitter, and came across a particular thread that pointed out why you shouldn’t be shipped with Min Yoongi. That very short thread garnered a lot of attention, and you could see that people were divided.

They shouldn’t. You were obviously with Yoongi and you couldn’t understand why they perceived your fleeting glances as “avoiding eye contact.”

Yoongi must have heard your snickers and sighs because he stopped fine tuning this english track to look at your sprawled form, “What’s with you?” You raised your head to meet his gaze. Is this avoiding contact, huh? You shook your head and told him that the world was an idiot.

Not that you could do anything about it though.

Yoongi stretched as he chuckled, asking if you wanted to go to the small unknown cafe down the road for a breather. You agreed and were excited that you get to go on a simple, spontaneous date with the love of your life. Yoongi held your left hand in his as you two walked to the cafe.

Well, that was a mistake.

You two underestimated Dispatch’s abilities to sneak and follow you two. You also paid no mind towards Manager Sejin’s offer to bring you to the cafe via car ride. The journalist must have had a field day because he was able to take photos of you two holding hands, you two kissing, and you two laughing at the barren cafe.

As you went back to the building, you two were met with a very stressed Namjoon and a defeated Manager Sejin. Dispatch was able to post everything before you could even return back to BigHit. Oops.

Curiously peeking at your phone as the four of you went to Bang PD’s office, you could see that a lot were shocked yet happy that the supposed enemies of BigHit were actually dating.

Jokes on you, world. I’m dating Min Yoongi.

“What are we gonna do about this?”

...Bang PD please don’t fire me.

jung hoseok

“Do you hate me?” Hoseok whispered, quite nervous to ask you such a question while the others were on taking a break outside of the practice room. You were BigHit’s choreographer and assistant to the legendary Son Seungdeuk, and were previously teaching them the dance you, Hoseok, and Seungdeuk have come up with for their newest track, Dynamite.

To say the least, you were taken aback that Hoseok had thoughts like these. If it weren’t for the keep quiet rule set by BigHit, you would have told every person you came across with that Jung Hoseok loved you back. You immediately assured him that you love him so much, even more than you loved your favorite snack.

“What made you think so?” You asked softly, sitting on the floor beside him.

Hoseok hummed, deciding it was best to show you rather than tell. He pulled his phone out and opened Weverse, their app, and scrolled to the latest posts that said you and your boyfriend seemed to hate each other. You never really thought much on how the world saw you two but this particular reaction from the fans shocked you.

“Hmm… I never got to the bottom of why they thought we hated each other but their only evidence is me glaring at you from the back of the camera,” Hoseok said, his mood being lifted by how baseless everyone was being.

“You were trying your best not to laugh during the dance practice shoot, thanks to my good looks,” You whipped your hair in confidence, laughing your ass out with him when you two remembered.

Before you could even kiss his cheek, the younger members barged in and faux vomited at the sight. Mr. Son was also pretending to gag, but he should see himself when he’s with his wife at their company gatherings.

After the practice, everyone was playing around and making selfies. Namjoon must have not noticed that he faintly had you and Hoseok laughing in the background because he posted the photo immediately.

Nothing could be done anymore, even if he deleted the picture. The “Are you two enemies or lovers?” debate grew much more because of the picture that even Dispatch decided to meddle to get to the bottom of it.

The next day, while they were preparing for the live stage as you monitored their movements, will forever change the course of the enemies versus lovers discourse. You and Hoseok were near the backstage, but still visible if someone looked hard enough. Look hard enough Dispatch did. You were laughing as Hoseok striked silly poses, earning a few pecks and hugs from you as support.

They were thriving as they dangled from a tree, using one of the lenses with extreme zoom, and successfully getting a few shots here and there of your interaction.

After that event, they immediately posted the collection of the photos that were taken without consent, consequently confirming the thoughts that formed from Namjoon’s latest post.

You two really didn’t mind their opinion when that article was published. You two were occupied by the impending scolding you’ll get from Mr. Son and Manager Sejin.

At least, the world began to see the sense from your past interactions, questioning themselves why they ever thought otherwise.

You were with Hoseok, and it was obvious from before. The world finally knew that.

kim namjoon

Fans speculated that Namjoon had someone in his heart. It wasn’t that obvious but they were able to connect certain videos and photos, coming to the conclusion that Namjoon was in a relationship.

But they were very sure it wasn’t you.

You were one of the very few actors of BigHit, currently working on a romantic comedy drama alongside BTS’ Jin, and the “someone” in question for Namjoon’s heart. Because you and Jin were co-actors, BTS would often visit your set when they could. They would also send food trucks for you two with your funny candid pictures and unreleased selfies.

Namjoon took this chance to visit you when he was available because your moments with him have become scarce when their comeback coincided with your drama. When not in shoot, selected staff could see you in your van cuddling with your very tall boyfriend. You’d easily fall asleep when he’s with you and your manager was more than happy to know you could rest properly if Namjoon’s around.

It was one of those days when you were out in a province to film for the next episode and Namjoon was free to tag along.

Dispatch being dispatch, knew ahead that your drama would take place in the quiet province, so they sent one of their journalists to get some tea on the Y/N x Jin ship that bloomed from the drama. Sadly, they also had someone inside the filming crew (it was one of those interns that was unaware of you and Joon) in case someone discovers the actual journalist stalking them.

Namjoon never got out of your van ever since your filming started. He didn’t want to get in the way of your work process, opting to stay inside to read an ebook that he started some day ago. Visiting twitter for awhile, he came across one of his mutual’s questionable thread of lies that stated you were enemies with your long-time boyfriend and current fiance.

He had a rare blank look on his face, speechless at how this mutual of his must have come up with this out-of-this-world conclusion. Namjoon decided it was best to end the mutual because he didn’t want any bullshit on his timeline. He was right to do so anyway because that ex-mutual of his got exposed for being a solo stan and an overall bad person.

Moments later, the door to the van opened and revealed a very stressed-looking you wanting nothing more than to sleep in his arms for the entirety of your 30-minute break. Namjoon grinned softly at your grabby hands, fixing the chairs so you could have enough space to sleep comfortably.

That short time was enough for the mole (the intern who actually worked for dispatch) to see that there was something going on with you and Kim Namjoon. He couldn’t sneak pictures, however, because your manager was quick to close the door and give him the stink eye. Mr. Mole relayed his newfound information to the journalist lurking in the trees and their focus shifted to you and Namjoon instead because this would take the world by storm.

Your manager felt that something might happen that day so he had discussed with Bang PD and Manager Sejin prior on precautions to take. Scanning around the crew, the person he was most suspicious of was clearly communicating when phones weren’t allowed, so he sent an alert to Bang PD and other people involved with this concern.

You were fast asleep in Namjoon’s arms so only he was made aware of what was about to take place. BigHit was ready to post their confirmation that you were way past dating, on the way to marriage and you weren’t with Jin at all. (Jin was with someone else, but they couldn’t disclose that yet).

The moment Dispatch had released photos of you not only with Jin but also with Namjoon, BigHit immediately dropped the truth. They dismissed Dispatch’s accusations of you “whoring” around with both idols, sharing that you and Namjoon share a long past and will continue to share the future with each other.

It was a win for both you two and BigHit. You could finally go on dates and post about each other. And BigHit?

They finally sued Dispatch.

permanent taglist: @luvinseokjinnie @97faerie @amoreguk @bbyjoonies @borednia @tanumiki @taescake

#bts #bts x reader #hyungline #hyungline reaction #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #female reader #lin's special event

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tsuki-chibi · 5 years ago

Text

Passionfruit (November) Day 19: Gear

Catch up on AO3: Passionfruit

————

Adrien swallowed as the car pulled up out in front of the school’s gates. Marinette’s expectation was a heavy weight. His stomach fluttered with nerves when he saw that Nino was standing there as per usual, waiting for him. Nino grinned at him as Adrien climbed out of the car.

“Hey Dude!”

“I think we should go to the zoo after school!” Adrien blurted out. He was pretty sure he heard the Gorilla snort. He frowned and shut the door, watching as the car sped away. Okay, that hadn’t exactly been smooth, but at least he’d asked.

‘Mon minou, that was the very opposite of smooth,’ Marinette thought dryly.

‘Shut up,’ Adrien thought back, pouting.

“You want to go to the zoo?” Nino repeated, looking a little baffled.

Adrien nodded. “They have a new panther exhibit. I already asked my dad and he said yes.”

“Your dad said yes?” Nino seemed more amazed by this than anything. “Seriously?”

“I told him how educational it would be for me to see animals in person. I’ve never been,” Adrien confessed. “My Chinese language got canceled tonight because my instructor is sick, so the alternative was me going home to watch anime. It was pretty funny how quickly he cracked and said yes.”

“Niiiiiiice,” Nino said. “But wouldn’t you rather go with Mari?”

“She’s coming too! So is Alya,” Adrien said, aiming hard for nonchalant.

Nino narrowed his eyes. “Alya too, huh?”

‘He’s onto you! Act innocent!” Marinette thought, a little panicked. Adrien calmed her, smiling at Nino.

“Well, yeah. Alya is my friend. Or at least, I think she is,” he said, realizing that he’d never actually clarified that with Alya.

“Of course she is,” Nino said quickly. “I just thought you and Marinette might want some time alone, that’s all. It’ll be awkward with me and Alya tagging along.”

“Mari and I get lots of time alone. I want to spend time with all my friends,” Adrien said. “But if you don’t want to come, I understand.” He sighed, looking downcast.

“No! No, I can make it. Who knows? I might even learn something.” Nino chuckled and nudged Adrien in the ribs. “Right after school, you said? Tell me you’re planning to pig out on junk food for dinner.”

“You know it,” Adrien said with a grin.

‘Mission accomplished,’ he thought to Marinette.

‘Great job!’ she thought happily. ‘Alya and I are walking to school together. I’ll ask her on my way.’

‘Good luck,’ Adrien thought. He didn’t envy Marinette. Alya was way more suspicious than Nino was and would have way more questions.

He followed Nino into the school, blatantly eavesdropping on the girl’s conversation. Naturally, Alya was incredibly curious to know why she and Nino were being invited along on Adrien’s and Marinette’s date. Marinette demurred as much as she could, but Alya wasn’t easily swayed by the thought that Adrien and Marinette got plenty of time alone. Everyone knew how busy Adrien’s schedule was.

‘Help!’ Marinette thought as she and Alya approached the school. ‘She won’t stop quizzing me. This is never going to work if we can’t get Alya to come. She totally knows what we’re trying to do.’

‘We’re in the classroom,’ Adrien thought, which of course Marinette already knew. He could feel them approaching and geared himself up.

The door slid open and Alya walked in, followed by Marinette. Even without their soul bond, Adrien would’ve been able to tell how badly Marinette was struggling. Her eyes were practically screaming for an interference, not that Adrien could blame her. Alya was in full journalist mode. He almost hated to speak up and bring the full force of her curiosity onto him.

But, faithful to the end, he put himself in the line of fire for his lady.

“Hey Alya, are you coming to the zoo with us after school?” he asked.

Alya’s head snapped around to him. “You sure you want me to? Seems kinda weird you’d want Nino and me around cramping your style.”

Adrien cocked his head with his best innocent expression. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I just wanted to spend an afternoon with all of my friends, but I get that the zoo isn’t that interesting to everyone. I mean, I’ve never been before. It would be my first time and everything.” He sighed loudly. “But it’s okay if you don’t wanna.”

“Oh,” Alya said, visibly softening. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. The four of us never get to hang out!” Adrien said. He could see Marinette trying not to laugh over Alya’s shoulder.

‘Kitty, you are a fantastic manipulator,’ she thought.

“Well... okay,” Alya said, walking around Nino’s desk to go up to her own desk. It didn’t escape Adrien’s notice that Nino and Alya barely looked at each other, but that was possibly because Nino was turning to stare at him.

“Dude,” Nino said. “You totally played both me and Alya, didn’t you? What are you up to?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Adrien said breezily, turning back to his work. He heard Marinette giggle as she passed his desk and grinned down at his notebook. He was pretty sure that both Alya and Nino suspected what was going on, but he also knew that both of them would show up anyway. Nino because he was a good friend, and Alya because, if nothing else, her sense of curiosity would drive her crazy otherwise.

The school day dragged by. Adrien really was excited about spending time with his friends, and when the bell finally rang he leaped out of his seat. Nino, Alya and Marinette all laughed at him as he grabbed his gear and rushed over to the door. They followed him outside; the zoo was only about a fifteen minute walk away so they had all agreed upon walking.

Adrien fell into step beside Nino, while Marinette and Alya walked ahead of them. He shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled happily as he listened to Nino talk about music. Sensing his emotion, Marinette peeked over her shoulder at him and winked. Adrien grinned back at her.

‘I sure hope you’ve got a plan,’ he thought.

‘Of course! We can walk around for a little while together, but then we’re going into one of the movies. We can slip away from Alya and Nino in there,’ Marinette thought.

‘And how do you know the two of them will stay get together?’ Adrien thought.

Marinette frowned. ‘Uh... shoot. I didn’t think about that. It would be just like Alya to ditch Nino out of pure stubbornness. This might be harder than I thought.’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ Adrien thought reassuringly. Marinette’s plans were always the best.

When they got to the zoo, they each paid the small fee and walked inside. Adrien picked up the booklet that had a map of the zoo on it and slowly flipped through, growing intrigued as he saw all of the animal exhibits that were available. There were so many of them! He would’ve said he didn’t know where to start, but -

“The panther first, right?” Alya said. She jabbed her finger at the map. “It says we have to walk towards the center.”

“For someone who didn’t want to come, you’re awfully excited,” Marinette said slyly.

“Panthers are cool,” Alya said, hitching her backpack higher. She took the lead this time. Adrien reached over and took Marinette’s hand, which earned him a shy smile and a squeeze.

He was literally just starting to relax and think that it was going to be a great afternoon when Adrien heard the sound of someone screaming. He tensed up immediately, eyes darting around. Marinette had a similar reaction. Nino chuckled at them and pointed over to where a little girl was screaming with excitement over seeing a bunch of monkeys.

“Paranoid much?” Nino said.

“It’s Paris. You can never be -”

Marinette was cut off when someone else screamed. And this time it was not the happy kind of screaming. Adrien just barely managed to yank her to the side to avoid both of them getting trampled as several people raced by them. Following closely behind the group was a - Adrien blinked, just barely stopping himself from rubbing his eyes.

“Was that a wolf?” Marinette gasped.

“Akuma!” Alya exclaimed, lighting up. “Yes! That means Ladybug and Chat Noir here! I can get my pictures!” She took off in the direction the people had come from.

“Alya, wait!” Nino shouted, running after her.

‘Guess that’s our cue,’ Marinette thought glumly.

Right. Adrien cleared his throat. “I’ll, uh, go find a place to hide.”

“Me too,” Marinette said awkwardly.

They looked at each other for a moment, then parted ways. Adrien ran towards a small stand that sold ice cream. The seller had abandoned it. He ducked behind it and opened up his jacket. Plagg emerged, yawning loudly.

“Do we have to?” he whined.

“Yeah, we do. Claws out!” Adrien whispered. Chat popped back up and raced towards the direction the screaming was coming from. He was swiftly joined by Ladybug.

“Hi Chaton,” she said, as though they hadn’t just seen each other literally moments ago.

