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ethicallysourcedhumanmeat · 8 years ago

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Practically Impractical

This is a Mystic Messanger Fic with a custom MC/Seven/Jumin. It’s mostly fluff and angst. You can find it up to date on my AO3 account here

[Next][Masterpost]

Part One:

She should have said something sooner. In the chat, they’d certainly asked her plenty about herself, but Seven’s background check had only revealed her sock accounts. Besides she didn’t plan on seeing any of them again.

Returning the phone had been a whim. Overseas, alone, no one to judge her she’d finally taken her friends advice and installed a chat app. One of those locals in your area, swipe left to accept things she’d been avoiding for years. She’d thought the lost phone was just someone’s clever hook up line. So she packed her pepper spray, sent a text to a local friend and took a cab to the address. But all she found was an empty apartment and the RFA.

The RFA was an excellent distraction. She was in Korea for work, contemplating taking a job that would move her here. She’d said no at first. She was content being mostly behind the scenes at the small gaming media company, helping the tech department get the stream out, compiling soundtracks and acquiring media licences. It had been a fluke getting her little niche half hour show. She’d streamed games in her free time, mostly for friends and then someone had uploaded a 15 minute video of her playing Last of Us and singing along to the spice world soundtrack. It had gone viral before she’d even known it was on youtube. Suddenly 15 followers was 1500 and someone recognized her from crew appreciation and she got called into a meeting. She got 30 minutes every Thursday evening with a guest dubbed Inappropriate Soundtrack Karaoke.

She wasn’t convention appearance big, but she was frequently requested to host their coverage, so when they decided to send someone from their American studio to co-host Pro-Gamer tournaments with her Korean counterpart she was the first name to come up.

She’d declined at first. Max was finally settled, finally had people, she didn’t want to ruin that. But she agreed she’d do one. It wasn’t just her popularity as a host that had extended the invitation but her background. She’d grown up there, an army brat, and then stayed after her parents had been posted back to America. She’d met Max’s father, a fresh faced Private, while she pursued a media communications degree.

Then they’d been posted back to the States, but not near either of their families and that’s when things had turned sour. No work for her aside from sparse freelancing, no common ground, no mutual friends, and worst than the social isolation was that she could’t even go anywhere. She’d let her license expire because she’d taken the train mostly but where they were stationed didn’t even have a bus system. It was three years since they’d split and she was doing better than ever, and if not for Max, she would have seriously considered the move.

The party was a good distraction, and the chats. She could work from the apartment. All her production tasks were easy enough to complete, and the apartment ended up conveniently close to the convention centre she could shoot intros with her Korean counterpart and make it back to the apartment in time to catch Zen’s morning selfie.

By the time she felt bad about lying to them Seven was at the apartment and things had gone horribly wrong. She’d had to call the studio and invent an illness, Seven had helped with fake documents. She’d been having fun chatting with him, had started to think about telling him who she really was, or at least encouraging him to look deeper. It had been fun being young and unattached but with the RFA she could see herself taking the job, moving Max here and having a support system.

Seven had been so withdrawn in the apartment, with good reason, and she worried what would happen if she told him the truth, and then it all came to a head and there was no time. She accepted the job via phone call in a hospital waiting room while Seven was in surgery. Standing next to Jumin she made arrangements for Max and all the things she’d had in storage to meet her. She supposed from the surprised faces now he must not have told anyone.

“You sing?” He asked in English, looking up from his phone, her wiki page open in the browser.

“Kind of,” she blushed.

Seven had insisted she stay at his place when he woke up. And she did try, but it didn’t feel right to be there without him, so she’d taken up Zen on his offer to bunk there but she’d only lasted a few hours, Zen was nice enough, but something in his personality reminded her of her ex-husband in a way that had her constantly on edge. So she planned to spend the next few days at the apartment, the one with the bomb, until Yoosung showed up with Rika. He’d insisted she stay with him. She’d tried to refuse but Vs funeral was coming up and she could see he had his hands full with Rika.

“You don’t have to do that.” Yoosung’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the hymn she was singing while she braided Rika’s hair.

