#because you’ve been kind of conditioned to think it’s too good to be true and something can and probably will go wrong 🙃🔪

[leqclerc]

i literally don't know how Charles does it. Like getting pole week after week and then things going wrong but not because of him. Like that has to suck but he is still trying and trying and never saying a bad a thing about his team. I so admire his attitude and strength at this point. And like ngl I never understood how ferrari is so bad at strategy (this more monaco and not this race) like even before charles they were bad at it and you'd think that they'd somehow get better😔 anyways, ferrari better get their act together or it's on sight for me...

I agree 100%!

The heartbreaking thing is Charles was willing to accept his past DNFs, even if they hurt, even if they robbed of him of potential wins or podiums, because the team kept promising him that his time will come. They worked on this car for the better part of last year, they put pretty much all their eggs in the F1-75 basket and openly said they aim to return and fight for the title. Charles isn’t someone who overhypes himself or his chances — on the contrary, he usually is very good at managing expectations (both his own and also gently reminding fans to do the same, especially when the result is an outlier, like, say, the Baku pole last year.) So when he starts talking about winning — and winning not only individual races but the championship — that’s when you know he seriously, genuinely believes they’re in a place to do that.

So, they promised him to have their shit together by 2022, kept reiterating that he’ll have a fighting chance and though it started off well, they hit a snag around Miami or so and haven’t really recovered. After winter testing they were hailed as the team that brought one of the most reliable cars; they tested their PU and were happy with its performance and reliability. Only…that was apparently only applicable to PU1. Ever since they upgraded the engine to the PU2 spec it’s been giving them issues. Alfa has similarly been plagued by engine issues all season so far, and we saw how the Ferrari powered cars started dropping like flies in Baku. Between their strategic fumbles, bizarre public statements (B*notto especially) and now reliability issues they seemingly have no explanation for (they said they’d look over the PU thoroughly after Barcelona; they proceeded to fit some of the elements from PU2 in the car for this race and we got an engine blowout) it’s not looking good.

And it must be frustrating for Charles when he is constantly reminded of his past mistakes by media of all kinds (it was obviously the worst in Monaco but also in the run up to Baku we kept hearing about his past castle section crash and one of the F1TV presenters even joked about how the circuit has all these corners “Charles Leclerc can crash into”) and posts and Tweets are being made about his “poor pole to win conversion rate” without the necessary context. He’s done a near flawless job this year, he’s driving pretty much the best we’ve ever seen him drive. He’s doing everything necessary, and when he doesn’t, he owns up to his mistakes and does everything in his power to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So for the team to have the ball in their court and essentially throw away deserved wins for a variety of reasons… it’s bad. And they got lucky this year! Everything lined up for them! They can’t really afford to abandon the effort this year, shrug their shoulders and say “well, there’s always next year!” because next year you’re looking at Merc potentially being back in the game for real. If they can’t even go toe to toe with Red Bull, then what chance do they have against RB and one or both of the Mercs? So yeah. Disappointment and anger. 😠

Charles loves this team, and like you said, always tries to see the best in them and highlight the good. So when even he is getting frustrated with them…That’s when you know they’ve fucked up. He’s incredibly nice and kind and gracious so I’m sure they’ll discuss everything internally and he’ll come back with his head held high ready to give it his all again come Montreal. The question is, will the team be able to do the same?

#replies #anonymous #discussions and predictions #.longpost #seriously so disappointed right now #it’s hard to go into races with no trust and instead a lingering feeling of dread especially when charles is leading #because you’ve been kind of conditioned to think it’s too good to be true and something can and probably will go wrong 🙃🔪

[tojifile]

@Muzan Kibutsuji . . . (＾＾＃)

Tags: husband!muzan, emotionally dependent reader, f!reader, violence, suggestive, manipulation, muzan is taller than you, mansplaining if you squint, huge daddy issues, toxic relationship

A/N: Thinking about husband!muzan and his wife who’s emotionally dependent on him. She’s a huge crybaby but Muzan loves how dependent she is on him. He loves the dominance he has over her. THIS IS FOR WOMEN WITH DADDY ISSUES WHO WANT TO BE TAKEN CARE OF IN THE MOST TOXIC WAY IMAGINABLE. The relationship and everything is super toxic but I love those and honestly, red flags get me going! (I am a bad example of what you should do with your life, do not copy) Merry Christmas Eve to my ho ho hos! 🎄

p.s. an anon just requested for a Muzan’s wife runs away after finding out so that may be after this, just know that I love toxic relationships with guys like Muzan :)

husband!muzan who only goes out at night. He tells you he has a skin condition that started when he was a kid. There was no known cure, so his “company” constantly tries to find information on possible cures for people with the same disease.

husband!muzan who seemed like the perfect partner, dotting on you, always buying you gifts. He’d buy you things that reminds him of you which made you all the more attached. You loved his attention and how he constantly babies you.

husband!muzan who you caught consuming a woman during a stroll. It was already past 7PM but you decided to go out for a walk. Everything was good, the streets were bustling with different kinds of people, all smiling and happy—that was until you got to a rather secluded area.

You heard loud cries coming from a narrow alley. The screams lured you in. At the back of the alley was where you saw your husband—Muzan Kibutsuji, devouring a helpless young woman. He immediately sensed your presence and turned around.

He swiftly got in front of you and covered your mouth with his palm. “Hello, my love, I trust you enjoyed your evening stroll?” He spoke, his voice dripping with an eerie yet sweet, confusing feeling. You only looked at him with teary eyes in response.

husband!muzan who tries to reason with you but he didn’t even need to say anything. You still wanted him.

Such a shame that you had to find out about his secret, “Kibutsuji-kun..” was all you could mutter after he removed his palm from your mouth. You then started to cry in his arms as he caressed your hair, calming you down. God, he was so sweet towards you.

A few lines of blood dripped down the corners of his mouth. He looked down at you with a soft smile on his face. His suit and pants were stained with the blood of his victim but that didn’t bother him.

Most—no, all of his past wives would’ve been crying and yelling about how much of a liar and monster he is and/or running away. But here you were in his arms, you cried because you didn’t know how to react. You were scared that he’d leave you because you found out his secret.

husband!muzan who is happy to know that you’ve truly submitted yourself to him. He loves the feeling of being in control. It was adorable, the way you melted into his arms, even after you saw him consuming another human being.

husband!muzan who promises to never hurt nor leave you. He just loved controlling you a bit too much. It got him excited, knowing that he comes home to such a cute little human wife who he doesn’t have to hide his true form from.

husband!muzan who then escorts you home while holding you by the waist. Telling you about how you shouldn’t go out at night without him. He doesn’t want other demons to mistake you for a lowly human.

husband!muzan who was just really turned on by the events. As soon as you got home he had you on the bed, kissing you softly. He didn’t even have to use force with you. You were just so happy to submit to the man who gave you affection.

husband!muzan who sometimes lets his fangs sink in your skin. Just for you to tremble and whimper under his touch. He loved it when you would cling onto him and he loves the little noises you’d make whether it be from pain or pleasure.

husband!muzan who tells himself that he’s only staying with you and treating you like this because you’re a valuable asset, one that could keep his facade going.

husband!muzan who slowly submits to your affection genuinely, especially after that night.

husband!muzan who always makes you feel safe and taken care of. He might be the demon king but he can’t let his wife be let down. Muzan Kibutsuji was too much of a loving husband to let that happen.

husband!muzan who treats you like a child that needs to be guided. He can’t have you forming your own thoughts now, right? That would corrupt your innocent little mind. He couldn’t let you turn against him now that he was so attached to you.

husband!muzan who loves to pamper you like a little doll. He loves the idea of using you over and over. Although he doesn’t understand why he’s so attached to you, he just lets it happen. You were still a benefit to him anyway.

And finally.. husband!muzan who has you numb every time he’s had a bad night. Getting you to do nasty things with him, knowing you’re always so needy for his attention.

Comment 🪩 to be on my taglist !

#kny #kimetsu muzan #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #muzan x reader #husband!muzan #husband!muzan x reader #f!reader #husband!muzan x f!reader #muzan x f!reader #muzan kibutsuji #kibutsuji muzan #muzan smut #toxic!muzan #toxic!muzan x reader #wife!reader #husband!muzan x wife!reader #kimetsu #muzan kibutsuji x you #demon slayer muzan #muzan kibutsuji x reader #kibutsuji muzan x reader #muzan kibutsuji smut #kibutsuji muzan smut #dazaidarlingposted #daddy issues #I love toxic relationships #tojifile

[onigiriico]

Mahiru audio drama (t2) - English TL

[ links: Spotify / Youtube ]

Another voice drama, another translation! 🎉 As always, if you’ve got any questions, find a mistranslated line, etc etc, feel free to head to my ask box (recommended) or my Twitter and I’ll do my best to get back to you! (Also definitely do listen to the drama if you get around to it because the VAs do an incredibly good job)

⬇️ translation under the cut ⬇️

(door opens)

E: …!

M: It’s been a while, Es-kun.

E: Mahiru…

M: I missed you…

E: …Are you okay?

M: Ah… yeah. I’m able to move around on my own as long as I have this wheelchair, so…

E: Shidou told me about your condition.

M: Ah… mh. Is that so…

E: I didn’t think you’d be in a state for me to interrogate you.

M: It’s all thanks to Shidou-san. Ah… I think I should thank Milgram as well. For supplying us with the medical tools and the wheelchair and all that. I wonder if you’re the right person to say this to?

E: …

M: Why do you look so sad…?

E: Because… you suffered such major injuries…

M: … Ah, but this is… I think Kotoko-chan is the one who did it, so… you know? It’s not like it’s your fault. Um, so…! I’m not holding a grudge towards Kotoko-chan either. I’m sure she just thought it couldn’t be helped…

E: That’s…

M: Ah, no, um… I do wish we could put an end to this though… ahaha… ack–

E: Mahiru–?

M: Sorry… for making you worry. I’m fine! It doesn’t hurt at all.

E: It’s a horrible injury. There’s no way it doesn’t hurt.

M: It doesn’t!

E: Don’t lie to me! Let’s call Shidou right now–

M: I mean it. It doesn’t hurt. Compared to the way I felt when you didn’t forgive me… Not at all.

E: …!

M: Not at all… Nothing. None of it hurts. It’s not… as big of a deal. Ever since, I’ve always been hearing… voices saying I couldn’t be forgiven. Yours? Whose? I don’t know… I don’t know, but… I heard them the whole time.

E: Mahiru, calm down…

M: Was what I did such a bad thing? I just… had a normal relationship like everyone else…! That’s all I did! Why can that not be forgiven? Hey, why? Why? Why?

E: Mahiru!

M: Stop it!

E: …!

M: … Ah– I– I—I’m sorry…! If– If you touch me so suddenly, it makes me remember… how it hurt… and I get scared…

E: It’s fine. If you don’t talk, that’s fine too. Let’s just take it slow.

M: …Yeah… S-sorry… It’s– it’s not that I hate you or anything, you know?

E: Take a deep breath. It’s okay.

M: Uh… (deep breaths) I’m fine already...

E: Mahiru…

M: Hey, Es-kun? I was wondering why you didn’t forgive me… I’d like to hear the reason… straight from you.

E: From me…?

M: Yeah. I already said this before, but all I did was love someone. I don’t know what kind of footage Milgram presented to you, but… did it not look like that to you? What did you see? What… did you feel?

E: What I saw was… just you having fun. I’m sure you were in love. Your feelings of bliss were conveyed to me as well.

M: Right? It was really fun. Did it make you want to fall in love?

E: No clue about that.

M: You’re so cold. – So, how… does that connect to me not being forgiven…?

E: It’s true that the footage looked happy. But by selecting [you], Milgram is telling me that you’re a murderer. I can’t just take things at face value. What Milgram shows to me is each person’s mental imagery. It’s not like it supplies me with certainty or objective facts.

M: Umm… 

E: What’s wrong?

M: I’m not that smart, so could you put it in a way that’s easier to understand…?

E: (deep breath) There’s the possibility that you’re just framing the truth in a way that’s convenient for yourself. Meaning that it was only a happy relationship… in your own mind.

