#also with the first idea or whatever everyone in the fashion scene fuckin knows that model is special to will

[hazmatazz]

fashion designer will and his model, mike, who typically has the worst style outside of what will puts him in

#originally mike was more a mannequin for will #then it progressed to photos/demonstrations of him with his face covered/blurred out/cut off in the designs #but maybe he shows his face eventually. i also like the idea that he continues being anonymous and he's just like a fashion mystery #there's also the idea they both work in some kind of agency and don't know eachother and will sends his work off to be modeled #but mike is an anonymous model and will is fascinated by the boy who keeps modeling for him #maybe he requests that specifically mike model for him. maybe they meet at a show and get along but mike doesn't reveal who he is #maybe they know eachother outside of it too... #btw i don't think anonymous models exist but like. think of how fun that would be #also with the first idea or whatever everyone in the fashion scene fuckin knows that model is special to will #ohh i'm thinking #i have more thoughts but i'll keep those to myself #one more tho: if they know eachother outside of fashion but don't know eachother in fashion then will doesn't suspect mike #because he knows that boy well and he knows that boy doesn't have any fashion sense. well not one that would line up with his model #stranger things #byler #byler au #babble

[una-hopeless-romantic1118]

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐕: 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬?—𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐑𝐨𝐣𝐚𝐬/𝐑𝐡𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐬

a/n: sorry for disappearing :,( I’ve had a pretty shitty life lately and writing has been helping me cope. things are less tense now and i’m able to update so i’m hoping u guys enjoy this MOMMY IS FEEDING YALL

timeline: ep. 3 (right smack in the Christmas scene) - ep. 4. 

PS I WILL BE MAKING ANOTHER CHAPTER. WHY? BC I WANNA SNEAK IN SOME HARDCORE ANGST BC WHAT IS A LOVE STORY WITHOUT ANGST

also bc i feel like the relationship is sped up and rushed and we hate that

Part 1

Part 2  

Part 3

Part 4

This chapter: Part 5

Part 6

Epilogue

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

warnings: as always, not proofread, hornae warren and y/n, some cavity-causing fluff, billy being a dicky dick, 

summary:

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

•─────⋅(cut to documentary)⋅─────•

Eddie: Y/N Augustine was not who I expected to show up that Christmas Eve, with two trays of the best smelling lasagna I’ve ever smelled in my life, and an apologetic smile.

Why did she look apologetic? I don’t know, maybe it had something to do with the fact that as soon as she walked in, Warren was behind her? They were, like, 3 hours late.

Karen: Y/N is always on time. Whatever it is, doesn’t matter. For someone as fashionable as her, she manages to always arrive on time in the most gorgeous outfits I’ve ever seen. 

She was still gorgeous that night, of course, but she was late, and she had a sort of...sleazy smile. Of course everyone assumed the same thing.

But 3 hours late? *she rolled her eyes* I mean, fuckin’. hell. 

Camilla: When I first talked to the Y/N Augustine, I remember almost dropping you *she laughs* I was a major fan of her work, and still am. I really wasn’t expecting her on the phone when she called a few months before.

I asked who she was, being so forward on the phone about asking for my vest size when I didn’t order anything. I explained who I was, and introduced myself as Billy Dunne’s wife, and that I didn’t order a vest from this woman.

She was silent on the phone for a while, and came back introducing herself saying her name casually as if she wasn’t an important person. She said that she had no idea who Billy was, and that she was only familiar with a Warren Rojas, who she owed an order.

I found myself wondering how Warren managed to get a fashion designer to owe him a piece of her work...*she shrugs*

After freaking out to myself while I got his vest size, I didn’t bother passing the phone to him. And why would I? I wasn’t going to pass the chance to talk to one of my idols. And she didn’t seem to mind either.

I believe we went from talking about California, to the beaches, the majestic golden hour that shined through our windowsills at the same time, to you, even. She heard you crying through the phone.

And when I finally met her in person that night on Christmas, she was as lovely and funny. She gave every one of us presents, including you, and bothered to make us homemade food. I was so happy for Warren, but there were so many gaps as to how they even met.

•─────⋅(cut back)⋅─────• 

“How did it go. Really,” Camilla insisted with a pleading tone. “How did you two meet?”

“Oh boy,” Karen mused, drinking her beer.

Y/N gave her friend beside her a pointed glare. “We met at a yacht party.”

Eddie leaned forward. “S-So is your name really Flora? Were you born ‘Flora?…” 

“Flora...?” Camilla commented, lost, looking back and forth between Eddie and Y/N.

•─────⋅(cut to documentary)⋅─────•

Graham: She was so sweet about it, when me and Eddie went back and forth trying to connect the dots, which made it even more embarrassing. 

I guess it didn’t really make sense to me at the time. Why and how someone proper and prim like her managed to wind up with Warren, the wild one of the group. 

If I really considered the times he came late for practice, or left early, or that whenever he left to “work” at the boats, I think I could’ve gotten to the conclusion that he was smitten for this woman a lot earlier. 

•─────⋅(cut back)⋅─────•

“That’s pretty smart right there,” Eddie chuckled at Y/N’s recall of fooling Warren. “I am very impressed.”

Y/N shrugs humbly, obviously as a joke. Warren knew she would forever tell this tale for however long she lived. Meanwhile, he’s just glad to be part of it and getting her at the end of it.

It seems that in their almost month-long relationship, the two have managed a healthy and surprisingly well schedule to meet up. With Y/N’s new projects and the band’s practices, they meet three times a week. Sometimes four, or more, depending on Warren’s libido that Y/N’s compared to a rabbit’s.

Though, it’s not like she can’t complain.

Apart from that though, Warren never misses the chance to get her something. Mostly jewelry boxes, jewelry, and take-out food, and when she needed to run an errand, he’d come to her apartment with her much needed rolls of cloths that he paid for, despite sending him off with her money.

•─────⋅(cut to documentary)⋅─────•

Y/N: When Warren and I first started dating, he was always the one coming to my place, never me visiting him over at Laurel Canyon. It was a little suspicious at first, so when I told him what I thought, y’know what he said?

He said, with the biggest grin on, “I wanna make a show out of it” and went to sleep after saying that. I never knew what he meant until that Christmas.

•─────⋅(cut back)⋅─────•

That night, he did indeed showcase his lover to his friends. Every question asked by Camilla or Billy or Eddie about her career he knew the answers to. 

Where were you raised? Here in California up until she was 10, lived in France until she was 22 and moved back here to start Serenity. Sexiest French accent ever, even better when she’s muttering phrases under her breath stressfully.

Siblings? Two brothers, one older who hosts a foster home with his wife, one younger who just started a professional boxing career following their father’s footsteps. Three stepsisters who are all younger than her from her step-mom’s side, all of who are just now convinced their sister is famous for dating a rockstar drummer.

Favorite part about putting together designs? She finds satisfaction in piecing them together, and how she gets lost in sketching to the point that she doesn’t realize how long she’s been working.

Favorite song ever?  She’ll say something everyone else says: Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. It is a good song, but it’s not a favorite song ever, because in reality it’s something old, specifically, Stand By Me by Ben E. King. She doesn’t like admitting this to other people for fear of being called a sappy romantic.

She is, in fact, a sappy romantic, and Warren doesn’t miss the chance to taunt her about it. The bedside table full of romance books that he's tried to read, but for the love of everything good he cannot sit still and read.

What he doesn't mind doing, however, is sit still to watch another invest in her books with focused, determined brows, and the occasional squealing after reaching a certain point in the book.

He's got her memorized so well, even Y/N's surprised that the things and habits she's kept to herself, he notices like she leaves it out in the open under the sun.

At the thought, she rests her head on his shoulder with a proud grin. And Warren responds with a peck at the top of her head.

While listening to an ecstatic Eddie share a story, something against Y/N’s lower back began to grow.

She holds in every fiber in her body to refrain them from giggling.

“Shame on you.” She sarcastically spat in his ear.

He frowns down at her. “Huh?”

Y/N widens her eyes and makes a pointed glare down to his erection.

There was a short reaction of shock. “Shame me? Shame on you.” Warren took note of this. It’s happened way too many times now, and he’s lost awareness of what turns him on. “Thanks to you, I don’t have control over my body functions anymore.”

“I didn’t do anything!” She whisper shouted.

“You’re just way too hot and good,” he groaned. “I can't wait to get home."

Y/N sighed into his shoulder helplessly. Home. Their condo, together.

“I love the way you smell,” he whispered, as he always does whenever near her. But no matter how many times he’s sniffed her or said that, he still doesn’t know exactly what she smells like. He figured it was sweet, of course, but it didn’t shoot up his nose too strongly. It wasn’t fruity either, or so he figured she's just her own scent. Natural.

"Thanks." She smiled up at him. "It’s the French brand. It lasts longer on me.”

"No, I think it's just you."

She looks up at him through furrowed eyebrows. "Nobody can just smell nice naturally."

He shrugs. "Well, I dunno what smell it is." He twirls her hair. “It can’t be on a title of a perfume brand.”

She shook his chin playfully. “Pay attention to the conversation, playboy.” 

He can’t. How could he?

It’s only been a month, but a month of what Warren already knew was pure and genuine. Y/N could do no wrong to him, and vice versa. They were good for each other.

The soft, buttery gliding up and down on his arm is what Warren can determine with his eyes closed; the softness of Y/N's fingers. The arm wresting on her chest as she leans on his front—it was only natural for Y/N to caress.

And as a response, another peck to her head.

•─────⋅(cut to the documentary)⋅─────•

Daisy: I’ve never been a fashion fanatic, but Y/N’s work spoke to me. She was a true artist, y’know? She knew what she was doing, and she is really fucking good at it. She didn’t just throw it a bunch of cloth and called it a day, the woman directed her creativity to the art every single time. And I recognized that.

Imagine my surprise when I see her at a house party I was also invited to.

•─────⋅(cut back)⋅─────•

Daisy arrives at the Dunnes’ place, already making a fool of herself by absentmindedly dropping the bottle of wine that she technically stole, but still.

Not to mention, she had an audience, their faces were clouded by the smoke she just blew out, and not to mention, it was dark.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” In her voice, Daisy can tell she spoke with a smile. “They have too much fun, they’ll need the fruit. Nutritional values.”

She emerged from the shadows with, indeed, a smile that warms the heart. But a recognizable face that she’s seen on televised interviews and small pictures of beside the designs she eyes enviously on the magazines.

“Holy shit...holy shit!” Her hands went up to the sides of her head. “Holy fucking shit! Hi! Oh my goodness...”

“Daisy Jones you’ve been in radios in everywhere I’ve been today,” she chuckled humbly. “I can ensure you I’m a bigger fan.”

“I’ve seen you in magazines for a lot longer. “ She shook her head in disbelief. “I love you so much.”

But before Y/N escorts her to the rest of the band, she pulls her into a hug.

•─────⋅(cut to the documentary)⋅─────•

Daisy: I’m not much of a hugger. I think, especially considering my relationship with my mother, I couldn’t handle physical touch. Most times I would just be forced into hugging people and I stand there, just like a stiff tree. But something about Y/N, even though I’d never met her before, made me feel so glad that I’m a person she would hug.

I felt really appreciated by this stranger.

While we spent most of the night talking us a group, eventually everyone else started to branch out and talk to others. Warren was clung to her like a lost puppy. God, *shaking her head* never thought a guy like Warren can be sappy. 

They just started dating and I could already see the connection between them. They mutually understood each other on such a level that everyone else around them can just do theirselves a favor and leave them alone.

•─────⋅(cut back)⋅─────•

“My family might visit for the summer,” Y/N smiles against her hand. “I can’t wait. Lils and Hana and Ines are gonna try and talk to you. They’re English is so broken, it’s adorable.”

Warren smiles at her, even as he’s drunkly chugging at his drink. “You ever think about kids? I dunno, someday?” He panicked.

“Yeah. I think about kids.” Y/N vaguely answered to tease him.

He nods slowly. “Ye-Yeah. Me too.”

Y/N smiles innocently, scratching his headful of curls. “Want my kids?”

Warren gave her the deepest kiss as an answer.

taglist (aka beautiful people): @pinkdaiisies @mlwriting5 @teletubbysteroids @linatells @stanzie @arsonkween @rexorangecouny @lisbeth122605 @cultsanrio @thatoneawesomechicka @magicalmiserybore @sourholland @sunfairyy. @lilyhw1 @viridianflowers  @goldenjasssy @eonnyx @coldlamaspersonspy @navs-bhat @nicostars @darkestcinema​ @gr4cel4nd2​

#daisy jones #daisy jones and the six #djats #warren rhodes #warren rhodes x reader #warren rhodes x you #warren rojas #warren rojas x reader #warren rojas x y/n #warren rojas x you #warren rojas fic #warren rhodes fic

[fastestboyalive]

(( WOKE IN A COLD SWEAT AFTER DREAMING ABOUT A THEORETICAL TEEN TITANS CARTOON REBOOT, IT WAS WILD, IT WAS VERY ROUND,,,,, I JUMPED TO DRAW EVERYONE BEFORE I FORGOT, DETAILS UNDER A CUT OH MAN

okayokayokay, not everything makes a ton of sense, it was a really long, disjointed dream of misadventures. it was also a much “happier” teen titans, all of them were doofy teens?? just. doofy.

Terra is the team leader of this “v2″ Teen Titans- Robin was the leader of the last one, then went through an identity crisis, then Terra took charge on a mission and he was like “listen how would you like to be leader for a while? i can help you out, but i just can’t do this rn”

she’s GREAT at it.

......... it’s twice as heartbreaking when she “betrays” the team. :’( she couldn’t handle the gig, and had shit goin on y’know

Beast Boy is the NEWEST member, shows up on a mission and offers to help the team.

in the dream he just kept giving weirdass nicknames and refused to call people by their actual names; robin was “Main Character Guy” bc his hair was “main character colored, like in anime”

he is so skittish

he is also weirdly cat-boy-shaped??? tail n’ all. HIS HANDS ARE NORMAL, BUT HE WEARS PAW GLOVES?????? sure, whatever why not

Raven is very chill. very quiet, doesn’t talk much. she has headphones on usually.

her skin is purple-y. cartoon demon-y.

because she can’t allow herself to “feel” emotions, she expresses herself thru art. fashion. music. poetry. she has a lot to say when she DOES speak. she is always listening to heavy metal, it keeps her calm.

wears nazars/evil eye charms and has them ALL OVER her room.

Starfire has a different accent like every day. that’s it that’s the hc. 

she uses she/her pronouns, but she is NOT a girl!!!!  her gender is “glorzmek”.  demigirl or nb is probably closest.

she’s seven feet tall, what a goddess

hair has.... “eel dynamics”. and it color shifts like an oil spill, it just looks like it’s always moving.

curious about EVERYTHING!!!!!!!! also free love hippie vibes.

Robin is doin’ great and is having a good time!!!!!! good for him!!!

used to be team leader w the Fab Five, but the Teen Titans is sort of a revolving door of members lol. following an identity crisis though, he decided to take a step back, for his mental health and everyone’s sake.

he is REALLY REALLY BESTIE with cyborg and kid flash!!!!!!!!!

HIS HAIR.... IS DIP DYED................. ROBIN’S EGG BLUE. I CAN NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP, THAT’S JUST HOW IT HAPPENED,,, happened during his ‘identity crisis” and bitch, same.

Cyborg is also much happy-go-lucky-er!!!! 

only half of him is really robo-cyborg-ish??? and also his right thumb is a prosthetic??? he thinks it’s very funny to detach it and just place it in friends’ hands; “I’m giving you a thumbs up :’) .”

i, uh... i can’t explain the mechanics of his design, not even a little. his limbs/joints are encased in clear puffy plastic, like... baymax-style. the “blue” parts are compartments of “coolant liquid” around his brain, heart, and... shoulder?????? oh yeah his brain, it is. visible. think Boskov from “Evil Con Carne”?

idk he’s a delight and makes the worst jokes

Kid Flash is basically the team medic haha. he loves extreme sports, but is VERY safety conscious.

always has his trusty backpack on- cushions from falls, has a first-aid kit, extra snacks, etc.

elbow/knee pads and wrist guards. his sneakers are just... normal. idk, seems like bad design but he just wears converse??

VERY friendly, VERY enthusiastic. also very calm??? team therapist.

The “bad guys” in the dream were Cheshire, and this other chick??? i had no idea who she was in the dream, and she was nameless, but as i was drawing her i was like “guhh this is Tigress now i guess, only makes sense??” i know, they’re swords not archer shit. i didn’t make the rules. maybe she reforms later on down the line and trades the swords for her old childhood archery equipment, decides she prefers the detachment of long-range combat from short-range,,,,

that was super rambly about a theoretical non-existent reboot/character. anyways, they’re both the “huntsmen” for some big secret evil organization. idk what it is. probably the Brotherhood of Evil.

both of them are silent. they communicate through body and sign language. totally wordless.

EXTRA/MISC HC’S???

Terra and BB are besties, but it’s her helping him come into himself.

Raven, in dream, did very monotonously say, “Gay rights”, so jot that down

Robin/Cyborg/Kid Flash are BEEEESSSTTTIIIIES, absolute troublemakers, “boys-will-be-boys” shenanigans. idiot jocks.

Star is tight with EVERYONE. she and cyborg have a secret handshake.

Robin and Raven will sit on the sidelines and just gossip.

BB’s eyes do that weird fuckin cat nocturnal thing and just go RED in the dark. terrifies everyone. 

Kid Flash is literally just vibing!!!! you know Hermes in “Lore Olympus”? that’s kid flash in this reboot i guess.

Robin will pop up out of fucking nowhere. he’s real smug about it. no one hears him, and he just. Poof. startles you.

when Terra is frustrated her skin... dusts? just puffs dust around.

Kid Flash and Terra have Sunday Morning Brunches together. helps her unwind/vent, mostly an excuse to get SO MUCH BREAKFAST FOOD.

i cannot stress enough how goofy the teens are, this dream had a younger target audience, they absolutely did not take being stalked by evil agent hunters seriously one bit. and it was an intensely choreographed fight-chase-dodge-tease scene, the fuck, why can’t i write that shit in real life. god i would pay money to watch this show. ))

#teen titans #ttgo #{ ⚡ || ;outofenergy } #{ ⚡ || ;my art } #(( oh what the fuck dash won't format both styles of bullet points come on ))

[girloikawa]

okay @daystens you want me to talk about the haunting of hill house. i fuckin will!!!

obviously the first thing has to be cinematography. holy fucking shit middle shots where everything aligns or even better and it’s a center shot and one thing is off!!! omg horny. THAT SHIT. this show just had generally some really cinematography in my non-specialist opinion, and it was overall lovely to see

the. style. you don’t know how many times i stared at olivia crain and her hair and her clothes and her eyes and her mouth. thise last two have nothing to do with style i just think she’s perrrty <3 but yeah! liv’s outfit in the last scene of episode 9 was truly euphoric. oh and i wanted to wear everything steven wore. and theo. and nell. um they fashion choices were superb that’s all

that house. i’m not going to make a separate bullet for the sets but yeah the sets are amazing. but also!! the whole “the house is eating them” and that the red room was the stomach of the house and it changed was so *mind blown* woah!! when they first revealed that theo was practicing in the room when nell and shirley were trying to get into the red room...i was like. omg. u know. so i loved the idea that the house was hungry and alive and eating them, and the eventual struggle that olivia got sucked into because she thought that letting the kids out into the world would be dangerous when it was just a trick to get the house to eat the family

nell and luke. they deserve their own bullet because i love them and their relationship. “she was my big sister” or whatever the line is IS MY HAPPINESS. them. them

lesbians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Theo!!!!!!!!!! that was nice and the “touch me” scene is something i can’t stop thinking about. because. theo WANTING to be touched

all of the family. one of my favorite tropes is anything family orientated, whether it be found family or just a family family, and this hit the sweet spot. they didn’t like each other a lot, and they argued, but they loved each other. beautiful. the end scene with luke in the hospital and then also the scene when nell talks to them and she kept talking about confetti. so cute

the whole funeral episode. that might’ve been my favorite. the drama......the pain......the DRAMA

all the spookly ghosts in the background. OH MY GOD AND WHEN YOU KNOW THE SUICIDE SCENE AND IT TURNED OUT THAT NELL WAS ACTUALLY [redacted] AND HER [redacted] WAS [redacted]. CHILLS. AND WHEN THEY WENT BACK THROUGH ALL THE SCENES WHERE NELL WAS WITH THE BENT NECK LADY AND CHANGED THE IMAGE TO FIT THE NEW INFO OMFBSKALA

i am white and so correct me if i’m wrong but i thought it was very cool n nice that all the romantic interests were people of color? and they were all hot as shit what the fuck is up with that. why is everyone so hot in this show

that deserves its own bullet point. everyone was hot as shit and nice to look at

shirley’s forever home and her attachment to it made my heart go boom boom boom. also steven and shirley (and kinda theo) not believing nell and luke was. ehhhhhh put a sock in it. there’s only so long someone can say “there’s fucking ghosts” and you still don’t believe. especially if you’re seeing the ghosts too, like cmon steven

OMG WHEN STEVEN SAW NELL IN HIS HOUSE AFTER THE SUICIDE HOLY SHITTT

i was creeped out so the show did it’s job

THE DAD. the repetition of “i can fix it” AND THEN IN THE END HE DID END UP FIXING IT?? LIKE NFKSKAKA. i really did like him as a dad. i thought he was really nice. once they were grown up it was like eeesshh bc they all hated him but. u know. i was rooting for him

oh and how they treated luke and his addiction. although i didn’t like steven’s (and in some degree all of them’s) reaction to it, i don’t think it was completely invalid? i do only really just want the best for luke and to love him forever. and i think steven agrees with that

i guessed that abigail was the two people’s kid so that was great!! the rest i did Not at all guess. sad face but also good!! it wasn’t like you couldn’t not guess what would happen, though, and so i like that. the dots could be connected and the story was put together nicely, i just was not smart enough to do so. sad face

THATS IT. TANIA. YES

#tania tell me what u think comma sexy #tell me your thoughts and feels #sorry i didn’t message you more i didn’t know if you wanted me to snxjaoao #the haunting of hill house #thohh #i started watching bly manor and NDKSKAK IM IN LOVEEEEEEE WITH DANI #eleanor crain #luke crain #theodora crain #olivia crain #TANIA WHEN WE WERE TALKING ABOUT OLIVIA CRAIN I THOUGHT SHE WAS THE ACTRESS NOT THE CHARACTER CNKAKXNDK IM STUPID #steven crain #shirley crain #tw: suicide

[aforrestofstuff]

What type of kid do you think the OPM characters were at school? I know not all of them went to school, but what if....

