#this one took me like. 1 day total from sketch to finished product?

[undermostcorgi]

ANOTHER ONE

[hetacon]

Prom Queen: Chapter 1

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Word Count: 1,500

Pairings: Endgame Prinxiety, Eventual Platonic LAMP, more could be included at a later point

Warning: The teeniest bit of swearing, slight food mention, Remus is mentioned briefly

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Summary: “Oh shut up,” he grumbled to it as he turned off the alarm before checking the date and sighing lowly.

It was exactly the day he had been thinking. The first day of school.

(Don’t miss the notes I have at the end of this post if you’d like to hear some additional details! There is a prologue to this story by the way, be sure to check it out!)

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The alarm blared loudly from across Virgil’s room. He tried hard to the best of his abilities to ignore it but he did make it loud for a reason.

One of those reasons being that he knew himself well enough to know that he would ignore it if he could and shut it off and go back to bed if he couldn’t. Going across the room to get it had always proved to have a higher chance of success in his experience so he had gone for that option last night.

The second reason though was because of today. Virgil shot up upon remembering and went over to his phone charging across his room, squinting at the screen.

“Oh shut up,” he grumbled to it as he turned off the alarm before checking the date and sighing lowly.

It was exactly the day he had been thinking. The first day of school.

The first day of high school in fact, the event of the decade that he and Roman had been waiting for in anticipation. Well, that was being generous but either way, they were both anticipating it for different reasons as they always seemed to do.

Virgil was not thrilled at the prospect of a new school. He would be required to learn a new campus, new classrooms, new classmates, and new teachers. Within the first week, he knew he’d be accustomed to at least the rooms for his classes but the other ones could take some getting used to. He knew that either way, he wasn’t going to get along with a majority of his classmates and he’d be too nervous to get to know any teachers or do much more than answer the occasional question or take role until they’d learned their students’ names. The campus was another issue too. Where would he be waiting in the morning? Where would he eat lunch? Did he and Roman even have the same brunch schedule? How was he getting home again? What time did his day end?

After shooting a text to Roman about one of those questions, namely in terms of the schedule, he got ready. After pulling his hoodie on over his head, he brushed a hand through his bangs to push them back before frowning at his reflection, letting them fall over his face again. He didn’t look better per say but he could see less which was always a plus in situations he was dreading. His mom had come in at some point to make sure he had actually gotten up and he was out of the house with his backpack and phone as soon as Roman bounded up his driveway.

“Virgil, it’s finally happening!” his best friend squealed, linking their arms as Virgil was tugged along down the route to their new school. “Finally, we’re high schoolers now, can you believe it?”

Virgil snorted, feeling a weight lift off his chest. One of them at least. “Can I believe it? Yeah. Do I want to? Hell no,” he muttered out with an edge of grumpiness to his voice only to have Roman laugh.

“I promise that I’ll be with you as much as I can the whole day! We’re going to have brunch and lunch together too and then I’ll take you over to my place after school!” Roman explained. He honestly made it sound so simple but really, he usually did. It even usually was, at least when Roman told him so. He just always knew how to make awful situations... easier.

“Eh, I guess I’ll take it. Though I’ve gotten a horrible end of the deal for compensation,” Virgil jeered a little, laughing to himself as Roman gasped and shoved him with an obvious smile.

“Shut up, you love me and you know it!”

Virgil’s smile came easily as they kept walking. “Yeah yeah, whatever you say,” he snorted.

Roman talked about theater, asking what productions Virgil thought they should put on, how he hoped to get some good roles this year, and then listed off some of his personal favorite musicals that he hoped he’d get to do at some point. Virgil filled in the gaps and spaces of the conversations and Roman did the rest. It was comfortable, it didn’t seem like this year would feel so bad now with things going just as they always had.

The day started off pretty alright honestly, much better than Virgil would’ve expected. Luckily he’d done a walkthrough of his schedule during registration so he knew vaguely where to go and he made it to his second period class early.

A lot of them were standard class introductions, icebreakers, and syllabuses. It seemed like exactly what he was used to in junior high, just at a different school. Some of his classes seemed pretty boring but he knew he didn’t have much of an option on the basic ones he had to take. He texted Roman between classes to see how he was fairing. He wasn’t very surprised that it was going off without a hitch.

It was a relief by the time that Virgil got to his English class right before lunch, the one class he and Roman shared together. Roman rushed in right as the bell rang and collapsed into the seat next to him, breathing out with a smile.

“Cutting it close, huh?” Virgil whispered.

“Sorry, I was a bit preoccupied,” Roman merely offered as explanation before the teacher got up and started talking, cutting their conversation short.

“Man, I am so excited for theater today! I can already tell it’s going to be so amazing!” Roman chattered excitedly as they walked out of English, making their way over to one of the more secluded areas of the campus Virgil had been able to find, setting up to eat lunch.

“Yeah, totally didn’t see that coming,” Virgil said with a slight shake of his head, smirking a bit. “It’s not like you’ve been talking about it all day. Oh wait! You have.”

“Alright alright so I will admit that I might be a little more excited than one would expect!” Roman relented, shrugging. “But! It’s just so amazing, I got into 7th period theater, Virge! I’m going to be in the actual productions!! That’s a big deal for a freshman, usually people don’t make it until maybe sophomore year, you know?”

“Well the director would’ve been an idiot if he didn’t want to put you in them, yeah? I think so anyways,” Virgil said as he took out his sketchbook.

“I suppose but still, I’m just...” Roman laughed to himself, bouncing in place. “I’m so excited, I can’t wait to meet all the new people there,” he giggled.

Virgil nodded, starting a sketch of Roman which Roman immediately posed for, knowing the drill.

“Soooo, have you met anyone interesting today?” Roman asked as Virgil was working out the shape of Roman’s nose, their eyes making contact for a second before Virgil was back to sketching.

“Nah, not really. Though somebody just kinda... Gave me a cookie during art. He said I looked like I needed it. He’s my table partner now so there’s that, you know?” Virgil said with a shrug. “He’s pretty cool I guess. Liked one of my drawings of you.”

“And you didn’t strike up a conversation? C’mon Virgil, you could be set on baked goods and a person with great taste for the rest of your life!” Roman exclaimed, shifting out of position as he threw his arms out to which Virgil gave a half-hearted glare.

“You’re dumber than I gave you credit for if you believe I can talk to people.”

“Well I may be dumb but I take it with pride like a Prince should!”

“Your brother is the smarter of the two of you,” Virgil mused.

Roman pouted. “He is not!”

“Pretty sure he is,” Virgil hummed out.

As the two conversed a little more, Virgil didn’t feel up to eating anything.

Lunch ended and the day finished up with Virgil waiting outside the auditorium for Roman to be done with theater. The two walked home with Roman going on and on about the rest of his day, telling him about all the people he had met and all the things that he had gotten up to. Apparently there was already some idea of what the fall play would be so Roman talked about it at length.

“But seriously Virgil, it was so nice of them! Two of the juniors gave me a card to welcome me, it had my name on it and everything, I can’t wait!”

Virgil merely nodded as Roman continued.

Virgil didn’t have much to say at that point, just letting Roman keep going. Virgil just listened on, focusing silently on his best friend as they made their way home.

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A/N: Hey hey hey guys, here is the first official chapter of Prom Queen! I don’t have an especially strict schedule for this story but I do try to post every other day and it works out fairly well! I’ll try not to make it be more than a couple weeks between chapters but life might get funky so if anything happens, I’ll try my best to handle it and get more chapters out!

That being said, I hope you are enjoying the story and are excited for future chapters! Let me know if you’d like to be added to my taglists, either this one or my writing/art taglists in general and I’ll catch you guys next time!

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Taglist: @spookijam, @its-the-cat-queen, @virgils-paranoia, @marshmallow-the-panda, @anotheregofanficblog, @tssidesfamily, @shapa-likes-art, @isabelle-stars

[birbhouse-doodles]

Some post-project ~thots~ re: my first big dive into horror movies in general, some favorites and reviews, and what I learned in boating school from finishing an inktober-type art challenge is

So the ~stats~ of this thing were, I did 29 drawings covering 31 pieces of halloween-related / horror-ish media, 28 movies, 2 series’ and 1 podcast episode. Of the 31, this was the first time I’d seen/heard 25 of them.

On the art:

1. The big lesson that I got from this is exactly what this podcast episode has to say about how executing an idea is its own skill that you have to practice. Like separate from the skills of actually drawing a thing, the mental skill of following an idea through from start to finished product (and being able to call it done and pull the trigger on sharing it) is also a thing you have to learn. And boy howdy does finishing one post-able drawing a day give you plenty of practice at that, and boy howdy did I get pretty good at it this month. I’m kind of floored by how this Just Get It Done Bootcamp of making a shit ton of art in very little time got rid of so many of my hang ups related to like, getting stuck partway through a piece because I'm scared to ruin it, or not being able to get past a thumbnail sketch because I can’t find the ~perfect idea~, etc. Especially this last week I barely even recognized this confident ass person who was planning and banging out these cool little paintings with almost no hesitation. That’s very unusual for me and I really hope it sticks

2. I’m glad I did this but the debate on whether or not I’d ever do it again is ongoing. Like, I’m insanely proud of myself, (whatever)tober challenges were something I always thought were super cool and wanted to do as a little baby artist but was I never in the right place to be able to stick to a project like that, so I’m very impressed with myself. I am, also, however, so fuckin tired oh my god. I spent most of weeks 2 and 3 swearing up and down that I’m never doing anything like this again. But I also spent the last week really loving it and I already have a list of movies I didn’t get to that I could use if I did this again next year... we’ll see I guess. (Also I never would have had time for this if I wasn’t in an awkward limbo of post-graduation-pre-real job right now where I have literally no responsibilities, so I have a feeling that if I do this again it’ll be like. a movie every 3 days for 10 total, something more sane like that.)

3. Deciding I was ok with it when my motivation fluctuated and planning the day’s drawing accordingly was super powerful. Low standards got the job done y’all

4. Sorta related, but I noticed especially for movies I really liked/ rewatches of things that I already knew I loved I would get this weird mental block about wanting to Do Them Justice, and have this struggle of wanting to do whole ass super complicated big awesome tribute pieces instead of something I could actually finish in a day. Was tough to reign that in sometimes and remember that this had to be a quantity > quality type game.

5. I’m glad I started with the markers because they did force me to keep things simple at first and avoid that ^ problem, and it was neat to actually get sorta good at them and test exactly what I can get done with them. Less neat that a few markers that I was really relying on started dying around day 17 or so. Overall my review would be that they’re great for sketchy stuff, darkest gray and lightest gray are the best ones, love that they don’t warp or soak through the paper, but there are a few of the more complicated marker pieces (Alien, The Ring) that would have been way easier and probably turned out better in ink.

On the movies:

Man I hate that it took me so long to realize that I really love horror movies. I remember not enjoying them at all as a kid/tween, I think I just had to grow into it? I have a whole separate essay on why I think that is but we’ll save that one for later. The point is this was my first time seeing most of these and it was really awesome to dig into the, like, ~popular classic horror canon~ like this, 12/10 very fun. (Not that I covered all of it by any means, there’s already a big list of ones I didn’t get to that just keeps growing, and now that I have a better idea of what I like I can be smarter about picking them next time, and I didn’t even scratch the surface of some subcategories of horror that I’d be really interested to check out, especially international stuff/ not just american big screen stuff, and, and, )

I can’t just pick favorites like a normal person so here’s way too many words about some that stood out for me, I have many opinions and no one can stop me so buckle up

I’m having a really hard time picking a scariest movie, but I the things that I ended up finding scary sort of surprised me. Like the super heavy gore/violence stuff wasn’t so much scary as just gross. A few that did stand out as scary for me were Us (jesus christ Lupita please have mercy you’re too good at this) and It Follows (I was so on edge just Watching the background extras trying to guess where the monster was, I thought the amount of tension in that was really impressive). Actually, anything that leaned on crafting tension in a skillful way and letting the horror come from Wrongness and Anticipation instead of just straight violence was chefs kiss, lovely, totally my jam. If I could build a house and live in the 3 seconds between the moment you know a jumpscare is coming and the moment when it actually hits, I would.

Prettiest movie award goes to Suspiria (1977). I would print out almost any frame of this thing and hang it on my wall, I’m just head over heels for the whole ~look~ and the architecture and the sets and the cOLORS oh the colors I’m in love. I actually watched it really early in the month, it might have even been September? but I didn’t want to draw it yet because it would have been a  crime to do anything related to that movie in black and white and I was kinda intimidated by including full color paintings for this project at the time. Runner ups for prettiest go to Caligari (which was like finding an old picture of a great-great-grant-relative and being like holy shit that looks exactly like my uncle I see where the rest of the family gets those looks, but in this case your uncle is like. Every Tim Burton/ Henry Sellick / whimsical-gothic aesthetic thing ever) and Coraline (Laika Studios owns my entire heart).

Best special effects is probably The Thing. GOD why did we as a society ever move away from super detailed hand crafted practical effects gore. You just know some assistant's whole job was to lovingly mist all the gooey bits down with a spray bottle to get it absolutely perfect. That shit is a work of art, I would want the two melted together faces as a sculpture to have in my house if the effects weren’t so good that I genuinely felt a little sick a few times watching this. Honorable mention to Alien for the same reasons.

Award for “didn’t scare me much but did make me deeply sad” goes to Carrie, with The Witch (VVitch?) as a runner up. Making me sad is also like, a valuable emotional response for a piece of art to cause and these were cathartic in their own way, but fuck man. A story that goes “young girl did not sign up for nor deserve any of this and does not catch a single break” are such downers for me. Something something I too was (am?) a weird little girl (tm) and these are My People, so I’m adopting them all as my baby sisters now and taking them out for ice cream and driving them to therapy

Best theme song/ soundtrack goes to Reanimator. This is a controversial choice by the judge (me) when the other nominees include Us, The Shining, and two entire John Carpenters, but I have not been able to get Reanimator’s funky little woodwind bop out of my head for days now. It has absolutely no right to fuck so hard. I rewatched the opening credits like 3 times just so I could hear it again, it ended up on my On Repeat playlist on spotify this week, girl help it’s literally still stuck in my head as we speak

Anyway the more I talk about this the more confident I feel in saying, see you next year for this again. But almost definitely on a smaller scale because jesus I am so tired

[notesbymari]

today i decided to start again a productivity challenge! this time i’m gonna attempt to do the 100 days of productivity challenge

---- rant ahead ----

due to being quarantined for 8 months, family issues, and the way bigger workload uni has imposed on us during online learning (like squishing a 22-week long subject in 10 weeks just because the professors want to, even though the online semester lasts around 14 weeks), i’ve been lacking motivation all year long. 

we finally have the keys to our new home, but it’s not legally ours yet, cause the current owner never finished the paperwork to register the house on the city hall’s records, and the city hall has been stalling to finish the paperwork for 5 months (the deadline was in 3 months) without any explanation.

plus, we discovered a lot of problems on the house, including on things that we had actually really liked and that contributed to us choosing this house - the bathrooms were good, there was wood-flooring, closets for everyone. now we’re gonna renovate 2 bathrooms (one by choice, the other by necessity), and we found out there are termites in the wood from a whole floor + a few doors and all the closets, so we’re gonna have to put new tiles all over one floor, the garage and the backyard, change a few doors, review all the windows, and build new closets...

so not only we have been waiting for 5 months to actually sign the papers for the house to be ours, but now we have 2-3 months of renovations ahead before we can move in, and we have to spend a ton of money fixing a house that is not even legally ours yet (that or wait for the paperwork and move in almost in 2022)

and, to top all of that, there is the living arrangments with my grandma. after 4, almost 5 months of sleeping in my grandma’s house every other day, alternating with my mom (which affected us greatly, cause our family time was always at night, and suddenly we stopped having time together at night for 4 months, the morale here at home was really low, and mom and dad fought all the time), my grandma accepted to sleep a few nights here at home. at first it was only one night, but now we have convinced her to stay 3 nights a week. it’s been around 4 months since she started to sleep here, she’s been staying in my room and i’ve been staying with my sister in hers. 

the thing is, now we know that we still have 2-3 months before we go to the new house, but my mom doesn’t thing my grandma will accept coming to sleep here everyday until then (she basically already lives here, we spend the whole day here, but mom has to go with her at night to sleep in her house and at each morning for her to shower there.

having to carry my stuff (sleeping stuff and study stuff) in and out of the room everyday was killing me emotionally, specially since i have online classes, i stay up until late doing stuff, and my grandma goes to sleep relatively early....so i was already willing to just move out of my room, even though having my own space is really important for my mental health....now i finally moved definitely to my sister’s room (my stuff is still in mine, but all the sleeping and studying stuff is in my sister’s), and i’ve been trying to have good days more often

---- end of rant ----

please ignore all of that if you want to, i just need to complain to someone and get it off my chest. this was all for me to list all the reasons i’ve been able to do nothing productive the past few weeks.

on a good note (and also a time-consuming one), i adopted a cat! it was kind of on impulse, cause on christmas my cousin suddenly appeared with a cat for her, and at that point i was in such a bad place emotionally and in my mental health, that seeing her with a cat (which has been my dream for a few years now) kind of broke me a little....

a week later my aunt said that the lady that gave her the cat had another female one, and i took her! totally on impulse, it was not the best time to adopt a cat (with all the house and living arrangments stuff), but she’s here already for a week and a half, and we’re loving it! this was the main reason for me to move out of my room to my sister’s, cause i’m raising her with me, and it would be too stressful for her and for me if we were to change rooms everyday (which would include move the cat’s stuff all the time, and that could confuse her) 

her name is Miso (as in the japanese fermented soy paste), and here she is in the photo! she’s almost 2 months and a half.

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january 12th 2021, tuesday - 1/100 days of productivity

now to the actual productivity challenge! today i:

studied one unit from an online course i’m taking on anemia

watched an episode of “legend of fei”

read 58 pages of “ink”, by amanda sun

studied a topic on week 3 of coursera’s “sistematic reviews and meta-analysis” course, by UNICAMP

did a sketch of what i want my closet to look like

[luvknow]

in another lifetime | kim woojin

genre: ceo/iron man!kim woojin x secretary!reader | ceo au ; superhero au ; alcohol mention ; blood mention summary: you and your boss were inseparable. no one could understand how you could work ungodly hours for such an inexperienced ceo. but your job was to stick by mr. kim for as long as you were getting paid, and that meant being his date to charity balls and helping him turn into the country’s best superhero. wc: 18.9k

Secretary was your title, but you liked to think you were more than just that. Perhaps secretary was just an umbrella term for amateur sommelier slash novice multitasker slash the only employee who knew how to drive stick. Whatever your job entailed, you were sure to list all of those tasks in your updated resume when it was time to pass the torch onto some other poor sucker because you would much rather die than be a secretary for life.

It wasn’t like your boss was a total ass, or anything. That was actually the scary part - the fact that your boss was one of the kindest and most attentive people you’ve ever worked for, yet you still hated this job! What made this so horrid was the amount of walking and running your poor feet had to do. And guess what? No sneakers were allowed in the office, so you were left with walking over forty-thousand steps in a day in toe-pinching sole-aching glossy shoes that were half a size too big for your feet because shoes like these always ran out in your size in the store.

“Good morning, Mr. Kim,” you greeted, walking into his private office at 8:00 am on the dot as normal. With tired eyes, he looked up from his stack of blueprints and gave you a warm smile. You don’t know how he does it, but he always managed to welcome your morning visits with a smile that almost made you consider your resignation. “Iced americano, extra shot.”

“You are a blessing,” he praised graciously. One sip of the liquid gold was enough to wake him up right away.

“Long night?”

“Yeah. You know how it took us hours to decide the wall colors for each floor in our building? Imagine doing that all over again, but for a superhero suit prototype.”

“But it’s just a suit this time, not fifty floors.”

“This isn’t just a suit, _____. It’s the suit of a man who’s going to save the world one day! A suit that everyone will lay their eyes on and judge me for my color choices.”

“You sound like a child.”

“An ambitious child, mind you.”

“Did you ultimately decide on a color?”

“Yes, two colors actually. Red and gold.”

“Wow, such a loud and loyal color choice.”

“Is it?” Your handsome boss pouted slightly while scanning his designs. “Seungmin said the same thing. Maybe I should change it -”

“No!” you interrupted for the sake of not wanting to look up Pantone’s thousands of shades of ruby and champagne. “Red and gold are perfect for you.”

Woojin’s pouty lips melted into a proud smile. “If you believe so, then I trust you. Come take a look - what do you think of it overall?”

You walked around his ginormous custom-made walnut desk to peer over his shoulder. Woojin could smell the familiar gardenia scent you wore for years and it immediately brought comfort to his panicking soul. Somehow your presence always calmed him down, no matter what stressful situation he was in. Maybe that’s why he wanted to have you around 24/7. How selfish of him.

Your couple minutes of silence were so agonizing that his nervous foot-tapping habit he told you about that he thought he got rid of in college broke through, which was your cue to answer.

“I like it. I like it a lot, actually,” you admitted honestly. “I would definitely feel safe if I saw you come to my rescue, although the helmet is a little concerning.”

“Concerning how?”

“Well, it has such a… A, uh… How do I put this politely? A dead expression?”

“‘Dead’ is a polite adjective to you?”

“I mean come on, Mr. Kim, there are two eyes and a flat line for the mouth where the corners curve downwards just slightly and it looks like you gave him little fangs. There’s not much life in the eyes, either.” 

“They light up when the suit is on!”

“Maybe I’ll like it more when I see it in person?”

“The helmet is the only thing I’m confident about, so nothing and no one can change my mind,” he said stubbornly.

“I’m sure everyone will love it,” you reassured while smoothing out the stress wrinkles on his indigo shoulder pads. “When do you plan on starting the build?”

“In half an hour.”

“What!?” Woojin nearly spit out his espresso at your yelping and the frantic way you sifted through your massive planner and scrolling through your emails on your phone at the same time. Oh, so that’s what he forgot to tell you! He knew something felt off. “B-B-But I didn’t get an email that the shipment arrived!”

“I called the company at five in the morning just as they opened and demanded an expedited shipping of all the materials and they’ll be arriving in half an hour.”

“But did the quality department approve of the materials? Or your design at least?”

“You do know I’m the CEO, right?” Woojin smirked teasingly. “That’s business talk for ‘fuck Quality’.”

Woojin stood up from his black velvet Chesterfield chair to escape your nagging and briskly walked away towards God-knows-where. Like an obedient, push-over puppy, you trailed closely behind with a light jog and all you could think about was how it was too early for your feet to be aching this badly.

“I don’t like the idea of this,” you said firmly.

“You never do. Loosen up a little, will ya?”

“I will not! I looked the other way when you decided on signing a contract to collaborate with that ugly luxury car brand, I agreed with the proposal of a new smartphone that totally flopped in the end, and I barely allowed the approval for the development of the new branch in Taiwan! All of those ideas are whatever, arbitrary even, but this? This puts you at the front line of danger, Mr. Kim! What if something goes wrong, or the material is compromised? What if these companies take you for a fool for not checking in with the quality department first? What if you’re setting yourself up to be sabotaged, huh?”

Woojin pressed the down button on the elevator, ignoring your pleas. Even though all you do is nag and play by the rules, he knew you were only doing so because he didn’t bother to. In the end, you were just looking out for him, and he couldn’t appreciate you more.

His gives you what he thought was a reassuring smile. To you, it looked rather mischievous “Lucky for me that you’ll be there the whole time, right?”’

“What do you mean…?”

“I mean you’ll watch the entire suit being built while you work. Then you’ll see how safe it is. I need someone to double check me, anyways.”

“Mr. Kim, I don’t think I’m qualified for that.”

“Don’t be silly, of course you are!”

Your engineering experience went as far as Physics I and II classes with a teaspoon’s worth in basic circuitry, so if Woojin thought that qualified you to double check his work, then you might have to question his PhD degree.

The elevator welcomed you both into its vacant container. The lowest level this elevator could reach with a single button was the basement, but if the right person (or the wrong person) were to dial the buttons in the order of 4-4-1-9, they would be taken nine floors below the basement to the rumored ‘Super Office’ (ten was too much because Woojin didn’t like the feel of the heavy pressure and eight was such a silly number).

The steel doors opened right into his Super Office which he designed to be five times larger than his executive office so he had plenty of room for building up new car designs and bringing his super suits to life for both him and his partners. His successful designs that were once worn but are now retired were placed on mannequins and stored inside a tall glass box on display for him to admire.

You walked up to your favorite one, eyes sparkled adoringly at Seungmin’s first Spider-Man suit.

“You always loved the red and blue,” Woojin noted behind you. “Still not a fan of the black one?”

“The black one is scary! No one wants a hero dressed in all black, like that color does not exude the feeling of safe.”

“Duly noted for his next suit.”

Beside Seungmin’s old spidey suit was an empty display case you assumed was meant for this final draft of Woojin’s Iron Man suit. Surrounding the two glass cases were dozens and dozens of wood and plastic demos that didn’t work out in the end, but Woojin didn’t have the heart to take them to the dumpster.

“Looks like the shipment arrived early!” Your mature but easy-going boss jogged up to the piles of wooden crates and packages that were laid out neatly in the center of his work space. Without much patience, he took off his indigo suit jacket, tossed it to the side like it wasn’t worth two thousand dollars (to which you caught before it hit the ground), and took the crowbar on top of the pile to open the cases with ease. Sheets of metals, different tools, and a cool welding and soldering set scattered along the concrete floor. Woojin gave you an excited grin that mimicked a child upon opening gifts on Christmas. “Let the building commence!”

There wasn’t room for any argument, so you took a seat at his desk where he normally would sketch the designs and worked off of his desktop with a heavy feeling of defeat. At least watching the process would be cool, right?

Maybe cool wasn’t the right word. Or watching.

For the next three months, from sunrise to sunset, you spent your day nine floors below the surface for almost twelve hours a day being his little helper. From holding pieces of metal in place while he flame torched them together to feeding him take out because his hands were covered in oil, you did it all and God, if Woojin didn’t give you a raise or at least some meal tickets to the executive cafeteria, you might just quit on the spot.

“Done.” With a heavy and exhausted sigh, Woojin clapped his hands together and marveled at his nearly-finished product. “We’re done!!”

“What about the red and gold paint?”

“I can’t work on this anymore or I’ll implode. I’ll just take this to my car guy and he’ll paint it exactly how I want it.”

“Not really a self-made suit then, is it?” you dared to challenge your boss.

He pointed an accusing finger at you. “Shut your mouth and give me my food.”

