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some-cookie-crumbz · 3 years

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A Little Charismatic

A Little Charismatic Fandom: My Hero Academia Pairing: FuyuPress Summary: FuyuPress Week 2021 Day 1 Prompt Fill: Life Swap - Never said who had to swap lives and I’m running on too little sleep and too much caffeine to stay in the lines. Standard Disclaimer: If you read and enjoy this, please give it a like/ reblog so I know if I should write more.

Sako Atsuhiro liked to consider himself an observant fellow, if not also a bit of a creature of habit. He had a handful of places that he enjoyed frequenting, where he knew his face was safe. He could walk about in his usual work garb, with or without his mask and hat, and none of the other patrons would bat an eye. It wasn’t because the company he found in these places was particularly trustworthy or noble sorts, however; oh, no, they were far from that. He had just taken the time to establish that, despite his seemingly frail physique, he was not a force to be tested. He was always watching, always vigilant, watching to make sure that men conducted themselves like proper gents in the company of potential romantic partners. And if not? Well, he may have done a sleight of hand trick to remove a wandering hand or two.

It wasn’t often that there were new faces wandering around his usual haunts, so when there were, he noticed. That night was one such example.

She’d been settled at the bar when he walked in, another bar patron already trying to get cuddly with her. Judging by the glower in those bright baby blues, she was less than impressed. She was an odd one to place as Atsuhiro moved past them, her eyes straying from her suitor to chase him instead. Ah, that was unsurprising. Many a woman’s eyes had wandered over him, taking his attire to mean he must be some brand of wealthy and useful. They’d come over and start up with the fluttering lashes and slow, playful touches while asking for a drink.

It was always entertaining to watch how their expressions shifted when he insisted they have separate tabs.

It took her a full ten minutes to shake the guy she was dealing with at the bar, but once she’d gotten him off, she approached. “This seat taken?” she asked, her hands laced behind her back and head tilted to one side. He chuckled as he sized her up, taking in the leather jacket tossed over a halter dress and combat boots. The damn thing was incredibly low cut and he was quick to avert his eyes, instead taking a sip of the beer in his hands.

“Not at all,” he hummed, indicating the booth seat across from him with the wave of a hand.

She offered him a polite bow before settling into the seat, a nice change of pace. Usually the women that approached would slide in beside him first go, but she seemed to have some iota of manners, at least. “You are a difficult man to track, you know,” she mused slowly, “Mr. Compress.” He froze mid-sip to stare at her, doing his best to keep the shock from showing on his face. Very few knew of his moniker, even when he was out and about in his full regalia, so for her to address him so matter-of-factly… She was a threat and would need to be disposed of. As if sensing the bleak thoughts running through his head, she held her hands up in a placating manner to him. “Don’t worry, I’m not a narc. Or affiliated with one. I don’t think many of the people around here are, in fact.”

“Whatever it is you are trying to play at, dear, you are wasting your time,” he quipped, turning his attention away from her to the bar keep. He seemed to be more focused on a loud, clearly drunk man arguing the merits of his tab, thankfully.

He kept her in his peripheral view, though. Just in case.

She blinked before her face morphed to show hurt. “So quick to disregard me… Ah, that seems to be a trend with men in my life,” she lamented with a long-suffering sigh. He got the distinct impression that most of her behavior was an act. One of her legs shifted out to prod at the side of his calf gently, trying to coax him to look at her again. “Won’t you at least hear me out?”

He scoffed but did return his attention to her. It was the least he could do and might yet yield some further information to help him discern her authentic intentions. “There is no reason to do so outside of wasting both our time,”

“What about a game, then? You seem like a man who fancies a fun game,” she suggested.

A game? Well… He couldn’t help but be intrigued by the hand she was laying down. “Depending on what the wager is, I may be inclined to humor you,”

“Here,” she shifted to rummage through her jacket pockets. After a moment, she dropped three items onto the tabletop between them; a lighter, a small vial of some kind of liquid, and a yarn and bead bracelet. With the items spread out, she picked up the bracelet and dangled it off her index finger, before indicating the other two items with her free hand. “Use your Quirk to put these three items away. Only one of them - this one here - is of any value to me. If I can get this one back from you, you’ll agree to comply with the request I have for you.” When she spoke, she waggled her index finger to attract his attention to the bracelet briefly, before dropping her chin into her other hand.

He blinked owlishly, contemplating her game. It was in his favor, yes, but then it became a question of what she could offer him in return. “And if you are unsuccessful?”

“I’ll comply with a request of yours. No limits,” she drawled the last two words out in a leading way, her fingers lightly drumming away along her own jawline. He wrinkled his nose a bit at her implication, but found it could be a rather useful trap. After all, there would be no indication as to which marble held what once he used his Quick to compress them. Only he would be able to say for certain, and it wasn’t as if he couldn’t easily swap them around if she picked the right one. There was much more to gain in this than he had to lose. “So, what do you say?” She stuck her hand out towards him, beaded bracelet still hanging on.

“Very well,” he said, taking her hand for a brief shake before sliding the bracelet off. Judging by the yarn on it, the thing was old and may be in dire need of some new yarn or replacing outright. He waved the thought off as he compressed it and then set to doing the same to the other two items. Under the table, he was sure to shuffle them around, placing the marble with her bracelet in the back pocket of his pants. He waited until she stepped away to get a drink to make that adjustment, sly grin on his lips. There was no way she’d be able to determine it was there as he wouldn't present it as an option, and then he could easily be rid of her. “There we are now. Just be aware, however, that I am very wise to the tricks a young minx like you is prone to attempting.”

“Is that so?” she hummed.

From there, they started up a fun little back and forth. He tried to get more answers to why, exactly, she knew his street moniker and why she’d been looking for him, but she flitted about the subjects using redirection. It was Take-aPenny, Leave-a-Penny logic she was trying to enact and he couldn’t help but find it amusing. It was clear she had some kind of experience with this kind of situation, with having to negotiate ones hand without tipping it too much. A flurry of questions came to his mind at the thought. She was such a young, demure young lady once she was engaged in a conversation. Something about those mannerisms and the idea of her living her whole life on the streets simply didn’t add up quite right to him.

It did, however, give him a fun little mystery to chase around.

After a good while she shifted to sit more upright, hands folded neatly in front of her. Her eyes were alight with mirth as she repositioned herself. “Well, I think that’s enough of that. I came here to accomplish a goal, not play footsie all night,” She stretched languidly and her gaze shifted from his face down lower, giggling a bit at what she saw.

He blinked twice before glancing downward himself and uttering a small short curse.

His eyes widened as he suddenly registered what, exactly, she’d been playing at all along. A glance downwards revealed a layer of ice sticking to the outer traces of his body, over his legs, hips and wrists specifically. Given that he was wearing his full gear minus his mask, of course he hadn’t noticed the change in temperature! She must have been assessing him during their conversation, skirting about with her verbal distraction while leaking small traces of her Quirk to gauge his reaction...

A clever ruse that he’d fallen into with regrettable ease.

“What in the devil did you do?” he spat, keeping his voice low as his eyes scanned the bar. No one else had noticed their exchange, thankfully. The last thing he needed was other hooligans taking advantage of this situation.

She tilted her head with a feigned innocence. “Hmm? What’s wrong? Don’t like that I used my Quirk too?” The faux concern melted into a mischievous grin of delight as she moved from her perch across from him to sit beside him. She nudged the chunk of ice pinning his legs down with the toe of her boot as she settled in nice and close. “I never said that it was against the rules, you know. And it’s only fair that if you got to use yours, I get to use mine. Wouldn’t that be the gentleman’s viewpoint on this matter?” Her tone was light and playful, but he could cast the mocking wisps underlying her words. Without further preamble, she reached over to rummage through his coat pockets as well as the pockets of his slacks, humming to herself as she ignored his quiet snarls to cease her actions. She leaned back just a bit once she gathered seven marbles in total, swirling one in a circle in her palm. “Ah, there’s more in these pockets of yours than just what’s mine. How uncouth! Scandalous even!”

He tried to twist himself free but the ice pinned up along his wrists and hips didn’t budge an inch. Not even a thin crack was visible, to his uncensored chagrin. “What game are you playing at, wretch?”

“Just the game we agreed to,” she hummed. She peered at his marbles with an appraising eye before stuffing them into the pocket of her tattered denim shorts instead. “Since I’m the obvious winner here, I guess that means you have no choice but to abide by my rule, hm?”

“Name your damn price, then,” he growled lowly.

She giggled and leaned closer, walking two fingers up along his chest to his face. “You’re going to come with me to have a meeting. With. My. Boss,” Each of her final few words was followed by a mocking tap to the tip of his nose. If he could move his hands, he would have firmly shoved her from his personal space, but instead settled for jerking his head to the side. It only made her Cheshire grin grow wider. He could almost see a feline tail swaying in delight behind her, he swore. “He has a very… prosperous job opportunity for you. One that I think you’ll be very much inclined to take.”

This young woman was dangerous, and he was unclear if that was unappealing to him or not.

#My Hero Academia #FuyuPress #Mr. Compress #Sako Atsuhiro #Todoroki Fuyumi #FuyuPress Week 2021 #my fics #I am surprisingly pleased with this one #All things considered

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ambivalent-anarchy · 4 years

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Body |Peter's Turn

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 -> here)

Masterlist

Gender: Female

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader

Warning: none (suspicions of cheating but no actual cheating lol just a lotta funny miscommunication)

Anon requested- can I get a one shot where the reader does the body positivity trend with the new megan thee stallion song and the reader is insecure about how ppl will react to it?? Most importantly how peter will react to it?? K thanks

A/N- Part 2 cuz I immediately knew what I wanted to do with this the second I got the ask. (Peter's turn)

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When Peter heard that you'd been nervous about showing him your video, he freaked.

He thought he'd done something wrong. That maybe he gave off weird vibes or that he'd said something before that made you think he wouldn't have liked it. Which definitely wasn't true. He liked everything you did.

Well, except that one time you got bangs. He didn't really like the bangs.

Anyway, Peter felt like he needed to show you that he was okay with it all. That he was down with anything you wanted to do or show him.

He looked in the mirror early that morning and decided.

Peter wanted to show what he had to offer.

He looked down at your TikTok "body" video on his phone. He could do something like that, right? He was completely clueless, but he could at least try his best.

He pulled out his phone and texted the one guy he knew could help him out.

PeterParkour🤟: i need u to teach me the lip bitey thingy

PrinceHarry👑: bro what

PrinceHarry👑: ???

PrinceHarry👑: what is that

PeterParkour🤟: like when u make yourself look all cool when u bite your lip

PrinceHarry👑: ...

PrinceHarry👑: oh

PrinceHarry👑: OH

PrinceHarry👑: 😂

PrinceHarry👑: lmao why do u wanna do that???

PeterParkour🤟: im trying to make a video for y/n

PrinceHarry👑: what kind of video 👀

PeterParkour🤟: NOT LIKE THAT

PeterParkour🤟: well actually

PeterParkour🤟: kinda like that

PrinceHarry👑: PETER WHATTTTT

PeterParkour🤟: ill explain later which penthouse are u at tonight?

PrinceHarry👑: the one closest to ur apartment

PeterParkour🤟: ok ill come over

Now, on your end, school was kicking your ass.

You weren't failing, but the amount of make-up work you had was so far through the roof that you might as well be. And the teachers were hellbent on making it the hardest they could.

To put it short, you needed a break.

And the second MJ heard your tired, irritated voice over the phone, she was on her way over with chips, dip, popcorn, and movies. If there was anything to calm you down, it'd be a nice movie.

MJ had gone to your kitchen to make the popcorn and you were laying on your bed finishing up some homework, when you got a phone call from Harry. "Hello?"

"I didn't know you and Pete were sending nudes."

You paused. "What?"

He carried on in a nonchalant tone. "I mean, I never took you guys as the types to do that, but damn, you two really surprised me. Dude's really over here asking for tips and everything-"

You sat up in your bed, alert and highly confused. "Okay," you said, taking a deep breath" ....what, again, the fuck?" Harry continued to ramble but one sharp scolding tone stopped him. "Harry, shut up."

He paused on the other side of the phone and then suddenly his voice came back, extremely hesitant. "...wait, was I not supposed to say anything? Did I just fuck up?" He sighed. "Oops.."

"No, Harry tell me what the hell you're-" BEEP. You looked down and saw that he hung up.

Just then, MJ opened the door, hands full with freshly popped popcorn. "Okay, ready to get the movie started?" She walked to the bed when she noticed that you were practically frozen in your spot. "Um, [Y/N]?"

You looked up with glossy eyes and she immediately knew that something was wrong. "Dude, what happened?"

You frantically shrugged a bit, and then let out a shrill laugh, half confused and half preparing for the worst. "Peter's- um... apparently... sending nudes to...me....Harry... someone?"

"What?"

Peter had finally made it to Harry's penthouse.

"So, nudes?," Harry chirped, very amused as he opened his door.

"What nudes?," Peter asked as he stepped into the living room. "What are you talking about?"

Harry paused. "Wait, what were you talking about?"

Peter only stared back in confusion, leaving Harry to pick through his own confusion fragments of information. He quizzically looked at him. "But-..the texts?"

"Oh!," Peter laughed, moving to sit on the couch. "No, I wanna make one of those thirst trap TikToks for [Y/N], that's all," he explained with a shrug and a bashful smile. "She made one for me, now I wanna repay the favor."

"Dude!," Harry hissed out. "You should've just said that!"

"Well, how about you just need to stop making assumptions," Peter said with a slight frown, not understanding why his friend was so wound up.

"Well, I had to since you kept being so vague!"

Peter rolled his eyes and started towards the refrigerator, if not to actually get something to drink, getting away from a crazed Harry for two seconds would be enough.

When he sat back down, Harry started to speak again. "So, what did you need me for?"

"Oh," Peter mumbled, shifting in his seat. "Well, you know how to do that sort of... stuff, right?"

"You mean looking like a fuckboy?," Harry snickered. "Yeah I'd say that's well within my reservoir."

Peter gave his typical bashful look. "So... teach me your fuckboy ways?"

Harry grinned. "Peter. You have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say that."

You held your phone in your handle, looking at Peter's contact number hesitantly.

"Just text him," MJ said with an eyeroll.

"But what if it's nothing?! I don't wanna be the crazy girlfriend!"

"But what if it's something?," MJ added. "Cuz if you put it off now, and it actually ends up being something, you'll be even more miserable than you would be if you just found out now."

You took a long breath and nodded. "Okay then I'll text him."

"But if it is nothing, you'll look pretty stupid jumping to conclusions like that."

You sighed. "So, no?"

"But then if it's something-" she continued, getting deeper underneath your skin with each word. "-you'll look even more stupid because you could've found out sooner and you didn't."

Finally quieting down from her rambling, MJ noticed you glaring at her. You sighed.

"So...do I or do I not text him?"

"Oh nah, dude. I mean, I wouldn't. After all, I'm not saying that I think it's something," she said with a shrug. "I'm just saying on the off-chance that it is, you'd be in bad shape."

"Okay can we please stop playing devil's advocate with my life?!"

"You know I love watching you squirm [Y/N]." "Anyway, I'm sure Peter's not cheating. The boys were probably just doing something dumb and Harry just explained horribly."

You bit your lip. "You sure?"

She shrugged. "Pretty sure."

"Okay, now lower the camera just a little," Harry instructed. "You gotta show the v-line, but still leave enough for imagination."

Peter dropped his arm and his posture and shot Harry an incredulous glare. "Harry, if you focused this much in school I wouldn't have to tutor you."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Just keep going."

This was the third picture taken and though it was out of his element, Peter strangely felt very confident with what he was doing. He never saw himself as ugly, but he certainly never saw himself as hot either. Not like Harry. But looking at himself now, with Harry's corny chain necklaces on and his hair scruffed up in a way he's not used to, he knew one thing for certain.

He looked good.

"Okay," Harry said. "Now the last one, actually needs to be some dumb picture someone took of you in your gallery."

Peter frowned. "Huh? But I'm on a roll here."

"Yeah but the whole point is that all of these pictures weren't supposed to be taken directly beforehand," he pointed out. "Since you're breaking that rule, you gotta throw in a cute dumb one to throw off your scent." He smirked. "Also, you gotta show the ladies and gents that you have a softer, funnier side."

Peter stared for a moment. "..why do you have this down to a science?"

"Says the science geek?," Harry retorted.

Peter spent the night at Harry's and they drove to school early in the morning. He was glad that it was Tuesday because your schedules made it so that you'd both have lunch together every other day.

"You sure she'll like it?," he asked Harry as they walked down the halls before lunch.

Harry rolled his eyes with a laugh. "You know, she asked me the exact same thing for you when she made her video?"

Peter nodded quietly, still feeling a bit down about you feeling bad about showing him that video. "Yeah, I know."

"Jesus," Harry laughed. "You insecure little dweebs are made for each other!"

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment..."

"As you should," Harry said with a shrug, as nonchalant as ever.

The two boys walked into the lunchroom and to the table they knew best. You and MJ were already there.

Peter could tell just by the look on your face that something was wrong. "Hey," he greeted cautiously. "Is everything okay?"

MJ glared at him and he looked to Harry, whose clueless face was not helping.

Finally, you looked up and sighed. "Pete, be honest. Are you cheating on me?"

What.

"What?!"

You examined the utter shock and terror in his face. It didn't look fake. He looked saddened and scared as he began to ramble. "No no! I would never! What even made you think-!"