Thanks for the request anon! I’ve basically just written a handy-dandy little high school au for y’all lmfao.

OPM Characters in High School

Tornado of Terror: Absolutely 0 respect for authority. She’s tiny, but she can fucking fight and everyone knows it. For that reason, she’s feared and avoided at all costs. She often feels lonely because of this and finds it hard to make new friends, but she’d rather go through high school suffering alone before she dare let anyone get close.

Silverfang: Tries to recruit his peers into this little club he’s made where he tries to teach martial arts but the only kid that joins is this little shit named Charanko that doesn’t really care at all about what’s being taught. He’s really reliable in group projects and is overall a good student, albeit a little wise beyond his years.

Atomic Samurai: The kid that drinks alcohol under the bleachers during transition periods. He fails almost every class except one. However, in that one class, he is an absolute genius. His talents are few and niche but he really soars when given the chance to embrace his full potential. He’s really dogmatic and almost rude at times, but he’s managed to get himself a small group of friends that are keen on following him ‘till the end.

Child Emperor: Prodigy student. Straight A’s, extracurriculars, extra credit, you name it. He aces it all. Everyone wants to get a peek at his homework and he obliges kindly almost all of the time out of pure politeness. He’s also in marching band because he gets a thrill out of dooting a trumpet (is that an instrument in band? I can’t fucking remember). Overall, he’s very well-liked, although not respected. People kind of walk all over him because they know he’s all-too-eager to lend a helping hand.

Metal Knight: Polar opposite to Child Emperor. He’s a prodigy student as well, but he will NEVER lend a helping hand to anyone. If you’re paired with him in a group project, he’ll just brush you off and do the whole thing himself because he doesn’t trust anyone else with his grade. Teachers get pissed off at him because he’s always correcting them during class. He pushes people around and treats his peers as if they were lesser than him based solely on their intelligence, and thus doesn’t have many (if any) friends.

King: Doesn’t study at all but still gets A’s somehow. He’s got the teachers fooled thinking he’s some sort of prodigy kid, when really he just finds ways to copy off of other people’s work. He’s got a PSP under the table at all times during lectures and sits alone during lunch. People think he’s mysterious and cool but he’s really just an anxious kid trying to get by.

Zombieman: The cool, mysterious kid that skips class and smokes outside. The teachers don’t mind him because he doesn’t cause any trouble. He’s only got a handful of friends, one of those being Child Emperor (whom he’s really close to) and people think he’s just trying to cheese himself out of a failing grade by copying off of CE when he’s really fine all on his own. He’s surprisingly smart and quick-witted, just not in the way that report cards show. Still though, he passes with solid Bs and Cs.

Drive Knight: Set the school on fire once. Blackmailed a principal on the basis that they were having an affair and threatened to release this information unless they extended lunch period. Studies hard and gets good grades only to compete with Metal Knight. Their rivalry is well-known in school and everyone thinks it’s just a joke but Drive Knight is dead serious.

Pig God: The lunch ladies have second servings ready the minute he walks into the cafeteria because they know he eats like a horse. He doesn’t say shit in class and is overall just really quiet and shy. People bully him because he’s the fat kid with no social skills, but he’s really nice to the few friends that he has. Teachers either pity him or join the bullies in picking on him. It’s kind of sad.

Superalloy Darkshine: Football jock. He’s a little dumb but he’s actually the sweetest person ever. People often try to take advantage of him because he’s always ready to help, but he’s got a lot of friends that warn him when that happens. He’s overall just the most supportive, warm-hearted, social butterfly in school and he brightens up every room he walks in to. Nobody dislikes him. The coaches all put their faith in him during the season and he always delivers with winning scores (I don’t know shit about football lol).

Watchdog Man: Does absolutely buttfuck nothing in school. He only does the bare minimum. Like, he’s so close to flunking out that he’s among the bottom 1% in the student body. Still, somehow, he always pulls through just before finals and comes out with a barely passing grade. Every. Single. Year. He has no friends, doesn’t talk to anyone, and never raises his hand in class. People wonder if he’s actually a student or a ghost that wandered in.

Flashy Flash: Track star. Fastest kid this side of the fuckin continent. He put the school on the map by winning so many championships. He’s ridiculously handsome and has a lot of secret admirers too, but he ignores all of that to focus on sports. Even the teachers kiss his ass because he’s kind of a legend. Although everyone wants to be his friend, however, he’s actually quite the loner. He spends his down time during school hours running on the track or sitting alone to read a good book.

Genos: Teacher’s pet. Absolute ass-kisser. He tries his absolute best to study and never wastes a single second not having his nose in a textbook but still only manages to get Bs. It frustrates the living hell out of him. He’s adopted a lot of unhealthy ways to stay awake during the school day because he spends all night going above and beyond on homework, like drinking a full pot of coffee or smuggling energy drinks into class. He follows Saitama around because he wants to learn the secret to getting good grades without actually trying.

Metal Bat: He’s intimidating and mean-looking. Upon first glance, you might think he was a bully but it’s actually the other way around. He doesn’t tolerate bullshit like that while he’s in the vicinity and is not afraid to cuss anyone out should they ever pick on another student, teachers included. He’s been reprimanded so many times for that exact reason and has gotten a plaque in the principal’s office for breaking the district record. He’s a pretty shit student, but it’s not because he’s dumb. He’s actually pretty witty, but due to his terrible dyslexia and devotion to his little sister, his grades have suffered.

Tanktop Master: Best friends with Superalloy. Together, they carry the football scene for the entire school. He’s a bit smarter and quieter, but he’s just as nice. He aces all of his classes and is the sole reason Superalloy isn’t failing because he allows this dumbass to copy his work. He has a crazy amount of secret admirers but disregards them to hang out with his homies on the football team instead (and he always wears tanktops to school lol).

Puri-Puri Prisoner: Theater kid with such a drastic flair for the dramatic that people have actually gotten hurt trying to act out his ridiculous ideas. He’s super huge for his age and people often mistake him as a teacher. He’s one of those kids that have a full-grown beard at age 17 and he doesn’t quite know how to take care of it or shave properly yet so it’s kind of gross and patchy. Also, he’s the resident gay kid. It’s embarrassing.

Amai Mask: Also a theater kid but he’s way better at it. On top of that, he’s a choir star. Whenever there’s an opening for a solo, it always goes to him. There’s an ongoing conspiracy that all of his teachers pick him as favorite despite him being a bit of a dick at times but it’s still up in the air. He’s ridiculously attractive and has an outrageous amount of secret admirers, but he actually makes an effort to humor them and “entertain the crowd”. He’s still single, however, and devotes all of his time to mastering his craft in the ✨fine arts✨ (and singing. Idk if that counts as a ✨fine art✨ but whatever).

Iaian: Kamikaze’s best friend. They do everything together. He’s a bit of a doormat, though. He’s always seen carrying Kami’s books or doing his homework. Despite all that, he still manages to maintain an A-B average. He’s very studious and studies hard while participating in sports, despite only having one arm. The other kids would bully him for it but nobody wants to be known as the dick that picks on a disabled person (and rightfully so. Shit’s fucked up). He’s pretty quiet, serious, and mostly keeps to himself. Teachers always trust him to turn his work in on time and set an example for the rest of the class.

Okamaitachi: Another one of Kami’s best friends. She doesn’t fall for his bullshit though. She’s always seen in ridiculously fashionable outfits and holds a separate bag just to carry her extra change of clothes (in addition to her gym outfit). She always looks her best and does her best, super high energy 24/7. She’s a social butterfly and makes friends easily, especially while doing theater. She’s not as exceptional as Amai Mask, but she’s still talented in her own right.

Bushidrill: Yet another best friend of Kami’s. He also doesn’t fall for his bullshit. Bushi is another one of those kids that has a full beard at age 17, but he actually knows how to take care of it. He’s weirdly wise beyond his years and is everyone’s go-to for advice when they find themselves in a bad situation. He drinks illegally as well but keeps it a secret because he’s not an idiot (unlike Kami). Overall, he just keeps to himself and minds his own damn business despite knowing everyone’s drama.

Fubuki: Networking queen. She was voted “most likely to be a CEO” in the school yearbook. She’s head of the student body and negotiates like a pro. She’ll organize events and get good grades all while still managing to find the time to hang out with her friends outside of school. She’s always go go go 24/7. Nobody knows her and Tatsu are sisters, though. She doesn’t go out of her way to keep it a secret, but she would feel pretty terrible if people found out because she doesn’t want to be compared with anyone else.

Saitama: Does buttfuck nothing in class and never studies but still gets As anyways because he remembers all of the material effortlessly. I’ve said this before in a previous hc, but he was one of those insanely gifted kids that never developed a work ethic because he’s never had to struggle to get by academic-wise. He minds his own damn business and stays out of everyone’s shit but still manages to get caught up in a ton of drama somehow. He shares his lunches with Genos because Genos often forgets to eat. Fubuki has tries to recruit him into student government but he refuses each time. All in all, just an average kid that is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mumen Rider: Studies hard, is a teacher’s pet, and gets perfect grades. His mom packs him really nice, healthy lunches and she leaves little love notes in there so he knows he’s got a good family waiting for him back home. The reason for that being, he gets bullied a lot. There’s no real reason why. He’s a nice kid and there’s nothing wrong with him, but a lot of his peers see him as an easy target because he’s scrawny and wimpy. He does have a handful of friends though. One of those being Saitama, who stands up to those bullies on behalf of Mumen.

Sonic: Wild card. He’s also on the track team and it’s just as good as Flash. They’re rivals and everyone knows it. He and Flash were childhood best friends until they drifted apart sometime before junior high, only to meet again while doing sports at the beginning of freshman year. Coaches often pit them against each other because it’s fun to watch the top two go at it. Academic-wise, he sucks. He’s the dumbest motherfucker in all of his classes and manages to get by solely because he uses his status as track star to get everyone to let him copy their work.

Garou: Another wild card. Teachers absolutely hate him. He’s loud-mouthed, awkward, and doesn’t really fit in. He has a lot of interests and wishes to get into some extracurriculars or clubs but he’s too worried about getting bullied. Like Mumen, there’s nothing really wrong with him. He’s not a dick for no reason, but people just see him as an easy target somehow and decide to pick on him relentlessly. He and Silverfang were once friends, but Silverfang betrayed him sometime before the start of the new year. His grades are atrocious because he can’t focus during class. Someone help this boy.

#one punch man #opm #zombieman #garou #child emperor #saitama #tatsumaki #silverfang #atomic samurai #metal knight #king #drive knight #superalloy darkshine #pig god #watchdog man #flashy flash #speed of sound sonic #metal bat #genos #tanktop master #puri puri prisoner #amai mask #iaian #okamaitachi #bushidrill #fubuki #mumen rider #headcanon #opm headcanons #asks

[qrbie]

The Masterlist

Hey. I know it’s been ages since my last fic rec, but my motivation is slowly building again and I think I’m going to have a big one coming up soon. Meanwhile, I tossed a ton onto @0nceuponafanfic, so she might have something brewing for y’all. Anyways, I’ve been updating this thing, so if you ever need a pile to fall back on when I’m MIA, here you go!

Please tell me if I’m missing something, like a trigger warning or a link to someone’s Tumblr. Also don’t be afraid to rec me your favorite fics or even your own fics! I wanna see them. If you want to request fic recs, I’m open for those too! Even if you don’t have fics or even a specific purpose, come to my inbox and mess around. I’m bored and want human interaction.

‘allo people! yeah yeah yeah It’s been AGES since the last update so I’mma dump some new fics into here soon. I’m also gonna fix up the organization a bit. so sayonara and see ya later!

As always, stay hydrated!

Happy pride, everyone!

Last updated 6/23

1-Chapter bits of fluff or angst or something else

one hell of a hook | A TodoBaku fic... but don’t let that drive you away! This is an amazing fic, so please give it a try before you judge.

Mafia Au | What if Present Mic was a yakuza boss and Aizawa was a spy? (There’s a lot more to this, including a lot more art, over at @nartothelar‘s blog)

UA Music Conservatory | a series of one-shots in an AU where UA is actually a music school.

Silent Shadow | has the potential to evolve into something bigger. Nomu!Midoriya is Kurogiri’s protege. So cool.

Present Mic’s Awesome Mixtape 2.0 | Aizawa doesn’t like any kind of music. Shocking, right? After discovering this, Yamada has a new goal. Find a type of music Aizawa likes.

cultivating something so divine | Vet!Kiribaku, with so much fluff and animals and mutual pining that even the hardest of hearts can be softened.

The story of how Midoriya Izuku won the Sport Festival | I love a good dose of Crack Treated Seriously, and here’s some.

Trash Goblin Finds Love | “Bakugou. This is the gayest thing I’ve ever seen.”

president of the krbk club | Whenever something exciting happens, what does Midoriya do? Whip out his notebooks, of course. So what happens when Bakugou isn’t pushing Kirishima away?

It's Hard to Get Past Some Things | Whenever Midoriya’s drunk, Todoroki’s his designated caretaker. What happens when drunk Midoriya decides to talk about kids (or pups, whatever)? (A/B/O)

it's just the little things | Bakugou’s interactions over the years (stealing from the official summary here)

The Knock-On Effect | There’s only a couple types of knocks that Bakugou likes. Kirishima’s knocks in the middle of the night are one of them.

Smile for me, would you? | Unlike the rest of us, Present Mics has goals, and actually follows through with them. This goal? Make his neighbor, Shouta Aizawa, smile.

Shadowed Soul, Electric Eyes (We'll Be Okay) | What if Tokoyami and Kaminari, people with completely different quirks, got quirk-swapped?

A Matter of Pride | How everyone in BNHA came out. That’s it. It’s so fluffy, though.

firedancer | Unlike the rest of these, this one has the tiniest bit of angst. So little you’d need a microscope, though. Whenever someone falls in love, romantically, platonically, or any other way, a flower appears on their skin. Kirishima has a ton of flowers, but where are Bakugou’s?

A Mile in New Shoes (and A Mile Too Far) | Artist!Bakugou is invited to his first house party... Luckily he has three guys showing him around.

Boy things | Ashido loves her friends, but sometimes it gets lonely being the only girl in the Bakusquad. Good thing they understand!

come home to me | Kiribaku might’ve gotten a telepathic connection... There’s so much fluff in this one!

one to ten | Kirishima wants to date Bakugou, but he’s gotta climb the ladder of friendship first!

Get Mad! | Bakugou teaches Eri how to cope, and Eri returns the favor.

bakugatsu | Yeah, I know this is 20 chapters long, but it’s basically 20 drabbles compiled together by the amazing wonhaebunny!

a mix of six | Probably my favorite series of all time, no matter the fandom. What happens when Aizawa and Hizashi adopt Bakugou, Todoroki, Shinsou and Eri?

KiriBaku Week 2020 | A series by PoorUnfortunateSoul - full of fluff!

Safety In Numbers | A little bit of fluff and a lot of parental Erasermic.

Multi-chapter Stories

How To Get Adopted Without Letting Your Dad Know He's Adopting You, A Guide By Class 1-A | Good old fashioned school fluff. (WIP)

Dandelion | No masterlist is complete without at least one fic from the legendary Broken Realities, right? So here’s @owlf45‘s fic... (there’s a lot more! Check out the Broken Realities Collection on Ao3 for at least some of them... I bet there’s a lot more floating around.) (WIP)

Phosphenes | A Naruto/BNHA crossover, Mina is reborn from Naruto, and learns to navigate life even with such a big burden on her shoulders. (WIP)

Flour Power | Kirishima and Bakugou are supposed to take care of a sack of flour for a school project. What could go wrong?

Not really a villain, but close enough | “Aizawa didn't expect the raid to go so well. he didn't expect the informant to be so useful and well-mannered. who was hi kidding? Aizawa didn't expect the informant to be a kid. but the green-eyed boy cuffed to the interrogation table was wiling to help, and Aizawa wasn't one to look the gift horse in the mouth“ (WIP)

green haze | Vigilante!Midoriya is known as the Green Haze, a vigilante, Eraserhead’s supposed to capture. Shenanigans happen.

2am Knows All Secrets | One of those classic Kiribaku fics that trickle through the ranks. Lots of fluff, with good ol’ tropes like sharing a bed and mutual pining and Good Friends, and-it’s great.

The life of a hero | Such a good series. It’s so amazing. It gives angst and pain but then soothes it over with fluff, but then it tears you apart... and then it gives you life... a great read.

The Last Resort | This is basically pure angst. It’s so painful, but it’s such a good story... Shinsou was sold as a young child to a yakuza. This yakuza would rent out people for their quirks... This is an amazing read, but don’t expect any fluff from this. (Check the tags! WIP)

¥300 Shampoo | When Aizawa’s working on a book at the cafe, he certainly doesn’t expect someone pulling his hair. He definitely doesn’t expect getting a free haircut out of it, either.

quote love unquote | Take the official summary “When Kirishima Eijirou's band hits the big time, he's not prepared for his newfound fame. He's even less prepared to meet the actor he's been crushing on for years, or to start dating him as a publicity stunt. The closer Kirishima gets to Bakugou Katsuki, the more he realizes he's in over his head. But it's hard to stop, once his heart is in it.”

lovin is easy | Blasty doesn’t get “feelings,” so here’s five times Bakugou doesn’t get love and one time he does. (WIP)

The Empath & The Mind Reader | Bakugou is a mind reader, and Kirishima is a empath. If both of them can literally know what the other person’s feeling/thinking, why are they still dancing around each other? (WIP, Contains smut, Anxiety attacks)

and finally I see the world in color (the violet stands out, thanks to you) | This fic deserves a LOT more than just 76 kudos. Sometimes people miss out on amazing fics just because it’s a femslash. Momojirou, where Yaoyaorozu is a businesslady who is bored with her life and everything else, until she happens upon the rambunctious band Dark Shadow. Seriously, please read this! (WIP)

Behind The Scenes | A KiriBaku actor AU. What happens when you start falling for your co-star - and your on-screen love interest? (WIP, It’s rated E for smut, but there isn’t any yet)

We Didn't Start the Fire | What if Touya decided to make something out of himself instead of becoming a villain? This is amazing, by the way. (WIP)

it seems i'm never letting go | Here’s how I summarized it to myself... “Koi no yokan... will Blasty experience it? (His sister left)” By the way, koi no yokan is basically love at first sight, Japanese-style. (WIP)

Lips Like Blood | What happens when Bakugou, a mage, falls in love with the one person who can’t love him back? (WIP)

Charm Me, Loser | A Hogwarts AU that has no right being that ingenius and amazing. My only problem with it is sorta small... There’s already a wizarding school in Japan... Why aren’t they going there? (WIP)

Gotta Get Away | Tsuyu and Bakugou are out getting some new hero merch together because of the new buddy system at UA. What happens when they’re mistaken for a couple? (WIP)

Opposed to the Typical | A fashion AU. This is ridiculously good. It feels like the author was actually in the Japanese fashion industry! (WIP, smut, past child abuse, mental health issues)

One Day at a Time | Pretty genius idea, actually. Bakugou and Uraraka are trapped in what is essentially a time-speeder-upper. What’s going to be a day for their classmates is going to be a year for them. What will they do in that year together? (WIP, it’s rated Mature but it’s pretty innocent so far)

The UA Quarantine Collection | Basically, a bunch of authors got together and made a ton of one-shots of what Class 1A is doing in quarentine. Technically it isn’t a coherent story, but I’m counting it as one. There’s two versions, a clean version and a version with all the smutty bits. The smutty one’s the second story in the series. This one’s linked to the clean one. (WIP)

Midoriya Fuckin' Izuku | This is an amazing fic! It has a ton of TWs, though. Make sure to read the tags before starting it! (WIP)

Seeing Double | A very good, and very long, fantasy AU. (WIP, smut)

Broken, but Still Good | Bakugou was rescued, after four years, from an illegal alpha fighting ring. Can Kirishima, a beta, help him back to society? Pay attention to the tags. (WIP, A/B/O)

Broken Wings | Kirishima’s a dragon who was rescued from the dragon slave trade by the mysterious Bakugou Katsuki, I don’t know what else to say. (WIP)

The Roast of Class 2-A | Have a crackfic. (WIP)

The Space Between | Midoriya’s a photojournalist who is just starting out. One fateful night, he goes to photograph the Antiheros in concert. (WIP, mild smut)

A Fissile Family | Bakugou’s been kidnapped by the League of Villains again. They’re actually sorta a weird family. (WIP)

Mochi Mochi | Just take the official summary. “Ochako never saw a problem with DM-ing an internationally known actor her grocery lists, absolutely certain that he'd never see them. That is—until he replies. And who the hell does he think he is to tell her mochi isn't real food?”