“I don’t mind,” she smiled.

“After everything, you don’t have to be so nice to her.”

“I really don’t mind Yoosung.”

The way he draws in his breath, his chest puffed out, she knows he wants to say more. She felt sorry for Rika. Callie had seen what religion and mental illness could do first hand. Helping Yoosung while Seven monitored Saeran’s recovery was cathartic and Jumin had surprised her by asking her to sing at Vs service.

“Why are you so kind?” He says, under his breath and she twitches.

“I’m not. Really. I’ve just,” Callie sighs. “When I was young I was very religious, Catholic like you, and I joined a youth group, it catered to my interests and my spirituality, except it was more sinster.”

“Like mint eye?”

“A cult, yeah. I had a very close friend who was sick like Rika. I’m not saying—”

“Callie.”

“Yoosung, what she did was wrong, but she needed help, V shouldn’t have taken her mental health on as his personal burden, and he certainly suffered the most for that choice, don’t get me wrong. But this is over, and if she recovers she’s going to have that on her conscience for the rest of her life.”

“But after everything—”

“She’s still a person, who was very sick.”

He’d hugged her then, and she’d held him while he cried. The moment passed, and her guilt levels rose. At any point she could have told someone. But then again, so could Jumin. He’d invited her to coffee, Yoosung and Zen had seemed relieved to see her leave that day, and Jumin had started interrogating her.

“I tried to let you bring this up yourself, but who is Max.”

“Jumin, I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking about this.”

“Because you haven’t told Saeyoung?”

“Fuck, really?” She hung her head. “So is this a friendly threat?”

“It depends who Max is. I assume whoever they are is the same person you frequently excuse yourself to talk to?”

“Jumin,” even Seven hadn’t noticed, he’d been so distracted by Saeran that he hadn’t even questioned her. “I just, there’s so much happening. I don’t want to add another cross to his pile.”

Jumin sat across from her eyes narrowed over his drink. “Perhaps this is a conversation better suited to a glass of wine.”

“A shot of tequila would be preferable.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I could arrange something.”

“No we’re here now,” she sighed. Resigned. “Max is my daughter. She’s 8 and no I don’t even speak to her father, not when I can help it.”

The always composed Jumin Han stared mouth agape for what she estimated was a full 17 seconds. He inhaled sharply though his nose and set his coffee aside. “And she will be moving here with you.”

“Yeah in a few more weeks, I hope. The studio is arranging to have one of my production staff escort her but—” she sighed. One more sentence and this would be officially considered confiding. Everyone else’s problems had seemed so large in comparison but she was starting to feel the cracks. “Jumin, are you, are you ok? You don’t need to listen to my problems. How are you with everything that’s happened?”

For a minute she thought he might open up, but he smiled. Content apparently that the offer had been made. “I’ll be fine, but what were you going to say?”

She takes a long drink of her coffee and by the time the bitter sediment at the bottom of the mug has settled at the back of her tongue she’s decided to tell him. “Her father is notoriously hard to contact and I have to have his permission to move Max out of the country. Max was born here like me, she and I have dual citizenship but he’s a Servicemen and I have no idea if he’s not answering my lawyer because she’s my lawyer or because he’s deployed somewhere.” She sighs relieved. There’s nothing to be done but it was nice to have been able to tell someone that, to express her frustration.

But Jumin’s eyes narrow and he’s already firing off who knows how many emails from his phone. “I’ll contact my lawyer, certainly I can help with this, at the very least.”

“No, I appreciate it but you don’t really need to get involved. I mean, I really appreciate the offer but I don’t want—”

“You don’t want my help?” Jumin offers.

She laughs. “No, I’d love your help but I don’t want the headache.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s one thing for the contract Lawyer at the studio to do me a favor and occasionally handle my ex-husband. But if a foreign lawyer, with connections to your name, aggressively contacts him in relation to moving Max out of the country? I mean I’m sure you can understand how it looks.”

“You mean there would be gossip.”

“Even if there isn’t gossip, he’ll be unbearable. I really appreciate the thought behind it, and if he was a different, reasonable, person I would take you up on it. As frustrating as it is to wait and do it on his terms it’s just easier.”