His eyes caught yours as you looked over towards Harry sittting next to him. Peter turned toward Harry and then looked back to you in confusion. "Wait, you think I cheated on you with HARRY?"

MJ bursts out laughing next you. "Jesus..."

Harry scoffed. "Well don't sound so excited Peter, jeez."

You let out a small chuckle but kept your eyes on Peter. "It's just... Harry called me and...said something about nudes and-"

Peter's face grew even more contorted with bafflement. "Nudes?!"

Harry hit his forehead, finally understanding what was happening. "Ooooooooh, me and my big mouth..."

All eyes turned towards him. "What, Harry?"

He sighed. "This is all just a big mix-up." Harry nudged Peter. "Just show her the thing dude."

"What thing?," MJ asked.

Peter fished through his pockets. "Okay," he mumbled, a bit shaken up by what happened. He took his phone out and handed it to you. "Here."

You looked up and saw Peter looking down at you, waiting for your reaction.

"So, this is what you were doing yesterday?"

He nodded.

You blew out a long breath of relief. "You're not cheating."

"God no, babe, I'd never cheat on you," he cooed, stepping over towards your seat. "I know you were really nervous when you showed me yours, and so... I thought I should repay the favor."

He didn't even have time to breathe before you were on him, wasting no time in bringing your lips to his. He kissed you back, mildly aware of the people in the lunchroom around the two of you, but he still didn't care.

Peter pulled away with a smitten smile until he noticed blood on his lip. He wiped it away with his hand and frowned when he realized it was not his own.

You almost asked what was wrong when you noticed him looking at you strangely, but MJ beat you to the punch.

"Dude, you have a bloody nose!"

You gasped, picking up a napkin from the table.

Harry laughed. "Did you really just get a horny nosebleed?"

"Horny nosebleed?," MJ snickered.

"That's not a thing," you scoffed. "...is it?"

"It actually is," Peter corrected, blushing profusely and rubbing his neck. "Just glad to know you thought the video was hot."

"It was really hot," you gushed.

Peter grinned and pulled you close. "Aww babe."

MJ rolled her eyes. "Okay lovebirds, get a room."

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Lol I know this was pretty trash but I was just trying to get to sleep while I was finishing this

Tagging: @allegra-writes, @allegra-soleil, @yumings , @hey-its-grey , @spideyyeet , @sunkissedspidey , @tommyunderoos , @chaoticpete , @sovereignparker , @thesherlockianavenger , @bubblebucky , @eridanuswave , @ithoughtthiswastwitterbutfr , @kidney9-9 , @gwenvrse, @the-weird-bisexual, @kelieah

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moonflowerlesbians · 4 years

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Or #22 for Dani & Jamie please !

Many apologies for this taking a hot minute. I started it to help with writers block and then it gave me more. Whoops. Also included here, prompt #35 from another anon.

This probably isn’t what you had in mind, but not to worry, angst is coming in another prompt.