You handed a slouching Woojin his box of take-out and wooden chopsticks. While you had a perfectly comfortable ottoman he could have sat on right next to you, he remained on the cold concrete, probably too sore and worn out to even stand up, let alone walk to a cushioned seat. Woojin was a man with personality and many faces, but his face of satisfactory upon completing projects was when he was the most handsome. For a while, you two just sat in silence, taking in every detail of the flawless silver suit while slurping noodles. 

“So,” Woojin began nervously. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful, Mr. Kim,” you say immediately.

“You mean it?”

For someone so intelligent and talented, it was a wonder how a man like him could be insecure about any of his creations.

“Absolutely,” you reassured. “Flawless. Is it fully programmed and everything?”

“Yup. I installed the software and artificial intelligence last week.”

“Sounds like the only thing you need to do is take it out for a spin.”

Woojin hummed with approval. “... Can you do it for me?”

“What!? No!”

“I really don’t want to do it…”

“With all due respect, please suck it up.”

“Isn’t it reasons like this why I hired you?”

“I was hired to be your secretary, not your lab rat.”

“To be fair, the job description was pretty vague.”

“Yeah, I definitely did not expect to be helping you construct a modern Knight in Shining Armor cosplay.” After wiping your mouth clean of all MSG and soy sauce, you tossed your dirty napkin in the trash bin that was a considerable distance away.

Woojin followed suit, who was also able to get his napkin in the can. Then you tossed another napkin, and then him, and this went on until you were left to toss your boxes and chopsticks. The real challenge was tossing the plastic wraps of the fortune cookies.

“Whoever loses has to do whatever the other says,” Woojin proposed.

Without hesitation, you nodded in agreement. “Fine, but I will not test that thing out if I lose.”

“Deal. Secretaries first.”

You did your best to crumple up and squish out any air that was left in the wrapped before whipping it like you were throwing the first pitch. The wrapper hit the rim of the can and fell to the side. But that’s ok, because there was no way your boss could even come close to -

“WOO!” Woojin cheered, getting up from the floor while you were left slumped in the chair filled with defeat. Of course, whatever he wanted, he would get his way. “Man, I am super lucky today.”

“What the hell! Did you wrap it around a stone or something!?”

“Darling, I would never cheat ~”

“There’s no use in arguing. Just lay the consequences on me, boss.”

Woojin scooted the ottoman closer - almost a little too close. Then, like a handsome little goldendoodle with his swooshy caramel hair and sparkling eyes, he gazed up at you pleadingly before offering you your punishment.

Fear and flattery tickled your spine. “Spit it out.”

A grin followed. “You will accompany me to the ball next week.”

“The Children’s Charity Ball? The biggest charity ball of the century? The one where all the white-haired big shots attend with their dates who just barely turned eighteen?”

“The very same.”

“And you want me to be your date.”

“Yes.”

“Seems a bit lazy, doesn’t it?”

“Lazy how!?”

Not wanting him to see you blush, you began cleaning up the mess from the takeout. “Lazy as in why not find a real date? You know, someone you’ll have a good time with.”

“Hey, I always have a good time with you! And I’m doing you a favor if you think about it. If I wanted to bring anyone else, that would mean you’d have to flip through all of my contacts and have you choose the perfect date for me. So unless you want the extra overtime, I’ll expect to see you dressed to the nines?”

“Don’t you want to bring someone more suited for this role? Someone with much more finesse and elegance?” you said as you twirled dirty napkins in the air.

“If I’m being honest, I do not have the time nor do I want to put in the effort into bringing someone so bland.”

“Who says they’re bland? What if I pick out one of your supermodel friends or like a professor, or something?”

“All my supermodel friends like to toke up in bathrooms and what’s a professor going to do? Lecture me to death? _____, please, I am begging you - be my date? You know you and I are going to have a blast, I promise you. We always do when we’re together.”

A moment of silence passed while you shuddered in disgust. You couldn’t believe you were going to say this, but…  “So what should I wear?”

“Yes! That’s the spirit! Wear anything besides velvet because that’s my fabric of choice.”

“Can you at least do the picking for me? We should at least match in the slightest.”

Woojin let out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, fine, I’ll do all the work.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, Mr. Kim.”

“It’s what I do best.”

After cleaning up the mess and a last quick polish on the Iron suit, the two of you took the elevator to the level below the basement where Woojin parked his favorite fancy shmancy foreign sports car you couldn’t pronounce. In its shiny and spotless all-white glory sat his coup in his executive parking spot where no other car or person was in sight.

“Quite showy for you, isn’t it?” you accused your normally toned-down boss.

“I had a hunch that today was going to be the day we finished, and low and behold, we did. Soojung the Spyder always brings me good luck,” he patted and praised his prized roadster.

The distance from the office to your apartment was a solid forty-five minutes away by public transportation, right on the edge of being not TOO far, but not close enough, but by car it was only twenty-five minutes. During your first couple of years with the company, you enjoyed the lonely rides and getting lost with your thoughts, but there were moments you got so lost that you missed your stop a couple too many times and sometimes the winter made waiting outside so unbearable. It wasn’t until you started to clock in tons of overtime that Woojin was nice enough to drive you home from then on.

--

“C’mon, _____, just get in the car,” Woojin begged for the twelfth time, holding the passenger door open with one hand and an umbrella with the other. He parked his car illegally right in front of the bus stop that so many other employees used. Why did it matter that you were using it while it was thunderstorming and past 10:00 PM? “The heat is escaping the longer we argue.”

“It’s fine! I don’t live too far away,” you lied. “Please go home, Mr. Kim, your puppy must be worried sick.”

“Hazelnut can wait, but I can’t. As your boss, I order you to get in my car!” Though the statement was serious with his booming voice, his pouty lips made it much less intimidating.

“With all due respect, I have clocked out for the day and I don’t have to listen to you until 7:00 am tomorrow.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me break the law.”

“What do you mean?”

The blinding lights of the bus flashed irregularly, a polite way of telling Woojin to get the fuck out of the way. But he didn’t move in the slightest. He patiently waited for you by the passenger door, not moving a muscle and looking like a car model dressed in his long, warm and tan pea coat.

“Mr. Kim, get out of the way!”

“Not until you’re in my car,” he shook his head stubbornly. “The bus is getting closer ~”

Your anxiousness hiked up exponentially when the driver held the horn long and loudly, not looking like they had much patience in them and indicating that they were very, very annoyed. For the sake of not inconveniencing the butt-load of passengers and the driver and securing your job, you hurried into his car, cursing up a storm that rivaled the one outside. A triumphant and smirking Woojin followed suit and sped away at a dangerous speed, perhaps breaking a second law that night. For those twenty-five minutes (or maybe it was fifteen with Woojin’s driving), the car was silent because your reckless boss focused on cutting every civilian off on the highway and you were too busy covering your eyes in fear.

--

“You were so dramatic back then,” Woojin snickered at the seemingly-harmless memory.

“Me!? You were the one who parked in front of a bus stop and begged me to get in!”

“You were the one who wouldn’t get in the damn car!”

“How does it look to on-lookers that a secretary is getting into her boss’s car!?”

“It’s not like anyone knows our relationship.”

“Oh please, someone like you driving a beautiful shiny car picking up sad ol’ me at the bus stop - of course on-lookers may not know me and my relationship to you, but they definitely know who you are at the very least.”

“I could not give more than zero fucks of what people think.”

“Yes, that much is clear.”

“_____, you can’t always worry about what everyone thinks ~”

You sighed loudly, as if you’d explained this to him a thousand times already. “Worrying is the basis to my entire title, Mr. Kim.”

“And will you drop the ‘Mr. Kim’ once and for all? We’re the same age!”

“Same age, but different titles and a massive pay gap. You and I are not equals.”

Woojin reached over to mess up your hair. “You’re so formal, it’s so cute!”

“Ah, stop it! You’re swerving!!”

Woojin had dropped you off and walked you up to your apartment more times than you can count, but you don’t think you’ll ever get over the embarrassment of your humble abode. Of course you’ve visited his mansion just as many times, since you participated in the designing of it, and him having to see such a sad home in comparison is, well, terrifying each and every time.

“Ok, bye,” you dismissed quickly.

A handsome laugh escaped your handsome boss’s lips. “Still hate having me so close to your home? You know, it’s quite rude you’ve never invited me in and yet you’ve been in mine hundreds of times!”

“My home doesn’t have marble statues or glass refrigerators and I can’t hire you to redesign the interior.”

“You know I don’t care about that stuff!”

“But I do!”

He pouted slightly once more. “What a shame. I thought we were friends.”

“We are, but friends don’t break sensitive boundaries.”

He passively waved you off. “Fine, fine. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.”

“Excellent. I have one request.”

It was your turn to pout. What could he possibly want this time? “Already? At least let me sleep peacefully.”

“It’s nothing complicated, I promise! In fact, it’ll save you thirty minutes. Don’t bring me my coffee tomorrow.”

“Don’t? Are you on a caffeine cleanse again? You know how badly that went last time - you barely lasted two days and you fired someone, to which I had to convince you for forty minutes to hire them back.”

“No, not a cleanse. Just come in a bit earlier. Let’s get coffee together.”

“Do you have time for that?” Knowing how packed Woojin’s schedule was in the mornings, you wondered his sanity for making time just so the two of you could grab a cup.

“I’ll make time. Actually, you’ll make time. Can you pencil us in for some coffee?”

“U-Uh, yeah!” With nervous and shaky hands, you pulled out your work phone and squeezed in half an hour of coffee time. “Done.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Don’t be reckless driving home.”

“No promises.”

Before going into your apartment complex, you watched Woojin wave goodbye before blasting music with a deep bass and speeding off, leaving a smokey trail from burning rubber.

“I hate him,” you smiled to yourself.

--

“I hate him,” you said to yourself upon walking into Woojin’s office.

Like an artificially intelligent robot that didn’t know of its purpose, Woojin dressed in his Iron suit walked around his office doing regular office things, like dusting the blinds and tidying up loose papers on his desk. It was a little difficult to do smaller tasks with his stiff and massive iron hands, so you’re not entirely sure what your boss was doing.

“G’morning!” he greeted cheerfully. “Just taking this baby out on a test drive.”

You had just noticed the paint job was completed on the suit which meant that it was good to go. However, you didn’t think this was the ideal way to ‘test drive’ a superhero suit. 

“Good morning, Mr. Kim. Is this really the right way to test drive?”

“I got too excited when my car guy told me it was done. He did it so quickly and precisely, too. Look, he even engraved it with my signature! She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

“Yes, very shiny. The gold and red are much prettier than I imagined.”

“Right!? Not too Gryffindor-y, is it?”

“Not at all,” you said sincerely. “Do you want to get coffee now? We should hurry, you have a conference call at 8:00.”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Woojin followed you to the door with a trail of heavy iron steps. You turned around quickly and gave him an incredulous look, one he’s seen much too often. “I don’t want coffee anymore.”

“Why not!?”

“I’m not going out in public with you wearing that thing! You look ridiculous!”

“That’s so rude of you to say about my pride and joy! This also took me thirty minutes to put on!”

“Mr. Kim, we’re just getting coffee!”

“You are not fun at all.”

It took only five minutes to get your boss stumbling out of the suit because the button for the release was hidden under a metal panel on his wrist, but at least it was painless.

“I thought you didn’t want to reveal Iron Man until you tested it and got your seal of approval?” you asked the child-like man.

“That’s still the plan, but I’m just so excited! I think we should test it tonight.”

“Tonight? Already?”

“Yup, and I need you here with me in case I die, or something.”

“And to think I was gonna relax and take a bubble bath tonight.”

“It won’t take long, I promise.”

“I’ll believe it when I drop my bath bomb in my tub.”

In your whole time working here, you’ve spent more time together with Woojin at both the office and at his home than working alone. The ratio was about seventy-five percent at the office, fifteen percent at his home, and ten percent miscellaneous, like going to business lunches or simple walks to the coffee shop like today. The long work hours were brutal on your feet and your social life, but the money was way too good to pass. You swore you broke the world record for ‘quickest payment of student debt’ with your hard work.

To anyone else, your job sounded so unappealing that no amount of money could ever convince them to do what you’re doing. ‘So brave’, they tell you, but it’s not that you’re brave, it’s that you’re loyal and as much as you hate to say it, you had the best boss. Yes, he’s a little goofy and yes, maybe a bit naive because he’s so young, but he treated you like you’re his equal and not someone so beneath him who takes all of his notes and takes his laundry to be dry cleaned. Plus when he compensated for your time so handsomely, how could you hate your job? Every day was new and exciting when you were with Woojin.

The day went along as normal, from conference calls to lunch and finishing the day with an interview with the press. The very second everyone clocked out at 5:00 pm, you followed a speedy boss to wherever he led you.

“Are we going to test it out now?”

“No, silly, it’s still too bright out! We have to test it once the sun sets.”

You knew that sounded too good to be true. You held a light jog in order to keep up with him. “Where are we going then?”

He turned and gave you a suspicious grin. “Shopping!”

“For what!?”

“You and I need matching outfits for the charity ball, remember?”

“You know, I was just kidding when I said that… We don’t have to match…” The last thing you want is for someone to mistake you as your boss’s date instead of his secretary, but to be fair you don’t know many guests going that bring anyone that isn’t a date, so you kind of shot yourself in the foot when you didn’t make that shot into the trash bin.

“We are matching and I am not arguing with you.”

A defeated sigh escaped your lips before entering the backseat of Woojin’s car where his driver would take us anywhere he pleased. He told him a cross section that sounded familiar, but not enough for you to guess where you’re going, so from here on out until you were home taking a hot bath, the rest of today would be a surprise. 

The car stopped in front of a glossy black DIOR building. You expected nothing less from Woojin.

“You would pick Dior,” you scoffed, completely amazed at how someone so rich could have so much brand loyalty to one company.

“Hey, they are consistent and beautifully crafted, don’t judge me.”

“Mr. Kim and Lovely _____!” An older, graceful lady came running to greet both of you with a warm smile dressed in a hot red shade of lipstick. You recognized her voice to be the owner from all the times you called to ask about any pieces Woojin could reserve before they hit the runway and were snatched up by the ‘I Have Daddy’s Credit Card and Inheritance’ private-school boys. This was your first time seeing her in person and her calming voice matched her mature appearance perfectly. “This piece has been waiting for you ~”

“I can’t wait, Auntie,” he smiled back graciously like an obedient nephew rewarded with cookies.

She led the two of you to the very back where the private dressing and tailoring area was, where the mirrors went from the floor to the ceiling. The store owner walked in with Woojin’s fabric of choice, a velvet jacket with crisp black pants and a white button-up that had the slightest sheen of silver from metallic strands woven into the shirt fabric. In the shadows, one would think the velvet was black, but in the light or at certain angles, there was the slightest sheen to it that showed the darkest shades of indigo and green, like an oil slick. You couldn’t believe the amount of detail in the velvet that your eyes looked like they were popping out of your sockets.

Your boss was so eager to try it on that he was taking off his pants before you were warned. Quickly you turned around and shut your eyes, pretending that you didn’t see his KakaoTalk-patterned boxer briefs.

“M-M-Mr. Kim! At least warn me if you’re going to strip!!”

“Sorry ~” he apologized unapologetically.

A couple of zips and rustling of fabrics later, Woojin tapped your shoulder to turn around. Your eyes bulged out of their sockets again while looking at your boss dressed in a suit that was clearly made for him and him only. It didn’t look like any tailoring was needed at all! He looked like he walked right off the runway. There had to be some enchantment spell in the fabric because you swear you’ve never seen any man more handsome before this moment.

“I take it you like it?” Woojin teased.

Your cheeks tickled with red when he caught you staring. “You look amazing as usual, Mr. Kim.”

“You think so?” You knew so. “It’s not too flashy, is it?”

“Not at all. I think you have the perfect amount of flash. How does it feel?”

“Like a glove. It’s already perfectly tailored!”

“I know your measurements by heart, my dear,” Auntie bragged. “Of course I had it ready to go already.”

“You’re the best.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug. “What would I be without you?”

“Not GQ’s best dressed man under thirty, that’s for sure.”

“Could you do me another favor? Do you perhaps have something for _____ to match? We have a charity ball next weekend.”

“Mr. Kim, this is really unnecessary -”

“I know exactly what to pull.”

Before you could object, Auntie ran to the back of the store where all the hidden inventory was held. You glared at your cheeky boss, still dressed in his sexy outfit and it was hard to keep your glare when he looked so damn good, that handsome bastard.

“I’m not wearing whatever she brings out.”

“You will and you’ll look great and we will buy it, so don’t embarrass me.”

“Embarrass you!? I am not your doll!”

“I’ve got it!”

Both you and Woojin whipped your heads to see Auntie running in with a blacker than black satin and silky outfit that was simple but elegant. Nervous goosebumps spread through your arms and straight to your wallet. You already knew this was going to be the most expensive outfit you’ve ever worn.

“It’s beautiful,” you gasped so slightly.

“Try it on!”

Woojin followed Auntie out of the dressing room but not before shooting you a triumphant wink. I mean, who were you to deny your boss and the store owner, right? So with ease, you put on the cooling fabric that clung to your body in all the right spots. The mirror did all justice and perhaps it was a magical mirror that Dior spent millions on to convince their customers to buy everything because damn, you look hot! With your face as red as Woojin’s Corvette, you presented the outfit to the two judges.

“Oh, it fits perfectly!” Auntie gushed with wide eyes.

Woojin stayed silent with his mouth ajar and eyes scanning you up and down like you were a precious gem discovered in a deep cave beyond a waterfall. It was hard to differentiate between feeling flattered and feeling like object, but at least you were a desired object, right?

“You look amazing,” Woojin admitted sincerely, no longer looking at you with awe and rather content.

“Really? I look ok?”

His handsome smile shined brightly at you. Whether you were dressed in your formal work clothes that screamed ‘absolute virgin’ or you were head-to-toe in Dior, you were never just ‘ok’. You always had the attention of everyone in the room once you walked in, especially his. You were always stunning, no matter what. Validation from your boss always came easy and calmed you quickly because he only had eyes for you.

“You look just fine,” he lied, because ‘fine’ didn’t come close to how you looked to him.

“We’ll be the best dressed at the ball, huh?”

“Absolutely.”

The car ride home was quiet other than the trot music playing on the radio from the driver’s playlist. Woojin seemed as cool as a cucumber, but you were at the edge of your seat feeling a bit awkward and ugh, unintentionally sweaty. Compliments from any man was one thing, but coming from your boss? A whole different level of weird, especially if they weren’t work related! What did ‘you look just fine’ even mean!? Was that a good thing? Were you too average-looking? Whatever it was, from now until you fall asleep at ungodly hours, those words were going to circulate your thoughts, perhaps haunt you for days.

At exactly 7:03 pm, just as the sun set below the horizon revealing the indigo night sky, the driver pulled up to the back entrance of the building that led to a secret elevator that would take you straight to the underground office after punching in the code. A giggling and grinning Woojin was the first to hop out of the car and ran towards the door.

“Mr. Kim, hold on!” you whined as you struggled to get out of the tall car.

“Hurry up, _____! Now’s the perfect time to earn that OT!”

“This time-and-a-half pay better be worth it…”

Upon entering the elevator, you were ready to punch in the 4419 code, but Woojin had already pressed the button to the top level, which led to the roof slash helipad.

“Why are we going up?”

“We can’t test the suit inside, silly. Seungmin came by earlier to pick up his suit after I recalibrated it last night and I asked him to take the suit to the roof.”

“How, that thing weighs like a ton!”

“Not when you’re wearing it.”

“You let him wear it before you test drove it!? Mr. Kim, that’s extremely reckless!”

“Relax, I trusted he wouldn’t mess anything up, and look! It’s right there!”

The glass elevator made a slow stop to reveal the red and gold suit standing proudly in the center of the helipad. As soon as the doors panned open, Woojin handed you his suitcase before running out and tossing his blazer onto the floor before hastily stepping into the suit.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, running back to your frazzled state. He took the leather suitcase from your hands and popped it open so he could give you a glass tablet. “This is for you.”

You looked at the shiny slab of glass with wonder. “What is it?”

“It’s like a control center. You’ll see what I see in terms of my stats and where I am in the city. If anything goes wrong, like say the jets give out, I need you to send a command to manually turn on the back-ups.”

“And what code is that?”

“Not important, we’ll study those later.”

“Later!? What if something happens tonight!?”

“Nothing will happen I promise, I’ll see you in a bit ~!” his cheering faded away the further he ran from you and to his beloved suit.

There was no use in fighting your boss, so you did as you were told and touched the tablet to reveal the control panel. It was black for a few moments before the screen showed your tiny self off in the distance looking down at the tablet which meant that Woojin was able to put on and turn on the suit super quickly without any problems.

“What do you see?” he asked you through the speakers of the tablet from his built-in microphone in the helmet.

“I see me in the distance, the battery level of the suit, and all other weird liquids and commodities at one hundred percent.”

“Perfect!”

You turned to look at your boss who was stretching and feeling out the suit as if this wasn’t his 50th time wearing it. Still, he looked so excited and proud of his hard work, it was hard to tease him about how childish he was, even if he was trying out his yoga poses he just learned. 

“How does it feel?”

“It feels incredible! Totally indescribable now that I’m out in the open. And it’s surprisingly lightweight.”

“How were you able to make it feel light with all that metal?”

“I don’t know, if I’m being honest…”

You rolled your eyes. “The work of a genius, huh?”

“You’ve got that right. Are we ready to take off?”

“I believe so. Are you ready to take off?”

“More than I’ll ever be, baby!!”

Before you knew it, you saw the camera’s view on the screen wobble and turn towards the edge of the building. Terrified, you saw your child-like boss get a running start before he dove off the edge and into the sea of the city.

In a panic, you ran and took a peak over the edge, hoping the jets or whatever kept the suit flying would operate properly and leave you without any worries. At first, Woojin was but a dark red speck falling beneath the shadows, but a second later, he came flying up at lighting speed doing tricks and flips with ease and whooping loudly, as any normal CEO of a software company slash wannabe superhero would do. You could hear him giggling through your tablet, and like a spectator watching the most spectacular aerial performance, you watched him with a smile on your lips.

After his solo, he glided back down to you and hovered beyond the edge just at your eye level. You couldn’t see any features behind the glass of his eyes so you were left awkwardly staring at his expressionless helmet with those signature weird fangs. After all you and Woojin have been through together, even with an idea like this being so ridiculously obscure, he could always rely on you to support him no matter what. He saw how your eyes sparkled with wonderment and how your cheeks dusted a soft pink and it was then that he knew you would stay by his side for even more ridiculous shenanigans to come.

He would never let you leave, anyways. Even in another lifetime, he’d have you by his side forever.

“How cool do I look right now?” he asked. His voice sounded deeper and electronic through the helmet, like he was a robot or had his voice programmed through a phone like Siri. You imagined an idea like that was how Woojin planned on becoming immortal one day.

You raised a brow. “You look kind of… scary?”

“Scary!? Why?”

“I don’t know, if I saw a flying robot come at me at rocket speed, I think I’d be terrified!”

“Well, if I come to your rescue, at least you’ll know it’s me.”

“I suppose. So what are you going to do now? Throw a reveal event? Press conference, perhaps?”

“That, or wait for a Demon-Level threat to pass through our city. I don’t know, whichever comes first.” Woojin shrugged nonchalantly. “Wanna see something cool?”

Before you could agree, Woojin held his palm to the sky before a neon blue blast shot out of it, disappearing into God-knows-where. You could feel the heat from the beam of light radiated around you and fear sparked inside your chest..

“What the hell was that!?” you exclaimed.

“Isn’t that so cool!? Gonna hit some suckers and fry them up like bacon!” Your boss blindly shot another beam of light into the sky and you prayed to someone out there that no planes would disintegrate in the process.

“Hey, careful! What if you hit a satellite or something!” In the process of grabbing Woojin’s iron hand so he’d stop being so reckless, you burned yourself upon touching the hot metal opening like a total dumb ass and yanked your hand back. “Ah!!”

“Oh, shit.”

Quickly and haphazardly, Woojin landed back on the helipad and climbed out of the iron suit. In the process of running back to your aid, he untied his black silk necktie to use as a temporary band aid on your scalding palm. Gingerly, his cold hands took yours and ran a thumb over the scarring semicircle.

“Ah ah ah stop!!” you cried with tears of pain and embarrassment streaming down your cheeks.

“Sorry! Here,” Woojin wrapped his tie around your palm and tied it tightly. The pure silk felt cooling against the burn and soon your tears stopped and you couldn’t do anything else besides sniffle. “Let’s go back inside. My office has a first aid kit.”

Your mumbling and cursing boss led you back to his office with urgency, blaming himself for being so stupid and recklessly playing with what could be considered a weapon of mass destruction. And now his favorite person, the one person who believed in his iron suit, was hurt in the process, pouting cutely and holding your burned hand like you were an injured puppy. This was one of his greatest fears upon completing this project.

You sat on his sapphire blue velvet couch with the bronze-gilded frame that looked like it belonged in the Ravenclaw common room trying to alleviate the pain of the burn in Woojin’s ice bucket (for his white wine, of course) while he shifted through his drawers to find the first aid kit you gave him a couple years ago.

“Do you remember when you got this for me?” he asked as soon as he pulled it out from the bottom drawer. You shook your head, too lightheaded and in too much pain to remember. He sat next to you and began to tell the old story while patching you up. “It was your third year working here, but my first day as CEO when I took over for my Dad. I got so many paper cuts from all the paperwork I had to read and sign and I got a massive headache afterwards and I just wanted to eat something because all I had that day was an iced americano. It was so late and by the time I was finished, it was maybe 7:00pm -”

“8:00 pm,” you corrected in between sniffles.

“Ah, so you do remember! At 8:00pm, you waltzed into my office wearing your comfiest clothes with a bag of take-out in one hand and the first aid kit with a million bandaids and Tylenol in the other. That night, you sat in my office and helped patch up my fingers, fed me lo mein, and helped me with the rest of the paperwork for two hours. I thought of you as my guardian angel since that day and vowed to myself that no matter what, you and I would stick by each other’s side and be the dynamic duo that we are forever. Oh, how the tables have turned tonight. Now I’m the one patching you up.”

Woojin had finished wrapping your palm at the end of his story. Something about his proclamation didn’t sit right with you. Something about staying here forever, clocking in massive amounts of overtime and being subservient to the same men sounded like your own personal hell.

“I can’t be your secretary forever, Mr. Kim.”

“I know,” he admitted. “But I don’t have to think about that for quite some time, right?”

“Maybe.”

“I hate change, you know.”

“I, more than anyone else, know that.”