“Will he be upset that you’re removing his access to your daughter?”

“Probably,” she shrugged. “But I doubt he’ll even bother to see Max before she leaves. She might get a call or an email when she’s finally here.”

Jumin was quiet for a while. “It must be hard to make travel arrangements then?”

“I think the plan is for my assistant to travel standby with Max as soon as he signs. I’d love to go and bring her back myself but even with the studio covering most of the costs, this hasn’t been cheap, and I just can’t justify it, and the studio is shelling out a lot to move me here.”

“Would you let me help with this then?”

“What?”

“I could, perhaps authorize my plane to take you to meet your daughter. As long as I have no other business when her papers are ready, if that is something you’re ok with.”

It was Callie’s turn to stare slackjaw. She nearly dove across the table to hug a very stiff Jumin. “Yes, yes, thank you, I would love that, we would...Jesus Jumin, this is. Man. Yeah. OK.”

In the cab she took to Seven’s afterward she got texts from Zen and Jaehee that linked back to a gossip blog, already featuring a photo of her hugging Jumin in the coffee shop. She laughed at the attempts to figure out who the strange American woman hugging the C&R director was. It was a good day, and with such good news she had decided to tell Seven about Max.

She practiced how she would tell him right up until the moment she opened the door and saw the Choi twins covered in blood.

“Shit,” Seven laughs as her face pales. She can see bruises on his neck and soaked bandages on Saeren’s wrists.

She doesn’t speak, her first aid kit was still in the car from their road trip and she knew she had put the tourniquet back. Saeyoung is right behind her when she kneels in front of Saeran. The smaller Choi does not speak or fight when she ties the tourniquet, trying to remember what her ex-husband had said about his field triage course.

“Do you need anything?”

She’s not sure if he’s speaking to her or his brother but she shakes her head, and removes the bandage, the cut is shallow, the wound in the wrong direction. “I supposed going to a hospital is out of the question?”

“Yeah,” Seven says.

She flushes the wound with alcohol and pats it dry. “Hand me the steri-strips, no the whole package.” She considers not using the tourniquet for the second arm, but she doesn’t want to let on, give anyone the idea that this was not worrisome or dangerous, or lend to any future attempts. So she repeats the process, tourniquet, cleaning, steri-strips. She covers the wounds with fresh bandages, and looks Saeren in the eyes, he looks away but she waits and gradually his eyes make their way back to hers.

“This isn’t ok,” she says softly. “This is never the answer, no matter what you think the question is, ok?” No response, just intense eyes staring back at her, and Saeyoung tugging at her elbows. “Even if you never feel like you can talk to him, talk to me.”

“So you can tell him, and laugh at me.”

“Oh honey,” she smiles and kisses him on the forehead. “You have no idea the things I haven’t told your brother.”

If he had to guess he’d have said it was his fault she hadn’t said anything. Hell if anyone had asked he’d have told them that she’d probably told him, and thinking back to that time in Rika’s apartment he’d had plenty of opportunity to ask. He’d just been so distracted. Overwhelmed was a better word.

If he’d been paying attention he’d have noticed the way her voice changed for two calls a day. Just a slight change, an octave higher, a singsong lilt, but he had spent too much energy telling himself that he wasn’t noticing these things to really investigate their purpose.

If he really thought about it he knew her internet presence was too small, too clean, full of carefully curated tweets and pictures of her in what he now knew was a wig. Most of all she was guarded when she spoke about herself. He of all people had noticed that quite easily.

And somewhere in the back of his mind he’d told himself he would look deeper, push farther. Every time her wall slipped he made a mental note.

“No no,” he heard her laughing on the phone with Yoosung through the CCTV. “Way back in LOLOL history...Oh god now I’m dating myself.” She laughs again and there it is, that twinge of jealousy. “No Vanil- yes Vanilla...this is embarrassing Yoosung...Okay fine, I was kind of a big deal, for like a year and then,” there it is that change in her face, the way she stops herself from saying something. He makes another note to look deeper when he has more time. “Life got in the way...No, real lif— Yoosung when you’re older you’ll...” She laughs again and he can feel his heartbeat rise and fall with the pitch of it, he turns off the sound and goes back to his work.