You can also read this and my other prompt-fills here.

~~~

Drunk Jamie is a sight to behold.

It’s a rare and beautiful thing that Dani is sure to treasure on the infrequent occasions Jamie allows herself to fall and trusts Dani enough to catch her. To see Jamie inebriated is sacred, or, at least, Dani thinks so. Because she is the only one who’s seen Jamie drunk, face flushed and carefree laughter spilling from her lips. She’s vulnerable here, alcohol having eroded the rings of fearsome walls she’s built around her life, trusting Dani to protect her from any threats. She’s softer, more relaxed.

It’s a good look on her, Dani thinks.

They’re in the back room of The Leafling, reclining, legs propped up, on the ratty sofa they found at the second-hand store not three weeks prior. The shop is quiet, the doors locked and the lights shut off. The plants sit in baskets and pots and displays placed perfectly to suit their needs. Empty drink trays decorate the countertop, a problem for tomorrow.

“You did it.” Dani stares at the ceiling, her heart warm. Jamie’s back is pressed comfortably against her front, and Dani twirls a strand of brown hair between her fingers as crickets chirp outside. The world is at peace.

“We did,” Jamie hums. “We bloody did it. Business owners, the both of us.” She barks a laugh and nuzzles her head into Dani’s collarbone.

They’d just concluded a soft opening party for the shop. Small business owners and potential clients had wandered racks of Jamie’s precious plantlings as the woman herself flitted nervously on the outskirts to avoid the shower of compliments. Dani had done most of the talking, offering up hors d’oeuvres and baked goods. As it turned out, despite her hot drink deficiency, she’s a rather decent baker.

“Oh, these are just lovely!” Mrs. Windham from the bookstore down the way, had said, gushing over a bouquet of hydrangeas.

“All Jamie,” Dani had proclaimed proudly.

“Well, she has quite the gift.”

“Doesn’t she?” Jamie had met her eye from across the room, sipping on her second -- or third -- glass of champagne, and offered a small smile.

Dani doesn’t begrudge her the drinks. Jamie has never been much of a people person, and who is Dani to judge if alcohol makes socialising just a bit less nerve-wracking? Besides, a buzzed Jamie is quite endearing, if Dani’s being honest.

This is the part where Dani shines, in any case. Making connections comes naturally to her, or, at least, more naturally than it does for Jamie. Being a teacher, she had to be good at it. She always had a knack for cracking the toughest students, much to the bewilderment of her colleagues.

Half the time, the kid was just lonely. Needed someone to talk to. Dani could relate.

It’s a skill that’s served her well in life and in her relationships.

Jamie stirs, and Dani wrinkles her nose, spluttering as brunette curls invade her mouth.

“Hey, easy there-” she finds herself silenced by a bruising kiss. “Um,” she blinks up at Jamie, who’s looking down at her with a dopey smile, “hello?”

“Why’re you dressed like that?” Jamie drawls.

Dani surveys her outfit, though her investigation lacks scope on account of her incredibly attractive girlfriend straddling her lap. “Um. Does that mean it looks good, or should I change?”

Jamie avoids the question. “I’m rather fond of you, you know.” Her breath smells of cheap champagne.

“It’d be kind of awkward if you weren’t. We’re in pretty deep, you know,” Dani mimics, and Jamie’s faces scrunches in disapproval.

“That was bad. That was bloody awful, Poppins.” Jamie rolls off her to lean against the opposite arm of the chair, and Dani finds herself missing the weight. It’s nice feeling safe enough to have someone so close that even inches of separation are a loss.

“You never answered the question.”

Jamie hums. “You never answered mine.”

“You’re cocky when you’ve been drinking, you know that?”

“And you’re right beautiful all the time.”

Dani pauses mid-retort, her mouth open slightly. Jamie stares at her from across the couch, that damn cheeky smirk on her face.

“Quite alright there, Poppins?” Her voice is just above a whisper, sultry and mischievous. Leaning in, “Look a little flushed.”

“I...you…”

Jamie studies her fingernails. “Out with it, darling. Haven’t got all night.”

“I...I’m fond of you, too.” Dani manages. “Even when you’re lying.”

Jamie feigns outrage, hand coming up to clasp her chest. “Never lied a day in my life. ‘Specially not to my favorite person in the bleedin’ world, who also happens to be the most lovely woman I ever laid eyes on.” She runs her hands up Dani’s calves.

Dani scoffs, gently shoving her off. “‘Never lied’ my backside, but I’ll let it slide just this once, and only because you’re knackered.”

“Am not,” Jamie replies petulantly, then promptly yawns. She freezes. Dani raises an eyebrow. “Christ, betrayed by my own fucking body. Knew I never liked you,” she says to her stomach for no discernable reason. “Gone and ruined my whole plan.”

“Your plan?”

“Meant to woo you.”

“I’m sorry,” Dani laughs, “that was your attempt at being sexy?”

“Oi,” Jamie pouts, “thought I was doing a marvelous job, thank you very much. You’d’ve been properly smitten. Irresistible, I am.”

“Yes, right, of course,” Dani coughs, “consider me thoroughly wooed.”

“Aha! See that, ladies and gents? That’s how it’s done.” She gestures around the empty back room to her invisible audience, which Dani assumes is giving a standing ovation. She joins in, her solo bout of applause echoing too loudly in the space.

“Hey, Casanova. This plan of yours have an endgame?”

Jamie cuts her sweeping bow short. “‘Course. Can’t rile you up with nowhere to go. No fun in that.”

“And your goal was…” Dani prompts, sensing a trend. “To flirt me into bed with you?”

“Forgive me for wanting to romance my business partner to celebrate our smashing success.”

“Business partner, huh? Not sure how the laws work back in England, but here in the States, we have rules against sexual activity in the workplace.”

“Best get out of the workplace then, yeah?” Jamie’s eyes are dark.

“Yeah,” Dani breathes. She has half a mind to pin Jamie to the couch then and there. Not to go any further than, perhaps, a heated make out session. Not with Jamie in this state. But before the thought can fully evolve, Jamie’s face splits into another massive yawn.

Dani sighs affectionately and gets to her feet. “C’mon,” she says, holding out her hand for Jamie to take, “let’s go home.”

Jamie stands, a little shaky at first, but she’s stable as Dani gathers their things. Side by side, they walk the few blocks to their apartment. The night air is cool against Dani’s face, and the chill sobers Jamie enough that her promiscuity seems to settle. By the time they unlock the front door, she’s blinking sleepily at Dani, who guides her into the bathroom and starts the shower.

It’s odd to see Jamie like this, Dani thinks. She’s soft, pliant beneath Dani’s steady hands undressing her. The pensive silence is common enough, but this feels gentle, more open, somehow. The intimacy is of a kind Dani never imagined she would experience, and neither, she assumed, had Jamie. It speaks to the immense chasms they’ve breached on bridges of trust. That they are able to concede control of their bodies with a blanket confidence that they are safe. They are safe, and they are protected.

It’s a bond Dani treasures, and one she hopes will last a lifetime. Two, if she has anything to say about it.

Jamie steps into the shower with a washcloth, and Dani sets about laying a folded pair of flannel pants and an old t-shirt on the bed. When she returns, Jamie wears a towel and an adoring expression. Dani tilts her head, confused.

“Meant what I said earlier. About you being beautiful.” She is deliberately earnest.

It’s difficult to feel beautiful when your body doesn’t feel like your own. When you prepare to look in the mirror each morning and wonder if you’ll recognize yourself. When the face that’s stared back at you your whole life has changed, and a brown eye is a reminder that you aren’t in control. Dani is learning, though. Slowly.

And she knows Jamie wouldn’t lie, especially drunk Jamie. She lacks the capacity to be anything but adorably honest, despite her admirable attempts at seduction.

Unable to put her thoughts into words, Dani cups Jamie’s jaw, brushing away droplets that trickle from damp curls, and kisses her sweetly.

“To bed with you,” Dani says, shooing her into the next room. Jamie manages to steal three more kisses along the way. She tastes of the mint toothpaste she’d used in the shower. “Come on now, PJs are on the bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She thinks she hears Jamie murmur, and Dani can’t contain her eye roll. The situation isn’t unlike the bedtime antics of a child, and the mental picture of her grown partner in footie pajamas evokes a chuckle. She tucks that image away for later.

Helping the shirt over Jamie’s head from behind, Dani presses a fleeting kiss to the scar on her shoulder, a silent observance of the vulnerability they’ve cultivated. Jamie had never hidden her burn, choosing instead to spin her tale of woe before the story came up organically. Much, much later, curled in darkness beneath motel sheets, she had whispered her insecurity and given voice to the resulting shame around feeling self-conscious at all.

Dani makes sure to pay special attention to the area during all subsequent explorations, noting each ridge and pockmark like a cartographer charting new terrain.

She peels back a corner of their duvet, allowing Jamie to climb in.

Jamie clings onto her arm, pulling her in as well. “Please don’t leave me,” she frowns.

“I don’t want to go, but, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m still wearing my party outfit.”

“Hard not to notice when you’ve been teasing me with it all evening,” Jamie sighs, a little sad, a little longing.

Dani swats her playfully. “Go to sleep. I’ll be right there.”

“Can’t properly get to sleep without you, now can I?” Jamie grumbles, but rolls over nonetheless.

Evidently, she can.

By the time Dani slips into sleep clothes and finishes brushing her teeth, Jamie’s breathing has evened out. Dani tucks herself in beside her and drapes an arm across Jamie’s hips.

They’ve built this life together, the two of them. They’ve got an apartment and a small business and more plants than they know what to do with. They’ve got postcards stuck to the fridge and a rickety heater and several throw pillows that Jamie claims to hate but cuddles with when Dani isn’t looking. And, sure, the back left stove burner only works half the time, and maybe the lock on the front door seems to hate Dani’s key in particular, but this is their home, and theirs alone.

Not a foster home, not the O’Mara’s, not the Wingraves’.

Theirs.

Dani revels in the thrill of it all. She’s still scared out of her wits, certainly, but, Dani has found, it’s infinitely more difficult to be scared when the person you love most in the world sleeps soundly beside you on sheets you chose together.

She takes in this feeling, savors this comfort for when the clouds next block the sun.

Whatever comes next, she is not alone.

#my painkillers wore off and so did my ability to write apparently #oh well #I hope you like this!#the haunting of bly manor #dani clayton #jamie #dani x jamie #jamie x dani #haunting of bly manor #Bly Manor fanfic #fic #writing #my writing #prompt fill #damie #damie fanfic #fanfic #the haunting of Bly Manor fanfic #bly manor

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spanishskulduggery · 4 years

Note

I've been studying Spanish for about 10 years now & I'm proud of my progress. I'm also lgbtq+ & so knowing trends in the Spanish speaking community is important to me. I've heard that gender neutral endings for non-binary people are an emerging trend. (I'll label it from here as nb.) Let's say an ending or convention is finally agreed upon. For the purpose of what I'm about to ask. In Denis Baron's book "What's Your Pronoun?" he teaches that Latin had a gender system where the neuter would be absorbed into the feminine & the feminine/neuter gets absorbed into the masculine. What's the emerging trend regarding gender heirarchy with the nb accomodations? Is it like it was in latin? Is it becoming non-absorbent? Is the nb absorbing the masculine/feminine? I know this is kind of niche, but I thought it was something cool to ask about even if it isn't as official yet.

So I’m not 100% sure I’m going to answer this correctly, so please let me know if I missed something or if there’s something specific you meant that I missed.

There is technically a neuter or neutral gender in Spanish, but it usually comes up in the context of a noun being absent. This neuter gender looks and conjugates like masculine singular, so much so that you could be forgiven for not knowing it exists:

el libro divertido = the fun book [m] la película divertida = the fun movie [f] lo divertido = what’s fun / the fun thing [n]

In the case of neuter gender, it exists without a noun and so it shows up with adjectives or a determiner of some kind where no noun is stated. Neuter gender is a stand-in:

por ese motivo = for that reason [m] por esa razón = for that reason [f] por eso = because of that [n]

Neuter gender only really applies to things that aren’t there, and abstract or amorphous concepts. It’s nebulous and vague, and it gets used as “it”. Because it’s “it”, it isn’t really suited for talking about non-binary people since it kind of denies personhood.

As for people who want to use nb forms, there’s unfortunately nothing that’s truly official but there are 3 ways that it can be done informally:

First is the @ (arroba). This isn’t necessarily the best option, but it’s used informally in contexts where it could be masculine or feminine since it looks like a mix of A and O. This might work better for people who are genderfluid, but not necessarily nb because it is literally A and O, the binary itself.

The second option is X. X has gained a lot of traction after being used as “Latinx” instead of designating latino or latina. Because X is used for an unknown variable in mathematics, using X where the gendered ending would be is like saying “masculine, feminine, both, or neither” it’s just kind of there. Informally you might see muchxs amigxs latinxs as a way to be inclusive, but it’s not officially accepted. This is similar to xe, xem, xir in a way

The third is the use of the letter E. There are certain unisex adjectives in Spanish such as inteligente, exigente, urgente, alegre, amable etc. They end in E and don’t change based on gender, but will go into plural. There are some online communities that use the E and the pronoun elle [pronounced ey-yay], as an nb version of él and ella. I have seen people use nosotres instead of nosotros/nosotras and elles in place of ellos/ellas for example.

The E is probably the easiest to understand choice because it has a clear pronunciation. The only issue is that you have to know how to work that into spelling in Spanish. For example amigo and amiga, but you’d need to spell it amigue for nb... because “GE” is pronounced like H, and “GUE” [as in guerra] has that hard G sound like in amigo/a.

...

But if we’re talking gender hierarchy in general, it would very likely tend towards masculine for Spanish.

Even in regular masculine vs. feminine, nosotras for example can only exist if the “we” is all feminine. You could have 99 women and 1 man and it would have to turn into nosotros “we” for masculine.

In most gender neutral official language, people will say things like: se busca un/una empleado/a “employee wanted”, but will refer to all employees as empleados unless they’re specifically talking about empleadas.

Most anything gender neutral will use masculine plural, like hola todos “hello everyone”

This is also ignoring words that are technically gendered but considered either inclusive [collective nouns] or gendered nouns that are somewhat unisex... For example la gente is collective as “people”, and la persona “person” applies to anyone. Words like el/la artista “artist”, el/la testigo “witness”, el/la modelo “model” and others change the article, but not the word.

There are also certain practices that I wonder how they would be impacted. For example, a man who rides a horse [a horseman] is el jinete. A woman who rides a horse [a horsewoman] would be la amazona. I don’t know which way nb would go, but I’m thinking probably they’d say jinete. Also not sure how caballero/dama “gentleman/lady” would work out, or how jefe “boss” would work because that’s implied masculine and jefa is feminine but it ends in E so I think it’d stay jefe for an nb person.

...

If we’re talking straight-up grammatical gender I’d say masculine has pretty much absorbed neutral gender already, and people know about lo but don’t really give it much thought since it takes “masculine” articles.

If we’re talking nb people, the tendency is to place more importance on masculine than feminine.

But say if there was 1 nb person and 99 women... I don’t know. My assumption is that it would take the nb ending, because in general the feminine is given least priority.

...

But again, I’m a langblr not a lingblr so I don’t know if I can give more than anecdotal thoughts and evidence. Someone more into linguistics can probably answer this more precisely

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certifiedceraunophile · 4 years

Text

KLAROLINE FALL BINGO PREVIEW.

@eliliyah @klarolinefallbingo

Prompt: Dias De Muertos

Honestly the relevancy of the prompt comes far to late in the story but it’s there, kinda. But hey it’s there.

MASQUERADES

(CinemaAU)

Sometimes all she needed was to take a breather. A single moment. One pause.

Breathe in.

To collect her thoughts and emotions. To steady her bearings.

To state in a repetitive loop all the reasons why punching one Niklaus Mikaelson in the balls would be a marginally bad idea.

And breathe out.

Forgive her, but The man was infuriating. Okay?

And unashamedly so. Not a whit of genuine compunction behind that facade of ‘Inescapable Charisma and Unadulterated Allure.’

Definitely not her words.

Nope. No sir.

These were the words of a certain Greta Martin, editor-in-chief for the first October issue of People Magazine.

With one Mega-frustrating arrogant blonde blue-eyed dimpled asshat demon going by the name Klaus slapped to the front of said issue.

And Nope if anyone asks,

No, she did not literally just shred -In a shredding machine no less, because efficiency, thank you very much- the first copy of the magazine she bought, after reading the beginning eight lines on his exclusive, recounting what a ‘delightfully satisfying and marvellous experience the entire three months of shooting turned out to be.’

Ok one Black-hole sized pause right there please.

Thank you.

A single beat.

And....

The Absolute Fuck?!

She’s sorry. Marvellous experience?

Excuse her, but say what?

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Beg pardon but What?

Excuse her.

But Marvellous experience, as in, aggressive quotation marks scratching the air “Marvellous experience” is NOT how she remembers it.

The slap in the face obvious discrepancy to both their stories is definitely not blind to her.

He called 84 re-takes that lasted four whole hours for one eight minute long single-shot single-angle scene, Marvellous.

He called having ice-cold Whiteclaw thrown square on his face by a Absolutely-done-with-wild-gust-of-agitated-Blonde-Fury on the eighth day of set, Marvellous.

He called having two separate make-up artists downright quit after being unable to touch up her makeup every thirteen seconds because she ran her hand down her face in unbridled aggravation every time her eyes landed on him, Marvellous.

He called the same experience where, she had to literally rush out of a set, under the ruse of a bathroom break, Twice in the course of three months, so that she can peacefully go through the motions of a rage-fueled emotional meltdown, complete with angry frustrated tears and a relentlessly colourful diatribe, cursing every man in her life who bore even a sliver of resemblance to the stormy-blue-eyed spawn of satan that was her co-actor, Marvellous.

God. How the hell did he possibly think he could get away with this,

How did he think he was going to smooth over the transparent inconsistencies between her interviews and his, without raising at least a few confused questions from bloodthirsty intuitive fans and the Press in general.

Given how her talk-show interviews and magazine exclusives gave the steady image, that

1. Klaus Mikaelson is a dick and a half, with an overgrown ego so ginormous that even the entirety of Tinseltown is ‘plainly restricting of his nonpareil talent in histrionic execution.’

2. Klaus Mikaelson is an arrogant narcissistic asshole that Hast pronounc'd upon his brethren yond this day f'rth that gent shalt with ev'ry smidgen of purpose in his life striveth to be the Unrivalled Bane of Caroline Forbes’ Existence.

3. The process of Creating the undeniable tour de force Masterpiece that was ‘100 years of solitude.’ The newest Christopher Nolan Direction and Production in theatres right now, that already has definite Academy Awards Nomination in the talks, was anything but Marvellous. She admits, It was so so gratifying and made her heart full with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, that left her giddy with such lighthearted contentment for days, after the phenomenal response it garnered post-premiering, Yes. But that does not capsulate how frustratingly tiresome and emotionally debilitating the entire creation process was. Hell it was downright painful at times.

4. Would she voluntarily take another movie with Klaus Mikaelson as a Co-star alongside her? You can get back to her when the sun starts to rise from the west and the answer would still be a definitive NO.

Now of course she wasn’t this brazen with her claims she knows how to be cute and classy and concise.

But she definitely did not mitigate the truth of her statement, she’s had enough training with her PR department to know what to say and how to say it but she’s sure that nobody had been able to overlook her less than companionable remarks about Klaus.

For example

The Stephen Colbert Show:

Stephen: “So Caroline tell us about the process, the Making of it, how everything fell into place like tiny puzzle pieces to reveal at last this grand, Grand Picture.”

“The process? Well the process was certainly not...pretty...but after every time we finished a scene, however small or inconsequential it may have seemed to the plot, there was this immense sense of ‘there-Done it. And done it well.’ ”

Jimmy Kimmel Live:

“Klaus Mikaelson, well my Co-star is um....eccentric at best.....”

Jimmy: “and at worst?”

“Well..... I guess” -hellish, heinously intolerable, a cruel mean bastard- “....Unyielding...?”

