#this suit has been sold this photo is old

[2headedmonsta]

Looking for my Valentine 💕

📸 dozingunicorn

[yridenergyridenergy]

The wholesome-ish friendship between Shinya and Kyo

Their latest playful Q&A in Haiiro no Ginka vol. 100 has prompted me to compile examples of this weird but overall wholesome relationship that Kyo and Shinya have and which is not obvious at first.

Situation #1

In October 2017, Kyo gifted Shinya with a custom white version of a MadaraNingen one-piece. As far as I remember, that article of clothing was not available for purchase in white at all, to the public. And of course, we all know that Shinya prefers to wear white.

Situation #2

I think that in response to Shinya sharing a video of him briefly playing with the minicars that were sold as tour goods in This Way to Self-Destruction, Kyo posted a story on Instagram of him revving up a bunch of mini-cars and persistently making them hit his phone propped up on a counter and displaying a picture of Shinya. At age 43. To which Shinya made an Instagram post vaguely hinting that: "Good children should not play with the mini-cars to hit someone's picture!"

Kyo's Instagram Story "The proper way to use mini-cars" video

Shinya's translated response

Situation #3

In late 2022-early 2023, Shinya publicly celebrated his bandmates' birthdays via emojis on Twitter, and Kyo was the only one to respond, in kind.

Situation #4

Kyo posted a cryptic picture of Shinya's video meeting with Mana in an Instagram Story and he has mentioned on Twitter at least once that he was watching Shinya Channel (the making of the FaFa onigiri).

In the same vein, Shinya took his failed attempt at needle-felting a pink bunny in March 2022 and turned it into a miniature hammer-wielding bunny in October 2022, in response to sukekiyo unveiling their Mosaic Shoujo PV which featured Kyo in the killer bunny suit.

Situation #5

This very old video of Kyo teasing Shinya by pinching the side of his dress, Shinya reacting by pushing Kyo a bit and Kyo falling into a robot dance in response.

Situation #6

The coffee maker. In one of the live talks held during the COVID-19 pandemic at concert venues, Shinya mentioned having a coffee maker which was of no use to him, and Kyo expressed interest in taking it from him. Later, in the Galacaa livestream talk between the two, it was revealed that Shinya had promised to give Kyo his coffee maker, but he never pulled through on that offer. Kyo, sporting a doodled face to hide his own, insistently questioned Shinya on this unreliability when the topic was brought up by fans in the comments. Shinya kind of struggled but ended up explaning that the coffee maker was really useless because of a defect, that it would not have been an appropriate gift anymore. But he forgot to update Kyo about it after he tried to contact the manufacturer. Kyo replied like: "Oh, alright then."

At some point, Kyo took the matter to Twitter, confronting Shinya about it with their respective member photos to illustrate the dialogue, and Shinya replied the same way.

Situation #7

In that same livestream, Shinya is so used to Kyo's bullshit by now that he completely ignores Kyo's doodle face sheet and casually leans forward to look past him and at the interviewer, sat on Kyo's right. After a while of this, the interviewer points out to Shinya that Kyo is insistently staring at him with this disturbing face, which is when Shinya becomes startled and nervously laughs upon realizing that, also making Kyo chuckle.

Situation #8

More often than others, Shinya and Kyo are documented chatting on the chairs backstage while they wait for everyone to be ready to start the show. Maybe there's something to be said of how they are the two members of the band to leave the stage the quickest, while Kaoru, Toshiya and Die stay for a while to throw picks.

Situation #9

Miscellaneous pictures of the two:

Situation #10

Apparently it was Shinya's earbuds that Kyo used to play with the cat (also Shinya's?) in this famous old video.

Situation #11

Other interactions on Twitter include commentary regarding the song battles that fans were voting on via that same website, during live broadcasts from their manager Fujieda on Galacaa. Kyo and Shinya were the only two members reacting to the songs that were pulled out of the box, Kyo sometimes replying to Shinya's own tweets wondering what he meant or outright questioning his preference.

Another interaction consisted in Kyo copying Shinya's tweets regarding the release of their Phalaris album and twisting Shinya's cute comments into hellish versions.

Situation #12

Probably a bunch of elusive comments throughout the years, but here's an example of something that Shinya said about Kyo in a magazine interview.

Situation #13

In Haiiro no Ginka vol. 100, the members were asked to send each other member five questions. Some chose to personalize them based on what they actually wanted to ask of the others, while a couple decided to send the same questions to all, but members were not told who the questions came from. Kyo picked up on that anonymous part of the game and when answering Shinya's set of questions, he ended each of his short answers with a second sentence that can either just be the Kansai dialect for: "Aren't you Shinya!", or in other dialects, translates more to: "Shinya, you bastard!" hahah. From what I saw, nobody else hinted at who they thought the questions came from in their answers. In reverse, Kyo took up two of his five alloted questions for Shinya with the simple statement: "You don't know you're dead yet!", a quote from Fist of the North Star which is highly intimidating as it hints that someone has defeated the character so easily and lightning-fast that they are a dead man standing, their body having trouble catching up with the reality that they were slaughtered. Shinya, in response to that repeated tease, stubbornly replies in his polite and formal Japanese that: "No, I'm not dead." Their Q&A with the other members were not nearly that quirky.

Situation #14

At his SERAPH birthday concert in 2023, Shinya said that his three treasures in life are:

DIR EN GREY

SERAPH

sukekiyo

Situation #15

Kyo replying to Shinya's post featuring a very old picture of Kyo (which was however respectfully hidden by Phalarisu-kun) by pulling out the oldest/youngest postcards of Shinya he could find, also commenting to paraphrase Shinya: "Postcards that probably no one has anymore." His own postcard depicting him peeks from underneath.

Shinya replied to that with: "I tried to look for it but couldn't find it 🥺"

Situation #16

On Twitter, Shinya posted a photo with other artists which he explained as: "Yesterday, we had a birthday celebration for everyone born in February and March 🎂 Happy birthday everyone 🎉🎉🎉"

To which Kyo directly replied: "I wasn't invited." (born February 16th)

And Shinya responded with: "The DIR EN GREY guys are a bit mean 🥺"

Kyo never replied to that.

Situation #17

Going to combine two things considering how long ago they were.

Shinya and Kyo were the first members of Dir en grey to meet, and the day right after I posted this compilation happened to be the 28th anniversary of when they first performed together.

There's also an anecdote that, way back then, no one in the band knew how to contact Kyo because none of them had his phone number, but eventually Shinya just casually revealed that he had it all along and said: "Oh I'll just call him"

Situation #18

Shinya and Kyo are the only members who are clearly dog lovers in the band, while Die and Toshiya are part of the cat team. Shinya used to have a dog (chihuahua?) and Kyo now has Pun-cha. Shinya recently wore a sweater with a dog on it.

Situation #19

In a tweet that Kyo has since deleted, he wrote that if there was one grudge he still held, it was that he never appeared on the cover of a Rockin'f magazine. Shinya also wasn't featured, so he added that while he doesn't have a grudge against them, he has declined interviews and comments for a certain magazine after that.

Situation #20

During their European tour 2024, Kyo and Shinya embarked in a playful spat on Twitter, seemingly out of boredom while traveling on the tour bus. It was funny the way it culminated in both of them forcing the other to subscribe to their fan clubs to find out more. On Kyo's side at least, I didn't see anything related to that on kyo-online for real hah.

Situation #21

Shinya took the time to snap a picture of Petit Brabançon playing on the Yunika Vision screens while he was out solving a game, then posting that on Twitter and promoting Petit Brabancon. " I heard Kyo sing while solving a mystery in Shinjuku"

He also made numerous mentions of the Petit Brabancon posters around Gorilla Hall in his video touring that venue:

... Did I miss any? And there will undoubtedly be more to come!

Thank you very much to shinyaburashka, mementoboni, lamenty45 and degtau for your help!

[bookished]

( a collection of starters. adjust phrasing as necessary.) feel free to make edits to better suit your muse, but please don’t edit or add on to the original post 💛 if you like, please consider supporting me through tips

The old, leather-bound journal was found hidden under the floorboards of the abandoned mansion. Its pages contained cryptic messages and a map that seemed to lead to something of great value—or danger.

In a world where the stars can be plucked from the sky and turned into powerful talismans, a young orphan discovers a constellation that has never been seen before. It points to a destiny that could change the fate of the entire realm.

During the height of the Renaissance, a young artist discovers a hidden chamber in the heart of Florence. Inside, she finds sketches of inventions far beyond her time and a letter addressed to her, written centuries ago.

Two strangers meet on a delayed train during a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. As they share stories to pass the time, they realize they have more in common than they ever imagined—and that fate might have brought them together for a reason.

In a small, isolated village, people start to vanish without a trace. The only clue left behind is a symbol carved into the doors of their homes, a mark that matches ancient legends of a vengeful spirit.

In a future where emotions are controlled by the government, a young woman discovers an underground movement that aims to restore true feelings to humanity. She must decide whether to join them or stay in the safety of her regulated life.

Every night, a small café in the city transforms into a magical place where time stands still and dreams come to life. Only a select few know about its existence, and one day, an ordinary person stumbles upon it by accident.

A high school student finds an old camera at a garage sale. When they develop the photos, they see glimpses of the future. Now, they must navigate high school life while trying to change events they know are coming.

"I don't believe in coincidences, especially not ones involving missing people."

"You mean to tell me you've never seen a dragon before? Where have you been living, under a rock?"

"The prophecy spoke of a hero, but I never imagined it would be someone like you."

"This isn't just a piece of space debris; it's a message."

"Our planet was destroyed. We're the last survivors, and we need your help."

"Do you really believe the king will pardon us if we find the lost treasure?"

"She's a woman in a man's world, but she'll change history, mark my words."

"I didn't come here to fall in love; I came to find myself."

"Every letter I wrote to you, I wrote with my heart in my hand."

"That house has been abandoned for years. Why would anyone go inside willingly?"

"The shadows in this place…they move when you're not looking."

"There's a map, but it's missing the most crucial part—the key to decoding it."

"I've been to the highest mountain and the deepest sea, but I've never seen anything like this."

"Freedom is an illusion they sold us to keep us compliant."

"We've been living in a lie. It's time we uncover the truth."

"Every night at midnight, the old clock shop comes alive. Haven't you ever noticed?"

"They say the forest spirits grant wishes, but only to those who ask with pure intentions."

"I found this old diary in the attic, and it’s like it’s talking directly to me."

[thereoncewasagirlnamedjane]

LOVE TASTES LIKE STRAWBERRIES.

PAIRING — baker!colin shea x patisserie f!reader

CONTENTS — one-shot; modern au; alternate universe—bakery; rivals in love; fluff; coarse language.

SUMMARY — You have a standing rivalry with the bakery across town, but you know what they say: there’s a thin line between love and hate. And despite how much you act like it, you don’t actually hate Colin Shea.

WORD COUNT — 3.3k

✩ main masterlist ✩ chris evans characters m.list ✩ library blog

“Hey, Princess!” 

You bite back a groan, trying to ignore it, hoping against hope that you were just hearing things. 

But then you hear it again. “Over here, your highness!” 

Finally, you turn towards the sound of the voice and are met with a pair of familiar blue eyes and that infuriating grin. Colin Shea jabs a thumb in the direction of your stall, the one right next to his, as it has been every year. 

Your biggest mistake was deciding to check out the competition after hearing there was a new contender in town. You saw the name of a bakery you didn’t recognize on the list of participants in that year’s spring fling festival. 

The event? A baking contest. The prize? $5,000 in cash and publicity for your store. Despite not winning that first year, the contest shone a spotlight on your shop, Queen of Tarts, and you saw a decent boost in sales in the month following the festival. Needless to say, you resolved to compete every year since. 