M: …!

E: …So, that’s what I deduced. So…

M: That’s… Aha. That’s a shock… This means that… you think of me as a liar, doesn’t it…? Did I do anything that made you think that?

E: …I’m the Warden. I get that this is painful for you, but I’m telling you my own thoughts.

M: Yeah… let me hear them.

E: I said that your love has killed someone, right?

M: That’s true.

E: Actions taken out of one-sided love, such as stalking… Someone dying as a result of something like that is a possibility, too.

M: …! Haha… That’s horrible…

E: Yeah. It is.

M: It’s not like you saw what I actually did, right?

E: Yeah. Not straight-forward, anyway.

M: Right…

E: Anyway, Milgram follows a three-trial system. This isn’t the final result. It’s only what I’ve seen up until now.

M: Yeah. – Him and I… we loved each other. Properly as boyfriend and girlfriend. We met in college… It was the first time for me, so I don’t know if it was good or not, but… I think we were just normally going out together. I thought it was fate. He said it was, too.

E: Is that so…

M: I’m not… a stalker or anything like that. Although from your point of view, it might seem that way.

E: Yeah.

M: But I’ve made up my mind. I’ll properly convey my feelings too. He’s dead. It… it might have been because of my love.

E: Mahiru…

M: But… I just normally loved someone. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. And besides, I… can’t live without love.

E: Why would you go that far…?

M: Because I know how precious it is to be in love. The moment you love someone, you realize the beauty of the world as it changes. To not forgive me means to take the act of loving away from me. That’s the same as not being alive. It’s the same as not being able to drink water or breathe. So… if this love isn’t allowed, then I don’t mind dying. Kotoko-chan’s acts aren’t a problem, either. I think she’s fighting for her own cause as well. So I don’t blame her. Because I also think that I… that my love isn’t wrong. I don’t want to be shamed for my love.

E: …

M: No matter what you think, it won’t change things for me. That’s what I’ve decided.

E: …I’m stunned.

M: Eh?

E: You’re impressive, you know. Without any flattery. I think you’re impressive.

M: Are you praising me?

E: I might be. To not resent anyone in this kind of situation, staying strong and even emphasizing with others… How can you do something like that?

M: Hehe… This is the power of… lo… ve…

E: Mahiru?!

M: I… I might’ve… gotten ahead of myself…

E: Your feelings have reached me, loud and clear. I’ll judge you in the second trial as well. 

M: That’s… good… (pained noises)

E: …I’m sorry. I’m responsible for the fact that you’ve ended up like this.

M: (coughing, heavy breathing)

E: It was my decision not to forgive you. I don’t intend to deny that. But… the fact that I couldn’t predict Kotoko’s actions was a failure on my end. 

M: (heavy breathing)

E: If I had known that it would turn out like this…

M: If you had known that it would turn out like this, you wouldn’t have forgiven Kotoko-chan?

(machinery whirrs, bell rings)

E: …Huh?

M: If you had known that Kotoko-chan would attack bad people, and you looked at her crime – would your willingness to forgive and your judgment have been changed?

E: …

M: This is the result of you doing what you believed in, isn’t it? The result of you working hard at your job?

E: Yeah.

M: Do you remember? Back in the first trial, I said I liked people who work hard.

E: Yeah… You did say that.

M: Because I told you that I like people who work hard… I’ll accept this pain, too.

E: …Ma–!

M: That’s why… no matter what the people around you might say, I think you should do what you want.

E: You’re– You’re the one… telling me that?

M: Yeah. Es-kun, you’re working so hard… You’re doing great.

E: …!

M: …Oh my… are you crying? Es-kun…

E: I’m not!

M: You’re putting up a tough front.

E: No way. – The talking ends here. Show me the continuation, Mahiru. In order for me to respond to your feelings, too.

M: Okay. It may be a bit late to say this, but… I’ll be in your care.

E: Prisoner no.6, Mahiru – sing your sins.

#milgram #milgram music videos #milgram es #milgram mahiru #mahiru shiina #translation #fan translation #audio drama #mappi's going through it & so are my feelings jfc man

[bullet-prooflove]

Sunflowers: Brendon Acres x Reader

Tagging @kmc1989

Companion piece to Lifeline

You don’t make much money working for the FBI. They pay you a modest stripe end, one that parallels how much it would cost to house you in the penal system. It’s just enough to afford a shitty apartment in an even shittier part of town. When you factor in transport, utilities and food, there’s barely enough cash left over to purchase art supplies, let alone any luxuries. It makes things harder when Brendon’s birthday comes around. He’s a man of wealth, of means and you barely have two dollars in your purse to rub together.

It shouldn’t matter but it does.

Brendon was the first person who showed you any kindness when you agreed to work for the FBI, he treated you like a human being, saw you for who you are. It was him that lobbied for you to consult with Special Investigations because you were dying out there in Art Crimes under Henderson’s control. Brendon had given you back a part of yourself you thought you’d lost, he’d shown you a different path and you will forever be grateful for that.

It’s your dress that helps you figure it out, the black one with the yellow sunflowers. You’d picked it up at a thrift store a couple of days before, it’s in surprisingly good condition. It’s insane that you used to spend thousands of dollars on clothes in your previous life and now you’re trying to work out if you can make a twenty stretch.

You’re sitting at your desk when Brendon sets a mug of coffee down in front of you. He takes up his usual perch on the corner as you tidy away the pictures of the Degas you’ve been studying. It’s a fake, you can see it even without seeing the piece of art up close.

“I’ve always loved sunflowers.” He tells you, his fingertips brushing over the fabric of your sleeve. “The problem is I’m allergic to them, I break out in hives if I’m anywhere even close to one.”

“What do you like about them?” You had asked him and he’d given you that smile and a half-hearted shrug.

“They just make me happy.” He tells you, you can see the truth of it in his eyes. It’s such a silly little thing but the fact he’s chosen to share it with you, speaks volumes. “They’re fun, colourful, they make me think of brighter days. I think that’s why I’m smiling so much this morning, your dress…”

He trails off, his gaze slipping down to his coffee mug as his cheeks flush pink.

“Maybe I’ll try to wear it more often.” You tease and he laughs at that. It’s such a rich, vibrant sound and it lights up something inside of you.

You like this man, really like him.

You haven’t felt like this in a long time.

It takes a few days for you paint the picture. You choose an A5 sized piece of paper because you feel canvas would be too intimate and you aren’t ready to give that much of yourself to someone else. Creating art, it’s a private experience, when you gift it to someone else you’re really handing them a piece of your soul, showing them your true self.

You spend your evenings hunched over the battered desk in your apartment, working to the sound of Vance Joy as you mix your paints. You have a very specific colour pallet in mind. A rich blue that matches the hue of Brendon’s eyes, a vibrant sunshine yellow that contrasts against it. You have a scene in mind from the last time you were in North Dakota, four sunflowers swaying lightly in the breeze alongside the barn your family used to own. It’s the last happy memory you have of that place and you’re giving it to Brendon.

Brendon doesn’t expect to spend his birthday shuttling between LA and Salt Lake City but then again it’s the nature of the job. He’d been looking forward to getting dinner with Simone and Cutty but it’s past midnight by the time he gets into the office. His birthday’s over before he even realises it.

It’s when he collapses into his desk chair that he notices the brown paper envelope sitting on his  desk, his name written in your pretty looped scrawl. He’s intrigued when he picks it up, his fingers breaking the seal eagerly.

He can’t help but smile when he sees the artwork. It’s an original piece, painted by your hand, he’s known you long enough to recognise your style. The bold use of colour, the delicacy of the drawing itself. He thinks he’d know you anywhere.

When he turns over the piece, he studies the words written in dark pencil and something just blossoms in his chest.

Brendon,

May all your days be as bright as sunflowers.

Mona.

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#brendon acres #the rookie feds #brendon acres x reader #brendon acres x you

[thehotelier]

On Housebroken

“Every true novelist listens for a suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into a different line of work.” -Milan Kundera

The subtext of this short quote that my friend posted the other day provided a pretty neat angle for thinking about the job that artists do for society. While some of us are working, making dinner, following up with people, or addressing every little aspect of our lives that are slowly degrading, artists are creating the conditions for profound truths of the world to speak through their bodies for a brief moment and then document it. These moments of oneness with profound truths are not unique to artists or writers, but a good artist is one who can capture that moment and communicate it through their medium, in a way that allows us viewers to access by interacting with their work.

It explains a thought that I’ve had quite regularly about my own work. People say “hey I like this music you’ve made” and my first inclination is to respond with “yeah isn’t it great?!”. If I were to say this aloud, it would probably either confuse or upset the person who would expect an either humble or self-debasing acknowledgement. But my excitement about my work, and part of the reason I had listened to some of my own tracks non-stop, was because I didn’t feel like it was something I had created. I didn’t feel responsible for it existing insomuch as I feel responsible for regurgitating historical trivia or making box mac and cheese. It’s never felt like trying very hard, making music. Not that I’m an expert or anything (I’m a clunky writer and not particularly skilled with any instruments) it’s just that my process has never been about working hard, and has mostly been about creating a concoction of circumstance to allow magic to happen or god to speak through me. And when that happens I’m sort of like “lol cool.”

So to me, a non-god, my “work” is almost certainly smarter than I was when I wrote it. Once I had witnessed this process fruiting many tracks that made me look smart, I tried not to shortcut that process moving forward. However, I figured this out maybe midway through writing Home, Like Noplace Is There and there has always been one track that stood out as blocky because of this, and that’s Housebroken. Housebroken was the first track I wrote for that record and it got a fair bit of play time in the many acoustic sets I had played prior to releasing that record. It was well received then, but I had sort of always felt an inclination to have to tease out the conversation around it.

The song material attempts to unveil the cycle of abuse, trauma, and conditioning. It was inspired by the trap of entering into the public forum to discuss justification for accountability processes, a model that was ahead of its time and kind of still is. Too often call outs of terrible behavior would evoke normies to object with some version of “this person did something fucked up because fucked up things were done upon them.” It was a trap to engage with this logic but us punks and anarchists did anyway because we knew we were on the right path and truth would prevail. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough back-pocket rebuttals handy to truly win those arguments for our apolitical tumblr bystanders.

Housebroken, through an allegory of a naive utopian speaking to a domesticated dog, went on to say that empathy alone is not strong enough to dam the river of harm in which we swim. At least that’s my interpretation. My interpretation, however, has the privilege of being granted the benefit of the doubt by its intent. Some other interpretations were not as generous.

I remember stumbling across a podcast (a flock of men) who were in the business of bad faith critiques of scene music. Their interpretation of Housebroken likened domestication to abuse in the home and abuse in the home to abuse of women by men. Through this lens, the use of the dog as a literary device was describing women as dogs, which is of course not cool, boo-boo.

The common interpretation by those who enjoy the song is actually not even that far off from the one above. The slight deviations come in the form of domestication not necessarily abuse in the home, or abuse in the home not necessarily being abuse of women by men. But even within these more favorable framings, there was still a path to an unfavorable interpretation which some had found in the moment where the narrator kills the dog. For me, this was actually a lazy way of saying “we can’t divert the flow, we can only break the cycle.” But it’s over dramatic, inconsistent, and a cop out. The dog probably should have eaten the naive utopian narrator, but then who sings the ending??

This was where my analysis ended when Hotelier decided to stop playing this song. I couldn’t really reconcile which interpretation should be given the most priority, mine or the fans. We had a couple of odd interactions with legitimate die-hards about this song at the time. I figured it would be a good faith gesture to let them be in the driver seat a bit for this one and we gave out some benefit of the doubt. To some, this might have seemed like an odd choice to give a few fans this much say over our artistic decisions. But I was 22, and truly trying to figure out the best way to navigate these fan artist relationships where the principles of consent do not map so cleanly. Looking back, I still think it was fairly wise to avoid intentionally grinding up against the edges of our fans who were so willingly giving us their vulnerability. And that’s how Housebroken got nixed.