“My Lady. Funny meeting you here,” Chat said brightly.

“Yeah, imagine that,” Ladybug said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s get this over with quickly, okay? My boyfriend and I have plans that do not involve an akuma.”

Chat was tempted to ask her about those plans, but then they caught sight of the akuma. It was a black panther with glowing purple eyes, and it had Max and Kim cornered. He hit the ground and aimed his baton, knocking the akuma away from their classmates. Ladybug rushed over to them and he knew she was getting them to safety, but he was more concerned with the panther.

“I’m afraid Paris is only big enough for one black cat,” Chat said, scooping his baton off the ground.

The akuma snarled. “Guess that means I’ll have to destroy you.”

It leaped at Chat and he squeaked, flinging himself out of the way. Razor sharp claws came within an inch of raking across the back of his suit. He caught his balance and swung around, just barely bringing his baton up in time. The akuma was fast too, to the point where Chat was breathing hard as he dodged and tried to get in a few blows of his own.

Ladybug’s yoyo appeared suddenly, wrapping the akuma up from head to toe. Chat had exactly enough time to feel a spark of victory before the akuma shimmered bright purple and morphed into an eagle. The akuma cawed loudly before taking to the sky. Chat watched it go with an open mouth.

“Okay, that is so not fair,” Ladybug said. “Chat, run!” She grabbed his arm and pulled as a bunch of animals staring charging at them.

‘This is not good,’ Chat thought as he ran. ‘What do we do?’

‘You find Kim and Max. I’ll deal with Nino and Alya, then meet you,’ Ladybug thought back.

Nino and Alya? He followed her gaze and saw their friends being chased by a gorilla. Ladybug changed direction, leaving the herd to follow Chat; there was no time or space for him to find Kim without leading the herd straight there. So he leaped straight up, landing atop a tree, and watched in amusement as Ladybug scooped up Alya and Nino and dropped them in the gorilla enclosure. She then slammed the door on them, ignoring Alya’s completely outraged expression.

‘You know, you can never tell Alya that you’re Ladybug now. She’ll kill you,’ Chat thought. He looked around, but the animals had run right past the tree and was now charging down one of the paths in the distance.

‘Focus, Kitty! Now come on. We gotta find Kim!’ Ladybug thought back, but not even her stern words could hide her delight.

‘At least one of your plans worked today,’ Chat thought, jumping down to join her.

Ladybug grinned breathlessly. ‘All of my plans are gonna work, just wait and see.’

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #nino lahiffe #alya cesaire #ladybug #chat noir #animan #passionfruit #passionfruit november

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kinghoranshit · 4 years ago

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Tell Me A Lie (NH) Ch 4

Word Count: 2,153

Warnings: swearing, anxiety

Six hours seemed to go by in a blink of an eye, and I felt like I was going to throw up as the plane came to a stop at the terminal and I had to get off.

I hauled my stuff with me and exited the plane, going through the terminal. I took more deep breaths, trying to control my nerves.

I shouldn’t have been shocked to see as many people swarming around as I did, and I saw my vision blur a bit as my anxiety kicked in. So, on top of the nausea, I felt great.

I was told to stay close to the gate, Niall and security would come get me. Hopefully it'll be soon. I felt like people were staring at me just standing there; probably had the look of being lost, which wasn’t necessarily far from the truth. I decided to take out my airpods and block out all the noises with music. The flow of it guided my heart rate to slow back to normal and I let out another heavy breath.

It’d be okay. Everything would be great.

There was a tap on my shoulder so I took out one of the pods, curious, and then someone whispered, “Lauren.”

My scream caught in my throat as I turned around in a jump. My reaction after turning around was to hit him in the arm. “Niall, not funny!”

He laughed, his eyes dancing. “I thought it was.”

Both of us looked at each other, smiling, and I sighed. “It’s great to finally see you in person again.”

“You too, Kelly.” He opened his arms for a hug and I accepted it. I couldn’t help myself from snuggling my face in his neck. He was just so soft and strong at the same time; humbled and still obviously so Irish.

“You’re not gonna cry are you?” Niall asked.

I scoffed with a small laugh, “No.”

He pulled back and it wasn’t hard to miss the small eye roll. “Come on.” He picked up my duffel from the floor. “I’m parked in one of the closer lots. It’s still gonna be crazy gettin’ out of er’.”

I couldn’t stop the look I gave him.

“What?” He laughed.

“Nothing,” I mumbled, laughing a little. “I didn’t expect you to drive us.”

He furrowed his brows now, and slightly scoffed, “Why not?”

I shrugged, then bit my lip. “You don’t seem like the best driver.”

“I’m loads good!”

When my eyes landed on the vehicle he started going towards, I rolled my eyes once again. Of course it was his black Range Rover. But the windows were tinted, so I assumed it was the safest option.

When I was a few steps from reaching the door, there was a flash and I couldn’t stop myself flinching and stepping back to catch my balance. Now, voices rushed.

“Lauren Kelly, right?”

“How’s it to be dating Niall Horan?”

“Where are you two at in your relationship?”

“Any wedding bells yet?”

“Have any major fights?”

The flashes continued and a tight wave flowed through my body as they closed in on me. I was confused how they managed to find us at this parking lot. It was a random spot hidden in the back. It was so under the radar.

A hand grabbed my wrist, yanking me forward, and I was pushed into the front passenger seat. I couldn’t rip my eye sight away from the security ushering the four paps and journalists away. After they’d done that, they nodded in our direction and Niall waved to them.

Once we were gone, Niall gave me an apologetic look. “I didn’t think they’d track us down here. But that’s what the security is for.”

I only nodded and folded my shaky hands together. I licked at my tingling lips.

Niall reached over to take one of my hands and kissed it. “You handled that so well, Lauren.”

To be honest, my mind was still fogged. That was more intense than I thought it would be. Oh my God.

I shook my head and cleared my throat. “I did not… I didn’t expect paps to be that intense. I’m fine.”

“I can’t promise that won’t happen again, but we’ll have security, and more than likely they’re gonna be the ones hired by Modest.”

“Perfect,” I retorted.

Today was meant to be a buffer day where he and I could hangout at his house. He had some studio work to do. I knew that my adhd and anxiety made things difficult, but that’s what the medications were for and I had my exercises.

Tomorrow would be our day out in public at Melrose, which I’d only been there once so it would be cool to go with Niall. The paps that Modest hired were supposed to snap us randomly over there.

We waited for this guard to open these massive gates that went into a development in Beverly Hills. This was not shocking to me, yet I felt out of place as Niall pulled through them. The buildings were definitely mansions and one of them was his. Holy shit.

“Will there be security at the house?” I asked, and that was for sure the dumbest question I’ve asked thus far.

“Oh, no, there's security at the gate. It’s a private community.”

I snorted. “Any of your neighbors famous?”

He laughed now. “All of them.”

“You fuckin posh prick,” I scoffed with a laugh.

The Range Rover came to a stop and I gasped. His house was absolutely stunning. A mixture of California and Victorian; white bricks, orange roofing, two pillars framed the front entrance, and a two door garage accented on the side. There was a lot more greenery than I anticipated as well; I wasn’t shocked by the palm trees he had out front.

“It’s really gorgeous, Niall,” I breathed.

He ran a hand through his tips a couple times, a laugh trailing after. “Wait until you see the inside. Less impressive.”

I rolled my eyes and didn’t say anything else as I stepped onto the concrete of the driveway. There was no way that it wasn’t just as nice inside. I pieced together that this wasn’t the home he spent the most time at when we stepped into the entrance; he probably did prefer his London home. The simple white walls and white marbled floor accented well with the greys, blues, and gold decor and furniture. I smiled at the framed golf photos and large canvas of an Ireland flag.

Niall cleared his throat as he rocked back and forth on his feet. “Uhm, as you can see the living room is here, bedrooms are upstairs… Feel free to pick whichever you’d like. The studio is in the basement which is where I’ll be for the remainder of today. Need anything else right now?”

I shot him a warm smile. “Thanks, Ni. I’m good for now.”

He leaned in to leave a kiss on my cheek. “Get comfy. I’ll see you later, Lauren.”

“Will do.” I laughed under my breath.

He disappeared down the second spiral staircase. I was back to being lost. I willed myself to go adventuring upstairs. There was an office with a sleek, glass desk that looked like it was never used; it was spotless clean though. The guest bedrooms all had their own attached bathrooms and that was where the extraness came from, otherwise it didn’t actually seem that large. Not like I’d imagined; Niall has always been a simple man.

The guest room closest to Niall’s room practically called my name so I plopped my duffel and backpack on the floor beside the bed. I sat down on the end and fell backward onto the soft cotton. My eyes found themselves having a hard time staying open, so I closed them for a bit.

Just a little bit…

***

I lightly groaned as I involuntarily stretched. My hand rubbed one eye as I sat up. Part of my hair had stuck to my cheek so I wiped it away behind my ear. It was clearly much later and I cursed under my breath. Despite the guilt of wasting time I could’ve used doing anything else, I did feel like a whole new person.

It was a nice nap I had to admit.

I grabbed the binder for Stone Cold, my pouch of pens and sticky notes, and airpods before I padded my way to the first floor. I’m sure there was a nook I could use to do some editing before we ate dinner, whenever that was. There was no way I would push Niall on a time.

Speaking of, there was a faint strumming that came from the basement. A flutter appeared in my chest hearing his sweet voice following it. This was an invasion of his privacy, even if I couldn’t make out the words. It wasn’t morally right to stand around.

The search for a spot to settle myself was back on. I finally found a small inset seating space under a window in the kitchen area; it was a beautiful navy velvet with a couple grey pillows. It was so comfortable, more than I could ever have predicted. It was my time to get invested in my own art and let the time slip by.

***

There was a muffled voice that didn’t match the music I was playing. As much as I wanted to keep going, I marked the paragraph I just finished and looked up. Niall’s tired, yet cheery, features filled my vision and I couldn’t stop the smile. I took out one of the airpods, which automatically paused the song, and cleared my throat.

“How’s the writing?”

He shrugged. “Not bad I think. Have you been here the whole time?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I actually fell asleep for a couple hours unintentionally.”

“The best kind of naps.” He laughed.

I bit my lip. “Yeah, and then I came here to edit. It’s a nice nook.”

He bit into the red apple he took from the bowl placed in the middle of the island and cheesed. “That it is… What should we do for dinner? We could go out, or get something to eat here.”

I thought about it. If we went out, I probably should change into a more put together outfit that didn’t reek of travel. That didn’t seem the slightest bit appealing to be honest. We had the rest of the trip to eat out.

“Do you mind eating in tonight?”

“Of course not. There’s this amazing Thai place not too far that delivers if you’ve got no objections.”

I smirked and shook my head as I stood. “Nope, Thai sounds wonderful.”

Within twenty minutes, the two of us were sprawled on the black suede L Couch in the living room with our own entrees and pot stickers. I used the chopsticks to bring some noodles and a piece of broccoli to my mouth. We had the first season of Stranger Things going and I tensed at the sight of Eleven using all her strength on the monster. I hadn’t realized I held my breath until that thing and she were gone.

I ate more of my Thai now, switching my focus to Niall who’d wiggled his way to lay his upper half across my lap at the beginning of the episode. I didn’t mind his weight though, it was more comforting than anything; even if the pressure on my pelvic area did emulate the sensation of needing to pee.

“That part gets me every time,” I stated. “She’s so badass.”

“I agree,” he remarked and reached over for another pot sticker from the coffee table.

“Get me one?”

He raised his brows momentarily before breaking out a smile and reached again, then handed it to me.

I cheesed. “You’re the best. This was really good. I might be addicted.”

“Don’t even get me started,” he scoffed with a laugh. “I get it every time I’m in LA.”

“Was the choice to eat out or in going to lead to this place no matter what?” I narrowed my eyes playfully.

“Maybe,” he mumbled, crossing his arms, and Niall made himself more comfortable; his eyes closed even.

I shook my head. “Such a dork.”

A small smile spread on his lips. He didn’t say anything else, and it didn’t take me long for me to catch on that he’d fallen asleep by the slow rise of his chest and soft snores. Netflix rolled into the second season of Stranger Things. I laid my head back, and found my fingers running through the tips of his hair.

Part of me realized that this should be more weird than it is, and the other part of me found calm happiness in it. It was okay for friends to do this sort of thing; platonic snuggles were normal.

Eventually, I drifted off too.

Next: Ch 5

[Masterlist]

#Niall Horan #Niall Horan fic #NH #NH fic #drama #comedy #romance #fanfiction #fic #Niall Horan fanfiction #NH fanfiction #Tell Me A Lie #Ch 4

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rachelannc · 4 years ago

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Gilmore Girls (Credit: Warner Brothers).

Call me late to the game, but I have joined the world of Stars Hollow and fallen in love with the girls we know as the Gilmore Girls, twenty years after it first debuted, and I’m not even mad about it.

Mind you, I had no intention of binging or even finishing the entire show, but as I casually watched one episode on Netflix and found how easily-digestible it was, one episode turned into three, and then it turned into every other day, and then it became a nightly ritual and, well, you know how it goes.

So grew my uncanny obsession with mother-daughter Lorelai and Rory Gilmore’s witty banter, exceptionally close relationship and charming small town, that I became so invested in their world and was able to finish the show in the two months I have returned and been quarantined in my own little small town. (A surprise for me, as someone who hardly ever watches or keeps up with a show, let alone ever binged a show. Seven seasons? Where do I even start, I thought?!)

Twenty years ago, I was just a seven-year-old girl listening to Hilary Duff and the Backstreet Boys while watching teeny-bopper shows and everything on the Disney Channel. I never really got into soapy teen dramas until (obviously) later in my life when I became a proper teenager.

My first reaction to watching Gilmore Girls? Wow. This Rory girl seems a lot like me.

Rory, the shy and introverted goody two-shoes and bookworm who loves school and always hangs out with her single mother and lives and grows up in a small town where everyone knows each other and loves her; and me, a girl who grew up in a town called Pleasant Hill. And if those Chilton uniforms didn’t remind me more of my own private school uniform? Ha, well I don’t really know what to say.

But really, the resemblances are uncanny and watching the show made me think: What would have happened if I had watched this as a girl growing up? Would I have handled situations with boys differently or treasured my girl time and female friendships a whole lot more, if I had seen Rory and Lorelai grow up, interact, and handle regular growing pains alongside me, as well?

As a first-time viewer, the writing and pacing of the show immediately stuck out. It’s incredibly quick and entertaining, witty through and through. I appreciate all of Lorelai’s references to eighties pop culture and Rory finding refuge in classic literature and the strong female characters and feminists I had so long been inspired by, too.

Moreover, it was incredibly comforting to find another person I could see myself reflected in, onscreen, growing up and making mistakes and always trying to do the right thing, but still staying true to who she was all along.

Her experience was so similar to how my adolescence had felt and been: my mom, who had given me all I ever needed to grow up, and me, just wanting to do right by her, was always responsible and loved at school, receiving attention from boys but never really ever cared for it because I was just happy reading a book or playing my guitar, ha.

And if that scene between Dean and Jess getting into a fight over Rory at a party couldn’t feel even more familiar to my high school days — when I was caught in a love triangle with boys who confessed their feelings to me on the same night, pressured me to make a decision, only for me to see their friendships fall apart right in front of me at school. Wow, that was high school in a nutshell, ha! And it was funny to see moments like that played back onscreen, happening to Rory as she had wished for none of it to happen, yet couldn’t really do anything about these boys’ feelings for her at the same time. (I feel you girl.)