Your handsome boss chuckled lightly at the heavy subject. His curly caramel hair covered his eyes as he looked down at your hand and traced small shapes on the bandaid. You knew that he knew you didn’t want to stay here forever, and he couldn’t blame you, but it didn’t make the thought of you leaving any less heartbreaking.

“Does it feel any better?”

“Much better,” you said truthfully as the cooling gel felt like a magical potion.

“This first aid kit is the only practical gift I’ve ever received. All others are for the aesthetic.”

“Do you prefer practical gifts, Mr. Kim?”

“Of course! The fuck am I going to do with a VVS diamond-encrusted chain?”

“Flex on all the other young CEOs?”

“And partake in their pissing contest? No, thank you.”

“You’re telling me you won’t be doing that this weekend at the Charity Ball?”

“When I have you next to me, I don’t need VVS diamonds,” Woojin grinned flirtatiously.

You hit his arm with your good hand and he flinched upon his correct prediction. “I am not an accessory!”

“Of course not! You are my beloved intelligent sidekick that all other big wigs tell me they wished they had! But when you look like that, it’s bonus points ~”

“Ugh, your kind are all the same!” you scoffed, trying to collect your things and storm out the door.

“It’s a compliment!” he teased. Woojin managed to chase after you and grab your things to carry to his car so he could drive you home for the 1106th time.

--

After a long and tiring rest of the week helping your boss do target practicing with the iron suit on, Saturday had arrived and now you had the honor of accompanying said-boss to a Big Dick contest disguised as a Charity Ball. The main event was for the sake of the children of course, but the real show was to see who was wearing what designer with what accessories and who pulled up in the fanciest sports car with the youngest and sexiest date in their arms. You were so, so lucky to be working for someone who liked to stay low key, despite always being the center of attention.

“Why are you so nervous?” Woojin teased, nudging your arm as you both walked up to the front doors of the venue. “This isn’t the first time you’ve played as my date.”

“I know, but it doesn’t get any easier,” you admitted, shyly covering yourself from the much-more revealing outfit now that it was tailored to fit.

“You and I look fine! Muted colors, minimal diamonds, low key attitudes - we’re perfect! No one will even notice we’re here.”

That was a complete lie, because the second you walked in, a swarm of gossip columnists and magazine writers circled around the two of you, bombarding you both with the same questions you were so used to.

“Mr. Kim, who are you wearing?”

“Mr. Kim, who’s your lovely date?”

“Mr. Kim, what’s the best way to lock in that your date will go home with you?”

Woojin raised his hand slightly and all that could be heard were the cameras clicking. God, the power he has… 

“Dior, a close friend, and be so irresistible that they can’t say no.”

Without another word, he gently took your bandaged hand and led you out of the circle of gossipers who were silent in awe. With your free hand, you covered up your ugly laughing.

“You’re such a cornball!” you said in between a fit of giggles.

“An irresistible cornball, at least. Now, walk me through all these people again?”

Woojin was young and when it came to networking, he still had the mentality of being the CEO’s son rather than the CEO. That meant that Woojin didn’t care much in remembering other CEO’s names and relied on you to remind him of all the people he should have remembered three years ago. It was a consistent hour of introductions and small talk about future goals, collaborations, and golfing, all of which you were able to expertly tune out while sipping prosecco and snacking on caviar tarts. Years of experience thankfully made these events easier.

“Did you practice your speech for your donation?” you reminded Woojin after taking a seat at the prestigious Table 2. Since the company was one of the Charity Ball’s biggest sponsors, the CEOs were always invited to say some manufactured speech.

“Yeah. I even practiced it in the shower. Hopefully I get the charity organization correct this time.”

“It’s amazing how you even got this far.”

The Charity Ball should have been named See Who Can Donate the Most Money Ball because every speech given by a CEO of some company tried to out-do each other. Luckily, your company’s speeches were always last and your touch of humanity written on paper always had the audience in awe with the Woojin’s compassion. To pass the time, you and Woojin played rock-paper-scissors and whomever lost had to drink champagne. Let’s just say Woojin ended up having the infamous Asian Glow.

His face was still blushy by the time it was his turn and you almost felt bad because the pictures with the flash turned on probably wouldn’t be so flattering in the magazines, but that wouldn’t matter because he still looks like the most stunning man in the room. All eyes were on him as he made his speech, but he had his eyes on you. Probably because he would piss his pants if he saw how many people were looking at him. You gave him two thumbs up for encouragement.

“It is the greatest honor to be here and giving a speech for the third year in a row. Children are the source and future for a better world, and it is our duty to -”

You blanked out for most of it since you wrote it. It was hard to focus anyways when his eyes were so piercing, so you averted his gaze and counted the number of peppercorns on his unfinished steak. At an alarming fifty-three, you glanced around the gallery to see if anyone was actually paying attention. Many, if not all, of the guests around your age were paying attention with dreamy eyes and pouty lips, all wishing they were in your position tonight. Some even dared to make eye contact with you as if to say, ‘how DARE you NOT pay attention to the sexiest man alive!?’ The older, more powerful guests seemed genuinely interested in the amount Woojin was donating and the older dates seemed to care more about their reflection on the back of a spoon.

The fattest check with a bunch of zeros was walked onto the stage. A standing ovation was in order of course, and you conformed with the crowd, even though applause always made Woojin visibly uncomfortable.

“He throws a big, fat check to charity and yet he still doesn’t like the attention, huh?”

As the clapping died down and the noise faded into the smooth hum of the live piano and jazz music, you turned to face the owner of a familiar sly voice. The man that stood before you was the famous doctor slash art collector slash playboy who you’ve come to know after attending all of these flashy events.

You smiled slyly at the man. “If it isn’t GQ’s Bachelor of the Month, Dr. Park Seonghwa.”

The raven-haired man gave you his signature smirk. Then he took your hand and kissed it tenderly like the prince he is. “Lovely _____, pleasure to see you as always.”

“Have you been doing that to all the other guests you frequent at these events?”

“Of course not! Just the beautiful ones.”

You let out a loud scoff. “You and your way with words.”

“Are they enough to convince you to finally go out to dinner with me?”

“Not quite.”

Seonghwa sighed tiredly and dropped his head as if this was the first time you’ve rejected him. Guess every time felt like the first time. The handsome raven held his hand out to you. “If not dinner, how about a dance?”

Hesitantly, you searched for your boss like you were trying to sneak away from a parent. He was busy shaking hands and catching up with The Important People’s Club, so you didn’t think one dance would hurt, though once you feed a dog a treat, he’ll be begging for more forever.

You took his hand. “One dance.”

“Five.”

“One.”

“Three?”

“Dr. Park!”

“What!? Ok, fine, one dance, unless you’re really feeling it and then we’ll dance some more.”

“Maybe in another lifetime, Dr. Park.”

The young doctor led you to the dance floor before you could object further. For someone not-so-smooth with pick-up lines, he was definitely smooth with his moves. With one gentle hand on your waist and the other holding your hand, you two glide around the white tiles like the Royalty of the ball, and truly, for a few moments, it really felt like you were the star of this fairy tale.

Seonghwa let out a tired sigh. “Intelligent, beautiful, loyal, and good at dancing? How are you so good at everything?”

“Stop that.”

“I mean it! Yet no man swept you off your feet.”

“Just because I won’t say yes to you, doesn’t mean I’m not waiting for that special someone.”

Seonghwa held your hand up high and made you do a little twirl. “You might be waiting for a while, beautiful.”

“Why do you say that?”

“With Mr. Woojin by your side twenty-five hours eight days a week, there is no man that has the courage to come in between such a strong relationship.”

“Even you?” you challenged.

“Even I. Unless you want me to -”

“Nope.”

“Ice cold heart as always…”

Song number one melted into song number two and it passed you both as you continued to discuss the hot topic of why you’re still single. It’s a conversation topic that you thought was reserved for nosy family members for you to brush off, but coming from another man who has begged for your number since you both met really put your love life into perspective. Perhaps you were too loyal to your boss…

While engulfed in the heated debate, Woojin was desperately searching for his right hand where he thought you’d be - either at your seat or by the bar, but you were at neither. After receiving his order from the bar, he let the expensive gold liquid over ice flooded through his bloodstream, which led him to a group of gawking gossipers whining and gazing at the dance floor. What was all the hype about?

The sight of you in the arms of the world’s most arrogant doctor didn’t sit too well with him. The scene made him see green.

“You’re such a liar!” Woojin heard you laugh aloud. “I did NOT give you so-called bedroom eyes at Yuta’s house warming!”

“You’re telling me you weren’t eyeing me up and down like a barbecued piece of pork belly dipped in sesame oil?”

“That’s because you had sesame oil on your white shirt!”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Woojin took another sip of his golden drink before putting it down haphazardly and waltzing towards the dancing couple. To onlookers, this scene looked like it was straight out of those cheesy love triangle dramas. The gossipy gals wondered - would Woojin punch Seonghwa? Would he grab your hand harshly and drag you away to scold you and tell you how much he cared about you? Would he kiss you!?

You saw your uncharacteristically stern-looking boss approaching, and even though you’re unsure of his intentions, you still smiled brightly, as you always did whenever you saw him. Woojin lightened his heavy, angry steps. Even with another man by your side, you still looked at him. How could he be mad at you?

“Hello, Mr. Woojin,” Seonghwa greeted, holding out a hand for him to shake. You knew your boss wasn’t the biggest fan of Seonghwa, but he politely returned the gesture anyways. Somehow you felt your heart beating in your throat - the tension on the dance floor was too high, too powerful, and you were but an awkward and nervous secretary standing on the side while two powerful men duked it out.

“Dr. Seonghwa, nice to see you again.” Woojin was good at lying, but his lies never passed you. The amount of discomfort knitted in his eyebrows almost made you snicker. “Long nights at the hospital still?”

“As always, but at least it’s rewarding and enjoyable. How are your long nights at the office?”

“Can’t get enough of them, right, _____?”

“What? You’re still doing that much overtime?” Seonghwa asked worriedly. Now, was he worried because you were overworking yourself or was he worried because you were spending so much time with a man that wasn’t him?

You shrugged unapologetically. “I love that overtime pay.”

“_____, that’s not good for your health -”

“I tell them that all the time,” Woojin interrupted defensively. He was always like this whenever anyone questioned the amount of work you had. To you, it was not much of a burden at all, but to anyone else, they couldn’t fathom your work hours but if they saw your paycheck, maybe they’d understand. Even your boss felt bad whenever your friends blamed him, but  no matter how much he tried to convince you of a normal 40-hour work week, the duties of being his secretary never added up to just that. Therefore, your boss always felt the need to defend you and him for the sake of making sure you weren’t portrayed as his slave. “But you’re just so stubborn, aren’t you?”

“Only because it’s you, Mr. Kim,” you said like you’re reading a script. Somehow that doesn’t translate through the ears of the two powerful men in front of you, as your boss smiled triumphantly and Seonghwa couldn’t help but shake his head.

“If you ever want to take me up on that date, Lovely _____, you know who to call.” The most handsome man who’s ever flirted with you took your hand gently and planted a sweet, soft kiss that sent little tingles all up your arm. You don’t think you’ll ever reciprocate his feelings, but the feeling of being desired and wanted by a man really kicked up your ego and really made you think - when was the last time you ever liked someone, or someone ever liked you?

Park Seonghwa disappeared into the crowd and perhaps left the Charity Ball all together. Until next time.

Your boss turned to face you, whose stern face quickly melted into innocence as he knew what was coming by the look on your annoyed expression. “What?”

“What was that all about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You shook your head and mumbled under your breath, “Ugh, you are unbelievable, Mr. Kim.”

As you tried to escape, the desperate man caught your hand. “Wait, where are you going?”

“Away from you for just five minutes, can you let me do that?” you snapped in a hushed volume. “Or do you need to watch over me and speak on my behalf, since you’re my Father apparently!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to act like that.”

“You say that every time, especially when I’m talking to another man and even more-so when I’m talking to Dr. Park. When will your sorries mean something?”

“You know I get protective over you.”

“Again, you are not my Father!”

“I know, but -”

All of the attention that was once focused on the handsome CEO and his secretary shifted to the glass ceiling that was now shattered to pieces upon the force of some dozens of masked strangers dressed in all black. Woojin instinctively, though harshly, forced you down so he could hover over you so none of the glass hit you. What followed seemed to be too numbing, as all of the stimuli in the banquet hall was too much to handle.

“Get down,” Woojin instructed while pushing you under one of the tables. “Don’t move until I come back.”

“Wait, but where are you -”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes!”

“Mr. Kim!”

Of course, he didn’t listen, as Mr. Kim always did what he wanted, right? Which would normally annoy the fuck out of you, but who has the time to panic about what your boss was up to when you’re stranded under the table and shrouded by cheap table cloth linen?

Since those people had invaded and fallen from the sky, you noticed that no gunshots or any sort of violence outside of melee were heard. No purpose of the attack is even known yet, but the signs were promising, until the famous alarm was heard throughout the whole town.

“Threat level: Dragon. Please stay inside until all threats have been cleared. Threat level: Dragon. Please stay inside until -”

“Ah, yes, the richest of the rich gather here today to donate the smallest percentage of their some billions of dollars to charity,” a booming voice tisked through a microphone. “Do you feel good about your good deed of the year? Are you proud of yourselves?”

For some unknown reason, the voice paused, as if waiting for an answer or a reaction from the people. Nothing was heard besides shrill screaming and crying, which was probably what the wannabe-vigilante wanted. For the first time, you peaked through the slits of the table cloth. At the stage where Woojin gave his speech was a now-broken stage with the foot of a giant robot through it. It was a very top-heavy robot that looked like it had a large cavity in its belly, whose odd shape probably served some weird purpose unknown to everyone.

“Perhaps you’ll be proud of your donations for once when we capture you all and milk you of your every last penny!” The man laughed evilly at the head of the robot. “Down with the rich!”

“Down with the rich!” his people cheered in unison.

The oddly political turn of events made the scene less jarring - it seemed like an over-exaggeration of townspeople coming together to fight for higher taxing of the rich. Then you were reminded of the Dragon-level threat by how the minions loaded up the richies with a gun pointed to their heads and the complex mechanism that loaded them up to the belly of the robot. Somewhere among the mass of people you saw Seonghwa in between another surgeon and a senior engineer at Tesla before he disappeared behind the walls of metal.

“Hey, I found another one!” someone yelled close by. “Under Table 2!”

Shit. “Fuck.”

Perhaps all those years of advance self defense classes that Woojin’s father enrolled you in would come to good use this time.

By your glamorously-strapped heel, one of the masked men dragged you out from under the table. There was no use in struggling, and the man seemed quite satisfied with how you complied.

“Let’s go, darling.”

With your free foot, you dug the pointy end of the studded heel into his groin. Luckily, you can only ever imagine how painful something like that could feel. He was in so much pain that he doubled over and let go of your foot, leaving you to flee to God-knows-where after you stole his police baton.

“Don’t fucking call me darling,” you spat as a farewell.

There were too many men in between you and the emergency exit, so you had to fight your way through like in those cheesy American action movies. A bunch of kicks in the groin here and a couple baton to the knee caps there were enough to get you by half way, but then they started double-teaming on you. Of course, this was much harder, but Senior Mr. Kim didn’t give you the best sensei in the damn nation for no reason. You felt invincible even after defeating multiple double teams, but it was the triple teaming that got you stuck. You can only kick and baton so many groins at one time until two men held each of your arms and the other stole the baton.

While struggling to break free, you managed to knee the one in front of you in the chin, causing him to cut his lip with blood dripping on his cheap leather shoes. After realizing what had happened, he punched you in the cheek as punishment. Was that a bone you heard cracking?

“Try me again, bitch,” he seethed.

Out of nowhere, your knight in Iron armor landed before the one who punched you and returned the favor, sending his body through so many walls of this building that you worried about the foundation and how long you had before it collapsed.

Woojin’s red and gold helmet swung sharply and the empty eyes were staring into the souls of your captors while at the same time not.

“Who’s next?” Woojin threatened with his super cool and inaccurately deep robotic voice.

Both men fled the scene as quickly as possible, losing their grip and throwing you to the floor. The penny taste finally registered in your brain that yes, you were definitely coughing and spitting out blood.

The cold metal of Iron Man’s hand helped you to your feet while the other cupped your quickly-bruising cheek gently. The underlying tenderness of your boss’s touch somehow healed all pain, or perhaps it was the cooling iron. Gestures like these were so foreign that you almost forgot it was your boss behind the mask and not some handsome stranger who was ready to sweep you off your feet. It was instances like these where you wished the latter was real.

“Are you ok?” he asked gingerly.

“I’m fine,” you promised. “Go save your investors.”

A light chuckle came from Iron Man. “My driver’s already waiting outside. Are you able to run?”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“C’mon, _____, now’s not the time -”

“Do not argue with me until you save everyone, Mr. Kim.”

Woojin shook his head tiredly. He knew there was no use arguing with his headstrong secretary. “You’re so stubborn. Just promise you won’t get into any trouble this time.”

“No.”

“I’m cuttin’ down on your work hours!” he yelled, blasting off to fight the giant robot thing so he wouldn’t have to hear you argue back again.

You were left with a couple of masked minions who still had the balls to attack and capture you as if you were worth more than your surprisingly above-average five-figure salary. Your copper saliva mixed with your boss trusting you enough to not die in the middle of a Dragon-level threat really pumped the adrenaline through your veins, so as one man sprinted to attack, you managed to dodge it and kick him in the throat before he could try something else. The other guy tried to sneak up behind you, but you were quicker, swinging the baton hard enough to the head to knock him out cold. The power you felt coursing through your body left you on a major high. Where were all the other minions? No way was that all…

In the middle of the banquet hall was the face-off of the century, rivaling any and all story lines from DC and Marvel combined. A tiny seven-foot-something intricately crafted and painted sheet of metal was about to fight a giant several-stories tall and several-dozen-tons heavy hunk of junk with dozens of guests they managed to scoop inside. Now how was Mr. Kim going to save the day this time?

“Kim Woojin, the man of the night,” the man controlling the ship scoffed. “You will look like my childhood favorite action figure once I stuff you in a glass box in my office! A prized treasure is what you’ll be. How does that sound?”

“Sounds kinky.” You could just sense the smirk behind his mask. “Then what will you do to me?”

“Milk you of all your assets, of course! Liquidation of its truest definition! The redistribution of wealth will come easy to the people, especially with your earnings in the mix!”

“Fine, take my money. But let these people go.”

“Absolutely not! I need all the money I can get! How do you expect me to change the distribution of wealth of the entire world with just one CEO’s salary!? Mr. Kim, I thought you knew that, silly.”

“Ok, fine. You take all of our money and then what?”

“Well, kill you, of course.”

A chorus of gasps and crying were heard from the belly of the machine.

The philosophical man continued. “People like you are the very reason there is a large pay gap. You sit on your ass drinking cocktails and eating caviar and you donate to some profiting charity only a tiny percentage of what you make while all the good hard-working people are the ones bringing the big bucks into your bank account! And what do they get? Small paychecks and four hours of sleep!”

Yeah, this guy was bad, but he had his points, so you’ll cheers to that, am I right?

“Well, then where will you get your money after that? Hm?” The captain stayed silent. “Where will you get more money to sustain this utopia? Certainly not from the hard-working people who have no experience leading or handling such a huge sum of money. And certainly not from you, right? Ha! With your five-figure salary paychecks that barely get the bills paid on time.”

A heavy arm swung to try and snatch up your boss. Though the arm was so large and heavy, Woojin barely managed to escape his grasp. By the silence of the once-chatty leader of the pack, you could tell that he was bothered by the words spat by the youngest CEO in the room. How dare Woojin mock his hard-earned pay when his earnings were given to him on a VVS diamond-encrusted platter!? There were a couple of times where he landed a couple of hits on your boss and you should feel worried, but you couldn’t help but think he deserved it. You hated to be on the enemy’s side, but you, too, were one of those five-figure salary paycheck owners that are barely scraping by with their bills. And of course you were all for the redistribution of wealth, but this guy definitely went a little too far…

You would think that the sheer size of this oddly-shaped hunk of metal wouldn’t be able to move so fast, but it managed to capture Woojin by digging its claw to the wall and sandwiching Woojin in between. He couldn’t even wiggle his way out between gaps because the THING was pressing too hard against the wall. Woojin could feel the metal bending from inside.

“People like you will never understand the worth of the dollar,” the captain seethed. “Not when stacks come to you in baskets sewn with gold and jewels commissioned by your Daddy. People like you, and everyone captured, need to be humbled a little. Maybe you all can learn a little something from the working class.”

“Then we die, is that right?”

“Of course! But at least you’ll die a hard-working man, Mr. Kim.”

“I will. But I’ll die a hard-working man with billions in my grave before I let you take a penny!”

The blue beam of light that you once cursed for burning a half circle on your palm you were now thankful for, as that beam of light shot your boss up in the air and freed him, taking a few fingers off of the hunk of metal with him. A couple more shots of incinerator beams later, and both arms of the robot had been severed and half disintegrated. Woojin kicked the glass where the leader sat and pulled out the defenseless lump of flesh that spoke the harsh truth about the wealthy. The leader was a young man who was not much older than either you or your boss, who didn’t look afraid in the slightest. Perhaps he expected, or even wanted, to go out this way - fighting for what he believed in.

The police, who had been waiting outside for all the ruckus to die down, came in and cuffed the leader and a few of his minions who cowardly hid under the tables. Woojin helped all of his investors safely come out and among the crowd you saw Seonghwa, safe and sound.

You thought after a traumatic attack that now was not the time and place to reveal who Iron Man was or even associate yourself with him, so you tried to mix in with the crowd and book it to the driver like he asked you to do before. But of course your flaunty boss wanted to do the exact opposite.

“_____, wait!”

No, no, no, no, no, what the hell! Really!? Right now!? was how Woojin read your expression as he walked to you with the suit on. When the seven-foot something Iron Man stopped before you, the face of his helmet slid open to reveal an out-of-breath Woojin. The entire banquet hall echoed with gasps.

“Are you ok? You’re not hurt, are you? Your bruise is getting worse!”

You could not feel anything on the left half of your face besides intense pain and somehow numbness at the same time and your limbs felt like jello and over-kneaded dough. But you couldn’t let your boss worry about you - he needs to take care of more important people right now. You’ll be fine come tomorrow once you sleep on a frozen bag of peas.

“I’m fine, I promise,” you said convincingly. “Looks like you have an impromptu press conference to deal with.”

To Woojin’s dismay, all of the cameras and press and the phones of his business friends captured his face inside the Iron suit next to his famous secretary that all his business friends wished they had. He knew you hated press conferences because even though you never said anything, you were always by his side and that meant the cameras were pointed at you also.

“I can deal with them. Go to the car and go home.”

“I can stay with you.”

“I won’t allow it. You need to go home and ice your face.”

“I said I -”

“I said go.”

Woojin never raised his voice at you ever because he never had a reason to. You were always hard-working and loyal and you always did everything correctly and did it with his best interest in mind. He’ll allow small things that might be detrimental to your health, like all the over time you loved to have and the unhealthy amounts of coffee you drown yourself in. But when the arm that’s supporting your body weight was shaking, your left cheek was the color of aubergine, and you had blood splatters on different parts of your body, that’s when he had to draw the line. Worry was knitted into his brows and his lips were a flat line and you only ever saw his face like this whenever he talked with his father. It was terrifying to see him almost mad at you and it made your heart sink a little that you did something wrong.

He softened his expression upon seeing your glossy eyes. “Take Monday off to rest. I’ll see you on Tuesday, ok?”

“But -”

“I’ll pay you for your time off, so don’t worry about the money. I just want you to rest. Can you do that for me?” You could only nod. “Thank you. Go home - I’ll text you when I’m done cleaning up tonight.”

Woojin plastered on his happy television face and returned to the fawning crowd and overly-thankful investors. You were blinded by the flashing camera lights and that was your cue that you didn’t belong there anymore.

The trot music-loving driver hummed the whole way home while driving on auto-pilot, as he had memorized the path to your apartment long ago. Sitting in the back seat covered head-to-toe in the finest satin wasn’t as luxurious when you were alone as opposed to having your equally-luxurious boss next to you. You imagined what it’d be like if a giant robot didn’t crash the party this evening: you’d probably yell at him more about how you needed space and that he was overreacting with the whole Seonghwa deal; then he might try to bribe you with food or dessert so that you’d stop pouting like a child (and you’d totally cave in); and finally, he’d walk you up to your doorstep begging to come inside once more and you’d deny his entry, only for him to leave you with a comment about how you were the most stunning person at the ball tonight.

In short, as much as you hated to admit it, the ride home was lonely. Can you believe that? Your short time alone away from your boss was fucking lonely. Not peaceful, not relaxing, not mind-clearing, but totally and completely lonely. So much so that your heart ached a little, and to put these feelings in the simplest terms, it was because you were so used to being by his side that the emptiness to the seat next to you mimicked an unfamiliar cavity in your heart. It’s a painful feeling, really, because that meant leaving this job would be much harder than you hoped.

As if he planted a tracking device in your phone, Woojin texted you upon locking the front door to your place.

The Money Man [01:03 am]: did you make it home ok?

An involuntary smile spread across your lips.

You [01:04 am]: just got home. are you stalking me?

The Money Man [01:04 am]: you didn’t think the phone i gave you was completely harmless and bugless, did you? ;)

You [01:05 am]: i should have known better. how’s the impromptu press conference? are people surprised that it’s you?

The Money Man [01:07am]: they are, but at the same time it’s not. ppl keep asking me questions and won’t let me take the suit off, can you believe that!? it’s hot as balls in this thing!!

The Money Man [01:07am]: shit, gotta go - gotta somehow convince these idiots this is definitely NOT something to invest in.

You [01:08am]: text when you’re home.

The Money Man [01:08am]: yes, darling.

‘Darling’ has a nice ring to it.

--

Having Sunday all to yourself was normal and you did what you always did every weekend: cleaned your place, took your time making a nice meal, organizing all of your work papers, and ended the night with a hot shower and an ice pack to your cheek. Monday, on the other hand was a disaster. You were so bored! Your fingers were itching to scribble down your boss’s agenda and you were so tempted to log into your work laptop, but you knew Woojin would chew your ear off for not listening to him and resting as you should. It wasn’t your fault that you were a work-a-holic!

After looking in the mirror and hating the way your face looked for the fiftieth time, it was time to accept that the bruise wouldn’t disappear for at least a couple more weeks. Sunday was at its ugliest, where the center of your cheek was a deep purple and there was this off-colored halo around the perimeter. Now, the swelling went down and it wasn’t as purple or painful, but still equally ugly no matter how you looked at it or tried to cover it up.

