#they’d email me and have no idea that their email got sent to the void

[re-decorate]

PSA for any new college grads: do not under any circumstances continue to rely on your university email after you graduate

i am begging you to switch to a personal email address bc if not then your university could randomly deactivate your account without your knowledge and it’ll be 9 months until you realize something must be wrong because even though you can still log in you haven’t been receiving any emails

[mauloveskpop]

My The Rose Concert Experience

I got top 10 tastemakers so I got free VIP tickets and we got to go in before everyone else so I got to stand at the very front literally right in front of Jaehyeong’s mic stand. The wait for the concert to begin felt like it took hours even though it was about 1 hour and then the concert felt like 2 minutes.

Every song was amazing as usual, I’d tell you the order of the songs but so many things happened I have no idea lol. 

Jaehyeong must’ve looked at me at least like 20 times, since I was right in front of him. I did finger hearts at him and he did it back <3 i melted. He was just smiley the entire time it was hard to look away. When you’re that close to the stage it’s hard to not look at the person right in front of you all the time. So whenever someone else came over it was the same thing like !!!! i can’t look away. 

During Bae Bae they’re all moving around the stage and the girl to my right was filming and holding her phone out and Woosung came over and took it and filmed himself for a little bit and then he gave it back and took another girls phone. God I wish I was filming at that point. 

Between two songs Dojoon started to take off his jacket and everyone just !!!!!!!!! and he laughed and told Jaehyeong to do the same and the same reaction of course. THEN he jokingly told Woosung to take off his shirt since he was not wearing a jacket the crowd chanted “take it off” and Woosung just looks down his shirt and goes “not today”. Bitch don’t do it ever.

The crowd was very excited for Hajoon and someone yelled that she loved him and then said that she loves all of them and Woosung just “it’s okay if you only love Hajoon”.

I almost didn’t cry but then I.L.Y happened and there you go, I controlled it though since I knew I’d have to meet them up close later :P 

Here’s the one video I filmed

That’s all I can recall from the concert at this time moving on to hi touch + group photo.

Time to do a “keep reading” cause there’s a lot.

Hi Touch first, it was super quick just a hi + high5 and moving on. Woosung however decided this was a good time to compliment my hair (my poor heart). Which is pink and just above the shoulders. 

We go around and do the group photo and as i’m getting up to go and wait for the QA Woosung AGaIN says “nice hair”. Please my weak heart. 

I’ll probably look terrible in the photo, I do not photograph well. But whatever he complimented me twice and he was not done with that.

Not much more to say there so moving on to the QA.

We had to wait for everyone else to leave and then we were taken backstage. There were 6 girls, myself included. So it was very intimate and special. We were in this small room on chairs pretty close together. We waited a minute or two before the boys came in and they were adorable. So pretty man gosh, who allowed it. 

We all sent in 3 questions each before and they picked randomly. I probably dont remember all the ones they answered. 

One of mine was first. It was something along the lines of “is there a song or album of yours that is about your life” or something. These answers are not word for word. W: Dawn, cause they wrote all the songs on it H: I.L.Y cause he loves us J: She’s In The Rain, I don’t remember exactly what he said but it was something about that they wrote it. D: He couldn’t think of anything saying his life was too complicated so Woosung came in with Avril Lavinge’s Complicated.

One question was asking Dojoon specifically what he does in his spare time, he said he stalks us all on social media, sleeps, eats, watches movies, sleeps and writes songs. 

What motivates you to keep making music? This was a funny one, pretty much word for word. W: Oh that’s easy! Should we do it on 123? 123 W: Black Roses D: The Rose! Everyone: ??? D: I meant to say black roses but the black didn’t come out W: The Black Roses?

About halfway through they were like oh what’s your names? So we said our names one by one and I said mine and Woosung just kinda quietly just “that’s a pretty name” why are you doing this to me Woosung! He didn’t do that with anyone else so I’m just why stop pls.

Another question was if they’d put any unofficial songs on an album. Woosung turned it on us and asked what songs we wanted and the first girls were trying to say song names and then it got quiet thinking of songs we wanted so I just said “All of them” and the girls agreed.  Woosung said they might put them all on an album once they make a full album.

They answered like 8 questions but my brain is all blank cause Woosung, this was not the end of it all though. He was not done killing me. I’ll post the other questions later if I remember them XD

So after the QA it was time for individual photos with them and then they signed the item we brought for them to sign in one go for each person. I was like 3rd or 4th. 

We were standing against the wall me in the middle, shoulder to shoulder. I was so lame cause I know I don’t photograph well so it’s whatever. Took a couple photos that will be emailed to me, so I don’t have them yet. 

Then I brought out the Void photocards for them to sign and they got really excited. Dojoon said it doesnt even look like him lol. Woosung was really fast signing it which is funny cause he wrote the most. He then decided to have a casual conversation with me about hair dyeing. Since you know, pink hair. Here’s a summary of what we said. W: How many times did you have to bleach it to get that? Me: I dont even know W: Is it like really damaged? Cause mine was when I dyed it white, it’s better now though. We did say more than that but that’s what it was, the whole time for like 1 minute or 2 we had eye contact and I’m just dying inside. He didn’t decide to have a casual conversation with any of the other girls either, i’m fucking dead guys. 

The others got done signing and there’s so many tiny hearts on them I melt.

The next girl covered her face cause she was embarrassed so the boys covered their faces which made it worse and she crouched so they crouched. So they took her photos while crouched lol.

The last girl was very shy and didn’t like having her photo taken and mentioned looking ugly so the boys just went “no no you’re beautiful” and stuff like that. Woosung decides to start singing to her and she just tries to run away and he sings “where are you going?”. She then asked if the rest of us could look away while they took the photo.

It was then time for the boys to go and Woosung suggested a group hug but the manager said no :( (which is understandable but :((( )

They then went around and high fived us all again before going.

We collected our merch and that was it. I’ll be posting some concert photos separately. 

[master-sass-blast]

Strong as Stone -Part Fourteen

GUESS WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND HAS VOMITED WITHIN THE PAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!!!

*screams into the void* MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

That was gross. Sorry.

I am sick again. This has been the theme of my summer.

But why lament the loss of our physical health when we can write fanfiction!

I know this update is astonishingly early. I’m attributing that to the fact that my latest meds make me largely nocturnal, thus allowing me to work uninterrupted.

I don’t know how many updates I’ll do this weekend. Y’all might get treated. We’ll see.

Welcome back! Last time, we celebrated Shuri’s birthday! Tears were shed over the lack of T’Chaka’s presence, and Dewani CAME THE FUCK THROUGH with an amazing birthday gift!

This week is a bit of a plot filler. It’s really obviously meant to set up other points, but I got the end and went “This feels good. I’m not going to add on to this bit. This is a good stopping point.”

So, yeah! Enjoy the early update!

Rating: T for language.

Warnings: strong language, mild verbal fighting, and mild sexual themes.

Pairings: Okoye x M’Baku, background Shuri x OC, and background T’Challa x Nakia.

@the-last-hair-bender

You cannot win every fight you enter.

You will lose matches. You will fail missions. You will be frustrated, and you will loathe the bitter taste of defeat.

Do not loathe yourselves, my dears. You are human. You are not required to be perfect.

It does not matter if you fall down, only if you get back up.

The Gibson Desert, Australia; 3 AM Western Australia Time

Okoye paused to wipe beads of sweat away from her brow as she crept towards a seemingly abandoned warehouse in the middle of the Gibson Desert. And M’Baku thinks Birnin Zana is unbearably hot.

Their latest lead on Klaue’s associate had lead them here --an old hideout of Klaue’s in the middle of fuck nowhere that, according to their intel, he retreated to when the CIA, FBI, Interpol, or other intelligence agencies came too close to capturing him. If they were lucky, Klaue’s associate --and the vibranium cache--would be there.

She signaled to the other Dora Milaje that had accompanied her, and they moved in together.

Okoye stopped outside the back door. She waited until her women were in position, then nodded to Djabi.

Djabi kicked the door in.

Okoye sprinted into the warehouse, bracing herself for an onslaught of resistance.

The air was stiflingly hot and still inside. The space inside was completely dark and smelled like dust.

Okoye scowled and activated the flashlight function on her kimoyo beads. Don’t tell me...

The warehouse was utterly empty, save for a decrepit looking mattress stained with Bast knows what and an unnatural abundance of cobwebs.

Okoye smacked the end of her spear against the concrete floor. “Bast dammit!”

Birnin Zana, Wakanda; 10 AM.

Okoye glared at the report of her mission to Wakanda.

Again, all of the leads and intelligence they’d collected confirmed --not indicated, confirmed--that Klaue’s associate was in the safe house in Australia. Plane tickets, emails, texts, phone calls, satellite tracking of the vibranium that had been stolen --an entire fucking paper trail!

Again, all of their satellite scans --on the best satellite Shuri could build--had indicated that at least sixteen people had been in that warehouse. Vitals, heat signatures, motion sensors, everything!

Again, there hadn’t been so much as a suggestion that the “alleged” occupants were wise to their arrival or had decided to pack up and ship out.

And, again, they’d arrived on the scene to find an abandoned location.

At least it wasn’t booby-trapped this time, Okoye thought, deeply pissed off.

It wasn’t about failing the mission...

It was a little about failing the mission.

But, more importantly, vibranium was deeply dangerous in the wrong hands.

We know Klaue was more than capable of building weapons. Okoye’s stomach lurched. His associate could sell them off to the highest builder.

Or, worse, sell it to an American intelligence agency.

The end of the fucking world as we know it.

The was a knock at the door, and it swung open before she could answer. “I was sent here with a mission.”

Okoye smiled, surprised to see M’Baku standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

“The King said it was an emergency. I imagine that is mostly about the difficulties in locating the vibranium stolen by Klaue, but I suspect he wants me to calm you down as well.” He lifted two cups. “Hence, I brought bribes.”

Okoye closed the display of the mission report. “I accept your bribe. Sit.”

M’Baku handed her one of the cups and sat with a chuckle. “I take it the mission didn’t go well.”

“No. We were duped again.”

M’Baku kissed his teeth. “I’m sorry, my love. I know it’s frustrating for you.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Okoye muttered darkly as she sipped at her coffee.

“The King called an emergency council meeting for today. Apparently, the tribal leaders are a little upset over the lack of progress.”

“Well, they’re not the only ones.”

M’Baku was silent for a moment, then reached across the desk and took her hand in his. “You look tired, my love.”

“Oh, because that’s what every woman is just dying to hear.”

“I only mean that you look like you could use a vacation.”

Okoye slumped back in her chair. “For once, I’m with you. I’m exhausted.”

“In that case... may I recommend a trip to the Jabari lands? The cold is quite refreshing.”

Okoye smirked at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to get me to come see you.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“Well, you’re in luck. I have mandatory time off in two weeks.”

“Why the delay?”

“We’re going back to the United States. President Trump is supposed to be issuing a formal apology to me at the American/Wakandan Unity Press Conference event.”

A dark smile twisted M’Baku’s lips. “Honestly? I want to see that.”

“Ask the King. I sure won’t mind having you there.”

“I will. Believe me, I will.”

The atmosphere of the throne room was tense. Everyone’s face was equally puckered with the burdensome knowledge they all bore together:

Klaue’s associate kept evading them. As far as they knew, the associate had enough vibranium at their fingertips to annihilate half of China.

Okoye had just finished briefing the council on the latest failed mission.

The disappointed and judgmental expressions that the elders wore stung. Deeply.

T’Challa steepled his fingers together and let out a heavy sigh. “At this point, I am less and less convinced that Klaue’s associate could’ve pulled all of this off without inside help.”

Nakia frowned and placed a hand on T’Challa’s arm. “You think we have a mole among our ranks?”

“What other explanation is there? There’s no logical explanation as to how they keep evading us.”

“Well,” the Mining tribe leader said with a displeased look at the Border tribe leader. “I think we all know where to start looking.”

“How dare you insult the Border tribe! We have proved our loyalty--”

“By betraying the King even after it was evident that the challenge had not been completed--”

“Enough,” T’Challa barked. “This meeting was not arranged for the purpose of accusing the Border tribe. Anyone could have leaked our information to Klaue’s associate.”