The Ellen Show:

“Well Klaus was a..... demanding partner and it took Herculean efforts to meet his exacting standards, but I can understand how that paid off so well on screen. The end result when I saw it for the first time, it damn well paid off.”

Ellen: “so he is absolved of his admittedly ‘uphill’ personality then?”

She laughs awkwardly,

“Ye-ah....No.”

followed by more laughter dissolving the painstaking grimace she’s trying to tamper down.

Oh and the worst.

The Late Late show with James Cordon:

During the ‘Fill Your Guts or Spill Your Guts’ segment

James: “So....I’m going to give you, let’s see, Ah there, the Bird Saliva.”

Caroline: “James!.... Damn it, you are so not making it into my good books, and....God. That’s just disconcerting I mean, How do they even, I don’t know... collect it?”

James: “Well there’s a whole process of harvesting it from the salivary glands and—“

Caroline: “Never mind! Nope. No need for the details, please, James, a lady’s delicate sensibilities are at stake. And unless the question is ‘what is your social security number?’ I’m not drinking this poison.”

James: “Now Caroline you wound me, I can assure you everything on this table is edible albeit being marginally unpalatable—“

Caroline: “Marginally?!”

James: “You should try the Cow’s tongue. It’s delectable.” Followed by a sagely nod.

Caroline: “Now I’m just intensely bothered. You’ve definitely lost all claim for a spot in my good books.”

James: “Ah well, speaking of staying in your good graces, here’s a question that will have you downing that Saliva in seconds.”

Caroline: “Hit me.”

James: “Well then, ‘Name Any one CO-star with whom you have worked with in the past that you would never volunteer to work with again.’”

Pause.

And the audience descended.

“Like I said, speaking about staying in your good books.”

Amidst the raucous screams, whistles and laughter, it didn’t even bother Caroline, the clarity and speed with which the name

‘Klaus Mikaelson’ flashed in the front of her mind, like a large Neon LED sign from a typical Vegas Nightlife scene.

It took her a total of three seconds to know that she was going to answer with his name because, well just look at that drink in front of her,

Sure if you bend over real low and squint in the right light it may look like a harmless Daiquiri, but a Daiquiri it was not.

No. This was Bird Freaking Saliva,

Come on, you can’t possibly ask her to put that in her goddamn mouth.

Like NO.

Just no.

So sue her for protecting her taste buds that are yet to experience many more exotic flavours and textures of food from all around the world.

But then again she can’t possibly outright just say “Oh that’s easy, Klaus Mikaelson.”

That’s exactly the kinda PR trouble she wants to stay above and definitely didn’t need to be wrung out dry by her Spitfire Mistress-of-Hell Publicist Katherine Pierce for.

(Who also alternates as her BFF, occasionally, mind you.)

So she puts on a good show, dropped her head in her hands, gave a healthy long groan, looked up and gave James her best wounded Puppy Dog eyes, to which he was clearly not immune to, judging by how he looked a touch chagrined, but the game was just as much as beyond his hands as it were hers,

She looked to the audience “You guys are so mean, it’s not even funny.”

And grumbled a bit more till everyone was laughing and pitching forward and back on their seat amused by the poor Blonde’s Dilemma.

So she looked up to the heavens as if to ask for some unknown deity for deliverance and guidance, and poised herself to drink,

Only to put the glass back down in the last second in a begrudgingly weak show of caving in, and blurted out reluctantly,

(She’s a glorious actor, she’s aware.)

“You know what, Nope. He’s just gotta deal with it, okay?.”

Deep breath

Or was it the audience taking a deep breath and holding it in,

“ItsKlausMikaelson,PleaseDontKillMe.”

Pause again.

And the auditorium transcended.

Well,

she handled that, pretty well, if she does say so herself you know.

Apparently Kat Disagrees.

Apparently She Blew It.

She blew it so hard she could’ve knocked down the third little pig’s brick house.

Ironic since she always envisioned Klaus as the Big Bad Wolf who huffs and puffs and just generally blows.

Apparently her little admission was a PR disaster.

And Kat was furious.

The two minute edited clip that encompassed the question, the reluctant grumbling and finally the confession was apparently now a viral video on all social networking platforms.

They were trending on twitter under the hashtag

#KlarolineUnrequitedLoveIsABitch.

But her admission to being generally averted on taking up Klaus as a colleague again was apparently only one half of the video,

The other half....

Well the other other half was Klaus with his personal confession.

God, it wasn’t even a confession,

it was a—a Mockery, yes that’s it, a Mockery,

Of Her, no less

Basically Here’s the run down of the second insidious half of the video,

Klaus sitting in front of Graham Norton, in all their British glory, going live on The Graham Norton Show,

when asked about Caroline Forbes, his “partner” on scene has the audacity to let out this evil little amused huff and say:

“Caroline?” Another amused huff. “Well Caroline, Christ, where do I start? She’s an absolutely glorious presence on set. Her energy....it’s infectious, She hits you like a blonde hurricane of sunshine and snark and you’re just left staring up at the sun thinking, ‘you need to catch up mate, if you want to be half as bright and burning as her.’”

And Caroline thinks maybe this is the feeling of your brain imploding within the confines of the skull.

TBC

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letstalkpop · 5 years

Text

We All Need To Get *NSYNC Right Now

“I know this can’t be right, hey baby come on...”

I don’t need to hash out what’s going in the world right now in March 2020. We’re all very aware of the situation at hand, and it’s scary. A lot of us feel alone, isolated, panicked, especially the people who already have problems with being alone, isolated, and panicked. Let’s not talk about that right now though.

There is another serious matter I want to discuss. On March 21st, it was the 20th anniversary for the most prolific, important album of all time, No Strings Attached by *NSYNC. The week leading up to it was filled with so much nostalgia and all around feels for *NSYNC fans around the globe. Lance Bass interviewed all the guys on his podcast, The Daily Popcast, and each interview was better than the next. Now, *NSYNC are in the headlines, with random articles filled with misquotes, poor research, bad opinions of what might’ve happened back then, because Justin went solo and it’s all his fault, right? No, wait it’s Lance’s fault. It’s the label, or Lou Pearlman’s ghost, or the Backstreet Boys, or Britney.

No. Stop it. Let’s break it down. “IT’S JUSTIN’S FAULT.” The most common thing out of people’s mouths when talking about the break-up of *NSYNC. He wanted to go solo, he was tired of the band, he got really successful and left everyone high and dry, yada yada yada. Stop blaming him, or anyone else in the band. Get ready for my HOT TAKES people. Do I want another *NSYNC album? Well, yeah, no shit. Would I have loved another *NSYNC album if it came out in 2002, or 2003 or even 2004? Probably, but if JT creatively decided to not do Justified, would he have been creatively invested in this theoretical 4th *NSYNC album? (I know technically 5th with the Christmas album, don’t get into semantics with me you guys.) Would the album have under performed and *NSYNC just fizzle out into existence? Would Justin not have gone on to bring Sexy Back or put his dick in a box? In this weird, alternate universe of us getting an album after Celebrity, do we really, as fans, think that they would’ve stayed together like BSB? It was time. As sad as it was, and still is, that we don’t have that album after Celebrity, it’s okay. We are all okay.

I would rather have three amazing, beautiful, iconic albums to listen to over and over again, than even more *NSYNC albums that are mediocre. Maybe it’s because I’m not a huge BSB stan, but I honestly have no idea what any song they have recorded after that Incomplete song in 2005 sounds like. Not. A. Clue. Oh I listened to their first three albums. I owned them, and enjoyed Black and Blue more than Millennium. Of course if someone told me to name all the songs on those albums, to quote the *NSYNC guys, “NOPE. Can’t do it.” My point in all of this, is that did we want that for *NSYNC? Did we want them to fizzle out like that? I’m sure the BSB are fine and all, but let’s not beat around the bush here.

Think of all the amazing things we could’ve missed out on if they had made that 4th album back then.

FutureSex/LoveSounds Schizophrenic Until Yesterday/You Ruined Me Justin on SNL, maybe at all? In Time ( I STAND BY THIS )

You know, there’s other things. We might’ve never gotten Solo JC, and as short lived as it was, it was EVERYTHING. Fucking, everything. I think a big part of them stopping at the height of their career is what makes them so special. That 20 years later, we love them. We ship them. We’re obsessed with them. We make *NSYNC podcasts about them, and despite what my one friend said about how much can you possibly say about *NSYNC, my answer to that question is there is never enough you can say about *NSYNC. I’m still invested and figuring out things to this day, like did you guys know Joey was hot back then? Whoa, how did this fly under my radar for all these years? I was astonished when I discovered this out.

It doesn’t matter why they stopped back then, or whose fault it was, although I think Lou Pearlman’s ghost should start trending, because at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. From Celebrity to On the Line to Justified to Schizophrenic to now, I will forever be *NSYNC fan, JC stan, will see every movie Justin is in (except that Woody Allen movie, yikes), Lance popcast listener, Joey instagram live watcher, Chris being the best dad ever *NSYNC fan for life.

We need to come together more than ever now, and we can all agree that *NSYNC can help do that. Whether or not you don’t agree with other fans about what may have happened or what could’ve been, just be happy with what we have, because it was glorious, and special. Now is the time for us to reunite, come on party people, there’s a quarantine party going on, and tonight is the night, everything’s gonna be all right.

Now to end with more HOT TAKES, here’s my ranking of *NSYNC’s top 20 best songs, without explanation to make it more controversial, because I don’t need to explain myself. This is from a fan that did heavy research, and is more accurate than that other ranking that’s floating around out there. Enjoy, and thank you all.

*NSYNC’s Top 20 Songs

20) I Drive Myself Crazy

19) For The Girl Who Has Everything

18) Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

17) This I Promise You

16) Here We Go

15) It Makes Me Ill

14) I Want You Back

13) Tell Me, Tell Me... Baby

12) Under My Tree

11) Pop

10) In Love On Christmas

9) Tearin’ Up My Heart

8) No Strings Attached

7) I Thought She Knew

6) You Don’t Have To Be Alone (Live Version)

5) The Game Is Over

4) Bye, Bye, Bye

3) It’s Gonna Be Me

2) Just Got Paid

1) Music of My Heart

Stay *NSYNC ladies and gents.

- Tori

#quarantine #lockdown #nsync #nsa20 #nostringsattached #nostringsattached20 #lancebass #jcchasez #justintimberlake #chriskirkpatrick #joeyfatone #girlwereyoualone

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snkpolls · 5 years

Text

SnK Chapter 117 Poll Results

The chapter poll closed with 1325 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,235 responses

Isayama continues to please. In fact, “Judgment” is the highest rated chapter this year with 62.3% selecting the highest possible rating. In recent month, only chapter 112 scored higher.

Honestly, just incredible

Excellent Chapter although it did favor the action over plot continuation. I really just want information rather than awesome action. I'll just have to do my waiting but the action is very enjoyable.

Finally a great action chapter which does a good job showcasing Erens new abilities.

Fuck yeah, Shiganshina3.0 with an entirely new field of play. Excited to see how the new teams play out.

It was nice to have another action-heavy chapter after being without one for so long. The only downside is they feel way too short.

god I love this manga so damn much

Seeing Marley invade Paradis with those planes is absolutely chilling. It's a whole new era for the Walldians

We're in the Endgame now

GIVE ME NEXT CHAPTER

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 1,292 responses

With 30% of the vote, the moment when Eren reacts to Reiner’s attempt to eat him takes the top place for favorite moment. Following up with half as many votes is Zeke’s arrival as he displays his big brother complex. In third came Eren’s defensive use of the Warhammer Titan’s power.

The most memorable moment was definitely Eren's scream of sheer determination and will to live as he was ripping Reiner's jaw apart, in a complete rejection of the self-loathing and fatalistic mindset his old nemesis was seemingly trying to push onto him.

It was nice to see eren harnessing his titan abilities and proving that he is a strong character

Eren ripping half of Reiner’s face off was neat

Reiner vs Eren was very repetitive and shonen typical and just there to show how 'badass' Eren had become. Besides, the Marleyans are getting too much screentime at this point. The only cool thing was Zeke's entrance.

I loved the fight and zeke's onii-chan part uwu

I thought it was neat that it was confirmed that the Shifters' Titans have brains that control the Titan, rather than the Shifter controlling it themselves. I still want to know more about the Titan Chemistry Research Department, and all of the in-universe info about how Shifters interface with their Titans.

Onii-chan saves the day.

When Pieck took Gabi in her mouth? 👌👏 And that cannon?? 😍😍😍😍 And when she finished putting on the cannon and stood up in all her majesty I just straight up died. I also loved seeing Eren use the War Hammer to make back spikes, that was so neat.

WHO WAS THIS CHAPTER’S MVP? 1,288 responses

With lots of characters joining the fight this chapter, who was the MVP? The overwhelming majority at 62% think Eren fighting off three titans on his own earned him the title. Pieck was also a popular choice, at 16%. Magath rounded out the top three at 8.9%

EREN MVP WON ALONE AGAINST 3 TITANS

Magath is a great leader. We need to see more of him.

I was so happy to see Zeke! And that phrase, ahh!

Hugs for Reiner. Poor guy can never win a fight :( And love Pieck for being the MVP, as usual!

porco did nothing wrong shout out to my boy porco

Eren is collecting Titans like they're limited edition Pokemon cards

It's time to stop confusing Gabi with Eren. Gabi proved to be actually smart.

Magath is the MVP of this chapter and anyone who says otherwise is delusional.

My wife Pieck was very cute and smug.

Zeke's arrival was so sick. Oni-chan

Not gonna lie this chapter was fire af. Kinda surprised about Magath being a legend, but it may have been a mistake for him to not kill Eren.

Zeke showing up at the end was hype.

PIECK AND PORKY ARE THE BEST.

the mvp award should go to the jeagerists for getting themselves killed in the stupidest way ever

WHICH JAIL CELL EXPRESSION WAS THE CUTEST? 1,290 responses

Our quick glance at the 104th was enough to know they are alive and well for now. We wanted a fun way to ask about their stunned expressions at the noises they assumed to be the rumbling. Mikasa’s was declared cutest with 27.4%, Armin was second with 23.1%, and 16.9% didn’t want to play along.

"Which jail cell expression was the cutest?"What?

GET MY FUCKIN SONS ARMIN AND MIKASA OUT OF THE FREAKING JAIL THAT SHIT JAEGERISTS PUT THEM.

I hope Onyankopon will rescue everyone in jail.

Just get Falco and the prisoners out of there, they'll get titanized/crushed

WHICH EREN VS. REINER FIGHT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE SO FAR? 1,288 responses

Reiner and Eren’s practice fight in training has served useful, as they’ve fought as titans no less than four times now. 36.9% selected the fight from last chapter as their favorite bout, with 26.9% choosing their first rumble. 23.4% loved the recently animated Shiganshina fight the most, and only 12.8% chose the brief Marley exchange of blows.

Anime-onlies and manga readers collectively screaming about Eren vs Reiner in Shiganshina... You've got to wonder if this was planned somehow.

Eren vs. Reiner identical non-productive fights are getting boring.

I Want More Eren Vs Other Shifters

Reiner VS. Eren 4.0 is now a thing ladies and gents. But we now have a new fighter which is big bro Jaeger.

Eren vs. Reiner in a fearsome battle in the middle of Shinganshina that culminates in Reiner seemingly gaining the upper hand before his head is blown off by an outside force. Am I talking about the most recent manga chapter, or the most recent anime episode? You decide ;)

It's about time Eren's and Reiner's fight ends. Give us a conclusion, Isayama

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT REINER ORCHESTRATING ANOTHER ATTACK ON SHIGANSHINA? 1,288 responses

Although about 50% of respondents thought it was at least somewhat understandable that Reiner brought the fight to Shiganshina again, a good chunk of votes trended toward pretty neutral or unsure about whether Reiner is a hypocrite or not.

He sincerely believes Eren is miserable BECAUSE he's projecting his own emotions onto Eren but also needs to consume the Founder as Magath mentioned

He wants to do something right because the only thing hes good at is getting his ass whooped.

Honestly, all I can say about Reiner is that his isna big hypocrite.

Reiner should win a battle in his life, please Isayama.

He's definitely projecting, but lowkey if he eats Eren he finally gets to die, because they'll give the Founder to another Warrior.

People should really stop assuming that just because Reiner & Co. are deserving of sympathy, they are right. Downtrodden as they are, if they win they'll still destroy Paradis without a second thought, and all the blatherings about stopping the 100 years cycle of violence, are just that, and justifications after the fact.

I thoguht Reiner would kick Eren's ass but whatever

Reiner should really give up fighting Eren... he always loses. Unless he likes getting his arse kicked, I don’t know why everyone just lets them fight over and over again.

REINER DON'T GO DOWN THE PATH OF ZEKE PLEASE

WHY DO YOU THINK EREN CHOSE TO FIGHT, RATHER THAN LISTEN TO YELENA AND GET AWAY? 1,285 responses

Yelena wanted Eren to run, Eren wanted to fight. But why? 38.4% think he’s trying to protect those in the building, 25.8% think he believes running to be pointless, and 16.8% thought he just wanted to fight his best sparring partner, Reiner, once again.

"Until my enemies are destroyed," remember?

All of the above

He doesn't care what she thinks. Eren will do what Eren wants

He feels confident enough in his ability to shut that shit down by himself. He's also visibly pissed at Reiner for messing up with his plans by pushing for this surprise attack and wants to end him personally.

He's fought him three times already, might as well just fight him a fourth time.

I think it's both that it's pointless to run and he wants to protect those in the building. For the former, he knows Marley will just keep on persisting and will do everything they can to find him, so escaping is pointless. As for the latter, he cares about his close friends that are still inside and thus doesn't want them to get hurt, so for their safety, he wants to be the one to take on Marley by himself.

If you don't fight, you don't win.

I think this chapter proved that Yelena wasn't the one who "manipulated" Eren like some people claimed first, because he refused her order and choose to fight instead of "run away" or "trusting her plan".

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GABI REVEALING THE ROYAL ZEKERET™ TO MAGATH? 1,289 responses

The Marleyan forces have finally zeroed in on what the true Zekerets are, all thanks to Gabi. 52.2% of readers forgot that Gabi was aware of the royal blood situation, and 22% didn’t expect it to come together this way but liked how it ended up.

Forgot she heard it, if this is what all her buildup has been leading too... 🤢

Honestly thought Pieck figured it out in chapter 116 with her line of questioning so I assumed they already knew or at least had their own doubts about the use of the FT Power but this makes sense as well.

I'd forgotten about it. But I think this confirm the fact she was here during EMA conversation will also be important

I kinda expected her to do so, but still I am glad she did it !!!

She has now served her role as a plot device. Please go permanently off-screen now.

Miscalculation brought back

MAGATH SAYS HE WANTS TO END THE HUNDRED YEARS OF RESENTMENT. WHAT DO YOU THINK HIS INTENTION IS? 1,277 responses

General Magath is the leader of the enemy forces, but seems to have good intentions in mind. What’s his true goal? The large majority of respondents, at 45.6% think he wants to wipe out the Eldians on Paradis. 21.7% think he wants to liberate Eldians, and trailing that at 20.4% is the idea that all he wants is the Founding Titan.

Chances are he's wants to wipe them out, he seems to care about the ones under his command, but he seems loyal to Marley first.

He just wants to end the war, he is a good man

Can't know for sure. He is sympathetic to his comrades but Marley has always pushed for more power so that may continue their imperialistic goals. I highly doubt Magath will make a complete 180 and will begin giving countries their own autonomy. Most likely, he will use the FT to further this effort in accumulating resources. No one should wield the power of FT. Too strong!

He wants to liberate Eldians AND annihilate Paradis

He probably wants to change Marley's policies and stop with the imperialism + Eldians-as-weapons, but he also seems willing to use Paradis as a scapegoat so far so I'm rooting against him.

He wants to protect Marley and introduce reforms. It’s noble in theory but I’m wondering if he was manipulated by Willy as per of a larger plan. He’s inspired by the Helos legend but he knows that it’s a lie. He has sympathy for Eldians in his own country but whether he wants to save all Eldians remains to be seen.

I think he wants to destroy the Eldians on Paradis but he also wants to persuade the higher ups in Marley to treat the Eldians more humanely

No clue. He doesn't seem like a genocidal maniac, but I don't think he'll allow Paradis to get off that easily.