Now admittedly, this is one of the Hotelier songs I felt like I had a hand in writing, that is to say that I wasn’t simply a conduit for messages containing more wisdom than I possessed. I remembered being inspired by an idea, but only having the distance from Akron to our recording session in Chicago to get down. We drove overnight in a short school bus with 7 people drunk asleep, and strewn about on the seats and carpet. I was on the couch in the back forcing that ditty out. Once it was recorded that acoustic version, we just built the album version around it and stuck it in the most likely place.

Every other song on that album was given time, was meditated on, was never written but allowed to write itself. The lyrics were many words I have never said before in any real order. Writing the rest of that record genuinely felt like many therapy sessions. I remember sensations in my body that I haven’t felt since, like being a moment from sleep and being suddenly massively awake and strangely cold, suddenly crying at phrases from a stream of consciousness, and what felt like a rattling marble at the top of my spinal cord. Writing Home was like simultaneously realizing trauma held in my body for the first time and quickly unknotting it. It was pretty absurd. I could have been possessed but it would have been by something pretty nice. I understand why people could believe in angels. Through your own actions, you induce some state of consciousness in which everything makes sense, and everything is okay, and its wise and kind and all of these things that might feel so unlike you. How can someone have experience and be expected to believe that that is just them. In a period of time when we still don’t understand consciousness. Could be angels, babe.

It Never Goes Out was an album that shouted “As long as we have each other, the world stands no chance.” Turns out, the real weight of that statement rests on “as long as”. It’s really amazing the amount of absurd scenarios a bunch of suburban beatnik cosplayers in early adulthood can find themselves in. One of us got kicked out of our home by our parents. I showed up in my underwear to lighten the mood not expecting her dad to come out and try to bust through my car window. I remember us trying to figure out how we were getting home from the mall because the only friend who could drive was having a personal moment in the back seat and not talking to us. Lots of “you don’t get me”. Lots of “I’m going to kms.” I’ll skip a lot of details that I can’t or don’t want to remember, but it was clear we were too big of a mess to change much.

And here we circle back to trauma not as a thing done to us by bad people, but now by people we love with every ounce of our being, people we wouldn’t throw out in front of a moving car. Many people will have their own interpretation of what that means to them, and I’ll let them have it. I’m just the messenger.

#Dreams of Field Records #home like noplace is there #the hotelier

[bleach-your-panties]

Quit making me think about izuru 😂 I can't stop thinking about neighbor izuru who does repairs and things around your property to impress you or childhood friends to arranged marriage

Girl help me I can't write 😭

Now, THAT I cannot do😂 I CAN, however give you some hc’s for neighbor!Izuru. I also love the arranged marriage idea! *puts in pocket for later*

dividers by @/benkeibear and @/todorosie

Your neighbor, Izuru Kira, who lives in the apartment next door to the one you just moved into.

Who works as the groundskeeper and stand-in maintenance guy for whenever his boss is busy with other jobs.

Izuru who politely welcomes you into the neighborhood by leaving a basket of fresh fruit and crepes on your doorstep. 

You often see him attending to the multitude of flower beds and shrubberies around the complex.

On days where the sun is particularly sweltering and he is working tirelessly; like a good neighbor, you will bring him lemonade and sandwiches because you know how hard he works to ensure that the grounds look nice for all of the residents.

Your neighbor, Izuru, who helps the elderly residents of the complex bring in their groceries and fixes little odds and ins around the house for them.

Who even climbed up a 20 ft high tree to rescue a little girl’s cat (that ended up scratching the hell out of his face - but no worries, because you invited him into your apartment to clean and disinfect his wounds)

Neighbor Izuru, who voluntarily cleans out the pool on his day off, just to help his boss out. He does so shirtless in nothing but a pair of light-wash blue jeans that slightly hang off his slim waist, revealing the waistband of his Calvin Klein boxers. Sleek blond hair dripping with sweat that he wipes away with a swipe of his hand across his forehead.

Neighbor Izuru, who you’ve grown an extreme attraction to in the past few months that you’ve been living here. He was always so kind and mannerable towards everyone; a true gentleman.

Who’d never said one thing out of turn to you, even when he accidentally caught a glimpse of you through your bedroom changing into your nightclothes one evening. He noticed that you don’t wear any underwear beneath your pajamas. Probably due to the summer heat.

Neighbor Izuru who fisted his cock to the image of your naked body that night and busted all over his hand and sheets with a deep red blush set on his cheeks.

Who couldn’t stop fantasizing about having your naked body beneath him in his cool bedroom, the air conditioning set on a comfortable temperature so you’d both be content.

Izuru whose ears now turn pink everytime you greet him ‘good morning’ on your way to work and ‘good evening’ when you return home.

Your neighbor, Izuru, who does subtle things to try and catch your attention, like planting the roses in the garden by the office in your favorite color and mending the birdhouses so that the little cardinals and sparrows have a place to congregate when you come to feed them.

Izuru, who you’ve often caught sleeping in the courtyard on his break with his hand over his eyes and back leaned up against an oak tree. The same tree that he rescued the cat from.

Who scrambles awake, completely flustered when you inform him that his boss is looking for him. You’re kneeling in front of him and he can see your breasts by the way your sundress dips in the front. You’re still not wearing a bra.

Izuru, who, finally after months of secretly pining after you, gets up the nerve to ask you out for ice cream; his treat. He knows a great place not too far from the apartment.

Your neighbor, who is stunned when you actually end up asking him out first by bringing him a basket of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

His blue eyes widen in surprise, even more so when you stretch up onto your tip-toes to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you for all of the hard work that you do around here, Izuru. It doesn’t go unnoticed.”

Izuru Kira, your neighbor, who gets a sudden rush of courage and grabs your chin, pressing an experimental kiss to your chapstick-covered lips. You taste like watermelon.

Who ends up getting pulled by you into the pool shed and pressed against the door while you fumble with his belt and the button of his jeans. Your lips molded against each other's in a sloppy, wet kiss.

Izuru, your neighbor, who asks if you’re sure when you sink to your knees and pull his cock out of his boxers. You nod and give his leaking tip a few kitten licks before taking him in to the hilt.

He lets out a strangled yelp and holds your head flush to his crotch with his gardening-glove-covered hands.

Your neighbor, Izuru, who has to bite down on his lip to keep from making too much nose when your nose touches his pelvis and buries itself in his light blond pubes. One hand leaves your head to pull up your sundress, revealing your naked ass.

Izuru who, before he can cum from your mouth, bends you over a pool chair, drops his jeans to his ankles, swipes his fingers through your wet folds, and strokes the slick over his hard, aching cock.

“A-are you on something?” He blubbers nervously, not wanting to get you pregnant during this heated romp of passion.

You look at him over your shoulder and he almost cums on the spot. You nod.

Your neighbor, Izuru, who grips the hem of your dress and fists it in his hand while he eases the fat tip of his cock into your waiting hole.

“A little inappropriate, don’t you think? Letting your neighbor fuck you like this.” He says as he hikes one boot-clad foot up onto a pile of random junk and sets his pace: steady, eager, and hard.

Your ass recoils off of his hips, making loud slapping sounds that echo around the mostly empty shed.

The combination of your moans mix together so beautifully as you say each other’s names along with sweet praises and compliments to the other.

“So good” “so tight and warm” “so big” “so pretty” “you’re amazing.”

Your neighbor, Izuru, who begs you to cum - he can’t, refuses to cum before he feels you let go all over him. And you do.

Your orgasm triggers his and he pulls out quickly - warm, thick seed splashing over your ass cheeks and lower back.

Izuru, your neighbor, who reaches into his tool belt and pulls out refreshing wipes to clean you off before helping you stand upright. He has to catch you in his arms because your legs give out, making both of you blush.

Your neighbor, Izuru, who never thought that he’d fall for his pretty next-door neighbor and have her reciprocate his feelings.

Your neighbor, Izuru Kira.

#💗💗🍡°taglist: @stygianoir

#bleach izuru kira #bleach izuru #izuru kira #kira izuru #izuru kira x reader #kira izuru x reader #izuru kira x reader smut #izuru kira x female reader #izuru kira smut #kira izuru smut #bleach smut #bleach imagines #bleach scenarios #💗💗🍡°bleach headcanons #💗💗🍡°bleach masterlist #byp🌹

[landofzero-archive]

Ibara Saegusa - Private Room Chapter 1

Writer: Nishioka Maiko

Season: Autumn

(Location: CosPro Conference Area)

Ibara: ………

This is probably the best time to contact the other party. Even though the other person is of higher rank, I don’t like humbling myself too much and being criticized.

Now, what’s the next matter I have to work on? Oh? What on Earth is this stack of paper?

…… Ah, is that the photogravure gallery of Eden I took the other day? Hmm…… At first glance it looks like there’s no issues. (1)

Well, I think it’d be better to check in with each person.

His Highness is particularly sensitive about his appearance, especially when it comes to visuals. I’ll check with him to be sure—

Hm? An electronic sound coming from my tablet……?

(Ah. Is it that alarm that sounds when the stock price fluctuates?)

Uum……?

Huh? What on Earth is this……?

(The price of the stock I bought the other day plummeted……?

It’s common for stocks to fluctuate when investing, but I had read that this stock was pretty solid……)

…… Did I read it completely wrong? What a shame…… I ended up paying for an expensive life lesson.

(Location: Starmony Dorms (Exterior - Night))

Ibara: Fuu…… (Turning his head to relieve his stiffness)

(I’m tired…… No matter how many things I settle and finish, the work just keeps coming one after another. Today was a really busy day.

I found out I double-booked a shoot, was unable to get a hold of the other party, and was told they lost the documents I had gone through great lengths to create.

To top it all off, how on Earth did I only discover this evening that there was an unprocessed matter due today……!

Even though things went well in the morning without any major trouble……

—That’s right. It was around the time the stock price fell. Problems kept occurring in tandem.)

Haah. I’m not lucky at all…… Oh?

Natsume: Hm?

Ibara: Ah, hello. Are you heading out at this hour? Thank you for your hard work.

Natsume: I was just trying to go to the nearby convenience stoRE— More importantly. Fuuun…… HeEH?

Ibara: …… What is it? I’d like you to stop staring at me so intensely. 

Natsume: I sense you weren't feeling very ambitious toDAY. What's wrong with your conditiON?

Ibara: Huh……?

Natsume: It feels like you’ve been constantly exposed to the negative energy of a malevolent stAR. You’re down on your luCK. It’s a pretty rare conditiON, Ibara-kun. 

Ibara: What? It’s true that there were quite a few incidents today but I didn’t think there were that many.

Well, I suppose today just happened to be that kind of day. Statistically speaking, it’s normal to have bad days even if you’re lucky.

Natsume: That’s riGHT. It’s normal to have good days and bad dAYS. But your situation is differeNT. As I saID, you’ve faltered.

Sometimes it’s no exaggeration to say that there are people possessed by malevolent spirITS. That’s exactly what your condition is nOW.

It’s rare to come across such a caSE. How about it? I’ll tell you your fortUNE.

Honestly, I don’t care about you, but your condition is interesting because of your jOB.

Ibara: No, that’s quite fine. I don’t wish to hear such troublesome talk. I don’t believe in any of that spiritual stuff.

To begin with, if all fortune-telling was correct, then no gambling would take place and no one would fail in their investments.

Natsume: You don’t understAND. Fortune telling is not predictiON. General fortune telling is based on “observation” and “deductION.”

There are fortune tellers who claim to be 100% accurate, but they’re not fortune tellERS. They’re swindlERS.

Well, think about what I’m about to say as just small tALK. All I'm saying is that you can make the ingredients into whatever dish you want them to BE.

Ibara: Good grief. Well, I’m fine. I’m not interested at all, but I decided that it would be more reasonable to just listen rather than have a debate here.

So could you please hurry up and finish your fortune telling quickly?

Natsume: AlriGHT. I sometimes get asked to read fortunes by people I meet for work, so I usually keep this with ME. It all worked oUT.

Ibara: What did you just pull out? A pendant?

Natsume: No. This is a penduLUM—Hmhmmm…… I see. As expected, the rotation of the stars has worseNED.