“My King, the Border tribe ought to be suspect because of their willingness to back Killmonger --a willingness that no other tribe demonstrated,” the River tribe leader said.

T’Challa drummed his fingers against the arm of his throne. “My uncle, Prince N’Jobu, betrayed my father because he believed that the world needed vibranium. This isn’t about what wars have been fought; it’s about who believes that selling out to Klaue’s associate is worthwhile. And that belief is something that can be possessed by any person, regardless of the tribe they hail from.”

“Perhaps the process of finding the traitor should be handled by a neutral party,” M’Baku recommended.

“That... is probably our best option,” T’Challa agreed. “General Okoye, do you believe the Dora Milaje are up to the task?”

Okoye nodded. “We’ll partner with our internal intelligence team in the War Dogs program once they’re done with their own internal analysis.”

“How do we know the mole isn’t in the ranks of the Dora Milaje?” the Mining tribe leader asked.

“The longer we sit around, worrying over where the mole will be, the more opportunities the associate has to sell off the last of Klaue’s vibranium to the highest bidder,” Okoye said. “We need to start looking. Bottom line. Once we do, any mole that might be in Wakanda will run out of places to hide.” She swallowed hard as the tribal leaders started discussing the best methods for finding the mole, what timeline was most appropriate for the situation, and what punishment was suitable for betraying Wakanda.

After five failed missions, her confidence in finding the infiltrator --to say nothing of the missing vibranium--was at an all time low.

Bast, please don’t let me be wrong.

“This is nothing but discrimination!”

Okoye fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose.

Long story short: M’Baku had taken issue with the idea of interrogating the citizens of the Jabari lands. A very, very large issue.

T’Challa, on the other hand, had no issues with pinching the bridge of his nose. He groaned. “M’Baku, it’s just a formality--”

“Your entire political system seems to be one of formalities. Why interrogate the Jabari when we have no interest in vibranium, no access to it, and no contact with the outside world?”

“If we hadn’t included the Jabari tribe in the planning, the council leaders--”

“The council leaders can shove their formalities up their pompous--”

“Whoa!” Dewani skipped up to her brother. “Save the swearing for me.”

M’Baku frowned down at his younger sister. “What are you doing here?”

“I was summoned. I was told you were throwing a temper tantrum.”

M’Baku stared down at Dewani, then narrowed his eyes at T’Challa. “My sister is not your convenient ticket to getting me to cooperate.”

“I asked her to come, M’Baku,” Okoye said, allowing some her exasperation to leak through. “I figured having her opinion on the situation was valuable --and that you might listen to her.”

M’Baku opened his mouth, closed it, crossed his arms over his chest, and opened his mouth again. “You think I’m being unreasonable.”

“Well, you are,” Dewani said. “These are special circumstances, obviously.”

“There is not a single Jabari that would deign to lower themselves by having anything to do with vibranium. Not. One.”

Okoye shot a glance at Dewani, then steeled herself for the low blow she was about to make. “M’Baku. What are your people’s laws on homosexuality?”

M’Baku frowned. “What?”

“Your people’s laws on homosexuality. Is there any formal ban on it?”

M’Baku’s jaw tensed as he put together where she was going. “No. The laws of Hanuman do not forbid homosexuality.”

“Then... how did your uncle come to the position he’s so adamant on keeping?” Okoye pressed her lips into a thin line as M’Baku looked away from her. “If your uncle can promote hatred and abuse when the law does not support him, then it’s at least possible that someone might have sold us out, even though the Jabari condemn the use of vibranium.”

M’Baku rolled his jaw, and stared pointedly at the wall behind her. “Your logic is impressive, General.”

Okoye pushed down the sting of his cold tone and held up her hands in an appeasing gesture. “I will hand pick the women who will conduct the interrogations. Your people and their property will be treated with the utmost of respect. You have my word.”

M’Baku looked at her, finally. His eyes were dark and hard. “That, I can agree to.” He shot an annoyed glance at T’Challa. “Anything else, my King?”

T’Challa shot M’Baku an equally annoyed glance back. “No, Chief M’Baku.”

“Good.” With that, he spun on his heel and strode out of the throne room.

Okoye grimaced. “That went poorly.”

“Don’t mind him,” Dewani said. “He’s being a brat.”

“Dewani!”

“You are!”

Okoye watched as Dewani chased after her brother, jabbering at him about “not being so much of a fucking asshole.” Well. This day has officially gone from bad to worse.

The door to M’Baku’s suite swung open, revealing a pajama-clad Dewani. “Hi, Okoye!” She nodded in the direction of the private patio. “He’s pouting outside.”

“I do not pout!” M’Baku shouted from where he was seated on the patio.

“Yes, you do!” Dewani leaned towards Okoye and whispered conspiratorially. “I’ve been working on him for you. I think I’ve managed to help him un-wedge his head from his ass.”

Okoye winked at Dewani. “You have my thanks, recruit.”

Dewani saluted, then turned and yelled at M’Baku. “I’m going to go see Shuri. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Behave for the Queen Mother.”

“I will!”

Okoye swallowed hard as the door closed behind Dewani and forced herself to take a deep breath. Relax. He’s not going to scream at you. She walked over to where M’Baku was sitting and smiled down at him. “Am I welcome, or do you hate me now?”

M’Baku smiled tiredly up at her. “Like I could ever hate you.”

Okoye allowed herself to be pulled down into his lap and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry about the homosexuality bit earlier. I should’ve done that in private.”

“You’re fine,” M’Baku murmured as he pressed his lips against her temple. “I was being... unreasonably difficult. Besides, T’Challa probably would’ve brought it up. And if he didn’t, Dewani definitely would have.”

“Maybe so, but it’s different with me. I’m your partner; it’s not fair for me to take that kind of shot in front of everyone else.”

“Debatable. Honestly, I was more annoyed about being wrong than your pointing out my logical fallacy.”

Okoye rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless. “Of course.”

“The Jabari are nothing if not proud of themselves. And don’t think I didn’t notice you use the term ‘partner.’” He grinned down at her. “Are we ‘official’ now?”

“I don’t see why not. We’ve been together for a while now.”

M’Baku nodded. “A whole year just two months after Dewani’s birthday.” He pressed his lips against her forehead. “I talked to the King about coming with you to America. He said he was fine with it.”

“I’m going to say this right now --you cannot punch Trump. No matter how much you may want to.”

“‘Koye--”

“I’m not kidding, M’Baku. He will test your self-control that hard.”

M’Baku put his hand over his heart. “I will not start an international incident. I promise.”

“Thank you.” She kissed him gently, then moved to straddle her lap as an unexpected burst of arousal started coiling inside her.

She was on such a sensitive trigger for M’Baku in a way that she had never been for W’Kabi.

It was wonderful.

“Do you have any plans for tonight?” she murmured against his lips.

“As convenience would have, Dewani is spending the night with the Princess.”

“Do you mind if I stay with you?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Okoye laughed as M’Baku picked her up --hands planted firmly on her ass--and carried her to his bed. Bast, I love this man.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Ghost Liotta Interview: Soft Synths, Hard Decisions

BY JORDAN MAINZER

It takes quite the level of trust for musicians to hand over their art to someone and give them free reign, usually the type of relationship a band might have with a longtime producer. For Ghost Liotta, it happened with first-time collaborators. Using vintage modular synths, live drums, and steel guitar, the trio of drummer James McAlister (The National, Sufjan Stevens), multi-instrumentalist Christopher Wray (Butch Walker), and multi-instrumentalist Zac Rae (Death Cab for Cutie), recorded material at Rae’s studio a few years back after each person was finished with a tour. Before finishing the material, a fire permanently closed Rae’s studio. A few years later, rediscovered, instead of looking back themselves, the band handed the hard drives over to producer John Spiker (Tenacious D) to see what he could come up with. The results weren’t what the band could have imagined at any point in the creation of the songs; yet, they were perfect. From dark, industrial, beat-centric tracks (“when we sleep”, “nonlinear b”) to ambient atmospheric drones (“back to dust”, “life cycle”), their self-titled debut album, released in August, flows seamlessly, never trying too hard, yet always surprising you.

A few months ago, I spoke to the band over Skype from their respective homes and studios in California. (They’d been able to see each other during the pandemic for a photo shoot but were otherwise busy doing sessions for other projects, so the interview was as much of a catchup session for them as it was an introduction to myself.) Read on as they talk about how they made the record, its aesthetic, whether they’ll follow the same creative process in the future, and how in the hell they came up with the band name.

Since I Left You: Why did you decide to make this record self-titled?

Zac Rae: It was a long discussion about the titling of this record and the names of the songs. Everything at one point was untitled because they existed as numbers on a hard drive, like “Untitled No. 6″ and “Untitled No. 9.” We initially kept that as an artistic choice--it wasn’t linear. It was like, “3, 2, 7, 9″ in the sequence we’d come up with. We realized it would be confusing for the whole world, so we titled everything but left the album title as the project.

Christopher Wray: The way we made the album, Zac, myself, and James were in Zac’s studio. We basically told the engineer to hit record and we’d start making music. Those jams would sometimes go for 20 minutes and sometimes an hour and 20 minutes. We’d pretty much stop at some point and go into the control room and drop markers on ideas we thought were cool. After doing that for three days, the whole saga of the studio burning and the hard drives, we gave the files to Spiker as a form of torture and he just started sending back these amazing arrangements. We just couldn’t believe it. We had all the raw material Spiker coalesced into an album.

SILY: The album definitely has a cohesiveness to it you don’t often get with raw improvisation.

ZR: That was a choice. There were times where we debated whether to leave something as a rolling, 10-minute amorphous thing or put it into a form that somebody listening cold can hear the development of the idea. We chose to make it a little more focused.

SILY: With the sequencing of the tracks, did you want to present them as mini suites? Or were you trying to change things up from track to track?

James McAlister: I don’t know that there was a super conscious thing, that we were making a record and had to have 10 songs that were three minutes long each. The way the songs were created was super unstructured. We let those dictate what each thing was. It wasn’t some endgame where we had to make a certain number of songs out of the material. What’s on the record is the best of what we pulled from those sessions, so there wasn’t forethought on the form of anything. That was the fun of it: Taking those moments and letting them be.

CW: That’s very much the spirit of the album too. James, I don’t know if you remember this, but going way back, I guess 6-7 years ago, the impetus for me reaching out to Zac before Zac and I had ever met was a project like this, if not this project. Zac’s been in the scene for a long time, and we have a lot of mutual friends and worked with the same people. I love what he does in the studio. I remember asking James since you were buds before, “Can you introduce me to Zac Rae? I want to do something that’s just for us, not for a particular artist or project.” We got breakfast at Kitchen 24 in Hollywood, and that was the early bird of this project.

JM: The way it came together is one decision leading to another, which is my favorite way to make everything. We even talked about having vocalists to collaborate, and the more we got down the road, we just liked what it was. We didn’t know what to call it, and that’s a good sign: When you make something you like and you’re happy at the end of it. I feel like I was constantly surprised by how great every decision came out, like, “Oh, wow, this is better than I thought, even.” All four of us make a lot of music, so it’s refreshing to be pleasantly surprised by something you do. We can go into work mode, get it done and get it right, but this felt more special than your average thing.

SILY: Would you say the record has a distinct mood?

JM: I think that’s what its strongest trait is.

ZR: When we were putting together the final sequencing and edits, we were all in a space thinking whether you could put it on with headphones and listen to it all the way through, or by yourself or in your car or biking in the wilderness or in an airplane. It sustains the space really well for the length of the record. We thought consciously about that and made some final decisions based on, “This piece doesn’t really fit in this flow,” and making one body.

SILY: When I first read that the album would have so many different types of synths, live drums, and steel guitar, I expected to be able to hear those instruments more. “I Am Thoughts” was a track where I could consciously hear drums, but otherwise, it was a pretty consistent aesthetic.