The fact Rory wants to travel and pursue journalism as well couldn’t hit it home for me any more. Her university days reminded me of my own writing articles and chasing stories for my school newspaper. And when her and Paris wanted to experience “all the college experiences,” embarking on a cliche spring break trip trying to do “spring break right,” I couldn’t help but giggle as I found myself in college as well, very well knowing I am not the party type, but decided to get “all the college experience” as well, embarking on a Vegas trip with friends which, I do have to say, was a hell of a time.

There are so many moments from the show that have stuck with me, but here are a few memorable thoughts and moments I’ve had:

When Rory said, “I cannot do this alone. I need my mommy and damn it, I don’t care who knows it!” (s3 e13) I think she was speaking for all of us.

“I don’t want to be that kind of girl. That kind of girl who just falls apart because she doesn’t have a boyfriend.” (s1 e17) Yup. Yup, yup Rory. That was me.

Lane and the Kims and their lifelong friendship was just charming, and I couldn’t help but feel for the Asian best friend and strict mom who means well.

Rory and Paris and their ongoing escapades. Man, you can’t help but love them. Their spring break trip was all too relatable: Rory drinking and drunk-calling Dean for the first time and them doing spring break even if they never want to do it again because they realize they just aren’t the partying type. “It’s a college memory. I intend on having as many college memories as possible.” (s4 e17) Yeah, all too relatable. Ha.

Also Paris being that one friend we all know who is a little too much, too bossy, too aggressive, can turn people off but is also one of our very best friends? It was also incredible to see how their “hatred” (and Paris seeming to pop up everywhere Rory was, lol) turned into a real friendship over the years. I loved seeing that.

Rory’s graduation speech: “My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Patti Smith. As she guided me through these incredible eighteen years, I don’t know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her.” (s3 e22) That was a moment that made me just cry and tear up, for being a grateful kid myself, but also feeling just how mushy Lorelai must have been feeling as a mother, raising a good kid, all on her own. Ugh. 😭

Oh, Dean and Jess. They represent the boys we all meet and fall in love with when we’re young: Dean, the dependable boyfriend who is ready to give you everything, support you, be there for you, and may always love you even when you might take him for granted; and Jess, the said “bad boy” and mysterious romantic who leaves you hanging onto every single word that makes you fall head over heels for him, even if you know it might be bad for you.

When Rory has sex for the first time (s4 e22): It was such a big, telling, and coming-of-age moment. And you could feel that. I could feel and know exactly how she was feeling: how excited she was, how dumb it was, how one’s feelings get the best of you even when you normally think every action through and make reasons to justify it. God. I was also��afraid to see how the show would handle the situation, especially Lorelai. I’m glad she was never quite overbearing to Rory and trusts her and lets her grow as her own individual, but I’m glad she put her foot down and told her how it was not okay for her to sleep with Dean, who was still a married man. #greatmothermoment

When Rory drops out of Yale and takes some time for herself:

I couldn’t have felt more seen. Going back home, bored at home all over again, finding things to preoccupy myself with until I got bored of it and wanted to move on to the next thing, because I genuinely wanted to… that feels very familiar. And it was heartwarming to see her have this moment and want it for herself. I know it may have been a controversial choice for many, but Rory’s quitting school let her evaluate her own choices, have the space and time to figure herself out — who she was beyond what everyone expects her to be — only to realize that she really does want to be a journalist. Her whole life had been predetermined by her surroundings, and we see just how hard of a worker she is, that to have this “slip-up” is actually the best thing she can do for herself — she realizes she can be and is responsible for her own actions. To experience that in college, rather than many years later down the road, is admirable.

And moreover, I appreciate how Lorelai handled the situation. She never forced Rory to do anything or made her feel bad about her decision. Rather, she let Rory have the space and time to want to go back to Yale and school to be a journalist. She realizes that no one can make that decision for her, but her. And I loved that. Another #greatmothermoment.

Even more so, when Jess surprisingly came back and tells her he’s written a book and reminds her that “this isn’t you,” (s6 e8) that moment almost broke my heart. It reminded me of a time I felt so lost myself and a boy who once knew me would be tough on me, because he cared for me and knew who I was and always have been, and wanted me to do “better” because I was better… I think we’ve all had those people who know us very well who tell us hard truths about ourselves. And we don’t really want to listen, but a part of us knows that maybe they’re actually right. 💔

I actually really liked Logan and Rory’s relationship and the sense of trust and maturity they had built since that infamous “You Jump, I Jack” life-and-death brigade episode (s5 e7). Beyond that, Rory and Logan were completely smitten with each other the whole time. They came from worlds that were incredibly similar, yet wanted to be different. I appreciate how Logan knew and acknowledged his privilege and mistakes. I appreciate how Rory made herself clear that she is a “relationship kind of girl” instead of an “every girl” and gets a boy like Logan to stop his ways. (If I had to be honest, I was never that kind of girl, either.) When they said they’d “factor each other in,” they showed ultimate support for each other. And it’s clear that they were each other’s biggest fans. (When Logan took Rory, Lorelai and Luke out for a Valentine’s Day weekend getaway? Wow.) It’s clear they have a lot of chemistry and fun together. And Logan’s smile to Rory. Ugh.

On Lorelai:

I thought Lolelai and Jason were actually kind of cute. A part of me wanted it to work out, but I knew it never would.

Oh man, I had a fat crush on Max Medina too.

I loved seeing Chris and Lorelai stick by each other throughout all those years, and actually try to make it work. He’s a good guy who means well, and it’s clear how comfortable they are with each other, but timing was never on their side.

The letter Lorelai wrote to Luke’s defense to have custody over his daughter legit brought me to tears. Luke really was there for Lorelai and saw Rory grow up. You can’t ever take that back. Ever. Ugh.

What happened between Lorelai and Chris was bound to happen, and I was actually so happy for Lorelai to be with him. I’m incredibly impressed at how the show was able to show such a raw, real and complicated feeling of never really being “in love,” so well.

Emily and Richard: what a hoot of grandparents. I loved all their comic banter. All those Friday night dinners and the show they always put on. Richard’s relationship with Rory was so warm and comforting, and Emily’s incessant complaining and nitpicking was great. But when Emily actually had a moment towards the end explaining to Lorelai how Lorelai was able to be a single mother, independent and all on her own, while she herself has always been a wife, not knowing how to be independent, couldn’t be a more self-aware moment.

After all of this, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a show like Gilmore Girls let its characters be who they are: wholeheartedly immature and charming, unabashedly flawed yet real. And while these characters could be problematic — Lorelai is at times immature and inappropriate, yet means well; her relationship with Rory may be too codependent that Rory ends up dropping everything to tend to her mom; Rory is part of an elite society that comes from wealth and privilege; Emily constantly hates on the help; etc.

As much as the above is true, it’s still inspiring to see how Lorelai and Rory take on — and maybe even take down — their given worlds. They bicker and laugh, whine and moan, lust, laze around and criticize, but they are also incredibly real. Just as we humans can often be short-sighted in our lives, Rory and Lorelai are too. Too often we are given female characters who are either a saint or a sinner, a wife or a girlfriend, a prude or a prostitute, that with Rory and Lorelai, we get both. I think we all are at times a little annoying, yet incredibly fascinating the next. And that’s probably what has made the Gilmore Girls so beloved and such a cult-classic since its debut in 2000: Its heroines are flawed, yet deeply human, just like us all.

https://twitter.com/rachelannc/status/1295641850913501185?s=20

https://twitter.com/rachelannc/status/1292361621071790091

Thoughts I Had While Watching Seven Seasons of ‘Gilmore Girls’ for the First Time, Ever Call me late to the game, but I have joined the world of Stars Hollow and fallen in love with the girls we know as the

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prettywordsyouleft · 6 years ago

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The Sex Contract [M] - Chapter 2

Genre: friends to lovers au / friends with benefits / mature content / romance / angst

Characters: Shim Changmin x Kaia Ashton (OC)

A/N: Due to the overwhelming request I have followed your encouragement to bring back one of my older stories. This was back in a time where OCs were everything and writing one chapter in each main’s point of view was the trend. I hope that even though I have edited this, that you can appreciate this story comes from my older style of writing. I definitely still read this often and find it enjoyable so I hope you will too.

Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 - FINAL

Chapter 2 – Kaia’s POV.

The difference in working atmosphere was obvious as the Korean music boomed around the trendy office the following day. Kaia had arrived home in the early hours and collapsed onto her bed, only to be woken up by a ridiculously early text message from Changmin wishing her a good day. Although she enjoyed the friendship she had made in the boy, Kaia didn’t like his schedule. She didn’t even know when he got the time to sleep.

Working for Korea Star though wasn’t as bad as it would be if she worked full time at SME. It comprised of a small team of young journalists with a mixture of racial backgrounds that produced the latest KPOP news translated into five languages around the globe. She hadn’t quite expected when she finished her degree at Canterbury College to end up halfway across the world teaching English part-time and writing articles that fuelled the fans that Changmin didn’t understand. To Kaia though, it made perfect sense. It was incredibly easy to fall in love with Korea.

“Almost finished with that piece on Miss A, Kai?” a familiar voice questioned and Kaia smiled up at her boss Minah, nodding her head. “Good. Do you reckon you’d have enough time to translate and edit another story before lunch?”

“Of course, what is it about?”

Minah leant down to her ear, though her whispering wasn’t exactly quiet. “News on TVXQ going to Japan later this week to begin promotion of I Don’t Know and Superstar.”

“I’m free, how come you didn’t give that story to me?!” cried the girl next to them, and Kaia grinned at her disgusted face. “What’s so special about Kaia that she must write about the Gods?!”

“Must you really refer to them like that, Sungra?” Kaia pulled a face. “They’re just guys.”

“Here we go again,” Abby, a brunette opposite them mentioned and Kaia smirked at her. “The debate over what to call Dong Bang Shin Ki commences!”

“Kaia will never understand that despite their name translating to Rising Gods of the East, they are considered a league above the rest.”

Kaia leant around Minah to shoot my other best friend a look. “Still at the end of the day Sungra, they sleep, eat and have bodily functions.”

“Very funny.”

“I just don’t get why everyone in this building apart from Abby and I flail like little fangirls over them. We’re journalists, not obsessed fans.”

“Technically,” Minah began and laughed lightly. “Because we source the latest news and have such an interest in doing so, we kind of are or at least we definitely are good at fuelling the obsession.”

“And if we were to look at Kaia’s wallpaper right now, I’m sure we’ll find her reason as to why she’s so blind to TVXQ.” Sungra folded her arms over her chest smugly as the room fell into laughter, Kaia’s eyes merely rolling as she took the information Minah had brought over for her to translate. Her Korean was fluent despite originating from England, having a Korean step-father had helped with learning as a young child. It had also been the reason she felt more at home in Korea than back in Kent, enjoying Asian culture and what it had to offer.

Although Kaia loved living in Korea, stepping out into the world alone at only twenty-two had made her miss the close friendships she had back at home. It wasn’t like Changmin and Sungra were her only friends, though they were the two she had grown closest to. It was a hard situation to be in; one of her best friends being a member of the group Sungra was so crazy over. There had been several opportunities to tell her but every chance Kaia had, she quickly talked herself out of it, wondering how detrimental it would be if Sungra knew the guy she dreamed over marrying in her fantasies was someone who Kaia frequently had dinner with. She almost felt guilty for it and after Sungra’s reaction when she found out that Kaia worked at SME as a tutor, Kaia had sworn she would never tell her Korean friend about Changmin.

It made situations at work a little awkward though. There had been so many times where she wanted to admit that Changmin didn’t smell like manly cologne, but could make an entire room empty in five seconds flat with his stench. Many found his eating habits endearing, whilst she would sometimes watch in horror, the tall boy eating enough for two people at times. Even with some of the other artists she had learned the inner secrets to, Kaia had to refrain from joking about the actual reality. She had learnt quickly that KPOP fans, including the girls she worked with, could be vicious about those they protected.

Kaia snapped out of her thoughts and looked at the article within her hand. Reminding herself that she would need to text Changmin later and ask why he hadn’t told her he was leaving for Japan, she then set to work, mildly aware of Sungra’s huffs every now and then.

It seemed after the long day in the office that Sungra had forgotten all about the incident earlier. Instead, she had organised a work trip to a karaoke bar, something Kaia was still learning to be a popular night out amongst the girls. It also showed how much of a lightweight she was when it came to drinking and so she never bothered, knowing her loose lips could potentially get her in trouble if she did.

“Does my hair look good?” Sungra asked as they walked down the busy sidewalk in Hongdae, glancing at her friend expectantly. “Oh and my makeup, I never checked in the bathroom before leaving work.”

“You look fine,” Kaia assured and then smiled. “But why are you worried about that, it’s just going to be us girls in the karaoke room.”

Sungra sighed and looked at her like she had sprouted an extra head. “You never know who or what you might see when out, Kai.”

“I seriously wonder how we’re such good friends when we’re complete opposites,” she murmured and Sungra let out a huff of air.

“Not everyone can be a classic beauty like you.”

Kaia rolled my eyes. “I’m white and in an Asian country, if anything the most I get are stares and comments of look there’s a foreigner directed at me. Hardly anything to write home about, Sun.”

“So oblivious,” she chided before stepping into the karaoke place. They found the rest of the girls were waiting in the lounge area for them, greeting loudly with glasses of alcohol already in their hands. Kaia waved at Abby, noticing she had a juice and grinned.

“Ready to sing?” Abby asked and Kaia shrugged, laughing lightly.

“Reckon we’ll be able to slip out after two hours?”

Abby nudged her lightly. “Have you got a date?”

“Only with my television, I’m not missing another episode.”

“Oh goodness,” she chuckled and then nodded. “I’ll help you with your drama fix, don’t worry. Though, I wonder if you’re ever going to notice the guys around you if you keep painting the perfect pictures Korean dramas replicate.”

“You sound just like someone I know too well.” Kaia smiled. “I’ve given up on men in reality; they just don’t seem to understand romance like in books or movies.”

Abby laughed as they followed the rest of the excited group down the hallway to the private room. “Might I remind you that the men you refer to don’t exist either?”

“Leave me to my fantasies, and I’ll not press you for who you’ve been texting all day long.”

The girl blushed. “You noticed?”

“Every smile that came with them too.”

Abby groaned and flumped down on one of the sofas that were embedded into the wall, the noise already rising up a notch or two with 2NE1 being chosen as the first song to sing along to.

The night continued in that fashion, and Kaia was tired from leaping up and down to join in with the songs she actually knew well. The girls all seemed to find hidden energy whilst singing, whereas she was happy to take her early leave at nine, which left just enough time to get home and in front of the television.

Kaia was already on the bus ride home, holding onto the bar despite being in a seat. She had discovered that the driving system and drivers in Korea were frightening, with a pure love for speed. Even though she had grown accustomed to darting for a spot on a bus, she still wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to the speed everything and everyone travelled at.

Her phone began to ring around the quiet bus and she fished it out of her jacket, hitting talk without checking who was calling. “Hello?”

“You sound tired.”

“You never told me you were going to Japan,” Kaia bit back and the man on the other end chuckled. “Not that it matters too much, I’m pretty busy of late.”