After a lonely and boring Monday afternoon, your doorbell rang around 5:00pm. You weren’t expecting any visitors or deliverymen, so upon peaking through your viewfinder, you were surprised to see your boss on the other side.

“What are you doing here?” you asked surprised.

Woojin was glad you didn’t seem disgusted by his presence since he was the one who told you to take the day off and you must be tired of seeing his face by now. He whipped out an oily bag from behind his back with a child-like grin on his face. It was an unusual sight to see a man dressed in a several thousand dollar business suit carrying a twenty dollar bag of dinner.

“You and I have some business to discuss.”

“Hold on, let me get this straight - you tell me to take the day off, rest up, ice my bloodshot cheek only for you to come into my home and say I need to work?”

“Yup,” he claimed unapologetically, squeezing past you to get through.

“Yes, please come in, Your Highness,” you rolled your eyes, though he was already setting up at your dinner table.

“Your home is nice. Why are you always so embarrassed whenever I try to come in?”

“I mean, look at it. It’s nowhere near as nice as your home.”

“It’s as more of a home than my place will ever be, no matter how many velvet cushions and arcade games I ask you to buy for the place.” Woojin whipped out two bottles of beer, his favorite chaser to wash down the oiliness of the fried chicken, and poured them into glasses. “How’s your cheek?”

“By the look on your face, I guess not so good?”

He adjusted his twisted expression upon your teasing. Blood and bruises were never his thing, so any variation of the sort just looked bad in general. “It just looks so painful… Have you been icing it like I asked?”

“I have, and it’s not as painful as it looks!”

“Oh, yeah?”

Woojin challenged your claim by standing in front of you and lowering his head to see you at eye-level. His face was way too close to be considered appropriate for CEO and Secretary relationship behavior, though you knew he never cared for those formalities. His eyes were always so sparkly per usual and that gave him that dreamy stare all the ladies in the office loved. You never saw the appeal to it until now, with only a few centimeters in between.

He poked your bruised-like-an-apple cheek.

“Ow, what the hell!” you screamed, swatting his hand away.

“Not as painful as it looks, my ass.”

“Well, people don’t go around poking my cheek all day!”

“Do you need pain killers? My doctor can write you a prescription for the best one on AND off market.”

“That’s ok, I only trust Dr. Seonghwa.”

Woojin gave you the same look he gave a former intern who got his breakfast and coffee order incorrect. Let’s just say the intern started crying on the spot. You, on the other hand, could barely hold in your snicker from his death glare. You were never on the receiving end of the infamous death glare and now that you were, it was hard to take it seriously.

“Ha ha,” Woojin fake laughed. “Not funny.”

“What exactly do you have against him, anyways? It’s surprising that you’re threatened by the likes of a doctor and not some other hot shot software company CEO.”

“I don’t have anything against him.”

“You’re such a liar!” you scoffed, taking a swig of the ice-cold beer. “If you didn’t have a problem with him, you wouldn’t have acted so defensive at the charity ball.”

“I don’t like the way he looks at you,” he said shamelessly. A vigorous bite of a chicken leg came afterwards. “He looks at you like how I look at chicken legs.”

“Well, maybe I like the way he looks at me.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Stop doing that.”

“You deserve it for acting like my Dad that night.”

“I said I was sorry! I even bought you dinner and cold beer to make up for it!”

“Oh, so this is not because you said that me and you have some business to discuss?”

“Well, that, too.” Woojin wiped his greasy fingers on his silk handkerchief that he kept on the inside of his breast pocket before whipping out his phone to show you multiple news articles on the night of the charity ball. “Watch these videos.”

Almost all of them were exposing your boss who was behind the genius that is Iron Man, but what preceded the reveals were clips of you kicking major ass. The sources came from both paparazzi and the security tapes at multiple angles and it was hard to hide the fact that it was you as all angles captured your facial features quite clearly. Headlines and whole articles talked about how the mighty CEO and his secretary were the perfect unstoppable duo and they weren’t wrong - you kicking ass in a sexy outfit with a man of iron handling the big guy? Definitely a story worth selling.

Your brows furrowed worriedly because you had no idea how Woojin felt. “Are you mad…?

“Mad?” Woojin paused the current video and placed his phone face-down on the table so he could focus on his good chicken and better company. “Why would I be mad?”

“I don’t know! What’s the point in showing me these videos?”

“To show you how bad ass you look! Where did you even learn these moves!?”

“For some reason, your father thought being a secretary was dangerous enough that he decided to enroll me in some classes. I actually really liked it a lot, so I kept at it and I guess I got to a pretty advanced level.”

“Pretty advanced is definitely a misnomer, love. Well, it’s good to hear that Father has made one good decision in his reign.”

“Is this the business you wanted to speak about?” you asked shyly, hoping that the beer was a good enough excuse for your blushing cheeks. You’ll never get used to Woojin praising you.

“Sort of. I have a proposition for you.”

“What, that you want me to be your sidekick?” you scoffed. When Woojin remained silent with only the same sly smirk on his lips, you could see your worst fears coming true. “Oh, God, you’re not serious.”

“I am one hundred percent serious.”

“Are you out of your damn mind!? I am not sidekick material!”

“You totally are! You and I are already the perfect duo! Why not take it up a notch!?”

“No, Mr. Kim, I cannot be your sidekick again, but in a different form and outfit!”

“Why not!? It’s not like I’m not going to pay you for it.”

“The pay is not the problem. The pay is never the problem. It’s…”

How do you put that the pressure of keeping the entire country safe and being by his side twenty-four/seven sounded like your own personal purgatory that you could never escape for as long as you lived, or until you died by the hands of some Demon-level threat monster?

“It’s a huge commitment, I know,” Woojin admitted. “Too huge to even put a price on it. But can you at least consider it? I can’t imagine anyone else by my side except you.”

Now only if a man who wasn’t your boss said that to you without any underlying superhero context, you might have considered the proposal.

“Mr. Kim, I can’t…”

You hesitated getting the right words out, but Woojin knew why. You’ve been bringing up how you couldn’t stay his secretary forever, and although he knew this was true, he couldn’t help but try to keep you anyways. You’ve been loyal to him for so long that he often forgot how to treat you like a friend and not his subordinate. But the thought of you leaving? Soon, at that? It was something he didn’t want to think about just yet. He wanted to keep you by his side for as long as he could.

Woojin downed the last of his beer before whipping out his phone again. This time a slow song played over the speakers. He stood up and offered you a hand.

You raised a brow. “What are you…?”

“You and I never got to dance on Saturday. So dance with me.”

“Here? Right now? In my small ass apartment?”

“The next charity ball isn’t for another month and I don’t think I can wait that long.”

His impatience was just shy of flattering - if only you weren’t so afraid of being within close proximity to him. It was one thing when he helped ease the burn on your hand, it was another when he touched your cheek while inside his iron suit, but the two of you alone dancing in the middle of your living room was a whole other level of intimacy that needed to be hidden from human resources,

You took his hand and he led you to the living room. One hand on your waist and another holding the one with the scabbing half-circle. The two of you swayed in silent contentment for several songs. It was a comfortable silence, but there’s some hidden sadness to it that you couldn’t explain - something along the lines of him missing you dearly, despite you being right in front of him, and you missed him dearly, too. So much that your nerves made you squeeze his hand harder, asking him to not let go of you for a long time.

Then your boss pulled you in close enough that it felt like he was hugging you.

“S-Sir?” you stuttered nervously.

“Thank you,” he began. “For always being there.”

“Well, that’s my job,” you snickered.

“Not just as my secretary, but as my friend.”

“You think of me as your friend?”

“I do. Don’t tell Vice President Chan this, but I consider you one of my closest friends.”

“You’re quite soft, aren’t you?” It took a moment to register that he was definitely not joking. The tension in your shoulders diminished and you were able to relax in front of the equally-vulnerable man. “I consider you one of my closest friends, too.”

“Really?”

“By association though. After all these years being by your side, it’s only natural that I came to like you.”

“I like you, too,” he chuckled, tucking some hairs behind your ear. “A little too much, at that.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“In another lifetime, I feel like you and I would be soulmates.”

“You don’t think we would be in this lifetime?”

Were you hoping to be? “Perhaps. By association though, right?”

You didn’t want to press more about any underlying meaning to his statements, so instead you looked down embarrassed. In another lifetime, in this lifetime, in multiple lifetimes, Woojin thought you and him would be each other’s soulmate no matter what, because a lifetime with you sounded perfect.

A thumb gently ran over the perimeter of your cheek bruise and it tickled rather than burned, so that was a good sign that it was healing. A loud tisk came from your boss.

“God, do I really put you through this much pain!?” he cried aloud.

“Huh? You didn’t cause this - those dumbass followers did!”

“I guess, but I was the one who brought you to that event! And what about the scar on your hand, huh? I definitely caused that one.”

“Well, yeah, but -”

“That’s it, I can’t be hurting you like this anymore. I can’t be putting you through all of this danger like you’re my bodyguard. I have to let you go.”

You knew he was joking when he couldn’t hold in his cheeky smile. “That is not probable cause to fire me, Mr. Kim.”

“Really? Dammit.”

“No matter how many times I get hurt, you can’t get rid of me that easily, ok? I go out on my own terms!”

“So strong willed… I almost hate it.” Woojin sighed exaggeratedly before pulling you in for a real hug this time. His arms squeezed your waist tightly, letting you know that he didn’t want to let you go even if he tried. “Just make sure to give me a two weeks notice, all right?”

“Anything for you, boss.”

“I’m going to miss hearing that from you the most when you leave.”

You hit his chest lightly, but he caught your hand and held it for a few moments before leading you back to your kitchen to finish up dinner. The rest of the night wasn’t you and your boss - it was you and your closest friend enjoying dinner and some ice cream you had in your freezer.

In another lifetime, huh? Too bad you were stuck in this one.

--

Work has mellowed out in terms of paperwork and actually work and has instead transitioned into more press conferences and meetings with government officials regarding Iron Man. In theory, the meetings sounded cool, but you wouldn’t know for sure, as your boss decided to take one of the newer girls as his assistant for these meetings.

The first time he denied your company, you were only a little confused, but it soon passed when he said there was a lot of paperwork he only trusted you to complete on his behalf. But when he would bring her to every event - whether it was out of habit or on purpose - for an entire month, and her only, it really made your blood boil.

No, you weren’t jealous…! You weren’t jealous he was hanging out with someone younger and prettier and more his type! Definitely not! You were upset that your boss, whom you called one of your closest friends in a time of vulnerability, was already replacing you before you could put your two weeks in! And you knew this to be true when he denied your invitation to get lunch and instead you found him in the cafeteria laughing and flirting with the new girl at the table you and him would always sit at.

For a whole month, without even knowing it, you were slowly getting left behind and replaced for someone better - someone who would actually heed his every word and never argue. Someone who would keep their mouth shut for once. Someone who wouldn’t mind taking order from him forever.

It had been a month since you were living in this limbo, and tonight, the night of the Animal Cruelty Charity Ball to which Iron Man would be making a guest appearance, was when you knew he no longer needed you.

“You’re taking Ryujin…?” you repeated, as you couldn’t believe your ears.

“Yes, so you can go home early if you want,” Woojin said as he fixed his bow tie in the giant mirror in his office. He then turned to present to you with an ignorant grin. “How do I look?”

“Why are you taking her?”

“She’s been working hard this past month, so I thought I’d reward her with tonight and have her practice some networking skills.”

“How generous of you,” you mumbled bitterly to yourself.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

“Can you help me put on this chain necklace thing? The clasp is so damn tiny…”

Reluctantly, you helped clasp the silver jewelry. While you thought your boss was heavily admiring himself in the mirror, he instead was focused on you and how your face was uncharacteristically stern.

“Are you ok?” he asked sincerely. He pressed a firm hand to your forehead. “Are you sick?”

You harshly swatted his hand away. “I’m fine.”

He shrugged it off, thinking that you probably had a bad week with all of the boring work he’s been having you deal with. A lot of weird and unsettling energy was pent up inside of you for the past month, so before you exited Woojin’s office for the weekend, for some reason you thought this was the appropriate time to speak on it.

“Actually, I’m not fine,” you blurted out. Woojin gave you his full attention for the first time that month. “I… I’m putting in my two weeks.”

His eyes went wide. “What?”

“I’m giving you my two weeks notice.”

“Do you have a job lined up?”

“No, but I will figure that out later.”

“You don’t have another job lined up but you want to quit? Where is this coming from?”

He didn’t sound angry. He wasn’t - he was more hurt than anything else that you wanted to leave without a proper explanation. He thought you and him were doing well… What changed so suddenly?

“I can’t do this anymore,” Woojin noted how your voice was shaking. “I was fine when you had me staying ungodly hours, I was fine when you had me get you coffee every morning and your dry cleaning every Monday, and I was fine when you involved with the Iron Man project, but now all you’ve given me lately is paperwork and shit that the new hires should be doing and not myself!”

“_____, language -”

“And why is that? Why do I feel like I’m starting to get left behind already, or-or why do I feel like you don’t appreciate anything I do!? It’s clear to me that you’ve already begun to replace me, so what’s the use of me staying here when you don’t want me anymore?”

Woojin was silent. You couldn’t tell if he was angry or sad or surprised at your sudden outburst. The tension in the room was suffocating and his silence even more so, like this was his ideal form of psychological torture. Woojin didn’t seem to care for your feelings anymore as he turned back to face the mirror.

“Your two weeks has been noted,” was all he said.

You left the room in tears, with your blood still boiling and your heart crushed. But this was a good thing. In the end, this would be a good thing, is what you were trying to tell yourself, because this lifetime wouldn’t let you be with Woojin.

--

Another month passed by and you were left in a worse limbo than you began with a month and a half ago. No one was contacting you about any job offers so you were left to ‘self-reflect’ or some bullshit this self-help book told you to do for the past two weeks. Luckily, all the overtime you put into your savings account had vastly accumulated into an unthinkable sum that would support you far beyond whatever the government noted as a proper unemployment time. Like, you didn’t even know what to do with the money sometimes - thank Woojin for time-and-a-half, huh?

On days where you couldn’t help yourself - when you felt like torturing yourself - you would look up Woojin on all the tabloid sites. Surprisingly enough, this happened way more than you’d like. Of course, as you speculated, Ryujin had quickly taken your spot as his secretary and God, did you like to shit on how terrible she was! You didn’t have to be at the office to know that Woojin must be frustrated with her by the crookedness of his ties and jackets and how she must have forgotten to schedule a salon appointment by the look of his roots and unruly brows.

Ha! That’s what he fucking gets for not being grateful! That dick!

What a shame your relationship with him had come to. To spend what felt like an entire lifetime with him to being complete strangers, it was like you were reborn into this new and fresh carefree person. So carefree that you hummed on the way home with a bag full of fresh produce from the local market.

Perhaps you should have been less carefree, as a stranger snuck up behind you and knocked you out cold.

--

“Ryujin, where’s my document-signing pen?”

“Um, in your drawer?”

“Which drawer?”

“The one with all the other pens…?”

Woojin sighed loudly, running a hand through his curly locks and staring intently at the mess of papers that scattered on his desk. His desk hadn’t been this messy since the first day he started when he had to sign all of those official documents that transitioned him to CEO. The same day when he fell for you.

Ryujin, who was nothing close to a secretary compared to you, was only getting on his nerves these days. Perhaps yes, he’s been a little too harsh on someone who’s still fairly new, but in truth he just didn’t have a way to express his frustration about you leaving all of a sudden. Where had he gone wrong?

“Take the rest of the night off,” he told his subordinate.

The poor girl bowed obediently and scurried out the room.

Another sign left the young man’s lips. This time it was because he was tired. He couldn’t deal with anymore bullshit tonight.

An anonymous FaceTime call rang his phone. Who could be wanting to FaceTime him at such an odd hour of the weeknight?

When he swiped to answer, all he saw was you tied up roughly to a splintered chair with tape covering your mouth. Woojin nearly dropped his phone.

“Good evening, Mr. Kim,” a familiar voice sang. From the shadows behind you emerged the fake vigilante that led the invasion of the Charity Ball. “I see that you’re doing well.”

“What do you want?” he demanded quietly.

“I think you know what I want.” A shiny knife drew a line across the other cheek, small drops of blood seeping through and mixing with the dried tears and dirt. Woojin’s heart felt like it was collapsing. “A blank check addressed to little ol’ me.”

“If I see another scar on them, I’ll kill you,” he threatened.

The man held his hands up high in defensive mode and took a step away from you. “Fine, I won’t touch them! Just give me what we want near the docs.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Oh, and one more thing - come dressed in Iron Man and I’ll slice their throat. Bye!”

The line cut dead and Woojin had no choice but to leave empty-handed with only a blank check in his pocket.

The air inside the enclosed cargo bed was hot and suffocating and your rising panic did not ease your pain or heavy breathing one bit. It didn’t help that the guy and his minions were playing with your hair and playing with their knives, draggin the dull edges on your arms and neck. Normally, you wouldn’t be so weak and crying to the point that the tape around your mouth was loosening up, but life these days was tough and perhaps an event like this, causing Woojin major inconvenience once again, was what you deserved.

Scurrying and uneven footsteps were heard from outside and you really, really hoped it was Woojin not dressed in Iron Man.

“Here already? He must like you,” the leader teased.

The back of the cargo bed opened up to reveal that the sun had fallen a long time ago and the light of the moon outlined your plain and simple hero. He didn’t give the leader a second passing glance before blindly shoving the blank check to his chest and rushing by your side to untie you. First, he ripped off the tape and you let out loud gasps of air and cries.

Woojin’s shaking hands take hold of your face to try to calm you down. “Hey hey, shh, I’m here. Are you ok? Are you hurt?” You shook your head vigorously, whining and trying to break free from the ropes tying you down. “Hold on, I got you.”

Before Woojin could untie your hands, one of the minions hit him on the back of his head the same way they knocked you out. But your boss was stronger than that - his head was harder than his iron helmet. At the failed attempt, Woojin hurled the guy over his shoulder and out the cargo bed. Your bad ass boss got up like it was nothing, but he was breathing heavily.

Not because he was tired or weak, but because he was furious.

Three more guys tried to kick his ass and it was then you realized that your boss wasn’t just some fake hiding behind an iron suit who could program it to fight. He truly was kicking their ass! Like, raw strength and all! If you weren’t scared to death, you might have thought this was kind of hot. But then Woojin punched one of the guys too hard and it sent him flying over to you, to which you fell over and broke the chair. The rope was no longer tied to anything and you were free.

Yet another one of the lame-o sidekicks tried to capture you again, but now you were equally as furious, if not more, than your partner in crime. How dare they sneak up on you and not even give you a chance to fight back!? That was the definition of a weak-ass group of villains! So of course you had to show them a lesson and kick a few balls and some asses. But the number of asses was infinite and you were getting really tired. They had enough people to fight you and Woojin until you couldn’t keep up and then they’d kill you easily.

“Mr. Kim, now would be a good time for one of your brilliant plans!” you begged between kicks and breaths.

“Ten seconds tops. But when I say so, I need you to hold my hand, ok?”

“What!? What are you planning!?”

“Just trust me!” You and Woojin saw the leader direct the last ten of his minions to finish the job. “Ready? Three… two… one!”

A heavy force on the outside pushed the cargo bed off the edge of the pier and into the ocean with the purpose of drowning everyone in it. The only sensation you felt was ice cold water freezing your blood flow and Woojin grasping your hand for dear life while trying to swim up to the surface. Before blacking out from lack of oxygen, you felt the ripples of something entering the ocean and saw a faded red and golden glow of light. Not a second later, a hollowed Iron Man on autopilot rushed you and Woojin to the surface and placed you gently on the sand just under the pier. The silent night was filled with a chorus of ugly coughing fits from you and your boss. What a wonderful CEO slash ex-secretary couples activity this turned out to be.

As soon as your breathing returned to a rhythmic beat, a wet, crying, sand-covered Woojin held your face in his still-trembling hands. He didn’t say a word - he simply held you and pressed his forehead to yours, making sure that yes, this was real, and not some unconscious dream where he was still in the middle of the ocean drowning. Yes, you were there with him and you were alive.

“Why are you crying? I was the one kidnapped,” you joked, hoping it’d lighten up the mood if but a little bit.

Woojin laughed between sniffles and shivers, but couldn’t stop crying. He was smiling, but still crying, and if that didn’t perfectly depict this situation, you’re not sure there’s anything out there that did. Haphazardly, he planted a cold kiss on your forehead before pulling you into a hug.

“I’m so happy you’re ok,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Why? You had nothing to do with this.”

“I’m just sorry in general. I’m sorry I took you for granted. I’m sorry for making you feel like I was replacing you. I’m sorry for not buying you that cappuccino three years ago. I’m sorry for -”

What’s the only way to silence your sexy boss in a heartfelt moment like this that would complete this superhero plot line? Kissing him mid-sentence, of course. You kissed your loving boss fully, wrapping your arms around his neck and pressing your whole body into it. It took him a while to register that yes, his secretary was definitely kissing him, but once it did, he kissed you even harder, enough to make you fall back onto the grass with him on top of you.

You’re left breathless the moment your lips parted. “I-I, uh, I forgive you…”

“How could you ever think that I could replace you?” he muttered. “I could never. Not in this lifetime.”

“You also said that me and you wouldn’t happen in this lifetime,” you challenged.

“Lifetimes can merge into one, I guess.”

Iron Man returned to Woojin’s basement as soon as his job was done, so your favorite driver picked you two up in ten minutes with plush hot towels and dry clothes to change into. The pajamas you wore already had your initials monogrammed over your heart.

“Yeah, uh, about that,” Woojin began awkwardly on the car ride home. “I was going to gift them to you a couple Christmases ago, but you said that monogrammed clothing was cheesy and stupid, so I abstained…”

“... They’re not so bad,” you admitted truthfully. “Very soft.”

Coming home to Woojin’s felt so wrong, yet so right. You’ve only ever been inside for business reasons, such as redesigning his closets and kitchen pantry, but now that you were here on leisure - well, after almost fucking dying - it was kind of weird. But Woojin holding your hand reassured you that you were wanted here - that he needed you here.

“Take a shower upstairs. I’ll go make some tea.”

You gladly obeyed, using your favorite shower that you helped design. The door and the walls of the shower were made of glass and the shower head hung from the ceiling, making your long, hot shower feel like it was raining. Your body was covered in cuts and bruises and it was really ugly, but you’ve never felt more badass and in control in your entire life.

You left the shower smelling like orchids and eucalyptus and entered the kitchen that smelled like ginger and honey. Woojin, who had also showered, followed shortly after, stealing a kiss on your cheek that was cut up earlier that evening.

You followed Woojin to his giant marble island while he poured tea into white mugs on the other side. This felt so… domestic. This felt so right. This felt like home.

“I have a business proposition for you,” he smirked slyly.

Well, that ruined the moment. “What, no ‘how have you been the past month since I replaced you with some other chick’?”

“I promise I’ll ask that after, but I need to ask you this.” Your hard-headed boss was all giddy just at the idea of it and it was the first time in a whole month since you’ve seen him smile like this. He was so, so cute.

“Fine, what is it?”

“I want to hire you back.”

“Mr. Kim, I already told you, I can’t -”

“As the Head Director of the Iron Man project.”

Your eyes widened at the prestigious title. “Head Director?”

“You stayed by my side through all the criticism and the praise and I can’t imagine a better person for the position.”

“So it’s not just a fancy title for like, super secretary, right…?”

Your handsome man chuckled. “No, I promise.”

“Head Director, huh?” your lips slowly spread into a grin. “I like the sound of that.”

“Is that a yes?”

“On a few conditions.”

“Hit me.”

“Higher pay with time-and-a-half.”

“Obviously.”

“I get my own secretary.”

“Of course.”

“An extra week of vacation.”

“You’re pushing it.”

“Last one. I’m your date to every event from now on.”

Woojin raised his eyebrow teasingly. “Oh? And if I say no?”

“Then I say no.”

“Jeez, I’m kidding! Of course you can, on two conditions.”

“Fine.”

“You call me Woojin from now on. Or boyfriend, or soulmate, or whatever suits your fancy.”

“Deal.”

“Second,” Woojin leaned in and puckered his pink lips. “Kiss me.”

You start your new job next week - after Woojin cashed in one week of vacation to spend with his soulmate.

[rodpupo2]

Research: Storytelling project

JOCK

Mark Simpson, best known as Jock, is a Scottish comic book artist and illustrator. He began his career in 1999 working on the British comic book publisher 2000 AD (where most of the British artists and writers, began their career, before going to the major leagues like DC and Marvel), and started working with characters like the Judge Dredd.

The artist began his career in the USA with The Losers, at Vertigo (a subdivision of DC comics), and some issues of the Green Arrow.

He also have worked with conceptual arts for various films such as Iron man 3, X-men days of the future past, and Star Wars episode VIII.

I have known Jock for a while, I have seen many of his works in the comics, and he is known for working mainly with covers, where he does extremely surreal works, mixing various types of colors, and always uses a lot of shading, not worrying if the characters are in the correct proportion, because that is not his proposal.

But I know he did some works as a sequential artist, like The Losers, for example, where he makes extremely tight pictures, always focusing on the expressions of the characters, and especially on the hands that he most likes to do.

His storyboards or sketches are very different, because his drawings do not follow the traditional way of being centered on the pictures, many of his characters are jumping over the pictures, to show the size of the action scene that Jock wants to do.

It is worth remembering that he mixes his drawings made with pencil and nanquin, with digital, often taking pictures of different landscapes or scenarios, and drawing over them, and mixing with his drawn character to make an interesting composition.

Despite all this, he has a very peculiar style, which many people complain about the lack of movement and poses that his characters does. That his lines are also very dirty and dark. But Jock says, that this is his way of drawing, that he likes to have a not so commercial style, like many other artists. He likes to play with colors and likes to draw his characters, in a little more simple poses, and glorifying the background.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, he’s known for designing movie posters and title sequences.

For 40th years, he worked with Hollywood greatest filmmakers, such as Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Billy Wilder.

Bass was born in New York in 1920, to a Jewish family, he was all ways drawing when he was a child.He graduated from James Monroe High school in the Bronx. He studied part time at art students league in Manhattan, and moved to Brooklyn College, where he had classes with György Kepes, a famous Hungarian painter and photographer.

He began in Hollywood in the 40’s, designing prints for films like champion (1949), death salesman (1951) and the moon is blue (1953).

He became widely known for creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger’s The man with the golden arm (1955), which’s about a jazz musician, addicted to heroin. Bass decided to create a poster which dialogues with the controversial subject, so he chosed the arm as the central object, as is a image which relates with heroin.