CW: The most conscious aspect of that was having the room in the recordings itself; in a genre that’s more traditionally direct, we wanted to be able to hear the room, hear amps. To me, I think that’s what gives the album its depth and uniqueness. Hearing chairs squeak. I can’t remember the name of the track, but one of the first ones we kind of organized into a vibe, the Overstayer on it was interacting with a really weird way where the reverb coming out of my amp was in another room. The overhead mics from the drum kit were catching the reverbs of my amp that were in another room which was creating this weird vibe. Very room-centric.

ZR: Things like James hitting the pad, generating an electronic sound, but you’re hearing the sound of the stick on the rudder, so it’s thudding and being sort of distorted, not like an electronic snare or a drum but somewhere between the two. I’m really proud of how that landed in the vinyl version.

JM: There’s nothing worse than, “Here’s an electronic beat we’re gonna record a drum kit over!” If I hear that one more time I’m gonna hang it up. [laughs] We got into this weird sort of in between space that’s hard to do based on the situation we have.

SILY: What’s the story behind the band name?

CW: I was on a session for another artist, and we were on break, and I was on a couch and two different conversations were happening at one time, and in one conversation, somebody said “ghost” and in the other conversation somebody said “liotta” and all my brain heard was that phrase. I thought, “That sounds like our band.”

SILY: I assume somebody was talking about Ray Liotta?

CW: I’m not sure. I don’t know how else that word gets thrown out.

JM: This whole thing is a sublet nod to Ray Liotta. I’m still hoping we can get successful enough that he can be in a video for us.

ZR: Ray Liotta as a ghost in space.

CW: In between his Chantix commercials. [laughs]

JM: We could figure out some kind of narrative where this is actually Ray Liotta’s band. All instruments by Ray Liotta. If you’re curious, confirmed: Ray Liotta did all of this.

SILY: Why are all the titles lowercase?

CW: Thank you! They are. On Spotify, when I uploaded tracks, it [wasn’t working.] When I emailed them, because I’ve seen other artists do that, I tried to get some sort of permission to do all lowercase. But I can’t figure out for the life of me how to do that on the streaming platforms, and I was sent a “No.”

I don’t know if it’s a visual thing, but artistically, it’s what felt right to all of us.

JM: I was pushing for everything being untitled, so I had to settle for lowercase letters.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

CW: We were looking at different artists and options, and an artist in Southern California...we saw this beautiful painting that he did, it looked like the world our album lived in. We reached out, he was super cool and said, “Go for it.”

SILY: What else is next for you?

ZR: We’re excited about making this music. It’s been three years since we created this. We’re excited about repeating this process and seeing what new influences we’re bringing to the table. I think later this year we’ll do that.

SILY: Do you think you’ll follow the same process, where Christopher, James, and Zac will make and give it to John to arrange?

John Spiker: I think that remains to be seen. In one sense, there was something beautiful that I knew nothing when I stepped into this stuff. When I first heard the music, I had no memories of the session or what I was searching for. It was this void where I could needle drop around it and let fate lead the way. It was a positive for my workflow. I don’t think it was the key to why it worked, but it was interesting and a first for me. This fresh exciting thing for me to jump into and discover moments in a different way rather than sitting into the control room listening to the guys playing. I think if I had that in my mind, I might want to think of it more structured of the way it was created. Since I didn’t have that, it was, “It could be anything.”

CW: If you’re okay with it, Spiker, it would be cool to recreate that and keep you in the dark! I would be stoked if we sent you an hour of music and nothing we recorded made the cut.

JS: This is like working backwards. This is usually year 10, album 5 for a band where it’s like, “No, you don’t need to come. Don’t come, actually, we’d rather you not be there.”

CW: The one thing I want to make sure we do even if the concept changes is being in the same room while we’re making it. James and Zac are not interested in making music in a silo. We all do that on other things. The magic that happens is being in the room vibing off of each other and making decisions. We didn’t use a single soft synth on the album. It’s all hardware. Because of that, we’re making decisions that are internal. You can’t go in and change a preset and dial something back. I like the permanence of making those decisions together in the moment.

SILY: Was that experience on the flipside for the three of you also unique where you made it and sent it off and had no idea how it would come back?

CW: Yeah, and it was due to complete trust. Spiker has been one of my best buds for a long time. I met him before I moved to L.A. He was the only person in the world I would have trusted to send all this stuff and say, “Do what you want with this.” We just said, “Do your thing.” If we had given it to anybody else, I don’t know if the passion would have been there. Anybody else would have required some direction or some kind of an idea of what they should be doing. Spiker just dove in and made shit happen.

ZR: Other projects in my life I have such a high degree of control over. It’s my band, I’m mixing it and controlling it and have control over every stage of the process. It’s so gratifying for Spiker to come in and handle that side of it and to be surprised almost like somebody was doing a remix of your record. It was really lovely for me to have that weight removed.

[justjessame]

Who Really Believes in Numbers Chapter 2

It had been a month since Jasmine Monahan had left for NYU. A month since she'd started classes and become engrossed in her major. She'd soaked up the academia and a little of the culture, if you included walking across the campus culture. Mostly she read and wrote her assigned texts and reading, and called and texted Colin her various observations. She wasn't trying to deny herself the experiences she tried to convince him to have a go at, she just didn't seem to find the time for it.

Colin wasn't having all that much better luck. He'd found an apartment. And his band was having some luck finding gigs, but aside from that, he wasn't being all that much more outgoing. His friends didn't feel like helping him. Jasmine and Colin were well known and liked couple at their high school. No one understood Jas' idea for this "open relationship". So, it wasn't quite going to plan.

Instead, Jas sent Colin NYU crap. T-shirts, caps, bears and the like. She didn't have much time to visit on weekends. Her classes were advanced placement and pretty much keeping her nose to the grindstone. When she wasn't in class, doing homework, talking or texting Colin, she was sleeping. Her new friends, and roommate, were trying everything to tempt her into getting out at all. Colin was trying to convince her as well. Reminding her that her idea only worked if she gave it a try, too. After sending her a selfie, wearing an NYU shirt and cap, he told her to go have a drink in his honor. And with a sigh, promised he'd do the same.

For Colin, that was the turning point as well, he'd felt like he couldn't hold another girl without seeing Jas' face. Seeing her, and feeling someone else would just be wrong. So he did what any red blooded Boston Irish boy would do. He went out with his boys and got shit faced, then went home with someone who looked nothing like his girlfriend. It was the first and last time he'd ever go home with a girl, from that point on, the girls went to his apartment. It opened up the experiences for him, and for that, he was grateful. He guessed, anyway.