Ibara: Even though you were talking to me in an insinuating manner, you were being very casual. What could you possibly understand about me at that level?

Natsume: I’m not trying to get into technical matters here, but taking more time doesn’t necessarily improve accurACY.

That’s right…… Maybe you could turn your luck around by reclaiming something familIAR.

Ibara: What? Even if you say that……

Natsume: Whether or not you believe it is up to you, Ibara-KUN. Like I said, just think of it as small tALK. Well, keep it in the back of your mIND. Then, I’ll be OFF.

Ibara: …… Good grief. I would like you to say what you want to say and not leave immediately……

---

TL NOTES:

1. A photogravure is an intaglio print process that was sometimes used to produce high-quality reproductions of photographs in ink. Traditionally it involves a copper plate being etched and then coated with light-sensitive gelatin that was exposed to a film positive. Fancy black and white photos. This instance was more than likely the digital version of the technique, which involves the masking and printing of various light values that have been etched, building up its values over time.

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#ensemble stars #enstars #enstars translation #ibara saegusa #natsume sakasaki #era: !! #type: scout #tl note: (Natsume voice) Mercury is in retrograde Ibara-kun

[planetknoxville]

You’re not my dad (Johnny Knoxville x Reader ft Bam)

Under 18 do not interact 

Notes: I've read every bit of Knoxville fanfiction there is so im going to have to write my own. I need this man out of my head, it's becoming a problem. The time its set is kinda around movie 2 or 3 or 4 idk who cares. It's not quite fluff, not quite smut, just a kinda fatherly Johnny because I'm a sick sick individual. I made up a character called jess she a dickhouse chick i guess just made her up cause i hate the Y/N thing lol

Warning: Blood, drinking, swearing, reckless mentally ill behavior, daddy kink if you squint,  etc

Please drink responsibly 

words 2400ish

----------------------------------------------------------------------

“Come on dipshit”

 I looked up to find Bam standing in front of me with a cooler in one hand and both of your skateboards in the other. I knew that cooler wasn't his and would have bet this month’s salary on it containing beers he'd stolen from catering that were meant for after filming had wrapped for today.

“A bit presumptuous that I’d want to hang out with you Brandon”, You said peering over the top of the trash magazine you’d been pretending to read. The day was going very slowly, as only a few people were actually on set and the ones that were here were absorbed in work you wanted absolutely nothing to do with. So, there you were lounging in a camp chair waiting for some dumb stunt that you knew was not happening today.

“Come onnnnn..” he whined, kicking you squarely in the shin.

“You’re a menace to society” you said through gritted teeth. Sighing in resignation you rose from your chair and immediately shoving him as hard as you could. He barely stumbled and looked back at me with disbelief, “ Is that all you’ve got Jess?”

We slipped behind the sea of large blue tents that shielded the expensive camera equipment and crew from the sun. We’d been filming in the paramount lot for two weeks now, there were several air conditioned warehouses but no, the holy trio of Jeff, Spike and Johnny had decided that outside in the boiling Los Angeles heat was far better. You began to think they were really pranking you with melanoma.

Filming was usually fun but there was a lot of waiting around. Get ready and wait, they always say. Bam and I were a lot alike, both liked skating and found it especially hard to do nothing or sit still so naturally, we became fast friends. In the first couple of days of mucking around we had found a few unused (hopefully) planks of wood, a large flat sheet of plywood, some milk crates and other assorted junk which we squirreled away and started building our very own skate park. It was precarious and constantly breaking but that was half the fun. It was tucked away in the corner of the giant concrete lot, our own private death trap. Just few bushes, a metal park bench with a plaque of remembrance for some executive that probably should be forgotten and the two dickheads dumb enough to fuck around and find out.

You both started throwing beers back like it was your job. If we couldn’t do our actual jobs then we had to put our talents to good use. Technically, it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, birds were chirping away, and sweat was dripping down your face right into your eyes.

“Fucking hell”, you moaned, using your sleeve to mop your brow blinking rapidly as the salt made your vison blurry. “Take off your jacket, Numbnuts,” Bam shouted.

“It's part of the outfit dummy” you did a little turn.

“You look homeless Jess.”

 Unfortunately, it was kind of true. the black and white flannel you were wearing had more holes than you could count, the white crop was dangerously thin close to showing your nipple piercings and you'd patched up the knee of your jeans only last night. You'd done it drunk and after sticking yourself a few too many times declared it done and perfect. But you were afraid if you looked at it too close it would fall apart. The icing on the cake was the white bandana you had been wearing as a shitty ineffective mask to get past the covid police that was still tied around your neck. A plague neckerchief if you will.

"Fine" you slipped it off your shoulders. Bundling it up into a ball, you took aim throwing it at the metal bench but missed, landing it directly in the middle of a bush. “Good one” Bam sneered. You rolled your eyes behind your sunglasses, aware that he probably couldn't even see it, so you flipped him off to drive the point home.  

You heard the general chatter from inside the tent grow louder and the both of you froze, looking at each other in mild panic. It wasn’t necessarily a secret what you’d been doing, people generally knew where to find us but you weren’t super keen on having soul sucking executives know about the giant liability that the two of you had created (outside of the carefully planned stunts).

 “Shit” we both scrambled to throw our discarded beer bottles behind our friend The Bush.

Two men started walking around the tarps and into our janky club house. As they got closer, you both audibly relaxed. It was Spike and Johnny. “Calm down guys we’re not here to break up the party” Spike still looked annoyed “it’s not like we can go ahead anyway today”

Johnny touched him on the shoulder and said “bring the camera back here, one of these idiots is bound to eat shit" he looked over his stupid aviators at me, winking. “I’ll bet $100 it will be you Doll”.

My cheeks started to grow hot and not from the beer. How did he always know what to say, it took all your self-control not to turn and stare. Like most women alive you found him irresistible, but you were dealing with it by pretending he didn’t exist. The men continue to stand in the cool shade, chatting but also watching. You hated that. Please fuck off Knoxville let me look like shit in peace, you thought bitterly

We began skating again, trying to stick the landing of a ramp we'd built only the day before. You’d even “borrowed” the props department's power drill because Bam was moaning about going the extra mile. You took your run up and predictably the ramp bowed in middle causing you to bail half way through stumbling and tripping over your board. You could feel the four beers you’d sculled sloshing around in your stomach, cheering you on internally.  

Spike started to clap slowly, jeering sarcastic encouragement “You've almost got it”

 “It's looking like a really good doll” Johnny, not even trying to keep a straight face.

“This is not conducive to my success fossils” You got back on your board rolling over to the cooler. Johnny put a hand over his heart feigning emotional distress.

Cracking another beer, you saw Johnny raise an eyebrow. You'd think for a man with his history, he’d be a little cooler. “You want one Irving? You need to loosen up”.

Turning away from the death glare and back to Bam who was lining up for his turn.

 “That shit is wobblier than your ass,” you whined.

Bam laughed “You're leaning into it way too much”.

“Then you fucking do it” you shoved him as you passed continuing to circle the ramp draining your beer and throwing it into the bush. It missed hitting the side of the bench breaking into a million pieces.

“Jess!!!” a chorus rang out and I raised my hands in an admission of guilt. “Don't worry baby I'll clean it up”. Snatching up and popping the top off another beer, you made a show of putting it safely on the ground out of the way. You could feel Johnny's eyes burning right through as you and Bam began to giggle uncontrollably.

“You've got this right? I’m going home” Spike clapped Johnny on the back. “I will see you both tomorrow whether or not you’re hungover” he pointed his fingers at us. Simultaneously we both sprang to attention “Sir, yes Sir” arms raised in a salute. He walked away mumbling and rolling his eyes.

“Thank god”, you cheekily beamed, “because I'm drunk as fuck”. Bam grinned back “let's hang here for a while, I've got something special”. From his pocket he pulled a silver flask. Gleefully you grabbed it, downing a huge mouthful.

“Woahhhh” Johnny shouted “You need to take it fucking easy”.

“Alright precious” You handed the flask back reluctantly.

“Did you know I used to be a gymnast?” you shouted back, “Could put my legs behind my head”. Johnny's mouth fell open in what you didn’t know was shock or disapproval. Bam barked a laugh, half of his sip coming out his mouth, the other out his nose. You patted him on the back patronizingly as he doubled over coughing still laughing.

“I can still do some of the tricks”. You launched yourself forward in a cartwheel. “I used to be able to do this thing, we called it the Hawk Tony”.

 “Why?” Bam wheezed.

“Cause you skate upside down.”

 Lining up with the skateboard, you took a deep breath and let the liquor flood your body with electricity. You planted my hands directly in the middle of the grip, balancing carefully and flicking your legs up vertically. A pretty decent handstand you thought for a bitch ten years out of practice. You hear Johnny let out a low whistle “Why didn't I think of that”.

“Well well look at you go” Bam said “Can you move?” As if a handstand on a skateboard was not enough? “You bet” I balanced on one hand, using the other to push off the concrete. Balancing was a lot harder than you remember and you needed to push off several times, but you did a circle around the park, stood up with only the slightest wobble, then raised your hands in a proper dismount and bowed to the now clapping Bam and Johnny.

“Jess!!! Look at yourself” Bam shouted. Thinking my shoelace had come undone I glanced down only to see scarlet droplets raining down on the concrete. I pressed my fingers to my face as if to check for a nosebleed when I saw my hand.

A bloody gash with a shard of broken glass. Beer bottle glass. "If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions”. Johnny started walking over, Bam stood motionless with an unopened bottle in his hand.

“Seriously guys don't even worry it's not that bad” you looked over at Johnny and smiling like an idiot you took two bloody fingers and wiped it over your cheek like some kind of grotesque Eye Black that footballers wore.  You pulled the glass from your palm, undoing the bandana from around your neck and tying it around your hand, tightening it with your teeth.

Johnny reached his hands out for you, “Come here kid, let me look at it”. Very quickly and impulsively you chucked down your board and rode out of his grasp. “Are you shitting me, Jess? Come back here”.

“I'm fine, Mr Knoxville. It's just a scratch.” You teased. The alcohol had made you feel nothing but a warm confidence. Bam had unfrozen coming over to stand next to Johnny like two disapproving parents. “Seriously, dude. You're bleeding kinda a lot.” he said nervously.

“Oh no, someone is bleeding on the set of Jackass. What a tragedy. How will I ever survive??” You waved your hands around in the air dramatically, unaware of the blood slowly but surely dripping down your fingers. You continued skating around, deaf to their pleas to stop and come to the medical tent. You snagged another beer, this time using your teeth to open the bottle.

“You guys are being ridiculous, okay I’m fine” You downed most of the beer as a trophy for your misguided victory lap. Johnny turned to bam, whispered something to him. “What are you girls gossiping about?” You queried.

Bam nodded, got on his board and started skating around. Thinking he'd finally relaxed, you rode alongside him grinning. He was just a board length ahead of you when he sharply cut in front of you, and you had to abruptly stop, staggering sidewards. “Bam you fucking stupid cun...” Your stream of profanity cut off by legendary stuntman and actor Johnny Knoxville HOISTING you over one shoulder and hauling your bloody drunken ass towards the medic tent.

“Fucking put me down” you squeal wiggling desperately. This was the most mortifying thing you could have ever imagined, you’d rather drown in horse cum. You couldn't help noticing how effortlessly he carried you, like a ragdoll, he'd picked you up like you weighed nothing.

“Darlin, you should have come on your own when I gave you the chance”.

“Please put me down, I'll walk”. You whined now seeing the blood-soaked bandana, your head swimming from both the beer and being upside down. You could see the trail of red you’d left, staining the footpath and his white shirt where you were grasping at. He continued on his way ignoring your cries, leaving a bemused Bam to pour beer on the ground to wash away the literal crime scene you caused.

“Asshole You're not my dad”.

“Well, someone's gotta be, doll”, he drawled. God that accent, it pulsed straight to your core. You'd fantasized about him manhandling you sure but not like this. “PUT ME DOWN” you all but screamed at him. You pulled hard on his belt, hard enough to rip the stitches on his belt loops, leaving bloody smears on the white letters that spelled KNOXVILLE. You heard him hiss and then he slapped you hard, half on the butt, half on the top of your thighs. You were genuinely speechless. Humiliated and in increasingly more pain, tears filled your eyes and you finally stopped struggling.