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye on the CCTV, Vanderwood is distracted so he glances at the screen and, something isn’t right, ok there’s a stranger in the apartment, a stranger in a towel in the apartment. A woman with short, white hair; he starts to think that maybe he’d figured her out. Maybe she was gay and that was what she was hiding, that was why she drew the line at does Jumin Han is gay. Then the woman turns and a familiar face looks up at the CCTV, a quick flash of embarrassment and then she holds her finger to her lips and winks at the CCTV.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Vanderwood asks behind him. “You have work to do, we don’t pay you make your own Voyuer porn you pervert.”

Seven turns off the CCTV feed.

Something about the fickle way she interacts with Zen, the hot and cold. Always warm to start, and then the change. He makes a note of it. He’ll look into it when he has more time, but the agency and now the chatroom is hacked again. He watches her phone light up on the table in front of her and he can tell by the way she cringes that it’s Zen.

And she is so kind, so calm, every curveball thrown their way and she takes it all in stride. She even suggests he do more background checks on her. Maybe she’s in cahoots with the hacker he starts to wonder, or maybe the agency is testing him.

Maybe it’s all test from the agency. That’s what he’s leaning towards, this pretty girl with a secret past who falls flawlessly into the RFA winning even Jumin’s heart. V had gotten him into the agency, V could be in on it too. He had to focus on his work, but with her casually revealing secrets on the CCTV maybe she’s the real job.

And then the special security system got hacked. Even if she was a rival, or a test, why would she put herself at so much risk? Still with little explanation she’s happy to do what he says. He can see her eyes on the screen, frightened and yet her voice on the phone is so calm. What are you? He wants to yell. The words repeat inside his head until they become the soundtrack to everything he should be doing.

Even when Saeren is in the apartment she’s fearless. He watches her walk barefoot across the shattered glass as Saeren threatens her. He watches her stance lower and shift as she prepares to defend herself and then she sees him and yells his name and he can’t focus.

He can’t remember a thing said but he remembers the fear in her eyes as she bit down on his brother’s arm, the way her barefeet ground into the glass covered floor as she slammed her body backwards to loosen his grip on her, the way she felt behind him her breath steady and determined.

No matter how awful he is, she always speaks to him calmly and with kindness but her eyes betray her hurt, it’s not until he’s destroyed the robot cat, not until he looks up breathing heavy full of adrenaline that he sees her take that step back, sees the fear, that’s when his heart breaks.

But still he pushed her away, and she treated him with kindness. Even in her demands she’s kind. He swears she knows his mind better than he does. She talks to him while he works, asking him questions and looking at him like she knows what he’s going to say. When he finally decides to open the drawer she’s practically waiting with a crowbar.

“What are you doing,” he laughs. “We’re probably driving to our deaths and your colouring your hair?”

“Colouring our hair,” she smiles at him in the mirror.

“Our?”

“It’s a wash out,” she smiles “But it can’t hurt to look a little different since we’re on the lam.”

“The lam?” he laughs.

“Shut up and come here so I can do your hair.”

He concedes, just to see her smile. Of course she’s probably a little right, the agency could have local police looking for them, he would have to change the plate on his car before they leave and changing their appearance even a little wouldn’t hurt.

She doesn’t sleep, not for the whole drive, and after all that time she spent on their hair, she starts producing wigs out of her bag. A wig for every county line they cross. She laughs with him despite how terrified they both are and still she makes those quiet secret phone calls.

“You know,” she says, yawning, “I’m the oldest member of the RFA.”

He perks up, she’s starting to talk about herself. “Nah,” he smiles at her. “Jumin and V are almost 30.”

“I know Luciel,” she laughs. “I turned 30 in July.”

“No you didn’t,” he chuckles. “You’re facebook says—” What had her facebook said? No her age hadn’t been on her profile. Her age hadn’t been anywhere he looked. Just another thing he’d made a note to look deeper into but not found the time.”