Numbers? Still Not Keeping Track…

~~~~~SIX YEARS LATER~~~~~

"Jas," Colin was saying, as he juggled his guitar, and his apartment key, while he tried to open his door and held his phone to his ear. His across the way neighbor was trying to get out of her apartment while not making eye contact, typical. "I thought you were coming in this weekend?"

"Me too," she said, glaring at her thesis adviser's door where the sign was hanging proclaiming that she couldn't actually take the weekend off as planned, due to the asshole's rearranging schedule. "Unfortunately, I'm standing outside my adviser's office and apparently he arranged the schedule, again." She said something that her mother, and their priest would make her seek confession over. "I was REALLY looking forward to seeing you, Colin." She sighed deeply. "I'm so tired of this."

Colin couldn't deny that he was missing Jasmine too. While filling the void with his overnight guests killed time and gave him something to do, they weren't the same. Not even close. None could or would hold a candle to his Jas. He had been looking forward to this weekend. A full weekend, he couldn't remember when they'd had a full weekend, not since she'd left for NYU six years before. He couldn't fault her for pursuing her dream. She'd never faulted him for doing the same. And the goal was the same, she'd get her Master's and come home to Boston, and teach here, while he pursued his dream. It just sucked being apart.

"So another weekend apart." He knew he sounded pissed, because he was.

"I'm sorry." Her voice sounded small. "I wish," she stopped, knowing it wasn't enough. "I'll let you go, Colin." She hung up, knowing he didn't want to hear anymore excuses.

He hadn't noticed that his neighbor was still standing outside her apartment, nor did he care. He finally let himself into his door, and tossed his guitar case, more carefully than it looked. He sighed and leaned against the open door. Shaking his head, he took another breath. It wasn't her fault. He was just tired and frustrated. Jasmine was the only one he wanted, and he was tired of fill ins.

His cell rang before he could shut his door and he knew it would be one of the guys. Fuck it, he thought, it wasn't like they had a gig. He'd go out and get drunk and find a girl. Slamming his door, he didn't bother to notice if the neighbor was still outside.

DAYS LATER~~~~

Colin's neighbor had come to him, while he was naked and partaking in an apple and picking up his newspaper, to ask for a favor. He was intrigued.

Ally Darling. She was one of "those" girls. The ones that Jas would have wanted to shake sense into. So worried about being seen as broken or somehow gross because they liked sex. He could almost hear Jasmine's voice in his head telling him to help her, if only to show her that she didn't need these losers she was seeking to fix her.

And so, here he was, working on her list. Finding them one by one, and hopefully showing her why each and every one of them didn't work the first time. All the while, he was trying to work through his feelings over missing Jasmine. How he needed to find a way to be with her, if only for a day.

Sighing, he let himself into Ally's apartment, hoping for a cup of coffee while she slept. So focused on his task and his worry about Jas, he accidentally destroyed the glass carafe. "Shit," he whispered. Moving to the sofa, he refocused, considering how to complete the task of finding Ally's exes, and NOT destroy anything else she owned before she woke up.

He smiled, thinking about her lack of social media presence. Taking what he hoped she'd find a flattering picture of her sleeping, he started her a Facebook page, mentioned in a Tweet the broken coffee carafe, and friended her on her new page. He hoped that Jasmine would notice his new altruism. They hadn't spoken in days, and the texts weren't coming at all. He hadn't seen any emails either, now that he thought about it. Looking online, he checked her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. No new posts were on any of her accounts. She hadn't been online at all, if they were to be believed. He checked his phone, and noticed that a call had come in the days before, but he didn't remember it. It had been answered, not missed, and he tried desperately to remember. Nothing came.

Before he could torture himself further, Ally woke up, and the conversation switched to his search for her exes. His breaking of her coffee pot, and her new social media account. Jasmine's missed call was quickly pushed to the back of his mind, and then forgotten.

JASMINE NYU DAYS EARLIER

Jasmine had given Colin a week to cool off after the disappointment of being unable to come home. She called him close to noon, knowing that he'd be awake and it would also give her ample time to devote to him given it was her lunch break. As his phone rang, she felt her heart pound with worry. She hoped he had had enough time to come to terms with his anger, and that he knew that she'd had to go along with the program, no matter how much she wished she didn't.

When the answer came, it wasn't the voice she would know anywhere, instead it was a husky female voice. "Hello?"

Jas, was confused at first, then thinking that perhaps someone picked up by mistake, she asked for Colin. "Yes, hello, is Colin Shea there?" She said, as pleasantly, if not completely certainly.

"I'm sorry, no he's not." The voice said, searching it seemed for the appropriate excuse. "We're heading out for lunch and then we're off to a movie. I guess he hasn't had a chance to let the other girls know about us. Yet." The voice said, Jasmine felt the smugness in her bones. "You may want to ditch this number, honey. He's off the market now."

"Alright, then. Well, goodbye." Jasmine said, feeling her heart constrict. She touched the disconnect button and felt her vision blur. Knowing that it could happen hadn't actually prepared her for it happening.

She sat down on her desk chair, hard. Making sure that she could feel, anything, at this point feeling was important. She looked down at her hand. On it was the promise ring that Colin had given her on her 18th birthday. It was a Claddagh ring with a sapphire stone for her birthstone, and it felt heavy upon her hand now. Should she take it off? She hadn't removed it, not once since he'd place it there, but now did it matter?

Her world was spinning and for a moment she forgot that it was her fault this was happening. Then it came rushing back. This was her fault. No one else was to blame. She made this happen. It was her idea. She told Colin to play the field. She told him not to wait for her. And that made her laugh, she laughed so hard that when the tears started she couldn't stop, not for hours.

[wishingforatypewriter]

Rewind

Summary: Erina reflects on a missed opportunity 

It was a typical Friday night at the Nakiri mansion. Alice and Kurokiba had gone out on a date. It was a double date this time, if Erina had heard her cousin’s boastful ramblings correctly, but she had no idea who with. 

A few minutes after they left, Hisako had slipped out of the back door wearing lipstick and perfume and a black dress with a slit up one side. If her endeavors on previous Friday nights were any indication, she wouldn’t be back until the wee hours of the morning.

This time, like each time before, Erina had been sorely tempted to ask her friend where she was going and who she kept meeting and whether she thought it would last, but she didn’t. People were entitled to their secrets—their secret pleasures, their secret sorrows. There were things Erina preferred to keep hidden as well.

With a resigned sigh, the second seat closed the romance manga she had been reading and let it rest on her down pillows. She walked over to her desk and opened a small drawer with a key she kept at the bottom of her jewelry box. Inside was a plain manila envelope, one she had sent Hisako to deliver to the Polar Star dorm three months prior. Thinking it had contained only routine shokugeki related paperwork, Hisako had offered to store it in the ‘voided’ section of her gargantuan file cabinet. But Erina had insisted that she should keep the documents with her in case another opportunity to use them ever arose. It hadn’t.

Taking a seat on her plush swivel chair, Erina took the top document—printed, of course, on her personal letterhead—and read her statement of challenge for the first time since the day she composed it.

Yukihira-kun,

It’s insulting that you thought for even a minute that this was a real challenge. Given your current condition, I could win the first seat back in my sleep. However, being a woman of principle, I could never bring myself do such a thing—least of all to you…

It had all started about two weeks after the shokugeki that changed everything. In a 3-2 ruling, Yukihira Souma dethroned the illustrious Nakiri heiress and took the first seat of the Elite Ten Council. Subsequently, nearly every senior at Tōtsuki—and an impressive number of underclassmen—set out to challenge him for the top spot. The impulse, however ill-conceived, was understandable. If a commoner could reach the academy’s pinnacle, why couldn’t any of them? What Erina couldn’t wrap her mind around was why he always felt the need to entertain their requests.

“You’re up early,” Erina had said one morning when she’d spotted her cousin on her way out the door.

Alice glanced up at her, yawning. “Takumi Aldini took the spot last night, so I had to settle for a shokugeki before classes.”

“Alice.” Erina gave her hair a petulant flip that was made less threatening by the fact that she was still in her nightgown. “Do you truly believe that you’re going to win against him?”

“It’s a crapshoot, honestly,” the fourth seat revealed. “With our grade, the rankings barely mean anything. You, me, Yukihira, Hayama, and Ryo-kun are all basically at the same level. Who ends up winning depends on luck, the weather, how you feel when you get out of bed.” She gave a noncommittal wave to punctuate her point.

“You’d like to think that,” Erina said, mostly to herself. “Well, try not to take too much time. He and I have to go meet with the people from Saveur magazine later this morning.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t make you late for your date.” Alice winked at her cousin before opening the door. If someone had told Erina she’d ever miss being teased like that, she would have never believed it.

“For the last time, Alice, it is not a date. It’s an interview!”

“Whatever you say, Erina. You can console him on the way there after I win.”

In the end, Alice didn’t win the shokugeki, but she still managed to put them off schedule.

“You’re late,” Erina said when Souma slid into the car they’d be taking to the interview location. “If you’re going to occupy this position you should at least make an attempt to be somewhat punctual.”

“My bad, Nakiri,” he said, unbothered as ever by her scolding.

As they started driving, Erina checked her emails and texted Hisako and approved all the tastings she’d attend in the next two weeks. About half an hour into the journey, she actually ran out of work to do. 

She usually brought more paperwork with her on trips, but since she normally got absolutely nothing down when Yukihira was around, she hadn’t seen the point. Just as she was contemplating her unexpected productivity, a string of sneezes from the boy next to her drew Erina out of her musings.

She glanced over at the first seat. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What?”

“You’re not talking my ear off like you usually do,” Erina pointed out. And then, although he had been looking pretty tired before, he flashed her that ever irritating grin—the one that made people think that nothing was ever a problem for him. By the end of their first year, she’d known for certain that it was fake at least eighty percent of the time.

“If you wanted to have a conversation, you could have just said so.”

“I’m not saying that I wanted to talk to you! It’s just unusual for you not to rudely impose on me and distract me from my work, so I thought I’d ask why.”

“You know, Nakiri, you have a pretty cool talent there. You can really make anything sound hostile.”

“And you can distract people until they forget the questions you don’t feel like answering.” That was another thing she had noticed at the end of their first year. She had watched him talk circles around Tadokoro and Takumi—even his own father—and not one of them ever noticed he was doing it.

Souma sighed, then coughed a little. “What was the question?”

“What. Is. The. Matter. With. You?” She enunciated each syllable individually. “And if you say ‘nothing’ I will probably punch you.”

Souma smirked at her. “I would pay to see you punch someone.”

At this Erina rolled her eyes. Then she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “You know, now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually punched anyone, and…” The second seat grew quiet, realizing what he was doing. How often did he actually do that to her? “And that is not even the point! Yukihira!”

In the face of her withering glare, the first seat could only laugh. When he started coughing soon after, Erina just shook her head.

“Do you have a cold or something?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I think I’m just tired.”

Sighing, the second seat slid over and placed her hand on his forehead. “If you have a fever, it’s only a small one,” she decided. Then she retracted her hand and turned her head away, content to pretend that she hadn’t just done that. “You’ll probably be fine if you take it easy for the next few days.”

But of course he didn’t take it easy. And when the first seat walked into the French cuisine practicum they had together that Thursday morning, he looked like hell and sounded worse.

As was expected, they both finished their rouille de seiche well ahead of everyone else in the class, and received top marks, and had ample time left over to quarrel over nothing the way they always did. Or at least, they would have been quarreling if he could manage to get more than two sentences out without coughing like his lungs were about to end up on the floor.

“You sound like shit.”

“When did you start swearing, Nakiri?”

Erina’s cheeks flushed faintly. “Shortly after meeting you,” she said—and sadly it was pretty much true. Then she glanced out the window where the rain steadily pelted the campus. “I have a car coming around after class ends. Let me take you home. If you drop dead, I’ll be stuck with all your paperwork.”

“Thanks, but I have another shokugeki right after this.”

The Nakiri heiress rolled her eyes. “You really have no sense of self-preservation.” If only he had sabotaged himself this well back when she was rooting for his demise. “Against who?”

“Hayama.”

Erina’s eyes widened, all Alice’s talk about crapshoots and rankings rushing back to her. “You’re literally giving him the first seat,” she said. “Even on a normal day, there’s about a fifty-fifty chance that you’d lose to me or Hayama.”

“That's—”

“True. And you know it.” Erina crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t be stupid. Just cancel the match and reschedule it for later. It’s not like you have anything to prove anymore…well, I mean I still won’t accept you, but that’s a completely separate issue.”

“Things must really look bad if you’re worried, Nakiri,” he managed to say before he started hacking again.

Erina just sighed. There was so much she resented about that statement, she didn’t even know where to begin. Who said she was worried? And even more pressingly, who said she worried about him any less than anybody else? “You’re not going to listen to me anyway,” she said.

“I’ll pull it off,” he promised her, right before the class period ended. “Just watch.”

And naturally, he did pull it off—though just barely. And she did watch, though she was watching him more than the match, willing him telepathically not to fall over—as that was what people tended to do when they could hardly breathe.

And when it was over, he’d smiled a smile she knew was just for her. Once again, Yukihira Souma had proven her wrong, and once again she was happy to have been mistaken. Erina hadn’t even minded that people could probably see her gazing down at him like some naive Juliet.