“So busy you can’t come hang with me tonight since I’m leaving soon?” he asked with a voice that she knew followed with a pout.

“I saw you last night; surely you have better things to do.” Kaia smiled. “Or at least I have better things to do.”

“Like watch TV.”

“Beats playing games when I should be sleeping, Max,” she retorted, carefully changing to his stage name in case the older lady nearby was listening in.

“I remember you were there beside me playing.”

“I’m not coming over,” Kaia decided, nodding her head even though he couldn’t see it. “I’m too busy.”

“I’ll watch it with you.”

“Watch what?”

“Your silly drama, now get off at the next bus stop and give me directions. I’m already heading out to my car to get you.”

And then the phone line went dead. She obeyed his request, sending him a text with her location and wondering if she had finally stepped into that parallel universe.

Or rather, what was going to be in store for that evening.

_________________

Part 3

[TVXQ Masterlist] | [Main Masterlist] | [Request Guidelines]

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alexturnerobsession · 7 years ago

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ICON’S MAGAZINE TRANSLATED

“What the hell is this?”, says a fascinated Alex as we enter the Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel in London, an old building where the interview is having place. “I don’t know, I think people get married here”, answers the press girl. Alex starts running in the room, where the plenary sessions of the former city council used to be carried out back when the building was constructed. He sits in the chair in which they guess the mayor used to sit down. “What do you want, a fine or a wedding?”, jokes Turner who can’t be still. He starts to run between the seats, until he stops at the place assigned to the spokesmen. "One hundred pounds! Man, there’s one hundred pounds in here!”. He picks up a couple of 50-pound notes, and I suggest him to keep them. He laughs. The moment to begin the interview has come, after all, we are not here to get married but to talk about Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the band’s sixth LP. His laughing ceases. It’s unfortunate that Alex is so shy and cautious when the recorder is turned on. "Would you get married here?", asks Alex before getting started. My answer is no, the place is interesting, but not romantic at all. “I agree. Motion denied.”

[Now the journalist describes the journey of the band, from its Internet expansion to the end of the AM tour.]

“When the tour finished in 2014, almost everybody in the band was about to get married, or about to have a child or another one… The end of those shows seemed to be the end of an era. We all were 28 or 29 years old and it felt like everything was going to change. During that never ending tour I thought the album was going to stay with me forever. It was the longest tour we had ever done. Now I think that we prolonged it because we knew that when it finished, it would mean the end of something bigger than a series of shows. I thought everything would change, because I felt we had less than we had in the beginning, even if the numbers said otherwise” recalls Turner about the last days the band was seen together.

Then Alex went back to The Last Shadow Puppets […]. In 2016, they headlined Primavera Sound Festival. The show was grotesque. Turner’s looks made sense in the framework of AM, but in that particular context, it appeared as a joke. Turner, that boy who as a teen was not hired by a Sheffield thrift shop because of his shyness, had lost the plot. “That is part of the past”, intervenes Turner, who talks very slowly, leaves sentences half said and might not even finish a joke if he thinks it’s not going to be funny as he was expecting. “I think that the things I wanted to say with that image and attitude are already said. Now it’s over.” Nowadays he sports long hair and a beard that has been object of controversy among his fans, who even started a Change.org petition for him to shave it.

“A lot of attention is put into our next step, I know. We’ve always tried to be careful about where, with whom and what we did. It’s healthy, but I don’t think we do it on purpose. In times like this it’s complicated to keep secrets. We already tried with our last album and just when we got to the studio, the engineer posted a picture of us. Everyone’s so crazy now, they’re acting as if this was Columbo. I’ve seen this, I’ve seen that guy…”, explains Turner after being asked to explain how it is possible that, with a band as great as theirs, he has achieved to go completely unnoticed for everyone when the most awaited album will be released in less than a month. “I don’t know if not getting involved with social networks is something that we now do on purpose to protect the band, but maybe it helps,” points out Turner introducing the “offline” element into the equation. “I guess that wanting to expose ourselves is not into our DNA. I’ve put so much into the music that I don’t know what else I can do with that. I can’t open a Twitter account, because I think everything’s there, in the songs. I’d make a fool of myself if I began to use Twitter. Well, if I’m honest, it’s not as if I dislike social networks, but when you become that version of yourself that you’ve created in the virtual world, there’s something in there that allows people to take out the worst of themselves against you. And you can also take out the worst of yourself against them. I can’t even imagine the consequences, but I don’t want to either.”

We’ve had to listen to Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino in a dispositive that would be self-destructed in a week. We’ve been told not to ask anything too personal after Alex had a brush with a journalist from The Times some days ago. There won’t be any promotional single, but there is a new band logo. The most recent photo of Alex is one that he took with a flight attendant in the airport days before our meeting which has reactivated the debate about his beard. It’s a release like in the old days, but Turner doesn’t really appear as a world star. I tell him about the time I interviewed Beyoncé, being told not to touch her under any circumstance. I also tell him about how, in order to talk to Chris Cornell, I had to get in a completely dark hotel room and, in an act of faith, believe that the voice that I was hearing belonged to the grunge star. “Would you like some water?”, interrupts Turner when, before I can even answer, begins to pour some into the glass

Days after our encounter in the town hall, the first new picture of the combo appears (they look as if they had been dressed for a wedding right in the middle of December from 1972 in Iceland) and the titles of the album’s 11 tracks as well as details about the recording are revealed. But it’s been the first verse of the album what has caused more of an upheaval. “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes, now look at the mess you made me make”, sings in Star Treatment, a gem of a song that sets the tone for the rest of the album, one destined to confuse all those who were expecting something bombastic, expansive and hormonal. The LP contains songs with titles as fabulous as The Ultracheese, Batphone, or The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip. Imagine Richard Hawley going on tour together with comedian Andy Kaufman and performing only in hotels from Sheraton’s chain, or Scott Walker reciting in a pub after Sheffield United’s match. It is deliciously decadent, and it promises to polarise the opinions of their millions of fans. Is he nervous? And, above all, is he sure? “Well, I sort of remember feeling a bit like that with our last album. I wasn’t sure if it was the right album. Won’t we be going through the wrong path? It always happens. When I showed the first songs to my manager, people from the label and my mates, most of their reactions were ‘This is so different.’ I thought it was different too, but not that much. I was doubting if it’d be appropriate for a Monkeys’ album. Then, Jamie came home and spent two weeks with me recording. His enthusiasm about the songs confirmed that it was right. If this is what’s inside of me, this is what it has to be. I believe that we can be whatever we want to be, it’s our band. So there’s no need to worry about whether it fits or not”, explains about an album which lyrics refer to solitude continually. “Yes, a little”, concedes Turner. “There’s always been something in my life that has led me to isolation. But, even to this day, I don’t know why I’ve tried to avoid this topic creatively. The lyrics have been through a very long process of polishing. It was complicated to reach this stage. For example, that first line about The Strokes. I fought a lot against it, I wanted it but I didn’t want it. I was thinking: ‘Whatever, it’s staying, but I know I will change it in the end because there’s no way I’ll end up saying such atrocity.’ And it came to a point in which I thought: ‘If this is how I feel, why can’t I just say it? It’s better to be honest.”

EXTRA

This is how Icon #51 was made

Arctic Monkeys

Everything was supposed to be a secret. The hotel, hidden in the east side of London. The artist, in an unknown place, and the room in which the pictures were to be taken, small enough for the editor to have to stay outside during the session. When Turner got out, he said: “It’s a boy.” Everybody’s happy.

Translated by @jurametio and myself (some parts have been omitted because the journalist was explaining the beginnings of the band and other information that we all already know by now)

#arctic monkeys #interview #icon #icon's magazine #magazine #icon el país #el país #alex turner #translation #ato

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arcticmonkeysaf · 7 years ago

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Translation of Alex Turner’s interview in ICON magazine

Alex Turner, leader of Arctic Monkeys, the biggest rock band of the 21st century, and perhaps its last hope

"What the hell is this?"

We've just arrived at the location of our interview with Alex Turner, leader of Arctic Monkeys, who is absolutely awestruck. It's the first floor of the Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel in London, an ancient Edwardian building with touches of art deco, converted, of course, into a hotel. In a room of the first floor, a photoshoot has just taken place.

"Well, I don't know, I think the people are getting married," says the press agent, attempting to explain some of the excitement it's provoked in Alex being in the space, without getting too carried away: we still have a job to do. Alex begins to run through the hall, the site of council meetings of the Bethnal Green since 1910, when the building was constructed. Nearly all civic government buildings in Spain are smaller, and certainly not as lovely as this place.

The writer of Fake Tales of San Francisco has already seated himself in the chair we suspect belongs to the mayor.

"What do you want? A fine or a wedding?" he jokes.

The press agent leaves, but the leader of the band formed in the era when teenagers no longer wanted to form rock bands can't keep still. He runs between the benches until he's standing in the spot meant for the speaker.

"A hundred pounds! Look here's £100!" He procures two rosy £50 notes. I suggest to him that we should keep them. He laughs. I decide not to insist. I say instead we should start the interview, after all we are here to talk about Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the sixth album by the band, not to get married or chat. He stops laughing. It's a shame that Alex Turner becomes such a timid person, careful and cautious, when the tape recorder starts. Before he assumes the role of frontman of the group that launched AM four years ago and made it the best selling vinyl record of the 21st century, he permits himself one last question.

"Would you get married here?" We look around - myself still thinking about those £100 - while we get cozy in two benches in the last row. I answer no, that's it's all very interesting, but not at all romantic.

"I agree. Motion denied," he decides.

Rising to fame in the middle of the last decade, Arctic Monkeys have become a phenomenon thanks to a handful of songs a friend converted into mp3 - they say that they, despite being part of the digital age, had problems even turning on a computer - which soon began to spread on the Internet. It was the raucous, intelligent, and British response to The Strokes. Seeing them on the stage in those early days, before the premiere of their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not, which would see the light of day in 2006 and would become the fastest selling debut album ever in Britain within in its first week of release, was a tremendously peculiar experience. Four kids at 3 a.m. making a spectacular noise in the Sala Razzmatazz in Barcelona, but who could barely reach the bar counter to order a drink.

More than a decade has passed and they've recorded four albums more. A brilliant sequel (Favourite Worst Nightmare), another risky, rapturous and rocking (Humbug, recorded en the California desert with Josh Homme), a delicate and underrated return to pop (Suck It and See) and a million-dollar beast, a sex-soundtrack record called AM. And then, they stopped.

"When we stopped touring in 2014, nearly everyone in the band was about to get married, or having kids, or another kid. The end of those concerts was much like the end of another chapter. We were all 28 or 29 and it felt like everything was about to change. During this neverending tour I thought that record would be with me forever. It was the longest tour we had ever done. Now I think we extended it because we knew that when it ended it would be the end of something bigger than just a series of concerts. I expected everything to change, well, I felt that even though the numbers said the opposite, in the end we had less than we started with," remembers Turner, about the final days we would see the band together in public.

Now all living in the U.S., each of the band members went on his own path. Alex returned to The Last Shadow Puppets, a band loved by Arctic Monkeys devotees. There Turner splits responsibilities with his friend Miles Kane, a guy with impeccable taste but with terrible ideas. In 2016 the pair played the mainstage at Primavera Sound, where they were the headliners. That performance was grotesque. The image of Turner, who looked like a mix between an actor in Rebeldes and a finalist in an Elvis impersonators competition, had only a semblance of Arctic Monkeys of AM. In that context he made a bit of a joke of himself. Compared to the boy who, as an adolescent, was rejected by a second-hand clothing shop in Sheffield because he was too shy, it had gotten out of hand.

"That was..." His words are halting, he speaks very slowly, he leaves sentences unfinished and even stops a joke short if he finds the punchline isn't as funny as he'd thought. "I think what I wanted to say with that image and that attitude have been said. It's over."

Now Turner sports long hair and a beard which has been the object of controversy among his fans, who even launched a Change.org campaign for him to shave it.

"There's a lot of scrutiny around our next step, I know. We've always tried to be discreet with what we do, where and with whom. It's normal, but I don't think we do it on purpose. In this age, it's hard to keep secrets. With this record we tried and even just getting to the studio, the sound engineer goes and posts a picture of us. Everyone is so crazy these days, they act like they're Columbo. 'I saw this, I spotted that guy...'" explains Turner when asked how it's possible that a band as big as his, who will be the headliners at Primavera Sound and at MadCool, has managed to make sure that, even with only a month left until the record's launch, no one knows absolutely anything about it.

"I don't know if not getting involved in social media is something we do on purpose to protect the band, but it helps," says Turner, introducing the topic of being offline. "Maybe it's not in our DNA to expose ourselves. I've put so much into the music that I don't know what more I can do with that. I can't open a Twitter account because I think everything's there, in the songs. I'd make a fool of myself if I started tweeting. See, social media doesn't bother me, truthfully, but when you become the version of yourself you've created in the virtual world there's something there that allows people to do their worst against you. And you can also do your worst against them. The consequences of that I can't even imagine, but I don't want them."

We've had to listen to Tranquility Base in a version that downloads and is scheduled for automatic deletion the next week. The band have asked us not to ask anything personal, days after an encounter Alex had with a journalist from The Times. There is no single before the release, but there is a new logo for the band's image. The only photograph of Turner is the one taken by a guard in an airport days before this meeting and which has reactivated the fierce debate with respect to the Sheffielder's beard. It's a record release like the ones before, but Turner hardly seems like a global superstar. I tell him that one time I interviewed Beyoncé and they sat me at one end of a massive table and told me that I shouldn't even think about touching her, and that, on another occasion interviewing Chris Cornell, I had to go into a hotel room that was completely dark and had to confirm that the voice answering my questions was actually the grunge singer's.

"Would you like some water?" Turner interrupts, and, before I can respond, fills my glass.

During the hours after our meeting, the first new photo of the band is made public (they look as though they're dressed for a wedding in December of 1972 in Iceland) and they publish the details and tracklisting of their latest record, which was recorded in Paris, London, and Los Angeles, where the band members now reside. But what most strikes me is the first line. "I just wanted to be one of The Strokes, now look at the mess you've made me make," sings Turner on “Star Treatment”, a gem of a song that marks the tone of an album destined to confound all those who expected something bombastic, expansive, and hormonal. The LP has songs with titles as fabulous as The Ultracheese, Batphone, or The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip. Imagine Richard Hawley going on tour with comedian Andy Kaufman and performing only in Sheraton hotels located in state capitals, or Scott Walker in the pub, singing after a Sheffield United match. It's deliciously decadent and promises to polarize the opinions of millions of their fans. Is [Turner] nervous? And, more importantly, is he confident?

"Let's see, I think I remember feeling a bit like that with this last record. I wasn't sure if it was the right album. Are we going down the wrong path? It always happens. When I showed the first songs to my manager, to the people from the record label and my colleagues, a lot of the reactions were 'It's very unique.' I thought it was unique, but not that much. I doubted whether it was the right record for the Monkeys. So, Jamie came to my house and stayed with me for two weeks while we recorded. His enthusiasm for the songs confirmed to me that it was the right choice. If this is what comes out of me, that's what it is. I think we can do what we want to do, it's our band. So there's no reason to worry about whether it's a hit or not," he says about a record that, from time to time, evokes loneliness.