Green as the Leaves, and Red as a Rose | A TodoDeku flower shop AU. (WIP)

remember my name | Post-UA, Bakugou realizes that some things are for forever.

Blinding Shapes | What happens when soulmates, a blind abstract artist and a burnt out barista meet?

a heart swelled to bursting | Mind the tags, here. Training camp part 2 for Class 2A. (WIP)

manly man falls for manliest man | What happens when businessman!Kirishima meets his idol, and maybe biggest celebrity crush ever, actor!Bakugou? (Smut)

Miscellaneous Stuff From Other Fandoms

I have some Harry Potter fics lying around somewhere, so I’m going to add those later.

Stucco Hearts | One of my absolute favorite soulmate fics ever, from Percy Jackson.

Christmas and Chill | A old series I sorta just came across again from PJO.

The Florist and the Punk | Maybe another old series from PJO.

Hearts Need Love | Keep an eye on the tags! This is my favorite PJO fic of all time.

Our Songs | It’s good if I spent half an hour trying to find it again. It’s a Solangelo songfic.

Some random writers I recommend (A lot more coming along-I’m in the middle of a ton of different fics right now)

aloneintherain | @captainkirkk

wonhaebunny | @wonhaebunny

rosedvst

Sif (Rosae) | @intothedarknessigo

kiritime

sinderellaa

aloera | @aloera

Argentina | @junepixel

KuriKuri | @letaizawarest

#the pleb's fic recs #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #hoo #heros of olympus #percy jackson #fic recs #kiribaku #bakushima #jiroumomo #tododeku #dabi is a todoroki #bakusquad #actor au #band au #mind reader #empath #artist au #coffee shop au #kacchaco #businessman au #flower shop au #league of villains #soulmates #fantasy au #fashion au

[not-close-to-straight]

Summer Nights (One) (Stony Grease AU)

A commission for @simplynerdy-gal who wanted a Stony twist on Grease!

Note: This doesn’t take place in the 50′s like the movies, but definitely not modern day either. Let’s settle on that magically vague period of late eighties to early nineties when no one had cell phones but everyone had terrible fashion and sprinkle in a few modern day things for the lol factor. 

Also, I don’t follow the movie line for line/scene for scene but rather tried to reference our favorite scenes for nostalgia reasons.

SUMMER NIGHTS MASTERLIST HERE

Enjoy! 

*************

The sunset was gorgeous, filling the clouds with first orange and yellow, and then pink and purples that darkened to a stormy blue as they touched the ocean. The waves crashed loud against the rocks, the sea gulls called as they circled on the evening wind and hidden away on a soft, sandy part of the beach, a summer romance was coming to a close.

 “I’m going back to New York tomorrow.” Steve eased away from a long kiss and sighed. “How am I supposed to say goodbye to you, Tony? This has been the best summer of my life and now it’s ending. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.”

“Don’t talk like that, sweetheart.” Tony leaned in again and coaxed another kiss from Steve’s lips. “Nothin’s gotta end yet, c’mere and let me show you.” 

“Tony.” Steve was helpless against the brunette’s charm, and when their kiss grew heated, he let Tony lay him back into the warm sand, shivering when Tony’s fingers crept under the hem of his swim shorts. “This-- this won’t spoil anything will it?” 

“How could it spoil anything?” Tony flattened his palm to Steve’s stomach and smiled as the blond shuddered beneath the touch. “Just gonna make it better, right? We’ve been in love all summer Steve, ain’t like we’re rushing into this.” 

“I know, I know we aren’t, and I guess I’m ready but--” Steve’s beautifully blue eyes filled with tears and Tony sat up in a hurry, whispering something soft and reassuring as he wiped them away. “This is so stupid, I shouldn’t be crying but Tony, is this the end? Is this the end of us?” 

“Of course not.” Tony was lying and they both knew it, but Steve didn’t argue when Tony pulled him up into a hug and held him close. “Course not, honey. This is only the beginning.” Tony swallowed back his own tears and pressed a kiss to Steve’s blond hair. “M’gonna love you forever, sweetheart. Nothin’s ever gonna be better than this summer with you.” 

“Will you--” Steve clutched at Tony’s side and drew in a deep breath. “Will you call me? Or can I call you? I know summer romances are supposed to end in the fall but I don’t think I’m ready to say goodbye.”

“Oh my god, of course I’m going to call you.” Tony comforted him. “Long distance calls are real expensive, but I’ll get a part time job so I can pay for it. We’ll talk every week and maybe at Christmas you can come see me again or I can come see you or something. We’ll figure it out.” 

“Are you sure?” The words were muffled in Tony’s shirt. “Cos Tony this isn’t-- this isn’t me, you know? I don’t do this sort of thing.” 

“What sort of thing?” Tony combed Steve’s hair back out of his eyes and dotted a kiss to his nose. “What don’t you do?” 

“Kiss strange boys on the beach.” Steve blushed bright red and Tony nearly melted. “Getting adventurous for me usually means not studying before a test, or wearing mismatched socks, not talking to random guys and staying out past my curfew to hang out on the docks and that sort of thing. I’ve never wanted to do this with anyone but you.” 

“I’ve never wanted to do this with anyone but you either.” Tony admitted, his voice hoarse and eyes uncertain. “Steve you make me um-- you make me wanna be different, you know? I’m gonna call you after you leave and I’m gonna do everything I can to see you again and um--” 

He stopped, biting at his lip and Steve whispered, “Tony?” 

“I love you.” Tony framed Steve’s face with both hands and crushed a kiss to his mouth. “Steve, I love you and nothing is ever gonna be better than this summer with you. Nothing could ever be as great as spending a day with you.” 

“‘Cept maybe the summer nights?” Steve fell back onto the sand and dragged Tony with him, wrapping both arms around Tony’s shoulders and kissing him back as hard as he could. “The summer nights with you are pretty amazing.” 

“The summer nights are pretty amazing.” Tony agreed, and in a near inaudible tone, “Tell me you love me, Steve.” 

“I love you.” There were tears again but neither Tony nor Steve were sure who was crying. “I’m never going to forget you.” 

“I’m never going to forget you either.” 

*************

*************

Bucky “Bronco” Barnes hated everything about school. He hated the teachers and the way class started so got-dang early in the morning. He hated how the rooms smelled and that he couldn’t have a smoke in the hall and had to go all the way outside for it. Ugh the homework and ick the pep rallies. 

In fact the only thing that made school worth it were all the pretty people, and as Bucky popped the collar on his leather jacket, lit up his first cigarette of the morning and checked out the talent walking up the way, he grinned to himself. 

Gonna be a good year. 

And then from across the parking lot came an all too familiar yell and Bucky’s cool guy persona slipped just a little when he caught sight of Valkyrie, Sam and Clint all running his way. 

“Bucky!” Clint whooped out loud and launched himself over the carefully trimmed hedges in an attempt to beat Valkyrie to Bucky’s side. He caught his foot on the top branches though and bowled right into the girl, and Valkyrie screamed, taking Sam down to the ground as well as she flailed around for a handhold.

“Damn it!” Sam cried at the same time Valkyrie yelled, “My lunch got squished!” and Clint just barrel rolled out of his sprawl and popped to his feet, the leaves in his hair doing absolutely nothing to distract from how big his grin was for Bucky. 

“Whaddup Bronco!” He held up his hand for a high five and Bucky rolled his eyes and punched the goofy kid right in the thigh. “Ouch! My leg! I’m wounded!” 

Sam shoved a hopping Clint out of the way and socked Bucky in the shoulder. “Bronco! Where you been all summer! We didn’t see you at the arcade or nothing!”

“Had better things to do than hang out with you kids all day.” Bucky made a show of fixing his jacket collar again, smoothing back his already slick hair. “Been haulin’ boxes at the docks to save up money for a car. Whad’ya’think about that?”

“I think it’ll have to be a pretty sweet set of wheels to get the girls to look at you twice.” Valkyrie snorted and Bucky flicked her ear in annoyance. “M’just sayin, you aren’t exactly the best looking outta the group!”

“Speaking of the best looking, where’s Tony, you seen Tony yet?” Clint piped up. “Where’s that boy at?” 

Bucky scowled over the idea that Tony was better looking than him, but he twisted around looking for his best friend anyway, scanning the growing crowd of students for that signature black leather jacket. He hadn’t seen Tony all summer and when he’d called last week to ask after him, Mrs. Stark had said he was out walking the beach which... didn’t seem right at all. Tony didn’t do beaches and he certainly didn’t do long, solo walks as the sunset, so Bucky had figured Tony had lied and snuck off with someone pretty for the night, and promised to call back later. 

Work had gotten busy and Bucky had never called back, so now he grinned when he finally caught sight of Tony, put two fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply, waving impatiently when Tony seemed to hesitate before turning their direction. 

“Tony!” Valkyrie all but tackled the other brunette and Tony oophed under her weight, laughing a little as he shoved her off, only to be taken out by Clint and Sam as well. 

Bucky thought maybe Tony wasn’t laughing at all that time, and his blue eyes narrowed when Tony even back up a few steps from the group, dusting off his jacket and smoothing his hair before shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“How’s it goin’, bud?” Bucky waited a few seconds for Tony to collect himself, then put an arm around his shoulders. “What’d you do all summer, how come I didn’t see ya?” 

“Heya Buck.” Tony was a good two or maybe three inches shorter than Bucky and Sam and just at eye level with Clint, but he tipped his chin up and set a stance like he was taller than all of them, his eyes glinting with determination and more than a healthy amount of cockiness as he answered, “Spent the summer down at the beach, too damn busy gettin’ lucky for all your bullshit.” 

“Yeah?” Bucky’s grin stretched a little wider at the typical-Tony response. “How was the action at the beach?” 

“Oh you know.” Tony huffed a laugh. “As good as it always is. Barely made it out with my pants on.” 

“Yeah.” Clint butted into the conversation. “Must’ve been hard with all them pretty people hanging around you, huh? I sure know how that is.” 

“Only thing that hangs around you are flies.” Sam shoved Clint away and asked, “So what, you just chased tail all summer? Couldn’t call us once?”

“Nah.” Valkyrie decided. “Nah, there was someone special, that’s why he didn’t call us. Look at him blushing like a fuckin’ idiot. Who was it, Tony?” 

“Wait, what?” Bucky peered a little closer at the tell tale red on Tony’s face. “You punk! Holdin’ out on me? What’d you do, go and fall in love?” 

“Yeah right, Tony Stark doesn’t fall in love.” Tony denied quickly, almost too quickly. “I mean, there was this one guy. Blonde, real hot, smokin’ boyd. He was uh--” Tony cleared his throat. “--he was sorta special, I guess.”

“So he put out like a vending machine, gave it up for nickels.” Bucky decided and the other three howled in laughter. “Ain’t that right, Tony?” 

“That all you think about, Buck?” Tony pulled a face and Bucky nodded decisively, “You know th’hell it is!” 

The bell rang, covering whatever Tony said in response but when Bucky caught what looked like sadness in his buddy’s eyes, he grabbed at Tony’s jacket to slow him down before they made it inside.

“Tony, what happened this summer, you gonna tell me or what?” Bucky wanted to know. “You don’t gotta tell me everything, but I wanna know if you found someone good. You’re my best friend, that sorta shit matters.” 

“Tony Stark doesn’t fall in love.” Tony repeated the words a little louder, almost as if he were trying to convince himself like he was trying to convince Bucky. “But if it makes you happy, I’ll give you the dirty details at lunch, you horny bastard.” 

“Oh, do you know the way to my heart.” Bucky clasped a hand over his heart and Tony finally laughed out loud, shoving at his friend and jogging up the steps. “Glad you’re back around, Tony. Senior year, baby!” 

“Senior year!” Tony jumped up to slap the frame of the door, trying to hide the lingering heartbreak over Steve under another shout. “Here we go!” 

“Here. We. Go.” Natasha Romanov unknowingly echoed Tony’s words as she stepped from her car and swung a bright pink jacket around her shoulders. “One more year in this piece of shit place and then we’ll be free.”

“This place is a piece of shit, but at least we’re seniors this year.” Pepper wobbled and nearly fell on sky high heels but managed to save it, balancing rhinestoned sunglasses on her nose and shrugging into her own jacket. “This time we rule the school. Andover High is ours for the taking.” 

“Damn right we rule the school.” Carol tore open a pack of Oreos and licked the frosting from the middle of a cookie before discarding the rest and opening another. “Nobody’s gonna tell us what to do this time around!” 

“Okay maybe not, but still oh my god, stop that!” Pepper smacked Carol with her clutch and tried to knock the cookies away. “That is so adolescent!” 

“Well I mean--” Carol shrugged and destroyed another Oreo. “We’re still here for one more year right? Technically we still are adolescents.” 

“Okay just don’t flaunt it.” Pepper adjusted her bra and Natasha asked, “Stuffing this year, Pep? Gave up on asking Santa for new boobs, huh?”

“For all you know I could have gone up a size this summer! This could really be me!” Pepper cried, and then shrieked when Carol reached over with a “Honka Honka!” and squeezed at the bra. “CAROL!” 

“Definitely stuffing but it sure felt fancy.” Carol’s eyes widened. “Oooh! Are you wearing one of them new WonderBras?” 

“I hate you!” Pepper hissed and Carol tossed her head back and practically cackled with laughter as Pepper tried and failed to run after her in those stupid shoes. “Carol! I hate you!” 

“One more year.” Natasha said to herself, straightening her skirt and lifting her chin. “One more year and then I can get the hell out of here and away from--” 

Pepper was still shrieking in the distance, but that didn’t distract from a few sideways looks as a group of girls passed Natasha, nor did it cover the whispers as they shared no doubt pointless, hurtful gossip about the easiest girl in school.

“--away from all that bullshit.” Natasha sneered at their smirks and tugged her shirt down a little further to show off another inch of cleavage. “Bitches.”

************

Back in New York Steve had spent all his time with a small group of friends who had enough in common to make the school days easier. They had studied together, been wall flowers at dances together, were always in student government and sat at the same table at lunch. They might not have been the most popular kids in school, but they were fun anyway, and as he walked into Andover High for the very first time, Steve would have given just about anything to be back in New York with them again.

It was bad enough moving without any notice at all, he’d had to say goodbye to his friends over the phone while unpacking boxes at the new place. It was even worse that his parents had decided to move without even going back to New York. There had been a new job opportunity for Steve’s Dad and the perfect house opening up at the perfect time and his Ma had been so excited about it all working out--

--neither of his parents had even thought to ask what Steve wanted, when all Steve could think about was how Tony would have called the New York number only to reach a disconnected dial tone. 

Steve was sick to his stomach thinking about how heart broken Tony would be, or worse how angry Tony would be, most likely thinking Steve had given him a fake number. Steve had spent nights tossing and turning trying to come up with ways to track down Tony’s number or maybe even his address so he could write an apology letter or at least explain what happened. Tony probably hated him now and it just wasn’t fair-- it wasn’t fair-- and Steve thought he’d never stop being sad. 

He was pulled at least partially from first day nervousness and soul wrenching melancholy by the presence of his school assigned guide Thor, who was extra big and extra friend and really difficult to stay miserable around. 

Thor swept Steve through the halls of Andover High with wild hand gestures and loud explanations of various teachers, showed Steve the trick to kicking a locker door open if he couldn’t remember the combination, and at lunch, Thor wrapped his giant hand around Steve’s wrist and pulled him through the cafeteria and out to the tables, cheerfully announcing over his shoulder, “My friends are sort of terrible, but I promise you’ll like them anyway! Come on!” 

“Oh, they’re… terrible?” Steve asked, but Thor was already making a beeline for the lunch table on the far end of the yard and Steve knew there was no stopping the massive blond. “Well I mean, I guess I need to make new friends at some point?”

Thor might have been enthused about school and making new friends, but Natasha was already ready to jump out of a window and drop out of Andover entirely and it was only noon on the first day. 

“Hey.” Carol reached over and snatched at Natasha’s dessert before plopping down on the chair next to her. “Tasha, did you check out Tony this morning? He is looking fantastic this year. He’s got some weird, broody thing going on and it’s wonderful.”

“It’s ancient history is what it is.” Natasha muttered, poking at her food. “Stop talking about it.”

“Well sometimes ancient history repeats itself.” Pepper needled, “And Carol’s right, he does have this broody look going on. Nothing’s cuter than a damaged boy, right?” 

“Right, cos that’s what I want. A boy who needs fixed.” Natasha shoved the less than edible food away with a huff. She wasn’t willing to admit how much it had hurt that Tony hadn’t called her once all summer, especially after they’d gone together for a while last year. And Tony did look good this year, older and a little more serious but Natasha was willing to bet good money that it was another line, another play, another attempt by another boy to just be stupid because that’s all they ever were. 

“I barely wanted Tony last spring.” She said calmly. “I certainly don’t want him if he’s going to be high maintenance and need his feelings cared for.” 

Carol and Pepper exchanged a look that Natasha did not appreciate at all, but before she could say anything about it, Thor shouted at them from a little bit away and waved excitedly, so she let it drop.

“Hey girls!” Thor was bigger than most of the boys at the school, bigger than most of the teachers for that matter, over tall and over muscled and just the nicest person in the world, and even though the table shook when he sat and Pepper fussed over losing one of her rhinestones in her food, everyone had a smile for the guy. 

“Thor, that shirt is--.” Carol looked over Thor’s too tight tank top with raised eyebrows, then glanced up at Steve. “-- well your nipples certainly aren’t shy, are they? Anyway, who’s your friend?” 

“This is Steve.” Thor announced proudly, and tugged Steve closer. “He moved here from New York and doesn’t know anyone and I thought he’d fit in just fine with us!” 

“Ladies.” Steve offered a somewhat awkward wave and sat gingerly at the table, smoothing the pleats of his khakis self consciously. “I appreciate you letting me sit with you. This is all very different than what I’m used to.” 

Carol, who had her hair in pigtails and was slurping at a smoothie like it was her last meal, only waggled her eyebrows in apparent approval of Steve while Pepper, who seemed quite a bit more mature than the other girls only sent Steve a coolly appraising glance over her sunglasses. He felt like Natasha immediately didn’t like him, the tiny redhead’s eyes narrowing and arms folding as she asked, “New York? What part? You seem a little small town to be from the Big Apple.” 

“Small town.” Steve repeated, not sure if he’d just been insulted or not. “I um-- I’m actually from Brooklyn but it’s still part of New York City.” 

“Oooh, Brooklyn.” Natasha raised her eyebrows. “That city carries a certain sorta reputation I have a hard time believing you live up to--ow!” she scowled and rubbed at her leg when Thor kicked out at her. “Damn it--”

“Oh yoo hoo!” a voice cutting through the general lunchtime noise and whatever else Natasha was going to say. “Ayoo-ahoo-ahoo! Don’t think you can hide from me, because you can’t!” 

“Who--?” Steve started to ask and Natasha sighed as if the very words pained her as she answered, “Scott Lang. The most obnoxiously, over cheerful, pain in my-- Hi!” she looked up with a smile that was closer to a snarl. “Scott! How are you!” 

“Oh, oh my gosh.” Scott was cute, bubbly and sweet and with a smile at least a mile wide, and entirely oblivious to the layer of hostility at the table. “I love the first day of school don’t you? It’s just the biggest thrill of my life! And oh! You’ll never guess what’s happened!” 

“...Probably not.” Carol said around a mouthful of sandwich. “Gonna tell us anyway though, aren’t you?” 

“The nominations for student council just came in!” Scott’s impossibly wide smile got even wider. “And you’ll never guess who’s up for Vice President!” 

“Surprise us.” Thor said calmly and Steve hid a tiny smile at the giant’s attempt at politeness. 

“Me!” Scott burst out and then laughed out loud. “Isn’t that the most! I mean, to say the least.” 

“The absolute, very least.” Pepper sighed. “So, Scott--” 

“Oh my god, you must think I’m the worst for not introducing myself to your friend!” Scott hustled his way around the table and plopped right down into Steve’s space. “Hello! I’m Scott Lang! You must the new kid because I don’t know you and I know everyone! Where are you from? You sound like you’re from New York, but don’t worry, that terrible accent will fade super quick and you’ll be talking just like us beach bums around here!” 

“Uh--” Steve blinked a few times and Scott rushed on, “You have to come to cheerleader tryouts! I know what you’re thinking, cheerleaders are girls! But no! We have to have someone strong to lift the girls into the stunts right! Say you’ll come! We’ll get to share so many experiences and have so much fun and get to be life long friends!” 

“Life long--” Steve couldn’t quite manage to match Scott’s energy. “I mean-- sure?” 

“Oh my god, leave the poor kid alone.” Pepper said in exasperation and shoved at Scott’s shoulder. “Steve, you don’t have to be a cheerleader. No one except Scott is that peppy.” 

“Nothing wrong with a little pep!” Scott said cheerfully. “What do you think, Steve?” 