For Alfred Hitchcock, he provided memorable posters, like Vertigo(1958), North by Northwest(1959) and Psycho(1960).

For Martin Scorsese he had done the posters of The Goodfellas(1990), Cape Fear (1991), the Age of innocence (1993) and Casino (1995).

For Stanley Kubrick, he designed Spartacus (1960), and probably the best poster in his career, which is the poster from The Shining (1980).Kubrick, however, wasn’t amused. On the sketches themselves (which were later discovered in his personal affects) he wrote “Looks like science fiction.”Title looks small, looks like the ink didn’t take on the part that goes light,” and “Maze too abstract and too much emphasis on maze,” and, the most scathing of all, “Don’t like artwork.”

More discussions followed, and Bass agreed upon an illustrative approach of a large head peering through the title.As Kubrick instructed, the poster evokes both “terror” and the “supernatural.”

Bass once told,that his main goal for his titles sequences is “try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story".

James Cameron

James Cameron is a famous film director, which is for having two of the greatest box office films of all time, which are Avatar and Titanic. In addition, he is always revolutionizing in special effects, always bringing something new and revolutionary, but it all starts on his drawing desk, with his sketches and storyboards.

James Cameron has always been known for creating extremely interesting worlds, and completely out of the ordinary. Starting with the film Aliens, the sequel to Ridely Scott's film, where he expanded this world by creating an ecosystem for the aliens, in addition to showing futuristic equipment, for the space army that faces the aliens.

He also created concepts, for the Terminator films 1 and 2, where it was an idea never before seen of a robot that travels in time to kill a person. Its detailed perfectly drawn storyboards show one of the most interesting scenes in the film, where the terminator does a self surgery, revealing his true form.

And finally, once again creating a whole world, with a fauna and flora never seen before in the movie Avatar.

Cameron always wanted to create worlds, so he putted everything on a piece of paper when he was a child, where later, he took courses of drawings and did art colleges, to get a clearer idea of ​​how his worlds and characters could be.

Before being a director, he wanted to be a writer and an artist, but he never thought his ideals could be just in a book, he wanted to expand these ideas in a way never seen before.

Perhaps what impresses me most about James Cameron, besides being a creative force, is all the care he takes with his works, he said in an interview, which he always preserves all his storyboards, even from those films that he never made or did not work, and said that almost every day, he sits at his drawing desk and tries to come up with possible scenes for any film he is making. And when he creates an interesting scene, he tries to invent a whole story, to get to that specific scene.

 https://issuu.com/dteditore/docs/spidercameron-screen-eng/1?ff

Glen Keane

Glen Keane was born on April 23, 1954, in the city of Philadelphia, United States. Early on, he became interested in art while watching his cartoonist father Bill Keane draw. After finishing high school, he turned down a scholarship to play football and signed up for CalArts- California Institute of Arts.

Keane signed up for the painting program, he wanted to be a visual artist. However, his application was accidentally sent to the animation department, then Film Graphics. The college vetoed him to change course, so he stayed there.

Glen’s passion for painting helped him tremendously in animation, since the first skill an animator must have is knowing how to draw. Do not simply draw, but really know anatomy and how to give the illusion of weight.

His first work was Bernardo and Bianca in the kangaroo land. In the following years Keane worked on other features such as the Hound and the fox, Oliver and his gang , treasure planet, and the list goes on.

But it’s was at the time called the Disney Renaissance that Keane stood out. He animated Ariel the little mermaid, Beast from the beauty and the beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and most recently, was Rapunzel (Tangled).

At the time, Keane and the animators, had to use the traditional animation (by using paper), so him and his crew had to plan, all the scenes and poses, by doing storyboards, and later drawing on the paper frame by frame (the frequency to project a film in the cinema is twenty four frames per second, twenty four drawings in total were needed for each second of animation seen on screen).

There is no professional on the animation field, who does not know the name Glen Keane. He is the reference to all of them. What sets him apart, is his passion for his characters. During the production of the animations, Keane understands them and is thus able to perform better.

[riverdalepoet]

ALL I EVER WANTED (part 5)

PAIRINGS: Sweet Pea and OC (Emma Carter Wilson); Fangs and Kevin; Betty and Jughead; Toni and Cheryl

WORD COUNT: 1294

WARNINGS: language and suggestive themes

A/N:  Although Sweets has been back at it for months now, Emma’s going back to work, and Serpent life like she does everything else: head first. (I still own nothing)

PART 1      PART 2      PART 3      PART 4

________________________________________________

  Whether I liked it or not, I had to leave the comfort of my home and the cuddles of my four month old and get back to work.   Sweet Pea returned to Andrews Construction a mere two weeks after Carter was born.  Throughout his first day back, he flooded my phone with messages, utterly heartbroken to be away from his little buddy.

                Luckily, my mom stepped in to manage Southside Sounds while I was out having Carter.  She told me if I wanted to take another month, she would hold down the fort, but with Veronica’s competing shop opening up in a few weeks I had to get back to business.

                Southside Sounds Record Store had been in my family for generations and was the reason we moved to Riverdale in the first place.  When my grandfather passed, my mom had no choice but to come take it over.  A few years back my parents came to me desperately.  They had nearly run it in the ground, and if something didn’t change and fast, we would lose our business.  From that moment, the store was officially mine.  I cut costs dramatically, streamlined our inventory, expanded our marketing targets, and organized community events. I made it a safe place for Southside teens to relax, and find weekend and summer jobs. It took a lot of double shifts, sleepless nights, creativity, and breakdowns but we were finally seeing the product of our labor.

                That is until Veronica announced the opening of Archie’s birthday present- Archie’s Records.  The day I found out, I stormed to Andrews Construction, guns blazing with the flyer Veronica taped on our window crumbled in my fist.  Sweet Pea met me at the door and tried to get me to calm down, but once he saw the flyer, he called for Archie.

                It took some convincing, but Archie assured me that he had nothing to do with the business.  Veronica insisted that it be named for him, and he expressed how tactless he thought it was for her to do that.  Despite his vicious girlfriend’s influence, Archie was still a decent person.  That didn’t stop me from declaring war on our Northside competitor.

                Before I made my way to the shop, I dropped Carter off at my mother's.  I left after an hour of briefing her on everything Carter and crying about having to leave him for any amount of time.  When I finally made it back to the car with ruined makeup, I got a text from my husband.

[My Man:  Happy first day back to my sexy boss babe! I’m proud of you, and I’ll prove it later ; ). I’m bringing the new recruit by after he gets out of school.  His name is Blazer- he’ll be good there… and if he’s not, I can fix that.  I love you x]

                That was my favorite part of running the store- getting to help young Serpents.  I knew some of them worked for school clothes and even food, and it broke my heart. Shoving my phone back in my pocket, I made my way to the store.  When I opened the door, I saw that my mom made a few changes while I was gone.  I made a mental note to talk to Crystal about letting her mess with the way I had the store merchandised.

                I spent the next two hours in my office planning this week’s open mic night, and brainstorming ideas for opportunities to build our image in the community.  Right when I finished up sketching Friday’s flyer, Crystal walked in.  “Hey, Ems, welcome back,” she greeted, tossing her bag on the coat rack.

                “Hey, traitor.  Couldn’t tell my mom no, could ya?” I sneered, smiling at her regardless.  She flicked on all the lights and shrugged in response.

                “She said if I stopped her, she’d fire me.”

                “Dude, she’s not your boss.  I am.”

                “Yeah well, tell her that.  Your mom is scary.” She shuddered at the thought, making me laugh, and I helped her prep the store for opening.

                “Alright, alright.  Fill me in.  What all have I missed?

                Her blonde curls bobbed animatedly as she opened the doors and caught me up.  “So your mother ran off the kids that come in to just listen to the music.  You’re gonna have to round them up and convince them that it’s safe again, cause she was a total dragon.  There’s a local band that’s gaining some traction and they’re from the Southside, so we should be able to get them to perform here a few nights.  They just signed with that label out of Greendale- Bewitching or whatever the hell it’s called. Maybe you could call Gus to see if we can host their album release.”

                “Oh I like it,” I wrote it down on my list.  “Anything else?”

                She paused and pursed her lips, stalling.  “Yeaaahhh.  ‘Bitchronica’ got Eliza and The Delusionals to perform for the grand opening.”

                Crystal grimaced when I flung my clipboard on the ground, “How in the hell? They hardly come to the States,” I seethed, and forced myself to take a deep breath.  “It’s fine.  It’ll be fine.  We have our regulars, we have our plans, and we have our community.”

                “We just don’t have Eliza and The Delusionals,” she muttered, getting right to work on reorganizing the LPs.

                I glared in retaliation, “Do you want to be fired?”  Her hands were raised in surrender, and I shook my head.  By the time Sweet Pea showed up with Blazer in tow, we had the store back in functioning order.  He looked to be about sixteen and stood just below Pea’s shoulder.

                Sweet Pea walked him over to me and kissed me briefly on my forehead before turning back to his recruit and fixing him with his sternest glare.  “Alright, Blaze, no funny business.  You make one wrong move here, and you’ll pay for it tenfold in The Gauntlet, you got me?”  The poor kid nodded, looking truly terrified.

                I reached up to steal a kiss from my favorite baby Serpent wrangler and smacked him on the ass as he headed for the door.  Right before he left he turned around.  “Em, show him the basics and get Crystal to watch him after that.  Jug wants us all at the Wyrm.”

                “I guess my maternity leave is over on all accounts, huh?” I groaned as he threw me a wink.

                I watched him walk to his bike and drive off before turning around to my newest employee, “It’s really not as intimidating as he made it out to be.  Do you like music?” He nodded.

                “Do you plan to trash my store or screw me over?”

                His eyes went white, and he stammered nervously, “No ma’am.”

                “Then you’ll be fine.  Oh, and Blazer?  Don’t call me ma’am.”

                When I pulled in to the parking lot of the White Wyrm, Sweet Pea was leaning against his bike, waiting for me.  He smiled when I hopped out and whistled at him.  “Hey hot stuff, my husband’s not around.  Wanna have some fun?”

                He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into him, placing quick kisses up the side of my neck.  “You’re dangerous.”

                “You ready to talk about what happened the other day on the job? I’m assuming that’s why we’re here.” I leaned against his chest.

                I felt his breath hitch in his chest beneath my head and I looked up at his conflicted face immediately. Whatever it was that he was called out to do was personal, and he was obviously struggling with it.  “Baby, I should’ve already told you this.” He took a few more minutes and clutched the smooth leather of my jacket desperately.  “My dad’s in town.”

[hangonimevolving]

Craft Therapy

Between my dad’s illness, my uncle’s death, and some other random adulting I’ve had to do, the last few weeks have brought much stress, anxiety, grief and loss.  But curiously, they’ve brought great pleasure too.  Different people have different responses to crises.  I have come to recognize that my natural crisis response is to be flooded with a ton of creative energy, and a strong impulse to put things in order, plan, organize, execute, and analyze.  I also feel this almost manic urge to make myself useful to those who need help, and to be a source of comfort, calm, and assistance to those whose grief response is to fall apart, curl up, and have limited function.  There are probably some drawbacks to my way of handling grief - but at least for this phase of life, I’ve focused on using my natural response as an asset, or at least as a productive impulse, to tackle some events that were both planned and unplanned in our lives.

My dad’s whole ordeal took us from late August through mid-September.  I had been brainstorming and contemplating the kids’ Halloween costumes and my annual Trunk or Treat theme for weeks at that point, but once I returned from NOLA following Dad’s surgery, I knew it was time to spring into action.  The kids had selected their costumes way back over the summer, and amazingly they hadn’t deviated from their original ideas.  Vev wanted to be a blue whale, and Dey had stated a wish to be a lobster.  So it was clear to me that our family appeared to be gravitating towards ocean life as a costume theme this year.  Therefore, I decided my Trunk or Treat theme would reflect this preoccupation, and I titled our trunk “Discover the Sea!”.  

Then it came time to start costume planning and construction.  This took the necessary trips to Joann’s, to procure fabric and supplies....

... then a pattern was sketched out for the whale costume, using brown packing paper salvaged from an Amazon Prime shipping box.

Fabric was cut, pieced, and then sewn together...

Then began the process of strategizing batting and foam.

Flippers were created....

... and then inner lining fabric was procured, cut, and sewn, to make the two sides of the whale.  Each side became like a “pillowcase,” into which the foam could be inserted.

Oh, and prior to foam going in - I top-stitched some lines by hand, using embroider floss, to make the stripes and striations on the whale’s underbelly, similar to what a blue whale has.

*This project entailed WAY more hand-sewing than I usually do!  It was quite an education.  My thumbs still ache sometimes, weeks later, when I think about it!

Speaking of hand-sewing - it was time to make eyes for the whale.  I purchased a few sets of doll eyes from Amazon, and used these along with a hot glue gun, fabric, batting, and foam balls, to create a set of realistic (but maybe sorta creepy) eyes for the whale.  

Hand-sewing those eyes, with the eyelids, and then sewing them onto the whale, were both significant undertakings.  I’m surprised at myself!  

I didn’t photograph this next process very well, which is a shame, because it was also a new and challenging undertaking.  But for these costumes, I decided to work with craft wire for the first time.  I was using batting and foam to give the costumes three-dimensionality and texture, but I was concerned about the shape, and ensuring that certain parts of the costumes - specifically, the tails, for both whale and lobster - would be positionable in a cute way that would help people recognize what time of animals they were.  So, I bought this 3 mm craft wire off of Amazon:

And using a pair of wire cutters/pliers that I owned, I go to work making an “endoskeleton” for my whale, that involved two big oval “ribs” in the sides of the whale for support, that each fed into the fins of the tail to help them stay upright and give them shape.  After feeding the wires through the body and tail, I stuffed the tail full of foam and batting, then hand sewed it to the whale body.  I sewed on nylon webbing for straps, and the end result looked like this.

Not bad, eh?  

Then it was time to get cracking on the lobster costume.  Funny - for frame of reference with time, I started the whale on October 3, and finished on October 22.  Obviously, there were many disruptions to my work schedule in that time, including not one, but two trips to New Orleans, and a boatload of grieving.  But the result was, I had only about a week to get the lobster costume done.  So I was motivated.

Cutting began:

Then the batting and backing stages were undertaken, to make a simple apron of sorts:

Then came the creation of legs, which took WAYYY longer and was WAAAYYY harder than I thought it would be!  Using both sewing techniques to create casings, and the craft wire idea I’d had from before, I managed to make 8 of these bad boys in the end.  It was painful, though.

The result were eight tapered, but bendable/shapable legs.  These legs would need to be attached to the inner surface of the apron, and I confess I probably didn’t do as elegant a job of this as I could have - specifically, I could have made the legs, then sandwiched them between my apron layers, but I didn’t - I ended up hand-stitching them to the inside layer, which is considerably less professional, but oh well.  

Then I decided to create a hood for the costume, upon which eyes and antennae would be fitted.  This was yet another new venture for me; I’d never made a hooded garment before (I’ve hardly ever sewn garments in the first place).  I used a double layer of heavy-duty fusible interfacing to give the hood some stiffness and structure, and also to bear the weight of the eyes, which I constructed in a similar fashion to the whale eyes.  

I used a braided triple-strand of red pipe cleaners as the antennae, and created a makeshift grommet to hold them in place on the hood through a reinforced hole that I made with my KAM snap awl.  The result:

Then came the construction of the lobster tail.  I was actually pretty pleased with how this came out.  I made a fatter, puffier, and segmented version of the “pillowcase” using a pattern for a lobster tail that I sketched out on packing paper again.  I also made a pattern for the final “fan” of the tail, and used fabric with several layers of craft interfacing to make that the appropriate texture and stiffness.  

Like with the whale tail, I gave the lobster tail a craft wire “endoskeleton” that coudl be bent into an optimal curled shape if desired.  I didn’t bend either costume too much prior to the day of Halloween, because I didn’t want the wire to get too soft - but on the day of, I took the chance and went for it, and the results were awesome!  

An especially fun detail with this costume is, I was using a shiny stretch material for the red portions, as well as a matte jersey red fabric, just for visual interest - but for certain areas (the underbelly of the lobster, the underside of the tail, etc.), I had this synthetic, scaly, faux crocodile-esque peach fabric that really looked cool.  

Anyway, here’s the tail:

Oh - and the lobster tail was detachable.  I used KAM snaps and my snap press to make some sockets on the apron, and studs on the tail, so that it could be removed.  Reason?  There is NO way Dey could sit in this costume at school with the tail on :)  So I had to come up with a creative solution so that his entire school day, he wouldn’t have to be standing up like a horse!

The final stage of this costume was to make lobster claws, or “snappers,” as Dey called them.  I knew he’d be irritated if they went over his whole hand, like a mitten, so I did some strategizing and came up with a way for him to wear them on the backs of his hands, while keeping his hands free.

And presto!  I was done!  Here are some “day of” pictures.  I splurged and ordered both kids solid color t-shirts and bottoms from Primary, to be worn under the costumes:

I had an internal deadline for completion of the lobster costume as October 27, which would have given me a relaxed three days to work on my Trunk or Treat trunk and really enjoy the process.  

HA.  

Yeah, that deadline came, and it %^ing went.  Fast-forward to me scrambling to finish the lobster costume on October 28th, then 29th, amidst numerous technical difficulties, jammed bobbins, and cursing while sitting at my sewing machine.  This was my view all day, everyday, in the week prior to Halloween:

(feeling murderous)

I managed to do a little bit of detail work on my Trunk here and there during breaks from sewing, but the majority of the trunk was put together on October 30th (and the wee hours of October 31st).  The stages of preparation for my “Discover the Sea” trunk were as follows.

1.  Acquire materials.  Most of what I used for this trunk was salvaged from crap I had at home, or purchased at my local Dollar Tree.  I spent $44 at Dollar Tree, which in my book is kind of like saying I spent $600 in one shot at the grocery store :)  Its kind of a lot of money to spend at a store where everything is a dollar.

If you’re wondering - this is what $44 of goods looks like in the Dollar Tree checkout line:

A few things were bought at Walmart, and I did purchase a can of spray foam insulation from Home Depot.  The total expenses on this trunk were my most to date of any trunk I’ve designed: about $75.  Again, this is probably the last year I’ll ever do this (sniff) so I decided to go out with a bang.

2.  I had a rough vision of my trunk from the get go - I wanted a blue background, with a number of coral reefs in the foreground, and some strands of seaweed framing it all.  I wanted a number of schools of colorful fish swimming about the coral, too.  My vision of coral reefs included a brain coral, and I had a random idea about how to make one.  I was worried that in case it didn't work out, I’d need time to either brainstorm another method, or time to adjust to my vision without the brain coral - so the creation of the brain coral was one of the first things I did.

Ingredients for a brain coral:  dollar store rubber ball, tube of inexpensive silicone caulking from Walmart or Home Depot.  A box or something to hold the ball steady while you’re working.  And down the line - a can of spray paint in a coral reef-y color of your choice.

After making my brain designs on the ball, I knew it would need to cure at least 24 hours before painting - so I set to making the next most time-consuming element of the trunk: the fish.  Using some fish shape templates that I found for free on google and printed, and a stack of craft foam in different colors, a pack of adhesive google eyes and a little tub full of leftover fabric paint from some bygone project, I made about 5-6 long strands of 5-6 fish each.  I had angelfish, parrotfish, seahorse, jellyfish, and sea turtles of various sizes and color schemes.  After cutting out, painting, and allowing these items to dry, I stuck them onto lengths of invisible fishing line (ha! the irony) to be used in the trunk.

3.  Then it came time to assemble some of the coral reefs.

This started with the preparation of several cardboard boxes I’d been saving for the occasion (courtesy of Amazon Prime deliveries).  I filled each box partway with some cheap gravel from Home Depot, so that they’d be weighed down a little and not blow over in the wind...(messy work)

Then I taped the boxes shut, and on some, hot-glued dollar store floral foam on top in strategic places:

covered them with either brown packaging paper, or some gold glittery wrapping paper from the dollar store.

Then came making the coral.  Thanks to a number of awesome tutorials on Pinterest and Youtube like this one, I turned this...

Into these....

4.  I had corals, I had fish, but I feared I might need a few extra doodads to fill in blank spaces... so I employed my children’s help with a stack of dollar store coffee filters and cupcake liners, as well as more google eyes, to make some clams and oysters.  A pack of dollar store pearlescent christmas ornaments served as pearls in the clams’ mouths.  I also blew up some various shades of blue balloons to various sizes, to be used as “bubbles” in the ocean water, just in case I had dead space in the trunk tableau that needed filling.

5.  My spray foam insulation corals!  I almost forgot.  A $3 can of spray foam insulation, some bamboo skewers I had laying around the kitchen, plus some waxed paper laid on the grass, resulted in these:

 6.  I mentally prepped and kept ready the misc supplies I’d need on day-of:  sea-colored backdrops, courtesy of blue metallic disposable tablecloths; dollar store Christmas garlands to serve as seaweed.  Several long bungee cords to use as “belts” around my car’s lift gate, for securing the backdrops and fish strands in place.  And, of course, the toolbox of Trunk or Treat, which includes: scissors, masking tape, scotch tape, staplers, pins, etc.  I also borrowed a few of my kids’ ocean-relevant toys, like Vev’s stuffed animal octopus, Dey’s stuffed animal hammerhead shark, etc. to be placed in empty areas of the trunk and give it more marine life.

7.  I told myself this year I wouldn’t need to trouble myself with making a big sign for my trunk.  I have a small cute wood-framed chalkboard, and I used colored chalk to make a sign that said “Discover the Sea” with some cute cartoony art around it.  But - of course, at the last minute, I found myself making a sign garland with a pretty font and eye-popping colored craft foam, to give the whole thing a polished look.  It was my swan song after all.... again, had to go out with a bang.

Anyway.  SO.  How’d it turn out?  I think fairly well.

Boom.

I think it came out amazing.  I was really proud of it.  

Trunk or Treat is NOT a contest, there were no prizes handed out for trunks, and its all in good fun.  But for me, making this look awesome was not about impressions to other people.  I DESPERATELY needed something to look forward to, something to throw myself into, and something to make myself feel good, after a shitty few weeks.  Every time I look at these pictures, I smile.  I am really happy at how our trunk turned out, and I’m happy that when I look back on this season of my kid’s young childhood, I’ll remember one really fun and validating experience, and not only the heartbreaking challenges and losses that we faced this year.  

Another happy thing that emerged from our trunk - one of the teachers, Ms. K, who teaches for the 4-6 year old classroom, is going to be doing a huge project this spring where she decorates her entire classroom like an ocean scene.  She wants to do sort of a class skit on the story of “The Rainbow Fish,” a popular children’s book.  She really loved our trunk, and when she told me about her plan, I was SOOOO happy to tell her right away that when the time comes, I will gladly donate EVERYTHING I made for this trunk to her.  It would give me so much pleasure and satisfaction to know that the hours of labor I put into making these coral reefs will go on to be used in another setting, for the kids’ benefit.  I hope that we can make it work out!

Anyway.  So, this was it - my Trunk or Treat SWAN SONG!  I have enjoyed every year that I’ve participated in this event, and am very grateful that this year, the experience could be therapeutic and uplifting.  I’ll post a briefer entry next with a retrospective of Halloween costumes I’ve made for my kids, as well as side-by-sides of my trunks over the years.  I also look forward to sharing the crafting projects I’ve been cooking up in the weeks since Halloween - there are a few!  

Here’s to craft therapy.  Love it, love it, love it.

[drorystory-blog]

Can I produce a HIT Podcast in 1 WEEK!?

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1S0kPVzKO4&feature=youtu.be

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYtMBNSMTbU

In this thread I’ll be going through the exact steps I did to finish this challenge on time. I’ll be breaking it down into what I did on each day.

Day 1: Sunday

Came up with the idea (I was inspired by the DND Improv Show in the Winnipeg Fringe). I got a cast of improvisers together. Made prompts to inspire the actors. Ronnie and Bradley came by and did about 40 minutes of character development and then improvised their scene for the microphone. I enhanced the scene with music and effects afterward. I recorded everything into Reaper and with a Rode NT1-A. I sourced all my sound effects from YouTube and downloaded them through YouTube - mp3.

Day 2: Monday

Mark, Adam, Raegan, and Karanveer came to record their scenes. After about an hour of character development, they took to the mic in groups of 2 and I recorded. I edited their scenes afterward, adding in sound effects where appropriate and a beat when Adam and Mark start dancing. I have a lot of fun making sure the sound effects enhance the story by bringing it to life a little more. In editing, I noticed that Adam and Mark were heading towards their friend from college who’s been highly successful and Raegan and Karanveer were just caught by the King. It made sense that the King and the friend from college was the same person.

Day 3: Tuesday

With everyones first takes done I began thinking of a logical, dramatic way to tie up episode one. It seemed there had to be an Evil King character so I went towards casting it. I decided that I will play the Kings assistant then my girlfriend said she wanted to do a role later on so I let her do it (I played the guard and the kid waking up at the end). I wrote the script for the end of the episode. The script had 6 additional scenes and was about half of the total time of the episode. I contacted a graphic designer I quite like to make a sketch of an image for the series. He wanted 60$ per character so I decided on 1 character and he agreed to take his price down to 50 for a shout out in the video. I started scheduling people to record their last lines.

Day 4: Wednesday

As much as I’d like to keep the script improvised, I couldn’t get actors on the same day so with the written script I was able to record the remaining lines of 2 characters on this day. I wrapped Adam and Raegan. I produced Gnarbelarbezub’s rock and roll doorbell by using some guitar samples on top of the doorbell melody I made in Logic. I layered the Logic Melody with an electric guitar plug-in. I got a few samples of art from the graphic designer. We’re narrowing down the final product but overall impressed with this guys professionalism. His Instagram is @kumobleu. I still needed a king and a narrator so I asked Connor, my girlfriend's coworker and old improv teacher and Brooklyn, a host at the radio station I work at and they luckily both said yes. I was particularly happy to have Brooklyn on board because she was my main teacher at the radio station and I was proud to be able to say that I had a project with her.

Day 5: Thursday

By the end of this day, everyone’s audio files were in for me to start slicing together. I got this day off work so I could have actors in and out all day. I had Connor over at 1:30 to record all his lines, we recorded Audrey’s lines at this point too. With Audrey's help, we finished the script for the narration and sent it over to Brooklyn who sent me the recordings within 2 hours. Very impressive. I quickly recorded my guard lines. Mark, Ronnie, and Bradley came over at 6 to record their lines and Karanveer finished his lines up at 8. I had all the files that I needed so I got to work piecing the story together in Reaper. I had 9 scenes and ended up staying up til 5am to finish getting everything together.