Rockin’ Rolls, the new bakery that opened up across town, was exactly like you expected: lots of natural light, bare white walls, gallon-sized jars full of flour and sugar lined up on shelves painted a light minty green, and wooden display cases that looked like they were handcrafted.

It was a quaint little place, and despite the sweet smell of fresh bread wafting out from the kitchen, their displays showcased a wide selection of breads, pastries, cakes, and pies. Evidently, they sold much more than just rolls. 

The owner of said establishment, however, was not at all what you expected… and you ended up, well, checking out the competition in a whole different way. 

Frustratingly handsome, easygoing boyish charm, and a sense of humour you’d find endearing if it didn’t belong to your sworn enemy, Colin was a pain in your ass but looked damn good while he was at it. Not only could he be charming, he was a master of bread. The first day you visited his bakery, you bought a loaf of brioche that was so rich, so buttery, yet so light and airy that it almost had you in tears. 

Your pride, though, kept you from going back for more. 

Because he was also absolutely insufferable. At first, you enjoyed the dose of healthy competition, the two of you always good-natured and lighthearted about it. The rivalry soon became an all-out feud, however, as it turned out both of you were frighteningly competitive… and very sore losers. 

Soon, Colin’s laidback attitude became a source of unending irritation, while he seemed to find your background—namely your rich parents—personally offensive. You’ve engaged in a yearly bake-off ever since, both your storefront windows featuring an actual tally squeaked on with marker. The winner threw obnoxiously smug celebration parties, tagging the loser in photos and videos posted on social media. 

“Aren’t you a little old for the name-calling, Shea?” You snark, taking in his slightly tousled hair and casual attire, a dark t-shirt smeared with flour and dark jeans torn at the knees. 

“Calm down. You know it suits you,” Colin replies mockingly. “Naive and privileged heiress, out here slumming it with us peasants.” 

“Don’t you know—” you say through gritted teeth as you set up your station. The proximity of your tents has both of your staff groaning in frustration, but neither of you are phased. “—that you shouldn’t ever tell a woman to ’calm down’ unless you want to get punched in the dick?”

“Aw, sweetheart, if you wanted to touch my dick that badly, why didn’t you just say so?” He smirks as he kneads his dough, the muscles in his arms bulging nicely with the effort. It takes every last ounce of willpower not to stare at them. 

“I’d rather be set on fire,” you mutter to yourself, lying through your teeth, rolling out your own pastry dough for your tart crusts. 

“And did I ever tell you how cute that name is? Queen of Tarts, how adorable,” he pouts, pointing a flour-covered finger to the sign hanging from your tent. His voice holds a slightly mocking tone, but you’re determined to let it slide off your back. 

“Yeah, so you should be calling me ’your majesty’ instead,” you sneer. 

“You haven’t earned that title yet, Princess. And your little strawberry tarts won’t be enough to win you that prize.” 

“My tarts were famous long before you showed up, I’ll have you know.” 

“For what, being a giant disappointment? That pastry is way too thin.” 

“I know what I’m doing. I was making these with my eyes closed while you were still learning how to proof bread!” 

“The weight of your custard is gonna break those things in half before anyone can even eat it. Not to mention all that fruit you’re about to pile on top.” 

“You know,” you shake your head, rolling out the chilled dough. “Someone ought to teach you a lesson.” 

“Yeah, you think you can teach a man like me?”  Colin grins, wiggling his eyebrows. “Silk sheets, candlelight… the gentle strains of Kenny G?”

“Ew, stop it.” 

“Why? Afraid you’d like it too much, rich girl?” 

“Ugh,” you groan in disgust, turning away to concentrate on your pastry. “Just you fucking wait. This is gonna be the best thing you’ve ever had, and then I’ll have you admit that you don’t know jack shit.” 

It occurs to you then that Colin has never actually had any of your pastries. All of the times you two had competed, not just in the festival, the two of you would automatically declare yourselves the winner—the rules be damned. And after the fact, while you couldn’t help but secretly partake in the loaves of freshly baked focaccia, ciabatta, and sourdough, Colin has never once touched the tarts you’ve so painstakingly made with love. 

The pastry Colin deemed too thin, you had down to a science, filled with smooth and creamy perfectly sweet custard. On top are strawberries you sliced so thin they could be arranged into the shape of a blooming flower, brushed with shiny red glaze, dusted with powdered sugar, and garnished with a few adorably tiny green leaves of apple mint. 

When you win the top prize this year, much to your satisfaction, the other staff at Rockin’ Rolls gladly grab at your famous confections, showering you with appreciative mmm’s and ahh’s. Colin, however, remains at his station, cleaning away and looking pouty as he usually did whenever you beat him at something. 

“Come now, Mr. Shea, don’t be a sore loser,” you tease, despite the fact that you were probably much worse, ignoring the way Colin noticeably bristle at the sound of your voice. You hand over a plate with a single strawberry tart placed gingerly on top of the white porcelain. “I’ll be generous and share my winning creations.” 

Generosity, sure. Deep down inside, way past the rivalry and annoyance, you held a reluctant respect for Colin. Despite his carefree attitude and sometimes crude jokes, the man is serious about yeast. He turns into a different man once he steps into the kitchen, his eyebrows knit together in concentration, all signs of the immature jokester you’ve come to know disappears. Or at least, pushed momentarily aside. 

His hands gently mold doughs into various shapes, handling them with such care that sometimes you didn’t recognize the baker in front of you. You remember that first taste of brioche, how that masterpiece had come from the heart of this giant man-child, and it was impossible not to admire Colin Shea the bread artisan. 

So, you wanted to know what he thought about what you could do. It was one thing to own a mildly successful business, but another thing entirely to share your creations with someone who knew what the whole process entailed. 

“I’m allergic, your highness,” Colin merely says, not even looking up as he wipes down his flour-dusted workstation. 

Your jaw drops. “What?” 

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, don’t you also have some cleaning up to do?” Colin glances over your shoulder to bark out orders to his staff, who quickly finish the rest of your tarts before going back to their stations. They give you friendly pats on the shoulder as they pass, showering you with more compliments, just as your staff does for them, like they all do every year regardless of the outcome of the competition and despite the childish rivalry of their bosses. 

Except you can’t enjoy it this time. You take back your plate, the dessert still intact, bringing it back to your own tent where you would pick at it for the rest of the festival until it was time to go home. 

Because you know for an undisputed fact that Colin is not, in fact, allergic to strawberries. 

He’d lied to your face.

You can handle the jokes, the snide remarks, and his mocking tone… but if there was one thing you wouldn’t ever let slide, it was dishonesty.

Colin says goodnight to the last of his part-timers as they head out the door of the shop. Everyone had piled into the van and helped him reload all their supplies back into their kitchen before heading home for the day, but he stays behind long after closing time. It’s nearly midnight, but he opens the fridge and pulls out a small yellow box. 

Queen of Tarts is written in loopy pink script, a little bejeweled crown hanging off the capital T. It’s a logo Colin knows well. One of his employees had saved this for him, not knowing he had already declined your offer earlier at the festival with a bald-faced lie. 

They said it was the best strawberry tart they’d ever had, “But you knew that already, right, boss?” 

He didn’t. 

In all the years you two had competed, Colin could never bring himself to actually try one of the tarts you were so proud of. 

For the two of you, baking wasn’t just about making money. It wasn’t even always about what you made. It was about expression, about the way food, even the mere thought or smell of it, could bring out emotions and memories long buried. 

The only reason strawberries were your signature item was because your father took you strawberry picking as a child, you once shared with him. Colin found himself smiling at the mental image, of a younger you making fresh strawberry jam at the farm, sampling it with pieces of soft bread, only to be broken out of his reverie when you turned away out of embarrassment, demanding that he forget about it. 

And baking bread was a whole other beast. It required patience, love, and care. Colin insisted on kneading the dough by hand, the industrial-sized mixer at the shop often going unused. He always tells anyone who would listen that it doesn’t taste right otherwise, which is what his grandmother told him when she’d taught him everything he knows. 

Food contained histories and legacies, lessons of love carried throughout generations. To partake in a meal prepared for you by someone else, no matter how brief or how small, was incredibly intimate. 

And Colin definitely didn’t do intimate.

Every romantic encounter was fleeting and casual, the terms made abundantly clear before he ever partook. He felt no guilt when the women he slept with walked away hurt, because it wasn’t his fault they expected more when he explicitly stated over and over that he couldn’t give it to them.

And then he met you, and for the first time he was the one who wanted more. He wondered if he could ever change for you, if he could be man enough to swallow that fear of commitment and just tell you all the things he felt whenever he looked upon your face—even if he couldn’t exactly find the words big enough, right enough, to describe them.

Colin had expected a typically sugary-sweet proprietress of Queen of Tarts, naive about the ways of the real world, your path paved by privilege and by dollars you hadn’t earned but instead inherited.

But what he got was a bolt out of the blue and the knowledge he had misjudged you. There was a fire in your eyes unlike any he’d ever seen in another person, a stubbornness to prove your worth and your place in this world, to get by without the help of your immensely wealthy parents. 

Like the first blossoms of spring, colour slowly bled into his black and white world, as though his life didn’t really begin until your arrival in it. 

And he knew that the moment he gave into his desires and took a bite out of your carefully constructed custardy treats, he would know what love truly tasted like. 

He wouldn’t be able to pretend any longer.

Colin looks down at the lone strawberry tart, looking just as perfect and sweet as they always do. In the privacy of his own shop, alone in the middle of the night, remembering the way you’d looked at him when he lied about being allergic, he finds his resolve faltering. 

Because before any of his hopes could ever take flight, they were dashed just as quickly. Just four words uttered a week ago after he won another meaningless bet, after he had proceeded to rub your nose in it. 

“God, I hate you so much.” You’d muttered it under your breath as you rolled your eyes, turned away from him so you couldn’t see the surprise and hurt that was surely laced right into his features. 

A part of him shouted that the words were merely said in jest, that you only mumbled them out of irritation because—even he has to admit—he was being a colossal dick.

But another part of him realized you’ve never actually smiled in his direction. You have done it around him, at your patrons and your friends, at his employees who unlike him were always nice to you, but the second your eyes met his, the smile would drop. 

He knows the remedy. He could just stop being an ass, pour on the effortless charm that seems to work on most of the women he’s encountered. Except, he just can’t. Colin sighs.

Despite your hatred, he likes watching you get angry at him. Not that he enjoys making you mad, he simply likes it when you give just as much as you get, not letting anything deter you until you’d proved him wrong. He likes that you challenge him, that you aren’t afraid to be you around him. 

Then, a sudden frantic series of knocks on his shop door startles him into tossing the tart back into the fridge. Uttering a string of curses, he moves to finish closing up and ignore the stranger at the door, until—

“Open up, Shea! I know you’re in there.” Colin’s heart jumps to his throat at the sound of your voice. He freezes for a moment, listening to your fist continue to pound against the door. But then he manages to collect himself, slapping on that arrogant smile before opening up. 

“Well, what brings you here at this time of night?” He asks, but before he can continue with an inappropriate booty call joke, a second yellow box is shoved under his nose. 

“You are going to eat every last crumb of this tart,” you slam the box down onto the counter. “I don’t fucking care if you really are ‘allergic’ all of a sudden.” 

“Uh, that’s called murder, your highness.” 

“Every. Last. Crumb.” You emphasize each word with a jab of your finger against his chest. Colin wonders why he can see hurt laced in your features, too. 

If you hate him, why does his opinion even matter to you? For the first time, Colin can’t immediately tell what a woman is thinking, and it’s driving him mad.

But if you were privy to his thoughts, you’d tell him it’s because everyone knows a good and true rivalry is born and built out of mutual respect.

People just don’t bother with someone they don’t hold in high esteem. And if you really did hate him, if he really did hate you, then what was the goddamn point?