“I think being a cheerleader would be a great way to make some friends…” Steve started slowly, but apparently that was enough for Scott, who clapped his hands in excitement and started rattling off try out times and practice locations and oh wouldn’t Steve just love their uniforms, he looked like he was born to wear red white and blue!

“Steve.” Carol took pity on Steve’s slightly glazed expression and reached across the table to tap at his hand. “So what’d you do all summer? Anything fun?” 

“My folks rented a cottage and I was down at the beach every day.” Steve smiled when Thor made an “oooh” sound. “I um-- I met a boy there. We spent the entire summer together.” 

“You hauled your cookies all the way to the beach for a boy?” Natasha took a loud sip of her drink. “Sounds pretty pointless to me.” 

“Well I mean.” Steve rubbed at a spot on his button of shirt, a streak of pink splashing across his cheeks. “He was pretty special.” 

******************

All the way across the football field, Tony sprawled onto the bleachers alongside Bucky, tossing pebbles at Valkyrie and Clint as they arm wrestled and jeering down at the jocks with Sam. It was weird to be back in school after what felt like an endless summer, weird to be back in his leather jacket after living in soft shirts and board shorts and during some wonderful afternoons, no shirts at all, just skin to skin with Steve as they kissed and touched and….

“So hey.” Bucky finished his lunch and tossed the trash away, bumping Tony with his elbow and jostling him from his thoughts. “Tell me about the guy this summer. All that beach action. Was he taller than you?”

“Everyone’s taller than Tony.” Sam joked and when Tony scowled at him, put both hands up and apologized, “Damn man, sorry. Thought the height thing was okay to joke about.” 

“Ignore him.” Bucky kicked Sam’s drink over just to be a jerk and smirked when Sam shouted in protest. “Tell me about him, Tony. Come on.”  

“Nah.” Tony didn’t really want to tell anyone about Steve, he sort of wanted to keep that memory just for himself. 

Besides, it wasn’t like the summer had ended nice or anything. Tony had kissed Steve bye and then waited a week  to call just to make sure the beautiful blond would make it back to New York, and then he’d called twice a day every day for a week and a half before someone had finally picked up. 

But the person on the other end hadn’t been Steve or anyone who knew Steve, just a confused sounding lady telling him, “No one named Steve lives here, honey. You must have the wrong number.” 

Tony had hung up, looked down at the number he had so carefully copied and repeated back to Steve at least a half dozen times so he knew it was right, then tossed the paper in the trash and cried himself to sleep for the first and goddamnit, the last time in his life. 

But now for some reason his leather jacket felt like it fit different and his stiffly styled hair look unnatural in the mirror and Tony knew he had bags under his eyes big enough to pack clothes in, but he hadn’t slept much at all since that day and he was freakin’ miserable. 

So no, the last thing he wanted to do was talk about the sweet blond that had both stolen and broken his heart so, “Nah.” was all he said, and went back to picking at his food. 

“Hey!” Bucky protested loudly. “What’s this bullshit about keeping secrets! Come on! You promised horny details, damn you!” 

“Horny details--” Valkyrie yanked away from the arm wrestling and Clint yelped as he splatted forward onto the bleachers. “Dumb ass! That woudn’a happened if you weren’t putting all your weight into trying to beat me! Tony! Let’s hear horny details!” 

“I’m down for horny.” Clint sniffed loudly and straddled one of the bleachers. “C’mon Stark, don’t hold out on us. I didn’t get lucky once all summer, help me out here.” 

Valkyrie, Sam and Clint were egging him on and Bucky was looking at him like he didn’t understand why Tony wasn’t willing to give up any details, so Tony did the only thing he felt like he could do--

--popped the collar of his jacket, ran his fingers through his hair and tipped his head back with a cocky grin, drawling, “Alright alright alright. You guys wanna know what happened? It started with a blond.” he let his smile slide slow and knowing, hiding the sadness he couldn’t quite seem to shake. “And ended with a--” Tony let his hand hit the bleachers a few times, bang bang bang, and Sam howled out loud as the others erupted into cheers. 

“Yeah that’s right.” It was easier to pretend he was okay so long as he didn’t talk about any feelings, so Tony basically leered as he said. “It was a blast, you feel me? Happened so fast, so damn easy. I met this smoking hot blonde. Real tall, bright blue eyes and a body that just--” he shuddered and Clint whistled. 

“He was crazy for me.” Tony said confidently, and that wasn’t a lie at all. “Just freakin’ crazy for me.” 

“Oh yeah?” Sam tore open the wrapping on a candy bar and shoved half of it into his mouth. “Did you get real far?” 

“Yeah, that’s what I wanna know.” Clint agreed. “Details! Details! Details!” 

“Oh come on, you know how it is.” Tony laughed when Valkyrie and Clint started banging on the bleachers. “Same old, same old.” 

************

“So tell us about him!” Pepper ignored Natasha’s glower and urged Steve, “How did you guys meet? Did he have a car?” 

“Oh well.” Steve didn’t even know if he could talk about Tony without crying, but he gave it a try, managing a nearly heartbroken smile as he answered, “I don’t know about a car, but uh-- we met cos he was trying to show off. He was running down the beach and tried to dive for a football and ended up just kicking a bunch of sand at me.” 

Steve’s smile turned a little more genuine thinking about how Tony had tried so hard to be suave. “He was really cute though, and apologized about sixteen times so I forgave him.”

“How did he make it up to you?” Carol flicked a french fry at Natasha just to make the redhead frown and added, “I mean, boys are generally the worst, so what did he do to make you fall in love with him?” 

“Just the usual things, I suppose. “ Steve’s blush got a little deeper when Scott squealed something excited and propped his chin up in his hands to listen. “We went bowling and he was terrible, and I laughed so hard when he tried to be cool about it that he finally stopped and was just dorky with me.” 

“Oooh he was dorky?” Natasha rolled her eyes theatrically. “Sounds like a keeper.” 

“... he was a keeper.” Steve said sadly. “He was wonderful.”

“Tell us more.” Scott demanded. “I want to know more about your Prince Charming.” 

“Oh I don’t know--” 

“Tell me more! Tell me more!” Scott chanted. “Tell me more!” 

**************

“So we’re both in the water, right?” Tony dropped his sunglasses down over his eyes and affected a casual tone. “He goes swimming by me in these little tiny shorts, little red and blue striped things? Just slutty, I swear. Begging for attention. Then he gets a leg cramp and almost drowns, I’m telling ya, it was a good thing thing I was there.” 

“Uh huh, uh huh.” Bucky crowed. “So you rescued him and he thanked you in all the good ways?!” 

“Don’t you know it.” Tony scrunched his nose and grinned. “He nearly drowned okay? Without me there, the world been have been less one hot blonde. Real shame, that. And oh my god, he was so grateful, you know?” 

“Did you get down doobie down?” Sam wanted to know and Valkyrie hit him in the shoulder with a, “We’re practically adults, Sam! Just call it sex!” 

“Alright fine.” Sam huffed. “Did you get sex, Tony? There, you happy Val? Now I sound like an asshole.” 

“You always sound like an asshole.” Bucky retorted. “Keep goin’ Tony. Tell us more.” 

“We made out under the dock.” Tony said slyly and Sam whistled under his breath. “Sand was warm and the water was cold and he didn’t believe in wearing a shirt so it was just a whole lotta golden skin everywhere. Plus he had this sexy little East Coast accent, something in New York. He’d get all flustered and it would get thick and just--” that was a little too true for comfort and Tony forced out a teasing whistle. “All good things.” 

“Wait.” Clint grabbed at Tony’s leg. “Wait, lover boy was a virgin? If he got all flustered when you’d kiss then--” 

“What can I say, those good boys love me!” Tony laughed out loud and everyone else joined in. 

“Even though for a good boy, he sure kissed real nice.” Tony admitted. “Never met anyone who kissed half as good as he did, and I’ve spent a whole lotta time kissin’ a whole lotta people. He was the best.” 

“The best?” Bucky said skeptically, and Tony’s smile edged towards sad as he repeated,  “Never kissed anyone like that before, and never gonna kiss anyone else like him again. I swear.” 

***************

“Oh my gosh, he was sweet.” Steve sighed a little. “Almost ready to turn nineteen, and he was handsome enough to be a model but then had these dark brown eyes that could get just about anything out of me. Bambi eyes, you know?”

“Just about anything?” Pepper’s pretty lips parted in surprise. “Out of you?” 

“Well not everything.” Steve glanced around the table, from Natasha’s bored expression to Scott’s wide eyed interest. “But there’s nothing more romantic than summer nights, right? Walking under the stars and being on the pier as the sun goes down?” 

“That sounds wonderful, and I absolutely hate that romantic nonsense.” Carol declared. “Tell us more. Did he spend a lot of money on you? That’s real love, when they buy you things.” 

“Preach.” Pepper reached over and high fived Carol. “So Steve? Lots of presents?” 

“He bought me lemonade every day and then we would share it while we wandered along the boardwalk.” Steve said wistfully. “Cotton candy at the Fourth of July fair. I didn't need presents, it was just nice to be with him. He got all friendly wanting to hold my hand and he’s the first boy I ever kissed and it was amazing.” 

“Sounds like a drag.” Natasha fake yawned into her hand and when Pepper sent her a look, she shrugged, “What? It sounds too pure for me. Practically prissy. Call me when the story gets good.” 

“Ignore her.” Thor decided. “Tell me more. Where is he now?” 

*************

“Could he get me a friend?” Clint asked eagerly. “I need someone to kiss.” 

“No one wants to kiss you.” Valkyrie said flatly. “So what Tony? You kissed this guy and then-- I mean, did he make you work for it? Give it up like it was going out of style? What?” 

“He got all sortsa friendly down in the sand.” Vaguely, but meaningful, Tony waggling his eyebrows pointedly. “All sortsa super friendly, alright? Didn’t take much at all. Those summer nights, you guys. Just ice cream, romance and gettin’ lucky. Easiest thing in the world to get lost in all that, over and over.” 

“And over and over and over!” Bucky hollered. “YES, Tony! Was he any good?” 

“I told you he’s the best kisser I ever had.” Tony objected and Clint countered, “Well yeah, but just cos someone kisses like they know what they’re doin’ don’t mean they actually know. Remember the Bruce debacle?”

“He says debacle like he knows what it means.” Sam tossed a pebble at Clint. “He’s got a point, Tony. Bruce walks around kissin’ like he’s tryna fuck you right then and there but you said when you tried to get friendly, he turned you down.” 

“Eh, maybe I’m not his type.” Tony hedged and Bucky argued, “Nah Tony’s everyone’s type. S’just that Bruce is one’a them that only likes kissing but doesn’t like sex, you know?” 

“That just doesn’t seem right at all.” Valkyrie declared. “We call the guy the Hulk for a reason, a damn waste to not use all them inches  for the greater good.” 

“The greater good--” Bucky snorted soda out of his nose and spluttered a few times. “Damn Val, warn a guy before you say something like that!” 

“Anyway.” she rolled her eyes and turned back to Tony. “Alright, so you got lucky with the guy all summer, he was hot and made you feel all shivery and shit. What then? What happened?” 

“It got cold.” Tony tried to shrug as if it didn’t matter but Bucky tipped his head and frowned when he saw a flicker of sadness across Tony’s face. “And summer romances, they gotta end at some point. It got cold, he went back to New York, end of story.” 

“End of story.” Sam repeated. “You don’t call him or anything?” 

“Tony Stark doesn’t do long distance.” Tony cocked an eyebrow like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Summer fling, don’t mean a thing. I told him we’d still be friends, maybe if he ever came back this way then we could do it all again. That was it.” 

*************

“He told me he’d call and that he wanted to see me at Christmas and try and be together next summer.” Steve sighed, and next to him, Scott sighed as if it were his heart breaking. “Then he told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him, and we promised to never forget each other. That was it.” 

“That was it?” Pepper gathered up her lunch trash and the rest of the table stood to start heading back inside. “You spend all summer with him, fall in love, and the guy didn’t even lay a finger on you?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Steve shrugged, a hand to his stomach as it twisted uncomfortably all over again. Tony must hate me now, oh my gosh. “He was a perfect gentleman and saying I love you was enough. We didn’t need to do-- to do everything else.” 

“Sounds fake.” Carol decided, jumping up onto a table so she could climb onto Thor’s back and get a ride to class. “I don’t see how anyone would spend a summer with a boy who looks like you and not be climbing into your pants.”

“You aren’t ever going to see him again?” Thor wrapped one big hand around Carol’s calf to hold her steady, then hooked his other arm around Steve’s shoulders and clicked his tongue in sympathy. “Didn’t you exchange addresses or phone numbers or anything?” 

“I gave him my number in New York.” Steve’s blue eyes dimmed in distress. “But then my folks decided to stay here and we moved our belongings with a service and never actually went back to the East Coast.” 

“So he thinks you gave him a wrong number?” Natasha cut in. “Wow. He probably hates you now.” 

“He probably does.” Steve sounded so miserable Natasha actually felt bad for her comment, and cursed under her breath before awkwardly comforting, “Well i suppose he probably thinks he wrote it down wrong.. I mean maybe he doesn’t hate you?”

“What was his name?” Carol asked from Thor’s back, peering down at Steve curiously. “Was he local? This isn’t that big of a town, we might recognize the name if he’s one’a them tourists that have a summer home here or whatever. If he comes back every summer, maybe we could help you track him down.” 

“I suppose it can’t hurt.” Steve smoothed his khakis again. “His name was Tony. Tony Stark.”

“TONY STARK—“ Thor stumbled to a stop and and nearly face planted, and Carol screamed as she catapulted over the blond’s shoulders and into the bushes.

“WELL!” Tasha said loudly, smacking Thor’s midsection so he wouldn’t say anything else. “Steve, I think your summer love sounds um— sounds—“

“Peachy keen!” Pepper interrupted. “Just absolutely peachy keen!”

“And you know.” Natasha bared her teeth in a fake smile. “If you believe in true love and um, miracles, I’m sure you’ll see your Prince Charming again.”

“Do you really think so?” Steve absolutely lit up, blue eyes sparkling. “Thor, do you think so?”

“Ummmm.” Thor glanced at the girls helplessly, then reached and hauled Carol from the bushes, brushing the leaves from her hair. “I… I think we should get to class, Steve. Let’s worry about Prince Charming another day.”

Thor hurried Steve away, sending a concerned look over his shoulder as they went, and Carol whirled around on Natasha immediately, nearly screeching, “Tasha! Prissy McGee’s Prince Charming was Tony?? Weren’t you two just playing tonsil tennis and doing the dance with no pants?”

“Oh god, Carol!” Pepper gagged. “Don’t say it like that!”

“Whatever Tony and I were doing was neither tennis nor dancing because both of those things require good hands and stamina and Tony Stark has exactly none of either.” Natasha scoffed. “A Grabby Quickfire is all he is. Steve is welcome to him. I certainly won’t miss those three minutes of grunting and groaning and cleaning up the mess after.”

Pepper sneezed a laugh into her compact and then cursed when the powder flew into her nose. “Oh damn it Tasha. Seriously, though. How the heck does that happen, and what are you going to do about it?”

“What am I going to do about it?” Natasha snatched Peppers compact and carefully reapplied a thick layer of bright red lipstick. “I’m going to make sure our new friend doesn’t get anywhere near Tony for the next week and then re-Introduce them at the pep rally on Saturday. Nothing like a spontaneous reunion to keep things interesting, right?” 

“That seems harsh.” Carol ripped the wrapper off a lollipop and shoved it in her mouth. “Gonna mess Steve up real bad to see how Tony really is.”

“Well, he won’t be the first to be heartbroken, will he?” Natasha clicked the compact shut and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Let’s go ladies.”

*************

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE CHAPTER! (I love approximately 120931928 things about this AU and I can’t wait to scream about it with you guys!) 

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@ships-galore @ceealaina @izziebladez @cwar1864 @hausoffro @lookuplaughing @tonystarkisanangel @multishippinglife @girlnic @iam93percentstardust @water-colouredmemories @paranormalmoonlight5 @igotloki @moosette05 @wayward-student-philosopher @kaz-brekkers-gloves @atomicfandombomb @desitonystark @1fuckingshitup69 @agentlokii @here-for-your-bullshit @livewire28 @flowers-and-honey @bluedreamdino @blackreaders-assemble @pidgist

#ncts fics #stony #grease au #steve rogers #tony stark #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #pepper potts #thor #carol danvers #clint barton #sam wilson #valkyrie #t-birds #pink ladies

[grimelords]

My March playlist is finished! This one is slightly more diverse than usual, swinging all the way from vibraphone jazz to Bhad Bhabie to black metal so I’ve taken the liberty of actually sequencing it properly for you. So if you’ve got 3 hours you can listen to this straight through and be taken for a hell of a ride. No matter what you like I’m sure you’ll find something in here that you love.

Tahiti - Milt Jackson: For an unknown reason I had a big jazz vibraphone phase this month and when you're talking jazz vibraphone you're talking the Wizard Of The Vibes himself, Milt Jackson. I feel insane even having an opinion on this but it's a shame that some of the best vibraphone performances were made at a time when the actual recording technology wasn't really there, they all have this very thin quality that I think misses a lot of the great character of the instrument.

Detour - Bill Le Sage: Like compare this from 1971 to Wizard Of The Vibes from 1952, the sounds is miles warmer and gives so much more of the full range and detail of the instrument. I also listened to this song five times in a row when I first heard it, the central refrain is just so fuckin good. Like I said, big vibes vibe and who knows why.

Blowin' The Blues Away - Buddy Rich And His Sextet: Superhuman playing aside, it's unbelievable how good these drums sound. The whole first minute just feels like a tour of each specific drum and I absolutely revel in it. I feel like flute and vibes is a relatively rare combo so it's extremely nice to hear Sam Most and Mike Manieri go ham in tandem.

Yama Yama - Yamasuki Singers: A friend sent me this song that he's had stuck in his head for ten years ever since it was in a beer ad from the days when beer ads were incredible strange for complicated legal reasons about not showing people enjoying the product or something https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfkh0OojxY and this incredible song is apparently from a 1971 French concept album where a couple of guys wrote a bunch of psychedelic songs in Japanese for an unknown reason that later became a massive drum and bass breaks album, and one of the guys was Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk's dad! Music is crazy.

Alfonso Muskedunder - Todd Terje: I'm starting a petition to get Todd Terje to write the soundtrack for the next Mario Kart. I absolutely love this song and this whole album because it's so joyful and strange and it just sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. He seem to truly operate in a world entirely of his own.

Pala - Roland Tings: I love this song. It's like he wrote it with normal sounds and then went back and replaced every instrument with the party version. This song hands you a coconut and says welcome to the island where bad vibes are punishable by firing squad.

Keygen 13 - Haze Edit - Dubmood: There's a fucking album of keygen music on spotify and it's absolutely great and so good that someone's doing the work to recognize the value of the music this extremely weird scene produced and preserve it. If you don't know, back in the day when you pirated photoshop or whatever, you would download a license key generator which was a program made by extreme nerds who had cracked the license key algorithm to give you a fake one, and for unknown reasons they would make the keygen program play original chiptune music that someone in their nerd crew would compose. Who knows why but god bless them.

My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Remix) - Feist: The very concept of a Boys Noize remix of My Moon My Man is hilarious and it turns out it sounds absolutely amazing as well. Two great tastes that taste great together.

Low Blows - Meg Mac: I had a big Meg Mac phase this month too, listened to her album a lot and it's extremely solid. Great timing too cause her new one comes out in a month or so too. I really am excited to hear her next album because she's so good but I've always got this feeling that she hasn't reached her full potential yet, she's only going to get a million times better in an album or two.

Patience - Tame Impala: I love that the cover of this single is a pic of congas because it feels like that's the central thesis here. Kevin Parker bought some congas and is making disco Tame Impala now and I really couldn't be happier about it.

Unconditional (feat. Kitten) - Touch Sensitive: I love a 90s throwback done with love. There's nothing cynical or ironic about this it's just fun as hell!

Last Hurrah - Bebe Rexha: Get a fucking load of this Bebe Rexha song that interpolates Buy U A Drank by T-Pain for the chorus! It's a testament to how good that song is that she's using the verse melody as the chorus. T-Pain will quite literally never get the respect he deserves. Also this song goes for 2.5 minutes. There's something happening where pop songwriting is getting more and more compact, completely trimming the fat and ornamentation and it's very interesting.

Hi Bich - Bad Bhabie: Also I'm fully six months late on Hi Bich but I'm of the opinion that it's extremely fucking good. A perfect little reaction gif of a song and it only goes for 1m45!

Friends - Flume: I'm doubling down on my thesis about emo rap from last month but this song literally sounds like a Flume remix of a Hawthorne Heights song. The whole melody of it, the overlapping yelled/clean vocals. The lyrics obviously. I don't know it's just very odd how close it is. A sort of emo trojan horse to trick people into thinking The Used are cool again. 

How To Build A Relationship (feat. JPEGMAFIA) - Flume: I've been meaning to check out JPEGMAFIA (AKA Buttermilk Jesus AKA DJ Half-Court Violation AKA Lil' World Cup) for a while but this is the song that convinced me. There's just so much to digest in this. Every line is gold and delivered with massive conviction even when he realises it's total nonsense like 'dont call me unless I gave you my number'.