Day 6: Friday

Woke up around 11 and started downloading my stems from the 9 scenes. My coworker, who produces a show at the station let me use his studio after work so at 4 I hopped in, uploaded my tracks and started mixing in Pro Tools. I didn’t mess too much with EQ because I’m not confident with my ear for that yet, basically, I just made sure the volumes were all good. I put a limiter on all the speaking tracks. It was difficult to get the improvised scenes good. The first 2 scenes took me 4 hours to get because the limiter was crushing it too much and I was getting lots of distortion when I’d listen back. I do like the improv scenes so in the future, I may try to give them on their own mic channels. That’s one way I’d like to see this project grow. The improv scenes are a little more natural-sounding than the others. During the scene where Slevin and Dorgy are communicating through the intercom, I had 2 beep channels, one was EQ’d so that it would only play the lows. The intercom voices were lowered and filtered as well to make them seem a little distant. I was mixing in the studio and finally finished at 1am. I got the art earlier in the day and am 100% happy. Listening to the podcast as a whole, with Brooklyn’s narration felt really great. I’m proud of myself.

Day 7: Saturday

I put all my vlog footage together and made a video in Final Cut Pro and at the last possible minute titled this project: How to Fail at Magic Without Really Trying, Episode 1: How to Love One’s Elf. There were a few different title options and I had a very hard time picking but this one was the most popular with the cast.

If you have any questions about anything specific, I’d be happy to answer. :D

[heartcravings]

50 Questions Tag!

@jongin-be-my-jagi​ tagged me for this a while ago, but I took my sweet time to answer. Here is my secret intel if you want to know me a little bit more!! Check hers as well, she’s an amazing writer and friend. 1. What takes up too much of your time? Tumblr, my stupid procrastination prone brain and my thesis. 

2. What makes your day better? Friends and loved ones, music and these absolute dorks (Channie especially) 

3. What’s the best thing that happened to you today? I hopped on the mat today in the early hours of the morning, rain on my window and the neighbours cat peeking at me from his window across the street.

4. What fictional place would you like to go to? Wonderland, bacause it’s “curiouser and curiouser!”

'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.  Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

5. Are you good at giving advice? I think so. Not so good at following my own advice though.  I do always consider where the other is standing and if I don’t know how to proceed then I’ll just be honest and say I can’t help. But i’ll always listen with my heart. 

 6. Do you have any mental illnesses? Not diagnosed. I do think i might be going through something now. 

7. Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? No, but i have a recurring nightmare: the world is made of black and white paper thin layers. I am a paper thin person walking along a street surrounded by paper thin buildings. I walk for a long time, looking up at the white sky. Until the street ends, there is no more building and i fall into the abyss of a blank page.  I have had this dream since the age of 8 or 9 years old. Fear of not being good enough, you say?! Ding, ding, ding!! We got a winner in the back!  8. What musician inspired you the most? I get inspired by music all the time!! One of my all time favourite songs is Spanish Sahara by Foals. Its sublime!

So I’d say I’m mainly inspired by these artists: Queen, Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Radiohead, Bowie, Daughter, Bob Dylan, Beirut, Yeah yeah yeahs, Arcade Fire, The National, Joy Division, Blur, Warpaint, Gorillaz, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Chet Baker, The Cure, Courtney Barnett, The Maccabees, Car Seat Headrest, Florence + The Machine, Editors, Kasabian, Crystal Fighters, Death Cab for a cutie, The Doors, Efterklang, Explosions in the Sky, Franz Ferdinand, The Horrors, James Blake, José Gonzalez, Los Campesinos!,  Metronomy, Nick Cave, Nina Simone, Patrick Watson,  Phoenix, Sharon Van Etten, The Shins, Simon & Garfunkel, The Smiths, St.Vincent, The Strokes, Toro y Moi, tricot, Tune-Yards, TV on the radio, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The Vaccines, Vampire Weekend, The Velvet Underground, The War on Drugs, Wild Beasts and Yo La Tengo.

And the electro, pop and hip-hop groves of my heart: EXO, 2NE1, Janelle Monáe, Big Bang, Kris Wu,LCD soundsystem, SBTRKT, Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar and Daft Punk. 

And special mentions to the portuguese ones (learning from yixing and promoting when i can :P): Capicua, Joana Espadinha, The Legendary Tigerman, Linda Martini, Mayra Andrade, Noiserv, Ornatos Violeta, Paus, Samuel Uria, You Can’t Win Charlie Brown and The Silence 4. I know, tldr right? Sorry folks! 9. Have you ever fallen in love? Yes I have. I have mistaken a crush for love too. But i have definitely been very deeply in love. A wrecked kintsugi heart over here people! 10. What’s your dream date? I don’t think I have one. I’d love to do something unique with that someone special, something special for the two of us. It could be as simple as riding the subway while sharing earphones & listening to our playlist or walking the dogs out! Idk, I’m easy to please. But right now it would have to be with this handsome man :D pretty please?!

11. What do others notice about you? I am very kind and warm hearted, so I think that’s what people first notice when meeting me. Although I maintain good eye contact, I am also timid and will be quieter if there are very energetic people in the group. When alone, I usually take the first step and try to meet people, but only if i really must.  12. What’s an annoying habit you have? It’s really hard for me to ask for help. I also like to tell detailed descriptions of everything... Couldn’t you tell? 13. Do you still talk to your first love? I’ll text him on his birthday and he does the same to me. We met when we were 10 years old and that childhood friendship remains. But regarding my one and truly deep relationship, no we do not talk, unless we randomly meet.

14. How many exes do you have? I have three exes. The first love who was just an idealized crush on my childhood friend: we dated for 2 weeks during summer break xD Then my first real boyfriend, we met in my first year at university, dated for quite some time, he really loved me and made me love myself a little more. Finally the one i loved too much. I mended his wounds and made him love himself as much as I did. I always say all the love we feel makes our hearts grow bigger. I do not regret loving any of them, I am me now due to them and I would not change it if I could. 15. How many songs are in your playlist? I have way too many playlists for each and every mood... But my favourite songs list on spotify has about 1500 songs! uwu!  16. What instruments can you play? Triangles and flute?! I had mandatory music classes in school... so in reality I can’t really play a instrument...

17. Who do you have the most pictures of? Probably my cat, Sushi. With a second close of my doodles and sketches. 

18. Where would you like to go before you die? EVERY WHERE!!! But I really want to go to Japan and Scotland and Iceland and South Korea and New Zealand and i’ll shut up. 19. What’s your zodiac? Capricorn. 20. Do you relate to it? Sort of.

21. What is happiness to you? You know when it’s really cold outside in the winter and you manage to find a sheltered place where no wind can hit you and you still get to feel the warm rays of the winter suns on your skin? You hear the birds outside and you are contempt in that moment, at peace. That is happiness to me.   22. Are you going through anything right now? Yes, I am a bit lost. Trying to finish my thesis and trying to find what I want to do after. It’s liberating but also pretty scary. 23. What’s the worst decision you ever made? It’s a series of small decisions really. It started with going for a phd with the same people i worked in my msc. Should have gone to a different place. Then deciding to come home after a traumatic loss in the family. Should have kept my life going but I stalled it then. (I don’t regret helping my loved ones though).

24. What’s your favourite store? Probably Wishtrend for beauty stuff. Other than that I don’t have any favourite brands/stores. 25. (HALFWAY!) What’s your opinion on abortion? I think everyone is free to decide what they want or need to do. I couldn’t possible judge. If I would it? Probably not.

27. Do you have a favourite album? I don’t think so, I have favourite tunes for different moods and moments in my life. But if threatened with my life, I’d maybe say Total Life Forever from Foals.

28. What do you want for your birthday? It’s such a long time until my birthday comes! But maybe a real EXO ot9 reunion as a goodbye to Minseok?

29. What is most people’s first impression of you? Friendly and easy to open up to, i think.

30. What age do you seem according to most people? In real life, people usually think I am way younger than I am.  31. Where do you keep your phone when you’re sleeping? In the crook of my bed, between the mattress and the bed frame.

32. What word do you say the most? No idea really! 33. What’s the oldest age you’d date? 40s? I don’t think too much about age actually. 

34. What’s the youngest age you’d date? 20s? Again not very important to me. Love is love, whomever, whenever and wherever <3

35. What job / career do most people say would suit you? I don’t know! People always say i don’t totally fit in anything... so there’s that. If you have an idea please let me know! 36. What’s your favourite music genre? Go back to question 8. I listen to everything! :D 37. If you could live in any country in the world where would it be? I’d like to live around the world, every few months a different place and get to know different cultures.

38. What is your current favourite song? I’ve been obsessed with RM’s intro/teaser song, Map of the Soul: Persona. (I’m not even a bts fan, but this music and lyrics just touched me a lot.)

39. How long have you had this blog for? I think for about 6 years? It’s my personal space, where I dump all my obsessions.  

40. What are you excited for? I’m visiting some friends in Granada in a couple of weeks. Yay, tapas!

41. Are you a better talker or listener? Normally I am a better listener. But there are a few people to whom i open like a book. Either words flow right out of me without even thinking or they see throw me. Those truly are my people.

42. What is the last productive thing you did? Prepped meals and cleaned the kitchen. Open the folder and file of my thesis. Read the latest chapter I wrote.  43. What do you want for Christmas? Well, just like for my birthday, there is still such a long time to it! But let’s say i want to have already finish this part of my life and want to find my next adventure.

44. What class do you get the best grades in? No more exams! Ehehe! But I used to have good grades at everything. Physical Education was my lowest mark i think.

45. On a scale of 1-10 how do you feel right now? Right now, a 4? I have a headache.

46. What can you see yourself doing in 10 years? Smiling? :D I want to be happy in my own skin. To feel contempt in my life, doing something that gives me a sense of purpose and having time to share and enjoy with my friends and family. 47. When did you get your first heartbreak? Oh my kintsugi heart has been broken quiet a lot. By friends and lovers and even by myself. I keep patching it up with gold dreams though.  48. At what age do you wanna be married? I will only want to be married if i find the one. So until then I guess. 

49. What career did you want to have as a child? I wanted to be an astronaut and a ballerina. Preferably both!

50. What do you crave right now? Just sitting somewhere and listening to Yeol play the guitar.

Well i finished it! :D I’ll tag @thedeviousdo @ohsenhun @hongseok and @paepsi. I’d love to read yours! Feel free to dismiss it though, it is quite a lot.  Lots of love everyone!! <3 <3 <3

[mysticsparklewings]

Bug Girl

My WIP Wednesday! piece is all finished!   (Warning: LOOOOOOONG description about the art process ahead!  ) I don't think it's terribly obvious for a number of reasons (at least not at first), but this piece is actually a bit of fan art/inspired by How to make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow, which I finished reading Monday night--Though I actually started this piece a couple of days before   There's a concept that gets brought up a few different times in the book of the main character Tiger imagining a "bug-girl" in a jar, usually to help visualize her emotions to us, the audience. This concept really resonates and stuck with me even before I finished the book, and thus I was compelled to draw it. Technically the way I see that concept in my head looks different from what I've done here, so sometime in the future I may take another stab at it, but for this time I wanted to strengthen the connection between the bug-girl concept and the book, so visually I modeled the overall aesthetic largely off of the book's cover; white lines and white dots on a dark blue background that has a slight gradient at the bottom. The gradient on the cover is more subtle and is more on the lines than the background itself, but I took artistic liberty on that to make my life a little easier. My original plan was to do the background with watercolor, do the lines digitally and print them out (since I had some kinks in the sketch I wanted to experiment with digitally instead of doing a lot of additional drawing and erasing) and then use my lightbox and a white gel pen to trace directly on top of the watercolor, then splatter away with some white ink. But of course, things can never be that simple. The way I see it in my head, the bug-girl has, well, bug eyes, but for this piece, I didn't want to lean too heavily into the "creepy" factor, given it doesn't really fit with the content of the book (which is a great read if you like realistically heavy YA novels, by the way) so I angled her head down and her hair covering her face to keep from having to make the decision on whether or not I wanted to go with that look. And additionally to do proper bug eyes (at least the kind I was imagining) would've involved a lot of tiny circle/cell shapes, and I imagine that would've made things feel too crowded or would have blended into the splatters/background in an uncomfortable way. Additionally, I was going to have her wings raised behind her, but after playing around with a few different references and positions in Photoshop (knowing full well I was not happy with the original wings from the sketch that I completely free-handed), I felt like this more asymmetrical, lowered position and dragonfly-type structure just looked better and fits better with some of the movements of the wings described in the book (using them to cover her eyes, etc.) which in most cases aren't technically plausible with normal bug wings. My first real problem was with the jar. Realistically, it needed to be tall enough for the girl to stand at full height at least. And in theory, probably a little bit higher so it would be more comfortable overall and so that in theory she wouldn't just stand up and be able to push the lid off. But I was having issues with the sizing because the jar could only be so big so that A. it would fit comfortably on my paper and B. if it was too tall, the empty space between the top of the jar and the girl would noticeably awkward. So I fiddled with that for way too long and ultimately, it's probably too short, but the size balanced is more comfortable to the eyes, I think. (I also added the cross-hatching to the lid to make it more obvious there was a lid since originally it just kind of looked like the jar had a very wide lip.) I also gave her a set of antennae, and after trying the concept of segmenting her whole body to be more bug-like (which was way too many lines everywhere) I decided to add some plates on the front of her forearms and calves. It's not much at all, but I didn't want to stick solely to traditionally "fairy" imagery since she's a bug-girl, not a fairy, but in this lines-only format, there was only so much I could do and still get the proper impact I was looking for. Speaking of which... I did a lot of swatching and testing of my various watercolors that I have on hand to A. get the colors I wanted right, B. practice my blending of two colors with more paint than water since I wanted very dark, opaque colors, and C. test if my lightbox would even work under the thick watercolor paper and the actual watercolor. However, I made two errors in judgment during the testing: 1. The areas I swatched to test were considerably smaller than the actual size of the area I wanted to cover and even with my biggest brush when I went to do a practice go I very quickly realized that was going to take an absurd amount of paint, time, effort, and I was very likely to run into some blending problems with the gradient. (So, in summary, half-pan-sized watercolors and mostly small brushes are not great for very large areas) 2. Once I realized the above, (and I had already done two very quick tests with alcohol markers and that idea almost immediately went out the window for the same issue) I had to switch course and ended up using some water-soluble pencils (one Arteza Woodless Watercolor Pencil for the dark blue and one Derwent Inktense pencil for the dark teal at the bottom) to lay down the color for the background and then wet them down to smooth out the color. Which turned out pretty nicely, especially once they dried. (I was a little worried at first since while still wet it was looking kind of patchy and weird ) The problem with number 2 is that after it had fully dried (aside from the paper curling pretty badly since it was in a sketchbook and I didn't think to tape the edges of the page down before taking water to it, which was mostly fixed pretty easily by wetting down the back of the page and sitting a very heavy box on it while it dried overnight) when I went to use the lightbox, the pigment from the water-soluble pencils was noticeably more opaque than the straight watercolor tests/swatched I had looked at previously. It wasn't so opaque that I couldn't see my lines underneath at all but it was opaque enough that a lot of the smaller details wear really hard to see. And thus I had a pretty big problem on my hands. What I should have done was trace the lines in black on the blank paper first so they would be more likely to show through the pigment in the first place and there's a good chance that would've fixed the problem, even if I still needed the lightbox to see those lines perfectly. But hindsight is always 20/20 so that knowledge didn't really fix the matter at hand. I knew pretty instantly that I didn't want to try tracing the lines onto another piece of watercolor paper and trying to color matter since I seem to always have majorly noticeable issues with that, especially when there's a gradient involved, and also because I knew when I scanned it in it would be fairly obviously there were two layers of paper instead of one because of how thick watercolor paper is. I also knew alcohol markers were out because, again, color matching issues with the selection available to me, and also from some of my much earlier testing with trying to get the specific gradient that I wanted. That left me with colored pencils. And thus I went through the five different sets I use enough to keep where I can easily access them (I have others I don't like as much that would've just been a waste of time) and started swatching colors on a piece of the same paper I had the lines on and then held them up to the background to color match as closely as possible. I ended up picking one dark blue and one dark teal each from both my Prismacolor and Polychromos sets since the blue from the Prismacolor was closer but the teal from the Polychromos was closer but they were both slightly off, so to keep the texture consistent I mixed both together for both colors. This ended up being a very good idea in hindsight because I finished off with a final layer of the Polychromos and that kept my white gel pen from having the problems it would normally have over straight-Prismacolor pigment. (Since Prismacolors are wax-based the wax usually clogs the pen tip very easily; the Polychromos are oil-based, so the oil created a slicker layer between the wax and the pen). And all I did was use my lightbox to see the black printed lines through the colored pencil as easily as possible and went back over them with my white Sakura Gelly Roll, then I went back and outlined the jar and the lid specifically with my white Uni-Ball Signo, since the ink is slightly brighter and the nib is larger. Once that was all done to my satisfaction, I cut out the girl in her jar and placed it on the watercolor background with some double-sided tape I picked up the day before from DollarTree, clipping a few edges so they'd be as flush with the edges of the paper as possible. And I figured that would be a better idea than glue because the glue had a very good potential of being very messy and leaving notable marks. The tape was just a safer bet. And fortunately, the paper laid pretty flat, save for a couple of spots I either missed because I applied the tape by lifting up the edges so I wouldn't totally lose my placement or up by some of the nooks and crannies that make up the ridges at the top of the jar that were just too small to do individually. And there is one spot where that tape wrinkled on me, but it's fortunately not terribly noticeable in the final product. Then I made a paper mask for the girl inside the jar and got to move on to the slightly more fun part; I dipped a paintbrush in some white ink (white ink as opposed to white watercolor because I was concerned the water part might cause some reaction to the existing watercolor background that I didn't want and I was a little concerned it would make the non-watercolor paper that the girl and the jar were drawn on warp) and started tapped it against another paint brush to get splatters everywhere. I masked the girl since I was pretty sure she'd blend in too much if she got splattered too. After the ink was dry, I removed the mask and went in with the white Gelly Roll again to make some stars here and there; mostly just because I wanted to since the original book cover only has dots. I left it at that for the night since it was almost 3 and I was tired, but I came back to it the next day and racked my brain for a bit since it felt like it was missing something. I ultimately ended up putting the mask back on the girl and used my pastel blue PanPastel to create a glow effect around her. After that, I scanned it and did make some minor adjustments in Photoshop (mostly color correction, but there were a couple of black lines of shadow around the edge of the jar since it was still a separate piece of paper on top of the other one at the end of the day. And here we are. It's still not perfection, but I am ultimately happy with it since I think I got the look I was after in the end. Plus, I think I capture the spirit of the original book cover's style pretty well ____ Artwork (c) me, MysticSparkleWings I do not own How to make Friends with the Dark or the cover art ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[sheeping-around]

Sheeping Around Retrospective: By The Numbers

tl;dr: Scroll all the way down for the numbers.

Sheeping Around has been live on the App Store for a little over ten days now. I think it is about time I look back at the development cycle, the good parts, the bad parts and also share some sales figures while I’m at it. I’m following the trend of transparency to help other indie game developers know and understand the market of premium games, for which I gained inspiration from Eric @ Slothwerks and Arnold @ Tiny Touch Tales. I’m also inspired by the way they work: solo devs working with talented people across the world on a contract basis, and I follow the same pattern.

While I’ve worked on games in the past, this is my first official release on the App Store, and I’m really glad to have been able to reach that goal. My previous games got stuck in infinite iteration loops and never got to see the light of the day. 

Inception

I have written in one of my previous posts how the idea of Sheeping Around was born. The idea began as a turn based (asymmetric) strategy game, and eventually turned into a card game that it is today. You can read more about it in the below two posts:

Sheeping Around Inception

Inspired by Card Thief and More

Inspirations of Sheeping Around and its inception as a physical card game

Development

I have around 8 years of experience as a Javascript developer. While I am familiar with other languages like Java and Objective-C/C++, my core expertise and speed of development is still in Javascript. Also, I had begun using TypeScript at work since mid 2017 and had loved it. Reminded me of the good ol’ Flash and Actionscript days.

When the physical version of Sheeping Around card game was proven to be fun enough, I began working on a web-based prototype version of it using Angular.js on the front-end and Node.js on the backend in the first week of November 2017. I deployed the system on Heroku on its free plan, and used Heroku Postgres as database of choice. (It was free upto 9000 rows, more than sufficient for a prototype.)

Initial prototype version of Sheeping Around

For the native mobile version of the game, I used cocos2d-x JS with TypeScript.

I pushed the code to GitHub as private repositories. I maintained separate repos for client and the server.

Multiplayer

Initially I had planned on Sheeping Around to be a solitaire card game, but it ended up being too similar to Card Thief. It wasn’t much fun anyway either. I decided to prototype a two player dueling game on paper, and it proved to be a lot of fun. I figured it would be much more challenging to handle a multiplayer game, but given my full-stack experience, I was confident I’d be able to do it anyway.

Architecture of Sheeping Around

Sketch, GraphicRiver and GUI

Around March 2018, I began working on the GUI of the game. I had recently switched my role to Product Design at my company Sumo Logic and had begun learning Sketch and loved it. I bought some assets off GraphicRiver and heavily modified a lot of them and put them together in Sketch.

All screen designs in Sketch

I wasn’t very happy with the initial designs, but towards the end of April things had started looking much better and professional.

Initial designs

Final designs

Google Indie Games Accelerator

The progress in the initial few months was somewhat slow. I spent time refining the balance of the game and tweaking the progression. Meanwhile I was also designing some UI for the native mobile version of the game.

By the end of June 2018, Google announced the first ever Indie Games Accelerator for games made in South East Asia. The submission deadline was July, so I started rapidly working on the mobile version for Android and iterating it really fast. By mid of July, I had the gameplay fully functional. By the end of it, I had the entire progression system and marketplace fully set up. 

Some charts from the progression and reward system of the game inspired mainly by Pokemon

While I was not selected for the accelerator program, it did help me accelerate the game development process anyway and I am thankful to the accelerator program for that.

Art and Animation

I discuss a lot about art style with Rashi, and we had finalized that the characters would be anthro. Check out some concept art and final artwork for some of the characters below:

I really loved the idea of in-card animations in Card Thief, and wanted to have something similar in my game as well. I was fortunate enough to run into Robinson Millaguin in the Indie Game Developers Facebook group. He began his work on animating some of the initial cards in Spine and my mind was blown already. Check out the video below:

You can see more of the animation GIFs on the official website for Sheeping Around.

Tragicomic Theme and Music

I had contracted someone for music, but it did not sound so fitting. It was very difficult to decide what kind of music would fit this game because it was such a unique premise. I started scouting out for tracks on AudioJungle. Farms are usually associated with country music, but I had ruled it out completely. Western style music with gut guitars and ukuleles are a close second choice associated with farm themes. Somehow that style didn’t fit either, and sounded rather cowboy-ish. 

I explored all kinds of genres of music and tried to see if they fit in the game. Finally, I found that the music in Comedy genre seemed to be the most fitting. I stumbled upon the profile of AudioAgent, who had an amazing portfolio of comedy tracks. His tracks are tragicomic themed, and coincidentally, he kept adding more tracks in the genre as the game progressed.

The game now features a total of 9 comedy audio tracks by AudioAgent. (The tracks change every 10 levels.)

You can check out the tracks in the below Youtube playlists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Ajh9Cn23k&list=PLnTakDx63B8L0pBpjPD10VB3NJEcXj2l4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXeq713R444&list=PLnTakDx63B8IS3hr4Sd-tnZXgu5vCIoi6

Sound

I had already made a list of suitable sounds from AudioJungle, but it was from a variety of artists and didn’t seem to fit together. I was not sure if I should hire a sound designer for the project. I figured it would be a good idea to ask around anyway.

I am active on Twitter in the gamedev community, and I found Elise Kates’ profile there. She had done some amazing work in the past for games like Moss, and I thought she’d be a good candidate to help me out with the sound. And it was a great decision afterall. The sound effects added the finishing touches to the polish in the game and really brought the characters to life!

Putting It All Together

I’m glad I’ve been able to put all of this together in a single package. The pun in the name, gameplay mechanics, art, animation, sound and music all come together really well. It would be perhaps be one of my proudest achievement since it is an important skillset to have.

Translation, Screenshots, Trailer and Preview Videos

In December, I took help from the Indie Game Localization community to get the game translated in 12 languages. It was an overwhelming amount of work, about 5000 words. I maintained separate Google Sheets for each language.

But what was harder was designing screenshots and preview videos and localizing them into all languages. But it did pay off eventually because it got the game featured in most of the regions that I had localized for.

Check out the preview video below:

Robinson helped in creating a landscape trailer for the game as well, since Android needs a landscape video regardless of whether the game is landscape or not. it was more of a theatrical trailer that served as an introduction to the premise of Sheeping Around and dab a little bit into its gameplay:

Freemium, Premium or Paymium?

The hardest decision for me to take was whether to go premium or freemium (or paymium), and if premium, what would be the price point of the game. Early on I had decided that the game would be premium on iOS and free-to-play on Android, given how easy piracy is on Android (more on piracy in the Piracy section below). I had thought of keeping the game’s price to $4.99, as I had read that Card Crawl had recently upped its price to $4.99 from $2.99 and it increased their month-on-month sales by more than 2x. Turns out, it won’t work very well during release when both developer and the game are new to the market and there are no ratings and reviews. This is also why my day 2 sales were more than day 1 sales, when I dropped the price to $2.99.

My game also has in-app purchases, and most people object to the idea of IAPs in a premium game. But if you look at the top paid charts in the card game category (or even any other category for that matter), you will find that more than 70% of the games have IAPs. This model is called paymium on mobile platforms, and has only recently entered the debate alongside freemium and premium. In the PC world, most games are paid, and the concept of DLCs is fairly normal and accepted, so I don’t understand what the issue with IAPs in premium mobile games is about.

Besides, the IAPs in Sheeping Around aren’t your typical in-your-face popups that appear at the end of every game to give you a reward or to increase your life. They are subtle, just two coin packs that you can buy if need be. You probably won’t need to though.

Pre-orders and the Coming Soon Feature

I set the game to be available for preorder on 31st December 2018. That would make my first new years’ resolution to be to release this game. I set Thursday, 17th Jan as the release date. That is because App Store refreshes every Thursday and it would get greater number of days in visibility if it gets featured then. (Most features last at least a week.)

That is also when I also submitted my game and my story to Apple via App Store’s promote link, hoping to get featured.