"Yes, a little bit," concedes Turner. "There's always been something in me that has made me isolated in life. But until now, I don't know why, I've avoided touching upon that on a creative level. The words passed through a very long process of refinement. It's been complicated getting here. For example, that first line about The Strokes. I fought hard against it, I wanted it but I didn't want it. I thought, "Hell, I'll leave it, because I know I'll change it because it's impossible that I'll end up saying this nonsense." And it got to a point that I thought, "If I feel like this, why not say it? I should be honest."

#alex turner #arctic monkeys #tbhc #tbh&c #tbhc spoilers #i know it's been traslated but have another #lmao #i nearly threw my computer against a wall while typing this up so #mine

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barmcakemag · 4 years ago

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Halifax Festival of Words talk

This is the talk I gave at the Halifax Festival of Words. It took place in the front room of the Grayston Unity bar (pictured below) last month, just before publication of Barmcake 9. Some of the posters from the talk are also pictured below. Thanks to the festival and bar for having me.

I love this front room.

It sort of reminds me of being a kid, at my grandparents, on Boxing Day.

Some of the family used to get up and do a turn – a song, a sketch, a tune.

Among the aunties and uncles was my Great Aunty Mary, who was great in all respects. She was very funny, wrote poetry – and was the spitting image of Hylda Baker, (poster below), who I’ll be coming to later.

I didn’t have an uncle like Lou Reed – fortunately.

That would have made Christmas a bit tense.

‘Uncle Lou, you’ve spilt heroin on your roast potatoes again.’

Anyway, I’ll be coming on to the Velvet Underground later as well.

So, I’m Dave Griffiths and I make Barmcake.

The magazine started in April 2014 and the new edition – issue 9 – is out next week.

There are usually two editions a year. I only brought one out last year because I was busy with my other work – I’m a freelance writer, editor, proofreader and journalism tutor.

Barmcake is available free in about 45 venues in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Sheffield, and North Derbyshire. You can also obtain copies by post, if you send a donation.

I write all – or all but one or two – of the articles in each edition. I also design the magazine, edit it, find the advertising, sort the fundraising, promote it, and deliver it.

This afternoon I’m going to be telling you why I make a print magazine in the digital age.

And why I make this particular magazine, which I believe is different from anything else out there.

(I know it’s definitely the only one that offers northern entertainment for the middle-aged.)

I’ll also tell you how I make an issue from scratch.

There are high points about making Barmcake – interviewing people like John Cooper Clarke, Viv Albertine, and Ken Dodd.

But there are perils about making a magazine on your own – for example when my computer packed in a week or so before deadline for issue 8 and I had redo the pages from scratch

I’ll also tell you about the money side of things.

I’m happy to take any questions at the end. Although don’t ask me anything about maths. The square of the hypotenuse is worth two in the bush, or whatever.

I’ve been a journalist since 1989.

I’ve worked for all the ridiculously-named weekly newspapers – the Congleton Chronicle, the Biddulph Chronicle, the Ormskirk Advertiser, the Wigan Observer.

I’ve never been a Woodward and Bernstein-type journalist. I used to love doing golden wedding anniversary interviews – finding out about people’s lives. (The secret for most couples is: ‘Never go to bed on an argument’).

I moved to London in the mid-90s and became a sub-editor. Then I came back up north to Leeds to work for PA New Media’s Ananova website as a sub and writer. It was a really exciting time to be part of a new national media organisation.

At that point the digital world seem to offer limitless possibilities – a chance to hear fresh voices and cover things that didn’t get much attention on a national platform

But as it went on – on Ananova and elsewhere – the choice of topics became narrower and the coverage shallower.

It felt like a missed opportunity and after a few years, I left to become a sub on the Manchester Evening News print edition.

That disillusionment with the digital world fed into the creation of Barmcake. I even stopped doing my own blog, which is a sort of forerunner of the magazine.

I feel websites lack the personal touch of magazines and newspapers. Each edition of Barmcake is yours to hold, to savour, to read how you want. It’s not borrowed on a screen in a clutter of links and dowdy, keyword-heavy headlines.

Print is more personal.

I was reminded of that a few years ago when I was flicking through a paper, turned the page and there was a two-page picture spread of the inside of a doll’s house – with fantastic detail of each room

Now, if that had been a website link – say ‘See the amazing doll’s house, click here’ – I probably wouldn’t have looked at it.

But the photo, text and design on the printed edition stopped me in my tracks.

And it was me who chose to stop and look at it, not a website trying to guide me

Of course, I can’t do Barmcake without digital media.

I can get instant access to performers and venues via their websites and email addresses.

And Twitter is a great promotional tool.

Even the front page of each Barmcake is partially designed that way so it looks good on Twitter.

Crucially, it’s how you use all that information available on the internet.

And I think many websites, magazines and newspapers aren’t making the most of it. They are picking from the same narrow pool of stories.

Meanwhile arts coverage in regional newspapers – with a few notable exceptions – is not as good as it used to be.

Some newspaper bosses are so pleased they can offer the same size newspapers as 10 years ago with half the staff, they forget about the quality of the editorial content.

When I look at some of the free lifestyle magazines in shops and pubs, the editorial content seems to be a shoddy afterthought.

And some website and magazine interviews are written by people who don’t appear to know anything about their interviewees, beyond what the PR company has told them

So that’s another reason why I started Barmcake – I want the articles to be the top priority.

I don’t stint on research and writing and rewriting.

For a two-page article in issue 8, for example, I read four books and endlessly wrote and rewrote the article.

They were four books about The Fall so it wasn’t the worst thing ever.

Hashtag firstworldindieproblems

Pete Wylie was another reason I started Barmcake.

I read he was crowdfunding to make a new LP which to me was huge news.

But I couldn’t find much about it in magazines, newspapers and websites.

Now I’ve got Northern entertainment for the middle-aged in my strapline.

But I hate some middle-aged people’s attitudes to new bands, the sort of people who say: ‘Well, of course, they sound a bit like the Velvet Underground but they are not as good as them – and I speak as someone who has a 23-minute out-take of John Cale whittling a spoon.’

But having said that, there are artistes aged 40 and upwards – like Pete Wylie – whose work is either being ignored or under-appreciated, while some fairly dull, conservative, twentysomething bands are lauded to the hilt, merely because of their age.

I also felt audiences aged 40 and over were being ignored by many websites and magazines – the sort of people, for example, who might live in West Yorkshire but travel to gigs or comedy shows in Sheffield and Manchester (hence my circulation area).

People who like a nice real ale pub, a good book and trips to theatres and galleries.

Those were the subjects I wanted to write about.

Plus I wanted to provide a decent listings service.

I used to love looking at City Life and Time Out and picking out gigs I wanted to see.

Can you do that on the internet? Not really, unless you want to wade through lists of venues or dates of gigs.

Barmcake is also a reaction against magazine shops like Magma and websites like Stack and Magculture.

They only consider design-led, rather than text-led, magazines (spoof trendy mag, above).

Their view, unfortunately, seems to dominate the indie-mag culture.

The Magma magazines are beautiful, for sure, but slightly formulaic – lots of photos, lots of white space.

Some of the articles can be slightly sterile and desperately in need of an edit.

I was brought up on 80s NME and Sounds with writers like Steven ‘Seething’ Wells and his hectic, hectoring, hilarious prose, which is completely at odds with something you’d read in, say, Monocle.

Word magazine and Forty-20, a rugby league magazine, are other influences as they put – or did put in the case of Word – witty text first, before the design.

So a year before I left the MEN, I was thinking about going freelance and starting a magazine.

I went on a Guardian course about how to make one.

I wanted to know if I could make a magazine on my laptop and how much it would cost.

But the course wasn’t particularly helpful about either the basics of making a magazine or the money side of it.

And I realised I had a lot to learn when I went to a printer in Manchester after I went freelance.

I wanted someone to guide me about the basics of the printing process.

At the MEN, you simply had to press a button to send it to the printers. The page sizes, colours, etc were all set up for you.

So I came bounding into the shop, all enthusiastic, to be met by this spectacularly miserable bloke.

I said: ‘I’m going to make my own magazine and I was just wondering what I need to do.’

He said: ‘How many pages?’

‘Er..I don’t know, about 35.’

Shakes head: ‘You can’t have that number. What type of paper do you want?’

‘Er…I don’t know, just standard magazine paper.’

‘What sort of paper do you want for the front?’

‘Er…I don’t know.’

‘Do you want colour or black or white?

‘A mix of colour and black and white.’

‘Which pages are colour?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

I left the shop with my tail between my legs; my hopes not exactly crushed but dented.

Fortunately, I discovered the Footprint Workers Co-operative in Leeds who were very helpful and answered all my daft questions with patience.

I can definitely recommend them if you are starting your own magazine or fanzine.

So I had an idea of what I was going to cover (music, comedy, pubs, theatre, books. film, art).

I had an idea of how I was going to write it (make the writing as good as it can be, keep the articles short)

I wanted to target an over 40s audience living in and around Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester, (although I don’t mind who reads it -– I’m not going to tell a youth with a fashionable beard to ‘put the Barmcake down sunshine’)

I wanted to keep the design simple and retro (the headlines are meant to look like 70s sitcom credits).

And I wanted to make it as cheaply as possible – so I would do all or most of the writing, as I couldn’t pay anyone else, and I would deliver it.

I found a free design program (called Scribus) and I only use publicity photos or photos that I take myself.

I don’t charge for Barmcake because I want to get the magazines in the sorts of pubs, cafes and independent shops where people like to read books, newspapers and magazines.

In these sorts of places, most of the other magazines and newspapers are free.

Keeping it free also means less hassle for the owners of the pubs and cafes – no separate pots of money to keep etc.

I wanted a funny northern word for the title and Barmcake fits the bill.

There’s also the ‘You starting a print magazine in the internet age? You Barmcake!’

‘Northern entertainment for the middle-aged’ gives some idea of what the magazine’s about, but it is not entirely serious.

I don’t want to go down the professional northerner route:

(Hovis voice):‘Eeeeeeeh, we’re all right friendly in t’ north.

‘London? They never speak to anyone.’

I’m always up for challenging northernness, because let’s face it – some of the world’s most miserable people are in Yorkshire!

I also didn’t want to get stuck in a straight, white, indie, male, middle-aged rut where The Smiths, The Fall or Half Man Half Biscuit can never be criticised.

And where it would be blasphemous to suggest that Temptation by Heaven 17 is better than Temptation by New Order.

Barmcake is A5 because I wanted something that people can fit in their pocket or bag when they are out and about and it only costs a first class stamp to post a copy.

Apart from postage, my other costs are printing and petrol.

So I need to find about £850 for each issue.

Initially I used some of my voluntary redundancy money from the MEN and money from my other work to pay for the magazine.

I started seeking advertising from issue 2 onwards.

My advertising revenue has gone up from £60 in issue 2 to £630 in issue 8.

It will be more than that in the new edition.

I feel that if you give people something to read, then they don’t just flick through the magazine and so they are more likely to see the adverts.

I am pleased that plan appears to be paying off.

But, it’s tricky balancing the amount of time you spend on editorial and advertising.

On some issues, I’ve left the advertising a little too late because I wanted to get the editorial right.

But, if I spend too much time on the advertising, I may get more ads in the short term, but I won’t keep the advertisers in the long term as the quality of the magazine will drop.

I set up a Paypal account for donations, which you can access via my website, and that brings in between £150 and £200 per issue, so I was more or less able to cover my costs for the first time for issue 8.

I also sent some copies to Australia for the first last time.

However I’d like to bring in more money through donations.

So I’ll go through how the magazine has developed over the years.

Here are some bits from Issue 1 (above).

That issue had interviews with Cud, the Wedding Present, the director of a Frank Sidebottom doc, and the Revolutions Brewing Company owners, among others.

Features included Maxine Peake, a pub crawl on the Tour de France Yorkshire route, and Alan Bennett.

I did ask for interviews with Maxine and Alan.

With Alan, Faber and Faber gave a curious response – not no, but: (Alan Bennett voice): ‘Mr Bennett is aware of your interest.’

(I like to think everyone at Faber speaks with an Alan Bennett accent).

I was hoping perhaps that they were giving him potential material for his diary.

That would be the dream for me: (Alan Bennett voice): ‘I used to be contacted by the Guardian, but now it’s only bread-related magazines.’

In general I find about 75% of people I contact agree to interviews.

I was excited to get the first issue out.

There were 1,000 copies for that, it’s been 1,500 copies from issue 2 onwards

There was a good response to Barmcake 1 – the title, strapline and the front cover probably made the biggest impact.

But in hindsight I felt the interviews were too short and there were too many, fairly ordinary, one-page previews.

I addressed those issues for Barmcake 2 by making most of the interviews two or three pages long and sticking about 6-7 previews on two pages at the back – and that’s been the format ever since.

So issue 2 (above) had interviews with Viv Albertine, Pete Wylie, Age of Chance, Steve Huison, among others.

My friend Richard wrote about why Otley is better than Prague for beer.

He has also done Bluetones and Skids interviews in other issues.

My friend Roshi has written about David Bowie and Count Arthur Strong.

And Prue, my wife, has interviewed Bryony Lavery and done a piece on the theatre company she co-founded – Root and Branch Productions (more northern entertainment for the middle-aged).

I’ve only used one feature from a writer I didn’t know as I want to be in a position to pay people for their work.

Viv Albertine was one of my most important interviews I’ve done for Barmcake.

It’s one of the most popular pieces with readers and it encouraged other artistes to get in touch.

I thought her book was one of the best memoirs/autobiographies I’d read, yet many of the reviews concentrated on the Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious anecdotes and didn’t focus enough on her fascinating life.

She answered my questions within a day (some people take nearly 2 months) and I was really chuffed she’d taken the trouble to give such interesting answers.

For example I asked her: Was punk the only time she’d come across so many strong and interesting characters?

She said: “God no. Those people weren’t that strong and interesting. Vivienne Westwood was.

“We were all very flawed. But at least we didn’t hide our flaws, we flaunted them.

“I would say it was the only time in my life when you were allowed to be yourself, not smiling and saying thank you all the time.

“Not greasing the wheels and aspiring and careerist.”

The Ken Dodd interview, from issue 5, in 2016 was also a highlight.

Here’s an extract:

He was fizzing with jokes and anecdotes.

When I mentioned I was from Huddersfield, he immediately recited a limerick about the town involving udders.

He told me an interviewer once asked if Dodd was his real name and he told him it was an anagram.

While I took that in, he’s onto the next joke.

I was also fascinated with how works an audience.

He said: “You play an audience like a musician plays his instrument.

“You know where the hotspots are, you know where you’ve got to work hard on them when they’re a bit stubborn, you know where to flirt with them, where to encourage them, and where to take it easy.

“You put little ad libs in, little asides, go faster, slower, louder, quieter, take it easy.”

So it was great to interview Ken and it was great to interview John Cooper Clarke for the same issue.

The interview was difficult to set up but turned out well.

I was meant to be interviewing him at a gig in Buxton but my car broke down and I couldn’t get to the gig in time on the train.

The angle I went on was his accent – whether it was the most important thing about his work and whether living in Essex for 25 odd years had affected it.

Here’s an extract:

“Accent? I don’t think it’s at all important. It’s what the work contains.

“I don’t think the accent’s got anything to do with it.

“I think vocal quality might have something to do with it, as in musicality.