Bells & Circles (feat. Iggy Pop) - Underworld: Underworld alive 2019?? I love this song becuase Iggy Pop has been riding a fine line between punk provocateur and old man yells at cloud for a while now and this song is the perfect mix of both. You can't hijack airplanes and redirect them to cuba anymore and as a result it's over for liberal democracies. Just yelling about air travel for six minutes and it's good.

Guns Blazing (Drums Of Death Pt. 1) - UNKLE: This beat is some of my favourite DJ Shadow work I think. The menacing organ bass throughout, and especially the distorted drum freakout near the end. It's just great all the way through.

Homo Deus IV - Deantoni Parks: Another Deantoni Parks track like I was raving about last month. This whole album is great and flows together as a single piece of work amazingly. I love the purposefully limited sample palette of each track forcing an evolving groove throughout. He absolutely wrings every bit of variation he can get out of every single sound he uses and once you get into the groove of it it's absolutely mind blowing.

Boredom - The Drones: I love that The Drones can write a song about joining ISIS that's also a lot of fun. Spelling out radicalization in a way anyone can understand and sympathise with and then switching it in the second verse to spell out how we got into this situation anyway. 

Loinclothing - Hunters And Collectors: I love how much this song sounds like a voodoo celebration in christian hell.

The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died - Queens Of The Stone Age: There's a good bit on the live dvd they put out after Lullabies To Paralyze where they play this song and they say it was supposed to be on the album but somebody stole the master recordings from the studio, which is an incredible and brazen crime. Then when they put it out on Era Vulgaris as a bonus track Josh Homme said in an interview "The tapes got lost. Actually, they were just at another studio, but we falsely accused everyone in the world of theft" which is extremely funny. This is really one of their best songs and I sort of really with it had been on Lullabies because it fits perfectly between The Blood Is Love and Someone's In The Wolf type of vibes, I love how it just kind of keeps shifting ideas and riffs throughout. An absolute jam overflowing with ideas.

10AM Automatic - The Black Keys: This song is an all time great in my opinion. It's so straightforward and so effective. I wonder if we'll get a blues rock revival ever or if Jack White still being alive and bad is souring everyone on that idea. This song also has one of my favourite guitar sounds in history I think - the outrageously huge sounding solo that comes out of nowhere and swallows up the rest of the mix like a swirling black hole near the end.

Gamma Knife - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: I've never gotten much into King Gizzard and because of their one million albums already it's hard to know where to start but I've been listening to Nonagon Infinity a bit and it's great, it's just good old fashioned 70s prog jams front to back.

Gina Works At Hearts - DZ Deathrays: I absolutely love this song and I absolutely love the second guitar sound in the chorus of this song that sounds like it's made out of thin steel.

Black Brick - Deafheaven: When I saw Deafheaven the other month I was right up the front and it was a life changingly great experience AND they played this new song live for the first time before it went up everywhere like three hours later which was very exciting to be given a sclusie like that. After they finished a guy behind me whispered to his friend "Slayer..." which was very funny to me.

Gemini - Elder: I found this band because one of my Spotify Daily Mixes was all stoner metal for a while, which is a good genre to see all lined up because it'll have Weedeater, Bongripper AND Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats right there in a row for you. Anyway this album is extremely good, the very best kind of stoner metal where it's groovy and fun and has big meaty riffs and ripping big solos and it's extremely easy to listen to three times in a row.

The Paradise Gallows - Inter Arma: My big obsession the past little while has been Inter Arma ever since Stereogum posted The Atavist's Meridian from their new album. It is just so fucking good and I can't believe I've never heard of them before. You know when you find out about an amazing band and then you find out they've been around for nearly ten years and you can't believe everyone in your life has been selfishly hiding them from you?

The Atavist's Meridian - Inter Arma: I think a big part of my enjoyment of this band has also been that I discovered them at the same time as I'm listening to an audiobook of the complete Conan The Barbarian omnibus so I'm very much in the brain space for music that sounds like it would be nice to swing an axe to.

Untoward Evocation - Impetuous Ritual: I love how halfway through this kind of just turns into a big swirling mist of dark sounds. It feels so formless and dark that it could just shake apart and dissipate at any moment and you'd look down to realise your skin is gone.

Eagle On A Pole - Conor Oberst: from Genius: 'In an interview with MTV news, Oberst stated “We were on the bus one day and a friend of ours that travels with us and works for the band kind of came out from the back of the bus and said that first line: ‘Saw an eagle on a pole… I think it was an eagle.’ And then this guy Simon Joyner, who is a great songwriter from Omaha and one of my great friends, he was on tour with us and sitting there and he was like, ‘You know, that’s a great name for a song.’ We kind of had a contest where he wrote a song with that first line, and [then] I did, and a couple of our other friends. We kind of all played them for each other. Simon’s is better than mine, but it is a good line to start a song.” Another version–Mystic Valley Band drummer Jason Boesel’s interpretation–is on the next album, Outer South.' The idea that such a good song has such a braindead origin only makes me love it more.

Lake Marie - John Prine: When I saw John Prine the other month he played this song that I had never heard before and I had to look it up after and now I'm completely obsessed with it. It feels like falling asleep during a movie and missing a critical plot point so the rest doesn't make sense when you wake up but is thrilling nonetheless. Also he absolutely screamed "SHADOWS!!!" when he played it which was a fucking cool thing to see a 72 year old man do.

Little White Dove - Jenny Lewis: The drums on this whole album are absolutely huge for some reason and I love it. My favourite recent sound is in the first chorus where there's a funny little pitch correction noise as she sings 'dove'. It's very strange and very very good.

Locked Up - The Ocean Party: I only found out The Ocean Party existed as they announced their farewell show this month which is a real shame but I'm glad I got to hear of them at all because they're very good. A very good song about that feeling we all know and love: driving for a long long time.

Plain & Sane & Simple Melody - Ted Lucas: I found out about this song from Emma Ruth Rundle's Amoeba Records video and she makes a good point about this whole album sounding like something's gone wrong and it got accidentally pitched down slightly in the recording process. It's unclear if that's what happened or that's just how he sounds but it adds a very softly spooky undercurrent to a very nice song.​ 

listen here

#playlists

[playunderground]

Introducing OVERSOUL: An Interview with Derrick Saladino

Last month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Derrick Saladino to talk about his brand, OVERSOUL. When he pitched OVERSOUL to me in his initial email, he described it as “a lifestyle brand created from identity crisis,” and that “counterculture/subcultures like anime, gamer, emo-punk, euro-techno, and underground hiphop/b-boy culture heavily influence the brand’s creative direction.” I stared hard at the first two influences, and then stared not-as-hard at the rest of the influences, wondering how these various subcultures could overlap.

My brain being comprised of worms and dirt, I assumed that the anime and gamer influences meant that the designs were going to look like Bart Drinking Lean or Sasuke Wearing Supreme. (In other words, a caricature of anime-inspired Instagram ad streetwear.) This assumption changed quickly after taking a look at OVERSOUL’s site. Their first collection, ISEKAI, is comprised of three pieces. The logo tee and hoodie both look great, but the third piece was what really caught my attention: it’s a button-down tee adorned with daggers. At a glance, it looks nothing like anime- or gaming-inspired clothing. This was the point at which I snapped out of my irony-poisoned haze; the world of memeified, ironic-but-not-quite-ironic hentai tees and Goku Smoking Weed edits had calcified my expectations of what forms of inspiration a brand could and couldn’t pull.

It makes sense in the context of the rest of his influences and the ethos that he operates under – to get ahead of myself for a second, Derrick had this to say of his interest in various countercultures:

"When people express their passions or life to a certain degree, it just pulls me in. It’s like, ‘Okay, I don’t know what the fuck it is, but show me. Let me indulge.’ That’s really how I get into things."

In talking to Derrick, on and off the record, I saw a talented designer who was unapologetic about what he was interested in and passionate about. He’s also a huge geek that runs a bi-weekly Smash tournament at a local nightclub.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

"Okay, wait, first and foremost, my name is Derrick Saladino and I am a fucking gamer. Before being a designer or anything, I am a fucking gamer. "

Daniel: What is OVERSOUL? 

Derrick: OVERSOUL is about identity crisis. It’s my experience dealing with that personally. Growing up, I never really fit in to particular popular groups. Every time I would attempt to make new friends, I would stumble upon the randomest shit: anime culture, gamer culture, I’d end up becoming friends with a lot of emo-punk kids, techno. Nothing that I fell into was mainstream, popular culture. It was a lot to do with being lonely and trying to make friends. With OVERSOUL, thinking about all that kind of shit, dealing with identity crisis – obviously there’s a lot of people who’ve been through that – I want to create a new identity or community of people who share similar values and, you know, take pride in it? 

I mean, even the name, OVERSOUL, I ripped the word from this really old anime that I used to watch growing up, Shaman King.

Shaman King? What the hell, like 4Kids shit?

Yeah. That wasn’t the first anime that I ever watched, but it was something that I was really into. From being like 12 to even later in my high school, I just loved it. The concept was so cool – taking a soul and imbuing it in an object to make it powerful. It just looked fuckin’ sick. When people wear my clothes, I want them to feel empowered. That’s how I want people to see it. Soul being clothing, putting it on yourself, there you go.

Spirit Integration is, I don’t think the tagline to the brand, but it’s also part of it. Spirit Integration is mind, body, and spirit, and for anyone into the spiritual side of life, that’s what makes us. Our thoughts and mind and DNA – that makes us who we are.

When I read the description on your site, I noted that you referred to OVERSOUL as not just a startup streetwear thing or a brand, but a conceptual design experience. What does this encompass, and why did you pick this specific wording?

None of the stuff I make or have made in the past is very conventional. It’s been pretty avant-garde, I would say. I’ll have an idea, and regardless of whatever trend is going on right now, I just fucking do it. When I make clothes, I’m not making clothes for the public, really. My mentality is more like, “You know what would be sick in a game? If the costume looked like this.” That’s why I say it’s a conceptual design experience.

Has being involved in the industry and working behind the scenes affected how you understand your own brand after launching? What about how you understand customers and other brands, now that you know what the design process is like?

First-off, let me just back up and go over a history of what I did before OVERSOUL. In high school, I made clothing because I hated what everyone else was wearing. This was 2011-2013. During that time, that’s when I had a brand and brands like Obey, Diamond Supply, and The Hundreds – literally peak Tumblr hypebeast, Zumiez, starter pack shit – were around. I looked around at everyone else and was like, “I can’t click that, it’s not resonating with me.”  I had two other brands after that, and then came OVERSOUL. So I have this history of kind of knowing the market, even being a consumer, and evolving as a businessman and designer. I don’t think anything has changed. I think I’ve always stayed true to doing my own shit, rather than trying to compete with everybody else. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll notice what other designers are doing and some things I’ll take note of or inspo from but I hardly think about other people, to be honest. I respect everyone’s hustle, I just can’t be doing the same shit.

Give me your top 3 video game fits.

Top 3, oh my god. Snake from Metal Gear Solid V – very techwear, utility as fuck. My previous brand before this was techwear, and I had to stop it because techwear is so hard to sell. 

I’m really into draping fashion. Cloud, Final Fantasy VII, it was the movie Advent Children – you play Smash, right? There’s two costumes in there: the black, and like this, not really skirt, but it covers up somewhat? All-black, huge sash going on, it reminded me of Yohji Yamamoto.

Something that I’m going to make in the future is inspired by Naoto from Blazblue. His outfit, I looked at it and I was like, “Yo, this could be fucking, like Chrome Hearts, like what the fuck? I’m just gonna abuse this character design, it looks amazing.” I think that fashion right now, what really gets people’s attention on social media, is just some crazy shit, I don’t mean dumb shit, but like, just has to be very bold, and I think that’s what Naoto’s character design is. His pants have this huge cross on them. I think that’s one of the most crazy things I’ve seen in awhile.

Let’s talk about Anime-den! It’s this thing that we started roughly 5 months ago. One of my best friends here, he actually works at Fortune [Sound Club, a nightclub in Chinatown], and he’s a music producer. We really bonded over clothes, anime and gaming, and we had this idea – I think we were just high as fuck one day – and I’m like, “Yo, you know what would be fucking dope? If we brought weeb shit into the club.” I think he was just joking around, but he was like, “That would be really fun to set up, we can do it.” 

[Weeb being short for weaboo, a pejorative term referring to those obsessed with Japanese culture to the point of fetishization and idolization. It’s been ‘reclaimed’ by some fans of anime, used ironically as a form of self-deprecation.]

So, the next day happens, we’re talking, and he asks me, “Do you actually wanna do it?”, taking it seriously. I’m astonished. I was fucking joking, you know? We were just some high guys. He pitches the idea to Fortune and they approve it. At this point, we’re like, “Okay, we gotta actually invest all our effort into this,” because we’re actually gonna do something that I personally haven’t seen anybody do before – bringing a game into a club, anime into the club.

It’s really cool. Just yesterday, the commentator from Vancouver Street Battle came to Anime-den. Pride? He commentated for Battle of BC 3 and Pinnacle. He has ties with Animebae, too. [Animebae is a local anime-inspired startup streetwear brand.] Who would’ve thought that this guy would come through? And he brought his friends. He was telling us that what we’re doing is sick, and hearing this from a guy of that calibre in the gaming or Smash community, it really shook us. We’re actually bringing in people who play the game seriously here. 

How has setting it in a club made it different from other tournaments that you’ve been to? How does the dynamic change?

It’s a little different because when it comes to actual competitive events, people have a different mentality when they enter. They’re there to win and they practice hard for it. As for Anime-den, it’s the total opposite. It’s very casual, we’re all just drinking, blazing, whatever. It’s just the environment where, you know, dim light in a club, there’s music going on in the back –I guess to some gamers it can seem distracting? But I think people, they don’t care. They just play. They’re just there to have fun. Totally different dynamic from an actual event. 

I think that the purpose of Anime-den is to bring people together. That’s literally what Anime-den is for.

Yeah, I just noted here that I think it’s consistent with your brand, in that you’re translating the intangibility of these digital spaces like anime and gaming that people bond over, and you’re putting it into a physical space and letting people actually further develop what these subcultures would look like in person. Like, when you think of anime or gaming in real life you think of Anime Expo or cosplaying or some shit – and that’s fine, people have fun with that [Editor’s note – I think it’s fun!] – but it’s not the only mode of expression. With events like this, I think it’s cool that you’re saying, “If you’re a gamer, there’s another avenue for you. You don’t have to dress up or anything…”

I mean, walking in today and meeting you, you wouldn’t have gotten the idea that I was super into anime or gaming. I just look like a regular dude, right? And my clothing gets inspired by it, but I don’t really look like I’m cut from the legit anime cloth. Choosing these lifestyles and putting it into this real aspect, I think it can appeal to everybody. People tend to judge a lot of things, but once you step into the Anime-den room, whatever perspective you have about anime to begin with, I’m pretty sure that changes. Man, the crowd, they look all the same as you do too. We’re all normal people, we just like cool shit.

I think we should talk about ISEKAI.

OVERSOUL’s first small collection was ISEKAI. Translated to English, it would be ‘a better world,’ and I named it that based off of the anime genre, isekai. When you watch these sort of things, it’s usually someone going to another world. For my first collection, I wanted to welcome people to my world. That’s why I chose ISEKAI. One of the big graphics for the brand was the blade shirt. [On the site, it’s name is the Beginners Dagger Shirt.] My reference for that was playing MMORPGs. Typically, the first weapon you get [in MMORPGs] is a short sword or dagger. I wanted to be like, “This is the start of my brand.” This is your starter item. It’s funny, when I tell people this – they’re always like, “I never thought…”

[laughs] It’s really cool!

That’s why I went with ISEKAI. This is what my world is. One of OVERSOUL’s long-term goals is actually establishing ‘my world,’ if that makes sense? There’s only a handful of designers who have, like, captured a signature silhouette. For example, Rick Owens. When you see [a Rick Owens piece], you know it’s Rick Owens. If Zara did the same shit as Rick Owens, you would look at it and be like, “That’s Rick Owens.” You wouldn't call it Zara. That’s what I’m trying to establish for myself, to create that silhouette for myself eventually in the future.

What’s up next for OVERSOUL? 

Hmm, how should I put this... should I leak something? I’m going to drop an accessories part sometime soon. That’s in the design process right now, but I’m looking forward to doing my next big collection.

There’s this one song that I found in the past during my peak weeb days: Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi. A couple of months ago, they released the first official music video for it, after like 35 years, which is fucking insane – they should have done that a long time ago. I totally forgot about the song until I saw the music video. It’s something that I could relate to before and can relate to now, and I definitely want to build my next collection based on Plastic Love.

I think Plastic Love works really well because I’m surrounded by that scene in Vancouver – I work in Yaletown, and that’s the Yaletown lifestyle. It’s very lustful, but you don’t care. It’s all fake shit, really. That’s what Yaletown culture sorta is. I wouldn’t say that I’m like that, but I think that I could definitely expand on the topic through my brand. It’s not necessarily identity crisis, but the genre and artist kind of make it a subculture.

There’s also a few collabs on the way. One with a music group, another with a tattoo artist. What I really wanna do with the tattoo artist – he does anime tattoos – is ero art. Like, erotica. I think it’s a slept-on art style. It’s not generally for the public, per se, so I think that it would be something worth making. Super ecchi, maybe line art. I want it very exaggerated, even bondage-type shit. 

There’s a lot of things where people are like, “Oh, that’s too much!” But you know what, it could be sick! This is why I do things solely for myself. As long as I get a reaction from somebody, I’m happy with that. Wanting a response, not even approval, just being acknowledged, that this shit exists, it motivates me to keep doing what I do. 

I thought about doing graphic design shit; anime erotica art goes really well with techno. That kind of scene, the way that European style posters are, if you take the art and fuse them together, it works really well. I’m like, “How come no one has done this yet?” 

So you’re treating it more like art and not just a part of anime culture?

I view anime as its own respective art, and with art, there’s no rules, so I can just take this and this, and bang. At the end of the day, everybody wants to see new and cool things. People are always going to have their own subjective opinions, but as long as you have their attention, you’ve already won the battle. That’s the mentality that I carry, that everyone has their own opinions. 

Last question: what are your top 5 video games?

You know, I was trying to prepare for this interview – I didn’t even think this would come up.

[laughs] Come on, man.

I’m gonna put Super Smash Bros. Melee on there – I’ve been playing it for so long, it’s literally been bonded with my DNA. 

I don’t wanna say Ocarina of Time, because I think that it’s everyone’s favourite, but I mean, it’s still up there. It’s an all-time masterpiece, but I enjoyed Majora’s Mask a lot more. The concept of the world being blown up by the moon, in-game time, the moon crashes in like 3 days, and you keep going back in time, skipping whatever, I think it was so much fun, so yeah. 

I really like Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s very recent, but I have so many hours on it already, and I can’t stop. I haven’t felt this way about a game in a long time. It’s so replayable. Once you finish Ocarina of Time, you probably don’t touch it for a while. When you play FE, you’re like, okay, let’s do the next one. There’s three houses! Even after doing all three, it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna try again, but I’m gonna make this character like this.”

I grew up playing a lot of Roller Coaster Tycoon, unfortunately, but it’s fun. It’s not a typical gamer thing, but I love it. 

I might put Final Fantasy VII on there, too – when Aerith died, I real-life teared up, like, “Dude, no way, you’re really gonna kill her off like that? You gotta save her!”… and then she dies. I’m pretty sure after that happened, I didn’t touch the game for a week. I was actually emotionally harmed. I’m really into RPGs – being able to emotionally attach yourself to characters, I think it’s a beautiful thing. 

Any last things you wanna say?

I want my brand comparable to Chrome Hearts, MISBHV or Rude [Vogue]; when they have their own aesthetic and that’s what they do, that’s what I want to build as well. The idea that I take a lot of inspiration from gaming, it really shows.

Maybe I’m hungover, so I can’t really find the words right now, but for anyone trying to do fashion, music, whatever, as saturated as the community seems at the moment, you just have to get your foot in the door and start. Yeah, there’s competition, but to be honest, with all the people here who have brands, I’m friends with all of the people who make them, and I have no judgement about if their clothes are wack or not. Some things I don’t agree with, but everyone’s on the same hustle.

OVERSOUL’s ISEKAI collection is available now online at oversoul.online. 

#oversoul #anime #gaming

[believingbrook]

taakitz hanahaki, 1

“Idiots, the lot of them,” Taako snorts. Even though he and Kravitz are seated next to each other in front of a booth, both nursing margaritas (at Merle’s behest, and for his kind offer to pay for them), his legs are kicked up over Kravitz’s lap as he surveys the scene. A hearty slap from Magnus’s friend Carey rouses him, if only for just long enough to whine about how proud he is and how his little boy is all grown up now before passing out on his wife’s shoulder.

“They’re proud.” Kravitz takes a sip of his drink, a small smile creeping over his face as he pointedly does not look at Taako. “So are you, I think.”

Taako splutters. “I am not! I’m not — no, fuck that, I don’t give a shit about the kiddo.”

“That’s why you give him free lessons, then.”

Taako gives a haughty sniff, leaning back against the cushioned seat. “Money ain’t even a thing. Our old man’s fuckin’ rich or something, and ever since he so generously stole us off the streets we haven’t worried about — about, uh, funds and all that.”

“Yet you ask me to haggle down the price every single time we go shopping.”