It can’t be just for the glory of being crowned the best, or the prize money; you’ve seen him in action too many times to believe that. This shared thing isn’t just a passion for either of you, it’s a way of life. It’s everything. 

“You hate me,” he says, but it comes out more like a question, the confusion evident in his voice. People don’t bring sweet strawberry tarts to someone they hate. 

“So? And you hate me. That’s how this works,” you say, clearly taken aback. Your voice grows unsteady at the way he looks at you, taking a few nervous steps back as he stalks toward you. 

“Except it’s not,” Colin stops just inches from you, so close he can smell the combined scent of sugar and butter latched onto your clothes. “Not even close.” 

“…Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” You wrinkle your nose. Even now, in the middle of a confrontation, after hinting that he is absolutely hopeless for you, Colin can’t help but love your timing even if it’s also frustrating as hell. He grins. 

“It was hot.” 

“Then take off your hoodie and not the shirt?” 

“You want me to take my clothes off?” 

“What? No, I—” 

“You hate me, though? Tell me the truth.” 

“No way. You lied to me earlier,” you finally look up at him, glaring. “And if I’m being totally honest, it’s the lack of effort that really grinds my gears. If you’re going to lie, at least do it well.” 

“I don’t hate you.” Colin says, still smiling. He wants so badly to touch you. 

“Well, good, I don’t hate you either.” The store goes still, the two of you maintaining eye contact until the silence is almost too much to bear. “No idea where you got that from, anyway.” 

He laughs, incredulous. “Because you said it.” 

“No, I didn’t! When?” 

“Last week.” 

“Oh, you mean when you were being a dick?” 

“Not uncommon, Princess. Be more specific.” 

“In my defence, you were being an ass.” 

“Again… not uncommon.” Smirking, Colin reaches out to brush his fingers against yours. His eyes never leave yours, trying to gauge just how far he can go. You don’t move even as your fingers intertwine, even as he tugs you gently towards the kitchen, picking up the box from the counter and pulling a matching one out of his fridge. 

Realization slowly dawns and you finally smile at him. Colin thinks he’ll melt into the floor, it’s so damn brilliant.

The two of you sit in his kitchen, illuminated by nothing but the small light from the nearby stove and the moon outside the window, partaking in sweet treats that would be gone in just a matter of minutes. But even long after the plates are cleared and washed, you and Colin would remember this night. 

You would remember you spent the rest of the night learning the recipe for his famous brioche, after reluctantly admitting you still have dreams about it. You would remember the way his eyes sparkled at your admission, his hands covering yours as he helped you knead the dough. The laughter at the way you ruined the first batch by adding way too much butter, the countertop and your fingers covered in a sticky mess.

As you washed your hands in the sink, Colin asked if you would come by again because “learning how to make bread is a process, Princess”. 

Colin would remember you saying yes, trying to sound nonchalant but turning away shyly and unable to meet his eyes. He would remember it being more intimate than anything he’d ever shared with anyone, committing to memory that he had been right.

Love tasted like fresh strawberries, buttery pastry, smooth custard, and just the tiniest tingles of mint. 

But, and this was the most important part—only if they came from your hands.

fin.

© 2025 by thereoncewasagirlnamedjane. do not repost, translate, or copy to third party sites. no part of this work may be fed into any AI software or websites. minors are asked not to interact with my blog; you are responsible for your own media consumption. followers with zero engagement, serial likers, and blank/ageless blogs will be blocked.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Another opportunity to own Frontier Town, b/c it's on the market again. This is a former old west town theme park attraction built in 1948, but it's been a residence since 2001 and is being sold as a home. Located in Helena, Montana, it has 4bds, 6ba, plus lots of stone and wood. $1.7M.

Imagine driving thru the gates of your fortress town and the first thing you see is your jail.

Continue down the the road past the old souvenir stands.

And, arrive at your log cabin style residence.

You've got some pretty serious stone walls in the living room. Is that a wooly mammoth tusk in the wall?

The kitchen. The property is being sold "as is" and the owner will go over with the buyer the things that will be staying.

Look at the fireplace in the kitchen.

The dining room is very rustic.

This is the primary bedroom and en-suite. I don't know what I would do with this house, it does need so much updating.

The property has a total of 42 rooms. This floor has a huge crack.

This looks like it was part of the attraction with a restaurant area and seating.

Here's a miniature town display. Everything is so dusty, and these were photos from when it was last on the market, so I wonder if it's deteriorated further.

Remember, before it was a home, it was a business. This looks like a dance floor. Look at all the things!

It's like a museum.

The old commercial kitchen stuff is back here all rusty. There're even some old spices on the shelf above the stove. There's a lot of clean up needed here.

The old game room. The owners really let this stuff deteriorate.

Looks like some wagons back here. Even if I didn't want to use the place as an attraction, I'd still want this stuff in good shape.

This looks like part of the Pioneer Town, also, there's a display kiosk with souvenirs.

There're some great things here, and they should've been kept clean and preserved.

Since it's a town, it has a church, too.

There are so many buildings that need attention.

There are 41 acres of land and, we don't know how much it's deteriorated since these photos were taken. Currently, it's been on the market 110 days already.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8610-W-Us-Highway-12-Helena-MT-59601/116348895_zpid/?

[verminadorer]

so first; information on ceos now has an excuse to be guarded. In an effort to avoid accountability, they'll all follow suit with the Healthcare industry if they've not already. They no longer have to pretend that they aren't afraid of the people they've been killing and profiting from, so it isn't uncouth in the eyes of the richest class for them to hide. If you are the type to keep track, write down everything you can before it dissappears. Look at their pictures, address them by name and title should you be unfortunate enough to pass them in person. None of them deserve the comfort they have bought; just go on about your day normally after that, if you'd like, you will have reminded them of the role they've shucked their humanity to take on.

The guy they arrested as The Assassin was wearing the same outfit in public five days later, apparently, after being called A True Professional, an Expert. The NY police already took three days to find his backpack in a park after he hit his mark (a few days ago as of now)... containing the jacket he's supposed to be wearing. The man they've arrested has a different nose bridge, and it would be impressive (if not superhuman) for a unibrow to fully grow back in about a week.

The McDonalds employee that snitched isn't going to be able to receive the cash they sold out for; McDonald's will see to that. Let their current social status and reward for being a class traitor teach us all something. Interpersonally, use this as a litmus test. If your close friends would have sold this guy out, stop talking to them about politics now, unless you believe you can get through to them: anyone with opinions that can be considered radical will become a mark in January. We should not be quiet, mind you, we should be certain that those we confide in won't give us the old red scare treatment.

Last thing I will say: if they wanted to push a believable manifesto on this guy who sort of (but not quite) looks like the grainy ass photos they've been spreading, they should have made it longer than two pages. Everyone I know who is angry at being medically neglected due to insurance adjusters and their bosses' fuckass opinions has more than two pages to say on it. Everyone I knew who died waiting for treatment to be approved so they could have some sort of quality of life had more than that to say on their deathbeds.

They never have to Get the Guy who did this, they'll just declassify the fact that they put away some random kid who was almost a match and was easy to plant evidence on twenty years from now. It's kinda their whole deal. They're doing this because it was effective, in the way that they always have when anyone dares to do more than vote.

[arobinwithoutbatman]

[let me remind you: you asked for this]

What am I gonna tell Jack…?

That had been the question he'd wrestled with most, once the shock had worn off. Well. It hadn't worn off at all, yet; he'd just forced his brain back into some semblance of functionality.

What am I gonna tell Jack…?

They have protocols in place, of course; contingency plans that Bruce had tortured himself come up with in order to make sure their identities remain secret. No one outside the family knows that Tim Drake was Robin, and it's going to stay that way. But that means finding a way to explain the loss of a sixteen year old boy who should be looking at early college enrollment instead of lying in a coffin. And that means having to lie to the boy's father about just how he died.

Dick already knows Jack doesn't like him. Doesn't approve of him. Knows it would just get worse if Jack had the first idea just what Tim actually got up to, the kind of life Bruce - and then Dick - had allowed his son to get into. It's terrible, because Tim is - was - is a hero, someone Jack should be proud of for all the good he's done, and Dick can't tell him any of it. Hell, he's not even sure Jack would believe him.

He's certainly not sure Tim would even want the man to know.

So he's kept his mouth shut, spun some believably tragic yet mundane story, and earned himself a sold punch to the jaw from an angry, grieving father who feels he's been proven right that flighty, airheaded Dickie Grayson had no business looking after his son. And hell, maybe he is right; if Dick had been better, had been faster, had paid more attention, then Tim would still be here. And he's not.

Jack's demanded all of Tim's things, too, and Dick has no room to refuse. No legal recourse. On paper, Jack is still the boy's father, while Dick is just a friend. The ward of the man who'd been Tim's de facto guardian, nothing more. Bad enough Dick has to box up his brother's possessions, but to give them to a man who's barely ever been there for Tim aches in the worst of ways.

At least Jack doesn't know about the photo albums. Or the secure laptop with its digital copies. And there's Robin's suit and weapons, but those...those hurt too much to look at. There are a few other bits and pieces, too, that Dick manages to keep back. Little things, keepsakes, for the family. For himself, for Alfred, for Jason and Babs...keeping a few things back won't hurt, right? After all, a part of him argues, how many of Tim's effects would Jack even recognize?

Is Jack even going to realize Dick's kept Tim's camera?

He's not even sure he's allowed at the funeral, but he goes anyway. Keeps to the back out of respect. Hates the fact that Tim's grave isn't up with Bruce's, where it belongs, but that hadn't been his call to make. Hates the fact that he now has to tell Bruce about it. About why Tim is gone. About how Dick failed both of them. Failed all of them. Tim and Bruce, Jack, the rest of the family…it's his job to keep them safe, keep them together, and he failed.

They'll have a memorial for him themselves, of course; Dick also has to tell Tim's teammates in San Francisco, and they'll want a chance to pay their respects too. And he still has to go out on patrol, keep working, keep trying, even as shattered as he is right now. It takes effort, far more effort than Dick wants to admit, just to put his mask on these days, but he does it. He has to. He can't just stop, no matter how much a part of him might want to; Tim would never forgive him if he does.

And Tim's left too many unfinished projects. Arkham's reformation, the new planned mental hospital, outreach and awareness programs for mental health and neurodivergence…who's going to make them happen now, if not Dick? He's failed his little brother once already, in the worst of ways; he can't fail him again.

((...I did what now? -Checks blog for what the queue spat out- OH... OH NO

Kei. My friend. Surrogate older brother. You are a menace, meet me on discord for an ass kicking, my heart hurts in the good way but I'm still gonna kick your ass!

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭))

[silveme]

i will admit that since im mobile-only i cant actually read the playlist description BUT, i can very clearly tell characters/themes sections , and that some sections made me laugh out loud when certain songs would play, like specifically, hitting us with back to back songs that make made me laugh way harder than i probably should have been laughing, memorably,

Puppet Boy immediately followed by Under My Skin, so meaaan to them

the one-two punch of fuck my boss and da biggest bird.........

the combo of Just The Two Of Us and Thats Life,

the man who sold the world. BACK FROM THE DEAD STRAIGHT OUT THE CASKET RISING UP OPEN UP YOUR EYES CANT YOU SEE ME WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

the cars themed songs, ejsus fucking ..

starting out with a man without love is Perfect ... the first four songs paint such a picture like thr opening of a film except the fourth song is camel by camel of all things,

heaven knows im miserable now. i was looking for a job and then i found a job. making plans for nigel. then ghost.

i can go on (which would be me continuing to state the obvious) but im not planning on editing this ask once i type it out so (sweating) im so sorry....

there are some fantastic choices you can kinda tell who listens to what via vibes , even though obviously no i couldnt actually figure out that marc listens to will smith. but there is a VERY clear switch between steven music, marc music, jake music, plot music, setting music, show mystery atmosphere music, etc. even their mercenary background,

this is only somewhat related to the playlist, but i didnt realize that My Way Of Life was the song that jake was playing in the last scene, and then when you put frontier psychiatrist in there, did yoy know that that song is sampled in there. the That Boy Needs Therapy song. sampling the song that was playing when jake makes his appearance at khonshu's behest, a song that is all in one an admission of defeat, a prayer, and a claim. can i speak to the directors was this on purpose (shaking someone wildly by the shoulders)

your sense of humor shines through the entire thing even from the photo and the GET THE FRIES title reference which im still laughing to myself about it like an idiot and as i finished the playlist i was thinking to myself like. Thats it, Thats The Whole Show 👍👍 We've Covered Literally Everything yknow i marathoned this playlist but this playlist is so long that by the time i hit the end of the playlist after marathoning it i was driving home from work free bird'ing down the highway like I DID IT ... WHAT AN EXPERIENCE...