“That’s weird right?” She’s nervous. Her knees drawn up to her chest, barefeet flat on the seat, she doesn’t even look at him. “Fuck, it’s weird right? I’m like 9 years older than you. You were 11 when I got married.”

Everything stops for a minute, he can hear the clunk of her head against the window and the sharp intake of breath.

“Married,” he says quietly.

“I’m not anymore. He left me three years ago.”

Seven snorts. “Is he stupid?”

She laughs. “Was that a compliment?”

He shrugs and they drive in silence for a while. “Is he Korean? Is that why you’re fluent?”

“No, he’s American. I was born in Camp Casey, my parents were American military, I’ve only been in the US for 10 years grew up off base.”

“Oh.”

He could have asked her more questions then but he already had so much to process with Mint Eye and Saeren, he had to file this away for later.

And then everything happens so fast, and god help him she keeps it together the whole time. Even when he shoves Saeren and Vanderwood in the car, and he’s shot, she keeps it together.

“Hey, bitch in the fancy coat,” he can see her watching Vanderwood in the mirror.

Vanderwood says nothing, sneers back.

“You don’t have to talk to me but there’s a first aid kit in my duffel, I’ve got a tourniquet, do you know what that is?”

Vanderwood snorts.

Even trapped by Mint Eye, even with Rika, and then V being shot, she doesn’t falter. She holds it together, and when he feels like the pain and the blood loss might bring him down he just has to look at her determined face and another surge of adrenaline keeps him going.

He expects her to break down when Jumin gets there with his army of security guards but she stays by him, breathing steady determined breaths, and the last thing he remembers is the pitch of her voice when they take him out of the Ambulance.

“What do you mean I can’t go with him.”

But she’s there in his room when he wakes up, curled up behind is knees with her feet dangling off the tiny hospital bed.

“Hey,” he says softly carefully laying his hand on her head as she starts awake. “I thought you couldn’t come in with me?”

“That was in the ICU, but you’re out now.”

“And Jumin Han’s money doesn’t hurt?”

“And that,” she laughs. Her make-up is smudged, her face pale. She’s been crying but she’s also changed. “Jaehee brought me something to wear.” She answers without his asking.

“Is that Zen’s face?”

“I don’t know, I think maybe?” she laughs.

His recovery is fast, and despite his insistence she stays with Yoosung rather than in his house. He calls her every chance he gets, no more CCTV feeds but Saeren keeps him busy and it’s only a few days before he’s out.

She’s so calm when she finds them, covered in Saeren’s blood. So calm when she asks about the hospital, knowing the answer would be no. She ignores him behind her, with his shaking hands, and anxious breaths. The way she takes control, he should have known.

“Uh, Luciel.”

“Nope, I’m not going to look at the gate feed until she’s answered all my questions.”

“Seven you should really—”

“You can’t make me.”

In truth the smug look on Jumin’s face should have told him something. 707 the hacker would have connected her weekend away for work with Jumin’s sudden business trip.

“Dude,” Zen was laughing. Maybe he should look. But then he heard the gate click open and the door swing open and—

“Maxine Annette, we don’t slam doors.”

Everyone is quiet except for the little voice arguing that she definitely did not slam the door, until finally Jumin speaks. “Hello Maxine.”

“Hello Mr. Han.”

“It’s nice to see you again.”

“Didn’t you want to say something to Jumin, Max?”

“Thank you for the plane, Mr. Han, and the stuffed kitty.”

The entire room stares as Jumin Han kneels in front of the little girl with Callie. “Did you give her a name yet?”

“Mom said it should be something regal,” Seven can see Jumin’s face, he can read the expectations in that statement, but from the look on Callie’s face he’s not sure the little girl can meet them. “Her Royal Majesty Sparkleface Fluffbuttons the first.”

Jumin does a good job of hiding his disappointment. And the tension in the room fades as everyone quietly chuckles at his expense. Yoosung and Jaehee swoop down on the little one called Max and suddenly Callie is at his side.

“I’m really sorry,” she whispers.

“You have a kid,” he whispers back, but still there’s a smile on his face.