“If I'd known spanking you would have gotten you to behave, I would have done it weeks ago” He chuckled, bending his knees slightly to enter the tent. He put you down on your feet with a shit eating grin plastered all over his smug, stupid, beautiful face. You stared at him blankly as his features blurred with the bright light they had illuminating the tent, your own head swimming and you could hear ringing. His strong muscular arms snaked out, grasping your shoulders as you swayed slightly forward, slumping your head against his chest.  “Baby it’s okay, Take it easy”. He held you gently and whispered the comforting words against the top of your hair as the confused but attentive medic pulled forward a stretch for him to lay you on. You moaned at the loss of contact, cringing internally that you’d made a sound like that out loud, but he held this small smile on his lips. He grabbed your other hand and murmured into the back of it “It’s okay,  I’ve got you”. As your head began clear, you started to sober up and the medic cleaned and dressed your wound, you looked over to see Johnny staring intently at you with a egotistical smirk plastered on his awful handsome face.

“What?” You groaned desperately trying to cover your face with your arm, but he held your fingers in a firm embrace. Forcing you to keep looking at him. How were you ever going to live this down.

“I guess you owe me that hundred bucks baby girl”.

#johnny knoxville #jackass x reader #jackass #bam margera #jackass imagine #johnny knoxville fic #Johnny Knoxville smut #johnny knoxville x reader #steve o #dickhouse

[laundrybiscuits]

(come alive in the neon light tag | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6)

“It’s called folie à deux,” says Robin. “Madness shared by two. That’s your genius plan to make Eddie your boyfriend: inducing a psychiatric condition.” 

“I’m playing it safe.” Steve frowns. “I still don’t even know if he’s gay or whatever.”

“Oh, what the shit, obviously Eddie is gay, dingus.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No, but—” she hesitates. “Well, everyone knows. It’s obvious. Everyone talked about it at school.”

Steve starts flipping through a pile of magazines by Robin's nightstand, just to have something to do with his hands. “Everyone talked about Jonathan Byers, too. I talked about Jonathan, and then he stole my girlfriend.” 

“Right, but, as far as I know, you did not have sex with Jonathan Byers. I think the fact that you’ve been hooking up with Eddie is a pretty strong indication of homosexual tendencies. Wait, why have you been hooking up with Eddie if you thought he was straight?”

“Well, I figured it was worth a shot. Straight guys mess around sometimes, it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Robin stares at him. “That’s the single most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard. God, I hate men.” 

“I’m just saying, we can’t rule anything out!”

“Okay, but you’re hoping it means something, right? That’s the goal here? How’d dinner go?”

It had gone pretty good, Steve thought. He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like any date he’d ever been on before. 

Normally, he’d take a girl out to dinner and just try to get her talking. Get her laughing, try to charm her. They both know that if she’s smiling enough by dessert, she’s going to be slipping him a little tongue in the car at the end of the night; depending on the girl, they might be doing a lot more than kissing. 

It’s a tried-and-true method. It’s how he does things, and he’s pretty damn good at it. But taking Eddie to dinner had felt like having to learn a whole new language. For one thing, Eddie hadn’t known it was a date. For another, it hadn’t been any kind of warm-up to something, because they’d already left Eddie’s sheets in ruins. 

The part that got to Steve the most, though, was how he didn’t know what the right way to act was. The place they’d gone to wasn’t even that fancy or anything, just a burger joint, because Steve might be new to this but he knows how it looks when two guys go to a restaurant with tablecloths and silverware. Between the formica tabletops and the flimsy plastic basket of fries, the atmosphere hadn’t exactly been date-like. And during the dinner, Steve hadn’t gone to any of his usual patterns of do-you-have-siblings and what-kind-of-music-do-you-like because he already knows that stuff. 

He knows a hell of a lot more than that. He knows what Eddie looks like when he’s scared out of his mind; he knows what Eddie’s willing to do to protect the people he cares about. He knows Eddie, so he doesn’t have to ask.

It’s not like they hadn’t had stuff to talk about. It’s always just easy to talk to Eddie. He’s funny and clever, way smarter than Steve, but he never makes Steve feel stupid. Or, well, not in a bad way. Just the way where sometimes he smiles and scrunches up his nose a little, and Steve stops being able to talk for a second. 

So sure, they have stuff to talk about. Movies, the kids, any dumb thing that goes through their heads. At one point, Steve had had to grab Eddie to stop him from standing on the booth and delivering a little speech about dueling, which for some reason he has very strong feelings about.

Steve’s worried that he hadn’t been showcasing his boyfriend skills enough, though. He’s been trying to be a little flirtier, but it’s like he’s fighting with one hand tied behind his back. Every time he’d almost reached out to touch Eddie’s hair, maybe play with his fingers, he’d remembered: right, we’re in public. 

It’s not like any dating he’s ever done in the past. It’s difficult and complicated, and he can’t even complain about it to Robin without being an ass, because it's not like she's got other options. 

What he’d say to her, if he could, is that maybe it would just be easier to stop trying. Find a girlfriend. Do things the way he knows how, the way there’s rules for. 

He could even just stop trying for more with Eddie, and go along with what they’ve got now. He could have Eddie as a friend, his best friend other than Robin, and still have Eddie cursing and beautiful in his bed. It’s possible. 

But Steve thinks about the way Eddie slipped off the booth and collapsed into Steve’s side for a moment, cackling like a maniac, with a little bit of ketchup on his cheek.

Yeah, there’s no way Steve’s giving up yet.

#I wrote like half of the actual sex scene preceding this and then got writer's block and skipped ahead #so here's the plan: we're moving ahead BUT god willing and the creek don't rise it'll be in the AO3 version #(whenever I put up the next chunk) #steddie #fic: come alive in the neon light

[twilightmalachite]

2×2 - Grown-Up Situation 9

Author: Akira

Characters: Yuuta, Hinata, Nagisa, Shinobu

Translator: Mika Enstars

"You need to be especially careful, Yuuta-kun. You’ve had a real bad mouth lately thanks to a certain somebody’s influence."

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Season: Winter

Location: Back Alley in Downtown

First day of 2×2 episode 5, beginning filming of “Experience Living On The Streets”…

Nagisa: …Alright, then, what should we do?

…This is my first appearance on 2×2, a program that has 2wink as the leads, so I’ll try to keep out of the way and adapt to your style.

Yuuta: Ah, by the way, beginning now, be conscious of the cameras and act accordingly.

We have ES’ prided unnecessarily-skilled hidden camera men are secretly filming us.

Hinata: Yup! It won’t be entertaining for our viewers if we’re too conscious of the camera, but if we get too careless and say something without thinking, it won’t be broadcastable.

You need to be especially careful, Yuuta-kun. You’ve had a real bad mouth lately thanks to a certain somebody’s influence.

Yuuta: And who is this somebody? I think you might be misunderstanding something, Aniki, if you think this is about that gambler who laughs with a “gyahaha”.

Hinata: You don’t have to deny it so readily.

Shinobu: Umm. Then, from now on, “sessha” is prohibited de goza…. prohibited.

Nagisa: …I have to become a god, too.

Yuuta: Shinobu-kun aside, wouldn’t it be alright for you to stay in your natural state, Ran-senpai?

Nagisa: …Yeah. That’s how my policy is these days, but I’m still worried if my true self will be accepted by my fans and such.

…So maybe I shouldn’t be me, but instead act as the domineering, masculine me that one naturally associates with my appearance.

…I suppose that is what Ibara had envisioned when he named us “Adam”.

…When I think about that, I feel compelled to play the “God Mode” that I’m so used to.

Hinata: I getcha~, I’m also worried about if fans will accept 2wink’s, or rather, my little brother’s recent changes.

I find myself thinking, “wouldn’t it be better just to keep the same two-as-one 2wink as before?”

Yuuta: Fortunately, while I dunno if it’s well-received, we’ve been getting more attention than ever! It’s just conjecture, but isn’t that what also got us our namesake program 2×2?

Hinata: I suppose that’s true… Wait, is it alright for us to be chatting?

Filming for our “experience” has already begun. We’ve gotta get it together.

According to Anzu-san’s instructions through HoldHands, as pairs, we’ll start our living experience in different locations.

After that, maybe we’ll join together or not, or maybe we can team up to antagonize and crush one another. How we live our lives is up to us.

And however has the better life by the end of the last day is who wins.

Yuuta: Those victory conditions are rather vague. Even going by “better life”… Maybe like The Game of Life[1], with whoever has the most money wins?

Hinata: Well in any case, we’ll have to head over to our respective starting points.

Farewell for a while, Yuuta-kun, Onii-chan will miss you—

Wh- whaa?

Ran-senpai? Why are you picking me up?

Nagisa: Let’s move then, Hinataaaaaa!

Hinata: Huuuuh!?

Ran-senpai’s character suddenly changed!? Ah, oh right, is this what his “God Mode” is like?

Shinobu: It’s been a while for Ran-senpai, so I guess his calibration is a bit off…

Hinata: I feel so boggled because this is the complete opposite of Ran-senpai’s usual self… T-the regular, normal Ran-senpai I can do just fine with!

Nagisa: Quiet, it’s fine so let’s go! Just shut up and come with me!

Hinata: Wow, he’s carrying me to the location bus in his arms~… His speech and words are rough, but since his personality is the same kind Ran-senpai as always, there’s an extra big gap~…

Yuuta: S-See ya~!

Shinobu: Umm. So is this a good place for you and I (sessha), I mean, I (boku), to start?

Yuuta: Yup. Though, in order to be fair, we’ve been instructed not to move until Team Aniki is in place.

Shinobu: Team Aniki, huh. Guess there’s no other way to describe it.

Yuuta: But well, it should be fine to hold a strategy meeting. Actually, what should we do?

Shinobu: I don’t even know what to do… I really have no experience living on the street, I’m just a normal kid from a normal family.

So basically, I feel like you, who are used to this thing, should set up the plan.

Yuuta: Hmm… But now that I think about it, when we had run away from home, I was basically carried around by Aniki.

It was Aniki who made sure we had food and a place to sleep, so I might not know how to do that.

Shinobu: Huhh? S-Suddenly I feel anxious about this…

Yuuta: W-Well, better than Shinobu-kun, who has no experience, right? You can count on me, who has plenty of experience! ♪

Shinobu: Uu, I’m anxious because it’s feeling more plausible you’re just saying that…

But it’s true that it’s still better than myself, who has no experience at all.

I’ll count on you, and I’ll cooperate with anything you do, as long as you lead the way.

Yuuta: Hmmm… I’ve been feeling the same about the previous episodes too, but I have no experience leading a team at all…

When I’m told to take on a role of leadership, I become completely stumped.

[ ☆ ]

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He's referring to the board game here; you might just know of it as “Life”!

#2×2 #2x2 #yuuta aoi #hinata aoi #nagisa ran #shinobu sengoku #event #translation

[heymeowmao]

2023.03.21 - https://weibo.com/l/wblive/p/show/1022:2321324881830741672021

Long time no see!

LYN: Hallo everybody, good evening. I am Modern Brothers’ Liu Yuning. Welcome!

C: Ning-ge looks so handsome today. LYN: And what day was I lacking? When did it seem like my stream was lacking a little, tell me and I will go delete the playback for that “episode”. Alright? If you have any opinions you can tell me.

C: Ning-ge, you look thinner. LYN: I’m not thinner; I’m just the same. My guess is that you just haven’t seen me in too long and you’ve missed me too much. There’s that song, right- “思念是一种病” (longing for someone is a type of sickness). Then you... you’re all sick. - C: It’s so high quality today. LYN: You must have missed the last stream. I’ve upgraded my lights and adjusted the camera so now there’s a different kind of clarity- the kind that makes it kind of 3D.  - C: We’re all sick? LYN: Right. I’m a doctor, aren’t I? Call me Doctor Liu. C: You already said it- we’re lovesick. LYN: “Lovesick”... OMG... you all are... sweet-talkers.