But then Kurokiba issued his challenge. And as tireless as the current first seat was in his pursuit of new cuisine, she could tell that he was too spent to pull off another match. So, Nakiri Erina did what she did best. She made a scene.

From her private viewing balcony, Erina whirled on her cousin’s aide. “Don’t be absurd, Kurokiba-kun. His next opponent will be none other than me.” The entire crowd gasped as Kawashima Urara tried her best to commentate on this new turn of events. “After I take back my seat, you can fight me for it. If you have anything of value to offer me, that is. It’d do all of you good to remember I’m not as lenient as Yukihira-kun.”

Then the stadium erupted again, with everyone from the middle school students to the Polar Star crowd chatting anxiously amongst themselves. At long last, the severe god tongue, Queen Erina, had returned to Tōtsuki.

Erina glanced down at Souma one more time, her lips curled into a smirk, her eyes warm with affection, before turning to leave with Hisako in tow.

“Shall I draft an official statement of challenge for you, Erina-sama?” her aide asked once they were back inside the mansion.

“No,” she replied. “I’ll write it myself. This one will be…unique.” That was putting it lightly.

“Alright…” Hisako’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she didn’t ask any questions—a favor that Erina would return a thousand fold in the months to come. “Is there anything you need me to get for you?”

“A shot,” the second seat said with a sigh. “I think Alice has a handle of vodka on a shelf somewhere.”

Hisako blinked a few times, clearly shocked, though trying not to show it. “Of course. I’ll bring it immediately.”

After she took a shot—three, actually—Erina sat behind her desk in her plush swivel chair and started typing.

Yukihira-kun,

It’s insulting that you thought for even a minute that this was a real challenge. Given your current condition, I could win the first seat back in my sleep. However, being a woman of principle, I could never bring myself do such a thing—least of all to you. While I generally don’t share your egalitarian streak, I can respect it…at least sometimes. But, putting all that aside, you must know that since the day you first set foot on this campus, the pinnacle of the academy has belonged to you and me. Since we were first years, it felt like everything and everyone at this institution, including my grandfather (a fact that I still find a bit disturbing) has been pushing us towards one another. I hated you for it at first, which I’m sure you already know, but fighting against it is too exhausting. I’d be lying if I said you weren’t someone important to me—although I’m definitely still going to say it. Don’t waste your energy fighting every single battle that comes your way, because when I do decide to take you on again, I won’t hold back.

Additionally, on that note, get some sleep. If I see you in class, or at Parliament, or in any official or unofficial shokugeki venue any time before Monday, there will be hell to pay! Also, I suppose you can text me if you need anything.

Sincerely,

Nakiri Erina

Then she printed the form and slid it into the envelope and sent Hisako to bring it to the Polar Star.

It had returned to her unopened.

“I think we’ve become a nuisance to Tadokoro-san,” Hisako has said apologetically before explaining that the sixth seat begged her, all flustered and determined, to hold off the challenge ‘so Souma-kun could rest.’ Erina did all she did to keep from rolling her eyes. 

After she finished reading it over, Erina put the letter back in her drawer and locked it. In the morning she’d wake up and fight with Alice and act like she didn’t see the curious red marks that periodically showed up on the side of Hisako’s neck. On Monday, she would pretend to be as delighted with Souma and Megumi’s puppy love as everyone else in their circle of friends. By Wednesday, the delight would seem real. And if the weight of feelings unconfessed fell upon her again on some Friday night when she was left to her own devices…

People were entitled to their secrets—their secret what-ifs, their secret somedays. The drawer would always be hers to open or lock.

Notes: This is just me rewriting the time covered in one of my Megumi-centered fics from Erina’s perspective. Thanks for reading, everyone! 

[4wordletter]

@say-never

first of all, i’m sorry for offering the pathetic excuses. you deserve better than that. sometimes things require a deeper level of introspection and a higher level of self-awareness. i’ve taken time out to really think about our discussion so that i can dig deeper and give you a real answer.

i think at times i feel so restricted by that little chat window. when we’re instant messaging i feel i don’t have time to really think about what it is that i want to tell you, hence a proper post written on my laptop instead of my phone.

you’re right, i have gone further than virginia for someone i loved. you have to understand the context in which that happened. 

back then i was so starry-eyed, so passionate. my heart was full of love - really pure love. it wouldn’t have mattered if this woman was on the moon or mars, there was no barrier, no obstacle, no amount of distance that would quell the feelings i had for her.

i loved her like a child. it was pure and innocent. i thought she was some sort of angel. i idolized her. she was my hero. i wrote her love letters and poems. i made little pictures for her. little signs saying “have a great day!” - i loved her family and her friends both. i’d never miss anyone’s birthday. 

i wanted to love everyone that she cherished. somehow, i saw her friends and family as being part of her. i’d make silly pictures for them too! i’d wish them happy birthday. i’d send cards and gifts. i was a child and i loved like a child.

my heart was open and pure. i didn’t understand anything. i was a disney prince and she was my princess. there was no garden of thorns nor any dragon that could come between us. sure, i had problems. problems that i overcame. i used the fire in my heart that i felt for her and i propelled myself forward. i became more. i strengthened myself. i loved and i loved and i loved.

in response to any cynicism i wrote long, winding paragraphs confessing my true intentions, how hard i was trying. i wanted to reassure both her and her parents that i wasn’t fucking around. i bent over backwards. i want to show my love. i sent bouquet after bouquet of flowers. i remembered her smile in her towelturban and i wanted to see it again. i wanted to make her feel happy and loved. in response to any hate or insult i’d just show more and more love. it wasn’t faked. it was real, everything was real for me. she could call me a prick 11 times in a row and i would tell her how much i loved her.

i was a child. so naive. literally untarnished by the world.

the thing is, you can only be naive once. i was only that way because i had limited exposure to relationships. this girl was, in so many ways, the only girl i truly loved. 

i told my first girlfriend i loved her. i thought i did. i was 17 and she was the first girl who had really paid any attention to me. she said she loved me and i said it back. it became a habit and a routine to just say it. i never stopped to think if it were true. 

it wasn’t. i just liked the attention and i liked having sex with her.

my second girlfriend: this was a bandaid relationship. i moved from the first relationship straight into the second. i felt like, somehow, i needed someone. i needed someone to anchor my identity to. i told her i loved her as soon as i could. i needed to hear it said back to me. 

she was more a friend than anything else. i regret trying to turn it into more than a friendship. still, looking back i can categorically say that i loved her just as i love my friends and family - not romantically, not passionately. not with fire, but as a friend.

i think it’s really easy to say you love someone when you’re in a relationship. it’s been 2 years since my last relationship ended, so i’m afforded some perspective through that. 

i can wholeheartedly say that i loved this woman with all my heart. i never doubted how i felt about her. like i said, this love propelled me to become exactly what i needed to become in order to lay a solid foundation for a life with her. 

there wasn’t anything i wouldn’t do. i went to relationship coaches and parenting seminars. i cooked for her parents. i would have died for her child. there were no limits. i sincerely wanted to do all these things. i never thought what happened would happen. i thought it was all my fault. i thought i just wasn’t showing enough love. i tried harder and harder and harder.

in many ways, it was as if i were discovering true love for the first time. i’d never felt anything like it. my god, the goosebumps and butterflies. 

childlike. like a 14 year old falling in love for the first time. that’s how i was. naive. dumb, deluded. looking back, it’s no wonder that her parents were so suspicious of me. i doubt they’d seen anything like it from someone my age - someone so willing to do so much. i understand now, because love in the real world isn’t anything like how i felt. 

first-loves feel like that, but then you learn. you learn the hard way.

having your heart broken and stomped on not by one person but their whole family changes you as a person. it changes your ideas of love. it changes how you see yourself and it changes how you see others. it changes how you see the world and how you interact with it. it changes how you see your future and how you see your life.

it changes everything. it rewires the fabric of your personality and re-engineers your neural circuitry. you become a different person. you adapt to the pain. you become unrecognizable to yourself and others.

it fucking destroyed me, hannah. that’s not hyperbole, it’s an understatement. please note that when i say “adapt” i mean ADAPT. i’m not implying any sense of forward progress here, any sense of growth. yes, i’ve grown in so many ways, but there are parts of me that are dead and that won’t ever come back to life. in some ways i’ve maladapted. sometimes maladaption is the only adaption.

i’m sure you’re familiar with that quote by some dude who said not to stare into the abyss because it’ll stare back into you.

i searched so long for answers to all these questions i had in my head. why did this happen? what did i do? what did i do wrong? did i deserve this?

i got no reply. i searched high and low. i stared into that abyss. there was nothing. no answers. just a void. nothingness. that dude was right, it does stare back. the parts of me that wanted answers, that were crying out in pain, are numb and dead.

sometimes the only way to adapt is to stop caring. to adopt apathy as a core part of you. it’s pathetic, but it works. i could not go on asking questions with no answer. that’s a short road to insanity.

no, instead, i became numb. i repressed so much that i honestly don’t care any more. even if her parents appeared on my doorstep tomorrow morning saying how wrong they were, how sorry they were for everything they did, i’m not sure i’d even feel anything because after all this i’ve been conditioned to not feel anything.

there are only so many phonecalls that go unanswered, only so many voicemails, messages and emails that go unreplied to before you internalize it all: no one gives a damn about you. stop crying, stop caring. man up and cut the bullshit. this is the real world and it’s cold and callous. deal with it. there’s no room in the world for your shitty little feelings so pack it up and go home. stop caring, stop loving.

i feel it’s a natural human response, when you’re presented with such an unrelenting apathy, to make that a part of you. you cut the emotion out of your heart with bloodied hands and you get used to the fact that it’s better to feel NOTHING than feel like you’re unheard, that your feelings don’t matter.

listen, i don’t give a fuck about any of this. i know i’m dead inside. talking about feelings feels icky and weird because deep down i don’t have any anymore. i just remember what it was like, i remember what i went through. please don’t think i’m having a downer and i’m reminiscing over any of this shit, because i’m not. i’m merely relaying to you why i am this way.

i’ve told you a million times how i have this dark stuff inside of me. dark stuff is a misnomer really because there is no “stuff” - there’s a lack of stuff. a lack of light. it’s numbness, darkness, blackness. nothingness - it’s the abyss that looked back.

this is just who i am now. i know that sounds defeatist and maybe it is, but what’s the alternative? if you take a baseball bat to my knees then, realistically, i’m probably not gonna run a 10k again - or at least it will be pretty difficult.

forces shape us and shape our brains. i’m not insane or anything and for the most part i’m really loving and light. i love everyone and i’ve surrounded myself with loving people.

still, i’d never entertain the thought of a relationship. i see less and less value in them. i’m not that guy anymore. i’d never go more than, say, 45 minutes to see a girl. the thought of crossing the ocean for anyone seems weird and outlandish now. i’ve changed so much. at my core i am a different person. 

her parents changed me. in some ways for the better - picking myself up from what they did increased my confidence a hundredfold. if i can come back from that i can come back from anything at all. literally anything at all.

i’m not stupid though, i know how awful that situation was and i’ll never put myself in that situation again. i’ve learned my lesson. i will never love that deeply, never ever ever. i’ll never allow myself to get in that deep.

i don’t want you to fall in love with me. i’ll push you away if you show me signs that you love me. i don’t want any of that. it’s not for me. you can’t fix me so please don’t even try.

last week you freaked out when i took a day to myself. i hate that so much. please don’t place that much importance on me. there’s nothing inside me that you can love. the land inside me is so arid and dry that even if you try your best to plant your love and watch it grow, it won’t. it will die. please don’t waste your time.

let me be clear: this isn’t like the movies. i’m not some jaded boy you can love until he’s happy again. it doesn’t work that way. i have internalized a lot of really vicious emotional trauma. my brain is literally a different shape and you’re not gonna change that. it’s not romantic, it’s fucked up. so please, don’t attempt to fall for me. don’t waste money on me coming to scotland. there’s literally nothing inside me that’s worth crossing an ocean for.

this is, basically, a long winded way of saying “it’s not you, it’s me” - i think you’re a wonderful person. you have a lovely personality and i bond well with you. even still, loving me will be the end of you. i’ll break you like i’ve been broken. please don’t enter this pain cycle willingly. put an end to it here. don’t love me. don’t even try. i don’t want to hurt you, i don’t want to cause harm to anyone. i want to hold onto this shit until i die. i don’t want to expose anyone to it. i want to keep it to myself and keep it inside. i will never let anyone know me on a deep level because there is stuff down here that will change you like i have been changed. please don’t stare into my abyss. i wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

[ohlookaseblainefanfic]

This Doesn’t Have a Title || A Seblaine fic

Sebastian stared out the window of his high rise apartment that was now completely void of all things Blaine. It was Valentine’s Day, which normally would have him complaining about Hallmark holidays and how it was so completely unnecessary to celebrate with flowers and fancy dinners on that specific night, simply because of the specific day of the year, when they could and had always just shown each other how much they loved each other with those things all the time. On non-specific days. But today, the fact that Cupid’s holiday was happening and Blaine was gone left a hole in his chest.