“I wanted to tell you.”

“When could you have?”

She shoves him a little. “You’re supposed to be mad at me.”

“I almost got you killed, you have a kid. I think we’re even.”

#practically impractical #callie miller #mystic messanger #custom MC

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makemoneyonlineprofit-blog · 6 years ago

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caveartfair · 6 years ago

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The Photographer Capturing the Superstars of Drag

Photograph by Greg Bailey from the book Alright Darling, 2018. Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

The first drag performer that Greg Bailey photographed was Willam Belli of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame. It was 2012, before Drag Race became a primetime sensation, and it was easy to send a Facebook message to a drag performer to schedule a shoot. Bailey, who is based in Brighton, did just that; they met in London while Belli was in town. Bailey recalled walking up to her hotel room. “[I was] unbelievably nervous, because it’s Willam,” he said. “She’s a self-proclaimed asshole.”

He promised Belli that one day she’d be a cover star, but the queer magazines he was working with at the time were resistant, and perhaps scared, to have a drag queen on the cover, he explained. So in 2015, he published the first issue of Alright Darling,a zine where drag would be not only on every cover, but on every page.

Photograph by Greg Bailey from the book Alright Darling, 2018. Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

The phrase “alright, darling” was Bailey’s answer to everything—an everyday expression he used as an affectionate greeting, a come-on, or a playful taunt. “It was out of frustration,” Bailey said of the birth of Alright Darling. “But seeing what was around the corner, I wanted to do this for myself.” Bailey, who is not a full-time professional photographer, shoots in his spare time, on weekends and holidays and after work, often driving two hours from Brighton to London between shifts at a retail job. He was driven by a creative impulse and a love of drag and queer culture, yet he’s since noticed a change in the significance of his work.

While drag is as old as the gender norms it flouts, it’s the level of visibility that has changed in recent years. Where there’s a line between masculine and feminine, drag has crossed it. In 1921, Man Ray captured Marcel Duchamp’s female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. In 1969, the activist and drag queen Marsha P. Johnson became emblematic of queer liberation in America following the Stonewall riots. Divine, star of John Waters’s filthiest films, posed for Andy Warhol almost 10 years before the artist himself posed in drag in 1981. But it wasn’t until RuPaul became the first face of MAC Cosmetics in 1994 that a drag queen fronted a major ad campaign. Drag’s next wave of popularity began to swell.

Editors a few years ago may have lacked the courage to put a drag performer on the cover, but Bailey was tapping into a cultural phenomenon moments before it boomed. “I don’t like the word ‘lucky,’” he explained, “but I think I hit the nail on the head with that timing.”

Photograph by Greg Bailey from the book Alright Darling, 2018. Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

All of the performers and artists in Bailey’s images are captured under the bright white of Bailey’s flash—“stripped down,” as he put it—so that the moments and the people can speak for themselves. His new book, Alright Darling? (2018), compiles that work, a who’s-who of some of the queer world’s most extravagant figures: reality television stars, international club kids, legends of drag, and promising newcomers; in short, artists that are like catnip to an eager lens. “I don’t necessarily do what I think is drag photography,” Bailey explained. “I just happen to like working with extravagant people.”

There is something to be said about his leap from self-publishing to working with a publishing house. For Bailey, it felt like his passion project turned into a bona-fide book almost overnight, in parallel with drag’s quick ascent in pop culture. Many of the performers in the book have massive loyal followings accrued through stints on Drag Race, their social media accounts, or decades-long commitments to the local scenes of their home cities.

Photograph by Greg Bailey from the book Alright Darling, 2018. Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

Bailey is part of a new generation of photographers who devote the bulk of their practices to capturing drag. Magnus Hastings has photographed so many queens that he is the “unofficial-official” drag photographer. Gregory Kramer shoots elegant black-and-white portraits against seamless backdrops. Linda Simpson is a drag comedian who, in 5,000 pictures, captured just a slice of New York’s drag scene in the 1990s. But Bailey’s pictures are raw snapshots of pop culture. What’s more, his behind-the-scenes shots seem to satisfy the public’s curiosity for what happens when drag performers aren’t onstage, beyond what goes into the dramatic makeup-and-wig transformations. “I get to go to places that [fans] don’t,” he noted of his access.