C: Ning-ge, today is my birthday. LYN: Happy Birthday to you, friend. I wish you a Happy Birthday... LYN: /got distracted by his wig/ Why is this hair so long? I’ll pull it out. // There was an extra hair there... Here’s another one. /blows it away/ It’ll make another LYN.

LYN: I did make a prior announcement today, telling you I would stream. Because uhm... I got out a little earlier for today but I don’t think I will get the chance to later. We’ll be moving from Hengdian to shoot in another location soon. When I reach that new city I don’t think I’ll be able to stream. I’ll still bring my equipment and everything but the I don’t think I can stream regularly. I don’t think I’ll have the time to stream, anyway. Also this month I’ve a whole bunch of OSTs I still haven’t recorded yet. I was planning to wrap early and go record them, but my vocal condition isn’t that great today. So instead of recording I had a choice: 1. stream, or 2. record. Since I’m not in the best condition I thought it better to hold off on recording and come to chat instead. I’ve still got an early start tomorrow. C: You aren’t regularly streaming now. LYN: I know. The last time I streamed was on the 8th? That was more than a dozen days ago, right? I don’t quite remember. I’ll try to stream at least twice a month, now. That’s enough. Don’t they say that it’s because of my streams that there are so many (weibo) accounts? I don’t know if it’s true or not, and I don’t care, all I want to do is stream. That’s all I have to do. LYN: So, I welcome other people’s fans, too. You can also watch my stream.

LYN: Cheers! LYN: All I want to do is keep you company.

C: Ning-ge, I’m celebrating my great 20th birthday! (大寿) LYN: Don’t mess around. You think 20 counts as a “great” birthday? That’s not very auspicious. Don’t think that your joke is very humorous, it’s not auspicious. Twenty doesn’t count as a “great” birthday. That’s like... you’ve just been born. You’re just a child. You still have a long life to live. Why did you make it seem like living until you’re twenty is something so difficult? 

LYN: Honestly speaking, every time I stream it affects my state of being when acting. Really. Streaming affects my acting. I didn’t know about it before but recently I’ve felt that after I stream, and then go to the set the next day... I can’t say my (standard mandarin) lines straight. The lines I say every day become hard to pronounce in Standard Mandarin. I remember one day I had a line, “Why don’t you sleep in my room? The heating burns hotter.” But when I recited it, it came out with a Northeastern accent.  C: Standard is hard. LYN: Isn’t it? But we just have to keep learning as we age. Especially since my Standard Mandarin used to be pretty poor. I’m from the Northeast, and we don’t differentiate between sh- and s-. So for me, I’ve already put enough effort into Standard Mandarin in the time that I have, and in the rest of the time... /long pause/ ...I do other things. With Standard dialect it’s a long learning process- there will always be room for improvement. LYN: It’s the same for other regions, whether you’re from Sichuan, Changsha, or... just everywhere. There could be a period of time you experienced where you were constantly using Standard Mandarin, and you could have come to a point where you think your pronunciation is already very good. But then, like around the New Year, you go back to your hometown. You’re talking with you family in your native dialect and then after half a month you return and find that your Standard dialect is lacking again. All languages are spoken according to your environment. Let’s give you an example- say you’re from the South, and you have a roommate who’s from the Northeast. After a while, your own speech is going to be affected by the Northeastern dialect. I don’t know if you’ve ever had such an experience? It’s alright, though. It’s okay. I just have to keep practicing my Standard dialect, and I will. C: I’m from Shandong. LYN: /in the Shandong dialect/ You’re from Shandong?? // In my stream I purposefully use my hometown dialect. This goes for when I’m on variety shows, as well; But when I’m shooting my dramas I use Standard. But why do I do this? Because I feel like when I use my hometown dialect in my stream, it gives us a sense of closeness. Also the Northeastern dialect itself carries a sense of humor. Strangely, it’s humorous. I just want my stream to be somewhere you can take a rest. Otherwise I’d only be here to promote my album or my upcoming drama. But I don’t want that. C: Use Standard to stream. LYN: Nah. I just want you to feel the sense of a gap. Many of you might not have seen my dramas, but you’ve seen my stream. You could have come across clips of me on weibo or something, and thought “Why does this fellow open his mouth and sound like a fool?? This kid sounds like he came from the bottom of the ocean.” (Dandong is a coastal city.) And then later, they could see me in a drama and think, “Oh? He doesn’t sound like he did before!” Now they can feel the difference in character and they won’t mistake my character in the drama for my character while I am streaming. This is a difference that I purposely want to create. 

LYN: Our main theme here is contrast. /laughs/ It seems like anything that comes up here is the main theme. Like, “Our main dish today is...” It’s normally like that, isn’t it. When I was working in the restaurant as a waiter, I would serve the customers. They would ask, “What’s your special today?” Normally the waiters will recommend you something in one of two categories. The first is their main dish- their specialty, that the chef cooks well. For example, you can go to eat the... the... /thinking/ ?? Aren’t I a cook? Why can’t I think of the names of any dishes?? Okay- for example you want to eat 殺豬菜 (sha-zhu-cai; literally = “kill-pig-dish”), so you go to a restaurant that’s called “Dongbei Sha-Zhu-Cai” and when you ask the waiter what they can recommend, they’re going to say “sha-zhu-cai”, right? Then, the other possibility is that they recommend whatever is excess in the kitchen. For example, you ordered 20kg of beef yesterday and if you don’t sell it today it will go to waste. Then, you (as the waiter) would say to the customer, “We’re recommending a new dish today. Called “sha-niu-cai” (kill-cow-dish).” /laughs/ Of course, not like that. But you have to think of ways to get this beef sold. But in the end, whatever we recommend as the “main dish” is whatever we want to recommend to you. It doesn’t mean that it’s really the “main” dish. LYN: Right now our main theme is “contrast” and it should only be used for this particular moment. Whether it is still the main theme later doesn’t really matter. - C: Did you stick double-eyelid tape? LYN: No. // Did I?? /scratches his eyelid/ Oh, no. LYN: I took it off just now. LOL. - C: What is “sha-zhu-cai”? LYN: It’s a specialty in the Northeast. It’s a stew made of pork belly and pickled mustard greens and sometimes people put either rice noodles or tofu in it. Sometimes there’ll be blood sausage. It depends. - C: Ning-ge, your double eyelids are pretty prominent these days. LYN: Ah. I really didn’t go get double-eyelid surgery, okay? I didn’t get thread embedding, either. These days not only do I have double eyelids, sometimes I wake up to go to work and I have triple eyelids. For the past two days, when I woke up and got to work, the makeup artist asked me, “What’s wrong with your eyes? Did you cry last night?” And I replied, “Yes. People online are saying I’m ugly so I go home and cry.” They said, “Oh, okay, Cry less because after you cry you wake up the next morning with triple eyelids.” There are three layers. Later, I was thinking about it, and- no, I wasn’t really crying- I think it’s because... I’m getting older so my skin is getting saggier. That’s the only way I can comfort myself. I’ve just reached the age in life where my eyelids cant hold themselves up anymore. Now I have triple eyelids.

C: Ning-ge, your lower eyelids are more prominent too. (aegyo sal/love band) LYN: Those are just eye bags. Those are eye bags and dark circles- it doesn’t have a sliver of relation to the love band. Mine are just... eye bags. Why can’t you see them right now? Because I have turned on the beauty filter very high. Blur is already on 100- you can’t see a single wrinkle on my face. Even my eye bags have been worn smooth by the filter. The records of time have all been blurred away. It’s because I have the filter on. Yeah. So...

C: Ning-ge, your lips are protruding.  LYN: My lips are not protruding. You can’t treat me like this. I’m sure that if you’re watching my stream right now, even if you aren’t my fan, you don’t HATE me, right? You can be kind, can’t you? The problem here is, I can self-diss and say I’m old and my eyelids are sagging but you can’t start following along and diss me, too. LYN: I said I was old, my eyelids were sagging, I have wrinkles and eye bags, and then you can’t just come up and say, “Yes, your lips are protruding too.” We don’t do that here, okay? I can make fun of myself but if you start making fun of me then that’s a personal attack. I do it to make you laugh and relax, to joke around. But you can’t get caught up and start too. Are you monkeys? I give you a stick and you’ll climb right up?? Everyone else’s fans are like this- (I’ll say) “I feel like I’ve gotten fatter recently” and other people’s fans say, “No, no. In our hearts, you are the thinnest! As thin as a match. You’re the prettiest!” But when I start saying that I’m old and have eye bags, my fans say, “Yes. Your lips are protruding, too.” LYN: /sigh/ LYN: I’ll give you a flying kick!

C: Ning-ge, your hair looks less, too. LYN: You! I’ll slap you!! My hair is thinning?? I’m the spokesperson for L’Oréal!! Don’t say any nonsense, here! You’re going to make me lose my sponsorship. XD LYN: It doesn’t matter if you say it normally, but saying that right now means that people are more likely to believe you. Because lately I keep wearing these wigs in my stream. The rate of believability immediately raises. One person says, “It seems like Ning-ge is losing hair recently” and at this moment another one chimes in, “You might be right... he’s always wearing a wig in the stream. It can’t be that he’s balding, right??” You’re going to affect my market value. D: Stop messing around. C: Take off your wig to prove (that you’re not balding). LYN: I won’t! Some things need to be proven and some things don’t. 清者自清 (the wise man knows he knows nothing).

C: Ning-ge, is your foot completely healed now? LYN: There’s no way it can be completely healed. The bone needs time. Right now the bones are pretty much set- they've healed correctly and are starting to mend. It’s fine to walk normally, but it still hurts a little if I run. Sometimes if I am doing a fight scene and I step on a rock- if it puts pressure on the bottom of my foot, it will hurt. Basic walking is fine, though. I’m a normal person, again.

C: Mao-Xue-Wang mentioned you.  LYN: I saw that video. If I remember, they asked MBY if he knows what the “Great Celebration-Great Tragedy Combination” was and he was dumbfounded. He said, “What does this mean??” But I’m guessing that one of the staff told him. “Hold on! MBY-laoshi, the combination of you and LYN- the netizens are calling that the “Great Celebration-Great Tragedy Combination”. Alright? Okay- we’re ready to roll!” And at that moment MBY said, “Oh! Do they mean me and LYN?” He didn’t know. You can tell he was floundering. You can tell that someone at the side reminded him. Then LXQ put in a word, “Oh, Ning-ge? We should ask him to come play.” Isn’t it a coincidence that right when I was watching that video, LXQ was standing right next to me? The moment when my staff showed me the video, to tell me that I was mentioned in Mao-Xue-Wang, LXQ was standing right beside me. Life is so interesting. C: You’re saying it as if you were there. LYN: I’m just guessing that’s how it went. C: So does that mean you’re going? LYN: Yeah, if I have the time, I’ll go. I’ll shoot the drama with Xueqin first, and I’m already close with MBY. If I have time, I’ll go. No, I don’t mean “if I have time”- If I don’t have time, I’ll MAKE time. What is that? It’s called, “(being) A Friend.”

C: The music is too loud. LYN: Do you think the music is loud, friends? Sometimes when I stream I purposely make the sound of the music a little loud, because it’s not as if we’re taking an online class here. We’re not in an online class, so you don’t need to- C: It’s a little loud. LYN: Then, sorry. I must not have adjusted the output settings well. Sorry. It’s my problem. // Alright. I’ve adjusted it. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. When you’re watching my stream I hope that you can be happy. C: Can you make the speaking volume higher? LYN: I won’t. :p I already said that my voice isn’t in the best condition today, if it were I’d have gone to record songs.