Yeeeesssssss

YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS

YOU GET ITTT

literally kicking my feet in the air giggling and silently screaming while reading this THANK YOU!! AND YES IT IS THE PERFECT PLAYLIST TO MARATHON I ALWAYS PUT IT ON WHILE WORKING. Also good to know that everyone else can’t see the description on mobile too, damn I thought I was doing something wrong. it goes like this “We’ll need the energy in the coming days…THE ULTIMATE MOON KNIGHT PLAYLIST In order: miscellaneous, Marc, Steven, Jake. I’m always updating and curating this! Also check out my Layla playlist”

Followers who don’t care about the best moon knight playlist ever pls scroll now or forever hold your peace cause I’m about to wig out✌️

This whole playlist is very much my personal music taste both old and new so I’m so glad other people love it too. Like I’m 20 and I’ve been listening to some of these songs since middle school (and one since elementary school….”awoken” LOL) and some is my more recent music taste

So anyway without further ado, here is some of my personal favorite moments on the playlist, I’ll try to keep it in order, strap in.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Nutcracker suite Arabian dances: im very much a classical lover as you can probably tell by now but this has always been my favorite classical piece. It’s just sooooo “I’m tired and injured and trudging through the desert under the light of the full moon. I’m exhausted but I have to keep going” love itttttt

• Leopard: this song is literally always switching up!! Just like moon knight lol. One moment it’s sad and slow, next moment it’s anxious and fast, and then it’s smooth and chill. Need I say more.

MARC

• Back from the dead: “BLOW, YA TAKIN 2 SHOTS TO YA CHEST”

• Hunter: this one is very special to me cause it’s probably my favorite song of all time at the moment. It’s sort of the same deal with the nutcracker suite where it’s like you just have to keep on marching and do what you can to survive cause there’s not really a home you can go back to. It feels lonely, ghostly, desolate, and steadfast. So marc and so knightly. “I tried to organize freedom- you sussed it out didn’t you? You could smell it so you left me on my own, to complete the mission, now I’m leaving it all behind.” Very him and Khonshu am I right or am I right. HES GOING HUNTING. HES THE HUNTER!

• Pluto: this is a more recent addition, it’s just so visceral and violent. Like Marc! I also specifically added the live version with the strings cause it sounds so much moreee. Unhinged? Enraged? “Excuse me, I just have to explode this body” “I’ll wake up tomorrow brand new, a little tired, but brand new” just like going to bed as maRC AND WAKING UP AS STEVEN CMONNNNNN

• Dirty Harry: mercenary days marc moment

• mercure scene 1, la nuit: same thing as nutcracker suite and hunter. WE GOTTA KEEP MOVING EVEN THO WE’RE SO TIRED

• Off with his head: middle school classic of all time to me. It’s so “ugh. Gotta kill all these people to sate this ancient gods will. Sorry, I promise I don’t want to 😬”

• Awoken: relistening to old mlp fandom songs I used to love when I was little and then realizing one of them fit Marc Spector of all characters actually incredibly well felt like unearthing an ancient cursed relic. I literally still cannot believe it

• All the Will Smith songs: Marc speeds on the highway when he drives. And when he does, he’s blasting this. Also he doesn’t like any other musician besides will smith. He has literally had the exact same music taste since 1997 #comfortmusic

• Get out of my house: MARC IS THE HOUSE.

• All the love: the phone calls. THE PHONE CALLS. Did I mention the phone calls? The sighs too UGH. I’m imagining Marc coming back to that storage locker and listening to all the voicemails Steven had left him thinking he was calling their mom. Also am I crazy thinking the last “good night” sounds EXACTLY like Steven?

• Sandpaper kisses: “your gonna a leave her. You have deceived her. Just a girl, with featherweight curls” Layla 😭

• The moon/ Awake: EVERY. LYRIC. HITS. It fits the relationship between him and Steven amazingly. “When sins of sons to fathers come, too heavy is the weight. THE SPIRIT SPLIT IN TWO” <- when I heard that while looking for songs to add to this playlist my jaw dropped. ITS TOO REAL

STEVEN

• Ok let’s go: the moon/ awake to ok let’s go is the transition from Marc to Steven. It’s basically Steven being like “is this too much to take? That’s ok, I’ll take it from here” like he’s there to put Marc’s pieces back together after everything. It’s stevens introduction bc that’s his purpose after all. He’s picking up where Marc left off

• Diary: Goldfish problem vibes. “Dear diary, What a day it’s been. Dear Diary, it’s been just like a dream” “at night I can’t sleep, I toss and turn” also the guy is British so that’s a plus

• the miku song (I can’t type Japanese) : Steven grant anime opening. He’s running late to work with toast in his mouth

• COUNT THOSE FREAKS: literally episode 2. Mr knight vs that jackal vibes

• Sinking feeling, Only dreaming: I’m gonna lump these 2 together cause they have the same gist. Steven realizing that he isn’t completely alone and those strange occurrences and dreams are much much much more than they seem. His life is a lie! Poor man’s being put through the mental ringer.

• Linger a while: It’s just so british sounding you know what I mean? It’s so Steven nervously plodding along

•Oivomaintnt: steven grant walking simulator

• Wake up ( it’s 1984): “two worlds apart, BUT SO!! CLOSE!!!!!!”

• Is anybody here?: ohhhhohhh so Steven. Everything abt it is so perfect but here’s my fav lyrics “I left my soul exposed to frail hands who hold my fate up in the air.” Aka khonshus spindly witch fingers. “Waking in the afternoon, a captive in a passive tomb, moments turn to long Decembers, stoking fires from dying embers. I try To move a limb, but there's a disconnect within. A devil in the alchemy. A phantom staring back at me.ITS YOUUUUU” disassociation moment. He is quite literally slipping out of consciousness and losing days or even months of time. Also….a phantom….OR A SPECTOR

• Steal away: ok I lied this is the one song that’s based off vibes. It’s just Steven what can I say

• It only takes a moment, somethin stupid, might tell you tonight: HES FALLING IN LOVE FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME 😭😭😭

• Ghost: Steven being like “hey maybe actually not being alone isnt so bad :)” again, a ghost….OR A SPECTOR! Ehhhhhh? ;D

JAKE

• you belong to me: Marc and Steven may be free, but Jake? mmmm not so much :/ wherever they go, whatever they do, he still belongs to Khonshu.

• What you won’t do for love: “I guess you wonder where I’ve been”

• Desalento: I don’t speak Portuguese so I don’t exactly know what this song is about but it’s just so Jake vibes. Esp near the end

• The most cursed hands/ who am I: first part is cool but disregard it. The real reason why I added it is at the very end. “Who am I? Just a gambler, holding aces in the devil's eyes. What is wrong? What's the sin? Where's the answer? Where the hell do I fit in? Or could it be, there's just a little demon lost in the debris? And I, should idly bide my time until a wager releases me” cmonnnn that is so good. Where does jake fit in in all this? Steven and Marc are already a team but Jake is disconnected from them, where does he go in the story? Also the little demon lost in the debris is KHONSHU, they thought they defeated him but heyyyy he’s still there just in secret now. And what can Jake do but follow his orders till he’s released! “It can’t remain unknown” his existence can’t stay hidden forever! Also the vibes at this part are just so suave and Jakey.

• how I could just kill a man: marc and steven are soooo free and don’t have to do shit anymore but guess who’s left to do all the dirty work now? JAKE! And he’s pissed! “When your up on the hill in your big home, I’m out here riskin my dome”

• Vroom Vroom: obligatory

• Tardigrade song: Jake lockley is one tough son of a bitch. He can take pretty much everything you throw at him, since that is literally his purpose. He wakes up after years of hibernation, kicks ass in the most inhospitable conditions imaginable, then goes to sleep again. Just like a tardigrade!

• We fly high: I have this image in my head of Jake rolling up to an avengers meeting and you can hear this from the parking lot blasting in the moon knight mobile before he gets out and slams the door. They’re all looking down at him from the window like “ughhhh who invited that guy” “not me” “me neither” “I think he just invited himself” *door bursts open* “eyyyy fugeddaboutit” It’s like his theme song to me, it’s what plays when he rolls up into frame wearing sunglasses. He’s just balling. Simple as. Steven: ouch! He bit me!😰 Jake: no I didn’t 😎😏

Freebird: and what a perfect way to end the playlist. Wow look you made it way to go, now let’s make our car do flips and donuts in the avengers office parking lot 🥳🙌

Sorry if that was too much, I always think about these when I listen to it which is still fairly often. I’ve never gotten to discuss these things with anyone! Delighted to hear that you enjoyed it!!!!! Hope it helped you discover some really amazing songs. THANK YOU!!!!!!! 💕

[impressivepress]

The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier

A LIFE IN SHADOW: The North Shore families who hired Vivian Maier as a nanny came to know a kind but eccentric woman who guarded her private life and kept a huge stash of boxes. A chance discovery after her death by a man named John Maloof has spotlighted her secret talent as a photographer and led to a growing appreciation of her vast work.

On an unremarkable day in late 2007, John Maloof, a young real-estate agent, spent some time at a local auction house, RPN Sales in Portage Park, combing through assortments of stuff—some of it junk—that had been abandoned or repossessed. A third-generation reseller, Maloof hoped to find some historical photographs for a small book about Portage Park that he was cowriting on the side. He came across a box that had been repossessed from a storage locker, and a hasty search revealed a wealth of black-and-white shots of the Loop from the 1950s and ’60s. There’s got to be something pertinent in there, he thought. So he plunked down about $400 for the box and headed home. A closer examination unearthed no scenes of Portage Park, though the box turned out to contain more than 30,000 negatives. Maloof shoved it all into his closet.

Something nagged, however—perhaps a reflex picked up from working the flea market circuit as a poor kid growing up on the West Side of Chicago. Though he knew almost nothing about photography, he eventually returned to the box and started looking through the negatives, scanning some into his computer. There was a playfulness to the moments the anonymous artist had captured: a dapper preschool boy peeking from the corner of a grimy store window; an ample rump squeezing through the wooden planks of a park bench; a man in a three-piece suit napping, supine, in the front seat of his car, his right arm masking his face from the daylight. Whoa, Maloof mused. These are really cool. Who took them?

A contact at the auction house didn’t know the photographer’s name but told Maloof that the contents of the repossessed storage locker had belonged to an elderly woman who was ill. As time passed, Maloof tracked down a handful of people who had acquired similar caches of negatives once owned by the same woman, and he bought the boxes off them. With the collection becoming expensive to maintain, this lifelong reseller did what came naturally: He cut up some of the negatives and hawked them on eBay. They proved startlingly popular—some sold for as much as $80 a pop. Maloof realized that he’d come across something special, and he determined to crack the case of the anonymous photographer.