A drag queen, a photographer, and a pop star walk into a restroom. Though that may sound like the opening line of a raunchy joke, it was the setting for one of Bailey’s images. The drag queen’s name is Raja; Bailey is the photographer; and “the surreal bit for me,” Bailey explained, is that “Adam Lambert was there.” The trio was at the historic nerve center of queer nightlife, a club in London’s Camden district called the Black Cap, before it closed in 2015. As Bailey recalled, following a bomb scare, the trio was locked in the dressing room as a precaution. The dressing room led to the restroom, which led to a fire escape. Raja sat in the men’s bathroom, smoking; click, Bailey took a photo.

“Obviously you know nothing about [the backstory] from looking at the image,” Bailey said. In the picture, Raja wears a decadently ornamented pair of glasses that obscures her face. Her fingers are dressed in brass dance nails, and they fan across her face, holding a cigarette. But the picture wouldn’t have happened without the strange sequence of events leading up to it.

Photograph by Greg Bailey from the book Alright Darling, 2018. Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

“I think that it’s very necessary for pop culture and subcultures to be documented,” Bailey said, “because windows and doors open and they close again.” Drag is one of those subcultures that experiences cyclical waves of visibility, and photography has a way to render subjects more accessible. Most people didn’t go the legendary Harlem balls or the Pansy Craze of the 1930s—it’s through pictures that moments like those leave a more lasting mark on our culture. The influence of the club kids of the 1990s and the stars of the Hollywood Golden Age can be seen in today’s drag because those earlier photos are sources of inspiration. Bailey realized that “it’s all a big cycle.”

Bailey himself remembers being a teenager and looking at David LaChapelle’s portraits of Amanda Lepore, muse to LaChapelle and a living doll of New York nightlife. He still recalls that sense of discovery, flipping through a magazine to see photographs of Lepore, her face sculpted by fillers, exuding glamour. She performed debaucherous tasks in the images, from snorting diamonds to posing naked with a watermelon between her legs. He reflected: “It opened my mind up to see a side of life that was never shown to me before.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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martechadvisor-blog · 7 years ago

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5 Great Clichés that Will Help You Be More Forward-Thinking with Your Marketing

I may be going out on a limb here, but I think clichés get a bad rap.

Clichés provide excellent fodder for headlines, subject lines, social posts and other small-dose uses, especially when you take a cliché, give it a little tweak, and make it your own. (Remember Taco Bell’s campaign, “Think outside the bun”?)

Besides, if a phrase weren’t useful or true, it wouldn’t get used to the point of overuse. There are reasons clichés become cliché. They often speak volumes in just a few words. They’re part of our shared lexicon. They point to a nugget of shared wisdom that we need to be reminded of again and again.

With that in mind, I’ve collected five well-worn aphorisms that will nudge marketers to be more forward-thinking with their content and campaigns. Most marketers probably know they should be doing these things. But it’s all too easy to overlook the behind-the-scenes work—the planning, the processes, the templates—in favor of the sexier aspects of our jobs.

**The irony is, when we focus a bit more on the “boring stuff,” we experience less organizational chaos and greater overall efficiency, which gives us more time and energy for the work we love**.

#1: Be the ant, not the grasshopper.

In other words: Don’t shortchange the planning phase.

When things get chaotic at work, a return to the basic principles of productivity can be just the trick. If your content is feeling rushed and reactive, it could be because your process is rushed and reactive.

Ken Schaefer, president and CEO of Texas-based Schaefer Advertising Co., has often said that you should spend 50% of the time it will take you to build out the campaign compiling your creative brief. So if your team will spend 4 weeks concepting, writing, and designing, kick it off with 2 weeks of planning.

Sound like a bit of hyperbole? It might be. You don’t want to succumb to the assembly-line mentality, after all. But the real point is this: stop shortchanging the effort. Start sooner. Hold the meetings. Have the conversations. Take the actual time it takes to prepare a thorough creative brief. When you’ve thought everything through—from content types to distribution channels to approvers—your team will feel more aligned, and you won’t have a dozen do-overs in the review and approval phase.