On January 5, the game got featured in the Coming Soon section, and it started getting a little spike in pre-orders. From 1-2 per day to around 25-30 per day. On January 20, the game got featured in a lot more territories, including US, UK, South Africa, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. I netted about 250 pre-orders from this feature. But it turns out that in some places, since Apple lets you preorder without having a linked credit card, they would fail to be billed on release of the game. Because of this, only about 200 pre-orders went through successfully. App store still shows -1/-2 net preorders days after the game’s release.

New Games We Love & Top Charts

Upon release, the game was featured in “New Games We Love” in US, China and the Greater China Area (HK, Macau, Taiwan), South-East Asia, India, UK, Europe, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It also went on to become #3 card game in US (iPhone) during launch and stayed between #3-#5 during the first week. In China, which is the second biggest market for me, the highest it went was #9 in card games. (Competition is quite high in that category there, with most paid games priced at ¥1 ($0.15).)

I especially love the words UK editorial team used to describe the game in Games We Love.

Reception

The reviews so far have been positive, with occasional negative reviews talking about some bugs, most of which I have fixed in the week after release. Here are the current reviews and ratings stats for the game so far:

US: 4.6 / 5 (56 ratings, 32 reviews) China: 4.3 / 5 (41 ratings, 23 reviews) Thailand: 4.7 / 5 (15 ratings, 11 reviews) Germany: 4.0 / 5 (11 ratings, 6 reviews) Russia: 4.6 / 5 (8 ratings, 7 reviews) UK: 3.7 / 5 (6 ratings, 4 reviews)

Some encouraging reviews:

“I’ve only played this game for 20 minutes, and I love it already. The creativity, the idea, everything about this game is just beyond my expectations, and I can only assume how addicting this game will be.”

“It a really good game. You should make a physical card game for this game. I really like it and it’s definitely worth buying it.”

“Don’t really review apps, let alone end up playing one a day or two after I started. But this one... this one got me hooked! It’s fairly simple gameplay but sometimes it gets pretty exciting.”

“Pre-ordered it, I've played Card Monsters since release & Hearthstone for 4 years & this game is very solid & entertaining.”

“I think this game is another new twist to a card game, I can definitely see potential for this game. I can’t wait for the next update, hopefully with some new cards to use.”

“This game is family oriented and so easy to play. It has the simplicity of UNO yet with enough strategy to keep you engage but not overwhelmed. This is highly addictive and fun to play. The element of luck is always a factor but how to use the cards given is the key. The games are short but competitive. Those who love card/card battle games should download this without hesitation! Kudos! Look forward to updates to see what you guys come up with next!”

DAUs, Screen Time and Retention Rate

I use Tableau for my data visualization needs, and have custom graphs and dashboards created for all kinds of metrics. 27% of the players have played the game for at least one hour, which is quite encouraging. 4.5% of the players have been addicted and have played for more than 5 hours. I’ve been seeing an average DAU of around 750 and average total session time of over 450 hours. Not that it matters much for a premium game, but I’m tracking it anyway. In terms of retention, my day 7 retention is about 10%, which isn’t so bad. I will give it more time to see what my day 30 retention is.

Press Coverage and Critic Reviews

I had mailed a lot of media sites and YouTubers to review the game. A lot of them covered the game. Thanks to the localization effort, the game was featured in a lot of foreign language blogs. 

Specifically Pocket Gamer and Pocket Tactics wrote about the game. The review from Pocket Tactics was negative with a 2.0 / 5 rating, and from Pocket Gamer was somewhat above average at 3.5 / 5 rating. Pocket Tactics review, though negative, gave me a chuckle because of their words of choice.

You can check them out here:

Pocket Gamer: A surprisingly tense, exciting and fun card battler that doesn’t quite have the tactical depth for the long haul.

Pocket Tactics: Sheeping Around looks the part, but sadly the game turns out to be as dull as you would expect for a game based on an animal that stands around in a field all day chewing grass.

The criticism though has been pretty good in these reviews, and I will add more content and depth in the future updates to address the weaknesses they have mentioned.

Piracy

One thing I wanted to point out was that about 25% of the users of Sheeping Around are using a pirated version. I was under the impression that it would be very hard to pirate an iOS game, because it would need jailbreaking and it isn’t very easy to jailbreak your iOS device. Turns out I was very wrong. There are pirated App Stores like AppEven that you can install on your device, and you can install premium iOS games for free using those stores. You don’t need to jailbreak your phone and the whole process is dead simple. Turns out these folks are abusing Enterprise App certificates for ad-hoc app distribution, and Apple hasn’t been paying much attention to them. 

Within about two minutes, I was able to download a pirated version of my own game from AppEven. It even added its own ads that pop up once every few minutes that bring revenue to the owners of the pirated app store. It made me a little sad, but that’s the way it is. No matter how many attempts you make to prevent piracy in your app, the hackers will have a workaround to bypass it. They can remove the code in your app that prevents piracy, replace your ads with their own. It is their daily business.

Promotional Artwork

For games that Apple finds worthy of promotion using a banner feature or on the Today page, Apple requests developers for promotional artwork. I got this request last Monday and I submitted the artwork by Wednesday. The game hasn’t gotten a banner feature or Game of the Day yet, so I can only hope it will happen one day in the future.

By The Numbers

And finally, the moment you’d been waiting for. Sales. Sheeping Around was able to break even about 50% of its outsourcing costs (art, animation and sfx) in 10 days since launch. 

The top 2 territories where the game made some decent revenue are US and China, followed by Germany and UK.

What’s next?

I’m already working on some new cards that add more variety to the gameplay. These include:

Bonus cards

Peek - Look at the opponent’s hand. 

Undo - Undo the opponent’s last move. It can also potentially undo a stolen or whistled sheep.

Lucky Pendant - Draw half the number of cards in your hand (rounded off).

Shepherd cards

Fence N (N = 2, 3, 4) - Build a fence around all sheep preventing any of them from being stolen for N turns.

Electric Fence N (N = 2, 3) - Build an electric fence around all sheep preventing any of them from being lured or stolen for N turns.

Quarantine N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Cure all sheep of Infestation or Intoxication by N turns.

Vaccinate N (N = 3, 4) - Prevent Infestation or Intoxication on all sheep for the next N turns.

Thief cards

Infest N (N = 2, 3, 4) - Infest all sheep with pests to prevent them from being whistled for N turns.

Intoxicate N (N = 2, 3) - Intoxicate sheep to prevent them from being grazed or whistled for N turns.

Thrash N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Damage a Fence or an Electric Fence and reduce its value by N turns.

Termites (N = 3, 4) - Spread termites to prevent building a Fence or an Electric Fence for the next N turns.

Changes to existing cards

Rescue N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Reduce the effect of Trap, Infestation or Intoxication by N turns on one sheep.

Distract N (N = 1, 2, 3) - Reduce the effect of Guard, Fence or Electric Fence by N turns on one sheep.

You can already add an ally that unlocks at Lv. 20 to the game. Future updates may include upto 5 allies in total:

Shepherd’s side

Beaver - Jack Kim (Lv. 10)

Llama - Fuzzy Wumpkins (Lv. 20)

Sheepdog - Casper Cloud (Lv. 30)

Emu - Emily McCoy (Lv. 40)

Donkey - Muriel Miller (Lv. 50)

Thief’s side

Raven - Merlin Kook (Lv. 10)

Eagle - Cradoc McClaw (Lv. 20)

Coyote - Roxy Fang (Lv. 30)

Badger - Agent Chaos (Lv. 40)

Bear - Boris Rockpaw (Lv. 50)

Additional Features I’ll also be working on some features like: - Expressions and dialogs - Offline mode vs AI - Pass and play multiplayer - Quests

Conclusion

Sheeping Around was a fun project, and unlike my other shelved projects, it saw the light of the day, and it is a proud achievement for me in that regard. For the past 14 months, I’ve worked part-time at a consistent pace on this project (and full time for a few months). Especially as a solo developer being able to develop a PvP multiplayer game where people in US can battle people in China with servers located in London, I think it is a great feat.

Look forward to more updates in the future on this blog. Follow the blog on Tumblr or me on Twitter to keep yourself up to date on the progress of the game.

[fanfiction-for-me]

James’ Girlfriend

The motherfucking paparazzi left after five days. Five days. Five days without being able to see James or talk to him because I couldn't speak or sing for the next two weeks. Do you know how boring it is to be sitting on your supermansion without being able to chat or see your potential boyfriend? Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, our humble house did had some things that kept us pretty entertained, but still- I'm in love and I can only think about James! We texted, but it wasn't the same; I needed to listen to his voice (and hearing his albums only made me more nostalgic).

That Friday was a really peaceful day though. Lila went with Davie to get his stitches off and Sass and I stayed home video chatting with My Chemical Romance and 30 Seconds to Mars, but of course, Sass was doing all the speaking.

"Hello?" Sass tried when the MCR guys appeared on the screen.

"Hey, what's up Sass? Hi there Michelle" they greeted, and I saluted them weakly.

"What is wrong with your friend?" Frank asked Sass.

"She rasped one of her vocal strings screaming"

"Ooh, that hurts. Happened to me once. Drink some hot lavender tea; it will help you heal faster. It hurts like a bitch at the beginning but after a few mugs you will feel better, I promise" Gerard advised me. I gave him the thumbs up and immediately went down to the kitchen to make some tea. Sass stayed in her room talking with the guys.

I took my phone out of my pocket only to see I had a new message. It was James.

"Hey love, how r u feelin? I rly dont want to do this, but I have bad news for u :/."

I sighed and typed. What could it be? "Feelin the same :S what is it?"

My phone buzzed. "Production just told us we'll be shootin the first half of season 3 this week. That means I will probably wont see u until the next week "

"Damn, that's a lot of work :S I'll be fine Jamesy; just bored, but we will see each other someday, right?"

"Yeah, I'll make it up to you ;)"

That sounds interesting. "Make it up to me? How? ;)"

"I can't tell you now because I still don't know, but you'll see ;) g2g now, love you Chelley"

"Bye, luv u too "

I sighed heavily. One more week? God, give me strength. At least James was going to probably take me on my first date with him after it is over.

I heard Sass calling me from upstairs then. "Chellita! 30 Seconds to Mars want to speak with you!"

I ran up the stair as fast as I could run with a cup of hot tea on my hand. Sure, I wasn't going to be able to talk, but I could at least see them. I got to Sass' room and Jared, Shannon and Tomo were already on the camera. I smiled at them and waved hi. Seeing them always cheers me up.

"I heard the baby screwed her throat" Jared started.

"Yeah, and in a very stupid way -.-" I typed on the type box. "Gerard prescribed me some tea."

"That works" Jared agreed.

"So, how are you guys?"

"We're perfectly fine, thank you. About to start touring the UK in a week" Tomo said.

"How about you?" Shannon interrupted, "How's your boyfriend?" he questioned. Of course he had to ask.

I rolled my eyes. "He is not my boyfriend :P"

"Oh really, because we saw you dance with him that night and it was a pretty good show you put on" Shannon smirked.

"You saw? :$"

"Yeah, and no friends do that!" Tomo cackled.

":$ :$ :$ :$ :$"

Jared looked at me apologetically. "Guys... Let's not bother her because then she won't want to tell us how pretty boy asked her out" and he winked.

I smiled at him for that. Afterwards they finally let go the topic of James and we conversed about other things until Lila and Davie came back from the hospital a couple of hours after.

That weekend went kind of slow. We had nothing to do and we were still stuck in our house even if the paparazzi had already left. Everyone on the house was doing their thing. We sometimes talked with Davie's cousin Natalie, but I still think she is weird. Lila has told me she definitely doesn't like her that much; she thinks that Natalie wants to steal Kendall from her or something like that, I don't know. All I know is I can't wait to hear how James is going to make it up to me.

Next week started with another boring Monday. I got ahead on some new sketches for my stage outfits and went to bed super early. Tuesday was okay, Davie and I baked an apple cheesecake from scratch and it turned out pretty good, we even made up a song as we cooked. I didn't sleep that night because I had already slept a lot the night before, so I never really woke up Wednesday, which was the laziest day of my life probably. I spent the whole day in my pajamas, eating cheesecake and drinking tea on the bed while watching the whole two seasons of Big Time Rush, plus Big Time Movie. I think I fell asleep around 6 am, only to be awakened by a text at 7 pm (and yes, I did overslept).

It was James. He had been too busy the past five days, so much that one day he didn't text me at all. I never texted him first that week (even though I was dying to do so), only because I didn't knew if I would be disturbing his work, and I really didn't wanted to seem like the needy type before we even dated.

I tiredly opened my phone and read. "How's it going Chelley? IMU loads! But guess what? I'm taking u out tomorrow to make up for torturing u haha... It's a very special date though; I'll give you a clue: I'll be wearing a tux. I trust u know what to do ;) Xoxo, JM"

Oh my heavens! James is going to take me on a fancy dinner with him tomorrow and I am so fucked because I slept way too much! I'll probably won't sleep today either and look horrible tomorrow! But wait, he invited me to a fancy dinner... That is so romantic! Oh no, I'm not good with romantic. I don't know what to do; I'm excited and terrified at the same time! This is my first formal date ever and I really love this guy with all of my heart, so I don't want to screw it up being sleepy or not romantic enough. I definitely need some help, or advice.

Just as I was sitting with my legs crossed on the middle of my bed, thoughts lost in panic, the door of my room opened.

"Knock knock Sleeping Beauty... You up?"

"Mhm... Davie? Come here please" I tried to speak up, but I barely whispered loudly. The sudden nerves plus the grogginess were affecting my voice, which was recovering thanks to the  tea that Gerard advised me to drink. I could talk already, but I wasn't that improved to sing like I normally do when I'm healthy.

"I know it's like, nighttime, but...! I brought you some brekkie!" Davie sing-songed as he moved near the bed "... Are you okay?" he asked quietly as he placed the tray on my lap, probably because he saw my worried face.

I nodded. "Tell me that you love me, please"

"What? What is wrong with you? Are you catching some fever or something?"

I slapped Davie's inspecting hands off my face; I wasn't sick, just pissed at myself that I'm frozen nervous about a date with James. I've known him for almost seven months now; I shouldn't be reacting like this! "Just tell me!" I insisted, my voice breaking.

"Okay, but don't hurt yourself, God... and you probably already know this, but: I love you. There" Davie spoke dryly.

"Davie... Say it like you mean it"

His eyes were questioning, but he looked at me with a serious expression and murmured sweetly "I love you".

I blinked for two seconds and then I looked into his eyes "I love you too". After that I put my tray aside and cuddled on Davie.

"Oookaaay... That was weird-" I shushed him. Davie just patted my hair and wrapped his long arms around me.

I was trying to see how I would react just in case James told me that sort of thing tomorrow. Sure, Davie was a friend and I have no romantic feelings towards him, but I tried to visualize James. For some reason, being able to answer Davie made me calm, even though I knew it wasn't going to be the same if James did it.

I pushed Davie aside to eat my food- I was starving. He left with the plates after I finished my meal and thankfully he didn't question the reason why I had asked him to do that. He must've thought I was still half asleep or something. With that, I went back to bed because, surprisingly, I felt drained (of sleeping too much?) and in two hours or so, I fell asleep again.

My cell phone buzzed and lit up my dark room. I picked it up to see what time was it and almost gasped out loud. 1:00 pm? How come I'm sleeping so much? Am I turning into a bat? Well, I have no time to deal with that right now; I had to get ready for my date with James, which was in four hours or so.

I saw none of my bandmates on my way out of the house, so I guess they had all left with Sass to get her cast off. I grabbed my car keys and drove to the beauty salon. I got my legs waxed; my hair washed and blow dried, my face exfoliated, plus a manicure and a pedicure. After the salon I took off to my favorite dress boutique to find a perfect outfit for my date. An hour and a half of trying on over twenty dresses later, I found the perfect one. It was a sexy red with black lace, fitted on the top and loose from my hips down. The best part was I already had matching shoes home. Now I just had to get there because I had only less than an hour left to get ready. Note to self: get several assistants ASAP.

When I got home, I assumed the guys had arrived because Davie's car was parked on the garage, but I didn't saw them on the way up to my room; I don't care really, I am in a rush to get ready.

Thirty minutes later, I was ready just in time. I stared at myself on my huge closet mirror. I looked totally gorgeous! I really hope James likes it and doesn't think I exaggerated because I was feeling like I overdid myself a little. It was worth it though, because I sure looked striking.

A minute later, the doorbell rang and Lila screamed up to me (she must've opened). My stomach filled up with butterflies and I took a deep breath to calm myself up; with that, I went down the royal staircase only to see James standing there. He was wearing a tux just as he said he would, looking dashing and sexy with it, and was carrying a small bouquet of bright red roses on his hands.

James took a long breath as he assessed me with sparkling eyes "You are so- wow- stunning..."

"You too Jamesy" I smiled shyly at him and went over to hug him. He then kissed my cheek and gave me the bouquet, smiling brightly. God... He was too perfect, ugh!

My moment got interrupted by a slight cough. "Long time no see" Lila said, looking a little taken aback at James and I. I had forgotten I hadn't told anyone, and I didn't notice Lila standing there the whole time.

"Oh, yeah, hi... Sup?"

"What's up with me? What's up with you! You know what? Explain later because if Davie sees you guys likes this he'll probably freak out and we don't want anyone throwing punches again, right?" Lila chuckled as she looked at James. He put his hands up defensively.

"Okay, okay, bye Delilah" said James, and then he offered me his arm "Shall we go, my dear?"

"Of course" I answered as I put my arm over his. We walked to his car and James started the engine. He had been driving for five minutes when I started to really grasp what was happening "So..." I started "where are you taking me?"

"It's a secret, because I'm kidnapping you. No one will ever see you again... only me" James threatened with a playful naughty smile.

"That doesn't sound that bad actually; but seriously, where are we going?" I was curious. We were driving to the direction of the beach, and with the shoes I was wearing I don't think I'd be able to walk over sand.

"You'll see. Just relax... and listen to Big Time Rush" he turned on his car stereo and Boyfriend started playing. How convenient. "Common, join me" James said.

"I can't, as much as I want to, my throat is fucked, remember?" what a bummer.

"Damn, you're right. Guess I'll have to serenade you then" James started singing, his loud smooth voice filling the small space of the car. I was getting pretty comfortable, lulling myself with the sound of James' voice (was I seriously getting sleepy again?), when I heard the engine cut off. We had arrived to wherever James was going to keep me hostage.

I got out of the car and when I saw what was in front of me my mouth almost fell slack. Day had suddenly turned into afternoon, and in front of me I had a flaming pink and orange sunset, with tints of purple and deep blue higher up in the sky. James -still silent- took my hand and led me into a pier-looking structure, built probably a few meters into the sea. It was decorated with lots of white candles on the floor, and right at the center there was a table for two.

I sat down on the very fancy chair, facing James, but I could only see the beauty of the scene around us. "Whoa" I finally gasped.

"I know right? It's pretty breathtaking. But I'd rather look at you". I turned my head to look at James, snapping back into reality.

"Oh really? Why?" like I didn't knew...

"You know why; you look amazing"

"Thanks, you look really good as well" I smiled and sipped a little out of the wine that was served. How did James set this all up? I bet the other guys helped him or something because it looked a detailed, especially the candles; there were probably more than 200 candles.

"Lila looked surprised to see me when she opened the door" James spoke up.

"Oh, that. I kind of hadn't seen her or the rest of the guys in two days"

James' eyes widened a little "What? That's what happens when your house is that big!" he laughed.

"Other than the fact that I stayed in my room those two days" I explained.

"Why?"

"I don't know; Wednesday I watched BTR all day long, fell asleep and then woke up at seven PM next day!"

James snickered "Were you trying to be Sleeping Beauty?" I shrugged. "What about the food though? Did you just stay there in a hibernation state?"

"No, I had some tea and cheesecake the day before, and then the next day Davie cooked me some breakfast" I made air quotes around the last word and sipped from my cup again. I'm no wine drinker, but this one was pretty good.

James looked at me pensively "Davie cooks?"

"Really good" It was true. I don't know how but that boy was better than us three girls combined in the kitchen!

"Interesting" James responded, and drank half of his wine in two chugs. A random guy appeared out of nowhere then, with two trays of food. That's when I realized I was hungry; I hadn't eaten something since Davie came in my room yesterday night.

"Fancy much?" I asked James with a smirk. He smirked back.

"I told you it was going to be formal"

I ate a mouthful of the Alfredo sauced fettuccines before speaking again "James, do you dislike Davie?"

He stared at me through narrowed eyes, and for a moment I regretted bringing up the topic; I don't know why did I even asked him that. After a long pause he answered "Of course not Chelle; why would you ask that?"

"Because you kind of punched him."

"Well, he messed with my hair; you know that my hair is a sensitive spot for me!" I rolled my eyes and laughed. It was ridiculous because hair doesn't even have nervous terminations... "Also, I think I'm jealous of him"

Okay, what? "Jealous? How come? You do know he is the one that's jealous."

"Yeah, but if you think about it well, he spends most of his time with you. And the other girls, of course."

"You're right... But we will work it out somehow."

"We will" James brought his cup up and clanked it with mine. We ate and chat between bites, letting off the awkward topics such as Davie forgotten, cherishing the beautiful moment we had for us both alone, at the beach, having a great meal under the night sky.

James and I went to stand by the corner of the small pier after we finished eating, his head over my shoulder and arms around my waist. He quietly hummed Boyfriend, rocking softly as he shifted to the rhythm of his hums.

"We might as well dance" I suggested with a light smile, still looking at the numerous bright stars.

"You wouldn't think I forgot the music..." James moved over to another corner and held up a CD case. "Exclusive BTR acoustic performances" he winked. "And the first one" James closed the lid of the small stereo with a click, "is our song".

Boyfriend started playing for the second time that evening, only this time, it was acoustic.

"That's a really good version of that-"

"Shhh.." James pressed his finger softly against my lips. "Come here"

He pulled my arm and held me close to him. His hands were cold and I could practically feel his heartbeat. Must be nervous; the poor thing, but that made me feel better in some way; knowing that I wasn't the only one.

This time we danced without speaking a word (or kissing). James and I looked at each other boldly, saying more words with our eyes than we could say with our voices. I love him, I realized. Love him a lot. There was another part that was going so this is what it feels like..., but most of my brain and body was just overwhelmed with happiness, because even though he hadn't said anything, I knew he loved me too; it was written all over his eyes.

We were so caught up in our "dancing", that we didn't realize the CD had started repeating, and it had reached the third song.

I think we noticed at the same time.

"Are you gonna-" "Just let me go and-" we stared at each other and laughed as we tried to talk at the same time. "I'll go get that"

James took his hands off my hips and moved towards the direction of the CD player, only that he was still standing in front of me. "What's wrong?" I asked him.

He looked up at me with an anxious expression "I think I'm stuck".

I looked down and saw the front of his pants was stuck in the lace of my dress, in a pretty awkward way, if I'm allowed to say so. "Okay James, don't move, I'll get us untangled". I started to fumble with my dress and his jammed zipper, but it wouldn't give in, in fact, I was just making James more uncomfortable. He was starting to squirm and that made it even more difficult and even worse when his phone buzzed once. He tried to move to get to it, but lost his balance by pulling me in a little too rough.

"Shit!" James cussed as he hit the ground with the back of his head, me falling on top of him instantly, cus we were still glued together.

"Oh lord, are you okay? That sounded like it hurt!"

"Don't worry I'm... fine" He looked up at me, just inches away from his face. There was no space between us, my own chest rose and lowered to the rhythm of his breaths.

"... James-" I was at a loss for words. He was so gorgeous on the candle light; on any light.

James kept staring at me mesmerized, his facial features gentle and passionate; with just a whisper, he melted my heart. "Be my girlfriend Michelle... Please."

Sweet baby Jesus, is this happening? Oh god, where's my voice so I can tell him yes? Heck, I wasn't going to be able to speak, so I might as well demonstrate him that I want to be his girl. I grabbed James by the sides of his face and kissed him hard. Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course I'll be your girlfriend!

When I pulled off to see his reaction, James lay with his hair blown back from his face, expression shocked with his mouth hanging open in awe, looking like he was about to drool. I giggled at his face; his cheeks were even redder than before, he looked so adorable.

"Is that a yes?" James muttered, just an inch from my mouth. I nodded enthusiastically; he grinned brightly and without any warning, crashed my lips against his again.

So, there I was: lying on top of James on the floor making out with him. Wearing a new dress, which was stuck on his pant's zipper, and probably ruined? Yeah, I pretty much didn't care. Breathing was getting harder by the second too, but I wanted to kiss him forever. He held me tight, brushing my back with his hands now and so, and I knotted my fingers gently round his soft hair. It was heaven. I was making out romantically with the sweetest most handsome man ever, and he was mine.

I don't know how much time did we lay there, just kissing, but the sound of footsteps made us stop. I looked up to see it was the waiter that has brought us the food, removing the empty plates and wine cups. "I-I-I'm sorry; I'm just cleaning up" the guy muttered nervously, as James and I both stared from the floor. "Excuse me, Mr. Maslow" he uttered quietly and started to go.

"No, wait! Would you mind helping us? My zipper is stuck in her dress and we can't move apart without ruining it"

"S-sure sir" the guy moved quickly but awkwardly between us. Poor him. Poor James and I. It was embarrassing not knowing how to explain to ourselves how the hell did his zipper got stuck in my dress, but in a way, I thank that zipper.

At the end of the night, we saved my dress and James' zipper, and soon it was time to get home. I had been too stuck in spending a nice time with my new boyfriend, that I couldn't believe it when James' clock read midnight.

"Jamie, take me home please?"

"Aw, don't tell me you've still got curfews... another drink?" James offered, already pouring more champagne into my glass.

"No, thanks, I think I've had enough of those tonight. If I didn't know better I'd think you want to get me drunk" I laughed. "Just take me home, please, before Davie acknowledges my un-presence. The girls can't keep him distracted that long"

I could tell that bothered him "Fine... Whatever you want, love" James said gallantly. I loved it when he called me sweet things.

The ride home was short because there was no traffic, so we got home in no time. I opened the door and the lights were on, but there was no one in sight.

"Want to come in for a while?" I asked James with a smirk. He just looked at me with pursed lips and in a rush he picked me up and carried me. I giggled in surprise, but then panicked when he started to run up the stairs.

"James! Stop! We're gonna fall again!" I warned between laughs. He soon stopped and landed me carefully on my heels, taking my hands on his and kissing me again, only this time we weren't thrown on the floor, but standing at the top of the royal staircase. I was pressed tight against him, wrapping my arms around his neck. For some reason, I knew kissing James would be a problem, because once we started, it was hard to stop; it just got better by the minute.