One day in late April 2009, more than a year after he bought that first box at RPN, Maloof got a break. He found an envelope from a photo lab buried in one of the boxes. Scribbled in pencil was a name: Vivian Maier. One hit from a Google search linked to an item from the Chicago Tribune that had been posted just days before. It was the paid death notice for an 83-year-old woman: “Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died peacefully on Monday. Second mother to John, Lane and Matthew. A free and kindred spirit who magically touched the lives of all who knew her. Always ready to give her advice, opinion or a helping hand. Movie critic and photographer extraordinaire. A truly special person who will be sorely missed but whose long and wonderful life we all celebrate and will always remember.”

After a call to the Tribune left him with a faulty address and a disconnected phone number, Maloof didn’t know where to turn. In the meantime, though, he started displaying Maier’s work on a blog, vivianmaier.com. Then, in October 2009, he linked to the blog on Flickr, the photo-sharing website, and posted a question about Maier’s pictures on a discussion board devoted to street photography: “What do I do with this stuff (other than giving it to you)?”

The discussion went viral. Suggestions poured in, and websites from around the world sent traffic to his blog. (If you Google “Vivian Maier” today, you’ll get more than 18,000 results.) Maloof recognized that this was bigger than he’d thought.

He was right about that. Since his tentative online publication of a smattering of Vivian Maier’s photographs, her work has generated a fanatical following. In the past year, her photos have appeared in newspapers in Italy, Argentina, and England. There have been exhibitions in Denmark and Norway, and a showing is scheduled to open in January at the Chicago Cultural Center. Few of the pictures had ever been seen before by anyone other than Maier herself, and Maloof has only scratched the surface of what she left behind. He estimates that he’s acquired 100,000 of her negatives, and another interested collector, Jeff Goldstein, has 12,000 more (some of them displayed at vivianmaierphotography.com). Most of Maier’s photos are black and white, and many feature unposed or casual shots of people caught in action—passing moments that nonetheless possess an underlying gravity and emotion. And Maier apparently ranged far and wide with her camera—there are negatives from Los Angeles, Egypt, Bangkok, Italy, the American Southwest. The astonishing breadth and depth of Maier’s work led Maloof to pursue two questions, as alluring in their way as her captivating photographs: Who was Vivian Maier, and what explains her extraordinary vision?

Filing away negatives one day, Maloof, who today is 29, found a promising lead: Stuck to the bottom of a shoebox was a Highland Park address for someone named Avron Gensburg. Another quick Google search pulled up a related address with the names John and Lane—the same names as two of the people mentioned in Maier’s death notice. A little more sleuthing revealed that from 1956 to 1972, Maier had lived with Avron and Nancy Gensburg in Highland Park as a nanny for their three boys: John, Lane, and Matthew.

Today, Lane Gensburg, a 54-year-old tax attorney, is the citadel of Maier’s memory, and he is adamant that nothing unflattering be said about the woman who raised him from birth. When he starts talking about Maier, his eyes soften. “She was like Mary Poppins,” he tells me. “She had an amazing ability to relate to children.”

Maier had answered the Gensburgs’ ad seeking a nanny in 1956, and when she arrived, she almost looked the part of Mary Poppins. Under a heavy coat, she wore sturdy shoes and a long skirt with a lace slip, and she carried an enormous carpetbag. “She was dressed so differently,” recalls Nancy Gensburg. Maier was tall—five feet eight—but she appeared taller. “A very classy lady,” Nancy says. Maier’s trademark was the camera dangling around her neck. She was also very French. “She looked French, quite frankly,” Lane says. “She had a prominent nose.”

Technically, Maier wasn’t French, though she spoke with a watery French accent. According to her birth certificate, which Maloof found buried in some possessions the Gensburgs gave him, Vivian Dorothy Maier was born in New York on February 1, 1926, the daughter of Maria Jaussaud Maier, a Frenchwoman, and Charles Maier, an Austrian. By the time Vivian was four years old, her father was out of the picture, for reasons unknown. She and her mother pop up in the 1930 census, but the head of the household was a 49-year-old Frenchwoman named Jeanne Bertrand, identified as a portrait photographer. In the early 1900s, Bertrand was a successful and award-winning photographer who had an acquaintance with Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an artist and the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Jim Leonhirth, a freelance journalist in Tennessee who is writing a book about Bertrand and other photographers from her era, knows nothing about Bertrand’s connection with Maier, but he confirms that Bertrand had steady work in a New Jersey studio around the same time that Maier and her mother were living with her.

Maier and her mother returned to France for long periods of time, but where they lived is not known. On April 16, 1951, at age 25, Maier sailed unaccompanied from Le Havre in northwestern France and arrived in New York ten days later. What Maier did in New York for the next five years—besides take pictures, which abound in Maloof’s collection—remains unclear, but it’s likely she picked up work as a live-in caregiver, an occupation she would keep for the rest of her life.

Even among the people closest to her, she could be elusive about her background. The Gensburgs aren’t sure what brought her to Chicago or when she arrived. She was more forthcoming with her insights and opinions. “She really wasn’t interested in being a nanny at all,” Nancy Gensburg says. “But she didn’t know how to do anything else.”

The Gensburg boys adored Maier’s knack for creating quirky adventures. She wanted them to explore life beyond the confined suburbia of Highland Park—“the sticks,” as she put it. Maier and the boys might see the latest screening of an art film, visit the famous monuments of Graceland Cemetery, bundle up for the Chinese New Year parade, or forage for wild strawberries in a forest preserve—one of Maier’s favorite activities.

After one particular trip to the city with the boys, Maier returned to Highland Park in a state. While on the train, Lane had gestured out the window to the apartments along the el. “Look, Vivian!” he said. “The closets are hanging outside!” He had never seen clothes drying on a line. “Do you really think everybody has a dryer and a washer, Lane?” Maier asked. The little boy nodded. “That’s just terrible,” she told their mother later.

“She wanted them to be very aware of what was going on in the world,” Nancy Gensburg says.

On her days off, Maier would take a spin on her moped or go to the movies. If someone famous was in town—President Kennedy or Eleanor Roosevelt, for example—she’d pack up her cameras, work her way through the crowd, and snap a souvenir. Other days, she’d lock herself in her private bathroom, which she’d converted to a darkroom. “We could never get in,” recalls Avron Gensburg, the retired head of an arcade game manufacturer. “Not that we wanted to.” Maier didn’t talk about meeting up with friends, and there was no evidence of a boyfriend, let alone a husband. (To those who made the mistake of calling her Mrs. Maier, she’d respond tartly, “It’s Miss Maier, and I’m proud of it.”)

Maier collected things—or perhaps it’s equally true to say she had trouble throwing things away. Negatives, cameras, clothes, shoes, tape recordings, documents—Maloof’s attic is now a cluttered repository. She had an especially weak spot for newspapers. In her little bathroom at the Gensburgs’, the stack of papers on the back of her toilet reached the ceiling. However, “she didn’t keep papers just to keep papers,” Nancy Gensburg points out. “There was always an article that she’d want to get back to and couldn’t.”

For six months from 1959 to 1960, Maier circumnavigated the globe alone. Although she never talked about her family, Avron Gensburg recalls that Maier inherited part of a small farm in Alsace, and it appears that she sold her share and used the money to travel to Los Angeles, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt, Italy, France, and New York. “If she wanted to go, she’d just get up and go,” Nancy recalls. The family would hire a temporary replacement while Maier was away; she never said where she was headed. “You really wouldn’t ask her about it at all,” Nancy says. “I mean, you could, but . . .” Her voice trails off. “She was private. Period.”

Maier would share some of her photographs of the children with the Gensburgs, but she wouldn’t gift them. “If you wanted a picture,” Nancy says, “you had to buy it.” But Maier wasn’t selling her photography for profit. “Someone had to want it more than she wanted it. It’s like an artist who would paint something and then hate to get rid of it. She loved everything she did.”

When Maier left the Gensburgs’ employ in 1972—by then, the boys were old enough not to need a nanny—she took everything she owned and didn’t mention her subsequent jobs, not even when she’d stop by later to visit the boys. Despite the gaps in her timeline, it seems she never strayed very far from the North Shore; she always managed to land in another house in need of a nanny.

One belonged to Phil Donahue. After he moved his TV talk show to Chicago in 1974, he separated from his wife, and a divorce followed. He and his four boys ended up in Winnetka. “There was no Aunt Bee,” Donahue recalls, referring to the iconic caregiver from The Andy Griffith Show. “The women who came into my life as nannies didn’t last too long. No matter who they were, the kids hated them. They were rent-a-mothers.”

Maier lived with Donahue for less than a year, and his children, as well as a couple of his nieces, don’t share the Gensburgs’ memories of her as Mary Poppins incarnate. She was the eccentric French­woman who dragged them to obscure monuments, served them yucky peanut butter sandwiches with apricots, and made the girls a present of a paper bag full of green army men.

Donahue’s youngest son, James, who was around 12 at the time, remembers that Maier would roam the neighborhood taking odd photographs in a getup that reminded him of Maria von Trapp, the only other European woman he had met at the time. (Von Trapp had made an appearance on Donahue.) Maier would startle easily and exclaim, “Oh! Bah la-la bah!”—an expression that can be heard on audiotapes she made of interviews she conducted with the children or elderly people under her care. On those recordings, she dodges questions about herself.

Donahue recalls that Maier took pictures, but he doesn’t remember any prints. “I once saw her taking a picture inside a refuse can,” he says. “I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.”

Over the years, her subject matter changed. She stopped shooting in black and white, and her work became more abstract—artfully placed garbage, for example. There were no more pictures of the pyramids; she no longer made exotic trips. And she seemed to grow even more elusive—she would go long periods, sometimes years, without checking in with the Gensburgs.

By the time she arrived at the busy Glenview home of Zalman and Karen Usiskin in 1987, Maier was hauling around 30 years’ worth of photography. When she interviewed with Zalman, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, and Karen, a textbook editor, she made one thing clear: “I have to tell you that I come with my life, and my life is in boxes,” she said. No problem, they told her. They have a large garage. “We had no idea,” Zalman says. “She came with 200 boxes.” The family placed them in storage, and they sat untouched until Maier left a year later.

The Usiskins say Maier was good with their two children, but they heard she was less than kind to the taxi drivers on her trips to do the family’s grocery shopping. (She never learned to drive.) Back at home, she’d set aside all the bruised fruit, which she’d bought especially for herself. “If we would have a piece of meat [at dinner],” Karen says, “she would eat all the fat off of it—like somebody who was looking for calories to stay alive.” Karen surmises that Maier wasn’t comfortable buying expensive things. “I think that she had a real identity with being a poor person,” she says. “That was something that she was proud of.”

From 1989 to 1993, Maier cared for the disabled daughter of Federico Bayleander in his Wilmette home, and the stories about her start repeating: She was good with his daughter. She stored hundreds of boxes in his basement. She enjoyed critiquing movies and passionate conversations about politics. Neighbors complained that she was rude on the telephone. And there was something distinctive about her walk—a determined and heavy-footed gait, her arms swinging in large strokes.

After Bayleander, there was an employer in Oak Park and eventually a move to a cheap apartment in Cicero. When Lane Gensburg and his younger brother, Matthew, reconnected with her in the late nineties, they insisted on putting her up in a nice apartment in Rogers Park. “We were comfortable as long as we knew where she was,” Lane says.

He believes Maier was living off Social Security before his family stepped in to help, but she apparently had other sources of income. Today, Maloof can reach into almost any of her boxes and pull out a dozen stock certificates or uncashed refund checks from the Department of the Treasury, some of them for more than a thousand dollars.

The Gensburgs worried about her. Fearless as ever, Maier would walk around late at night in the more unsavory parts of Chicago and chat up the homeless under the el, giving advice or directing them to a shelter.

Around Christmas in 2008, Maier slipped on some ice while walking downtown, hit her head, and ended up in the emergency room. “We thought she was going to make a full recovery,” Lane says.