It felt like his heart was actually gone. Just like Blaine. Of course, perhaps if he hadn’t been so stubborn, he wouldn’t be alone in the first place. Blaine hadn’t wanted to leave. At least not by himself. They’d talked about it for weeks. Okay, months. When Blaine had first heard about his dream job he’d applied and sent that resume like it was nobody’s business. And with Sebastian’s full support. Both of them were excited for Blaine, but when Blaine had gotten a call for an interview, Sebastian started worrying. Trying to subtly convince Blaine that it wasn’t the best thing for him. Really it was Sebastian’s own fear starting to show through.

The call for the second interview came, and this time, Blaine had to fly to Los Angeles and meet with people face-to-face. When he came back, he had been overjoyed, but Sebastian was less than thrilled about it. He didn’t want to leave New York, especially not to fly across the whole country to completely start over. It was selfish, but then again, that was Sebastian.

He held onto the notion that maybe someone would be better for the job than Blaine, even though he knew that that was a complete lie. Blaine was born for this. And Sebastian was afraid of change.

They’d fought for three days straight when Blaine got the phone call that he was being offered the job, and accepted immediately, with a start date of three weeks from then. It was an outrage for Sebastian and eventually he informed Blaine that he was going to be going alone, because there was no way he was moving his life clear across the country. Not for anything. Or anyone. The look on Blaine’s face had been heartbreaking, and it took all of Sebastian’s willpower not to just give in and change his mind. He’d made a decision and he needed to stick with it.

There was barely a word spoken between them as Blaine boxed up his things and put them in a moving truck that got a head start to California. It left Blaine with nothing but a suitcase and a carry on bag, both of which he took with him when he left the apartment to stay in a hotel for five days before he flew out of Laguardia and into LAX. Sebastian stayed silent. He took days off of work, missing important phone calls and ignoring urgent emails. His whole life was in disarray, and it was all his fault. All he wanted was for Blaine to knock on the door and say he wasn’t leaving. Say they weren’t finished. Say that this was all a bad dream and everything was okay.

But Blaine never knocked.

And now it was February 14th, the day that flight was leaving.

Sebastian didn’t want to let go. He loved Blaine. He’d never loved anyone else. Only Blaine. Only those warm, caring eyes and that understanding smile. That gelled hair that Sebastian thought looked so much better in the morning when the gel had worked itself out overnight and led to a mop of messy curls. The way he would sing in the shower. Or the kitchen. Or the elevator. His bowties and his shoe collection. The pure light in his eyes and the love that Sebastian could actually feel radiating from him in every single warm embrace they had ever shared.

He wiped the tears from his face. How could he have been so stupid? Why did he have to be so stubborn? He could work in any financial office of any company… Why did he refuse to leave New York? The city was cold and lifeless without Blaine. He’d given up the only good thing he ever had. It was a mistake. A big one. But how did he fix it?

You have to buy a ticket.

The thought popped into his head, or rather slammed into him like a tractor trailer hitting a ten foot thick brick wall at a hundred miles per hour. He stood up, glancing around frantically. What time was it? 11:16am. Blaine’s flight was at 12:30. Knowing him, he was already at the airport and sitting at his terminal, waiting.

He grabbed his wallet and phone flew out the door, hailing a cab and a little less than nicely asking the driver to get him to the Laguardia now. What should have been a 25 minute drive took 40 minutes and at 11:59, Sebastian threw money at the cab driver and ran into the airport. He went to the only counter that had no line, and hurriedly bought a ticket to someplace- he had no idea where and it didn’t matter. He waded through security and by the time he had his shoes back, it was 12:23. Looking at his phone, at the flight information Blaine had sent him weeks ago, he held onto his shoes in one hand and looked up, full on sprinting to gate C14. Why did it have to be the gate all the way at the end? “Blaine!” he called out, hoping to get the other’s attention. He was out of breath by the time he got there, and through the window next the closed up exit, he could see the 747 taxiing away.

His heart fell. He was too late.

The terminal was far from empty, but he felt more alone and silly then than he’d ever felt in his life. His chest felt like it was going to cave in. His eyes welled up with tears and he willed them not to fall quite so publicly- he was definitely not a crier- but they betrayed him. It felt like someone was reaching into his body and pulling out his lungs, stifled sobs exiting him instead of breaths of air. His hand fell on the back of a chair and he lowered himself into it.

What was there left for him? He had a big, spacious apartment with fancy furniture and fancy clothes and a good job and more money than he knew what to do with, but none of it mattered. None of it made a single bit of difference if he didn’t have Blaine. He didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to have to face all the questions again. Why did he and Blaine break up? Why did he let the love of his life slip through his fingers like that? What was wrong with him?

He wished he knew.

He wasn’t sure how much time went by as he sat there, regretting every decision he’d ever made. What distracted him was the person who stood in front of him, he guess waiting for their flight. Probably wanted that seat. Their shoes were nice. Blaine would have liked them. Actually, he was pretty sure that Blaine owned that same pair of shoes. His heart started beating faster and he looked up through red-rimmed eyes.

There stood Blaine. He looked sad but also weirdly happy, and probably that was how Sebastian looked too. Was this real?

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave the hotel. I was ready to go, and I just… didn’t call a cab. I was hoping you would show up or something, I guess. At the room. I waited and you didn’t come. So… I went to the apartment. And you weren’t there. I guess I was just… hoping…” A pause. “And you were here.” There were tears in Blaine’s voice and in his eyes.

“I messed up,” Sebastian admitted. “You’re worth anything…” He stood up. “You’re worth… everything. I’m sorry. I tried to… chase you down… I bought a ticket,” he said, looking for the first time at the ticket in his hand. It was a direct flight to Dallas. Texas. Sebastian hated Texas more than anywhere else he’d ever been. He let out a sob-soaked chuckle at the irony before he looked back to Blaine.

“I don’t want to stay here without you. I don’t want to be anywhere without you. I can work anywhere. I want to go to Los Angeles with you. If you still want me to.”

Blaine was crying. He had a ridiculous smile on his face and Sebastian knew from experience what would come next. Before he could even try to smile back, a sobbing Blaine was suddenly wrapped around his middle, and he didn’t waste any time engulfing his own arms around those broad shoulders and squeezing him tightly.

Everything wasn’t perfect, and they had plenty to discuss, but Sebastian knew- he could feel it in his soul- that it was going to be okay. And maybe Valentine’s Day wasn’t so bad after all.

[gracefulswansofnever]

I lasted as long as I could

Today I finally quit my awful job at a supermarket chain here in Australia. I’ve been working there for not that long, just around 15 months, but those months have been some of the most traumatic of my life.

The sheer weightlessness I feel now is astounding.

The enormous amount of stress and pressure was partially placed by myself and is my own fault because of this damned chronic anxiety, especially surrounding phone calls and other social things, and maybe I shouldn’t have taken a job in an environment like that, but how I was even supposed to know from the outside that inside the place is so toxic? There is no way I could have ever known that from looking only inwards to the image that they project. Plus I want to feel like a normal human being who is not discounted from society simply because my brain works a little differently to others...

My boss is one of the strangest people I have never met. Of course I can fully appreciate the stress that he would be under as he has to manage me except multiplied by 70 - 100 people throughout different stores in the state.

But that still doesn’t explain why he never bothered to give me the time of day, to reply to ANY message I sent to him regardless of the format it was (emails, texts). He only contacted me when it suited him, and was never available to help me. I never even met the man. Not once. I have no idea what he looks like, which is also part of the problem because I was always on constant lookout on every single shift for anyone who seemed to act like he did in the way that he talked, for example. He only ever called to either complain about something I didn’t do (which BY THE WAY how am I supposed to KNOW WHAT TO DO IF NOBODY FUCKING TELLS ME ABOUT IT! SERIOUSLY! They’d just write in a book that I would never think to look in because I was a cleaner, not a baker, so why the hell would I look inside the private Bakery team member booklet?)

I was already relatively fragile and that fragility was in part exacerbated by him and his imagined appearance and also negative forms of contact at any time. That created a heightened state of fear and I remained in that state for so long, afraid that my phone would ring at any given time.

There were times when I could look past that and forget about it for a while, but it never really lasted long enough for me to recover. So I was worn down until I was begging to go to hospital as I couldn’t take it any more. The pressure and the stress and sick acidity in the pit of my stomach. The racing heart and the constant furrowed brow. I went to a place I’ve been twice before for a few weeks and they switched my medications around. I was a zombie for a while which was absolutely horrible but it resulted in finding a new second medication to add to my existing medication.

I returned to work after that. However that break soon wore off and I was soon back facing the same dark problems that I had before as the root of the evil had not been confronted yet.

Today I had an operation on my ear (the fourth in my life and probably another of many more to come throughout it). I emailed and texted him a month prior to this operation while also stating that I was planning to take some holiday time throughout January. I emailed and texted four times, to the correct addresses.

The only response I got was today when I didn’t show up for work and someone obviously called him and asked Where Was I and he would have then seen the emails and texts and only then decided to reply to merely say “I can’t approve your holiday leave”.

This resulted in me finally breaking and I called it quits through a message of my own back to him. My mum was with me this time as she knows how badly I suffer phone call anxiety and I even told her to take my phone away from me in case he called me after I sent the message.

I resigned of my own accord. I made it all the way into January which meant I got bonus pay for working three public holidays over Christmas and New Year. I took it as far as I could. Any further and I would have certainly had a much worse breakdown, even in the middle of the damned store.

Goodbye to the job from hell. I am sad that I left friends behind there but I will see them again. My last shift yesterday played out like any other. I cleaned everything to a good enough standard, before clocking off one last time and slipping out the back door. And sure, people will ask Where Did Max Go? And maybe they will be told that I was a useless sonofabitch or that I quit because I couldn’t handle the stress any more, or anything really. I won’t ever really know. But then again, I won’t ever really care about what they say.

I have done few things in my life for just me, and this is a huge leap forward in taking control of my own sense of self and most importantly my own health.

Now I take a gamble on myself, my small business with my friend, and put all the wasted energy spent on fretting over a useless job at a supermarket into creating a brand, a business, and products that we care about. I have enough money saved to live a few months off in which time we will try to gain more clients. I am even willing to sell my beautiful guitars if it comes to that. I would rather be broke and happy with myself than have cash in the bank and be utterly on the verge of the void, a suicidal place that I nearly went over twice but thankfully didn’t.

I learned to play the game, I understand the system now. It’s time to look forward and start believing in myself. Believe. In. Yourself. You can do it. You are strong, despite how weak they make you feel.

Let‘s go.

[authoriywt-blog]

Screwing [over] Someone Screwy

I try to be transparent when posting here. I’m a relatively private person, but working on being more open. That said, I want to talk about something that’s come up. 

If You Were There has been on the market since March. The physical books were available early that month, and digital came toward the beginning of April. People ask me how many sold, and I give the same answer of, “I’m not sure.” 

I was told by my publisher, Dog Ear, that I would have to wait until the end of the fiscal quarter to know the exact results. This is based on all vendors where the novel is available. July 1st was the last day of their quarter, and I still don’t have those numbers. I’ve been patient, however, always try to get a timeframe of when this would be reported. As I wrote about in the blog post called, Moving Day, the communication at Dog Ear is terrible. When I wrote that back in April, I had hoped it was only one person that was the problem. I’m finding that it’s a common thread as I get deeper into their world of distribution and sales. 

I have sent numerous unanswered emails over the past few months since Moving Day was written. Again, I would try to be patient and wait - for days. If I did get a response, it would be a week later. Finally, after I had my fill of the runaround bullshit, I sent another one (that I will include in this post) telling them I Googled their publishing company. I was shocked at what other authors were saying. Poor communication, unpaid royalties, and fraud to only name a few. My throat did a half somersault into the stomach, then a tail-side-grind out my ass.

The co-founder responded (also posted) and tried to assure me the reviews are one-sided and my sales data will be online by the next day; it wasn’t, or two days after that. There wasn’t a message from them explaining why it didn’t post, or even a middle finger emoji. You’d think after someone is accused of defrauding people, they’d do what they could to prove otherwise. Not here, my inbox was void; a vacuum searching for a dirtbag. 

I trusted these people to help get a story out there that I wanted to be told for 25 years. They got that part done; the book is published. I never wrote it to make money. Nonetheless, the idea of someone corrupting the purity of the intent and profiting off my hardships brings me to stirring rage. Not the type where you scream and get it off your chest. No, I’m talking about the kind where the next thing you realize is you’re standing outside an office building with a can of gasoline in one hand, flare-gun in the other.  

Of course, I’m saying that here so I can get it out of my system. However, I will not hesitate to take care of this in court if needed. I worked too hard and went through too much to let someone screw me out of what I earned, in more ways than one. It’s remained to be seen whether what I found on Google will happen to me, but I’m seeing some parallels which are concerning. Complaints have already been filed with the FTC, and I’m working on one for the Attorney General of Indiana. My recommendation is if you’re going to go the publisher route, find somebody that has an independent accounting firm. That way, there is a third party doing the financing.