Is it too optimistic to hope that he wants to change Marley's ways and to bring peace?

Why is "wiping out all Eldians" an option when he said he wanted to bring marleyans to the wars instead of the Eldians? I'm not completely sure about his intentions with Paradis but it's clear he cares for Eldians and he's ready to do anything to save Eldians and his own country.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PIECK’S NEW WEAPON? 1,279 responses

The Cart titan has been said to be versatile, and we’ve seen many upgrades and attachments, with this chapter being the biggest of them all. Most of respondents, at 53.6% thought it was super awesome.

...How did they put it on so quickly?

Further cemented the Cart's place in my heart as best titan

I worry about Pieck. She is intelligent, fast and dangerous with her new weapon. That why Zeke may try to eliminate her fast.

I'm not into guns or gunfights so I don't really care.

Bitches love cannons

It’s a very powerful weapon but it requires time to reload. That a considerable weakness.

It's beautiful

so creepy i had a nightmare about it

PEW!

BIG DICK ENERGY

REINER DOESN’T HAVE FACIAL HAIR IN TITAN FORM. YOUR OPINION? 1,291 responses

Isayama pls!! It’s impossible to know why Reiner’s beard keeps disappearing. It could be a quirk of his titan biology or perhaps the Golden Week crunch meant cutting a few corners. Either way, only 8.7% where glad about the omission.

reiner's facial hair come back pls

WHO BEST REPRESENTS HELOS, “THE HERO WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD”? 1,282 responses

Helos was a hollow statue, but will there be a hero for the current generation? 32.2% don’t believe so, but 35.5% think Eren will fulfill that role in the story. 12.3% think Reiner will become that hero to the world, and 10.8% feel it’s Magath.

Armin, mark my words

It's between Magath and Reiner. Magath because it has been nailed on him since he was mentioned, and Reiner because he's a half-Marleyan who wants to put an end to Eren's genocidal ways

Erwin/Levi...doesn't matter they're dead/dying, at this point I feel like they were the only ones capable to save the world. I'd say the 104th too but then, look where they are too.....

Heck, going by what's happening I have a sneaky feeling it's gonna be Falco.

Most likely Armin. Him being a "hero saving humanity" was foreshadowed already in RTS

I think resemblance between Helos and Levi isn't incidental.

Helos was proven to be fake, seems they indicate there will be no real hero

Honestly? Fuck it. Nicolo. I'm all-in on this.

Jean the Stallion

I don't know who, but not one of those three that's for sure... Historia? Where are you, our queen?

My Boi Reiner is super awesome here! He shows signs of becoming the new Helos!

Helos was a fake. There was no true Helos. It was just a story, so saying another Helos will save them makes no sense as Helos was just a facade in the first place.

EREN’S EXPRESSION AS REINER ATTEMPTED TO EAT HIM WAS INTENSE, BUT IT ISN’T THE FIRST TIME WE’VE SEEN THIS. WHICH PANEL DO YOU THINK BEST CAPTURES EREN'S TENACITY? 1,286 responses

Based on the overall results, it appears that Eren’s expressions seem to get more and more intense as the series unfolds. Over half of the fandom feels that his most recent expression of resolve has been the one that best captures his tenacity. At a distant second, his expression as he transformed in the basement at the festival takes second place.

EREN IS A GOD

God, I want to punch Eren in his shitty smug face so hard.

Eren's defiant glare cleansed my skin, reaped my crops and impregnated me with 13 babies!

Finally we see Eren having a different expression, showing more of a human side we have been missing lately

I’m gay for eren

God, I'm just dying to see Eren's endgame.

Love Eren! He's awesome! The best hands down! And I can't wait to get inside his head! I know it'll make me love him more! Lol

IS EREN’S EXPRESSION AS REINER TRIES TO “PUT HIM TO SLEEP” TO END HIS SUFFERING EVIDENCE THAT EREN OPPOSES ZEKE’S EUTHANASIA PLAN? 1,282 responses

Almost 40% of respondents believe that Isayama’s placement of these panels was a deliberate way for him to clue us in on Eren’s opposition to Zeke’s plan. 27% don’t want to trust the panel placement just yet and feel it could very well be misleading. 21% feel that he’s simply showing his determination to see the plan through at all costs.

I'm not sure but it was really freaking cool

Eren's determination to fight, win and live!

He is mad because he is fighting to save his friends and future generations. So yes.

didnt notice this before, but yes this is a good theory

I don't even know how these two thing could be related lmao. He just wants to finish the fight so he can proceed with his plan. He can't do that by being eaten by the enemy

Eren didn't hear Reiner's words, so we can't say

Zeke's euthanasia plan requires Eren regardless of the ideals behind it.

I think whatever Eren's plan is, he is determined to do whatever it takes to not die before accomplishing it

It's pretty obvious he wants to unleash the Rumbling on the world. Idk why this is even a question.

I don't think it has anything to do with eren's thoughts on zeke's plan and more to do with his anger at reiner and marley

I feel like people may be looking too deep into this somehow

I actually didn't think of that! Now that you mention it, it's possible.

It's pretty obvious without this that Eren completely opposes Zeke's euthanasia. What I think is more interesting to think about is Reiner's previous question about what Eren "gets" from living any longer: what exactly pushes him to go to such lengths for whatever goal he has now? His country? His friends? His freedom? His family? All of those?

WHAT IS REINER'S MAIN REASON FOR WANTING TO EAT EREN? 1,285 responses

Eren isn’t the only one who’s attempted to eat more shifters, and this time he’s on the receiving end. Did Reiner purely want to eat Eren for tactical purposes, or does he truly want to save Eren from the curse of a cruel life? Most readers at about 60% think Reiner’s just projecting his own thoughts and worldview onto Eren.

All the options above I think. Reiner thinks he knows Eren, but he clearly forgot one important thing: Eren is stubborn and once he's in his rage mode, he will never back down!

Both C and D. He truly thinks Eren is in misery, BECAUSE he's projecting. Can't have one without the other.

Eating Eren is just a part of Marley's plan but I think it's the revenge that motivates him.

He has nothing left except his role as a warrior fighting for Marley. And he is determined to fulfill this role to the very end

I think he may be projecting his own misery into Eren but he doesn’t realize he’s doing it so he automatically assumes that Eren is in misery. Or it could be that he believes all shifters are going through the same thing he is and are suffering

He just wants to have his job done: eat Eren, become a hero and die.

WHAT WILL EREN GET "FROM LIVING ANY LONGER"? 1,282 responses

When Reiner attempted to end Eren’s life, Eren fought back against the idea his life holds nothing but pain. What is the light at the end of the tunnel for him? 37.6% believe he’ll end up saving his people on Paradis, and 23.7% expanding that to saving the world. 17.9% think Reiner is right and he’ll only find more pain, and only 8.8% think Eren will go on to destroy the world.

Become Lelouch

Bring his 4D chess plan that somehow liberates the Eldians in a way that's different from what Zeke, the Yaegerists, the other Paradis military members and Magath are planning.

destroying the world to free Eldia from the oppression and probably to build a "future" for Historia and the child, which means to be the only ruling race

He'll save at least his friends, and hopefully help to save the world. by destroying its current foundation, and that includes the Eldians of Paradis

Eren just wants to catch 'em all... JK. He'll put an end to the curse of Ymir - Eldians will no longer be able to turn into titans.

He will destroy the world, cause this is probably his thinking of freedom for the eldians on paradis, but it will give more sacrifices and victims and more pain for others, like Connie who actually suffers, cause Sasha dies, because of Eren's selfishness.

A beautiful wife and their newborn baby

Eren wants to save the Eldians in Marley and Paradis

He will save his friends and future generations of Eldians. Eren doesn't care about himself, he cares about others.

Weird combination of protecting Paradis, those he holds dear and being willing to destroy the world for it.

I really hope world peace and a life in harmony without the titan curse although I'm scared it won't have a happy ending.

F R E E D O M

WHAT EMOTION DO YOU THINK BEST DESCRIBES EREN’S EXPRESSION WHEN ZEKE APPEARS? 1,285 responses

Onii-chan is here, but how does Eren feel about that? So many interpretations from the same panel! The most popular answer at 36.3% was astonishment, followed closely by worry, and then relief.

He actually called himself onii-chan

Realization that everyone who drank the wine is screwed

A complex mix of all the above

Surprised, I think he didn't expect Zeke to be there cause of Levi

He somehow feel relieved because he was lacking stamina, but at the same time I think he worries of lives of his friends and people who will end up as titans, if Zeke screams.

Mixed feelings. Relieved that he is saved, but sad because he's ultimately going to betray such a great onii-chan

i kept staring at this panel bc it's been so long since we've seen such a vivid expression on eren's face; it's kind of hopeful too?

This chapter really illustrated how well Isayama can draw facial expressions to convey the characters thoughts

God Eren you're so sexy when your facial expressions are ambiguous

ZEKE'S APPEARANCE IS A SIGN TO EREN THAT LEVI MAY HAVE BEEN DEFEATED. DO YOU THINK EREN CARES? 1,286 responses

Eren and Zeke planned to meet up here, but that would have to mean Zeke escaping Levi, likely in a brutal way. Now that that’s happened, does Eren have regrets? 55.8% feel he cares about Levi to some degree, 27.1% feel that Eren cares about his mentor a lot, and only 14.2% don’t think Eren cares about the manlet one bit.

He cares, but it was a calculated risk like all the others he's been taking lately. I think he's still shocked that Zeke made it there though.

From where I stand on Eren’s decisions, I think he cares. But I feel like since we don’t know what his plan is yet, we can’t really fully answer this

Hard to tell, since he’s been treating his friends like shit, why would he care more about his mentor?

He knew what could happen to Levi and his men during Zeke's escape but he still agreed on a meeting time and place with his bro, not to mention the Jeagerists openly called him their "biggest threat" and were ready to finish him off. So Eren's definitely accepted the possibility of Levi becoming a casualty.

I don’t think Eren really cares about Levi, I think he’s worried about Zeke turning the Shiganshina people into Titans.

I think he still cares but tries to numb it all down and not care anymore. so he might be fooling himself, deluding himself...I think he did the same with his friends. Thinking that there's a higher goal and that it's all worth shedding your friends aside for it - I think he might be trying to convince himself of that.

In this situation there is no time for him to care about Levi.

ZEKE IS NOW CLOSE ENOUGH TO TITANIZE THOSE INFECTED BY THE WINE. DO YOU THINK HE'LL DO IT? 1,285 responses

It was nice knowing you, Pixis. Now that Zeke has joined the battle within the walls of Shiganshina, it’s not looking good for anyone with a red or black cloth tied around their arm. More than 80% of respondents believe that those who drank the Zekejuice will soon be turned into titans, while only 19% choose to remain hopeful about their fates.

I would say Zeke titanizing everyone who drank the wine is inevitable, but the fact that Falco ingested the wine keeps being brought up. Zeke isn't aware. I feel like he has to know about Falco's state before any decisions are made. Whether that helps or not, we'll find out. After all, Zeke was shown to be close to Colt, who's Falco's big bro. Big brother feelings resonate with Zeke. It's a 50/50 chance imo.

Yeah, with Zeke joining the fray and all those soldiers that ingested his spinal fluid locked up, I expect Zeke will scream and turn Falco + all, if not most, of the spinal fluid-infected Paradis soldiers into Pure Titans next chapter. From there, Zeke will give Eren the Pure Titans needed to attack Marley's forces in Shingashina right now.

IS THIS THE FINAL BATTLE? 1,282 responses

Now that the fight has started, how many think it’s the last brawl? About ⅔ at 66.2% think the story will continue, whereas ⅓ at 33.8% think the story will end when this battle does.

Honestly this better not be the final battle. Marley vs Paradis is too black and white, I need a large commentary on the human condition

This really does feel like the final multi-titan battle. It might not technically be the final fight, but this feels like the RtS of the post-Marley arc. It's the climactic battle we've been building towards

People can say whatever they want, but everything indicates to me that Eren will become the last antagonist for the final war against the whole world.

This specific fight may not be the final battle but I have a feeling there are more to follow right here. Poetic really, that the series began in Shiganshina and will end there.

WHAT WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO SEE NEXT CHAPTER? 1,289 responses

117’s come and gone, on to 118! The most popular answer, at about 30% want to see this fight continue more than anything else. 23.3% would like an update about Levi and Hange, 16.2% want the 104th in action, and 11.7% are at the altar of Annie.

please god either of the blonde best girls would be nice.

Armin and Annie joining the battle

I want to see what happened with Hange and Levi and also information on Historia. I also kind of hope to see Eren double cross Zeke.

Eren's plan, Levi, Armin being the genius he is , Annie, Mikasa fighting

Erwin. There is nothing I want more and idc how unreachable my dream is.

Continuation of the battle, and maybe Armin using his titan power to jail protect everyone in the jail cell. If Eren could partially titanise to protect himself, Armin and Mikasa from canon ball fire back in the first arc, Armin could do the same!

Bertolt. More Bertolt.

Some scene where Eren or someone reflects on all those lost, because honestly, it's my only chance of seeing Mina in the main story one more time.

I'd love to see all of them (except Floch), but in the context of what's going on right now, I think it'd be cool to see Annie join the fight just because it's been so long she's been in that crystal, and with practically every Titan in Shingashina right now (not to mention the recent Annie teasing), she's the only one absent from the fight, and I want to see her participate. I also expect to see Zeke using his scream next chapter, because it just feels like the perfect opportunity for us readers to see the Founding Titan in action again.

Floch, 104th, Annie, Yelena, Zeke, Eren, (no levi dont care about him)

I want Mikasa to shine, and I want to see Historia again

WHERE IS MY FUCKING EREN FLASHBACK YAMS, I NEED THE SAUCE PLD

I'm sick of Eren and I don't care what happens to him. I want to know what happened to Levi.

All of the above, but fuck floch

I'm expecting Zeke will scream next chapter, and Falco will be the among the ones that will turn into a Pure Titan

Is it too much to ask for all of it?

Onyankopon FREE MY SONS AND DAUGHTER. FREE ARMIN AT LEAST.

AT THIS POINT, AROUND WHICH CHAPTER DO YOU EXPECT THE MANGA WILL CONCLUDE?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHAPTER?

Overall..pretty amazing chapter...just want to know the aftermath of zeke's arrival at this point.

Zeke is best boi and I needed that onii-chan panel in my life. My depression is cured.

Greatest Titan Battle yet!!! And Eren is easily the best character in Attack on Titan and one of the best manga protagonists ever!!!

Zeke loves eren and I think its so sweet, eren be gentle with him!

I want to see reiner getting his "revenge" over bertholdt's death , since we know that bertholdt was an important person in reiners life

FLOCH! Where is my lover? I don't have the power. On my side forever. Oooh Missing my Floch Lover!

It been a while since Isayama didn't shine with his drawing specially. The facial expressions and symbolism between some panels are so powerfull meaning and puts us in struggle to decoding it for a bit. One of the most deepest one (for me) was yelena saying "you're different from others Eren, you're special".

I do not foresee a great future for Eren as facial surgeon.

Marley and the warriors is so hypocritical. Porco's line really go to me because they attacked Paradis multiple times first. Hope eren beats their ass.

This chapter was okay but I’m getting bored of Eren vs Reiner. Also, I would really like to see the 104th out of that damn cell and I would also like to never have to lay my eyes in Zeke or Floch ever again.

Intense and amazing in many ways, Marley FTW

Pieke and Gabi made me feel for them more than I expected.

In need of an update on Historia. Looking forward how Zeke and Eren fight together. Will they actually kill the warriors? Will those who are in the cell break free and come to stop the battle or join in? Did the Yeagerists manage to get their hands on Levi and Hanji??

THE GATE GUARDS DID NOTHING WRONG I WILL NEVER STOP FIGHTING - I WILL SCREAM THIS FROM THE HEAVENS. JUSTICE FOR THE GATE GUARDS

Isayama has gotten very good at action scenes hot damn

I guess Reiner was right with saying that Eren is the most unreliable person who's entrusted with the coordinates and the power of the founding titan, because it could be possible that Eren will use this power for the bad.

I think 104th will escape and Chad style Dab on Marley and pop their airships to end up losing Connie and then get 99999x Thunderspears to create their own rumbling because Eren didn't have the coordinate after all.

Now we need Wack a Mole Eren

I was really hoping porco would eject out of the jaw titan when he was skewered, and retransform only to get nearly killed by Eren either impaling him or using him as a meatshield against Magath.

Where's mah boi Levi and Hanji at?

we were blessed with so much eren this chapter and i’d like to thank not only god but also jesus

Pieck has the biggest dick in the city. Take that Eren's WHT spears.

I really like how the Attack Titan screams so loudly it causes Gabi and Colt to resort to shutting their ears. Pretty sick xD

I sad-cringed at the "oni-chan" comment so much man. Poor Zeke

I think it was a well written battle in the sense that there was still a good amount of tension because Eren wasn't just effortlessly slaughtering the warriors. Instead he defiantly held his ground while outnumbered, outgunned and surrounded which imo showcases his strengths - tenacity and willpower - best of all.

I want all 9 titans to come together in an epic all-out brawl! Please make it happen Isayama!

If Pieck and Zeke don't engage in an Artillery duel next chapter, I'll be sorely disappointed.

This is just the begining of beautiful friendship - 104th and Marleyans. You shall see the truth soon ;)

When I finished the chapter I started crying because of what Reiner said while he was trying to eat Eren. In my opinion, Reiner has been such an accurate depiction of suicidal ideation that it's scary. It's just really painful to see, but I'm glad it's done so well and I really commemorate Isayama for treating it respectfully. I suppose I hope Reiner gets to see the kids again before he dies. At least... give him one last smile before he has to say goodbye.

I am most looking forward to see if Mikasa joins the fight or not, we still don't know what she thinks about Eren now!! And I want to know what Armin figured out, and I really want to know where the FUCK Historia is, and I really really want to know what happened to Levi and Hange. In that order.

Very good and well rounded, comedic moments were funny and not forced, Fights looked great as expected. Unique twist seeing new anti titan weaponry but enjoyable to see it being used.

This chapter really illustrated how well Isayama can draw facial expressions to convey the characters thoughts

It was an artistically beautiful chapter, as has been the norm recently, and I am so excited to see more.

It's so cathartic to see Eren finally let loose again

Magnificent, but seriously when is Annie coming back

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 1,236 responses

This chart changes ever so slightly from month-to-month. While Tumblr is up a few percentage points, Reddit continues to bring nearly half of all respondents. Thank you again to everyone who participated, regardless of what platform you are on!

#snk spoilers #snk 117 #snk poll #snk polls #poll results

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cloverchameleon · 5 years

Note

Favorite Met Gala Look??

God, that is a tough choice... Before I get into All That, dishonorable mention to all the basic bitch ladies who wore normal red carpet gowns and all the basic bitch gents who came out here in normal suits and tuxes or Tux But in a Different Color- you had one fuckin job. But now you’ve released the Costumer Opinions floodgate now though, so this will go one for a while. Get my hot takes below the cut

So for background, in case anyone reads this who didn’t know, this year’s theme was based on Notes on ‘Camp’, a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag analyzing the impact in culture and fashion of the rising trend of “camp” fashions in media. Camp being essentially taking fashion to the extremes, going borderline gaudy. As has been pointed out, this movement has heavy roots in the queer community, particularly in the drag sector. That being said, we had a truly staggering dichotomy between people who leaned into the theme to any degree and people who either didn’t even try or are so boring that their idea of a wild time is a woman in a suit or a guy in a color.

Honorable Mention 1 to Serena Williams, for comin out here lookin like Persephone herself came up from the underworld to show yall how its done.

Honorable Mention 2 to Zendaya, really getting into the showmanship with a light up led Cinderella gown. I’m pretty sure she’s just living out her dreams, theme be damned, and I respect that.

Fifth place goes to Michael Urie for the iconique half-dress-half-suit look, and further pushing the envelope by putting the makeup and high heel on the suit side and the weird platform dress shoe and buzzed hair/beard combo on the dress side. You, Urie, truly embraced the genderqueer roots of Camp, and I applaud you.