The Gensburg sons called in the best doctors and later moved her to a nursing home in Oak Park, where they would visit her after work. On the way to one of their visits, Lane and Matthew picked up their mother and grilled her: “Did you bring The New York Times for Vivian? Should we get her some coffee ice cream? She loves coffee ice cream.” Nancy muses, “They knew everything about her. She was just a unique person. But she didn’t think anything of herself.”

Maier passed away at the Oak Park nursing home on April 20, 2009. The Gensburg sons scattered her ashes in the forest where they all had found joy together picking wild strawberries.

When I first visit his two-flat, I’m blown away by the sheer amount of stuff Maloof has acquired. Upstairs is Vivian Central. By Maloof’s rough estimate, he now owns more than half a dozen of her cameras, more than a hundred 8 mm movies, 3,000 prints, 2,000 rolls of film, and 100,000 negatives. Steamer trunks and boxes line an attic wall. He pops open a trunk bursting with Maier’s clothes—felt hats, baggy coats in muted tones, black shoes so heavy they could double as dumbbells. Many of the boxes contain newspaper clippings encased in plastic frames or vinyl binders stuffed with everything from movie reviews to obituaries. One headline catches my eye: “Fellow Veterans Honor Victim of 1995 Heat Wave,” on a story about Rodney Holmquist, who had served in the navy and died alone. Twenty veterans rescued his body from a pauper’s grave and reburied him with military honors.

Although Maloof has thrown out numerous boxes full of newspapers, he’s holding on to the rest of Maier’s belongings to search for more clues to her story. In late 2009, he ran into an old high-school friend, Anthony Rydzon, who had majored in documentary filmmaking at Columbia College, and Rydzon suggested they make a film about Maier. They had the time: Rydzon had recently lost his job as a stagehand, and Maloof had switched from selling real estate to reselling products on eBay. Today their movie project is on hold, but there’s talk that a professional documentary team might be interested in telling Maier’s story. The two friends spend nearly every day in the attic scanning Maier’s photographs, prepping prints for various exhibitions, and sifting through boxes for new leads on people they might interview.

The immense volume of the photos makes for a daunting archiving effort. Maloof estimates that he’s scanned only one-tenth of the negatives in his collection—and he’s barely glanced at the remaining 90,000. When he finds a particularly strong photograph, he posts it on his blog.

With the excitement online and the exhibits around the world (the Cultural Center show opens January 7th), there is ample evidence of the popularity of Maier’s work, but how much of that stems from the unusual story of Maloof’s discovery and the curious nature of the woman behind it all? During our interview, Phil Donahue—who knew Maier only as a nanny, not an artist—asked, “Is there a preponderance of evidence out there that these [photographs] are really special?”

Colin Westerbeck, the former curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and one of the country’s leading experts on street photography, thinks Maier is an interesting case. He inspected her work after Maloof e-mailed him. “She worked the streets in a savvy way,” he says. “But when you consider the level of street photography happening in Chicago in the fifties and sixties, she doesn’t stand out.” Westerbeck explains that Maier’s work lacks the level of irony and wit of some of her Chicago contemporaries, such as Harry Callahan or Yasuhiro Ishimoto, and unlike them, she herself is often a participant in the shot. The greatest artists, Westerbeck says, know how to create a distance from their subjects.

Yet Westerbeck admits that he understands the allure of Maier’s work. “She was a kind of mysterious figure,” he says. “What’s compelling about her pictures is the way that they capture the local character of Chicago in the past decades.”

In any case, John Maloof has made it his mission to spread the word on his remarkable discovery. “I owe Vivian an honest effort to get her recognized as one of the great photographers of her time,” he says. “I’m only spending time on her story because the world is demanding it from me. The more I learn about Vivian, the more fascinated I am about this woman. She was a singular person, extremely intelligent, and her talent was extraordinary. I get great satisfaction in sharing it with the world.”

But Maier was an intensely private person. What would she think of Maloof’s mission? Wouldn’t she hate it? Maloof believes she wouldn’t mind because the world has moved on, and he lets her speak for herself. After a long search, he plays a recording from an interview she conducted with an elderly woman: “I suppose nothing is meant to last forever,” Maier says in her accented English. “We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel—you get on, you go to the end, and someone else has the same opportunity to go to the end, and so on, and somebody else takes their place. There’s nothing new under the sun.”

~ Nora O’Donnell · Dec 14, 2010.

[kjelltoft]

His porcelain eye

Grandfather Ebbe had received his porcelain eye after an accident on his motorcycle from the Birmingham Small Arms Company. It was said that the eye once popped out in the middle of a Christmas gift exchange and to the children's horror, fell straight into Santa's sack.

Among grandfather Ebbe's belongings was a tin box filled with cryptic gadgets and tools. On a canary-yellow box with an elegant label, one could read "Lithographic Crayon No. 1 W. Korn 120 Centre Street New York." I didn't understand the English, but the content was simpler because everyone knows what crayons are for: drawing cowboys with hats and revolvers. But the crayons were specially sticky, sliding around on the paper like a drunken ice skater and leaving streaks blacker than night. This is almost like drawing with licorice sticks, I thought, and gave up...

With the industrial revolution, the supply of consumer goods exploded. Everyday goods, consumables, and capital goods - everything was welcome and people wanted to see their products in worldly packaging and colorful advertisements. Alois Senefelder's invention - the lithographic printing method - fit like a glove in this brave new world. Now one could mass-produce both text and images for a pittance.

Ivar Krüger immediately understood the trend and with safety matches in exotic packages, he conquered half the universe and could build his Xanadu.

Ebbe, on the other hand, parked his motorcycle outside the Gothenburg School of Crafts. With a completed degree, he surfed along with a wave of Swedish lithographers who came to establish themselves during Sweden's interwar period.

Among grandfather Ebbe's works, the cigarette brand Blue Master is a favorite. The package shows a white horse in moonlight and a midnight blue sky. The cigarettes were manufactured by Norway's Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik. They are still sold today, but instead of visual poetry, they now package the smoke works with black-and-white warning texts.

From the bottom of the 90s financial crisis, mom fished out a small ad in the Göteborgs-Posten.

-Aren't you going to apply to Dômen Art School, Björn?

I applied and got in. In the department for graphic art.

-What is graphic art, mom?

Dômen had the answer but no lithography. It is only now at the Lithographic Museum that I get to grind limestone and drop nitric acid into gum arabic. And for those who haven't already figured it out: those sticky crayons were not meant for children's drawings on paper. The correct substrate is million-year-old limestone from quarries in southern Bavaria. The word lithography, by the way, is a combination of the Greek lithos - stone and graphein - write.

It takes a while for the nitric acid to etch into the stone and then there is a pause in the work. I took the opportunity to look around among the museum's objects and started leafing through a thick old volume. Who do I find there in a sea of black-and-white group photos but grandfather Ebbe in a gray suit. Apparently, at that time, all of Sweden's lithographers dressed like Humphrey Bogart. Imagine that grandfather Ebbe has been there all this time just to be rediscovered in a museum by his grandchild a hundred years later.

With contemporary times deeply immersed in a fondue of popular culture and consumption, it may not be so strange that brands become a recurring theme in one's artistry. But in the background, I also sense impulses from grandfather Ebbe. Being able to spin wheels and rollers in the mighty lithography presses feels a bit like letting circles meet over time and space. It is not just mass-produced products that lithography highlighted in a new way. It was also possible to create a whole new kind of art. Think about it, Ebbe, in a way you are a forerunner to Andy Warhol.

Stipendiary exhibition Lithographic Museum Huddinge, Sweden 2024

[xtruss]

Donald Trump Is Winning. Business, Beware! What A Second Term Would Mean For American Business And The Economy

— January 18th, 2023 | Leaders | Chaos—or Opportunity?

When Donald Trump Slunk out of the White House in 2021, executives at large American companies sighed with relief. Now that he has won Iowa’s caucuses by a margin of 30 points, they are digesting the reality that this time next year Mr Trump could be behind the Resolute desk once again. The Economist has spent the past few weeks talking to these titans. Some are deeply alarmed by the prospect of Trump 2. But others quietly welcome the chaos trade.

People who run large organisations have to be optimistic. They must find opportunities when others are panicking. ceos had an uneasy relationship with President Trump, many distancing themselves from his most outrageous pronouncements and tut-tutting about protectionism, even as they enjoyed his more conventional policies. Republicans in Congress may have talked about being the pro-worker party, but in practice they cut business taxes. It was hard for corporate America to be miserable amid a soaring stockmarket.

If Mr Trump is indeed elected again, those running big firms plan to keep their heads down (“don’t be Bud Light” is a frequent refrain, after the beer brand fell victim to the culture wars). They would avoid being dragged onto Mr Trump’s business councils, dodge presidential photo-ops and get on with making money. True, if Mr Trump did a deal with Russia that ended the war and sold out Ukraine, that would be bad for Western civilisation. But it would reduce energy bills.

What’s more, Trump enthusiasts in the c-suite have plenty of grumbles about Joe Biden. Mention Lina Khan, who oversees the Federal Trade Commission (the antitrust police), or Gary Gensler, who leads the Securities and Exchange Commission (the Wall Street police), and they inhale sharply. Mr Biden wants to raise taxes on companies. His administration also wants to go ahead with the Basel III “Endgame” regulations, which oblige big banks to hold perhaps 20% more capital on their balance-sheets, sedating animal spirits and damaging profitability.

Yet this bullish case for Mr Trump’s economic management is complacent. It fails to recognise how Trumponomics—a mix of deficit-funded tax cuts and tariffs—would work differently today. And it ignores the ways in which Mr Trump’s most chaotic tendencies could threaten America, including its companies.

In his first term the economy did better than many economists (including ours) expected. That was in part because Trumponomics turned out to be more moderate than the campaign had promised. The economy was also running further below capacity than thought, making it possible to cut taxes without stoking inflation. Strong overall growth and low inflation masked the damage done by Mr Trump’s protectionism.

There is no evidence that Mr Trump has updated his approach: he is still a tax-cuts-and-debt guy. But the economic conditions have changed. For the past two years the Federal Reserve has been trying to bring down inflation. Though it has nearly succeeded, the labour market remains tight. Today 2.8m more 25- to 54-year-olds are in work than would be if the employment rates of January 2017 had persisted. Then there were 1.3 unemployed workers for every job opening; today there are only 0.7. As a result the economy is more prone to overheating.

The budget is in worse shape, too. In 2016 the annual deficit was 3.2% of gdp and debt was 76% of gdp. The forecasts for 2024 are 5.8% and 100%, respectively. Should Mr Trump once again pursue tax cuts, the Fed will have to hike up interest rates to offset the stimulus, making it costlier for businesses to raise capital and for the government to service its growing debt pile.

These are the conditions under which Latin American populists bully their central banks to keep rates low, a practice Mr Trump dabbled in last time. The Fed is supposed to be independent, but Mr Trump will have a chance to nominate a stooge as chair in May 2026 and a pliant Senate could indulge him. The risk of more inflation would surge, perhaps exacerbated by more tariffs, which would also slow growth.

On top of that big macroeconomic risk are many others. Firms would not relish further trade restrictions, but some members of Mr Trump’s circle have floated a 60% tariff on imports from China. Lots of companies like the federal government’s support for renewable energy (which Mr Trump calls the Green New Scam). He has promised the biggest deportation scheme in American history to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the country. As well as causing misery, this would be a shock to that tight labour market.

As ever, saying what Mr Trump would actually do is very hard: he has few fixed beliefs, is a chaotic boss and can reverse position several times a day. In a town hall in Iowa he said he would be too busy in his second term to seek retribution against his political enemies. That was a few hours after his own campaign sent out an email with the subject line: “I am your retribution!” He could recognise Taiwan’s independence, prompting a meltdown in Beijing and a blockade of the island. Or he could walk away from Taiwan in exchange for China buying more stuff from America. Businesses often say that what they fear most is uncertainty. With Mr Trump that is guaranteed.