I still want people to read the book. It wasn’t written for a payday regardless of what happens with Dog Ear. I won’t discourage folks from buying it. Eventually, things will get worked out, either legally or amicably. That doesn’t mean I haven’t already planned a sequel to If You Were There, where “Jason” plays with fire. 

www.authorerikedwards.com

[toomanysinks]

A look at Birdies, the popular slipper shoe startup that just raised $8 million more from investors

Bianca Gates is a first-generation American, her parents having immigrated to the U.S. from Latin America. As such, she says, after graduating from UC Irvine, she was expected to get a safe job with a 401(k) plan and to live with her parents until she was married.

Things haven’t gone exactly that way, but one can imagine Gates’s parents feeling pretty satisfied with their daughter’s trajectory nevertheless. The reason: Gates, along with cofounder Marisa Sharkey, are the cofounders of Birdies, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based footwear brand that has made it chic to step out in shoes like look like elegant slippers, and which just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Slow Ventures and earlier investor Forerunner Ventures.

Sure, another e-commerce brand, why should you care? Actually, if haven’t seen the shoes out in the wild, there’s a high likelihood that will change soon, including because one of the company’s biggest advocates to date has been none other than Meghan Markle, the actress turned Duchess of Sussex, whose fashion choices are copiously detailed by fashion sites around the world, copied by their readers, then picked up by readers’ friends.

Interestingly, Markle was never meant to step outside in the slippers. But before we explain, let’s back up a bit first, to Gates’s earlier career, which is a familiar story but also underscores the importance of grit — as well as the importance of making the right connections.

As Gates tells it from Birdie’s offices on Union Street, a kind of yuppie haven in San Francisco, “My family was living in Santa Ana and I was commuting every day to Irvine and I just wanted to spread my wings and move to a big city with a lot of diversity after graduating.” Thanks partly to her fluency in Spanish, she landed a job with the broadcast giant Univision as an account executive. After more than three years, and “realizing I didn’t want to be typecast as an Hispanic person working for Hispanic TV,” she left for Viacom, where Gates fell for a colleague.

He landed soon after at Stanford Business School, and after plenty of cross-country flights, the two married and moved to San Francisco to start their family, with Gates opening up an office for Viacom’s MTV in the process. But she was soon feeling antsy again. “It was really convenient for me, but I [felt] after having my first chid and working out of a satellite office that I was out of the action. I wanted to be closer to people.”

As it happens, she caught a 2011 commencement speech that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered to Barnard College students and decided to apply to Facebook. Six months later, she landed a job leading retail partnerships, where she helped sales organizations understand what was then a new platform to them.

She also made powerful friends, including Priti Youssef Choksi, a Facebook colleague who was striking corporate and business development deals and who Gates befriended over a series of events at the home of Sandberg, who quietly hosted employees who Sandberg identified as eager to do more with their careers. “You didn’t photograph yourself there or talk about [the dinners], but it helped Priti and I form a deeper friendship,” recalls Gates.

The friendship — and Sandberg’s support — would eventually help get Birdies off the ground.

So did Gates’s obsession with finding post-work, pre-slipper-type shoes, which she says dates back a decade. “I just found that more and more, I was being asked to take off my shoes in friends’ homes and I was asking people to do the same. I thought that stylish shoes for indoors made a lot of sense,” but she wasn’t sure if there was a void in the market, or if she just imagined one.

She decided to pursue the idea while recognizing that she couldn’t do it alone. She still had that big job at Facebook that she loved. She also had two young kids at home at this point. So Gates texted her friend, Marisa Sharkey, a former Ross Stores executive who’d moved from Manhattan to Sacramento with her own family and was feeling restless. “I texted her and said, ‘I have this crazy idea; I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Marisa texted back immediately and said, ‘Tell me what it is.'” Within no time at all, Sharkey was fully committed, putting $50,000 into the venture, alongside Gates, who also put $50,000 into the venture.

What they got for their money? Shoes that today give them both “PTSD,” jokes Gates, but that became the starting point of Birdies.

It wasn’t so easy, but some key connections made the difference, one of which surfaced through good-old-fashioned outreach.  “We basically became so obsessed with our idea that we asked everyone we talked with whether they could help. Through degrees of separation, we were connected to someone who’d just retired from the footwear business in L.A and knew some factories in China and agreed to help introduce us to them.”

It was a game changer, even if what the factories were left working with wasn’t exactly pretty. Think shoes torn apart, their innards — including their memory foam inserts — reassembled on construction paper. “The shoe industry is very small and it’s really hard to get into a factory unless you know someone,” says Gates. “It isn’t like making apparel, where you can go to a factory in South San Francisco and make 24 dresses and see how it goes. With footwear, you can’t try in small doses.”

Of course, there were still many learnings to come, starting with the realization that they had nowhere to store the 1,800 pairs of shoes they’d had to order — and which arrived sooner than expected outside of Sharkey’s home. (They wound up housed in her garage.)

Gates also began worrying about losing her full-time job, eventually writing Sandberg to explain that she was responsible for a garage piled high with slipper shoes that she hoped to sell — then fretting about what the return email would say. As it happens, Sandberg “could have been more supportive. I even forwarded her note to my manager, saying, look, Sheryl is cool with this,” says Gates, laughing.

Fast forward several years, and Birdies is now a a legitimate, if surprisingly small, operation, one with just six employees but a big and fast-growing base of customers.

Its very first customer, Gate’s Facebook friend, Choksi, wound up being an important champion. Choksi left Facebook last year to become a venture capitalist. And as a partner with Norwest Venture Partners, she just led the firm into Birdie’s competitive Series A round, a development about which she sounds excited. “Even that first pair — they didn’t look like the random shoes i was putting on with what i was wearing at home,” recalls Choksi. “I could also get the mail and do quick errands.” She still has them, she says. “They’re fairly worn out, but I keep them to taunt Bianca.”

Meanwhile, Meghan Markle helped put the company on the map. A short lifestyle piece about Birdies in the SF Chronicle got the ball rolling. “We started to gain traction,” and with that came the nascent attention of fashion editors and celebrity stylists, says Gates. But the company still had very limited resources. It had to choose one celebrity on which to focus and it zeroed in on Markle, then an actor starring in a show called “Suits.”

“We just loved her casual elegance,” says Gates of Markle, whose courtship with with Prince Harry was on no one’s radar at the time. “We loved that she often wore simple button-downs and jeans and casual loafers. We also liked that she was this humanitarian.” Birdies sent Markle a complimentary pair of shoes, and to its great delight, Markle took to them. In fact, she began wearing them all them time and tagging them on Instagram, too.

There was just one problem. Markle was wearing them everywhere other than indoors. “It was this amazing, frustrating moment for the brand, because they were made for entertaining in the home.” They might have stewed longer, but a quick call with Bonobos founder Andy Dunn — who’d attended Stanford with Gates’s husband — soon set Gates and Sharkey straight. “He basically said, ‘You just fell into a much bigger opportunity.'”

A thicker rubber soul followed — along with a $100,000 check from Dunn —  and the rest is history in the making. Not that it’s all a walk in the park, naturally. The company has at times had waitlists of up to 30,000 people — a problem it hopes its new round of funding will help solve.

As happens with many new brands, it’s also wrestling with price points, offering several limited edition shoes in partnership with designer Ken Fulk last fall that “brought in a whole new customer” but were also priced at $165, roughly 30 percent more than most of its slippers, says Gates. (Birdies more recently introduced a “resort” slipper that’s priced at $95, and Gates says the company hopes to introduce other, more affordable designs down the line.)

There’s also the challenge of figuring out which new markets to chase while simultaneously hiring, fast. Choksi and Norwest, which has reach into many consumer brands, is helping on the latter front. Meanwhile, Gates says to expect more in the way of bridesmaids’ slippers, as well as other new designs coming this spring and summer.

Like another e-commerce footwear startup that’s taking off  — Rothy’s — which has filed a patent infringement suit against a rival, Birdies also seems poised to see more copycat designs.

Asked about this, Gates doesn’t seem terribly concerned, not yet. “We’ve had friends tell us that Target is offering a similar slipper at a different price point. Everybody copies everybody,” she says. “It’s our job to create a brand beyond the silhouette of a slipper, because that can be knocked off, it’s not defensible. What is defensible is why [a customer] is buying Birdies, and why she is telling her friends to shop us. It’s our job to give her more than a product, to lift her up.”

Birdies has now raised roughly $10 million altogether, including $2 million in seed funding led by Forerunner in the fall of 2017.

Above, left to right, cofounders Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey. Photo courtesy of Birdies.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/a-look-at-birdies-the-popular-slipper-shoe-startup-that-just-raised-8-million-more-from-investors/

[fmservers]

A look at Birdies, the popular slipper shoe startup that just raised $8 million more from investors

Bianca Gates is a first-generation American, her parents having immigrated to the U.S. from Latin America. As such, she says, after waitressing her way through college at UC Irvine, she was expected to get a safe job with a 401(k) plan and to live with her parents until she was married.

Things haven’t gone exactly that way, but one can imagine Gates’s parents feeling pretty satisfied with their daughter’s trajectory nevertheless. The reason: Gates, along with cofounder Marisa Sharkey, are the cofounders of Birdies, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based  footwear brand that has made it chic to step out in shoes like look like elegant slippers, and which just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Slow Ventures and earlier investor Forerunner Ventures.

Sure, another e-commerce brand, who cares. Actually, if you’re a woman and don’t own a pair yourself yet or know someone who does, there’s a high likelihood that will change soon, including because one of the company’s biggest advocates to date has been none other than Megan Markle, the actress turned Duchess of Sussex, whose fashion choices are copiously detailed by fashion sites around the world, copied by their readers, then picked up by readers’ friends.

Interestingly, Markle was never meant to step outside in the slippers. But before we explain, let’s back up a bit first, to Gates’s earlier career, which is a familiar story but also underscores the importance of grit — as well as the importance of making the right connections. 

As Gates tells it from Birdie’s offices on Union Street, a kind of yuppie haven in San Francisco, “My family was living in Santa Ana and I was commuting every day to Irvine and I just wanted to spread my wings and move to a big city with a lot of diversity after graduating.” Thanks partly to her fluency in Spanish, she landed a job with the broadcast giant Univision as an account executive. After more than three years, and “realizing I didn’t want to be typecast as an Hispanic person working for Hispanic TV,” she left for Viacom, where she fell in love with a colleague.

He landed soon after at Stanford Business School, and after  plenty of cross-country flights, the two married and moved to San Francisco to start their family, with Gates opening up an office for Viacom’s MTV in the process. But Gates was soon feeling antsy again. “It was really convenient for me, but I [felt] after having my first chid and working out of a satellite office that I was out of the action. I wanted to be closer to people.” As it happens, she caught the 2011 commencement speech that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered to Barnard College students and decided to apply to Facebook. Six months later, she landed a job leading retail partnerships, where she helped sales organizations understand what was then a new platform to them, as well as how to connect with customers in a personal way at scale. 

She was also making powerful friends, including Priti Youssef Chokski, a Facebook colleague who was striking corporate and business development deals and who Gates befriended over a series of events at the home of Sandberg, who used to host women of Facebook who Sandberg identified as eager to do more with their careers. “You didn’t photograph yourself there or talk about [the dinners], but it helped Priti and I form a deeper friendship,” recalls Gates.

The friendship — and Sandberg’s support — would eventually help get Birdies off the ground.

It all started with Gates’s obsession with finding post-work, pre-slipper-type shoes, which she says dates back a decade. “I just found that more and more, I was being asked to take off my shoes in friends’ homes and I was asking people to do the same. I thought that stylish shoes for indoors made a lot of sense, but whenever I tried to find something, the images went from bad to worse. It was either funny animal heads, or shoes you couldn’t really wear to pop outside to get the mail.” Gates wasn’t sure if there was a void in the market, or if she was just imagining one, but either way, her husband, “who was like, ‘I’m sick of hearing about this,'” encouraged her to pursue the idea.

She knew she couldn’t do it alone. She still had that big job at Facebook that she loved. She also had two young kids at home at this point. So Gates texted her friend, Marisa Sharkey, a Ross Stores executive who’d moved from Manhattan to Sacramento with her own family and was feeling restless. “I texted her and said, ‘I have this crazy idea; I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Marisa texted back immediately and said, ‘Tell me what it is.'” Within no time at all, Sharkey was fully committed, putting $50,000 into the venture, alongside Gates, who also put $50,000 into the venture.

What they got for their money? Shoes that today give them both “PTSD,” jokes Gates, but that became the starting point of Birdies.

It wasn’t so easy, but some key connections made the difference, one of which surfaced through good-old-fashioned outreach.  “We basically became so obsessed with our idea that we asked everyone we talked with whether they could help. Through degrees of separation, we were connected to someone who’d just retired from the footwear business in L.A and knew some factories in China and agreed to help introduce us to them.”

It was a game changer, even if what the factories were left working with wasn’t exactly pretty. Think a variety shoes torn apart, their innards — including their memory foam inserts — reassembled on construction paper. “The shoe industry is very small and it’s really hard to get into a factory unless you know someone,” says Gates. “It isn’t like making apparel, where you can go to a factory in South San Francisco and make 24 dresses and see how it goes. With footwear, you can’t try in small doses.”