“Listening to my old stuff it sounds like I’ve got a problem with my adenoids, and it can’t be that because I had my adenoids removed when I was about eight-years-old.

“To be honest, I think my voice is better than it’s ever been.

“But that’s not because of the accent, it’s because of the sonorous baritone quality.”

And of course, I can’t think of anyone else who says ‘sonorous baritone quality’ quite like John Cooper Clarke – stretching the vowels and punctuating the words so they got a real rhythm., He makes run-of the mill words sound magnificent.

Issue 3, (above), had interviews with, among others, John Shuttleworth, John Bramwell, O’Hooley and Tidow, the organiser of the Glossop Record Club, and Professor Paul Salveson, who talked about railways and northern regionalism.

The latter is an example how I’ve occasionally moved away from my core subjects as I think it would interest readers.

In issue 7 I interviewed the marvellous Beers Manchester blogger who wrote about dealing with grief after his son died.

And in issue 8 I talked to Rosie Wilby who has written a really interesting book about monogamy.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about Barmcake is finding out about wonderful artistes I didn’t know much about, like O’Hooley and Tidow, and looking into topics I’ve not really thought about much, such as non-monogamous relationships – and record clubs.

Glossop Record Club was the first of the groups or people I featured from Twitter.

I noticed the people who started following me were doing some interesting and unusual stuff.

In other issues I’ve done features on 8bitnorthxstitch, (pictured below) who makes fabulous cross-stitch creations of bands such as The Fall and TV shows such as Coronation Street

There’s Beer Mat Movies, who writes film reviews on beer mats

And Jennifer Reid, or as she calls herself, the pre-eminent broadside balladress of the Manchester region.

In Issue 4, I decided to make a few tweaks to the structure with a picture-led centrespread and a bigger listings section.

I don’t want the magazine to date so my listings look up to four months ahead.

The listings are usually the first and last thing I do in the magazine.

I look at every gig venue, theatre, and gallery website in my circulation area, looking for potential star interviews, cover stars and centrespreads.

I listen to bands I’ve not heard of before who are playing at these venues.

Artistes are also contacting me now and I use three or four stories an issue from them

Once I get two or three big interviews, the rest of the magazine falls into place.

I feel it’s a bit like organising a festival – you need headliners plus strong supporting acts.

And once I get the headliners, I start looking for advertisers.

I have a mix of regular and new advertisers.

I then ask all my stockists, I ask local brewers and some businesses who follow me on Twitter.

Most of my interviews are by email, the rest are phone interviews although I did one face-to-face chat with Martin Parr.

There is always a mad panic at the end of each issue , either because of a missing interview or ad, but all you can do is politely grovel with people to please, please, please in send the material.

As it’s just me making the magazine, there are no back-up features, no IT team to deal with technical problems, such as converting pdfs to jpgs.

Fortunately I’ve always managed to fill an issue in the end.

Once I’ve written and rewritten my pieces, I go back and check everything – the original source material, fact checks, spell checks.

The issue is then proofread by Prue and then by one of our friends.

I don’t want a daft literal or incorrect name to undermine the magazine, especially as Barmcake takes about two months to do, on and off, between my other work.

My printer then gives me a final proof before it goes to press and I get it back within a week.

The new Barmcake is due out midweek next week.

I like to do a big reveal on the day of publication but I can tell you it is the biggest Barmcake ever, with 9 exclusive interviews, more than any before, and 5 features – including Hylda Baker.

It takes me four days to deliver the copies.

I cover an area bordered by Wigan, Ilkley and Sheffield.

The list of venues is on the website, although it will change slightly over the next few days. Venues ask to be stockists and readers also recommend places.

I keep about 300 copies back for people who want a copy in the post, and for friends and media people.

Then I do a Twitter promo campaign for about 2-3 weeks.

I only put one article per issue online and I only do that months after the issue comes out.

In February, I start on a new issue.

It will be the fifth anniversary issue and a chance to take stock.

Ideally I’d like to be making more money for it, getting regular sponsorship from a suitable partner, and in the long term looking to pay others to write.

But anyway, that’s the story of Barmcake.

I hope you have enjoyed it

#magazines journalism

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mummified-game-review · 3 years ago

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2064 Read Only Memories: A Review

youtube

If you haven't played this game, then are there other point and click, cyberpunk kidnapping, mystery games that came in the Racial justice bundle that you think I should check out? Let me know all about them in the comments.the garden center of my closest hardware store and I’m trying to decide if the start up cost of 15 bucks in in my budget.

Welcome back to another video game review here on Mummified Games. Today were going to be taking a look at the modern Point and Click Mystery game 2064: Read Only Memories. By Midboss.

This game has a lot of charm to it. I Love how this game presents itself. The Music, art, story, and voice work, is all great and do a really great job of pulling me in. I did not want to stop playing. This was the first time where I was like okay maybe i play for 2 hours. And then write the review. But sadly there was no way I could do that if I wanted to make my deadline.

So the game is a future cyberpunk scene where Humans have found a way to cybernetically and biologically augment their bodies. Sort of just like every other Cyberpunk cenario. Just par for the course at this point.

Wouldn't have it any other way.

But what's great about this game is that it's not overly burdened with the constant narrative of life sucks and there's inequality and class disparity.

It's not dystopian cyberpunk, it's more optimistic. People seem to really be jammin with the future that they find themselves in. For the most part.

So it's your standard affair people are making so many augmentations to themselves in so many different ways. That there is a rebel group that is coming up that wants to see humanity return to who they were.

Not like a full blown god's perfect image, it's not a religious thing. But still embracing tradition and what makes humans human.

I don't know if we have the science to make Snake people then I'm all for it.

Ooo la la.

There are Robots that this big company is making that are designed to Walk like the humans, talk like the humans. But it's all just fancy code. And then the game tells you about one scientist that is working on transcending that limitation of just fancy code. And make something new.

Story intro out of the way, The scene opens with your less than standout apartment and you learn that you are a journalist, sort of.

And after you go through a nothing of a tutorial. As in like it's almost not even there cause it's so basic. You write a report and then go to bed.

INCITING ACTION

In the middle of the night a little blue robot hacks your door. And breaks into your apartment. Interfaces with your computer, cleans your apartment and also tries to clean the old computer, bricking it in the process.

You wake up and they tell you that they have selected you out of all known contacts of their master to help them track their master down. He was Captured last night and you need to join the robot to track down their master.

The robot's name is Turing, probably named after the real person Alan Turing the Computer Scientist.

A note about the dialogue and interactions with Turing. ALL THEIR LINES ARE VOICED! This game gives you so much during the process. There is a lot of reading to be doing in this game and luckily it's not all put on you.

I don't want you to think that I don't like Reading. Or that I think reading is hard. But if I'm meant to put multiple hours into a game. Doing nothing but reading for the entirety of it can get tiring

So I'm glad that so much is fully voiced. Gives you the chance to look down and tweet your love of this game for a second.

And that if there is a name or something that comes up you instantly know how it's meant to be pronounced. Instead of having to wait till you say it outloud in a video game review and suddenly everyone thinks “wait Tony, you say its like that? Wow okay”

Look, I have yet to hear anyone talk about Itch in casual conversation so I have no idea if you need to add the Dot I O to the end of it or if I sound like a Boomer who says out loud Dot Com at the end of every website name. “Yeah i just look it up on Google Dot Com”

I'm trying here folks I really am.

So after Turing tells you about what they need you join them on their mission to track down their creator and figure out what's at the bottom of this whole thing.

A note about the profile creation scene, it's quite funny and I thought it was super cool how they include multiple ways of character settings.

There's nothing visual that you can do to change your character so there's that. But Turing asks you for your name, you just type it out and I was excited for maybe a robot voice that was going to try to pronounce Mummified but it didn't go well.

Asks you for your pronouns, Yes! I love it. I would expect nothing less from a developer like Midboss. The people who host the Steam Summer of Pride Sale for the last couple of years Highlighing Queer games.

But the fact that they don't just limit to just He/Her/They but also Zir, and another one that slips my mind. And also an option to input your own preferred pronouns. SO COOL!

And I was ready to maybe answer one more silly question. That's where I was thinking the game would take things, assuming based on its sense of humor and the jokes that would come up in this game.

But no it was a real question about dietary needs and restrictions, to be kept in mind when out and about and talking about food. Holy crap that's so cool.

So the game gives you options like Omnivore, Vegetarian, Vegan, Halal, Gluten Free Dairy fr

What a super cool thing to include in your game. This just adds to the inclusion that is offered to players of all different ways of life.

So I just hunted down the list of food options in the video recording I took of this game and I'm reminded of just how funny this game is.

There are great jokes in this. There are subtle allegories to our own real world things in this game.

Turing says they found a better door that you could use to replace the current door you have due to its sub standard encryption features to prevent people from hacking though. And they recommend a particular model of door and mention it has over 300 reviews on Congo.

Wait... Congo. HA! Okay that got me. Cause you know Congo the river. And the Amazon river. I thought it was funny.

Also there is a joke about the Creator having a list of different things on the TV that they were watching like Ted’s Tech Tips. That one got me, because it might not be a thing but I'd like to think it's a nod to Linus Tech Tips.

This game is filled with great cute jokes. There are a couple of options that the game gives you when you wake up to see a strange robot in your room, some of the reactions are more fearful. And while reading them as an option I thought to myself WHY?

This little friend is Cute as hell. There's no way I would be scared of them. Their cute faces and little arms. I love them so much.

So the story is sound and the writing in it is so well done. The voice acting is great as well. Turing sounds innocent and has a cute childish nature to them, but they’re not dumb to say the least, they’re still the most advanced AI program in the world.

The gameplay is also stellar. Most of the interactions with things in this world are done with 4 different options.

Look: The game will give you a description of what the item, thing, person, whatever is.

Talk: If it's a person you can talk to them. Or sometimes things have voice commands.

Take/Touch, you might be able to pick something up or turn it on. Computers would take you to another window and you could do other things inside it.

Use time on: At the start of the game you're given an ID card and you pick up a pair of headphones in your apartment. The id could be used to get you places or scan for whatever might come up. Or you can connect your headphones to random things to hear stuff. What's funny is that you can use your headphones on almost anything and you can get some description of what you hear.

Real basic stuff. Like it's described. It's a Point And CLick Mystery Game. A lot of the game is being given a scene and you can talk to people in it, or interact with the things on the static screen.

Everything in this game flows so well together. Nothing takes you out of the experience. Its a story that takes you in and doesn't let go.

I think this is a game that I can fully recommend to people no matter what. If you have it. If you were curious about it. If you’ve never heard of it. Any range of feeling and knowledge of this game I highly recommend you go check it out.

If you have this game tell me your thoughts on it. Do you think Jessi was a jerk or if she is justified in her standoff-ness in her attitude?

If you haven't played this game, then are there other point and click, cyberpunk kidnaping, mystery games that came in the Racial justice bundle that you think I should check out? Let me know all about them in the comments.

In the meantime. Ah gee folks i really am thinking hard about that jade Plant. I'd love to get one. But my cable bill is coming and I know I need to take care of that first. Oh well. Maybe next month.

You all do the Youtube Dance, Like, Sub, Bell, Comment, and share this video with someone you know.

And as always hackers, Keep Digging, and we’ll make it out sometime.

See you in the next one.

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gretagerwigarchive · 7 years ago

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Greta Gerwig wants to hug every Lady Bird crew member after Golden Globe nominations

by Devan Coggan, December 11, 2017

source: http://ew.com/movies/2017/12/11/greta-gerwig-lady-bird-golden-globes-nomination/

EW caught up with Gerwig after nominations were announced to get her reaction to the news and talk about why so many moviegoers are falling in love with Lady Bird.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congratulations! How did you find out about the nominations this morning?

GRETA GERWIG: Thank you! Well, I knew they were coming out this morning. [laughs] I made myself sleep, and I said, “Don’t set an alarm. Sleep, wake up, make a cup of coffee, and then open your phone.” So I kind of forced myself to do everything, but I just wanted to look at my phone. And then I looked, and I had like 36 text messages and I thought, “Okay, something must have gone really well.” And then there was a lot of screaming and excitement and joy. That’s just sort of continued up until this moment. I think today is just going to be a full-on celebration screaming day.

The best kind of day.

It really is! [laughs] I’m just so proud of everybody who worked on it and so honored it was included in this year’s group of extraordinary movies. I want to see everyone who made the movie and give them a hug.

You’ve been nominated before as an actress, but what does it mean to you to be nominated for this film specifically?

Well, this is my first writing-directing solo situation, and it was nominated for Saoirse and Laurie and me and the movie. It’s like the most exciting thing ever! [laughs] And it’s a movie that was such a labor of love from everyone who made it that for it to be received this way and celebrated like this just means the world to me. We could never have anticipated this. It was just kind of this movie that we poured everything into, but you just never think it’s going to be received like this. It’s something that’s beyond our wildest everything.

Since the film has come out, the reaction has been so strong, and so many people have connected with Lady Bird and her story. Have you been surprised by how people have identified with it?

Yeah. I feel like movies are such a collaborative art form that it’s really the response to every single person who gave so much of themselves to the movie. There is this feeling of love around it because there was all the love that went into it.

And I also think it’s such a specific story, but it ends up being universal because it’s specific. I was in France and I was in the U.K., and I was talking to people there, and there were journalists saying, “I’ve never heard of Sacramento, but I feel like this is my story.” [laughs] It’s about home and how home is something you only really come to understand as you’re leaving it, and I think that’s something that everyone has a connection point with. That’s something that people can relate to. But it’s the wildest thing to be in a country that’s so far away, and yet they’re saying, “That’s me and my mom, and I grew up in Paris.” It’s very moving.

There’s that moment where Lady Bird and her mom go look at open houses, and I was sitting there, like, “My mom and I used to do that when I was growing up! Whenever we were sad or stressed, we’d do that and imagine what it’d be like to live there!” There’s a universality in that relationship that is so lovely.

Yeah! It’s funny, so many people have said, “I used to do that with my mom!” Men and women. It’s this thing where you go and almost imagine another life. Like maybe our lives would be perfect if we lived there. And I think people understand what that is.

As you mentioned, Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf both got nominated too. What was it about each of them that made them the right people to portray these two characters?

They’re both just such formidable actresses in their strength, and also in their powers of empathy. They have such a deep need to communicate, and I think for me — I had cast Saoirse, and then I cast Laurie next — it was this feeling where they could really take each other in the best way in both love and conflict. They could hold what the other person was putting down because they’re both just so formidable as actresses. I think that even though we were telling this very specific story of one year of this life, they would be able to bring the sense of a whole life. And that was true for every single actor, but for me, the heart of the movie is really a love story between a mother and a daughter, and I knew I needed two women like that to inhabit that space and really give it the stakes of something that’s monumental, even though it’s about a quotidian life in some ways.

One of the other key relationships that I love in this film is the relationship between Lady Bird and her best friend, Julie. That friendship feels so smart and real. How did you approach that friendship between the two of them?

Well, Beanie Feldstein is a treasure. She walked into the audition and she basically gave the performance you see on the screen. She was just so funny and so real and so heartbreaking and so detailed. She knew exactly what this relationship was and how to play each moment.