This unpredictability could make a second Trump term very much worse than the first. His administration would lack establishment types like Gary Cohn, once of Goldman Sachs, to shuffle the president’s in-tray and hide the madder ideas from him. More moments like January 6th are possible, as is a full-on revenge presidency. The idea that in this scenario business leaders could keep a low profile and focus on ebitda is fanciful. Employees, customers and the press would demand to know where bosses stood and what they proposed to do. The administration might in turn take exception to every whiff of criticism.

In the long run, the idea that corporate profits can be insulated from societal upheaval is a fantasy. If Mr Trump is broadly corrupting of American politics, and businesses are seen to profit from his rule, that poses a big risk to them in the future. In Latin America, when big businesses have become associated with autocrats the result was usually that capitalism was discredited and the appeal of socialism rose. That seems unthinkable in America. But so, until recently, did a second Trump term. ■

— This Article Appeared in the Leaders Section of the Print Edition Under the Headline "Business, Beware"

[elodiebridal]

Do I want to sell my wedding dress, and how do I do this?

There are several things to consider before deciding to sell your beautiful wedding dress.

How do you know if you should sell your dress or keep it? Brides wish to keep their dress for many reasons. Some say they want their daughter to wear it but have they considered that their daughter may not want a bar of their mother’s dress though? Of course, sometimes these daughters do go on to re model the dress or incorporate some of the fabric into their wedding day. Others feel that the dress is such an important part of their wedding day memories that they can't bear to part with it.

For some brides it takes 10 to 15 years before they realise they actually no longer feel so attached to the dress, and decide to sell it. Realistically though, they have missed the window to sell their dress more easily…. too often, the older the dress, the harder it is to sell.

If you do decide to keep your dress, read our blog on the subject for some tips on how to keep it in the best condition possible.

Before selling your dress, do some research. Pricing your dress will depend on many factors. You may have spent $$$$ on the dress but are unlikely to recoup as much as you think. Second hand wedding dresses are tricky to sell – so price it right. Also, the sooner you choose to sell the better; current dresses are more likely to sell than something that has been sitting in your wardrobe for 5 or 10 years.

If you are trying to sell a dress that you have bought online and you don’t like it or it doesn’t fit/suit you or whatever, then at least be honest and state where you bought it from, how much for, and show true photos of the actual dress, etc. Also give the dress a press or a steam to show it in the best light possible and photos of it being worn are really helpful too, rather than just on a hanger.

In New Zealand we have quite limited options to sell a second hand wedding dress online:

TradeMe - Going down this route means that brides cannot try on the dress, so are reliant on you providing great photos – especially ones showing it being worn - and good sizing indications – including any alterations you may have had done. Especially important is to mention your height as a dress can be shortened but hardly ever lengthened. You should also mention any damage, stains or marks on the dress and clearly state if it has been dry cleaned or not since your big day. I always recommend being clear on your price expectations – what is the point of a low starting price if you have a much higher reserve?

Facebook Marketplace - With regards to the dress description, the same applies as if you were listing it on Trademe. The main difference here, is that brides may contact you directly and ask to try it on, so you have to be prepared to have ‘strangers’ come into your home. Recently there has also been a lot of discussion around time wasters and scammers – so be wary.

Stillwhite - This is a global website so may attract overseas buyers if they are willing to pay postage. You pay a one-off fee and the dress is listed until sold. The site works well for designer gowns, and again you need great photos to make the most of your listing, including as many details as possible.

Remember with selling through these online platforms to try and put yourself in the prospective buyers’ shoes and pre answer all their questions.

If you are looking for an easier option to resell your dress, check with your local bridal stores to see if they offer a Sell on Behalf service.

Here at Elodie Bridal, we do just that. Dresses must be less than 4 or 5 years old, dry cleaned and in excellent condition. Selling this way takes the stress away of having to deal/negotiate with potential buyers, and it will be exposed to more buyers too. There are no up-front fees to pay and a commission is only taken once it sells.

How long will it take to sell? Who knows…. Depends on the style, the size, the colour etc – there are a lot of variables, but having it in a bridal store is way better than sitting in your wardrobe!

ORIGINALLY FOUND ON- Source: Elodie Bridal(https://www.elodiebridal.co.nz/post/best-tips-to-sell-your-wedding-dress)

[androgynousbirdtale]

Deadass? AI Algorithm Wrongfully Accused A Pregnant Black Woman of ...WHAT!??

A Black mother is suing Detroit after being mistaken for for a criminal while eight months pregnant.

By

Kalyn Womack

Thanks to a phony, AI facial recognition tool, a Black mother of three was falsely identified and arrested for as carjacking thief. Now, she’s suing the city of Detroit and their police department for letting a robot get her thrown in jail for no reason. She’s the first Black woman to fall victim to the algorithm.

Not to mention… when she was apprehended by police, she was pregnant and ready to pop.

Porscha Woodruff, 32, was eight months along in her pregnancy and trying to get her other two children ready for school the morning of Feb. 20. Her lawsuit states that six Detroit Police Department officers came knocking at her door with an arrest warrant for carjacking. Like any mother whose busy morning school routine was abruptly interrupted by the police, Woodruff responded, “Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” per the suit.

The police handcuffed her and booked her in the local jail. It wasn’t until 11 hours later that the cops realized their thief-catching-robot made a mistake.

Read more from CNN:

The carjacking and robbery victim contacted Detroit Police on January 29 to report the incident, the complaint shows. Oliver days later learned a woman returned the victim’s cell phone to a BP gas station, so she went there to review the video footage. The video was submitted for a facial recognition request on the woman who returned the phone, and it identified Woodruff, the suit states. Oliver went back to the gas station to see more video footage and “stated in detail in her report what she observed in the video footage, and there was no mention of the female suspect being pregnant,” the complaint states. The victim was later shown a “six-pack lineup” including the eight-year-old booking photo of Woodruff and “allegedly identified” Woodruff as being present during the carjacking, the suit states.

Detroit was sued back in 2020 for the first known wrongful arrest involving facial recognition when the cops cuffed up Robert Williams for theft, according to the ACLU. Over the past two years other police departments in the country also locked up a Black person after falsely identifying them thanks to that janky piece of tech junk. Randall Reid, a Georgia native, was falsely also arrested by Louisiana police officers after they used the tool to identify him as a fugitive. Michael Oliver was wrongfully arrested after being falsely identified as a larceny suspect, per CBS.

The use of artificial intelligence has been widely criticized for its embedded racial biases. Back in 2019, MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini found the AI systems sold by major companies like Amazon couldn’t even classify the faces of Ophrah Winfrey or Michelle Obama correctly. More recently, a 2022 study by John Hopkins University and the Georgia Institute of Technology found that AI tools and robots learned their knowledge from gender and racial stereotypes.

For example, a robot was tested to categorize people of different races and genders. The bot placed Black men in the “criminal” block at a 10 percent higher rate than the neutral “person” block... and this what the cops rely on?! The police might as well hire a Twitter sleuth. The internet did a better job at finding the people from a pixelated video of a brawl in Alabama.

As a result of her detainment, Woodruff said she suffered anxiety, dehydration, and stress-induced contractions. Her suit is seeking punitive damages but also raises a major concern about the racial biases in the facial recognition tool.

[daybreakrising]

My Lord Ayato,

I may have paid a few extra mora to ensure this letter arrived in slightly better wear than my last, so hopefully my coin has not been wasted. Do give my Lady my best, would you? Please tell her I miss her company dearly. Every time I spy something here that I know she would find interesting I think of her. Maybe a day may come when the two of you are free to travel to Mondstadt with me, so that I can show you both the sights!

Well, I'm relieved to tell you that after I summoned the nerve to visit the Knights of Favonius, I did reconnect with one of my old friends in what turned out to be a truly heartwarming reunion. She has changed, of course, in the way that we all change as we become adults and adopt responsibility, but she is also still very much the same bold, brave, and kind girl I left behind. She was more than happy to regale me with everything I've missed in my absence (once she released me from the bone-crushing hug I was mercilessly subjected to upon our meeting, that is!). And, as Acting Grand Master, she pulled in a favour for an old friend and loaned me one of the Knights uniforms to try on. Since you said you were curious, there should be a photo with this letter, so you can see it for yourself! I have to say… I'm not sure it suits me. Perhaps, then, it truly was my fate to leave Mondstadt behind. I think I look more like myself in my Inazuman attire. It was once my dream to join the Knights with my friends, but I believe what I do now is more important to me. I enjoy serving your family, serving you, and doing what I can for the people of Inazuma.

Ah, well since you asked, and since it's still fresh in my mind following my long overdue catch-up with Jean… would you believe that I was once a rather mischievous young boy, hm? I'm sure most young boys are, of course (perhaps even you were, once, though I find that curiously hard to imagine). The four of us were always up to something, testing the boundaries of the rules whilst we could. I remember less and less about those earlier years these days, but the memories of tearing through Mondstadt's streets laughing and causing chaos with my friends will never fade. As for my home… I made it to the front door, actually, just the other day. I didn't knock or ask the occupant to look inside, because… well, it's not really my home anymore. It's just a building. I expected to feel more when I got there, but everything that made it my home is long gone and I was left feeling a little empty, which I think is even more tragic than if it had filled me with sorrow. Though I did learn that the last of my family's things were, in fact, boxed up and removed after I never returned. Some of it was sold on or given to those in need, but the more personal items were kept and stored. I haven't managed to go through them yet. I don't think I'm quite ready for that just now. Maybe by my next letter I'll have been brave enough to sift through the past again.

I did, unfortunately, receive some bad news whilst catching up with Jean. I was surprised to learn that the fourth member of our little band also made it to the Knights but resigned after a family tragedy – and that was the biggest shock of them all. His father met a tragic end, not that long after I left for Inazuma I believe, and it caused a terrible rift between him and his brother. Crepus… he was something of a father figure for me, after my own father left. I can't quite believe he's gone. I feel guilty, too, for not being here when it happened. Maybe if I'd been around to bridge the gap between the brothers…

Ah, but there's no use dwelling on things that can't be changed, and I don't want to bother you with such sad topics when you must surely have far more important things to be focusing on.

Tsk, tsk. You should know better than to ask a housekeeper for his methods! Besides, if I give away all my tea-making secrets, what further use will I be to you? Maybe you will decide you like my replacement much better and there will be nowhere for me to return to! No, no, I shall keep my secrets safe, and you will have no choice but to keep me around. (I jest, of course, my Lord, but I still won't share my tips with anyone).

I had intended to return for the Lady's birthday, but it seems I must extend my visit. As it turns out, my other two friends have both been away on business in other regions and aren't expected back for a while longer. I would hate to miss them, especially when I can't be sure when I'll next have the time off to return. Please tell my Lady I am truly sorry that I have to miss her birthday and that I will make sure to source the most perfect gift to make up for my absence. And I am sorry to you, too, Ayato, for having to prolong this holiday. I know it must inconvenience you terribly.

You know… as I sit here, in this rented room, listening to the once familiar sounds of the windmill sails ever turning, I find my heart longing for the tranquillity of the Inazuman shores, and though the sight of Windwheel Asters invokes fond memories, I cannot help but miss the Sakura blossoms. Mondstadt will always be my birthplace, my heritage, but I think Inazuma has become my home, and that is entirely down to you, Ayato.

I miss it, all of it. I miss you. My heart is as eager to return as it was to see the windmills once more. I hope I'm not away too long.