“No, that’s different,” Taako says, kicking his legs higher on Kravitz’s lap. “That’s ‘cause the bullshit we find is all, uh, that’s fuckin’ marked up like hell and that’s just — it’s an injustice, you know? A slight against our Lady Liberty with her, fuckin’, torch and everything. You shouldn’t have to kick out a hundred dollars for a pair of boots, right? Unless they’ve touched, I dunno, the gross and smelly feet of Billy Armstrong or something.”

“But if money isn’t a concern for you, you could haggle it down yourself. What are the repercussions of another fifty dollars? It’s a good learning experience!”

“‘Cause I don’t wanna ask the old geezer for fifty extra bucks,” Taako sniffs, then brandishes his drink at Kravitz. “‘Sides, when am I ever gonna go shopping not with you? Lup and Barry go to the, fuckin’, Gap to get their clothes, and Magnus and Jules wouldn’t know a department store if it hit ‘em over their head and let’s be honest here, where is Merle gonna find his floral shirts in the middle of a Macy’s? He isn’t, that’s where.”

“You’re taking advantage of my silver tongue,” Kravitz grins.

“I — okay, yes.” Taako takes a long swig of his drink. “Maybe a little.”

“Maybe next time I should let you go on your own,” Kravitz teases. “See how you like trying to stack up against a Nordstrom’s representative in their ugly uniforms.”

“Absolutely not, I refuse to be seen in public shopping at Nordstroms without someone in at least a suit. Besides, their employees need to shape up and work somewhere else, because bright orange? Really? I wanna know what chump thought a bright orange uniform was a good idea and punch them in the face. Directly in the nose.”

“You know, you could wear the suit. I think you’d look good in one.”

“Fuck off.”

“No, really!”

Taako glares at him. “Perish the thought, bone boy, the day you catch Taako in something as boring as a suit is the day Lup’s finally snapped and burned my Maxi collection, which is to say the day both of us just beef it.”

“Oh, so you think my fashion taste is boring?” Kravitz gripes, faux-wounded, hand over his heart and everything. “Gosh, how could I ever recover from such a grievous insult?”

“Gosh,” Taako snorts. “I can’t believe you say shit like — like gosh and goodness.”

Kravitz shrugs, dropping the wounded front in favor of a grin. “It’s better than my accents, at least.”

Taako chokes on his drink, waving his hand in the air. “Do not even speak of those,” he says, laughing. “Those were awful, you were, what, twelve? Thinkin’ you could do an Australian accent!”

“Hey, my accents weren’t too bad! My Cockney was pretty good.”

“Your Cockney was the absolute worst of the lot,” Taako groans, as Kravitz knew he would. “We were in — fuckin’, middle school, and you were walkin’ around in a tiny tailored suit like pip pip cheerio in the most abominable accent. You’re — you know, you’re real lucky I decided to hang out with you, Kravitz. Got you back on the straight and narrow.”

Kravitz hums. “I think you butchered that first part, my man,” he says, dipping back into his fake accent.

Taako cuffs his ear. “One, that was an awful joke and you should be ashamed. Two, I refuse to be seen with you in public doing accents, I refuse. You do that again and I’m leaving, Taako is out.”

“Oh, are you really?” Kravitz drawls. “Now I think it’d be rather rude for you to just dip on me like that, dearest. Who do you expect to cover your drink?”

“Dearest,” Taako mimics, rolling his eyes behind his glass. “You’re disgusting.”

“And yet here you are,” Kravitz says, “ten years later.”

“It’s for the bargains. I wouldn’t get those discounts if I didn’t drag you with me.”

“I’m being used for my financial prowess,” Kravitz says mournfully. “You wound me, Taako Taaco. And here I was, thinking we were friends.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Taako slumps down farther in his seat, heels kicking against Kravitz’s thighs. “I thought we were too, and then you got on stage for, fuckin’ — who were you, Grant-someone-or-other, way back in middle school, and you did that awful accent, who was that?”

“Graintaire,” Kravitz supplies. He’d done an awful French accent. So bad that Taako threatened to Sharpie a mustache on his face and Lup had actually done it. “Les Miserables, Taako. We’ve only seen that movie about a hundred times.”

“It’s just jabber-jabber-revolution-thrust-die,” Taako says. “And that one guy spitting up petals, like, come on. The last time we watched I counted the number — the number of times they, uh, compared his little rose petals to the color of blood, and you know what I got?”

Thirty-seven, Kravitz thinks, right before Taako reports the same number. “Which is to say just, too many.”

“It was a sad scene, Taako.”

“Oh, sure, if you’re a hopeless romantic,” Taako snorts.

“You cried the first time we watched it.”

“I was fourteen!”

“And bawling like a child half your age,” Kravitz grins.

Taako takes a sip. “That was back when I thought something like he had could ever happen to me.”

Though Kravitz is used to his seemingly-random bursts of crippling honesty, this one still takes him off-guard. He knows better than to dig deeper, he knows better than to appear pitying, or react at all, really; but he can’t help himself from asking, “You don’t think you’ll find love eventually?”

“Yeah, perish the thought, I know,” Taako says, averting his gaze. He elbows Kravitz in the shoulder. “‘Specially for you, you, like — bleed romance novels and whatever. Trashy dime-a-dozen novels, I can’t believe you.”

“They were a dime back in the nineteenth century, Taako, they’re hardly so cheap now.”

“Which just means they’re an actual — an actual investment, which also means you should be ashamed. But um, Lup — she found Barry, and Mags has Jules, and once Merle wrapped up the whole thing with Dav’s dandelions they, uh...they put a ring on that and everything, and I figure there’s only so much love in the universe, y’know?” Taako takes a steady sip of his drink. His hands don’t even shake. Kravitz envies him, for a moment; that his hands don’t tremble, and don’t give him away.

Kravitz folds his own carefully beneath the table. “And even if that means ol’ Taako doesn’t get his slice of the apple pie, or cherry, or whatever flavor that pie is, then that’s fine by me. There are people who, uh, deserve it more, so.” Another sip. “I’m glad the universe is investing, fuckin’, flour and yeast and apple preserves or whatever in them.”

“I think you deserve it,” Kravitz says. He wants to reach for Taako’s hand, wants to fold those slim, cooking-calloused fingers in his own. He does not. “I don’t think there’s a finite amount of love, Taako. I think everyone loves and is loved in turn, and the lucky ones — well, for the lucky ones, it goes both ways.”

Taako watches him for a long, long time. Panic mounts in his throat — did he give himself away? Did he say too much? He’s at the point of spilling red wine all over his pants and that would be inconvenient, he just pressed these slacks yesterday, until Taako looks away. “Figures,” he snorts derisively. “You want a happy ending for everyone.”

“To the birthday boy!” Julia roars, so loudly that the whole bar turns and looks at her.

“It’s not my birthday, ma’am,” Angus says politely from his seat between her and her husband. At some point, when Kravitz wasn’t watching, he’d wedged himself between his adoptive parents. “I’m graduating tomorrow.”

“To the graduating birthday boy!”Julia says, equally as enthusiastic, and Angus rolls his eyes at the same time Kravitz does, because she knows it’s not Angus’s birthday but, at the point before weepy-drunkenness, this is her sense of humor. To both of their chagrin.

“To Angus,” Kravitz grins.

“To my magic boy,” Taako says, the picture of disgruntled complacency, and clicks his glass to Kravitz’s.

“So I am your magic boy!” a voice pipes from beneath their table. Or at least, Kravitz thinks it’s beneath their table until he looks over and catches two eyes peeping up at them. “You’re a dirty liar, sir!”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You certainly did!”

“Nothing you can prove in court, bubbeleh,” Taako says, and ruffles Angus’s hair. “You trip on the stage and I’m disowning you.”

“You’re not my legal guardian, sir. There’s nothing for you to disown.”

Taako places a hand on his chest. “As your uncle I am deeply wounded.”

“You’re full of horseshit, sir. Hello, Mr. Kravitz.”

“Hello, Angus,” Kravitz says. “Enjoying the celebration?”

“Very much so! Except I know it’s not a celebration because this is a bar and bars are for people over 21 years old, which I am not. Also I found the receipt for my cake in the trash can because Magnus forgot to take it out so I know there’s a real party for little boys tomorrow. Probably at your house.” Angus hops up on the seat next to him and peers at his drink. “Merle’s paying for those, isn’t he?”

“You’re an awful little boy, Agnes.”

“I learned from the best, sir.”

“Do at least act surprised,” Kravitz asks. “Magnus and Julia are very excited. They tell us you’ve never had a surprise birthday party before.”

“I think here is where I should say that that’s only because I’m too smart for people to pull surprises on me, but we both know that’s not true.” Kravitz’s heart twinges sympathetically — Angus’s grandfather could kindly be called distant, and the orphanage was understaffed at the best of times. “Anyway, I’m really looking forward to it! I think Julia is getting me a recording device that I can wear in my ear for whenever I need to be a sneaky little boy, and I’m pretty sure Magnus is getting me a duck.”

“Who knows, bubbeleh, this could be the year he gets you something else.”

“Oh no, it’s fine, I love them. I’ll add it to my collection. He gave my last one a little spyglass to look like me.” Angus pats Kravitz’s shoulder and hops down from the bench. “I’ll see you both tomorrow, I think. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Kravitz!”

“What about me?” Taako calls after Angus’s retreating back, then slumps back on the bench, looking distinctly miffed. Kravitz doesn’t bother muffling his chuckles in his sleeve.

“You’ve been thoroughly outwitted by a twelve year old boy.”

“You mean we have,” Taako snarks. “Joint planning effort, my dude.”

“You just sniped at Magnus and Jules until they let you cater.”

“I will not have my magic boy eating third-rate catering for his graduation party,” Taako sniffs. “That’s a disgrace to the Taako name.”

“They’re professionals, Taako. You’re not out of culinary school yet.”

“Yet I could cook any one of their asses under the table.”

Kravitz laughs, then clears his throat as it begins to itch. “I’m still waiting to see you cook off with Gordon Ramsay, you know.”

“Oh?” Taako cocks an eyebrow at him. “Who would your money be on, then?”

“If I didn’t care about winning? You.”

Taako yelps indignantly at him, sending him into further fits of laughter that break into coughs. The coughs don’t stop, and don’t stop, and his throat begins to prickle, tracing a line of embers up his throat.

He stumbles out from the table, waving off Taako’s worried inquiries, and hurries to the bathroom, one hand stuffed over his mouth. Gods, these fits always pick the least convenient times — thankfully he’s not often with Taako for one of these, but when he is, he always has to think on his feet to explain why he’s taking off in such a hurry. He’d never appreciated improv classes more than that moment in junior year when he’d sprinted out of a chemistry test to retch petals into his palm.

He locks himself in a stall and doubles over, stomach cramping. His frame shakes with coughs, as he struggles to tear a path through the bristling flowers rooted in his windpipe.

A lull, a thin opening and he slumps against the wall of the stall, spent. He tries to swallow and convulses, retching.

“Kravitz?”

Kravitz tries to warn him away and and regrets it immediately, on his knees as petals spill from his mouth, tickling along the top of his mouth and cutting at his lips. He clamps both hands over his mouth, trying to muffle the sound of his own choking and failing. He’s shaking already, and distantly fear grips him; it’s never been this bad before, he can count the petals in the dozens when in the beginning there was only one, a single fluttering petal he could catch in his hand before anyone saw, but this —

Footsteps approach his stall. “Krav, you okay?”

Panic lurches sharp in his stomach. “Fine — ” he gasps, fighting for air. “‘m fine — pneumonia — ”

“Again?” Taako asks, a touch of sympathy in his voice. Ten years ago Kravitz wouldn’t have recognized it but he does now, the sympathetic pain in his voice. He’d thought Taako unfeeling, back in junior high. “Jeez, Krav, your immune system’s really fucking you over, it’s been, what, three years now?”

“Just about,” he says, words catching painfully in his throat.

“Need anything?”

“Water,” he rasps, because he will, soon.

“Okay. Be right back.”

The door opens, and shuts, and Kravitz inhales carefully. When the petals stay stagnant, no tickling itch in his windpipe, he sits back against the stall, eyes fluttering closed. He needs to gather this up, all the petals, in the pocket he sewed just for this, but first he just — he needs a moment. His head is spinning and his heartbeat is pounding in his ears, but he narrows his focus to the slow drag of breath in his throat — in and out, in and out, a tempo of his own making, unravelled by his own heart.

He scrubs his mouth with the back of one shaking hand, sighs when it comes away streaked thinly with blood. He’s too drained for proper swearing.

Kravitz gathers the petals as best he can, careful not to miss any — doubtless the bar wouldn’t appreciate stumbling upon an explosion of petals — and tucks them in the inside pocket of his jacket just as the bathroom door opens again.

“Still in here?”

“Yeah,” Kravitz says and, patting his pocket to ensure the petals are securely out of sight, steps from the stall.

“You look like hell,” Taako says, and hands him a cup of water. “Shouldn’t you be, I dunno, takin’ meds for that or something?”

“Already am.” Kravitz knocks it all back in one go, eyes slipping shut at the relief in his throat. “Thanks.”

Taako takes the cup back, looking not quite at Kravitz’s eyes but down, at his lips. Kravitz has dreamed about this, granted, but under much different circumstances. “You’re shaking,” he says.

“Vomiting blood isn’t easy, you know,” Kravitz grins wryly. He tries to take a step forward and sways, head spinning. He braces himself on the sink. “Sorry, just give me a second — ”

“Here.” Taako slips an arm beneath his shoulder and tugs Kravitz close to him. “And don’t apologize for that, you idiot.”

The two of them slide back into their seats, their margaritas untouched where they were sitting. Kravitz sinks back into the cushions gratefully, letting his head fall back against the seat.

For a few moments there’s blissful silence. When Kravitz opens his eyes again he sees Taako watching him, a near-invisible note of concern in his gaze.

“Taako, I’m fine.”

Taako snorts, and the tension between them snaps. “Like hell you are.” He slides Kravitz’s drink closer to him. “You wanna go home?”

“No,” Kravitz says truthfully. “I can manage at least another hour, I think.”

Taako studies him for a beat, then shakes his head. “Lightweight. You always did knock out early.”

“Did not!”

“You absolutely did too, my man, do not give me that horseshit. You went to bed every night at eleven in freshman year.”

Kravitz pouts. “I was a freshman.”

“Yeah, but you were still you,” Taako says, and prods his chest. “Nerd.”

Maybe in a different world he’d take Taako’s hand, kiss the back of it. It’d make Taako laugh and splutter and turn him red all the way up to the tips of his ears.

Instead, here, in this world, Kravitz lets Taako’s finger fall from his chest — right above his heartbeat — without a word. And instead of a hundred other things, a would you like to get dinner with me tomorrow? or what time will you be home? or simply, I love you, Kravitz smiles and says, “Guilty as charged.”

They pass the next hour easily. It’s so easy to talk to Taako, and always has been, for Kravitz. The right questions and sympathy are rewarded with startlingly honest answers. Small things, like how his aunt’s roast turkey takes five hours to prepare and he’d made it for Lup, the day before her wedding, and complained to Kravitz the whole time because there was nothing for him to but sit and turn the roast; but big things too, like how neither Taako nor Lup can sleep in the dark, how they always curl back-to-back while napping, like how his gap teeth shine when he smiles and despite appearances he would do anything for the small family he’s crafted right in the heart of the city.

A few minutes before one he calls an Uber, and Taako walks him out into the brisk autumn evening. Taako’s face is the last he sees as he pulls away from the bar.

#hanahaki #taakitz #taako #kravitz #taz #tags to be added in later parts

[cerulean8looded]

25!!!!!!!!

okay that one i literally made bc i look like john, love just dance, and want to be loved but here we fuckin go

25. John being a just dance twitch streamer and all the boys being gay for it i mean youtubers au

so im thinking that all of them make WILDLY different content. lets start with the beta kids.

so john has a gaming channel, clearly, and he decides he wants to lose some weight in a fun way that also helps his channel, so he starts the just dance thing. other than that, he mostly plays things like minecraft, five nights at freddys, all your basic bitch stuff, along with a fair few horror games. he really likes minecraft and sims 4 though.

rose has a witchcraft channel. she practices witchcraft and makes videos about spells and sigils and crystals and all the other cool stuff that goes along with that. i dont know much about witchy stuff anymore, its been a while since i was into that stuff, so id have to do a bunch of research for her.

dave has two channels: irony channel and music channel. the ironic one is where he posts anything to do with sbahj, and just generally fucks about, does weird trends and stuff. he never shows his face on his music channel, never shares his name, and it’s all remixes, so no one hears his voice either.

jade has the most chaotic but pure channel. she does anything she feels like doing, from kids show reviews to “Look at this cool pumpkin i grew” to “heres my favourite gun”. she has no theme, and never plans to change this.

Trolls

aradia is similar to jade in chaotic energy, but she tends to stick to stuff like creepy antiques she finds, weird animal bones from the fields she just wanders about in and that kind of odd stuff. she also talks about dark conspiracy theories a bit.

tavros mostly focuses on animals; animal care, animal facts, how to spot animal illnesses, how to deal with hostile but injured animals in the wild, what to do if you see an animal you think might have rabies, all that kinda shit. theres always at least one animal in every video, whether its a ferret in his lap, a cat walking over him, a snake around his neck, a guinea pig on his shoulder, and so on.

sollux does a gaming and tech help channel. he plays any game that people claim is difficult and tends to beat them so fast people think he’s hacking. he slaves over every fnaf game to try to beat the custom night first. as for tech help, hes basically that guy who runs the channel on how to fix discontinued apple products.

i lost my fucking karkat paragraph, im furious. basic recap of what i lost: he does general content like dan howell and phil lester kinda, with a couple staple series, such as his rant series, where his followers give him a topic and he rants about it for about twenty minutes (after editing). he also does livestream versions which can sometimes last for several hours per rant.

nepeta does cosplay videos with whoever she can rope into helping her (usually terezi, vriska, equius, or feferi) plus a lot of fandom videos in general. she usually comes off really lighthearted in her videos, but she also makes a lot of important comments about fandom culture and shipping wars etc. on her second channel she does vlogs, which exposes her absolute gremlin side. these vlogs often feature things such as her climbing up a tree, getting stuck, and screaming until equius saves her.

kanaya does makeup and fashion advice videos, mostly with a vampire theme to them. occasionally she’ll do cosplay makeup too. her favourite videos to do are when her subscribers send in pictures of themselves and their closets, along with some general information on what they wont wear and all that, and she gives them advice on how to spruce up their look a little and declutter their clothes, etc. she likes feeling like shes making a difference to people.

terezi focuses on true crime mostly; cold cases, current cases, sometimes she runs through the process of solved cases. she prefers to do unsolved stuff, since it gives her the ability to talk about her own theories on it, and she does often get it right, but for particularly interesting cases she will do a video anyway. she also does a little bit on mental health and the reasons behind crimes and shit.

vriska is another kinda general youtuber. she does whatever the hell she wants, plus anything anyone says she cant do. she also lets some of nepetas fandom stuff leak into her content. no one really knows how she got so many subscribers. she also has the most merch out of all of them.

equius makes videos on whatever happens to be his current hyperfixation at that moment. hes the most inconsistent. one week hes picking apart the homosexual subtext in certain scenes of jaws, the next hes teaching you how to put together a microwave. he does a lot of lgbtq+ videos too; his most popular video is of him and nepeta and some others at pride and most peoples favourite part is nepeta racing around a small clearing with equius on her back while vriska cackles behind the camera

no one is really sure what gamzee actually does. his videos are all filmed on a phone camera and are never edited. he doesnt have an intro or an outro. sometimes it seems like he forgot to start filming until halfway through whatever he was talking about, but he never repeats the bits the camera missed. theres no theme, no clear goal, no one knows whats happening and theyre pretty sure hes high in every video. one time he posted a video that was over 48 hours of the phone just pointing at a wall, which appeared to be covered in blood just out of sight of the screen (as in you could see the edge of it but not the actual blood) and there appeared to be a hand sitting at the corner of the screen. everyone was fucking terrified for a while, but the next video posted to his account was karkat explaining that hed had a bit of a mental break and thrown a jar of jar at the wall (the “blood”) and that the hand was just a doll. hed taken out his phone to film a vent video, but promptly forgot about it, dropped it, and went to do something else. he finally remembered over two days later, posted it without thinking and called karkat. a few weeks later he started posting again like the whole thing never happened.

eridan’s content mostly focuses on harry potter and magic (which he definitely doesnt believe in because that would be ridiculous), but he makes a lot of environmental PSA videos about littering and pollution and stuff. in his fandom videos he comes across as just really excitable and doesnt seem like he cares about much else, but he really shows off his intelligence in PSA type videos. he also posts a lot of videos of him just talking about whatevers going on in his life, usually whenever he gets a new crush. his most popular video is the one he made right after seeing johns just dance streams for the first time, because he looked like he was about to cry or scream the whole time.

and feferi! her content mostly focuses on social and political issues. she talks out against “canceled”/purity culture a lot and tends to end up involved in discourse for it. shes that person in the middle of the argument whos literally only stating facts and saying that we shouldnt jump to unnecessary conclusions, but somehow ends up being accused of being jack the ripper or some shit for it. she isnt afraid to share her honest opinions and makes sure to remain as polite and level-headed as is humanly possible when responding to others.

i was gonna do the alpha kids and dancestors too and like share some plot and that kinda stuff but this is long as fuck, so we’re gonna stop here for now! feel free to request again for even more info dumping. also i just wanna say that i planned none of that gamzee stuff i had no idea what i was doing when i started that

#youtubers au #au summaries

[king--flvcko-blog]

A$AP Rocky Talks New Album, Under Armour Deal, and His Deep Love of Flowers

Our interview with A$AP Rocky was supposed to take place backstage after an A$AP Mob concert in Philly, in a quiet, empty room, but in the moment, Rocky had a better idea. “We need to capture this chaos right here,” he said, gesturing around his dressing room, still packed with Mob members, girls, security guards, other unidentified loiterers, and even (according to A$AP Ferg, anyway) a loose mouse. “Let's embrace the chaos,” Rocky suggested. “Rolling Stones in 1967, feel me?”