Fourth place, Janelle Monáein the Picasso-lookin eye dress- I mean, covering ya tiddy with an eyeball complete with feather lashes?? The lopsided stack of hats??? Visionary. Pun intended.

In third, Cara Delevingne. Not only covering her head in weird knick-knacks like a champ, but also going absolutely ham on the rainbows. Like, I’m pretty sure those stripes on her legs are makeup, not stockings. That’s just fun. This one’s fun. And very gay.

A close second place to Hamish Bowles. Now here’s someone who really embraces theme in my opinion. Fuckin TELL me you don’t know a ton of gay guys and a lot of gay girls and gay neithers who wouldn’t rock this shit walkin through the grocery store. I damn well would. The pastel rainbow hair, the soft lavenders, the fuzzy edging on the absurdly heavily patterned cloak-jacket thing, just everything about this Look- Bowles went OFF and I am so grateful.

And finally, I have to give my top billing to Ezra Miller. Look at him. Rhinestone corset cage. Classic pinstripe suit in all its glory, now featuring a train. That bright red lipstick is so bold but it barely even strikes you behind the SEVEN EYES OF AN ANGEL. And what’s that- oh, nothing, just a MASQUE OF HIS OWN FUCKIN FACE TO HOLD OVER THE TERRIFYING YET BEAUTIFUL TRULY ANGELIC VISAGE HE HOLDS BENEATH. Actual holy SHIT, BOI. You did NOT HAVE TO GO THAT HARD. Major props to his makeup person too- if anyone can find their name, PLEASE let me know- cause holy shit, I keep having to remind myself where his real eyes have to be logically in a human facial structure, those painted ones are so good! And I swear, he is striking such good poses in every picture. Miller KILLED IT.

And I’m pretty sure he’s also on his way to kill God.

#met gala #lankybrunettepartdeux

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jonasjjackson · 5 years

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Office Makeover with the ProjectColor App

With a home office, sometimes renovations are necessary to create a good workplace. Kourtni Munoz of House on Longwood Lane was able to take advantage of a few Home Depot products, showing how changing the paint on her bookshelf made her office a place she wanted to work in again.

The most embarrassing space in our house in my home office. I haven’t actually worked in my office since I remotely worked a 9-5 from home almost a year and a half ago! We’ve been using it to store everything I use for projects and not to mention there is a sleeper sofa in there for extra guest space.

The biggest part of a work space needs to be a space that sparks your creativity. I work mainly in our dining room and living room and that’s also created bad habits of leaving everything out and having a toddler who likes to “touch” everything doesn’t make for a good pairing!

Using the Project Color App

We decided to dive into the office makeover with The Home Depot ProjectColor App. Currently, the office has a built-in bookcase along one wall, and I wanted to paint the entire bookcase wall in a green/gray color to create an accent wall. Our whole home is very neutral and I’ve been craving a pop of color to spark my creativity in my office.

See it in Your Space

The ProjectColor App makes paint projects even easier with their new feature, “See it in Your Space.” You can browse through colors you like and choose to “See it in Your Space” by taking a photo and putting the color on the desired location. The app allows you to see the colors in your space before you actually paint. BRILLIANT!

I went through about 20 different shades of green in the app and chose a couple favorites that I wanted to see in the space in natural light. I narrowed it down to four green paint samples! I added them to my favorites and was able to purchase the samples through The ProjectColor App and just picked them up in my local Home Depot store. No waiting in line, nothing! It was a game changer when it came to choosing the best paint for my office.

Color Matching

Everyone has heard of color matching at The Home Depot paint department, right? Well, what about color matching at the tips of your fingers in your own home! I couldn’t decide on the shade of green I wanted to go with, so I tried out the color matching tool. My husband bought me a vintage typewriter when we moved into our first home and I have loved it ever since. This became my inspiration piece for the accent wall.

I color matched the keys and the body of the typewriter to see the color family I was looking at for Behr Paint.

I added the paint colors I liked to my “favorites”. Then, I ordered my paint samples by clicking on each paint color. I wish everything in life was this easy! Deciding on a paint color can be very time consuming and a bit frustrating in store. Especially with a toddler in tow and The ProjectColor App definitely helped me save so much time. If you aren’t sure where to even start, the app allows you to check out popular colors. And you can see what’s trending on Pinterest. Uhm, yes please!

Painting the Built-In Bookcase

We decided on Pinecone Hill by Behr Paintin Behr Premium Plus Ultra Satin Finish. The paint and primer in one made it so that I only needed two coats on the entire built-in! To get the best finish I used a high-density foam mini paint roller for cabinets and doors. It gives the look of a paint sprayer finish! The Home Depot is having a paint promo during Labor Day Weekend for $10 off 1 gallon / $40 off 3 and 5 gallons. You can check out all the details here about Home Depot’s Labor Day Paint Sale!

I couldn’t believe how great it looked! My husband was a little skeptical about the dark color since our home is so neutral. But, I think I’ve converted him to the dark side! Now who’s ready to see what a can of paint can do for your space?

After

Ladies and gents, this is what a can of Behr Paint and the ProjectColor App can do!

In addition to using The ProjectColor App I used tons of Home Depot décor to decorate the rest of the office. Home Depot is not only my go-to place for DIY projects, but home décor as well! Are you surprised Home Depot has killer décor like this area rug, pendant light, shelf decor, picture frames and tons of furniture? I rounded up the best home decor from Home Depotif you’re looking for some jaw dropping finds.

I used some Rust-Oleum spray paint to fix up this old Craigslist find and switched out the handles with some leather pulls from left over craft supplies. This filing cabinet makeover cost about the can of spray paint!

Can we talk about this shelfie?! If you aren’t sure what to put on a shelf, hit up The Home Depot’s Garden Center. Get your plant game on. This office is so full of life now and it’s refreshing to just sit and enjoy this space now.

To finish off the office makeover I grabbed some vintage and thrifted pieces along with building this DIY Modern Wood Desk. I couldn’t help myself! But my husband and I both decided this desk fits the space so much better now.

I hope this project inspires you. Grab that can of bold paint and shake things up this Labor Day weekend!

I took on this paint project at my own risk while preparing for baby Munoz! Behr offers multiple low VOC paint options to help you transform your spaces.

The post Office Makeover with the ProjectColor App appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

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#construction

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ventylatte · 5 years

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15/06/19 - 3:08am

i wanna try replicate my mind yesterday when i was doing the dishes at 10pm because it was really racing lmao

as mentioned prior, dan’s video on his sexuality really made thoughts that already swarm my mind way louder than usual, paired with the empty shelf that’s been left empty in my mindscape that had once been FILLED with a-level knowledge and stress. it’s now home to a bunch of loud questions about my identity, ranging from my nationality, religion, where i belong (maybe i’ll rant about that some other day, but i’ve made it vocal to people before) to my sexuality. i’m not sure if this was a ‘realisation’ of sorts but a couple months ago on a walk home from school, i remember declaring ‘if i was white, i would have probably come out as bisexual a long time ago’

and yeah i still believe that, 100%!

because despite my coconut-exterior that i seem to project (i hate it, i hate it, i hate it, i feel devalued), i am brown: i do still have asian-indian parents that wouldn’t be thrilled about their son or daughter claiming they’re gay (i say ‘claiming’ because that’s what it would be to them. i know it. ‘such a typical claim in this weird society. bound to happen, it’s a trend these days’, etc.)

i remember asking my mum what she thought about the lgbt, and if i remember correctly, she didn’t mind it, but didn’t want it in her family or ‘circle’.

now i ain’t criticising my parents. many would, but i really can’t. because they were born in a different generation, in a different time where the lgbt community wasn’t exactly as prominent as it is today.

but good god. one day an advert for that reality tv show, ‘the bi life’ i think its called, popped onto the tv, and my dad was all ‘what the hell is this? … freakshow’ (he muttered)

AND I FELT? HURT? no, ‘hurt’ is a strong word. just a bit… prodded at?

and i still can’t decide the reason. was it because i was wondering where i should draw the line with my dad’s remarks towards the lgbt community? i’ve always had this internal debate with myself about whether i’m sort of ‘silencing’ my dad by taking a stand in issues he doesn’t really believe in (primarily the lgbt community, he’s cool with feminism… to an extent lol). he always has a shout about how people can only say what they’re really thinking behind closed doors. would i be taking this away from him? where can i really draw the line in this whole counter-argument of my parents simply being born in another generation? i mean, sure, they aren’t hurting anyone outside (i really hope), but his comments do affect me.

that’s reason 1 i felt a bit disorientated. society’s a bit mad with labels, and i couldn’t find it in me to label my parents a pair of homophobes. BUT AT THE SAME TIME THERE ARE ADULTS THEIR AGE THAT ARE WAY MORE ACCEPTI- i need to stop before i get trapped in this circular argument that i’ve had 19218839 times with myself before - this is already so much longer than i thought it’d be lmfao.

reason 2? and here’s where i feel fake and dumb. something in me resonates with bisexuality.

JESUS, my hands TINGLED and my FACE tingled and it’s starting to heat up right now because i never, ever, ever got that in words, let alone WRITING. because that would make it a real, concrete argument. and maybe no i dont think so elina, stop right theeree duedddeee

i dont know.

sigh.

i dont.

know.

referring back to ‘if i was white, i would have probably come out as bisexual a long time ago’, i know that i would have come out as bisexual if i was white because i feel they have way less to consider when doing so. that’s not to assume that all white people have caring, understanding and liberal parents (but let’s face it dude, white parents are more likely to come around to the idea and other ideas in today’s society that rigid, asian parents would not. might just research into that, lol). a white girl can and will marry a girl if they feel like it, and that’s amazing, that’s so good, that’s so cool that they don’t have maybe other questions that halt this process like: - okay but HOW willing am i to marry a woman? - how plausible is a relationship with a girl? cause, ladies and gents and everything in between, these questions are always pinned under ‘what percentage of me would be with a man rather than a woman’ because fucking damn it, weddings are MAN an d WOMAN AND BITCH IF I AM WHAT IM SCARED TO BE WHAT IF MY HEART LEADS ME TO A WOMAN AND NOT A MAN. think of all the disappointment. white families aren’t as extended as asian families - the news would spread like a vicious wildfire. the prospect of bisexuality for an asian person or a person of colour generally is always pinned with this disgusting, self-denying statement that they really don’t want to think:

‘even if i am, there’s like a bigger chance i’ll marry a man so it doesn’t really matter, right?’

that bigger chance will forever stem from these expectations set by their families, i think.

and it’s always that question that makes them think ‘WELL shit i guess i aint then considering i practically negotiated my sexuality: u cant do that rookie, sexuality is SET IN STONE, so there’s no way you’re that sexuality. you’re only saying it because it’s a thing in society to be.’

it’s just why i dont believe in labels in general, and i love dan’s video so much for dedicated a section towards the matter. sexuality to me is fluid. the only thing that kind of makes it concrete are those labels. labels are great for some people: it gives them a name, a sense of normality in such a heteronormative society. but there’s a negative in that no one can simply just. be.

i wanna.

i dont wanna really.

sigh, am i just trying to align myself with society today? this label-filled society where your worth comes from how many labels you have slapped onto your blazer? it’s like those little patches those sporty, intelligent girls got in assemblies for being leader of the netball team or for excelling in ‘resilience’ or whatever that heck that means. those patches, except they have ones for ‘brown’ +1 point! ‘female’ +1 point! ‘sexually-confused’ +1 point! unless u think ur str***ht, in which case -2 points! where was i going with this AGH my brain isn’t being cohesive it’s just spitting shit everywhere.

another thing that makes me deny it all is my friend. let’s call her peach: she’s brown, muslim, pakistani, has very strict parents, but is still happy to identify as ‘gay’ to the world, and that’s amazing. but it sort of makes me wonder why i haven’t done that yet = thus suggesting ‘yeah im not REALLY, i would’ve felt it like she did in year 8, felt more passion for it - and i dont even have parents as strict as hers, so i can’t be!’ but her sexuality has also been generally fluid: she’s dating a guy at the moment, and has practically abandoned labels for the time being. goals lol.

what the fuk am i saying oh my goddddddd i can’t even make sense of it because i feel like im being super insensitive towards white people sigh forget it im going to bed, maybe i’ll string together something that makes bloody SENSE. its 3am egghj.

EDIT: I POSTED THIS ON RREI-CHAN AFHIAFAHIFA it wasn’t up for long, could’ve been so much worse, could’ve been on ryuga-zuki

#15/06/19

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brattywriters-anonymous · 6 years

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A Rose In Harlem

OC x Erik Story

Based on Teyana Taylor’s VII & KTSE

Warnings: Language

@chaneajoyyy

Chapter IX: Rize

February 6, 2014

22 HOURS BEFORE SHOWTIME.REHEARSAL, NINE PM.

"Ladies, Gents! Find Seats! Sit in them!" All twenty-four models followed Yani's request. We just wrapped our rehearsal, everyone did phenomenal. I can only pray that we get it like this at 583 Park Ave. Yani and I have been thee dynamic duo for the past seventy-two hours. I've been steaming outfits, she's been bagging accessories. I've been designing roll-away walls, she's been contacting every contractor in her contacts to design the black and gold glitter floors.

Honestly, in the past month, Yani and I have been on our hustle. I finished my last shoot and have been on go since. Erik and I have basically been like two ships passing in the night. I usually would leave before him, and come home after he arrived. We never talked about my father's birthday, our kiss..well..kisses. None of it. I've been too busy. Yasin and I have been texting here and there, but I haven't seen him either. He's been understanding about it though. The only person I've been spending my time with is Yani.

We've collectively gotten maybe eight hours of sleep in three days. So now, we're just exhausted and over it. We're trying to get this rehearsal over and done with. The theater's silence is my queue to step on the stage, I do so, scanning my models faces. They're looking like kids on Christmas Eve. So excited for what the next day has to bring. Their faces make me grateful, my smile spreads and everyone breaks out in applause. I decipher a few, "Yeah Syd!" "You did it girl!" and "Woos" in the crowd, I yield my hands up and down, they lower their yells. "Hey everybody, We're down to the wire here. We're less than a day away. We've been working our asses off for a month and a half. I couldn't have ever gotten this done without any of you. I'm excited for everyone to see our hard work. I'm even more excited for you to see your hard work pay off."

I point to Iyo in the control center, He dims the lights and lower the projector screen. "I now present to you.. UPTXWN." Applause rings out as the projector displays a drone clip of High Bridge among the sunrise and Syd's voiceover, "Uptown, Home of the greats. From The Bronx, to Harlem. The place I know, the place I love." The six models she started with appear on the screen, daringly sitting on the railing, laughing with one another in their high end garments. "Our hustles.. It always had this special..thing about it. We always went a little harder. Thought a little smarter. Emerged to the top a bit faster." Photos of me and all of Uptown's finest begins scrolling through from right to left. From a photo of me and Dapper Dan when I was fresh out of college. Diddy and I when I was an intern at Chanel. With Kerry Washington a bit after Save the Last Dance came out when I was twelve. Sistah Souljah, Kid Capri, Bianca (aka Young B), Cam'ron, Juelz, and Jim Jones back when Rock-a-fella were still together, Kalis, and finally, A$AP Mob & me when they were fresh in the game back in 2011.

"And when we're on top, we set trends. We define eras. Their stamps will forever be evident in our culture. Here's mine. Here's UPTXWN." All of the photos scroll backwards and the screen goes black for a few seconds. Images of the Big L tribute wall outside of the Harlem Up Deli Market, in black and white appear, then the same original six models; Sam, Levi, Von, Jade, Deanna, and Cass kneeling at different levels, crowded around the wall. Making sure not to block his face or name. Then Pretty Flako instrumental bangs through the theater's speakers. The TV flake transition changes to the Bailey house shoot. The drone shot pans around the corner of the property, all twenty four models posing looking like royalty draped in over $80,000 worth of clothes collectively. The visual pans over to a slowed down visual of Nina flashing her bottom grill, her thick frame vibing out to the up tempo beat. Then to Xierra kneeling beside her, giving face in her side profile. The screen shortly displays a wide pan of the property and models again, then switches to Levi. Iyo's suggested scene of displaying the details of his tattoos on his shirtless body-- while simultaneously showing the VVS necklace, the embroidery on the custom one of a kind jean jacket; came out perfectly.

The photos of each model in each of their looks scroll through at the right speed so each detail is fully displayed. Every model stands up, showing off as their photos went across the screen. As Gina's photoset emerges, I turn to the screen so I can roll my eyes. I instantly become reminded of how flirty she was with Erik before Yani had to snatch her up to take these. Yani stands beside me, peeping the entire scene, "Girl, suck it up. She in it now. Let's get it over with." I shake it off, turning back to the models.

The park Marcus Garvey Amphitheater scene pops up, it was a gloomy overcast. Which was perfect for the theme. As the looping instrumental repeats, each model was either sitting at the top of the folding seats, or crouched on the seat of the folding seats. The collective total of every look? $110,878. I'm lucky I got such great relationships with these clients and these models didn't fuck up any of they shit. The first visual was Von, on the center stage. His long hair hanging over his entire face. He rocked this black long open hooded jacket, shirtless. Displaying his massive musical themed chest piece. It gave me a grim reaper vibe that I was definitely looking for. The jacket was a piece I asked Chris Brown's people to create for their Black Pyramid line. They fucked with the vision and agreed to do it. Von flipped the bottom of the jacket back with force, the rest of the models appeared on stage, smoke filled the stage floor as the all black visual came to life. Gina and Cass rocked matching contrast dresses, Cass was the only model not in black that day. I put her in a white intricate lace Erdem Dress. Gina wore the matching Black dress.

Jade and Deanna were back to back. Jade was wearing a black deep v neck, with a leather ribbed comme des garcons jacket. With a cascading gold necklace reaching her stomach. Accompanied with black and gold aviator Louis Vuitton shades, Black ripped Levis I thrifted on the East side, and Jefferey Campbell's Legion booties. Deanna was wearing my favorite outfit of that day. A black long sleeved Oscar De La Renta ruffled shirt with cut out shoulders, a Burberry black ruffled skirt, and black Averil Doc Martin boots. Her bamboos and three finger ring spelling out her name put a street edge on her look that was near and dear to my Harlem bred heart. GG beat every woman's face and gave them the same cohesive smokey eye with the black, In The Spirit MAC lipstick. The only difference makeup wise was Cass' white undereye liner.

Once again the photos of every model starts cascading slideshow style. Johan was my second favorite look for that shoot, He rocked a black high low long sleeved Alexander Wang shirt, black distressed Givenchy jeans, and his personal black on black Ralph Lauren Hi Boots. I was going to put him in some other shoes, but I saw the ones he had on and they looked way better with the fit. We accompanied that look with a black Cuban link necklace, the matching bracelet, and Dolce & Gabana retro flip up round glasses.

Everyone's rave reactions trigger my tears of joy, it's all of our first times seeing the visual's final product and I couldn't be any more proud. This has really been my baby. I've nurtured it, I've put in the work for it. This moment was like its graduation. Everyone looks at me, "Awwwwww!" Yani gives me a big hug, "I'm proud of you, kid." I squeeze her, "I'm proud of us, kid." I push out a laugh.

The final shoot displayed the brownstones on Mount Morris Park, the street right outside of Marcus Garvey Park. Where my parents' old brownstone was. I only needed my original six for this one, since all twenty-four wouldn't fit on the stoop. That day, it was sunny. Not one cloud in sight. Perfect lighting for the intimate shoot. The theme was spring, specifically, pastel colors.