"Stop!"

Ah, Davie! We stopped but James still had his arm wrapped around my shoulder. Lila and Sass were standing behind Davie, who was practically blowing sparks from his hair. Damn.

"Davie... chill and-"

"Yeah, I'm her boyfriend now!" James said cockily.

"James!" Lila, Sass and I yelled at him in dread.

Almost simultaneously, Davie did a double take. "What?"

I stared at James with crossed arms. He shrugged and offered a lame "oops?"

"Run." I told him, Davie was already going up the stairs two at a time and I didn't want a beaten-up boyfriend. Sass and Lila ran behind him, probably to stop him; he tends to exaggerate a lot.

James and I got to the second floor; we were running across the hall, searching for a place to hide. I looked ahead and found it: my room. I was the only one that had the access to that place.

"Here!" I pulled James inside and locked the door. Phew, finally safe.

"Damn, he sure looked pissed" James breathed. We were standing against the door, as if we could hold it up in case Davie tried to break through it.

"Yeah... You shouldn't have said you are my boyfriend."

"Then when were you planning on telling him?"

"I don't know; when it got more obvious?" I shrugged

James rolled his eyes. "It couldn't have been more obvious, don't you think?"

I pursed my lips. "You're right. We screwed it." James laughed softly, moving to face me. He placed both his hands against the door, keeping me trapped between his arms.

"I believe we were not done yet..." James whispered in my ear. He started pecking my jaw lightly, traveling to my cheeks and finally to my lips. I stood paralyzed, surprised at how different this kiss was from the others. It was deeper; I could taste the champagne we had drank on his mouth. I leaned back on the door, and James moved closer to me, his hands still trapping me. They were so amazing, his lips. I know nothing about kisses because James is the only guy I've ever kissed (believe it or not), but he sure was really good at it, it made you want to keep going forever, and believe me, I would've stayed there if the door hadn't opened.

"Ouch!" Together, we fell to the floor again, only this time James fell on top of me, and damn, he is pretty heavy! Also, I think I was bleeding.

I have no idea how the door opened, but there was a furious Davie and a very amused Lila staring down at us. "Get. Off. Her. NOW." Davie growled.

James carefully lifted himself, taking me up with him. He turned to apologize but gasped when he saw my face. "Oh my goodness, I'm so, so sorry! I didn't mean to!"

"Huh...?" I had no idea. The kiss left me a little dumb.

"Mate" Lila snickered, "your lip is bleeding!".

"BLEEDING?" God, I hate blood!

James looked at me with concerned eyes, regret all over his face. "I'm so sorry baby, I shouldn't have-"

"I know! I know James! Don't worry, I think I'll be fine" I tried to calm him down by acting relaxed, but truth is I feared I might puke anytime soon.

"You!" Davie pointed at me. I rolled my eyes. "Come with me if you don't want me to kill your boyfriend" he sneered. I sighed and moved over to Davie, but to my surprise, the lace of my dress was ripped off because part of it was stuck on James' zipper. Again.

Lila started laughing like crazy when she saw that and Davie's face grew redder. James was blushing just like me, trying to un-stuck the dress. Thankfully, it was easier to unlatch this time. I hurried and grabbed Davie from his shirt so that he couldn't kill James.

"Guess I have to go now" James spoke.

"Yes!" Davie yelled, but we ignored that.

"Tonight was amazing. See you some other time?" I tried to smile without getting blood in mouth.

James took my hand and kissed it "Yes. Goodbye love". He said goodbye to Lila and Davie (tried to, at least) and then left, still looking guilty for my split lip.

After I cleaned up my wound, I couldn't really care less about it, or even about my ripped up dress. James was my boyfriend. Mine! Just in my wild fangirl dreams I dreamt about it and now it was my reality. I must be the luckiest girl on the planet, I thought. I was member of the rock band of the moment, doing what I love to do the most which is singing, with Davie, Sass and Lila, whom I love. I met my idols and my celebrity crush, who turned out to have a crush on me too, and now he is my precious boyfriend.

I spent over one hour talking with Sass and Lila that night, telling them how imperfectly romantic James had asked me out. Finally I slumped over my bed and prepared myself to sleep, when my phone buzzed.

"I forgot to tell you something: I love you. I'm so glad you're my girlfriend, beautiful; JM"

I smiled to myself and texted him back. "I'm really glad too. I love you, my boyfriend; Chelle"

[penguinsnoot]

Self-Care Tips from Someone Who Sucks at Self-Care (Part 2)

Part 1

In my last post, I listed some basic self-care tips and then proceeded to talk about them way too much. Guess what? I’m about to do that again. The difference between this post and the previous one is that the first one focused more on stuff that would mostly impact and improve physical health and this post is going to focus more on things to help you relax when you’re feeling anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, etc. (but still have positive physical outcomes). Of course, these things may not work for everyone since everyone is different, but the main point of this is to at least give you ideas that can lead to you being more relaxed. Without further ado, here’s Self-Care Tips Part 2: Relaxing Edition. 

Read | If you’re looking for a way do escape reality and avoid the problems of our messed up world for a while, read a good book! Or two, or three, or four. . .or more. . . Reading stimulates your brain, reduces stress, improves memory, provides entertainment, and can even lower your heart rate and muscle tension (help you relax). This may not be a cure-for-all solution, but reading truly is good for your brain and emotional state, so if you ever feel wound up and like everything is going wrong, stop, take a deep breath, and sit down on a comfortable chair and read. Getting away from the world for a while is sometimes better than facing your problems head-on immediately. You will still have to deal with them eventually, but you’re not likely to get anything done properly when you’re too stressed to function. Read a good book and let your worries melt away, at least temporarily. 

Listen to Soothing Music | If reading isn’t your thing (don’t knock it ‘til you try it), maybe music is. Listening to music, especially soothing music such as jazz, classical, acoustic, etc., can improve your mood, help you sleep better, and lower stress levels. There’s really nothing better than laying in bed with natural light coming in through the window and reading a good book with soft piano music playing in the background. Sometimes tuning out the world with earbuds in is more beneficial than parents encouraging us to go and hang out with other people realize (though being social is important, but more on that in another post).

Nap | I talked about sleep in my last post and I’m going to do it again, because it’s important. If you find that you have trouble sleeping at night or you’re losing energy quickly because life is just really damn draining sometimes, silence the notifications on your phone, turn off the TV and lights, and take a nap. Experts have found that napping helps reduce stress (are you seeing a pattern in the things I’m suggesting yet?), improve mood, perception, creativity, and memory, and boost alertness. When we’re tired, our bodies don’t function as well as they should, so if you can find the time, definitely lay down and catch up on some Zs. You’ll be amazed at how easily adding almost daily naps to your routine will improve your physical and mental/emotional health. 

Write | When I say write, I don’t mean break out the textbooks and peer reviewed articles to write a six-paged essay for your Psychology class. No, no, no. . . I mean write for pleasure. Whether you write a poem, short story, journal entry, or an entire novel, your creative juices will be flowing and your vocabulary skills will strengthen greatly. Writing can be a fantastic outlet for letting out all your frustrations and worries in life.  If you write even just a little every day, you will continuously be working on an essential skill used in school and most (if not all) places of work, so not only will you be doing something that can increase happiness levels and reduce stress levels but you’ll also be upgrading your value in the workplace. How’s that for throwing stones at a bird? That’s how that expression goes, right? Hmm. . .

Watch Cute Animal Videos | This will heal literally any problem you have (not really). What better way to spend an evening after a stressful day of school/work/family interaction/running errands than to wrap up in a warm, fuzzy blanket and watch cute bunnies hop around and eat leafy greens? Obviously this is something that’s more of a personal appeal suggestion than something everyone would enjoy, but if you’re sad or angry or just done with the world, why not give it a shot? Sometimes all we need in life to feel whole again is to watch cute videos of puppies and kittens cuddling. Honestly, what could be better?

Soak in a Hot Bath | Hot water relaxes the body and helps you fall asleep faster, relieves muscle tension and sinus problems, lowers anxiety, and more. Taking a hot bath right before bed will make curling up under the covers feel like absolute heaven, especially if you sleep naked (which has its own health benefits). After a straining and draining day, running a hot bath can be the perfect remedy. Fill up your tub, throw in a bath bomb or some bath salts, turn on some smooth jazz, and soak in the water for a little while. Just make sure to clean your tub first. 

Masturbate | Maybe don’t do this if there are other people in the house and you don’t have a lock on your door, because there’s a good chance of you getting caught (I’ve had a few close calls in the past), but if you can find somewhere private and appropriate (please don’t do this in a public space) to rub one off, do it. Masturbating reduces sexual tension and stress, helps you sleep, and relieves cramps and headaches. Not everyone may be comfortable doing this, but I’m going to tell you right now that there is no better way to build confidence in yourself than to explore your own body and figure out what brings you pleasure. Waiting around for someone else to do it for you can lead to some lackluster sex in the future (according to my mom; I have no personal experience with sex, but masturbation is great, I highly recommend it). 

Cry | Watching bunny videos and listening to Kenny G won’t always be what you need. Sometimes the best way to relax is to cry all your frustration, sadness and stress out. Crying releases toxins and reduces emotional stress by getting rid of stress hormones and other chemicals that negatively affect the body. Crying every day, for no apparent reason, however, can be a sign of severe distress, depression, or some other mental illness that should be treated. It’s okay to cry when you feel overwhelmed or like your emotions are clogging up, so don’t be afraid to curl up on your side and sob like your life is ending. You may end up feeling better than ever once you’re done, because not only will you have let everything out, but you’ll also be able to think more clearly once all of those negative emotions have been flushed out of you. 

Play with Makeup | This one probably seems silly, but I mean it: play with makeup. Whether that means swatching all your eye shadows and highlighters for the 10th time or doing a full face with products you don’t usually use, messing around with makeup can give you some time to enjoy yourself and not worry about the things in life that feel significant but are in fact trivial. Not everyone uses makeup, and I understand that, so obviously this wouldn’t apply to you, but it could. Go out to your local Walmart or  Walgreens and get some cheap drugstore makeup to play around with (unless you have sensitive skin, then you probably shouldn’t do that). You don’t have to get or do anything extravagant; sometimes it’s fun simply to put on a sparkly lip gloss and clumpy mascara and walk around your house in your pajamas acting like a supermodel going down the runway. 

Go for a Walk | Staying indoors all day every day can give your mind a chance to think up negative thoughts and let them fester, especially when you’re sitting in one place doing nothing for hours. Getting out of the house and doing something as simple as going for a walk can switch your mind over to a more positive space, or at least reduce the amount of bad vibes in the air. Walking regularly also reduces risk of heart attack and stroke, builds stronger bones and balance, lowers blood sugar, boosts energy and mood, and decreases stress levels by releasing endorphins (happy hormones). Even if all you do is go on a leisurely walk for 20 minutes every other day, that’s still better than nothing, and both your mind and body will thank you for taking the time to care for yourself. 

Watch Something Heartwarming | What this means for you is totally up to your interpretation. You can watch YouTube videos, TV shows, music videos, movies, documentaries, birds, and so on. When you want to relax and get away from stress but are feeling especially lazy, watching something that makes you happy can be just as good as exercising or going out with friends (not that you shouldn’t do these things; try not to be a complete potato [like me]). Personally, I like to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I finish classes and homework for the day because the lighthearted, friendship-focused aspect of the show makes me feel happy and helps me free myself from the mess of stress and anxiety I constantly find myself tangled up in. Don’t spend hours binge watching something, because then you get so caught up in a story that you don’t make time for anything else, but you could try to watch an episode or two of something a day if it makes you feel good. I highly suggest checking out My Little Pony and Phineas and Ferb. They may be for younger audiences, but that doesn’t mean they’re not awesome. 

Color | Or finger paint, or sketch, or do photography- whatever rocks your roll (is that one right?). You don’t have to be inherently artistic to do art. Creating art reduces stress and anxiety, and increases creativity and positive emotions. Coloring while piano music plays in the background (gotta love that Yiruma) is so incredibly relaxing that I wish I took the time to do it more. The brain has been found to enter a sort of meditative state while coloring, which can help to lower stress and anxiety levels. Give coloring a try and see if it helps you relax, and don’t get upset if you go outside the lines- it’s completely fine. 

Sit Outside | Run your hands over the grass, listen to birds sing and squirrels scurry up and down trees, watch the clouds/stars, and breathe in the fresh air (unless you live next to a paper mill or gas station or something, then don’t do that). Going outside is said to help with seasonal depression and improve mental health. If you sit outside during the day, you’ll also soak up some vitamin D, which helps with calcium and phosphorus regulation (maintain healthy bones). If you do decide to go outside during the day, make sure to wear sunscreen regardless of weather conditions (UV rays can still cut through clouds, my dudes). 

Now get out of bed and go outside. It’s vitamin D time. 

[recentanimenews]

Dissecting the Art of SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME Part One

  SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME, the anime adaption from Doga Kobo of Toume Kei's manga of the same name, tells the story of four young adults right outside of Tokyo trying to find their purpose in life. Through their personal struggles, they try to better themselves, but more importantly, the people around them in their time of personal uncertainty.

  One of the highlights of the show is its attention to detail, capturing the feeling of a Japanese suburb with the concrete and developing landscape of 2001 Japan. Crunchyroll was offered the opportunity to publish a translated version of a two-part interview series featured on the SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME website to highlight how the team brought that world to screen.

  Part one of the original Japanese interview with Usami Tetsuya and Fujii Yuta can be found here. The translated text follows.

    One of the essential parts of the anime SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME is the background art. The ones in charge of the background art are the art director Usami Tetsuya-san and Fujii Yuta-san, who’s in charge of the art design. Both are from STUDIO EASTER and we asked them a few questions looking back on the production of the series.

01: Please tell us about your jobs

Usami Tetsuya (left) and Fujii Yuta (right)

Fujii: My jobs are art design, 3D modeling, and 3D layout. Being in charge of the art design means that I’m in charge of all the designs for things other than props ... For example, the rooms, the outside of buildings, what the town looks like, etc.

Once the script is done, I will do art design so that the director can do the storyboards. They’ll tell me what kind of scene they want to do and what they need and then I’d create that for them. The director actually did the initial design of the town, and then with the photos I receive, I put all that together and add details to go along with the script and the scenes.

Usami: As the art director, once the storyboards and the art design are done, I would work on bringing the director’s requests together like what colors they want to use or where they want the light coming from in certain scenes. I believe it’s the art director’s job to create the “atmosphere.” I add color to the world that art design created and then think like, “Older looking wood would look better here.” It’s up to me to decide what the atmosphere of the room, the city, and basically everything is going to look like, and it’s up to the art design to work on all the details up to that point.

Fujii: My world is black and white. The art director’s world is filled with color.

The kotatsu in Rikuo’s room.

02: What did you concentrate on when recreating what Tokyo looked like 20 years ago?

Fujii: The story takes place in 2001 and around the Setagaya Line. The director loves the original story and definitely wanted to make sure we made it obvious that the story took place along the Setagaya Line. (From Episode 2, the story takes place from 2002 and on.)

At first, the director was having a hard time putting everything together, so we went to find locations together and would interview people who actually frequented through those locations. That helped him figure out how he wanted the animation to look to express the world of the original story along with some trial and error. Watching him work all of that out still comes to mind. He also talked about how he wanted the TVs, traffic lights, and LEDs all to look older like they did back then.

Usami: Yeah, or like erasing “taspo” [Note: a smart card used for buying cigarettes in Japan introduced in 2008] from the cigarette vending machines. And he wanted the cigarette packs to look more like they did back then.  It may not be that far back, but it was actually very hard finding references for all of this. 

I was reading this series as a student, and simply as a fan, I totally understood why the director wanted things to look this way. We mostly work with cells, but I did create a 3D model for an old school game. (lol)

Fujii: I heard we were doing cel animation so it definitely wasn’t that detailed. (lol)

Usami: I thought, “Man, this series really likes to concentrate on the little details.” (lol) Is it okay for a TV series to worry this much about minor details?

Fujii: It really does almost feel like we’re making a movie. (lol)

Director Fujiwara looking for a reference for the photography studio that Rikuo works at.

The director was also seen talking to the studio staff so he could figure out how the studio would look different in the anime.

The design for the analog TV in Shinako’s condo.

03: The town that exists between reality and realistic graphics

Fujii: The director had decided the initial layout of the town, so he’d give me some stairs and ask me to just create a certain part of the stairs, or like for the outside of a building, he’d give me a photo of a building and ask me to expand certain parts of it. I created everything under his direction. I had the director do the initial design of how he wanted the inside of the room to look and then I would fine-tune it, trying to make sure everything was within the limits of reality.

The original sketch and 3D model of Rikuo’s room.

Fujii: You can do some pretty extreme things in anime if you really wanted to, but I didn’t want that to happen, so while keeping the director’s vision, I did my best to make sure all the art design and 3D models all looked realistic still. Because all the characters live near each other, we do reuse the 3D model of the town. Depending on what the characters do in their daily life, we add and subtract things from the scene and adjust as needed. For example, with the convenience store, I was asked to create a back entrance because they wanted to do some scenes there. I then show them an example of what it’d look like and go from there.

04: The art of SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME that balances reality and the story

Usami: At first, I was asked to keep things as realistic as possible, as if we were looking at photographs. But if we went too far, we’d lose the hand-drawn feel of SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME, which was a problem that we discussed. So how do we balance the two?

So the more realistic we make it look, the more the hand-drawn feel seems to stand out in a way that we don’t want it to. So I’d look at the director’s storyboards and think, “I should add a bit more of the brush here,” or “If I mess with this anymore, it won’t look as realistic.” While I kept asking myself those things, I’d add a few extra touches and take some away. I basically kept trying to find a happy medium.

First, I thought about what kind of “brush” I would use. I wasn’t sure if I should use a brush that would make things look a bit more hand-drawn or more like watercolor. In the end, I wanted things to look like they were done in pencil. 

When I tried that and we agreed that it looked pretty good, so we went with that. My biggest reference was Toume Kei-sensei’s artbooks. The director was really attached to the flashback scenes, so we went heavier with the hand-drawn feel there.

Usami: With more recent series, they try to lay on more realistic textures to make everything look more realistic, but we decided not to use as many textures this time, and I was asked to make everything look more hand-drawn. If we just use wooden textures, you can make trees look like trees, but we decided to use brushes instead. Or like using textures for the tatami mats would look too detailed, so we used brushes. There were a lot of times where I blurred some of the details in this series.

In this day in age, efficiency is top priority in this industry, so I wondered if my job would be okay at times... (lol) A lot of our staff were first-timers when it came to hand-drawn animation, so they said that this series was harder to work on and different. (lol)

What’s difficult is when you try to add some finishing touches to something, you can’t let it look “dirty.” A lot of the staff grew up in the digital age so there are a lot of them who have never done any paintings, so there were some who couldn’t tell the difference between touching up and something just looking dirty. But through trial and error, all of them made SING “YESTERDAY” FOR ME the best it could be. Normal series would usually only have 4 to 5 people to do all the art department stuff, but this time, we had 15. So basically 2 to 3 times more than usual (lol).

I think the whole company worked very hard on this project.

The scene from episode 1 with Rikuo and Haru talking at the park.

If you look closely, you can see that some hand-drawn nuance has been added to the ground and stairs. 

Next time, we ask them how they used art to craft this multi-character story!

      Kyle Cardine is an Editor at Crunchyroll. You can find his Twitter here!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[sheilacwall]

Velvet Negroni is Trying to Make Music That’s Built to Last in an Ethereal Digital Age

When we chat his most recent record, NEON BROWN (via 4AD), has been out for less than a full week. But it’s already beginning to add layers to an increasingly mythological narrative. It’s not just Nutzman’s background being gradually woven together with each new review and published blurb, but it’s also the behind-the-scenes contributions that penetrate larger swaths of popular culture. The track “Waves” from Velvet Negroni’s previous release T.C.O.D. was played by Justin Vernon at Kanye West’s famously rural writing camp in Wyoming, resulting in a contribution to opening track “Feel the Love” on Kanye and Kid Cudi’s collaboration album, Kids See Ghosts. More recently, he’s lent vocals on both “iMi” and “Sh’Diah” from Bon Iver’s new album, i,i.

READ: First Look Friday: Meet Donavon — the Soul of the Algorithm & Disciple of D’Angelo

These high-profile contributions aren’t just Wiki-friendly Easter eggs and fine print liner notes; they’re a clear indicator that both Nutzman’s voice and creative direction possess a unique resonance that is parting the seas of an oft-impenetrable musical kingdom.

NEON BROWN offers an accessible entry-point to hear Jeremy Nutzman’s evolving artistry at work. Album highlight “Wine Green” is an instantly recitable, dancehall-esque anthem awash in peppy adlibs and ascending jabs of bass. “Poster Child” showcases a catchy, iridescent love-song-hook that glows vividly while the downtempo “Feel Let” spins out soft, palatable utterances that feel as if they’re being belted from a woozy, late-night cab ride home.

We talked with Velvet Negroni to explore the album, his creative inspiration, and a rapidly changing music landscape.

Title: Girboix Carmelo Artist: Velvet Negroni

Can you walk me through your contributions on Bon Iver’s album and Kids See Ghosts?

Justin Vernon played [Kanye West and Kid Cudi] “Waves” and it was the first thing that perked their ears that day so they got into it a little bit. There’s a part of the song that goes, “I can feel it in my bones!” I think it was basically just that little snippet that they just took that energy and vibe into “Feel the Love.”

So the inspiration was more cadence than lyrics or production? 

Yeah, there wasn’t a sample. While Justin was in Wyoming, I was at his crib working, I was there rehearsing to perform a couple of dates with him. He had helped to work on the record a little bit previously.

How did you two originally link?

I play in a band with a couple of cats that he grew up with essentially and so that’s how that intro went long ago. It was kind of fun. We were just around sometimes, and we got to know each other a little bit. And then my friend Ryan Olsen had played what I had so far of the record for him, he was really excited by it and the next time he saw me he kind of just opened up his place as a base, like “If you need somewhere to finish this or work on it you should come out.”

Source: Artist

Can you tell me about the recording process and what went into your new album, NEON BROWN? 

A lot of different things but mostly just good vibes, a good schedule and good hours. We would at least kind of sketch out one or two tracks, at least two things every day. Then after a little bit of that, circle back to one that we had worked on previously. The ones with real potential kind of just flowed out of the fucking mess and felt kind of obvious-ish, I guess. It’s like sifting for gold, eventually you keep whittling it down into a body of work that’s ready.

How do you feel now that it’s out? 

It’s just exciting that people are listening to it. The album has been done for a pretty sizable chunk of time, that happened long ago it feels like, but now it’s just, knowing that people can listen to it…that’s exciting.

There’s a wide range of sounds on the album, some heady and stirring but also lighter notes. It’s interesting to see you do both.

It’s a natural thing in the songwriting process. Especially when I’m working with Elliott (Tickle Torture) and Simon (Psymun), there’s no off-limits. There’s that many more influences, like each person has a toolbox. Then there’s that added onto the writing process. So, we’re taking from a pretty wide range of shit just in everybody’s own mind and then putting them together. I don’t think any of us think about the style of the song as it relates to the album until after the fact.

What new artists inspire you right now?

I’ve been excited about Yves Tumor on Warp and listening to this cat Mk.Gee. I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that I’ve really been jacked on. I’m kind of just stepping back into remembering that I can listen to other people’s music you know, like on my own, really just listen to music. Usually, I’m just in such a creative mode in my headspace, or I’m not listening to anything, or I’m working on my shit.

When you were first discovering music at an early age, finding discarded records on a neighbor’s lawn, which albums were especially formative for you?

In that pack of CDs that I found, I remember some 311, Soundgarden, some Metallica, Lords of Acid. I think there was a Crime Mob CD, some Tupac and even Marilyn Manson. Those were my youngest memories of having music that wasn’t church music. 

That was huge for me. But I was so young that when I was playing music, I wasn’t coming at it from a composing aspect at all. It was beyond me how you could even make something like that. I didn’t have any of the experiences that I have now to desensitize me to the wonderment of music in general.

Photo Credit: Rachel Kauffman for Okayplayer

What was the original intention of keeping you from being exposed to that music?

I mean those were just my parents’ rules. They were religious and didn’t think that anything else was worthwhile except for Christian music. I was practicing playing piano for at least one hour every single day and my mom would sit on the bench next to me, there was no getting out of it really.

We’re now living in a totally digital age. How do you feel the streaming era is changing music?

Oversaturation is a real thing, but there’s also so much more of a platform. I think that, eventually, for the most part, good stuff will be discovered. Like there’s too many people listening, seeing and talking amongst themselves deep in the Internet at all times that I think that the good stuff, the truth will prevail. It’s just a different style with music in general, because it used to be the furthest thing away to just go to a bedroom somewhere and record. Most people couldn’t afford to even rent studio time, let alone rent a studio and then then take their time writing songs in the studio as they go. People used to write a song, arrange a song, figure it out, get really good at it and then go record it. Now, it’s pretty much the norm to write a song as you’re playing and then you have the ability to manipulate audio. It changed the format.

When I first got into recording on my own, an amazing feature of it was that it moved so fast and I found myself making a couple of happy accidents. It was really exciting. Like, wow, what happened there? It went from writing songs and then finding happy accidents to just showing up and relying on happy accidents, rather than really spending time with the chord progression of the arrangement ahead of time.

I think from the critic or audience’s perspective, you also have less time to win over an audience with a shrinking attention span. Not everyone is even really around for a full album to listen from front to back.

That’s huge, yes. You can grab your albums out of thin air. There was no way to pirate an album unless you stole it from a store. So, it was physical, and I think it meant more just inherently then. It meant more on a tangible level. Like, I paid eleven bucks for this album, I’m not sure if I like it yet, but I’m gonna listen to it and keep listening.

The attention span is so fast that I think there’s more people trying to just jump on a wave or catch a wave and make stuff that’s relevant right then, instead of thinking like a whole album. Instead of maybe making a piece of work that is supposed to stand the test of time.

What’s it like to be a musician in 2019? Especially considering it’s increasingly rare to make a living off your art.

You’re correct with that being a rarity, it also depends on what one person’s definition of living and what you’re satisfied with. I’ve been making music for a real long time, but only recently have I even taken into consideration, oh yeah, I guess there’s a chance I could make some money from this. Really. I can only try and imagine what it was like doing what I’m trying to do right now when the Internet wasn’t the Supreme Being.

Photo Credit: Tim Saccenti

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Adam Isaac Itkoff is a freelance writer living in New York City. You can follow him (and us!) on Twitter.

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