He took his spot in the middle of a leather couch, surrounded by his old friends from Harlem—Ferg, Nast, Ant, and Twelvyy—and started methodically breaking down a small mound of weed as he spoke in a post-concert rasp. Every so often, he'd tease me for asking so many questions. But some of them he didn't mind so much: GQ Style had collected them from a few of Rocky's notable friends and admirers, with a promise of bringing back answers.

The chaos Rakim Mayers attracts is a result of his charisma, which is raw and uncut. It is el puro, perhaps the purest of any star in pop culture—Hollywood, music, fashion, whatever. And given that Rocky's mom named him and his elder sister, Erika B. Mayers, after Eric B. & Rakim, it was only natural that a kid who seems to crank up the color saturation whenever he walks into a room would channel his God-given wattage into rap music. From the beginning, though, Rocky also established himself as a style innovator and made fashion an inextricable part of his music. In his breakout video, for “Peso,” he repped hard-edged, gothic-leaning streetwear like Black Scale, as well as more established avant-garde fashion like Rick Owens and Y3, while rapping, Raf Simons, Rick Owens usually what I'm dressed in. That was back in 2011, long before he cemented Simons's unlikely hip-hop-icon status with the song “Raf” this July. It's not a stretch to say Rocky is partially responsible for making European high fashion as much a part of hip-hop and pop culture as streetwear.

In the six years since he first appeared on YouTube, everything he's touched has taken on a sort of magical flyness. He's put out three successful solo albums; recorded hit songs like “L$D,” “Yamborghini High” with the A$AP Mob, and “Fuckin Problems” with Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and 2 Chainz; stole scenes in the surprise-hit indie film Dope, co-starring Shameik Moore; and launched a creative agency, called AWGE. Later this year, he'll appear in Anthony Mandler's Monsterand he'll begin a wide-ranging, long-term collaboration with Under Armour. He's become a rap star, a fashion godhead, a music mogul, an actor, a designer-entrepreneur-influencer—a true creative in universes where everyone calls themselves creatives.

Now, after two years spent racking up all those hyphens, he is ready to return to the first thing that made him: rap music. But things are a little different this time. In January 2015, Rocky's best friend, business partner, and mentor, A$AP Yams, passed away in bed at his Brooklyn apartment from an accidental prescription-drug overdose. Rocky was there the night of Yams's death and was among those who found him. A few months later, in May, Rocky released At.Long.Last.A$AP; on the album cover, Rocky's face bears Yams's signature purplish red birthmark. This new album will be Rocky's fourth, but his first ever made entirely without the guiding presence of Yams.

When we met in London for the GQ Style cover shoot, Rocky was deep in his work zone, trying to finish the record. He was keeping his phone turned off, more or less, so he could try to complete the LP before jumping to Milan for the Gucci runway show and then returning to the States for a long tour with the Mob. He's 29 now—he's seen a lot, and even his friends have questions about where he's been and where he's going next.

GQ Style: The first question comes from Mahershala Ali: “Considering you were named after Rakim, one of the greatest MCs of all time, what legendary MC would you name your child after?”

A$AP Rocky: Wow, that's a good one. Let me think on it.

You're punting on the first question?

Yeah, but only because it's so good.

All right, we'll come back to it. The second question comes from Dior designer Kris Van Assche. You may have heard of him.

Rocky: Dior boys.

A$AP Twelvyy: From Paris!

Kris asks, “What was a typical Friday or Saturday night out for you like when you were a teenager?”

A$AP Ferg: Fighting in clubs.

Rocky: Oh, you want me to tell them the Santos story?

Ferg: You love telling that story.

Rocky: All right, one time in Santos [Party House, a New York City nightclub], it was like 2008. We took the train from Harlem. I had on this Marc Jacobs shirt, these D&G pants—'cause I was wearing D&G back then—and Marc Jacobs sneakers. Ferg, you had on the black Acne pants, with the blue jean jacket, and Nast, you had the blue jean jacket with the seam, with the black Acne pants, and the black Timbs, with the Super glasses on, with the 'fro, 'cause you was on your Jay-Z shit, trying to wolf up. A lot of A$AP members were there that day. I'ma come clean, we was in the club, and A$AP Bari was trying to talk to some dude's girlfriend. Next thing you know, the dude got mad. He looked like some wrestling dude. He was big, with long hair. He's like, “What?!” to everybody. We was like, “Yo, chill,” but he kept going crazy. So [Harlem-based visual artist] Jay West put him in a headlock, I snuffed him, he fell, everybody kicked him, we all dispersed, we ran.

A$AP Nast: Let's talk about the Ferg punches.

Rocky: Don't forget about the Ferg punches! Ferg said, “Don't touch my friend!” Boom, boom, boom! [laughter]

Ferg: I did not say that.

Rocky: That shit was echoing through the man's body! When the dude got up, the first person he spot was me with the pink shirt on, so he just start charging, like a mad raging bull, and he grabbed my head. Now we on the motherfucking dance floor, fighting like females, pulling each other's hair. I'm biting this motherfucker's thumb and pinkie and shit, going crazy, snuffing him. This motherfucker must've been on mollies and liquor. Next thing you know, I just see feet running my way. Ferg came through. Nigga said, “Get off my friend!” Ferg was mad concerned. It was sincere. He was like, “Get off my friend!”

Ferg: I did not say that.

Rocky: So then, we all leave out the club. We outside. Your man, he was a manager of the club, so he come out, bugging out with his security guards. He throw ice at all of us and hops in a cab. We run down on the cab, take him out the cab, and start beating him up while we're screaming “A$AP!” So that's how everybody knew us back then. Next question.

What's your number one priority?

Right now, it's music. Last year was businesses and developing all our new artists. Playboi Carti went platinum. Smooky MarGielaa is on the rise. Twelvyy album came out. A$AP Ferg mixtape came out—he always got number ones and bangers. Nast, Addie, up next. Cozy Tapes Vol. 2 is out right now. Now it's all about me making music again.

What do you say to people who say that you're “more fashion than music”?

I can see why they think that sometimes. I really wanted to take time out to show people I was an entrepreneur. I'm a businessman—you gotta take me serious. I can't help that I look good doing it. But if you just look at my catalog from this year, everything I get on, I body. I'm selective about what I get on. I'm particular. I wasn't really featuring with other artists. But this year, I'm showing niggas stop playing me, stop sleeping on me. I'm the god of this shit.

So when we saw you in London recently, you were on a phone-off lockdown, making an album. What was the vibe—the starting point for the new album?

My new album is really about testing new sounds. People are scared to test new sounds, so they go with what's current 'cause it's the easy thing to do. The top 100 songs sound a certain way. People cater more to that because it's a bigger demographic behind that, or it's a guaranteed demographic behind that. I prefer to experiment and have my crowd grow with me and to reach new crowds. I don't just rap—I actually make music. That's why it takes time. These sonics represent me.

Did you go to London for the sound of London, or was it more just getting away so you could focus?

Both. London has a cool sound. I always record in London. But I needed to get away. London's my second home.

When do you want to put the album out?

ASAP—no pun intended.

This year?

Yes, sir.

Your travel schedule is intense. When you're always on the move, where's your center, or your home? Do you ever wake up in another hotel room and wonder, “Who am I?”

Fuck no. Sometimes I do wake up like, “Where the fuck am I?” But not “Who am I?” I'm the same nigga I was when I went to sleep.

You've had relationships with Dior and Gucci. You seem to have a personal relationship with Raf. How do you characterize those connections?

Sometimes it's business, and sometimes it's friendship. Raf had me flying out to Antwerp so I could smoke my weed and just catch a vibe with him back in 2012 and 2013. I've been looking at him and [Rick Owens's wife and muse] Michèle Lamy for advice. Michèle Lamy is like my fairy godmom.

What do you and Michèle talk about when it's not Paris Fashion Week double-kiss time?

Art. She's the reason I got all these diamonds in my mouth. She had hers since 1985. She puts me on. She tries to make me evolve as an artist. She encourages me to do more things outside of musical arts—more contemporary art. She taught me the difference between masters and Renaissance and contemporary and Pop art. It's been a journey. Raf, we talk about collections, we talk about his favorite scenes—what rave scenes inspired most of his career.

Do you talk with them about, like, feelings and personal stuff? Or is it mostly art and the industry?

Yeah, Michèle Lamy be hooking me up with all type of models—not all type of models, but her friends who she thinks is sweet. She says, “You need to meet her, she's a nice girl…,” and I go meet her. They either crazy or nice.

Here's a question from Raf Simons.

Oh, it's lit.

“Dear Rakim—”

Oh, that's my guy. That's the lord right there, big bro.

“If you could not do what you're doing now, what would you do? What's another life dream of yours?”

If I wasn't doing this, to be real with you, I'd probably be an interior decorator.

Nast: You could be a florist.

Rocky: Yeah, I could. I have such good taste. I love flowers. I think decor value and feng shui is important. If not, I'd be a video director or a film director. But my whole life, I just wanted to be a rapper. That was it.

The Balenciaga sneakers that you wore in our shoot: They're a little controversial, and I would like to know why you like them.

I seen those early, and I like them 'cause they remind me of a Raf Simons sneaker, and on top of that, those shits are fire—

A$AP Ant: Shit is trash—

Rocky: He's hating 'cause he got the fake Rick Owens Balenciaga shits. I don't fuck with them shits. I only fucks with the ones I got. I call 'em the Larry Davids, you feel me?

You've been wearing a lot of yellow recently—shoelaces, hoodies, et cetera. What's the deal?

You ask a lot of questions. I'm just preparing for a final test, that's all.

Okay, well, the next question is from Shameik Moore.

That's my son.

“What advice do you have for getting more creative with your personal style?”

Nast: Wear what suits you and not what's trendy.

Rocky: Yeah, but when we wear stuff that suits us and not what's trendy, it becomes a trend. So that might be confusing for people. I would just say that everybody's different. Everybody got different body shapes and whatnot, so I would say stick to what you know fits you best and what you feel comfortable in, even if it's not in style. Just wear whatever makes you feel cozy.

Nast: That's kind of what I just said.

Your creative group, AWGE: First of all, how do you pronounce it? Second of all, what is it?

Nast: That question we don't speak of.

Rocky: The first rule of AWGE is you never repeat what AWGE stands for. Second rule of AWGE is, whenever in doubt, refer to the first rule. So there you have it.

Is it not “A$AP Worldwide Global Enterprises”?

Nah. You on some bullshit. That's sacred.

What have you learned about leadership since the Mob's rise into the public consciousness?

Fellowship. Brotherhood. I try to manifest leadership into anything I do as an entrepreneur, as a businessman. But when I'm doing music, it's the element with the brothers. We all lead by example and lead each other, so I lead and follow, too, you know?

You just announced a new deal with Under Armour. Why Under Armour? And what can we expect?

People would assume, with me going into a business deal with a sports brand, that it would be all about designing or curating a line—making things more lit. But what I liked about Kevin Plank, the CEO of Under Armour, was that he had a vision. He gives, gives, gives. When you donate or you do charities, it's not about showing people “Look, I'm doing this.” I was in a shelter myself. And I know that when people be donating and shit, you ain't get no fly shit at Christmases and all that. You don't see no money. Pardon my French, but you don't see no money. So I really want to make a difference. So I got with Kevin and Under Armour so we could open up real rec centers with fly shit in them. Not hand-me-down toys and technology—new stuff. And programs for kids to learn to become entrepreneurs, designers, athletes. They can screen-print their own tees and sell 'em from the store, get that commission on it. I think it's smart. Those kids need laptops and phones today—that's their platform. So I want to do something that's really gonna make a difference, as opposed to fronting with the cameras like, “Ah, I'm doing this, doing that.” We gonna show and prove when we go and design uniforms. We're gonna start in New York, the tristate area, 'cause that's where I'm from. And then go to different junior high schools and high schools throughout the country.

But commerce being commerce, you're going to have to sell some stuff to fund those programs. So are you gonna design a line with Under Armour? A$AP Rocky sneakers?

I'm talking about giving away to schools. That's not selling, bro—you don't make any money off of that. What are you talking about? I want to facilitate ways for kids to get better education without calling it education, 'cause that shit sounds boring. I want to make a way for being smart to be cool. There's nothing wrong with being a thinker. Where I'm from, being smart has a negative connotation—that means you sold out, that means you're a geek. I'm just trying to say, “Fuck all that. This is the plan: You are the future, that other shit is the past, so let's make a better way.” And if I feel like designing some shit with Under Armour, I will.

Question from André 3000.

Oohhh, it's lit.

“What hidden talent do you have that only your parents or close people know?”

Twelvyy: He's good at playing Pokémon and shit. Yo, you see him with like 500 Pokémon cards.

Nast: He's the best at double-Dutching.

A hidden talent—something maybe only your mom knows.

Well, we might have to call my moms, then. [pauses to think] I display mostly all my talents. Right? I'm creative, intricate—angelic at moments. You gonna make me sound real conceited right now talking about myself. Why don't you tell me what it is?

Well, there's a second question from 3000: “What hobby or craft would you like to be doing that is completely outside music or fashion?”

I want to design furniture. Maybe a sofa. Or a bed.

Ferg: You did design one of your beds in the house.

Rocky: I know I did, but I want to sell my joints. That was just me testing.

Switching gears: What does God look like?

Everybody has a different God. I don't know if God is a female, male, or even in human form. I pray to somebody. Religion is deep. Everybody got a different God, but I just respect everybody for their beliefs. It is what it is. I'm more spiritual than anything. Because I find flaws and contradiction in a lot of religions, respectfully, and I just take the good out of all religions and try to practice to be a better person.

You pray every day?

Yes, I pray every day. I pray over cookies. I say my grace, straight up and down.

You've experienced loss in your family. A few times over the years, as far as I know, and then you guys as friends and collaborators and a crew experienced the loss of Yams. Do you feel like you've grieved, or did you just keep working?

Keep working. I'm not gonna lie. Because if we grieve it, it might take everything out of us. [long silence]

How'd you get the scar on your face?

When I was 15, I had a fight with some niggas in the Bronx, on Arthur Avenue. This older guy gun-butted me while we was fighting. He was trying to rob my Pelle Pelle jacket. I still kept it, though. It was bloody. My sister Erika bought me that for Easter. I wasn't about to give my shit up. Fuck outta here. If you've ever seen Jim Jones's “Certified Gangsters” video, he had it on in black. I had it in white with the colorful Easter P's on it.

All right, so we're back to where we started—the question from Mahershala Ali. “Considering you're named after Rakim, one of the greatest MCs of all time, what legendary MC would you name your child after?”

Twelvyy: Yambo?

Ferg: Yami's not a MC, though.

Twelvyy: What you mean?

Rocky: No, he was a singer, bro. He was an R&B singer. As far as rapper…I'd probably name my child Pharrell.

Ferg: I knew he was gonna say that.

#rakimworks. #q'd

[umusicians]

UM Interview: Bea Kadri

Lebanese singer-songwriter Bea Kadri has always had a love for music. Tackling topics of self-discovery, empowerment, and all matters of the heart, Bea has found her niche as an artist. Although her rise into a career as an artist was gradual, Bea’s love for music can be traced back to her days growing up in Beirut, Lebanon where she glued to her iPod, MTV, and YouTube to get her musical fix of Pop, Hip-Hop and R&B. 

In 2018, Bea moved to London to pursue a master’s degree in music business management from the University of Westminster, with the hope of obtaining a job in the music industry. To date, Bea has landed a number of songwriting opportunities and sync placements, as well as performing at the BRIT AWARDS 2018 with Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton as a member of their choir.

Amandah Opoku sat down with Bea Kadri to talk about her latest single “Be Alright”, songwriting and more!

Amandah Opoku: Hi Bea, thank you for doing this interview with UMusicians! Can you introduce yourself to our viewers and tell us about one new song you’ve discovered in the last few months that you love!  Bea Kadri: Hey UMusicians! It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I’m Bea Kadri, an alternative RnB / Future Pop singer songwriter from Beirut, Lebanon. Recently been obsessed with Teyana Taylor’s Bare With Me!!! The music video, the track and that mix are so fire and constantly on replay.

AO: You recently released “Be Alright”, what is the story behind the song?  BK: I wrote and recorded “Be Alright” with rapper Isaac B in a studio session in London back in August. It really started off with us just discussing how tiresome, changing and fast life can be and how much we miss simpler times from our childhoods. We put the Jan Pastor’s beat on loop with that mindset and came up with this sort of reminiscing and melancholic call for peace as a reminder to stay chill no matter the chaos. 

AO: “Be Alright” features London based freestyle rapper, Isaac B. How did the collaboration happen?  BK: I was in London for shows throughout July and August and Isaac B is a hardworking talented rapper and a good friend of mine. We just thought why not explore what we could come up with musically together, he had access to studio time at The Rattle London so I went by and “Be Alright” was created in those few hours and recorded it on the spot. I only added a couple of adlibs and back ups later from the comfort of my bedroom studio. 

AO: Do you have any artists and/or songwriters you’d like to work with in the future? If so, who?  BK: Songwriters: I would LOVE to work with Nija Charles, she is insanely talented and has written a lot of my favorite on-replay tunes. Julia Michaels’ words hit different too, so definitely her. Sarah Hudson’s songwriting is always popping and she seems super fun to collab with and just get to know in general. Oh, and Pharell Williams, he’s ultimate feel good vibes.  Singers: Post Malone, Jhene Aiko, SZA, Beyonce, Rihanna, PINK, H.E.R, 6lack, Jessie Reyez, Lolo Zouai, Drake, Daniel Caesar... the list is long. 

AO: What inspired you to pursue a career in music?  BK: The realization that it’s all I could think of growing up and that it didn’t go away when I became an adult is a big one. It’s always been my dream as corny as that sounds. But also, every time I found myself at a low point in my life, dreaming about it and escaping to that space in my head was what kept me up. So at one low low I decided to move away and just do it once and for all : pursue a career in music, by both studying the business side of the industry in my masters and releasing music. 

AO: As you pursue your career as an artist and songwriter, what is one of your biggest fears?  BK: I think the instability that lies in an artist’s career is somewhat of a worry. Even when I reach high levels, I need to stay innovative, creative and be smart with my income streams, especially if later I have a family to provide for, it can’t be that fluctuating. 

AO: If you could describe your music in three words. What words would you choose and why?  BK: Chill, transparent and emotional. 

Chill because a lot of the music I release and tone I use is relaxed and laid-back. 

Transparent because I write and pull from real experiences and reflections.  Emotional because I make sure I truly channel the same raw emotion that inspired my writing a song. I aim to match that in recording too. Like my last break up track B4WBU was full of takes of me choking up and sniffing. So I’m kinda glad this follow-up release “Be Alright” is a happier lighter one lol. 

AO: Some of the music you’ve released to date has been synced in a number of television shows and films. What was your reaction when you received your very first sync placement?  BK: Yes!! I was ecstatic, jumping around in disbelief as I watched my songs play in these dramatic scenes on the Australian soap opera “Home and Away”. That was the first one. Ah! Loved every second of that! 

AO: Looking back at songs that have been released within the last year, what are your favourite lyrics you’ve heard that you wish you had written?  BK: “Remember when you got my ass arrested. At least when I was in jail, I got some rest in” has got to be one of my favorite lyrics this year. It’s from Die for Me by Post Malone feat. Halsey & Future. I don’t know why I love that line so much, it makes me laugh and just simply and strongly paints how toxic whoever she is was. Posty’s energy in the delivery of the song is truly FELT. 

AO: At the 2018 BRIT Awards you performed with Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton as a member of the choir. What was the experience like and what did you take away from the experience?  BK: It was honestly surreal! Such icons! And I got to be in their choir on my first year in London! Just madness. I remember the gratitude and excitement that filled my heart, I felt so lucky witnessing what it’s like at The Brits that I never miss tuning in to. Although, when I was there I had this fear that I’d mess up or overstep so I kept to myself really as I watched Dua’s dancers and Stormzy’s crew get ready backstage. Looking back now I really wish I had been more relaxed and networked more or sparked conversations even with the rest of the choir. We were backstage for hours and everyone seemed friendly and happy to be there. I was just way too caught up in my shyness and unsure how lil Lebanese pre-releasing me got there in the first place. 

Listening to the song we performed “Say Something” is a quick way to take me back to that day though. And my dad blasts it all the time he’s so proud. I’ll remember the details of that day forever or until the next time I’m there (ehem, universe, do your thang!). 

AO: Aside from your music career, you also have a fashion e-commerce brand Young Wilderness & designer for Fashiontv Eyewear. What inspired you to jump into the fashion/accessories world? And how does this connect directly to your music?  BK: Well, I was in fashion for years before pursuing music. I launched Young Wilderness back in 2013 and recently re-stocked it, now I sell it online and at live shows whenever I can. It’s this super comfortable, durable, funky brand that’s meant to add colors and good vibes to people’s lives. It also helps pay for my music-related things. 