And the thing that made me so happy was I had cast Saoirse early, and we had a year before we actually shot the movie. She was going to go be on Broadway in The Crucible. So there were times where I would just get her and Beanie together to just hang out. Not to make it perfect or rehearse the scenes, just so they could trade phone numbers and get some inside jokes going. They got so close as people that I felt like that really translated onto the screen, and the scenes that still make me so happy are the two of them cracking each other up. These two young women making each other laugh, and genuinely making each other laugh. We just kept rolling on them laughing because they so got under each other’s skin in the best way. They knew how to make each other break, and it was so much fun to watch because it did feel like we were just getting to document a friendship.

I also have to ask about the music because it’s such a wonderful element of this film. When you were sitting down to write the screenplay, did the music change or evolve over time, or did you always know, “These are the songs I want”?

I did write Alanis Morissette and Dave Matthews and Justin Timberlake and Ani DiFranco and Stephen Sondheim. Those were all written in. I didn’t really have a plan B when it came to those songs. [laughs] I just felt like I need these songs. I went on an extensive letter-writing campaign, and they were all so gracious and kind that they let me use their music. And then I had the good fortune of being able to work with Jon Brion, who’s one of my favorite film composers of all time. I knew I wanted the music that was playing in the world that these teenagers would listen to to be very specific and very clear and tell the story of the time, and then the score that exists in the world of the movie is this lush, romantic, achy, old-fashioned score. And he was able to understand what that juxtaposition was. So to me, when I think of the music of the movie, I think of those two things together and how they play off of each other.

That makes sense, having those two juxtaposed elements.

Jon Brion was so fun too, to work with. Especially because I’m not a musician, so it’s like somebody doing a magic show! I would explain a feeling to him and he’d play a chord and say, “Is that the feeling?” And I’d say, “How did you know the chord that went with the feeling!” He’s like, “That’s what I do!” It’s like, that’s amazing!

How did you approach 2002 without making it feel kitschy or like a throwback?

I think the thing for me was to treat everything with utmost respect and like it was very real. So to acknowledge the fact that, yes, this is a Justin Timberlake song that came out that year, but also the songs on the radio were still songs from the ’90s. Or cars on the street, not every single car was from that year. To sort of have the traces of earlier times in the year that it’s taking place. Because I feel like that always makes it feel more realistic to me. That was something with the production design and the way that we put the movie together that we were very careful about because we didn’t want it to be too cute. Even though it’s recent history, it still is not now.

In making this film and directing your first feature, was there anything about the process that really surprised you?

The thing I had a hunch about, but I didn’t know until I’d really done it, was how much I’d adore directing films. It’s absolutely the most fun I’ve had doing anything. I love directing films. I love working with a team. I love working with actors. I love being the person who’s able to bring all these people together with a common purpose. I thought I would love doing it, but then when you’re actually there, you think, “This is the best time I’ve ever had.” You don’t totally know how it’s going to work out.

And then in terms of challenges, I think one of the benefits of how long I’ve worked in film and how my film school happened on set — both in front of the camera and behind the camera — is that I knew in my bones that the difficulties that you’d face along the way in making a film were necessarily part of making a film. That doesn’t mean that the film is going to completely implode. That’s just part of it. Every day there’s going to be something that comes up that seems insurmountable. And then you all get your heads together and figure out how to get through it! [laughs] I think because of working in movies for so long, I knew that that was the path. That wasn’t some aberration from the path.

So I’m assuming you want to direct something else very soon?

Oh my God, there’s nothing I more want to do. I’m itching to do it again. [laughs] I also feel like it’s hard to codify what you’ve learned because so much of it is developing your intuition. It’s hard to break it down into, “I’ve learned the following 20 things!” But there was that feeling when I got to the end of it, like, I want to do this again right away because I have so much more information about how to do this and how to go ahead and how to push something forward. And it’s wanting to continue to grow and challenge myself. And the truth is, on the next one, it’ll be a whole new set of challenges. But I think you just keep adding to your toolbox. So yeah. One hundred percent. I can’t wait to get back on a set.

#2017 #Interview #Greta Gerwig #Lady Bird #Golden Globe Awards

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buckyswinterchildren · 7 years ago

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A Perfect Encounter - Part 1

Bucky Barnes x Reader AU!

Summary: sometimes, being at the wrong place at the right time means that your life can change.

A/N: “I´ll tell you my name if you can find me again” is my prompt to celebrate that @just-some-drabbles has hit 4k followers. Congratulations! I have already written to you toooo many times to tell you about your awesome work and writing skills, so you deserve them and more :)

Tags: @supersoldierslover @barnesandnoble13 @amrita31199

(Credits to the owner of the gif)

“I come back from work now, and the house is filled with strangers that Tyler has accepted. All of them working. The whole first floor turns into a kitchen and a soap factory. The bathroom is never empty.”

Your cellphone buzzing interrupts your reading. “Fuck,” you tell yourself as you take it out from your coat pocket, “I forgot to put in in silent mood.” After you check the notification (a message from your friend Natasha telling you that she won´t be able to meet you at the bar,) you silence the cell phone and keep it back in your pocket.

You do not get angry with Natasha; on the contrary, you just answer: “it is ok, Nat. See you on Monday then!” and you take advantage of the fact that you can be here at the park reading until whatever-hour-you-want.

“Teams of men disappear for a few days and come home with red rubber bags of thin, watery fat.”

“One night, Tyler comes upstairs to find me...”

“Great,” you think as you see with your peripheral vision that a man sits in the same banch that you are. You came to this park so you can be in peace, not to be surrounded by anyone, it does not matter if the person next to you right now is a complete stranger.

You try to keep reading “...hiding in my room and says, ´Don´t bother them. They all know...” Now this man´s phone starts to ring and you lose your concentration once again. You take a deep breath trying to calm down, and you convince yourself and your mind to focus on the book. “Please, brain do not get distracted too easily. I want to finish this chapter, at least.”

And your brain does.

“I say, no, I can´t say what´s going to happen. And I push the one, two, three molars into the dirt and hair and shit and bone and blood where Marla won´t see.

CHAPTER 15.”

Now that you have finally ended chapter fourteen, you are back to reality. You look around you as you take a deep breath of the fresh air of the park; you take a look at the kids playing in the playground, a mother and her child eating their icecreams, the old man walking with his dog, and you cannot avoid looking at the man who still is by your side: he checks the hour two or three times every two minutes. Before you can even laugh at his action, you return to your book.

The minutes pass, you are on the next chapter, and the man is still there. Now he seems bored, his interest in whatever he had it in is gone. You could see that, discreetly, he has been looking, reading, or trying to read what you are reading. “If you can´t beat your enemies, join them,” you think and smile at your thought.

“The Fight Club,” you say out loud without taking your eyes off the book.

“S-Sorry?,” the man asks in a confused tone.

“The book,” you close it so he can see the cover, “´The Fight Club.` Come on, don´t be shy, I know you were looking at it.”

“Sorry?” is all he says again.

You laugh at the poverty of his language. “Don´t be, we all do that.”

Now he laughs. “Do you like it so far?” is the first question that came to his mind as he checks the time again. “I have seen the movie and I think it was awesome.”

You smile turning towards him, “you liked it?! Wow, I do not even know you, but you are smart.”

The man narrows his eyes, “who does not like it?”

“Well, I am not surrounded by people who have watched it or liked it, so... I can´t talk to anyone about ´The Fight Club´ or other movies.”

“You are not supposed to talk about The Fight Club.” You both laugh at his spontaneous joke. “What other movie do you like that not everybody likes or has seen?”

You cannot believe you are having this nerd but interesting conversation with someone you do not know. “Well, let me think. Um, I enjoyed ´Donnie Darko,` ´The Perfectionist.` I do not remember what else, but I am such a freaky when it comes to movies and series.”

“Oh, then I am a freaky too. I have watched ´Donnie Darko` like a thousand times; of course that when I watched it for the first time, I looked for all the theories of the movie on the internet.”

You laugh because you did the same as soon as Donnie Darko finished the first time you watched it. “People are insane! How can they come up with all those theories?!”

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes have passed and you two are still talking about movies and series and the books they are based on. You can see that the man, whom you came to know is named Bucky, checks the hour for the 174th time as he puts a face of resignation. “Don´t you have her number?” you ask Bucky.

“Uh? H-how do you know?”

“That you are on a blind date or that she has not come yet?” Bucky looks at you almost afraid of you, “don´t look me like that; I am not a psychotic person who has been following you all this time, but I have been in both situations so you can say I am a survivor of blind dates and of being stood up.”

Bucky cannot avoid the laugh, “I like that nickname, ´survivor.`” Bucky finally keeps his cellphone in his pocket and continues, “yes, she is not here.” He looks at the floor, almost embarrased at his situation in front of a stranger, “I must look like an idiot right now.”

“Nah, don´t worry. It is possible that you do not see me anymore, so do not be embarrased in front of me. Besides, now you have an anecdote to share with your friends.” Now you are the one checking the hour as you realize the sun is almost gone. You think a few seconds on what to do, but finally your mouth is faster than your brain, “um, Bucky, do you want to go with me to a bar?” You get up from the banch while you keep talking: “I mean, I do not do this at all, I am not inviting whoever I meet at the street to do something, but since this girl is not coming and my friend either, I thought...”

“Yeah, yeah, why not?” You are surprised by Bucky´s sudden response. “You already told me you are not a psycho so, yes.”

Being in New York means walking a lot from one place to another in its endless blocks, but neither Bucky nor you feel the walk towards the bar exhausting or long since you have not stopped talking and laughing, yeah, laughing at him being stood up.

“Optimo Bar, I have never been here before,” Bucky tells you as you open the front glass door of the bar and the music welcomes you.

“Well, I am happy to be your first,” you answer in a serious but funny tone of voice. It is weird how Bucky does not even take the comment out of place; he just looks at you and laughs.

You make your way towards one of the fewer empty tables walking through the people who are laughing, speaking, drinking, eating some fries.

“Do you come here often?” Bucky asks you as he puts his coat on the back of the chair and takes a sit.

“Sometimes,” you sit right in front of him and continue: “with my friends we choose this place. It just feels good to be in a place where you feel comfortable, you know?”

“Yeah, I underst-”

Bucky is interrupted by the waitress who comes to take your orders. You rapidly choose your favourite beer while Bucky takes his time to read the menu before choosing another brand of beer.

“Can I ask you how did you notice I was in a blind date?” Bucky asks once the waitress leaves your table.

You laugh at his question, “oh, Bucky women know and notice everything. I realized you were checking the time continously and you were wearing that scarf which is so striking. When we were talking and you checked the hour in your phone again, you just make that face of resignation and took the scarf off like you did not want to be found by her.”

Bucky cannot believe all the analysis you just did of him, “you are a good observer.”

“You were right by my side, it was not hard to ignore you. Where did you meet this girl?”

“We have a friend in common, Steve, and he had the idea of the blind date. He insisted so much that I finally gave up and accepted.”

“I am sure that Steve is gonna be jumping of happiness once he knows what happens with his romantic plan.”

“Now I can tell him that I came to a bar with a complete stranger.”

“Hey! We are not complete strangers!”

“Yeah, my bad. Well, I can tell Steve that I came to a bar with a freaky half stranger who likes these weird movies, just like me.”

“´A super-cool-freaky stranger` is the best way to define me. All this that is happening today with you is a great story for me; I should write about you.”

“You write?”

“Yeah, I´m a journalist. But do not get too excited because I am gonna write about you being stood up.”

“Just tell me where you write so I tell my friends not to buy that edition.”

Instead of laughing, you look at Bucky with a serious no-so-serious face. “And you, Bucky? What do you do?”

“Well...” Bucky, looking at his glass of beer, makes a pause not being sure if he should continue. “I am... a stripper.”

“A stripper?! That´s great!” Your face is shining like a child who was just told he is not going to go to school today. “I have never met one before! You do not look like one though, but I think that in your guild you all know how to cover when you are not working.”

“You are not looking at me wrong,” Bucky is surprised by your reaction.

“Why would I? It´s a job, this is a free country.”

“You have no prejudices, do you?”

“Only with those who do not like animals or music.”

“Good to know I do not fit in any of those categories, but I have to tell you that I am not a stripper,”

“What? Oh, shame on you! Then, what do you do?”

“I am a lawyer-”

“Oh,” you reply.

“A cool lawyer,” Bucky adds when he sees your face of disappointment.

“I will still tell everyone I know I met a stripper. I don´t know much about the lawyers´ world; do you work in a law firm, like in the ´Suits` series?”

“Every single series is under your radar! No, not in a buffett, I specifically work for Tony Stark.”

“Tony Stark, eh? He is like the Donald Trump of technology. I mean, not that he is a crazy evil man, I am just saying that for all the businesses he has,” you try to explain yourself before Bucky thinks wrong about your idea.

“I have to tell my boss you just compare him with Trump and I don´t think he will be happy about it. But yes, thanks to all his businesses I have a job; you can imagine all the demands and legal procedures he is involved in.”

“If I get anxiety when the deadline to present my articles is near I cannot even imagine what it is like to be Tony Stark.” When you hear the song that stars playing on the background, you rapidly change the topic: “Oh! I love this song.”

“Where is the quite sweet reader of two hours ago?” Bucky asks as he sees you moving your head at the rhythm of the song.

“She disappeared the exact moment you sat by my side at that park, Bucky.”

“Hey, you have not told me your name yet.”

“You are right!” You take another sip of beer, “this is fun. What do you think is my name?”

“A game trying to find out your name?! You are a girl out of the box, Christina?”

“What?! Christina?! What kind of name is that? Keep trying, Bucky.”

Before Bucky can even tell you the second name he has in mind, his cellphone starts buzzing. He looks at the screen to see who is calling: Steve. “Oh, sorry, I have to take this call.”

“Yeah, do not worry. Right behind that big black door” you indicate Bucky as you point it out, “is the patio.”

Now that Bucky is in the patio, all the noise from inside is just a murmur. “Steve, hi.”

“Man, where the fuck are you? What happened to you?”

“W-what? Kirsten talked to you? She did not go, Steve.”

“But Kirsten told me she did go and she waited for you a lot until well... she realized you were not going.”

Bucky is totally confused, “how is that that she did go? I waited for a long time too!”

“Are you sure you both were in the same place?”

“Prospect Park, Steve. I was there.”

“No, Bucky, it was Flushing Meadows Park,” Steve laughs at Bucky´s mistake. “Did you really make all that journey to Prospect Park?”

“Um, yeah. I do not why I thought it was this park. I really do not know.”

“Ok, Bucky I am gonna tell Kirsten you have been a bit distracted and that only that was the problem. Aren´t you lost right now?”

“Thank you. No, trust me, I am fine now.”

Steve´s laugh can be heard once more. “Take care, Bucky. Bye.”

“Bye, Steve.”

Bucky laughs at himself, how did he confuse these two places that are not even close to each other? “At least I met her,” Bucky thinks as he goes back inside the bar.

But you and your coat and bag are not in the table anymore.

Bucky starts looking for you everywhere, but you disappeared just like a ghost. “Great, tonight is not my day,” he tells himself as he approaches his chair. Once in the table you shared, he notices a piece of paper under your empty glass of bear.

“I´ll tell you my name if you can find me again.”

If you want to be tagged in this series, tell me!