LYN: I’ve released a few songs recently. One of them is 朝暮 (Dawn and Dusk), the OST from Warm on a Cold Night (九霄寒夜暖). I’ve released quite a few OSTs recently... The drama is pretty good, I did actually find some time watch it. Just a little. It’s nice, so friends if you have some time you can go watch Warm on a Cold Night. I sang the song 朝暮 (Dawn and Dusk). There’s also another drama called Romance of a Twin Flower (春闺梦里人). For this drama, I’ve sung an OST called 长相诺 (Long Promise). I quite like these two songs. CGMLR has Ding Yuxi as a lead. I remember right when I finished recording that song I had gone to Changsha for a show and I met him. I told him, too, “I sang an OST for your drama” and I chatted with him a bit. I think this drama can be popular; it’s very nice. LYN: Another thing- if you have time, you can go to the theatre to watch a movie. There’s one called Manifesto (望道). I sang a song for that, as well.  LYN: Did I just lag? ?__? LYN: Anyway- Manifesto. Yes, I sang a song for the movie. You can go watch it, it’s not bad. It was fairly inspiring. You can watch it.

C: The speaking volume is too low. LYN: /pulls his mic closer to his face/ Is it low? My mic’s about to go into my mouth. Ey! Hello?? Hey!! It’s not low, right? /making more noises into the mic/ LYN: It’s alright, not low.

LYN: Before I started streaming today, I did a really big feat. I copied all the accompaniment tracks I have of my songs onto this computer. I had promised you before, that I would copy the tracks. Today I have finally done that. There are some I don’t have, though. I wanted to sing a song earlier, but I am finding I don’t have it. The one I sang on Jiangsu Satellite TV... what was it called? I forgot. XD C: A great feat! LYN: Right? I got them all recorded. No, I mean- copied. I’ll sing something... let me pick. // Xiao Hong Chen! That’s right. But I don’t seem to have that one... I probably didn’t copy it over. But I do have tracks for most of my own songs. Let me see...

C: 一爱如故 (One Love as Always) [The Long Ballad OST] LYN: 一爱如故? I’ve never sung that live. - /plays the first few notes/ LYN: It’s this one, right? But the problem is I might have to go online and look up the lyrics. // I don’t know how it’ll come out. It’s my first time singing it. First time singing it live. LYN: I sang the first line wrong. It’s like this isn’t even my song at all. Sorry. Let’s go again. It’s supposed to be “I lived too ‘stubbornly’” but sang it as “I lived too ‘miserably’.” That’s two different experiences. Sorry. Let’s try again. -- 一爱如故 (One Love as Always) LYN: Was this always so difficult to sing?? LYN: This song is so high (in key)? /sigh/ It’s alright. I’ll see if there’s a chance to sing it for you again next time. C: Ning-ge, the original singer didn’t do as well as you. LYN: There’s no need for backhanded compliments. We want to be confident, here.

C: 与子成说 (Yu Zi Cheng Shuo) [The Starry Love OST] LYN: Let me see if I have it. I think this song might send me (to death), though. // This one right? Let’s try. -- 与子成说 (Yu Zi Cheng Shuo) LYN: I’m not in the best condition, for this. I’m not able to sing it. It’s alright, though. All the tracks are copied to this computer, so I’ll sing for you the next time I stream. My voice is a bit tired, today. I feel like it’s hoarse. I won’t sing today; I’ll save these tracks for you. Later when I’m better I’ll stand and sing. We’ll just leave it here for today. LYN: It’s fine- just that when I’m shooting the drama I’m always fighting with people. I’ve made my voice hoarse (from yelling).

C: Will you be singing at Weibo Night? LYN: /clicks his tongue/ Don’t ask. You think you can ask about anything? Weibo Night organizers have spent so long just to try and give you a surprise, and you think I’m going to spoil that? Don’t ask. C: I got it. LYN: What did you get?!? You DON’T KNOW but you’re just pretending you do!

C: Ning-ge, when you go to Weibo Night be careful not to be overpowered. LYN: XD I don’t know if this person really cares about me, or if they’re trying to start something. “Be careful not to be overpowered”... isn’t that quite a normal occurrence, for me? You can grab anyone and they will overpower/overshadow me. It’s alright. I’m- how should I put this- I’ll be suppressed no matter what I do. I won’t struggle. If we’re talking about visuals, I don’t even consider myself a contender. I’m not UGLY, but if you compare me to other people I’m certainly not as handsome. So this time I think... I’ll proceed as usual. Our main theme is “overpowered.” Even my fans want to overpower me. As if I’m someone in this industry who is most easily pressured... I’m not even worthy of being overpowered by other artists. Now my fans have to come overpower me??  LYN: Weibo Night is a great activity. There’ll be a lot of people I’m familiar with in attendance. As well as those people that I don’t really speak to online, but in reality we talk a lot in private. I can go and see all the handsome men and beautiful ladies. I’m not good-looking myself, but at least I can go out and see the world, right? For Weibo Night this year, I’ll just go to open my eyes to the world. I’ll go to see exactly HOW good-looking all these celebrities are. C: Ning-ge, go to Weibo Night and ask people for their autographs. LYN: LOL. The point of going to Weibo Night is to go and take pictures with celebrities, is that it? My goal is to collect 40 photos together with artists? It’s like I’m on a mission every time I go. This time I am prepared to find 40 artists to take a photo with and then, I will ask 20 of them if I can get a personalized autograph.  LYN: If I collect 20 autographs, could I summon Shenlong, or what? C: And then sell them. LYN: I don’t think that’s going to work. They’re going to write “To: Liu Yuning” on them. Who am I going to sell those to? Sell it to someone in this world with the same name as me? There’s no need, right? I won’t sell them, then? Is my goal in attending Weibo Night only to get autographs?? LYN: My stream is like this, friends. It has a bit of an entry requirement. You might think that my stream really takes a lot out of you, but there are some friends- those without brains- who don’t understand. They can’t understand my stream, they don’t know what I’m talking about. Like just now, I said I would go to Weibo Night to gather autographs, and some people thought I was being serious?? They thought I was being serious and are even advising me against it, saying, “Ning-ge, there’s no need. Let’s not make ourselves look so pitiful.” These friends are cute and... they’re just afraid I’ll lose face, right? LYN: But this type of foolish thing is something I can really do. Our theme is “being different from others”! We want to be “perverse”. XD

C: Ning-ge, your accent isn’t worthy of your hairstyle. LYN: What type of accent should a person with this hairstyle HAVE?? Tell me. This hairstyle... what accent is it worthy of? - starts playing Big Bang’s - If You - [t/n: does this mean he thinks the hair’s worthy of being on a kpop boyband member’s head...] LYN: There’s no accompaniment track??  LYN: It doesn’t work. Let’s forget about it. ...It’s sha ma te. There is no “worthy” or “unworthy”.

C: Ning-ge, you know Cantonese songs? LYN: When I was working the bar I had learned some Cantonese songs, some Korean songs, some English... I don’t think I learned any Japanese? Oh- I learned one. LYN: Let me see if there’s an accompaniment track. // Why can’t my computer search... LYN: There’s even a Qin Junjie version?? -- Sekai ga Owaru Made wa... (世界が終るまでは…) (WANDS) LYN: This song is hard! You get the drift, though. That was pretty much it.

LYN: Someone earlier said that my accent plus this hairstyle equals suffering. I feel it too. Friends, tell me. What type of accent pairs well with this hair? Which region fits, even just a little? C: Perfect Scum sound. (渣苏音) LYN: What the heck is that? The “scum” of “scumbag” (渣男) and the “sue” from “mary-sue” (苏死你) [used to describe when something is too perfect]? What is that? I’ve never heard of it. Let me look it up- see if I can find anything. This is my first time hearing this expression. It might be the first time I got eliminated. [t/n: because he’s usually up-to-date on all the memes and internet slang] LYN: ?? Why is it all about other artists?? /watches a video/ D: What- what the HECK IS THIS?? This is what you like? You like when it sounds like there’s a tractor hiding in your throat- like this? /demonstrates/. Alright then, let’s do it. LYN: ~Friends, do you like this type of voice? If it’s true, then this is simple. /repeating the song lyrics (问风)/ Why didn’t you give me a reason and just abandon me? Your piercing eyes can see... the true form of a demon~ (second half is NOT the lyrics to the song X’D) LYN: ~Young friends nowadays like this sort of thing? Isn’t this purely the “off-putting man”? Friends, it’s like this- I told you last time about it but many of you might not have heard. I’ll teach you where this “perfect’ sound that a lot of girls like comes from. I’m sure there are men in the stream- you can learn. It’s just that when you’re speaking, you need to use a breathy "bubble” voice to start. What is the “bubble” voice? /demonstrates/ It’s this. Then, just use a normal breathy voice to end. /demonstrates again/ When you want to kill a girl with perfection, use the bubble voice to start and end with a breath. You can try it. With these lines... ? Why can’t I show you the lyrics? Friends, just randomly give me a line. Tell me a line that you think is most perfect in the world. I’ll see what lines there are and then I’ll show you where the “perfect scum sound” comes from. - /decides to look up some lines/ - /follows along with a video & creeps himself out/ LYN: I just don’t understand who the target audience with this is?? I really want to know, who would you use this on??? What the heck IS this? /sigh/ Forget it.

C: Handsome-guy, please change a method. LYN: ~You want me to change a method? But just now I... almost lost my wig. Let me... fix up my hair. /adjusts it/ Alright. I’m handsome once more. ~

C: Change a wig. LYN: ~ I don’t have any more. This is the only one I have with me. I can’t afford to buy any more. ~ LYN: My wig is about to fall off...

C: Jiu Yuan is fine. (Parting of Orchid and Demon King donghua) LYN: Jiu Yuan doesn’t sound like this!! He’s more... manly. When I was doing the voice acting for it, the laoshi kept telling me that JY was a god of war, and that he was very fierce. He could fight very well and he didn’t have any wants or worries. When I was doing the voice acting there wasn’t much emotion I needed to put behind it. When he speaks he doesn’t have any big emotional fluctuation. It’s difficult to phase him, so when we were doing the voice for him, we made him a bit... emotionless. He’s a monk, right?

C: Ning-ge, your wig is too distracting, I can’t get into it. LYN: What are you doing that you need to get into it?? Are you watching a drama? Do you think this is an ongoing drama or a movie? Are you too into your character, that you’ve fallen for the play?

C: Jiu Yuan is wearing a back-bearing outfit. LYN: Since a lot of people know that I was the voice actor for the character, now they’re asking me when /I’M/ going to wear a back-bearing outfit. I saw that comment and wanted to spit blood. XD  LYN: Whenever I’m shooting for the drama, I always run into these relatively... I said RELATIVELY! Relatively... exposing scenes. Of course, nothing is really exposed at all. But whenever I’m met with scenes like that I tell myself- not that I am so high and mighty, but- I tell myself, “LYN. You’ve gotten to the point where you need to sell your body?? You can’t just rely on your mouth (chattering) anymore, you need to sell your meat (body) now, huh?” I have to EXPOSE myself now. My goodness... C: Bathing scenes. LYN: Yeah! Isn’t it normal in dramas to have a scene or two of men bathing? But unfortunately, my physique is truly average. I’m too skinny. On set there are those dedicated cameras- the ones who follow you around and record the bts videos, right? So one day we were doing a bathing scene and I took my top off and just... hung out in the bath. We were getting ready to shoot the scene. And then the BTS-laoshi was standing right across from me. I was dazed. At first I didn’t even notice, but when we were getting ready to start the scene I turned around and there was someone standing there like this:

LYN: I said, “Laoshi, how about we not record this part?? You’re a bit TOO into it...” I was just sitting there, in the tub and (there was a person with a camera on me). Not to say that they weren’t allowed to film me. It’s just that if I had an 8-pack abs and 16-pack chest muscles that would have been fine. But I don’t have anything to show. Later I negotiated with them and got them to delete that material. I’m sure that laoshi knew what the audience wants to see. XD

- /chat is going crazy, I guess/ LYN: ... Can you.. can you not talk about this topic in my stream? I was joking around with you and you’re over here wondering where you need to send money to buy the video. Are we selling premium content, now? Don’t mess around. C: I’ll buy a membership to watch. LYN: There’s nothing to see!! I have nothing to show! I’m not like other people who train for nice muscles. I saw one of my friends post a video the other day showing off and I was almost jealous. They have really nice muscles and have abs, so when you look at me- friends, just go to the market and stare at a rack of ribs. Go to the market and ask the boss if they can show you pork ribs- what they show you is exactly what you’ll see on me. Go take a look, alright? It’ll be the same. I’m just... skinny. C: Ning-ge, I want to see your ribs. LYN: LOL. Even if it’s my ribs, you still want to see? I... /speechless/ /shakes his head/ I can’t with you, omg. It’s getting to my head, let me eat some grapefruit to cool down. LYN: If you have the means and really want to see Ning-ge, really want to see ribs, then go to the market first thing in the morning tomorrow. Go the earliest you can- the pork is fresher the earlier you go. Tell the butcher, “Boss, give me two racks of ribs” and they will give it to you. Take those ribs and stick my photo onto them. You’ll have a good enough idea of what I look like. C: Someone’s really going to do that. LYN: Not likely.