Designing for Fashiontv Eyewear was an interesting challenge, I never studied eyewear design, I just had ideas and did massive research about trends and color combos so that was a pretty cool chapter of my life...safe to say I have more shades than one woman needs. Would love to full-on dive back into fashion after I establish myself more musically, they can definitely go hand in hand beautifully. 

AO: In 2018, you moved to London to pursue a master’s degree and to be closer to your passion and to possibly get a job in music. You took a leap of faith. To those who may also want to pursue a career in music, what would your advice to them be?  BK: Depends on what side of the industry they want to be on. But whatever it is, I say definitely do your research and gain some knowledge in the field you’re interested in. Understand the legalities, understand royalties, take online courses, read up and consume on the subjects that interest you and most importantly, act on it. It doesn’t need to be 100 from the get-go. Take small to large steps in the directions that intrigue you, even if you’re unsure, even if you realize later you have a change of heart, even if you’re scared to fail. It all leads to you finding answers and gaining experience. I’ve very much become this annoying follow your heart and trust the process type of person, but if you love it, it’s worth it. 

AO: For a new fan that may across your music on digital music platforms, what do you want them to take away from your music?  BK: I can’t really say what I want them to take from it, that’s their personal business. But I do hope my music resonates with them on some deep level and sparks up memories and all types of feelings and healings and things. :) 

AO: Bea, thank you for sitting down with me to do this interview! Before you go, is there anything you’d like to say to your fans and our readers?  BK: I’d like to thank you for your awesome reflective questions, they’ve made me remember and smile. And to whoever is reading this, if you vibe with my music I got news for you: NEW MUSIC coming soon! I got the wheels rollin’ on a bunch of projects in this quarantine that I CANNOT WAIT to put out. Keep streamin’ my released til then. And thank you for choosing to spend your precious time reading this interview til the end. You’re a fuckin’ gem! Much love xx

Connect with Bea Kadri at the following links: https://beakadri.com/ https://www.instagram.com/bea.kadri/ https://twitter.com/beakadri https://www.facebook.com/BeaKadri/

#Interviews #Amandah Opoku #Bea Kadri #Be Alright

[tumblunni]

Baron omatsuri and the secret island traumatizes me yet again, hooray!

Ok wow that was a nostalgia blast! Finally goddamn have a physical copy of this thing to own. Its never been dubbed and the only way to get it was this weird manga UK licensed reprint of a bunch of (i think) hong kong english subtitles. The style of the subtitles looks like that, at least. Its all weird and grainy and very very old fashioned early days of subtitling style, which contrasts completely with the modern dvd menus and box and stuff. And its also a weird combination disc of four different movies, it seems they just bought out a licensing package deal or something? And just baked it onto the disc without checking or editing anything. Its not really a funny sort of bad subtitles though, its just awkward phrasings of thibgs that are hard to understand or random typos or whatever, no legendarily hilarious stuff. I kinda dislike it more when subtitles are like this, when theyre like...actually written by a guy who speaks fluent english but he just never watched the actual movie so theres a bunch of rookie mistakes. Also has a strange case of what you usually only see on fansubs- the obsession with leaving everything in japanese to Sound Cool. Nah we cant call them the Tea Party Pirates we have to say the japanese word for that. Nah we cant have this man say mustache when he's doing the mustache pose and talking about his crew of entirely mustache men who all do this mustache pose NO it has to be Chobehige because its somehow deep and edgy to not understand the word for mustache. Like i feel if i was watching this sub first i would have no idea what was happening! At least its not as bad as that older sub i saw where they insisted on translating friends as "crew", even when it was llike..a singular. This one man is my crew and here are all my other crews! Like i feel like that subber probably originally did that dumb old fandom thing of INSISTING that you had to say Nakama in japanese and Capitalized and it was a Very Important japanese word for specifically pirate friends that was Impossible To Translate. And then they just did a ctrl + F replace on the whole thing and made an incomprehensible mess. Also for some reason sanji just yells DOCTOR out of nowhere (chopper wasnt even in the scene) and baron omatsuri's one syllable "oh" is translated as some long string of what seems to be baseball jargon..?

But ANYWAY the movie is still fuckin awesome and i actually noticed EVEN MORE dark shit and subtle storytelling that i missed when i was a kid! The whole 'small child zombie stares blankly at the place where a sword stabbed through his chest and cant understand why he got back up' scene is EVEN MORE emotionally destructuve than i thought! Cos the subtlety of the voiceacting seems to make the poor kid sound so tired and resigned to it? He's desperately asking and his father figure feeds him the same old lies he's done a million times about how he's totally still alive and everything is fine. Like wow i missed that inplication that this has happened before! And then he kinda sounds like he's actually aware that Baron is lying and he's just pretending to believe him to make him feel better. And then he starts turning back into a corpse and he doesnt panic like muchigoro or not realize whats happening like the grandpas do. He just looks straight at his hand falling apart and tries to lie to Baron to make him feel better. *long shot of him from behind before you see whats happened* "I'm just feeling dizzy again. I've got used to it." *him staring blankly at his body falling apart, not even capable of feeling sad about it anymore* "Don't worry...i've got used to it." *thud*

Like FUCKING HELL this film is the best damn existential horror thing ever and why the FUCK did they market it as a fun happy kids film? it probably would have been way more successful if the twist wasnt kept all twisty, honestly.

And also WOW YEAH theres a lot of stuff thats the subtlest goddamn storytelling in the universe and youd never notice unless you watched this film a million times like i did! Like during the intro when everythibg still seems all fun and cute and normal, the advert for the Totally Innocent Not A Trap Super Secret Island Resort is being read over some random shots of waves and stuff. But then right near the end you see those same shots again and it becomes clear that it was literally the view from Baron's eyes as he was falling from the ship and drowning, desperately trying to keep his head above water and strain his eyes to see if anyone else had survived. All the moments that just looked like camera cuts were actually when his head fell beneath the waves. Thats fuckin amaizng you straight up showed the ending in the beginning and we didnt notice????

Oh and also right before THE FUCKIN TERRIFYING MUCHIGORO DEATH SCENE you see him casually mention being 'sleepy' a few scenes earlier. It just passes by without notice and you think that he's just drunk until he suddenly starts going from comedic slurring to fucking asphixiating and the SKIN ON HIS FINGERS PEELING OFF. Oh hey! Another thing i didnt notice before! FUCKING THAT. A fun game for you on your rewatch! Looking out to find the secret finger horror! Ha ha ha...ha...

Also MAN OH WOW all the subtle signs of Baron getting more desparate throughout the movie and how it seems the time limit for the zombies was almost up and he had to kill these specific pirates right now because he couldnt spare even a few more hours. In retrospect it makes sense how he was slipping up and leaving evidence for the heroes to figure him out. And its just so subtly offputting and strange how he goes from making a big fun performance about the festival early on and then starts subtky rushing through the formalities faster. Like you dont eveb conciously notice the tone is changing until suddenly BAM the full change happens and you realise you missed all those signs! And aaaa its so fuckin sad how you see him come running when muchigoro drops dead and he's like fuckin GET OUT OF THE WAY DAMMIT and kneels down next to the body and theb he just..turns emotionless again and goes ITS TIME FOR THE NEXT CHALLENGE. It is time. Its now. Shut the fuck up and do it, i dont have time to deal with this shit, just die so i can bring my friend back. (Tho of course you dont know thats why at the time) And then whats most jarring about the whole scene to me is how he's like "okay fuck it theres no more fun theres no more attractions, if youre not gonna play along then the final game is just i shoot your damn head off" WHILE YKNOW STILL STANDING OVER THE CORPSE OF HIS FRIEND AND STARING DAGGERS INTO THEM LIKE ITS THEIR FAULT FOR DARING TO CLING ONTO LIFE and then a fuckin half finished hapoy fun carnival game sign pops up in the backgroubd and everyone walks past it. Why was that somehow both hilarious and terrifying????? Just fuckin 'whoops we had this thing ready to go but alright its murder time i guess' and everyone IS SUDDENLY PACKING HEAT AND RIDDLING OUR HEROES WITH BULLETS???

And also even more subtly Baron just?? Stays with muchigoro?? Like notice how the entirety of the endgame takes place around where the dude dropped dead. And how when mustache pirate guy saves luffy you see Baron just walking in circles around the same area angrily shooting arrows at nothing in complete desperation even though the dude is gone and itd make more sense to run after him. No he stays standing right there and actually looks really damn relieved when luffy comes back, he's like 'holy shit you really were stupid enough to walk right into my trap jesus christ im so glad but also youre a dumbass'. And he fights entirely using arrows at this point so you might not even notice that he barely walks more than just circling a two meter radius of fuckin DEAD BEST FRIEND CORPSE. Which btw blends intonthe shadows for this entire scene and they only draw attention it again after Baron wibs and muchigoro comes back to life. And UGH MY HEART you see him smile genuinely for the firstvtime and he's like 'im so glad youre okay' and muchigoro is like 'haha im more than okay i can do somersaults!' and generally being a FUCKING TREASURE and this poor fuckin horrible evil man is hugging his buddy and gently leading him away from the battlefield so he doesnt norice he was just fuckin murdering some dudes to ressurect him. God the scariest damn thing about this film is how the zombies dont know theyre zombies and honestky they probably wouldnt even agree with their boss's plan to kill people to keep them alive. They justvthink they live a perfectly normal happy life on hapoy festival island, and he wants them to stay that way and never feel pain again :(

Aaaaand then yeah the infamous scene of revealing this horrifying intestines flower is growing out of the flesh on his back and all the corpses its digesting are pushed against the undulating flesh of its throat like a snake devouring its prey. And its cutesy fake flower face grows infinate eyes as it just keeps laughing and laughing. And then it gets graphically blown apart and the poor goddamn parasite host tries to shove the bloody instestines back into its body, knowing that without this horrifying monster chewing on his goddamn veins all his friends will go back to being dead.

THE END

THE FUCKING END

God it ends so abruptly seriously

I still cry my eyes out every time at the ending monologue of Baron dying and meeting all the souls of his dead friends and theyre crying telling him he shouldnt be here, they wish he'd been able to find another reason to live without him...

And then THE END

JAUNTY MUSIC OVER THE CREDITS

THE FUCKIN END I GUESS

What a great but very oddly executed movie. Seriously i feel it could have worked better if it was given space to breathe and more deeply explore the dark themes rather than the weirdness of trying to fool the audience into thinking it was cheerful and innocent. Like all of this shit happens in the last 30 minutes of the movie! They spend 60 minutes on the fun carnival games! What a strange sense of priorities!!

I WOULD DEVOUR A MILLION HOURS MORE OF DEEP SAD ZOMBIE CONTENT

I am like the Lily of fanfics

Oh yeah btw the horrifying deadly elder god spine parasite thing is named Lily and it looks pretty much exactly like flowey from undertale. This film kinda spoiled me for that game LOL ive never trusted a single talking flower ever since!

[horrible-monstrosity]

Punchy-liney episode seven: Clever writing is doing the same thing over and over again and explaining every little bit of it every single time.

Seriously, this is dumb.

So the entire point of the fucking time loop plot is you're supposed to be trying to fight fate, change the future, fight against inevitability, right?? So of course the fucking first thing you need to have is a furry little plot device showing up and telling you you can't change anything except what's arbitrarily allowed, which is... so far nothing, becaue the plot says so and the writers are too god-awful to actually write a scenario where the scenario itself has something working against the main character to make achieving their goal difficult, so we have to have a "because I said so" roadblock shoved in there. FUCK.

So it's just a bunch of Yuuta hanging around going "oy boy wow i sure do remember then this happeninged" and fucking doing nothing of value. Except, you know, doing the same shit we've already seen OVER AND OVER AGAIN!

Yoota gets all fucking upset over writing the stupid fucking pun in the stupid book because it means so muuuuuuuuch- no, it fucking doesn't, you only saw it briefly once just about an hour ago from your point of view and it's some dumb shit anyway. Just draw a bunch of dicks in it.

So this random apartment of grils and their fucking friendships is the most iipootaat thing in the universe? Why? Boy it sure would have been nice if these assholes had been, like, developed into interesting likeable characters during the first half of the show or something, right?? How the fuck's this supposed to stop the fucking meteor

So is the only reason the previous Yuutas have failed because they didn't follow the cat's orders well enough? Not because of any actual challenges but because following instructions is just too damn hard? What the *fuck*?

Yuuta tries to keep his ghost self from blowing up, goes into Ito's room... she immediately goes full retard, not even just over the panty shot but trying to take the door of its fucking hinges just because it wouldn't immediately open. What the fuck? Why are we supposed to like this psycho again? And then he gropes Juicey's juicy tiddies and that doesn't activate his power even though a fucking picture of lil babby pumpkin panties did because why Speaking of plot devices that make no damn sense, how does ghost-Yuuta's quantum ghost time-travel work when someone can see him? Or are we just going to ignore that plot hole because now-Yuuta saved ghost-Yuuta from blowing his top all of once? And why did he even bother to try and save ghost-him? He knows there's no point... unless the way the quantum bullshit works means he'd actually get the meteoric bad end his ghost self could just go back from, BUT IF THAT WAS THE CASE THEN HE WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ON THE ROOF AT THE END OF EPISODE SIX... GUIGSUUESIUUUEUEEUUURRRRRRRRRFGGHFGGFFGFh

And then suddenly becoming Ubermensch Aryan why the fuck did they call it that anyway just fucking inexplicably changes the way your soul is attached to your body in some overly complicated way that's just explained to the audience in way too much dialogue, because the plot of this show was written without any mind to actual coherency and we have to explain how the one thing happened one way one time and another way the other time so we have to add in ad-hoc """explanations""" later on and pretend it's all really genius. Better yet with the body swap reveal coming up at some point they could have just handwaved this somehow for now and had it later turn out that event left Yuuta's soul (as well as Juice-tan and the other one) less well-attached to the body it's currently in than a normal person's. YOU KNOW, SOME MOTHER FUCKING FORESHADOWING.

Oh, actually just kidding. I paused the episode to write that and something dumb happened immediately after I hit play

"Don't you remember, that one time you switched bodies with a bunch of your closest friends you never saw again after that?" You'd think someone, anyone, would have fucking mentioned this before, or fucking alluded to it, or the mere fact of its factuality would have exerted some influence on the events that followed from it... but no, not really. Just, fucking... casually remember that one time something fucking extraordinary happened that has a huge impact on the plot that we haven't even mentioned up until now. Ha ha.

NO, DON'T FUCKING EXPLAIN THE FUCKING SIMPLE OBVIOUS THING THE MAIN CHARACTER JUST DEMONSTRATED HE FUCKING REMEMBERS ANYWAY LIKE IT'S ANYTHING FUCKING INTERESTING AT ALL WHILE MAKING IT SOUND ACTUALLY COMLPICATED. You know what fucking happened here? All that fucking happened is the writers made a fucking Excel spreadsheet, right, they filled in three fucking rows of the sheet with the kids' names, and then they fucking... rotated... the list... once........... HOW CAN THIS BE SO FUCKING BAD???? This isn't the slightest bit complicated aside from the overwrought bullshit surrounding and enabling it while obfuscating the gaping plot holes that exist in what the writers want to do... because, I don't know, they're too fucking hackish to rework their simplistic fucking immediate ideas to work with a coherent underpinning. The fucking reveal was these three kids who we know little to nothing about and have NO FUCKING REASON TO CARE ABOUT got their souls shuffled around in a fucking obvious fashion (because there's only three of them and there's only two ways it could have possibly come out), and that's... it. That's... really fucking boring as your ultimate plot reveal. This is not worth all the fucking convoluted fucking shit that was required to justify it.

Like, here, let me just make this immediately better: Juice-tan is wimpy girl in pink-haired girl's body, the other one is pink-haired girl in the one guy's body- yeah, we leave those alone- but the trick is, Yuuta isn't Pine (what the fuck sort of name is pine anyway by the way) but some random blank-slate or even non-human soul that got succed into the wimpy girl's body when the crash happened. And the first thing that soul saw was the newly minted Juice-tan, who was traumatised and amnesiac due to what just happened and thus didn't recognise this used to be her body, leaning over (him/her/zip/zoom) and going all "are you okay??"... and thus the first character trait Yuuta develops is being in love with this girl. And Pine is the cat or something. NOW FUCKING LOOK AT THIS SHIT. You just fucking develop the three kids as close-knit frienbs (though that would help no matter what the plot was), then you have this tragedy where the group can never get back together again, one of them's gone and another's a psycho villain, but despite this the remaining member finds new love in an unexpected place or something.

And yeah, it really just was a random fucking car accident that caused this, except the car also got struck by lightning! Why'd they all go Uber at that time anyway? Was the car they were taking an Uber service?

8: oh boy more same thign oh wow yuuta didn't even go into the apartment to find pantsu he just went in there for no fucking reason and H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D to find them wow such good much writing w o w

is the villain's fucking "you wouldn't unerstaaaaand" plot just a muh next stage of human evolution plot? fuckin seriously? this is some fucking baby shit. this is babby's first villainous motive. this show doesn't fucking deserve to be compared to Higurashi with this shit

oh look more fucking tragic robot girl flashbacks and she repeats the thing about making gril a superhero and a superhero organisation with only one member that we've already fucking heard but now it's sad tn: "punch" means "five" in hindu

Turns out Yuuta casually broke a man's limbs offscreen, because even men with vaginas randomly turn into fucking psychopaths when le cutey gril is in danger. Also breaking a man's limbs your damn self is okay but just two people dying who you don't even fucking know and who nobody you know likes is just sooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaddd And then they try to play up the cat as sooo evil for saying "two lives are less important than seven billion!!" when... Yuuta just broke a man's limbs with his own damn hands... jesus christ

epitoad 9: "why did you keep this to yourself all this time, Pine?" "lol idek" Juice-tan and Yuuta have an """emotional""" reconnection where he tells her something he knew all this fucking time and could have said whenthefuckever he felt like it but just didn't feel like it I guess so now yuuta can just try really hard not to instantly cum when he sees a panties and it just somehow works now. as if we needed this to make any less sense. yuuta goes and talks to a random bunch of leading physics-cists and they actually give him the time of day for whatever reason. all to know nuke bombs don't work in space. just look that shit up online  dumbass

... It's amazing how much more pathetic some of these scenes are from the "proper" angle. Yuuta in his dumbass superhero costume just creeping on the roof IN PLAIN FUCKING SIGHT OF EVERYONE IF THEY'D JUST HAPPENED TO LOOK UP, and when the time comes he doesn't even jump into action or anything, he just stands up. It's so fucking WEAK. But it's clebverrrr because we did the thing where we watched him watch himself do the thign n now he do the thign we watched him watched himself do right ?????

More of our beloved hero being psychopathic and literally torturing a man by breaking his fingers and interrogating him... jesus fuck.

epipoo 10: how the fuck did yuuta survive and get back to the apartment

So it turn out, everything in this show could have been fixed by just tearing that little bit of tech off the satelight dish so the server hack isn't intercepted... just tell the current ghost-yuuta to tear the damn thing off the satelite dish the day beforehand next time for fuck's sake... but noooooo, saving the world is just so fucking hard wow

no one cares about these fucking kids and their dumb pseudo-romances. guriko or whichever the fuc the brunette was was a whiny little bitch. She gets into a screaming-crying match with the other girl over some toy, sits there and screams about it, then when Pine notices she hurt herself (or the other girl hurt her) in the fight and tries to help, she screams at him and demands the other girl come back and help her instead. Holy shit.

"originally it was supposed to be-" You see how fucking boring this shit is? We know exactly how the three of them swapped bodies, but you have to have Mr. Creepy McFuckNuts tell us this shit all over again like it's something that's just sooo hard to grasp when it's... so fucking simple... and it's not even in a way that gives his, her, its or zgeir'z unique perspective on it (like "I'm supposed to be in your body, but instead I'm..."), it's just... the fucking list.

chiyoo throws yuuta who she just found out was her long-lost friend pine into a fucking statue and has the gall to cry about "muh precious frienb!!" over ito... I feel like I'm watching that Diverisy and Comics video about Kim and Kim again. That's what this feels like. meanwhile gurio goes through the five stage of anime angst in like an instant. "I have so much power! But... I'm so lonely..... :'(" "the guriko i love!!!!!" she cries over someone all we've seen of them recently is them being a whiny little bitch and then yuuta goes fucking insane and destroys his room. and then has a bunch of le emotional flashbacks over characters we don't care about who have been demonstrated to be violent and uncaring toward him. lol. this is so fucking dumb

AND THEN WE'RE ALL REVED UP TO DO THE EXACT. SAME. FUCKING. THING. FUCKING AGAIN. Just.. what the fuck is Yuuta actually supposed to *do* about any of this? If he just broke the robot girl's computer or took the interceptor thing off the satelite dish everything would be fine, but he's not allowed to do that because... reasons.......????? So what the fuck is he supposed to do? What *sequence of events* is supposed to lead to the probem being over when he's not allowed to just... fucking... solve the probem??

Well whatever it is, I'm sure it's convoluted, retarded and utterly nonsensical. Everyone responsible for this shitshow needs to be fucking euthanized, for the good of humanity.

#anime bitching