Hopefully still your housekeeper,

Thoma

@daybreakrising sent:

My Lord Ayato,

I'm writing this not long after taking my first breaths of Mondstadt air after being gone for so, so long. I cannot tell you how it felt to see those familiar windmills on the horizon, to walk through those gates once more. I cannot tell you because I don't think I could translate it accurately into words (those have always been more your thing, after all). It's odd – I almost expected things to be completely different. I was barely more than a child when I left, after all, and the memory of a child can't always be reliable. Yet everything seems to be just as I remember – the same old buildings, same old people.

Some things have changed, of course. I'm sitting outside the restaurant that was a staple of my youth and already I have learned just from listening that one of my old friends is now the Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius, and another is the Cavalry Captain. Do you remember when I told you I once dreamed of joining the Knights? The four of us would train endlessly to ensure we'd pass the exam one day. Whilst circumstances altered my path, it seems my friends have achieved what I could not. I almost want to see it with my own eyes to believe it – and I hope I will, and soon.

I admit, I am a little… anxious about seeing them again. I'm sure they will have changed as much as I have. They may not even recognise me. I certainly don't recognise in myself the boy who left these shores in search of family (and who found it, albeit not the one he was looking for). I have thought about this moment so many times: what I will say to them, how they might react. Nothing can prepare me for it, though, can it? It's impossible to know what will happen. Hopefully, my next letter will be one of joy – I will have reconnected with those old friends and have many tales to tell you about them.

It's funny – I am getting some peculiar looks from the locals, no doubt because of my Inazuman attire. Seems I cannot escape being the stranger no matter where I go. And it's a curious thing, because I feel like a stranger here. Maybe I've been in Inazuma so long that it does feel like a visit to a foreign land, instead of coming home. Maybe it's because I don't really have a home here anymore. On my way through the city, I walked past the street I used to live on. I'm not ready to go to the house yet (and I'm sure some other family lives there now), but just being nearby was… difficult. I wonder if they kept any of the things I left behind.

The oddest thing is not having anything to do. I'm so used to my day being filled with tasks and jobs that having no set schedule is weird. About now, I should be preparing your midday meal, fixing your tea. Ah, but speaking of food, I'm already making a note of which ingredients I can bring back when I return, and the dishes I'm going to make for you with fresh (or as fresh as they can be) Mondstadt specialties. Hmm… I may need to hire an entire second boat to bring back all the trinkets and food for you and my Lady and the others of the Estate.

Since I can't be there to ensure you're not working yourself too hard, please try to take care of yourself in my absence. I will be checking with my Lady when I return, and you know she won't lie to me. Don't think you can neglect yourself just because I'm not there to force you to rest. Oh, and please make sure someone keeps on top of the housework while I'm gone! I'll be having words otherwise.

I think it's time I pay a visit to the Knights headquarters, and potentially face my first of many long-awaited reunions. Wish me luck!

Your ever loyal housekeeper,

Thoma

P.S. I hope this letter reaches you. I don't seem to have the best track record when it comes to sending messages across the sea!

To my dear Thoma,

receiving your letter this morning was the most pleasant surprise. Ayaka has eagerly been awaiting news from you and asked me nearly every day about it, so I am delighted that I no longer have to disappoint her hope. The envelope looked a little worse for wear, so I hope nothing was lost on the way - it seems the measures of correspondence between our nations still require some improvement, like many other things.

My congratulations to your friends for proving themselves and rising in the ranks of the Order; it seems quite the achievement at their age. You must be proud. I'm relieved to hear that your hometown is in reliable hands and prospering. Do you wish you could fight at their side? The Order would be lucky to have you fight under their banner; I can't speculate on your ability at the time but certainly you would have no hard time passing their entrance exam nowadays. I'm curious what the Favonius Order's uniform would look like on you. I have a feeling it would give you a solemn appearance.

There is no doubt in my mind that your old friends will recognize you with ease. You are hard to forget, my dear friend, in the best of ways. A spirit like yours is one in ten thousand. Do tell me more about how you used to be as a child sometime. I would love to hear the adventures of your youth; tell me about your house, too, if you will. Do you miss it? You should bring something from Mondstadt to decorate your room with here, something unique to there. Let it be a gift from me, whatever the cost.

Aside from your absence nothing much has changed here. I'm afraid I may have forgotten to look for a new housekeeper in time and caused a bit of disarray in the house. We have found someone to take care of things now - they have good work ethics and learn fast, but I miss my opponent in Shogi. It's funny that you should mention your schedule; as it turns out I struggle to keep track of my own without your regular assistance throughout the day. It seems I'll have to restructure the way I work until you are back.

How do you manage to server my tea at the perfect temperature? Perhaps you can send some tips for your substitute in your next letter.

As you know, my sister will celebrate her birthday next month. Do you plan on being back by then or will you stay until winter? I will take her to the travelling opera this year (with performers from Liyue, I hear) and I know she would be happy if you joined us. If not, we will tell you all about it over a cup of tea.

Your absence is felt like the leaves missing on bare branches in winter. I await spring with a hopeful heart.

Ayato

[mydollsaregay]

I feel like I need a tinfoil hat rn...

So I was looking at the american girl wiki page for “retirement”, hoping they had a link to the old archives that I could use in the wayback machine (sadly, no). In the wiki article, the “digital museum” is mentioned, so i decided to check it out, and see if there were any old promo images I could snag from there.

Sadly, it’s a kinda janky 3d experience, so I couldn’t grab any images, but I DID find some kind of surprising things.

To start us off, not very surprising, here’s Kit’s room in the museum:

It makes sense that they’d make it for her original look, as we know it’s coming back soon, and development of rereleases and digital content both take ages, so the developer of this weird little digital experience probably was told before they started. It also looks, to my eye, like a new stock photo, but I could be wrong. Funny, but not weird. Let’s look at some other historicals!

Huh. Okay, that’s a little more out there. Sam’s in her original outfit, with her beforever bed. Off-screen, her old side table and trunk are also in the room, 3D-modeled with about the same level of detail as the bed (so... not much). A little odd, but probably meaningless. It IS weird, though, that they would show Sam in her old outfit, since she’s currently being sold in her new one, though she’s cubed atm. I’m 99% sure that’s an old stock photo though, so nothing groundbreaking, just weird.

Well now that’s a bit out there as well. Same issue as Sam - why would they show off the doll in the old outfit? I just don’t get it. But it still looks like an old stock photo, so it’s fine.

Kirsten! nice to see you buddy. Even though she’s not being sold atm, it still makes sense they’d put her here, as she’s one of the original three. I’m also convinced they’re planning to bring her back eventually anyways, so this is nothing groundbreaking to me.

Huh. It seems like all the cubed girls are in their old outfits. I still think it’s weird, but now that a pattern has been established, it seems almost less weird? Though I do think the implicit message that the old outfits are better is hilarious.

Girl what. This is where I started scratching my head. I suppose a similar argument could be made for Felicity’s inclusion that I made for Kirsten: she’s more core to the brand than some of the other retired historicals. But there’s some odd details. First, that logo is a new variant of her BeForever logo that we haven’t seen yet. But that could be explained by the developer changing the colors to suit her old look better - it’s not that wild.

However, second: is that a new stock photo? This is where I started feeling like I needed the tinfoil hat lol. My only good explanation for this one is that it’s not a new photo, I just haven’t personally seen it before. Which is very possible! So if you have, let me know, I guess??

All the other (currently available) historical characters were in their current outfits, and there were no other retired historicals present.

In my opinion, I don’t think this is solid evidence for anything in particular, but it is possible that they are going to eventually bring Felicity back, or at least it was being discussed when development started on this project (even if it’s not actually going to happen). Whether or not this is evidence, it’s still fun!

[indestructibleheart]

for @dinnfameron​, here’s the first scene of the fic that may or may not be called Statues in the Stone:

✨✨✨✨

The first envelope arrives on a Wednesday.

David dips his hand into the mailbox, hoping to find the small parcel carrying the face cream he’d ordered, but, instead, he produces a manilla envelope addressed to himself. There’s no return address — just a stamp — and something about it settles uncomfortably in his stomach. It reminds David of that time he’d received an S.O.S. in the mail from Alexis, back when she’d been held by the Yakuza in Tokyo. That’s not their life anymore, and he knows that, but he still feels a rush of relief when he steps back into the house and finds Alexis scrolling through her phone on the couch.

It’s started feeling more normal recently. That is, having a house — not a mansion, not a motel suite, but a reasonably sized, two-story home in Toronto. It’s not strange anymore to find his sister on their leather sectional, watching videos on TikTok. To check the mail in the evenings. To roll his eyes at his parents over coffee. To take a stab at Buzzfeed recipes in the kitchen (and order pizza when it doesn’t work out).

Because it’s been six months since they sold Schitt’s Creek and moved to the city.

That’s six months since David was handed the one thing he’d been denied his whole life on a silver platter — his family, consistently in one space — and the opportunity to get back on his own two feet. He’s started painting again. Sketching. Journaling. David, for all intents and purposes, has the life he’s always secretly craved… and, yet, none of it has filled the hollowness in the center of his chest. He still feels like he’s constantly clawing at it, like a scab, and searching for the one thing that’ll fill the echoing, empty space.

His moisturizer arriving on time won’t give that to him, but, like… It’d help.

“Anything for me?” Alexis asks, only briefly looking away from the screen.

David shakes his head, wandering to the kitchen counter and ripping open the envelope with morbid curiosity.

What falls out is… not what he expects.

They’re photos — photos of David, specifically: huddled closely with Stevie in the lobby of the old motel and, alone, standing in front of some random store. There’s one of him and Alexis at Christmas, and another of their entire family and Stevie in front of the motel. But none of those are as compelling as the photo of David and a man he doesn’t recognize, wearing tuxedos in front of an ivy backdrop. That one knocks the wind right out of his chest.

It’s not the unfamiliar man, nor the suits, nor the ivy curtains that startle him, but their smiles. They’re absolutely blinding. And David knows, with depressing certainty, that he’s never smiled like that in his life.

Not once.

“What the fuck?” he asks the empty kitchen.

Alexis rounds the corner, twisting her hair into a bun on the top of her head as she walks. “What’s that?” she asks, but she doesn’t wait before taking the photos from his hands. Her face goes on a journey from mildly amused (“I didn’t know you were this close with the motel girl!”) to genuinely confused (“I don’t remember taking these?”) and all the way to super weirded out: “David, who is this cute little button-face and why does it look like you two, like, just got married or something?”

“I have no fucking idea,” he says, watching as she flips the photo over in her hands.

His sister raises a brow. “This says ‘September 2019,’” she points out, waving the last photo around like a polaroid. “That’s, uh, two years from now.”

David swipes the picture back from her hands. “I don’t understand.”

“Looks like you got a present from the fu-ture, David,” she chirps, too enthusiastic to be anything but mocking.

“That’s not a thing.”

“Mmm, it kinda looks like a thing.”

David flails his hands. “Well, it’s not.” He huffs. “It’s obviously a prank or something. Maybe Stevie is, like, actually a sociopathic stalker and she’s still mad at me for leaving or whatever. These could be photoshopped.”

“Yeah,” Alexis says dubiously. “That sounds realistic.”

He sweeps the photos back into the envelope and tries to forget about it. At least, he tells himself he’s going to forget about it.

Nobody needs to know that David tip-toes down the stairs after everyone has gone to bed and takes the wedding photo back out. His thumb traces against the line of his own smile and his chest hurts.

What must it be like to be that happy?

David, of course, recognizes himself in the photo — it’s, like, clearly his face — but there’s something unfamiliar in his eyes. In his smile. In the way he’s clinging to this mystery man like he’s perfectly comfortable leaning on him. The hollow pit in his chest spreads a little wider, like a crack in a glass windshield. This picture, so much more than the others, feels impossible, but… he has never wanted something more in his entire life. He aches for this version of David Rose. Happy. Loved. Whole.

He stuffs it back in the envelope when he realizes he’s crying, then rubs his eyes with the back of his hand.