I dressed Jade in a pastel yellow Ted Baker maxi dress, I accessorized her outfit with vintage canary yellow teardrop earrings with a matching tennis bracelet. She wore some nude Christian Louboutin spiked peep toed heels. She stands up when she finds her face and yells while twerking, "Long Hair! Red Bottoms! Long Hair! Red Bottoms!" Everyone, including me burst out in laughter. She kept saying it so much during the shoot, I let her keep them. Paid the $1,500 tab too. Deanna was draped in a Monroe and Main white two piece suit with black accents on the collar and cuffs. We accompanied that with my personal pearls I got from my mom before she passed, some white Manolo Blahnic pumps, and some VVS diamond earrings while her hair popped in the sunlight. She wore her low cut with a rose gold tint. I put Cass in a pair of nude Emilio Pucci wide legged trousers, a White Alexander McQueen peplum top, and a matching nude blazer was draping over her shoulders. Her accessories was a silver double C Chanel choker, charm rings from Tiffany Co., and a vintage Chanel crossbody, gifted from Karl Lagerfeld himself. He said I needed something old for my collection.

The guys were matching my girls' fly. Von parallels Deanna with a Tom Ford cotton two piece suit, I laced him with some white Versace loafers with the gold Medusa emblem on the center, with the Cuban link chain Johan wore at the Marcus Garvey shoot, and golden Panthere De Cartier rounded sunglasses. Levi's parallel was for Jade's look. He wore a pastel yellow Calvin Klein. Accompanied with a large size canary ring on his index finger, and the Burberry vintage loafers. Sam paralleled Cass, in a nude ASOS suit with the matching vest. I kept it simple and just accessorized it with my dad's gold pocket watch and black Stacy Adams dress shoes.

I thought the presentation was over, but then the screen transitioned to me working behind the scenes. Me pointing and directing at the Bailey house, with the wind blowing like crazy, me filming on Highbridge at the crack of dawn, Iyo even snuck some footage of the meeting we had in Morningside Park. It looks like Yani snuck some footage of me putting the image board for the fashion show stage together as well. I'm just admiring the scene of watching the hard nights and amazing days I shared with an incredible team. The last shot was me sitting on my old stoop. I was just reminiscing, thinking of how my mom, dad, and I would eat ice cream in the spring in the same spot. I looked up, as I normally do when thinking of them, put my hands together and mumbled, 'allah , shkraan lak.' The camera was too far to catch my phrase. Afterward I bowed between my legs so I could have my emotional moment to myself.

Everyone hops on the stage to crowd around me and initiated a group hug. Once everyone slightly disbursed, I see Gina still sitting in the audience with Erik, I guess he just got here. I hear the doors open again and see Yasin, smiling at me.

By half past 10, everyone had gone home except for Yani, Nina, Gina, Erik, and Yasin. Nina is waiting on Rashad to pick her up, and I guess Gina is looking to Erik to take her home. She's literally been all up under him since his arrival.

"Tomorrow's gonna go great, babe. You got a great team behind you, you've been super focused. It can't go any other way." Yasin lands a kiss on my temple as I blush at his encouragement. I blink in Erik's direction, he's giving the same look he gave us at Rashad's party. He then grips Gina, pulling her closer to him, "Yeah. You got it Syd. We gon head out. See ya later." with that, Erik and Gina strut to the exit. Nina's phone dings, "Oh, bae is here! See ya tomorrow Syd! We gon kill it, boo!" She hugs me and Yani then jogs out the double doors, "Nice seeing you again Yasin!" he nods, "You too!"

"So tell me something about you, Sin! I've only talked about me when I see you. What was lil Yasin like?" We are strolling down Saint Nick Avenue after getting grilled jerk chicken from King Barka. We decide to sit on a park bench right outside Saint Nick Park to chat since I wasn't quite ready to go home. "Well, I was born and raised in Brooklyn. Flatbush. My moms is from Brooklyn as well. My dad's side of the family is from Harlem, the eastside, but they love uptown just as much." I grin as he continues, "I was a bad ass kid growing up. Always fighting, getting into trouble at school, I even got expelled in middle school." "Well damn! How did you go from that to--" I wave my hands around his silhouette, "This?" He takes a bite out of his chicken and flashes a sexy smile, "My mom sent me to live with my Uncle. The one that retired and gave me the maintenance business."

"Ahhhh, I see. He whipped you into shape?" He snorts, "Oh, he whipped me alright. A lot. He taught me what it is to be a man." "Where was your father?" He continues eating, pausing his story for a spell, "Uh.. He was in prison. He pushed weight for about ten years, he got caught up. He didn't snitch, so he got twenty. He got out after eight years for good behavior." "How's your relationship with him now?" He shugs, "We're cool. We had a little spat when he first got out. I had to be the man of the house for a while for my moms and sisters. I resented him for it." I take a hold of his free hand, "We patched things up recently." "So him and your mom still married?" He nods, "Yeah. Moms held him down. That lady.. She deserves the world." He finishes his dish as he glows at the mention of his mother.

"She had to get two jobs before I turned sixteen and worked with my Uncle. She held down our household for three years, alone, before I was able to step in and help her. After that, she went back to school. She finished the year before my pops got out, now she's a nurse. Doing what she loves to do." "That's great. That's what life is about, doing what you love." "Definitely." He throws away our empty plates and we keep walking down the avenue, "So what do you love to do Yasin?" "I love music." I stop in my tracks.

"Let me guess, you rap?" he sucks his teeth, "Nah, girl. I play instruments. Three; Acoustic guitar, piano, and snare drum." "Ah, okay! When did you discover your talent?" "I was... ten, I think?" "You make songs?" He pulls a slick move behind me, grabbing me by my waist. I roll my eyes as we continue to walk, "I haven't made a song in five years." "Why not?" I feel him shrug behind me, "I've been busy." I turn around to grab his hands, "You're never too busy to do what you love." He smiles at me, I sense the same glow about him that he had when he spoke of his mom. "Especially when it makes you this happy...just talking about it." Yasin closes the gap between us, "Maybe, you're right. Look at you. Doing what you love. You're inspiring Syeda. Beautiful, too." He strokes my left cheek with his palm. I freeze, much like I did a couple weeks back in my apartment with Erik.

Speaking of Erik, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about what happened since my dad's birthday. I guess Erik knows what he wants, and that's Gina. So why am I freezing? What's stopping me? All of a sudden my inner thoughts are silenced when Yasin seals our distance, gently kissing me. My knees buckle and he hoists me up by my butt, cuffing the bottom of my cheeks. That makes me even weaker, he breaks off from me, "Damn girl. You good?" My eyes flutter as I respond, "Yeah. Yeah. I'm good." I pull him by his shirt to kiss him again.

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ianference · 6 years

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It’s time to venture back out to Chamonix and the surrounding mountains, with our case notebook in hand, to deduce what we can about Box 2 of the Puthon Collection. If you’ve not already done so, I strongly suggest taking a look at the overview page for the collection, as it provides a general guideline to viewing sets from this series. And if you haven’t seen the first box from the collection, you’re probably going to miss some of the context here, as familiarity with previous sets will always be assumed. But in any case, do what you like – if you’d rather just jump in and catch up later, it’s not like I can stop you! Let’s see what we’ve got in Box #2…

Box02 – standard Puthon Collection “Vitra” box, with “1929” handwritten on the front cover.

Nothing particularly special about the box itself, besides the year marking. What is exciting is that the box does, in fact, contain 11 slides all marked as 1929 images – so here’s hoping that there’s some chronology to the set in general (although I doubt that the boxes are in any kind of order). There seem to be at least a couple of trips pictured, and several new locations added to the map; a previously-seen location appears as well. The slides are, unfortunately, in slightly worse condition when compared to those from the first box – though the photography seems to have improved in general. Again, the action seems to be centered around Chamonix, which jives with the fact that several of the boxes have “Chamonix” written in masking tape on the side. Let’s take a look!

Slides

Box02-S01 – “Le Lavancher – Mme Puthon – Marguerite – Léontine – Juliette – 1929”

Description: A view of four women in Le Lavancher – one of them Mme Puthon! – standing against a hilly backdrop, with a number of mountains in the distance. Box01-S06 also notes the presence of Léontine with Mme Puthon – so two of these women appear in two of the shots! We’ll get to this later, when we hit the “Discussion” section. But meanwhile, we have what basically appears to be a hastily-taken snapshot, based on what first looked like a printing error (but I later noticed was clearly something in the foreground) at top.

Technical: A pretty-much-straight-up-B&W image, this displays much better use of stereoscopy than most of the 1928 images from the first box, if somewhat dodgy composition. The bar / pipe / whatever it is at the top of the frame is distracting, and while the women are placed in a nice rule-of-thirdsy sort of position, they’re somewhat obscured by the background and the rather poor lighting. Nevertheless, it’s not a bad amateur shot.

Box02-S02 – “Sommet de la Flégère 1929” (“La Flégère summit 1929”)

Description: A group of 15 people – 9 women, 5 men, and one I can’t tell – are gathered for a portrait at the La Flégère summit, with grand mountains in the background. The man with a grizzly beard and a bandaged finger is holding a copy of the “Le Progres” newspaper. He looks an awful lot like the bearded gent from Box01-S06! Most of the subjects are grinning victoriously at the camera (presumably after having just reached the summit), while a few choose to strike more “dignified” or “casual” poses. I’m not going to give each of them fun names this time around, unless I can link them to subjects in other shots – but I have a feeling we’ll see some of them again – so let’s number them for ease of reference:

Females get an “F” designation, males an “M”, and the unknown gets the wildcard “?”.

Technical: This is a very well taken stereo portrait, and probably the best work we’ve seen from our photographer (assuming the single photographer theory) so far. Central composition works here, because it’s a group portrait. The haze in between the subjects and the majestic mountains creates wonderful contrast, as the figures really pop here. It’s doubtful that the crimson toning was purposeful – likely, this is just how it came back from the lab – but it really works with the image and gives it extra punch. There’s a reason that this was the header image from my very first post on this site…

Box02-03 – “Sommet de la Flégère 1929” (“La Flégère summit 1929”)

Description: Some people stand near the edge of the La Flégère summit around the time of the above image; this was either taken candidly or the subjects were posing in such a way as to appear casual. In the foreground, a weathered post sticks up from the ground; in the background, the grand mountains once again. The nearest woman is F2 from our chart above – the only woman wearing a white coat and a hat. Two of the three ladies with white hats (F3/F5/F8) are sitting with M1 on the ground. I can’t discern who the woman in the striped shawl is – can you? The final woman is either F9 or ?.

Technical: A pretty good stereo photo; the rusticated post in the foreground lends a wonderful 3D effect, while the figures certainly pops. The deep blue is pleasing, though again, one wonders whether there is any creator intention here. The composition is rather muddled – the photographer did not spend the time in framing with this one, but perhaps they were trying to just capture the moment. Sadly, the slide itself has a large tear in the emulsion of the right-hand panel.

Box02-S04 – “Vue du Mont Blanc du Brévent 1929″ (View of Mont Blanc from Brévent 1929”)

Description: Next to the side of a building, eight figures crowd around a makeshift picnic table and a circular table up on Brévent with chairs; upon the long table sits a telescope. The view of Mont Blanc is quite stunning and painterly in the background. Sitting at the table are all three of the White Hat Women (F3/F5/F8), and it appears like F4 is sitting there as well. The standing man might well be M1 with his hat and tie missing. It’s possible that these were taken on a single ambitious day of hiking, but absolutely not certain.

Technical: This is another quite excellent stereo slide. While a bit contrasty, this probably couldn’t be helped – with the sky appearing clear, it might have been a while before a cloud could come and diffuse the light. The image is extremely well composed, and really shows off the scale of the mountains in the distance. Very pleasing to look at, and nicely sepia toned.

Box02-S05 – “Retour de Salvan Suisse 1929” – (“Return from Salvan Switzerland 1929”)

Description: A group of 9 figures walks along a path, presumably on the way back from Salvan. This doesn’t look entirely like the group from S02; while there are three women with white mushroom hats (seemingly a common 1929 fashion trend in the Alpine region), they don’t appear to be dressed exactly as the women in S02, and there are numerous other figures that might be new as well – particularly the bloke with the well-manicured salt-and-pepper beard in the background: it’s Posturing Gentleman from Box 1 again! The tall gent looks a lot like M2, and it’s likely that some of the group is the same. But Salvan is quite a hike from the Brévent / La Flégère region, so I’ll assume this was a different excursion.

Technical: Neither a great stereographic image nor a poor one, these seems like a pretty standard “group walking along a path through the mountains” view. The image is far more contrasty than others, leading me to wonder whether it was developed separately. It’s got decent stereo, and pretty standard composition – overall, it’s competent, not impressive.

Box02s06 – “Le Lavanché pres Chamonix 1929” (“Le Levancher near Chamonix 1929”)

Description: Another view from Le Lavancher, this time with a horse! Posturing Gentleman is here again, as is the woman on the far right in S01 – here, in front atop the horse. The woman second from the right in S01 is here too, standing in profile to the camera and reaching toward the horse. The woman pictured here with her back to the camera could well be the second from the left in S01 – meaning that the leftmost woman in S01 is the only person not appearing here. The other woman atop the horse, with the elaborate hat and the shadowed face? No idea. Finally, the metal frame behind the horse could well be the thing hanging into frame in S01 – though this is just conjecture.

Technical: This is well done image. The stereography is compelling, and the composition is going, showing motion and action – unlike most of the images by this photographer. The mountains, and the buildings in the valley between the mountains, frame the scene wonderfully, and the lighting is impeccable.

Box02-S07 – “Excursion avec nous les Américains Salvan Suisse 1929” (“The Americans excursion with us Salvan Switzerland 1929”)

Description: This must have been taken on the same trip as Box01-S10 – it’s similarly toned, and showing buildings in Salvan along with some common figures, including Posturing Gentleman for the third time in a row! So he’s now showing up all over the place in 1928 as well as in 1929 – I’m getting the feeling that he’s a regular with this photographer’s crew. Not sure who “the Americans” referenced on this slide and Box01-S10 might be. Nobody else is readily identifiable, at least at a first glance.

Technical: This is okay, but not great; the lighting is harsh, and a huge swath of the image is taken up with… white space. This can work to focus attention, but in this case, my attention is drawn more to the buildings, and to trying to figure out whether the nearby passerby in silhouette is carrying a camera. The stereo effect is underwhelming due to the subjects being far away and the foreground being boring – not among this box’s more impressive shots.

Box02-S08 – “Chemineé du Brévent 1929” (“Chemineé du Brévent 1929”)

Description: A group of people climbing a natural chimney somewhere in the Brévent area, aided by some metal railing that have been affixed to the stone. Three of the White Mushroom Hat Ladies are here, as well as some other figures, none immediately recognizable. Two of the men are wearing circular sunglasses. The angle of the shot makes the climb look somewhat intense, but the relaxed postures of the subjects betrays this notion; there’s no way that this is a tough climb.

Technical: Given the angle at which the photographer was basically forced to work, this is about the only photo that could be taken given the lighting. It’s good enough; the stereo effect is decent, and the image is appealing. Waiting for more diffused light might have benefitted the image some, but then, if the sky was clear, that could have been quite a wait…

Box02-S09 – “Près du Sommet du Brévent 1929” (“Near the Brévent Summit 1929”)

Description: Nine people have made their way – or are making their way – to a rocky outcropping near the Brévent summit. They’re quite small in frame, so it’s hard to tell exactly, but it looks like a group from which the subset in the above stereoview was culled. These were likely taken on the same trip. The man touching the brim of his hat certainly resembles M2.

Technical: This is a stunning image, second only to S02 in this set in terms of image quality. The haze once again allows a wonderful separation between the midground and background; there really is no foreground to speak of, due to the distance between the lenses and the subjects. The mountaineers are well placed, both in places where they stand out and in places where one has to search for them, adding an element of mystery to the scene. I just wish there weren’t an emulsion lift on the right panel!

Box02-S10 – “Excursion avec les americains a Salvan 1929” (“Excursion with the Americans to Salvan 1929”)

Description: A group of people, including the Posturing Gentleman, are clearly posing for a photograph in the streets of Salvan. There appears to be a camera club of some sort in the photo: new arrivals (for us) include an elegantly dressed woman with a folding camera, kneeling, bellows extended; a gentleman with a large brick of a camera at his side; an older woman with a box camera standing. M2 is there in the background as well.

Technical: Ack! There is severe right tilting to the camera here, resulting in a distractingly angled final image. Unlike a regular photograph, to which a mat can be applied to make a crooked image look straight, this format does not allow for such. This was either an outtake or a mistake on the photographer’s part; the extreme angle is so distracting that it significantly detracts from the image.

Box02-S11 – “Chalet du Brévent 1929”

Description: A group of travelers – many of them the same as in the other Brévant and La Flégère images in this box, as well as some that are definitely from Box 1. In the far distance, the mountains; in the foreground, coarse rocks. M1 is here, as is Posturing Gentleman. The three White Mushroom Hat Ladies are here again, and I’m becoming convinced that the older-looking Mushroom Hat is Diagonal Top Lady from Box 1. But we’ll see in the end discussion what we’re able to sort out.

Technical: Very good indeed. Once again, contrast is used to good effect to highlight the Chalet, the mountains, and of course, the subjects. The boulders in the near foreground really help give layering to the stereographic merge. The entire scene is beautifully framed by the mountains, and even the bright lighting does not detract in this case. Sadly, artifacts on the slide are distracting, and little can be done about that.

Discussion

Two boxes in, and we’ve already learned a bunch about the photographer and their subjects. But before we get into all that, let’s look back at the four women pictured in S01:

Detail from Box02-S01. For now, from left to right, we’ll call them “A”, “B”, C”, and “D”.

Presumably, one of these women is Mme Puthon – and identifying her is one of our main goals at this stage – since the name “Puthon” appears on a couple of the boxes, it’s important to figure out why. I presented one possible reason early on – that she’s the wife of the photographer, since we don’t seem to see an “M Puthon” in here. In the Box 1 post, we narrowed down Mme Puthon to being one of three ladies:

The three ladies from the previous post. From left to right: “Familiar Lady”, “Flower Dress Lady”, and “Diagonal Top Lady”.

It is important to note that there could be two crossovers here, as Mme Puthon and Léontine are both named on both slides. As noted before, we have at least one other definite appearance of “D”, on slide 06:

“D” from Box02s06.

This view bears quite a resemblance to “Diagonal Top Lady” from Box 1. There’s the superficial similarity of the White Mushroom Hat, of course – but then, those seemed to be “the thing” in those days, and they’re hardly unique. However, her facial structure – roundish face, large nose – are similar, and she has a similar general build. Of course, if the two images are indeed of the same person, that means little – it could be Léontine, Mme Puthon, or someone else entirely.

Then there’s the left-frame ladies of each side – “A” and Familiar Lady. Similar hats, similar builds, even similar expressions. But as of now, it’s hard to say – and we’ll leave such questions until we have yet more evidence. At the very least, we now know that we have at least several images of Mme Puthon in any case, based on the Box 1 comparisons, and very likely at least 2 in this box as well.

Moving on, then, unless a reader spots something I’ve missed in correlating these figures, let’s add two more underlying assumptions to those collected in the “Discussion” section of the Box 1 post:

The photographer themselves – M Puthon or otherwise – was at least a semi-skilled climber. In order to balance from whatever his position was when taking S09, as well as to schlep his camera, plates, potentially extra backs, etc along on the more rugged routes, the photographer would have to be a physically sound specimen.

The photographer regularly took at least one, and likely more than one, of the same people with them on their excursions. At the very least, Posturing Gentleman has now appeared in two different years at most every location photographed in this collection so far.

Let us now re-examine the three initial possibilities I suggested for the identities of the Puthons:

The Puthons were a wealthy family from the Chamonix region, and simply galavanted around with other wealthy people. This is further supported by the “hanging out with Americans” images from Salvan, where the newcomers indeed looked wealthy; by the fact that some people are consistent between 1928 and 1929; by the fact that the stereoviews are all still from one particular geographic region. On the other hand, it’s somewhat put in doubt by the fact that these all appear to be summer images – if they resided in the area, why no winter photos? Of course, we’re only 22 slides into the set, so we’ve a long road ahead!

The Puthons were indeed a married couple, possibly wealthy, and M Puthon practiced photography as they traveled all over the world. This is explained equally well by the same evidence we’ve added to possibility 1, without the problematic lack of winter imagery in the collection as it stands so far. However, unless they traveled the world with the same group of people, why would figures like Posturing Man appear in a majority of images?

The Puthons were a family that ran an inn, or a travel agency, or another sort of tourism business. M Puthon found a side business in selling stereoviews to tourists – he could take the diapositives while he led various expeditions, and the Puthon Collection represents his collected rejects or un-purchased views. This is seeming less likely, as (1) if he was a local tourguide, why would be bring the same friends on every trip? and (2) some of the “rejects” – particularly slides like S02 and S09 – are so good that they could easily be sold even to uninvolved parties – they’re just good photography overall. I’m not getting this feeling as of yet from the images.

So, we have more information from this box, but not substantially more information. The two slides which name Mme Puthon also name Léontine; until we get a slide with one or the other, and positively make a correlation otherwise, we’re still narrowed down to 3 figures from a series of images from Box 1, and to four figures from a pair of images from Box 2. We know that the photographer was in the region for two years in a row, and again in 1931 (and, from notations on the boxes, presumably in 1933). Otherwise, we still have precious little here…

And again, this is where you come in! If you recognize a location, or notice something I didn’t in terms of matching people up – LET ME KNOW! Use the Contact page, or leave a public comment below. It’ll be added to the discussion here, and you’ll be credited!

Even if you have some little alternative theory that you’re mulling, you now have 22 stereoviews at your disposal. Do some digging, and let us know – I’m not going to solve everything I want to about these slides on my own; I don’t know the region, the culture, what it looks like now – hell, I don’t even speak the language. So please lend a hand where you can!

And until the next time, please pop on your red/cyan glasses and check out the…

Anaglyphs

Puthon Collection Box 2: Climbing Higher in 1929 It's time to venture back out to Chamonix and the surrounding mountains, with our case notebook in hand, to deduce what we can about Box 2 of the Puthon Collection.

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dnodes18 · 5 years

Photo

Office Makeover with the ProjectColor App https://ift.tt/2PFvPBx

Using the Project Color App

See it in Your Space

Color Matching

I color matched the keys and the body of the typewriter to see the color family I was looking at for Behr Paint.

Painting the Built-In Bookcase

After

Ladies and gents, this is what a can of Behr Paint and the ProjectColor App can do!

I hope this project inspires you. Grab that can of bold paint and shake things up this Labor Day weekend!

I took on this paint project at my own risk while preparing for baby Munoz! Behr offers multiple low VOC paint options to help you transform your spaces.

The post Office Makeover with the ProjectColor App appeared first on The Home Depot Blog.

Kourtni Munoz

#The Home Depot Blog

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malassortiti · 5 years

Text

[INTERVIEW TAPE N° █████ TAKEN FROM STUDIO █████’S ARCHIVE, FOR THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC SPECIAL SHOW █████] [Date aired live: 20/09/1988 – hour aired: 22.30 PM]

[CONFISCATED BY THE LOCAL POLICE FOR PROOF, INVESTIGATION, CONVICTION OF VIOLENT ASSAULT – VISION OF THIS TAPE NOT AUTHORIZED UNLESS GRANTED PERMISSION FROM AN HIGHER-UP.] [The following tape contains graphic images of violence, blood, and bad language.]

(Program intro plays.

The cameras pans in on the centre of the main stage, on which are located two armchairs, a coffee table, and sparse accessories around the scenographies. Not too far behind are installed a microphone stand, and instruments.)

(Crowd cheers as the show hostess, EMMA PEARLSTON, walks to the stage. She smiles.)

Emma Pearlston: Good evening, ladies and gents! We meet again for yet another evening here on █████!

EP: As always, in this show, we make sure to keep up with the hottest, latest trends to keep all you weirdos satisfied. We offer food for your ears… and your thoughts!

EP: Now, tonight is going to be very special. We have a couple of artists, ready to be interviewed, that will absolutely blow your mind.

EP: And although the names might sound obscure to most of you, I’m pretty confident that once you’ll see – or, well, hear them, you will recognize them immediately, and never forget them.

EP: Admittedly, getting in contact with one of them has been quite a struggle. But with stubbornness, we succeeded in our endeavors! (audience cheers)

EP: Let me ask you a question, folks: do you like darkness?

EP: Of course you do, it’s part of the show. Electronic music is all about expressing one’s inner demons and instincts, as the staple artists of this genre established…

EP: But I tell you, you’ve never seen this kind of darkness. It’s a broody mix between terror and violence, something completely undiscovered and new, that completely launched me over the sky the moment I heard it – and I know you’ll go insane for it as well!

EP: Well, then. Let us hear a snippet of the dark music goddess that’ll grace our studio tonight!

(A brief introductory video introducing solo singer EULALIA plays. Pieces of her most famous songs – Dionysus, Houndstooth, Freak – play in the background as her most iconic photographies, and parts from live performances are reproduced on video.)

(The video fades out, the music slowly following as EULALIA enters the stage.)

(She looks at the crowd with a scowl, but flashes a wide smile as she salutes the audience. The crowd cheers in response.)

EP: Welcome, Eulalia! (sitting on an armchair) What a pleasure to have you here with us tonight!

Eulalia: Pretty lively people, I see. (sitting on the other chair)

EP: Of course! I’m sure you aren’t surprised to find out that even with such a recent debut, you’ve built quite the fanbase.

EL: I am surprised to be wanted on TV so soon, though.

EP: That’s because you’re so mysterious, Eulalia! Even the most knowledgeable and informed music magazines have nothing on you.

EL: Almost as if I popped out of nowhere. (laughs)

EP: I was about to say just that! With a poof, you materialized from thin air… and made miracles in the electronic genre. You’ve actually done a bit of a mix between that and others, am I wrong?

EL: Maybe, maybe not. I think… Electronic by itself can get quite stale. So I wanted to see what it’d be like if I picked industrial and rock, a bit of punk, and mixed them all together. It sounds like absolute shit – but it works.

EP: You say it sounds… er… terrible, but the top charts say otherwise. After all, your latest album peaked basically as soon as it was put out there… more than three thousand vinyls sold in all around the USA. Statistics aren’t my forte, but I remember you being in the top position of the charts for something like one week and a half.

EL: I ain’t bein’ modest, I speak the truth. You listen to it pieced together like that, expecting an actual mixture of those genres, and you’ll hear nothing but absolute crap. I guess what it does well is that it completely erases the listener’s expectations once they listen to it.

EP: Erase the listener’s expectations?

EL: Yes. Hm… it gives right away a vibe of “don’t fuck with me, don’t expect anything, shut up and listen”. Which is what I always say to my producer when I bring him new pieces. (crowd laughs, prompting EULALIA to smile again. EMMA laughs as well.)

EP: You’re a cheeky one, aren’t you?

EL: I just like to clear things up right away. Seems unfair for people to have certain views of me that aren’t true, delusional… so I’d rather break them right away. I don’t let anyone use me as an entry mat, despite what it might seem.

EP: As if anyone would assume that! Your live performances are terrific. They’re absolutely both powerful and completely out of this world. How can anybody think you’re going to submit to them that way, after witnessing what you can do?

EL: Trust me, miss. Richer people are always gonna ‘xpect that out of you. I don’t care if they’re the hand that feeds me, though – if I gotta bite them to gain respect, I will.

EP: Have you actually bitten someone before?

EL: (Initially remains silent, then smiles, baring her teeth. A chuckle follows.) Would you like to be the first?

EP: Ahah… ah! Oh, wow. (awkward laughter) Well, maybe not. Please don’t bite me, Eulalia! We’ve got a long way to go before I can let that happen. (nervously shifts in her seat)

EL: I was kidding, of course. (laughs) But no. Unless someone really strikes a nerve, I don’t resort to that kind of physical violence. I’ve been tempted, but I’ve also resisted.

EP: I see. Whoever decides to step in your way doesn’t stand a chance. You’ve got this air about you… you hold some sort of power when you sing and perform. What are the things and people that inspire your act? Because the way you express yourself is very particular.

EL: Don’t stroke my ego too much, miss. But, let me correct you. It’s not an act. I don’t need to act when I’m on stage. That’s just me being myself. A different me, but me anyway. If I were to work on that during my free time, I’d be already dead. I’m not really inspired by anything in particular, though – I look back to punk culture, raw emotions, and in general all things disgusting that people feel repulsed by just by looking at them. When I get on stage, when I sing a song, or do a little dance, I do it with the intention of disgusting my spectators. Because disgust elicits emotion, as well as reaction. When you see something disgusting, you react to it, right? Usually violently, with hatred, cursing and cussing at it, hoping it will die and that’ll go away from you as soon as possible.

EP: Oh, yes, I see your point.

EL: Some people see an insect and they want to squash it, outright fucking murder it because they think it’s disgusting. Now – that’s what I want to do with my art. I want to evoke that rational irrationality we usually don’t think much of. I want my fans to come at me and try to kill me – I want to see them going feral.

EP: Wait – (laughs awkwardly) You don’t mean it when you say you want your fans to … “come and kill you”, right? That’s a figure of speech.

(EULALIA initially doesn’t answer. Her expression turns dull, lacking of any humor.)

EL: Did I stutter?

EP: E-excuse me?

EL: I didn’t stutter when I said that, did I?

(EULALIA is silent, jiggling her crossed legs as she keeps smiling at EMMA. Dead silence resonates all around the studio. Suddenly, EULALIA breaks into loud, barked laughter.)

EL: Of course I’m being ironic! I don’t want them to actually kill me. How’d I be doing my performances otherwise?

EP: (sigh of relief) Ah… Eulalia, don’t play with my heart like this! We don’t need you to be joining the 27 club anytime sooner!

EL: And why is that?

EP: We’d be lost without your music – after all, you are the most prominent star in the electronic music scene… hell, I’d even say the underground scene in general. (EULALIA smirks at EMMA’s statement, while EMMA shuffles through her papers.)

EP: Well, Eulalia, let’s move onto more personal questions.

EL: Finally gettin’ to the part where you’re nosy?

EP: These aren’t excessively invasive questions… perhaps!

(EULALIA grunts in response. Occasionally, she turns to glance right into one of the cameras.)

EP: Alright… first and foremost, let’s start with the basics: where are you from, Eulalia? What’s your history?

EL: What a boring question. (EMMA falters for a second.) But I’ll humor it.

EL: I think I was born somewhere in Mexico… Don’t remember where, though. Then I moved to Texas, Houston, and things sort of skyrocketed when I dropped out of high school. Bullshitted my way through bands and music experiences… and now I’m here. That’s the relevant things.

EP: What made you enter the music scene in first place?

EL: Hmm, I think it was watchin’ homeless people string their detuned guitars. I liked listening to them. I felt more comfortable sitting somewhere and listening, quietly. They always sounded so strained, tired, done with the world. But they were too afraid to die. Even if they had lost any whatsoever perception of reality. I observed them when they were lounging and doing nothing, too – and I often thought to myself “I wish I were like this instead”. At some point, I just decided that I would try to replicate their music, and add my own touch to it.

EP: Very interesting. So homeless people inspired you? That’s something you don’t hear everyday.

EL: It was a small down. It was hot everyday, and there was very little to do. In the end, if you listen very closely to my music, it’s all a bunch of shitty, basic chords strung together in a pretty way. The out of sync voice, the exaggerated sounds… it should evoke dread. The same I felt when I watched those shoeless tramps.

EP: The dread you mention clearly resonates with your music, that is true. Some magazines even defined it as “haunted”, which I personally think is quite a feat.

EL: Oh, you heard it? (EULALIA shifts closer in her seat, placing her feet on the coffee table. EMMA looks at EULALIA as she nonchalantly does that, but says nothing. Mild discomfort is on her face.) The dread.

EP: Heard – yes, of course I did. I listened to your music even before I knew you’d come here.

EL: Is that so? I’m honored. Do you like it?

EP: I wouldn’t be enthusiastic to interview you if I didn’t! Your music is very inspiring, Eulalia, and getting to know the origins of it is quite the honor for me.

EL: (eyes fixated on EMMA) So, did you listen closely to it? (pauses) To hear that dread, you need to be quite invested. Otherwise, it’s not having any effect.

EP: (confused) What do you mean?

EL: Hahaha. Nothing, nothing. I suppose you’re just easily persuaded.

EL: Go ahead with the questions, miss.

EP: Um… alright. If you say so. Let’s see… Did you pursue any studies?

EL: You mean, if I went to a music academy or anythin’ like that? No. That’s also why I ain’t the best singer out there. You could say I’m mostly self-taught.

EP: You sing like a professional, though! It must be natural talent, then.

EL: It can be anything you want it to be. I want my voice to reach people for different reasons.

EP: What do you mean by that?

EL: It’s always the same discourse of evoking certain feelings inside of people, you know. It doesn’t stray further than that. I care more about getting the emotion across – and sharing it with the listeners, so that they can feel the same kind of pain that I feel. It’s not as powerful when I’m speaking… but you can hear it, can you?

(EULALIA moves closer to EMMA, whose expression turns confused. She scoots a bit away from the EULALIA.)

EP: What should I be hearing right now…?

EL: If you listen real closely…

EP: Eulalia?

(Eliciting a loud gasp coming from the audience, EULALIA suddenly grabs EMMA by the collar, bringing their faces close, beyond any comfort zone. EULALIA is smiling widely.)

EP: W-what are you doing?! (panicked) Could – p-please let me go!

EL: Just listen to me. Listen to me when I talk. Can you hear it?

EP: I-I’m sorry, but I sincerely don’t…

EL: Shut the hell up, for Christ’s sake. And listen.

(Silence falls in the studio for the second time. EMMA and EULALIA stare each other in the eyes, the hostess’ worried expression slowly twisting into neutrality. EULALIA’s mouth moves, as if she’s speaking – but the quality of the video doesn’t clearly show what she’s saying. She isn’t using her voice, but EMMA nods as if she is hearing everything perfectly.)

(The moment she catches sight of studio directors walking from behind the scenes, EULALIA lets EMMA go. The hostess sits in her seat with a far less excitable demeanor: her eyes seem glassy for a moment, as if she’s lost deep into her thoughts.)

EL: Well?

(EULALIA’s voice snaps EMMA back to life with a shake of her shoulders and of her head. The singer leans into her seat, and after a moment of further silence, EMMA begins stammering.)

EP: Yeah – yeah, I… I-I… oh! Woah! Ah! (awkward laughter) Forgive me, guys! It seems I had a bit of a blackout right there. Um…

EL: You were askin’ me questions, miss.

EP: Right… oh – (EMMA stops, almost as if she’s just realized that she is talking to EULALIA. Her expression freezes for a moment. Then she looks at her papers.) Oh. Yes. L-let’s see…

EP: Since our time seems to be running out, let’s ask one last question. What are your hopes for the future, Eulalia? What do you expect out of this newfound career and fortune?

EL: Hmm… I’m not sure. I know I want to keep doing what I like how I like it. Hopefully my producer won’t be too stuck up, and will instead allow me that much. Nothin’ else comes to mind.

EP: Not even a family? A partner?

EL: None of those ain’t in my plans. And I don’t think they’ll ever be. I’m focused on other matters now, which are drastically more important. I didn’t have a family, so I’m not thrilled to have one of my own – and romance ain’t my cup of tea. I ain’t exactly desirable either.

EP: But that’s not true! You are gorgeous, Eulalia. So many journalists have been praising your appearance, along with your music! You could easily find someone if you stopped being a greedy bitch.

EL: (blinks, then chuckles) Excuse me?

EP: I said, if you’d stop acting modest and you’d just expose your merchandise for what it is, I’m sure you’d have many people kissing your ass. I bet you’ll even be able to escalate to the moon at that point.

EL: Aren’t you getting carried away, miss? (unfazed, completely tranquil.)

EP: I’m fucking certain of what I’m saying! (EMMA’s voice raises with a roar, causing the audience to gasp. Chatter begins filling the empty background noise. EULALIA is still comfortably seated in her armchair, seemingly untouched.)

EP: Hey, when are you going to stop keeping it to yourself?

(EMMA stands up, goes over to EULALIA’s seat, and grabs the woman by the neck.)

EP: Stop that! Stop looking so fucking smug! What’re you withholding? What are you keeping from us? You think I’ll be able to deal with not knowing now that you’ve shown me?! Eulalia!

EL: (starts chuckling, gradually turning into laughter) What am I hiding? What am I hiding? Do you hear yourself?

(From behind the scenes, scene directors and cameramen begin discussing the unexpected turn of events. Staff starts approaching the crowd, reassuring it that this was not planned, and that it will be fixed soon.)

EL: What I showed you was nothing. There was nothing. All you saw doesn’t exist.

EP: You’re lying – lying – lying – lying – LYING! YOU’RE A DIRTY LIAR, EULALIA!

(EMMA’s hands curl around EULALIA’s throat, who does nothing to resist the abrupt attack. EMMA pours her weight onto EULALIA, pushing her back. The singer is still smiling.)

EP: YOU’RE LYING!! GIVE ME THAT! I WANT IT! I WANT IT!!

EL: You – want it? What do you want? What do you want, Emma? What ever could I give you?

(EMMA begins to yell indecipherable curses and words, and her screaming only fuels EULALIA’s amusement. Her hands wrap around EMMA’s wrists, inciting her to tighten her grip.)

EL: You’ll never get what you want – Emma, you’ll never get what you –

(The scenography director yells ‘CUT’ through a megaphone, and security guards immediately scuttle inside the room. They circle the stage, where EMMA is still trying to strangle EULALIA.)

[FROM THIS POINT ON, THE LIVE WAS CUT. THE REST IS THE REMAINING RECORDING PART, WHICH NEVER AIRED LIVE. KEPT IN THE ARCHIVE FOR CASE PURPOSES.]

(Other guards incite the audience to stay in their seats. The situation is spiraling, but it’s still, from the looks of it, salvageable.

Until EMMA begins to use her nails, cutting deep into EULALIA’s skin. Blood begins to drip from the woman’s throat, who does not stop smiling. Adding to EMMA’s screaming, is EULALIA’s sharp, eerie laughter. Two security guards slowly begin to approach the violent subject, but EMMA turns around, looking completely different from before.

The expression on her face isn’t one a human could possibly make.

EMMA without hesitation begins to attack the guards, clawing her nails at them and mercilessly digging them into their faces. The hostess is restrained after a bit of struggling, and is forced to stay put as if they were dealing with a wild, frenzied animal.

EULALIA is sitting on the armchair. Observing the scene. Her expression holds no emotion. That smile doesn’t indicate anything. It’s just there. Baring its teeth.

EULALIA turns to look into the camera in front of her.

The tape interrupts itself the moment a few staff members surround her, holding emergency kits.)

[END OF TRANSCRIPTION] [PROPERTY OF STUDIO STUDIO XXXXX’S ARCHIVE] [INTENDED FOR INVESTIGATIVE PURPOSES ONLY.]

#eulalia ‡ ongoing investigation #long post / if youre on mobile i... sorrY #I went a bit ham #at some point #but i had fun experimenting a little with this #i dont know if it's well-paced #nor if it gives the idea i had in mind #this could be better as a comic #but at the same time hm...#sehnsucht ⋮ are you a fan of desperation? ; DIP INTO ONE’S DEEPEST DESIRES #ooc ∴ out of choice

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