Of course, there were still many learnings to come, starting with the realization that they had no where to store the 1,800 pairs of shoes they’d had to order, and which arrived sooner than expected outside of Sharkey’s home. (They wound up housed in her garage.) Gates also began worrying about losing her full-time job, eventually mustering up the courage to write Sandberg to explain that she was responsible for a garage full of slipper shoes that she hoped to sell — then fretting about what the return email would say. As it happens, Sandberg “could have been more supportive. I even forwarded her note to my manager, saying, look, Sheryl is cool with this,” says Gates, laughing.

Fast forward several years, and Birdies is now a a legitimate, if surprisingly small, operation, one with just six employees but a big and fast-growing base of customers.

Its very first customer, Gate’s Facebook friend, Choksi, wound up being an important advocate. Chokski left Facebook last year to become a venture capitalist. And as a partner with Norwest Venture Partners, she led the firm into Birdie’s competitive Series A round and has joined the board, a development about which she sounds excited. “Even that first pair — they didn’t look like the random shoes i was putting on with what i was wearing at home,” recalls Choksi. “I could also get the mail and do quick errands.” She still has them, in fact. “They’re fairly worn out, but I keep them just to taunt Bianca.”

Unbeknownst to Birdies, it was Megan Markle who would put the company on the map, however. A short lifestyle piece about Birdies in the SF Chronicle after a chance encounter with the story’s author got the ball rolling. “We started to gain traction,” along with that nascent attention of fashion editors and celebrity stylists, says Gates.

But the company still had very limited resources. It had to choose one celebrity on which to focus and it zeroed in on Megan Markle, then an actor starring in a show called “Suits.” Says Gates, “We just loved her casual elegance. We loved that she often wore simple button-downs and jeans and casual loafers. We also liked that she was this wonderful humanitarian.” Birdies sent Markle a complimentary pair of shoes, and to its great delight, Markle took to them. In fact, she began wearing them all them time and tagging them on Instagram, too.

There was just one problem. Markle was wearing them everywhere other than indoors. “It was this amazing, frustrating moment for the brand, because they were made for entertaining in the home.” But a quick call with Bonobos founder Andy Dunn — who’d attended Stanford with Gates’s husband — soon set Gates and Sharkey straight. “He basically said, ‘You just fell into a much bigger opportunity.'”

A thicker rubber soul followed — along with a $100,000 check from Dunn —  and the rest is history in the making.

It’s not all a walk in the park, naturally. The company has at times had waitlists of up to 30,000 people — a problem it hopes its new round of funding will help solve.

Like a lot of e-commerce brands, it’s also wrestling with price points, offering several limited edition shoes in partnership with designer Ken Fulk last fall that “brought in a whole new customer” but were also priced at $165, roughly 30 percent more than most of its slippers, says Gates. (Birdies more recently introduced a “resort” slipper that’s priced at $95 and Gates says the company hopes to introduce other, more affordable designs down the line.)

There’s also the challenge of figuring out which new markets to chase while simultaneously hiring, fast. Choksi and Norwest, which has reach into many consumer brands, is helping on the latter front. Meanwhile, Gates says to expect more in the way of bridesmaids’ slippers, as well as other new designs coming this spring and summer.

Not last, like any successful startup, Birdies seems poised to see more copycat designs, though Gates doesn’t seem terribly concerned, not yet. “We’ve had friends tell us that Target is offering a similar slipper at a different price point. Everybody copies everybody,” she says. “It’s our job to create a brand beyond the silhouette of a slipper, because that can be knocked off, it’s not defensible. What is defensible is why [a customer] is buying Birdies, and why she is telling her friends to shop us. It’s our job to give her more than a product. It’s to lift her up. That’s the mission of the company.”

Above, left to right, cofounders Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey. Photo courtesy of Birdies.

Via Connie Loizos https://techcrunch.com

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Tales from ‘the heart of modern misogyny’

The Daily Beast unmasking of a New Hampshire House member as the founder of a notorious online forum that has been called “the heart of modern misogyny” sent shockwaves through the state’s political community. The governor, House speaker and GOP party chair all called on Rep. Robert Fisher (R-Laconia) to resign and last week the Republican-led House voted 307-56 to review Fisher’s actions for possible sanctions.

In a Laconia Daily Sun column, Fisher implicitly acknowledged his role in creating the forum when he explained and defended comments attributed to Reddit user pk_atheist in Bonnie Bacarisse’s detailed investigation. The previously anonymous Redditor is the founder of The Red Pill, which bills itself as a forum to discuss “sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.”

Fisher’s defense pointedly omitted any mention of The Red Pill, either his role in creating it or his ongoing involvement in the community. He will have a chance to expound on that Tuesday when he appears before the House Legislative Administration Committee. Here’s what we found.

‘Friends, I am stepping down’

On January 4, 2013, pk_atheist handed off the role of The Red Pill moderator to RedPillSchool, a Redditor whose account had been created just 17 minutes before the message from pk_atheist.

“Friends, I am stepping down,” he wrote. “Thanks for the great month.. this place has really grown and I'm excited for its future. Unfortunately due to circumstances I won't be bringing up here I am officially stepping down as a moderator and will no longer take part in any way with this community.”

“But don't worry..” pk_atheist wrote. “I leave you in the very capable hands of /u/redpillschool. I have been talking with him over the past few weeks and he is more than prepared to continue taking the community in the same direction. So long, and thanks for a memorable experience.”

“Don't worry... I promise to fill the void!” RedPillSchool chimed in. “Pk and I are on the same page.”

Over time, some Red Pillers conflated the two aliases and referred to RedPillSchool as the forum’s founder. For example, pickup artist Daryush "Roosh V" Valizadeh introduced The Red Pill to his blog’s readers by writing, “The Red Pill subreddit was created by an anonymous individual who goes by the handle RedPillSchool.”

When “The Red Pill Sidebar” was published in 2015, a post that had been written by pk_atheist in November 2012 to introduce the forum was included -- but it was now attributed to RedPillSchool. RedPillSchool thanked the member who assembled the collection and he placed a copy on a Red Pill website “so it doesn't disappear one day.”

In that same discussion, RedPillSchool recounted a date he had with a women's studies major who was familiar with The Red Pill and “went on and on about how refreshing it was to go on a date with a guy who was nothing like that. … I told her that I created the forum and actually hated women. She laughed and ordered another round. I don't think people would believe me if I did go public. Lol”

RedPillSchool made an explicit effort to refrain from providing personal details that would threaten his anonymity. In 2013, though, he did confirm his age as “30 +- 2 years.” (Fisher was 28 at the time.) In a Guardian interview he also confirmed that he is “white, atheist [and] conservative” (though admittedly, that likely applies to most Red Pillers).

RedPillSchool does occasionally repeat the story that he inherited The Red Pill from its founder, pk_atheist. “The sub itself was handed over to me early on,” he wrote last year, “I had had a lot of long conversations with the founder who went on to bigger and better things and he trusted I would run the forum well.”

But in a Guardian interview, RedPillSchool changed his story and said that he was the creator of The Red Pill. In the unabridged version of the interview RedPillSchool posted online, he told the reporter that he had been moderating the subreddit “since the red pill's inception.”

RedPillSchool described the events that led him to create the site. “I got started when I stumbled upon a few manosphere blogs and realized there wasn't really a good forum for discussion on masculine topics,” he explained. “I noticed the attitude of women in the dating market was very negative, it was a terrible experience. So that led me to researching others' experiences which led me to the mansophere, and eventually theredpill.”

(The Guardian piece referred to RedSchoolPill as “Morpheus Manfred.” RedPillSchool explained: “A few years ago was my first big interview, it was BBC world News. I needed an email, quickly. So I made a GMAIL, and it needed a name, so I figured, let's try Morpheus. You know, for obvious reasons. They needed a last name though, so I just thought Manfred sounded kinda righteous. Didn't realize they'd read my ‘From’ line on the email and announce me as Morpheus Manfred on the air. Since then I just kept it for consistency's sake.”)

‘We are the Puerarchy’

As The Red Pill grew, RedPillSchool was instrumental in rolling out a series of Red Pill-related websites – all with a connection to Fisher.

The original administrator’s email address for each site was Fisher’s personal email address -- the same email address linked to his campaign website, his band website and included in Fisher’s letter of complaint to the PUC -- and are all hosted on servers in Orlando, Florida. (Fisher once told Redditors that he is “personally spending thousands of dollars to co-locate [computer servers] in places like Florida.”)

The websites include trp.red (email), a Red Pill-related social media platform; forums.red (email), an archive of the Reddit Red Pill subreddits; feministvictims.com (email), a fundraising site for “victims of feminism;” and puerarchy.com (email), RedPillSchool’s blog.

Puerarchy.com is also linked to Fisher through a Google Adsense account. The website shares a Google Adsense publisher ID with insideNH.com, a website authored by Fisher and Rep. Nick Zaricki (R-Goffstown) where the legislators discussed issues related to their work in the New Hampshire House. (The insideNH.com domain name expired last month and the site is now offline.) Ad revenue from the two sites is directed to the same user's account.

Puerarchy.com made its debut in the summer of 2013. The word “puerarchy” was coined by the author of The Manosphere: A New Hope For Masculinity, Ian Ironwood, to describe “the evolution of male values and masculine goals toward a more selfish, self-oriented and unashamedly masculine perspective.”

RedPillSchool embraced the notion as a battle cry: “We’re going to eat pizza. We’re going to play videogames. We’re going to look at porn. We’re going to fuck every bitch we can. And we’re never going to ‘grow up,’” he wrote. “Some of us may make brilliant amounts of money. But one thing’s for sure: what we do is for us- and we’re not going to share. … Honor is dead. Long live the Puerarchy.”

In addition to news and discussion, the site hosts an interactive, text-based game: Slut Quest. It’s a sendup of Depression Quest, the game by female game developer Zoe Quinn that was at the center of the Gamergate controversy. The Slut Quest storyline is a typical Red Pill trope: a woman who has sex with men to advance her career and threatens to accuse them of rape if they don’t accede to her demands. “Slutquest was my crowning achievement,” RedPillSchool wrote.

Feministvictims.com was launched in response to the Andria Richards controversy that resulted in a male tech employee losing his job after she overheard him making an off-color remark. A Huffington Post write-up included a quote from RedPillSchool explaining why he believed the new site was necessary. “Unfortunately in today’s climate, being a man has become a financial liability,” RedPillSchool wrote. “Say the wrong thing in the wrong place and you can find your entire life ruined. Destroyed.”

“Feminists have fought for equality, but now they’re out for our rights,” he continued. “They’re destroying us financially. They’re trying to tear apart our families. We’re saying that enough is enough. No longer should men fear masculinity.”

‘I won't deny that the language is colorful’

When interviewed by Guardian’s Stephen Marche about The Red Pill’s notorious reputation as a misogynistic cesspool, RedPillSchool said, “I won't deny that the language is colorful and there's a lot of emotion expressed by the men on the forum.”

“I would argue that the definition of misogyny isn't really very concrete, that much is labeled as such because it's inconvenient. So, let's say there's a guy who just says ‘well I hate women.’ I think that's textbook misogyny and, in fact, we let them say that,” he continued. Because there's nowhere else for a man to blow off steam. … The endgame of our advice isn't to hate women. It's to understand them so you can stop being so darn frustrated by them.”

“If a guy came on and talked about actually hurting women or plotting to harm them, we'd remove them and possibly contact authorities if there was any risk of an immediate threat,” he insisted. “But this is the one place where men have the freedom to throw around ideas, vent, and discuss openly with other men.”

RedPillSchool denied the forum promotes rape culture. “There's no discussion of rape strategies. It's antithetical to our entire purpose, which is to find a way to become attractive enough that women will want to be with us,” he said. “If the group was seriously pro-rape, there simply wouldn't be a discussion on building attraction. We'd just take 'em all by force.”

“There have been probably a handful of comments I've removed over the past three years,” he continued, “and they're usually one-offs by trolls who want to make the group look pro-rape. They're banned and removed, since that is strictly forbidden in our forum rules.”

On the other hand, RedPillSchool has endorsed the subject of rape as “a great marketing gimmick.” In a post summarizing the “Red Pill state of affairs” written last year, RedPillSchool praised pickup artist "Roosh V" for the attention garnered by his plans for an international meet-up that was condemned as a “make rape legal” rally by detractors. The American blogger is best known for a 2015 article in which he proposed legalizing rape – a piece he said was a “satirical thought experiment” and “not to be taken literally.”

“I really can't fault him for the play that he made,” RedPillSchool wrote. “Some clever statements about rape that could be played off with the plausible deniability of satire, but gaining international attention on the sound bites. He was able to scare feminists and women in every major city, convincing them that big, bad rapists were coming to town to meet, plot and fester in the underbellies of their streets.”

‘The wrath of vitriolic women’

RedPillSchool has apparently been keeping a close eye on the Fisher unmasking and the subsequent reactions. The day Fisher’s response to the Daily Beast article was published by the Laconia Daily Sun, RedPillSchool posted a link to it on a Red Pill-related site. “I just got sent this by somebody on [Reddit],” he wrote.

Saturday, he addressed the unmasking, referring to it as “the recent doxxing of an alleged redpill founder.”

“Knowing the truth and living by it was not enough to save that man from the wrath of vitriolic women,” RedPillSchool wrote. “He stands as a testament to what happens to men who stand alone: They get torn down. Had he not built his own support structure, it could have been the end of his career.”