#2: Kill two (or more) birds with one stone.

In other words: Consider all the goals you could accomplish.

As part of the creative brief process, identify all of your business goals. Is this piece a sales tool? Does it fall into demand gen, or PR, or social? How many channels is this going to touch? How many different objectives can you accomplish with one content piece, without compromising its integrity or watering down its purpose?

Here’s a hypothetical example of what I mean. Imagine you have an annual survey or report to produce and release. Naturally, the primary objective of your marketing efforts will be to publicize the report. But while you’re at it, you decide to take a peek at your quarterly or yearly goals to see if you can check any of them off along the way.

You remember that one of your big annual initiatives is to increase blog views and subscribers, so you decide to skip the dedicated landing page you usually build and host the report on your blog instead. This way, all of your PR and social efforts are suddenly doing double duty—spreading word about the report and bringing eyeballs to the blog. Win-win.

#3: Begin with the end in mind.

In other words: Establish your distribution strategy up front.

Stephen Covey probably wasn’t the first person to say “begin with the end in mind,” but he popularized it as one of his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

As you’re planning out an ebook, whitepaper, video, or report, think beyond building just the asset itself. Where will you be sharing and promoting this piece once it’s done?

Armed with this knowledge, you can lump like activities together for greater efficiency and effectiveness. For example, when we send an ebook or whitepaper into design, we’ll provide text for both the primary asset and an accompanying infographic, asking them to deliver:

The report itself in PDF form

The infographic

A handful of images sized for social

Several images from the report sized for the blog

Video graphic banners and headers

Several weeks down the road, when our social marketing manager is ready to create social posts around the report, he doesn’t have to go back and ask design for anything new. He simply navigates to the project in our work management tool, and the images he needs are waiting for him in the DAM.

#4: You’re not driving the train; you’re laying the track.

In other words: Templatize your work processes.

Surely, every content marketer has discovered the power of the template when it comes to writing and design projects. You find a formula that works, and you use it again and again, tweaking it here and there as needed. No need to forge new paths; simply glide along the rails of the last similar project.

Apply the same thinking to your work processes. Create a repeatable template you can come back to every time you create another whitepaper, another blog post, another video—basically any project that you tackle more than once.

“**If there is a standardized way of working, you are less likely to make mistakes, less likely to be blamed about them, and more likely to be able to control those following the process**,” writes Esko Hannula in QI Hub. Plus, a standardized process is much easier to automate.

If you’re not quite on the cusp of process automation yet, start by documenting every step of your project plans and workflows in a shareable document that everyone can access.

#5: Procrastination is the thief of time.

In other words: Don’t wait until the end to pick your approvers.

Here’s another step to make sure you include in your creative brief/planning phase: Identify all of your stakeholders and potential approvers up front. It only takes a few minutes at the beginning of your project, but it can save you hours of rework (and potential compliance violations) at the end.

With so much work going through marketing teams today, it’s easy to get on autopilot and follow the same well-worn paths when it comes to reviews and approvals. All the usual suspects have signed off on the asset, and away it goes.

But what about the asset that’s slightly outside of your wheelhouse, so you brought in subject matter experts to consult at the beginning? Or the project, maybe one out of every ten you create, that needs legal approval because it mentions revenue or contains a trademark? The longer you wait to decide who needs to approve it, the more likely you’ll be to leave critical names off the list—and maybe find yourselves among the 10% of companies who have been hit with a fine or a lawsuit because of non-compliance.

A Cliché to Remember

These five clichés have become platitudes for a reason: because they’re true. In marketing—and life in general—we must constantly be reminded of even the simplest truths. **Keep your audience in mind. Measure effectiveness. Aim for evergreen content. Reuse and repurpose.** And of course, be as forward-thinking as you can, using the five specific suggestions above. After all, at the end of the day, it’s the low-hanging fruit that can provide the biggest bang for your content marketing buck. How’s that for cliché overload?

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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