#bucky barnes x reader #james barnes x reader #sebastian stan x reader #bucky barnes au #sebastian stan fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfiction

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herokita · 5 years ago

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What does it take to be successful in SEO? We spoke to our in-house SEO magician, Owain, to find out how he has climbed the rankings in the industry. If I had to explain what I do to a 5 year-old I’d say… I make PeoplePerHour appear at the top of Google using various methods of wizardry. Like a really uncool Harry Potter. It’s an age-old cliche, but I “fell into” SEO. I spent several years working in China in a previous life, initially as an English teacher after graduating from university in the UK, and then eventually as a bit-part translator, journalist and digital marketer. When I came back to the UK, I was trying to leverage my Chinese language skills and was lucky enough to be picked up by a multilingual SEO agency who were doing some China-focused SEO projects at the time, and it all started there. True experience in SEO is gained through first-hand practical experience. With SEO, there are an awful lot of blogs, guides and all manner of resources out there and the industry is quite unique insofar as it has quite a strong community that contributes to each other’s learning. This is initially useful for getting a grounding in SEO, though you soon find that a lot of what’s out there has limits when being applied to real-life unique SEO situations. True experience comes through trying, testing, failing, and eventually seeing positive results. My first couple of early SEO roles saw me get stuck in with a variety of content and technical SEO tasks and projects for different brands, and I was able to learn quite quickly. On top of that, I’ve been fortunate enough to work under the guidance of some real experts within the field, either through being managed or working collaboratively with clients or agencies. There are some incredibly smart people in the industry and I continue to keep close to a select few who I’ve learnt a lot from in my journey. My favourite part of the job is… Oftentimes it’s just the small stuff. A big part of SEO is having bigger picture vision and an exciting, overarching strategy, but I love it when you make small tweaks to areas of a site and see important marginal gains. It’s amazing what you can achieve with a quick internal linking optimisation or simple tweaks to existing content, for example. The future of SEO shouldn’t be optimised for search engines. Attend any SEO conference or webinar and you’ll see this question answered so often and in so many different ways that make the future of SEO look incredibly busy and contradictory, to say the least! I think the basics of SEO have remained on a straight path for some time and will continue to do so. That being getting your site in order technically, and creating useful, in-depth content that serves a useful purpose around an informed keyword dataset. Google will, of course, make algorithmic tweaks every now and then that send shudders through the industry, though this will benefit sites that do well in areas of optimisation that are of well-known familiarity, such as site speed and lack of duplicate content for example. Any half-decent SEO should be well on top of this regardless. I think a lot of the future of SEO is based around not optimising necessarily for search engines, but more for humans and to a lesser extent, machines. Consumers are becoming more specific in their search behaviour and intent and with the launch of the new BERT algorithm late last year, Google is becoming smarter at providing succinct answers from website snippets within their search results page. This often neglects the need for users to actually click through to a site to find out more. This presents a challenge for brands trying to optimise their content to capture not only the presentation of an answer in the Google search results page, but also do enough to anticipate this intent, entice users to click through and find out more, and thereby discover the brand. On the same token, it’s also becoming more important than ever for SEOs to work closely with UX designers to achieve this “human-focused” journey that serves user intent whilst adhering to the usual SEO best practice. My advice for anyone looking to build a career in SEO is… Attend as many free conferences or webinars as possible. Ask questions and network. Follow some SEO influencers you like on Twitter and get involved in the conversations. Get a basic grounding through the plethora of free guides and blogs online (though be wary of information overload!) SEO is quite a competitive industry these days though it is becoming more in demand. If you can, find a niche within the many facets of SEO that interest you. Above everything, however – and going back to one of my earlier points – build your own website and get some first-hand experience in SEO. Whenever I’ve hired people previously, I’ve always been keen to hear about their own personal SEO and website projects, as this is often a good indicator of passion and commitment. Your own website also allows you to experiment with content, code and technical ventures where mistakes don’t come at a price and allow you to learn without suffering the wrath of clients or directors! If I wasn’t in SEO, I’d love to get into politics. I’m an amateur musician, though that would struggle to pay the bills. I’d love to get into politics in some way. Slightly different skill set, though I’ve probably got just the right amount of vanity. My favourite app is Shazam. Old but gold and works so well! I’m a bit stuck in my ways when it comes to discovering new music, so it’s a godsend whenever I hear something new I like on the radio or on TV. I’m also a big fan of language learning apps and have this great Chinese language app called Pleco which I try and dip into as often as possible to try and brush up. It has a great user interface and allows you to practice writing Chinese characters. My last meal would be a steak…maybe. I’ve been to Hawksmoor steakhouse a few times with my partner, though being a vegetarian does make the experience lacklustre. Based on her reactions I’d love to know what it tastes like if there was some way to bypass the ethical conundrum of me eating meat. Failing that, the best meal I’ve had in recent memory was at a place called Elephante in LA. Aubergine whip starter followed by the most incredible pizza and washed down with a lovely Californian red. A funny career moment happened when an irate client was shouting down the phone asking why their site’s traffic had disappeared completely in the space of a day. It turned out that one of their developers had accidentally blocked the entire site from Google in their robots.txt file. Awful at the time, though this is made funny in hindsight by the fact it was a huge electronics brand everyone’s heard of. My mantra in life is live and let live. I don’t really live by any specific mantra in life per se. I guess I’ve been around the block enough to know how to treat certain situations, problems and people, having seen quite extreme examples of the good and the bad in my time. I suppose one simplification of this could be that you can get very far in life by simply being kind and empathetic to people wherever possible. Live and let live could be one way of looking at it. Read more: HEROKITA.com | Digital Talents On Demand Source link

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thisisheffner · 5 years ago

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Pet Shop Boys: 'The acoustic guitar should be banned' | Music | The Guardian

The new Pet Shop Boys album is, they say, the third in a trilogy. Hotspot follows 2013’s Electric and 2016’s Super, all collaborations with producer Stuart Price, all examples of the duo’s return to “electronic purism” after a succession of albums where, as Neil Tennant puts it, they variously “pretended to be a rock band” (Release), “made a zany one with everything and the kitchen sink on it” (Yes) and “went to LA and made an album about being old” (Elysium).

“That was your big idea, being old,” says Tennant, nodding in the direction of his fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe, who is sitting alongside him on the sofa in a record company office in the City of London. “He explained that to our manager and she was absolutely aghast. She looked completely horrified.”

It is worth noting that in recent years the Pet Shop Boys have also written scores for Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin and a ballet based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale (2011’s The Most Incredible Thing), as well as premiering A Man From the Future – a kind of pop oratorio based on the life of Alan Turing – at the Proms. They also provided the music for a theatrical adaptation of Stephen Frears’ film My Beautiful Laundrette and a one-woman Edinburgh festival show by actor Frances Barber, based on the character of Billie Trix, the washed-up pop star she played in the Pet Shop Boys’ 2001 musical Closer To Heaven. Its revival was also noticeably more successful than the critically savaged original production. “It was a very outrageous piece for 2001, loads of drugs in it, somebody dies,” notes Tennant. “Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s company produced it and I remember him saying: ‘Well, sorry guys, I guess it was a bit too much for everybody.’”

Set against this backdrop, the Electric/Super/Hotspot trilogy does seem like a return to what you might call Pet Shop Boys basics. They began their career in 1984, working with hi-NRG producer Bobby Orlando, transforming the predominant sound of the era’s gay clubs into a very British and brainy brand of pop music, shot through with a streak of social comment so subtly done that people frequently missed the point entirely. Thirty years of the duo patiently explaining that Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) was a satire of 80s excess doesn’t seem to have dimmed TV documentary directors’ enthusiasm for playing it in the background during footage of yuppies shouting into enormous mobile phones or spraying champagne; 1987’s Shopping was a withering portrait of London consumerism between the Big Bang and Black Monday, so shrewdly drawn you could imagine a City boy of the era banging the wheel of his Ferrari and bellowing along, oblivious to its real intent.

A lot has changed since 1984, though. For one thing, the Pet Shop Boys have sold 100m records. But while the vast majority of their 80s contemporaries have long been consigned to the nostalgia circuit or vanished entirely – “down the dumper,” as Tennant memorably put it while working as a journalist on Smash Hits – the Pet Shop Boys have become a kind of curious national institution. Still close enough to the heart of pop that younger stars flock to work with them – Hotspot features Olly Alexander of Years & Years, who, Tennant dryly notes, “is of a different generation to us, sings in a different style, more R&B, whereas Chris always says I sing like Julie Andrews” – and yet sufficiently highbrow that all the ballets and oratorios and scores for silent films feel like a natural fit rather than an affectation.

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The duo long ago reneged on their refusal to play gigs, although, as Tennant points out, his celebrated 80s line about how he “liked proving that we can’t cut it live” was meant as a joke, on account of their inability to make their grandiose plans for shows work financially – their first US tour was both a vast success and lost half a million pounds. Now, however, they are a reliably stadium-filling, festival-headlining act – a 25-date greatest hits tour of European arenas begins in May. It’s a state of affairs they seem to enjoy, but it’s not without its hiccups. “I announced I was going to retire,” sighs Tennant, “when we played a half-empty venue in Grimsby on my birthday in 2002.”

And yet here they are, in 2020, roughly where they were in 1984, occasional residents of Berlin (they own a flat in the city, its kitchen converted into a recording studio, complete with “a vocoder which we never use because I don’t know how to plug it in,” says Lowe), making music at least partly inspired by the city’s nightlife. They are regular visitors to its notoriously hedonistic techno mecca Berghain, although their approach to the club seems impressively genteel, as befits men in their 60s. “We go on Sunday lunchtimes,” smiles Tennant, “around 12 o’clock. We treat it as pre-lunch drinks – we go up to the Panorama Bar and have a glass of prosecco. You get the people who’ve been there all night, they’re absolutely twatted, but then there’s a fresh crowd coming in as well, and it’s a very interesting atmosphere. And it’s great to walk in from daylight on to the main dancefloor, which is completely dark, there’s just a kick drum playing four-to-the-floor, and it’s really, really exciting in an alienating way.”

If the duo’s penchant for satire seems less present on Hotspot, says Tennant, that’s because it was “siphoned off” on the 2019 EP Agenda, home to Give Stupidity a Chance and What Are We Going to Do About the Rich?, by some distance the angriest songs the Pet Shop Boys have ever recorded. “What was the reaction to them? Probably generally negative,” laughs Tennant. “I mean, if you’re doing something to wind people up and they get wound up, I suppose your job’s been done.”

In fact, a careworn song about the refugee crisis aside, the tone of Hotspot is often rather romantic. “Berlin’s quite a romantic place,” says Tennant. “People in Britain tend to think of Berlin, even now, as the wall and Bowie making ‘Heroes’. But it’s got 80 lakes in it, you can be in the countryside in 20 minutes, it’s such a beautiful place in the summer, you have pubs on the river. So that’s why I think it sounds warm and romantic.”

The duo are famously entertaining interviewees, Tennant’s background as a music journalist clear both in his theorising about “the discipline of the pop single” and an awareness of how things look in print. When talk turns to the current crop of earnest post-Ed Sheeran troubadours, he first, perhaps rashly, suggests: “I think the acoustic guitar should be banned, actually.” Then offers a headline for a feature based around that quote: “Pet Shop Boys Blast Lame Rock Rivals”.

Lowe, meanwhile, contrary to his public image – stony-faced and silent beneath an unending selection of preposterous hats – is drily funny about everything from his partner’s singing voice (“Neil is not from the gospel tradition, despite having been an altar boy”), to the Americanisation of British culture: “I can’t believe schools have started having prom dances. As if school isn’t bad enough anyway without a prom at the end of it. They never end well in films, do they? We’ve all seen Carrie.”

But nevertheless, an old-fashioned element of mystery and distance remains intact: what they do when they are not being the Pet Shop Boys remains largely unknown, their private lives off limits throughout their career. They don’t do social media, or rather they did, then reconsidered when they realised that it involved “interaction”, a word Tennant says with comic horror. “We were early adopters of Twitter,” says Lowe, “and early leavers. The only thing I liked about it was blocking people. I loved to block.”

“Chris,” smiles Tennant, “is the sort of person who, if he’d been a pop star in the 1970s, would have posted a turd to someone he didn’t like.”

They do feel a little out of place in the current pop climate’s obsession with authenticity and ordinariness (“authenticity is a style,” notes Tennant, “and it’s always the same style”), its lyrical penchant for what they waspishly term “narcissistic misery”.

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“We’re always looking for euphoria and excitement in music,” he says, “that sort of feeling we got the first time we heard Bobby O’s records, or Helter Skelter by the Beatles, or even She Loves You, going right back to being a child. That euphoric thing came back in with the rave scene in the 80s, but it isn’t really at the core of pop music now. Its context is social media; social media has actually created and defined the form of popular music and I think, unfortunately, that takes it down the narcissistic misery route. It doesn’t have the importance it once had, and that’s been the case for quite a while. It’s become a facet of social media. You know, everything we do, there’s people working out how to edit it down to 10 seconds, literally everything. I wonder what would happen now if you released Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Then again, says Tennant, they never did fit in. “When we started off we really did think we were going to create our own world that might reference other things, like a novelist writing a series of novels set in a particular era or something like that, where we were characters. And when we did collaborations, we judged them very carefully. So our first collaboration was with Dusty Springfield [on 1987’s What Have I Done To Deserve This?]. Our label didn’t want us to work with her, they wanted us to work with Tina Turner or someone like that. I remember the director of EMI going: ‘I can get you Streisand!’ But” – he thumps the coffee table before him for emphasis – “we wanted Dusty. Then we worked with Liza Minnelli and that was sort of politely greeted with horror, but everyone went along with it and it worked, because it’s our world.”

Of Top of the Pops, he says: “We were never the kind of performers who were going to enter into it wholeheartedly. Chris established early on that we weren’t allowed to look thrilled to be there. Whenever the camera came over to us, he’d say: ‘Don’t look triumphant!’ But we used to quite enjoy Top of the Pops, you know, being glared at by some singer because you’d said something nasty about them in the press.” He laughs. “I always liked the way that British pop stars always hated each other. When I worked on Smash Hits, I remember the editor saying: ‘We should do a piece on Paul Weller, because he’ll slag everyone off.’ The feuds! Duran Duran and Spandau, Boy George and Pete Burns arguing about who had those sort of gay dreadlocks first.”

“I don’t think bands do that now,” nods Lowe. “When we tour, we’ve got this band, young musicians, and it’s so refreshing because they’re so nice. They feel part of a musical community, they all know each other, they play on each other’s records, they’re all linked in. It wasn’t like that when we were around.”

But, of course, they are still around. Their albums – if not their singles – are inevitably Top 10 hits and sprinkled with songs that rank alongside their best. The Billie Trix cabaret show, Musik, is about to transfer to London, and there are excited rumours abounding that they are playing Glastonbury this year – “which we can’t talk about, which is annoying” – after their guest spot on the Killers’ headline set in 2019.

“Making music, there is still a magic about going into a studio and finding that sort of euphoria and excitement of something new,” says Tennant. “There’s a magic to realising there’s nothing more you can add to something, it’s finished, and then judging its value or whatever. It’s a supremely enjoyable and satisfying career, and, you know, you can’t stop doing it. I mean, if you run out of ideas, that’s when you stop.”

“I’m quite looking forward to that actually,” nods Lowe. “Running out of ideas.” He grins. “Because that’s when you go and work with Brian Eno.”

Hotspot is out today

This content was originally published here.

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