LYN: Right- I forgot to say. I really need to thank Givenchy. When I’m talking about a name brand like that, I feel like I need to speak Standard dialect. I’m afraid of damaging the brand’s image. I was just their beauty ambassador, right? It hasn’t even been half a year yet and they’ve already made me a spokesperson. That means they think highly of me, at least. I’ve also seen that a lot of their shops have my image in them. My fans have been checking in. I was wondering if there was a shop in a city close to Hengdian. I want to go check in, too. I’ll do some searching and find out a place I can go. Other than the hot packs, I think this is the only other brand to put up my photo. They made me look quite handsome. I saw the photos online and thought to myself, “Wow, they photoshopped it so well! It really looks like I shopped it. XD″ C: /telling him locations: Hangzhou, Shenzhen/ LYN: Alright, I’ll see if I have a free day sometime and go to Shenzhen (1200km away) to check in. C: Ning-ge, the photo doesn’t look as good as you do in real life. LYN: There’s no need for that. No. X C: /more locations/ Xi’an, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Dalian, Xuzhou LYN: I see. In any case, they’ve put it up in a lot of different locations, right? I’m happy to have a nice picture of me put up in the malls. Thank you, Givenchy and thank you to my friends, for buying their products. I see that a lot of you buy some stuff and then start showing off... thanks for that. Thank you for your support.

LYN: It’s like this- I’m actually pretty strict with accepting brand deals. I’m not trying to sell or praise myself, and there’s no need for that. I have few collaborations. Of course, if I WANTED to, I wouldn’t have so few. Then again, I am not as popular as some other artists who have multiple brand deals at one time. Just saying, I don’t need to have so few. But the thing is I only accept deals when I acknowledge the brand, and they acknowledge me. Some brands require you to shoot ads, and I don’t like doing that. I don’t like ads or taking photos, so sometimes that’s the reason I don’t accept deals. Another thing is, it doesn’t do my fans any good. I have a lot of dedicated fans who always support me when I am doing a project, but its not as if money just grows on trees. I’m really thankful for those of you out there who support me and really give me face when it comes to these brand deals, but there’s also no need. Even so, you support me and I thank you. - LYN: What does “2464″ mean? I don’t get this joke. What does “2464″ mean? I only have two thousand, four hundred and sixty-four fans? And only 300 “die-hard” fans? I really don’t get it. If I knew, I would say so. I didn’t lose connection, I just really don’t know. ...I only have 300 real (living) fans?  - [t/n: ?? idk either. something about only 300 fans showing up? and he says, “no, you’ve overestimated. last time only 6 fans showed.”] - LYN: Anyway, we were talking about brand deals- I don’t want to accept too many. The other thing is, I also have a different thought, which is... Ning-ge isn’t very popular. If I get a little more popular first and then accept the deal, wouldn’t the brand have to compensate me a little more? There are only so many brands out there to begin with. Once you’ve worked with them once you’d have gone through all of them in no time. Right? So I was thinking of holding off- not working with them first- and then negotiate a higher price later. If I start the collaboration now, I... I wouldn’t make as much. We have to think of the bigger picture! Just because I CAN accept the deals, doesn’t mean I SHOULD. With my current status a deal like that would only get me $200. But if I were more popular, wouldn’t that rise to $500? Right? We have to widen our horizons and think of it in the long run. There are only so many brands you can feasibly work with, anyway. If you’ve worked with them all early on in your career, what do you expect to do later? LYN: Our main theme is “horizons”.  -  C: I only have 2600+ fans.  LYN: That isn’t a small number. In this industry having 2k+ fans means that you’re already internet famous. You’re a celebrity!

C: 2464. LYN: I still don’t know what that means. Did a blogger say that? I have 2464 fans, and 300 offline? Is that it...? They’re right. They have such precise calculation of my internal info, so they must be an amazing/capable person. I received that data the day before yesterday and they already found a way to steal it. LYN: I only have 2464 living fans. Nice. Too many and I can’t attend to them all. After all, my main business is in keeping you company, right? [t/n: no, I still don’t get it. .__.;;]

LYN: I really want us to be different from others, and I’m not just saying that I want to be different. I really want to DO things differently. My hope is that this industry can forget us. I want us to be forgotten. But then, in a single wonderful moment, we can do something that makes people think, “Wow. I didn’t know that LYN’s fans were so amazing. I thought too little of them, before.” I like that feeling. I don’t want to be in the news all the time- that’s not sustainable. I want us to go slow and steady. We can do our own thing, and if the situation calls for us to charge forward, we can. If you see us great, but if you don’t then it’s your loss. LYN: I want to say that I have confidence in my fans. You’re the best. I just don’t have confidence in myself. I don’t have anything to show for myself just yet, in terms of acting. If you ask if I have anything to show for myself in regards to MUSIC, I do. It’s also rare for me to be able to hold a 10k seat concert just a year after my debut. Not a lot of people can do that, but I have and I’m proud. I have a few musical products, but none of them are particularly amazing. As an actor, I don’t really have anything to show for myself yet. All of my previous roles were as supporting characters. Even if those characters were loved by the audience, they still don’t count as something of my own. When I have something solid, then I will have the confidence. Right now I’m going slow and keeping focused on work- I’ve been doing one drama after another. The second day after BYOL wrapped, I was in the YNGS crew. When YNGS was finished it was New Year Holiday, so I got 6 days of rest then I went straight into the ZY crew. Our main theme is “working harder/longer”. I’m not letting myself stop. All I have to do is keep producing one after another, and keep my head low. Sometimes I’ll come to stream and keep you company. That’s enough.

LYN: I don’t need my fans to worry about me, and wonder if I have a mind for my career. You don’t need to worry about that. Look at what I’m doing right now, after work. You can tell if I have a business mindset or not. I finally had a day where I could wrap up early, and what am I doing now? That will tell you where my values are. I’ll keep myself in check, so you don’t need to worry or be anxious for me. I know a lot of people like to ask me, “Ning-ge, have you decided on your next drama yet or not???” I feel like you’re even more anxious about it than my studio is. I’ve received scripts and I’m currently looking through them, to see which one I will pick. Which one I like, rather. I’m looking through them and I’m also thinking about if I want to do a modern or historical drama next, because I’ve done quite a few historical ones already so I was thinking of switching it up. If there’s a suitable role for me with a modern setting I might consider it but if there isn’t then I will continue to go the historical route. I’m in the process of thinking about it! LYN: I have to look at the role and the script, to see if there’s anything I like. We’ll see when the times comes. In any case, I won’t stop shooting dramas. Even though there are many people who are trying to convince me to stop acting... but I don’t even listen to my mother, so what makes you think I’ll listen to you?? Since I was little my mother had always told me I had to study well, and I didn’t listen to her. XD You think I’ll listen to you? No. I don’t even listen to my mother. You don’t need to try to convince me to stop acting. It won’t work. There’s no need to for you to go through the effort and tire yourselves out. LYN: Our main theme is “rebellion”. /laughs/ I can make anything into my main theme... it’s so ridiculous.

C: When is ZY going to air? LYN: I’m still filming for it. Most dramas take up to a year after filming wraps before it airs. I’m still currently shooting so... you can start counting when we wrap. About a year or so after that. YNGS, as well. We wrapped that up around the New Year, so it’ll air around the New Year next year. After all the editing, special effects, censorship, voice acting, music- the whole process takes about a year. At the fastest it can be 6-7 months.

C: When will ALZ air? LYN: I really don’t know. Honestly, in ALZ I’m just a supporting character. I don’t have very many scenes and I don’t have enough face to go and ask anyone when it will air. Once during a stream I said that I had acted as the second male lead in ALZ, with about 300 or so scenes... I mis-spoke. I didn’t think it through before I said “300 or so scenes”- I was actually thinking of a different drama. I had said before, that I had 200 or so scenes in ALZ but that day in the stream I was just saying nonsense and didn’t think too much of it when I said 300. Then the internet got to talking. “You see that?! The second male lead exposed himself for getting added scenes. Even though we saw the announcement that the 2ML clearly has 200 scenes, he exposed himself in his stream and said he had 300.” The netizens will say, “How did that happen? He only had 200, how come he has 300 now??” and the reply will be, “Haven’t you heard of “filler” episodes? It’s obvious that the director or the production company added filler for the 2ML. They don’t count in the script, so that means they added scenes for him!” This single line made their brains go into overdrive, thinking of all the possibilities. The simple truth is that I mis-spoke. It’s my fault, though. I made them think too much. They’re making it seem as if they know more about the industry than the actor himself...  C: What’s a “filler”? LYN: A “filler” is, for example when you only have... It doesn’t matter. In any case, I don’t have any filler scenes and I only have 200 or so. The second male lead, Luo Mingxi, only has 200 or so scenes and if you don’t believe me you can start counting when the drama airs. Go count it yourself! Also, who do you think I am? Some company’s artist? You think I have some connection with the production/platform? I don’t. I just act out whatever is in the script that they give me. I don’t have the qualifications to have added scenes.

C: So fierce. You’re agitated? LYN: No, I just feel like there’s no end to it. I only acted as the second male lead, a supporting character- how many scenes do you think I could have?? Stop targeting me. I’m only a supporting character and I don’t even have that many lines. My dialogue is just- supplemental, utilitarian lines. Some roles in a drama are only there to serve a specific purpose; not that I am saying LMX is purely this type of character, just that a portion of his role requires him to serve a certain purpose. Anyway, what type of character is this? Let me explain. LYN: Let’s say you’re watching a drama and the main lead says, “Based on the evidence, I am positive that the killer is that person.” This is what the lead says, “Based on all of the evidence, I have determined that the killer is-” -and you can say any surname- “-Mr. Liu.” At this moment, the functional character comes along, “No way. There’s absolutely no way! We grew up together, how could he be the killer?? He would never do such a thing!” Here’s the lead again- “But all of the evidence points to him! My deduction can’t be wrong.” The functional character comes back in- “Why would he do it?” The lead starts again- “Because this person owed him money. There was already bad blood and so, in an act of revenge, he killed him. There’s motive.” The support comes in again- “But when could he have done it?” ML- “Based on my prediction and the state of the body, the crime must have been committed at least five hours ago.” The support shoots back- “What about the murder weapon?” ML- “Based on my prediction, the murder weapon must have been abandoned somewhere on this road leading east. It must be within 5km, so based on the suspect’s normal activity, he must have thrown it into the river. The support- “I don’t believe it! I’ll take someone to search right now!” LYN: /claps/ This is a functional character. Everything he says sounds reasonable but in reality it’s all just superfluous. This character is only there just to pave the way for the main character to get his next line out. LYN: This always happens in dramas and movies. When everyone including the main and secondary characters deem a single person to be the suspect, there’s always going to be that one person to go against popular opinion. “They’re not the killer! There’s no way they could be! Why would they kill someone? Tell me!” As the actor themselves, there’s no way they’re not going to know who the killer is, right? Of course they know, because they’ve read the script. Also, as a human being, they’re not an idiot. They’ve seen all the events leading up to today and they know the suspect has motive and could very well be the killer, but in that moment they’re still going to say they don’t believe it. It doesn’t matter where their disbelief stems from, they just don’t believe it.  LYN: Our main theme is “disbelief”. Anyways... some supporting characters are only there to serve this purpose. In ALZ, I am only a supporting character. Have mercy on me. Let me live. Stop targeting me. I only have 200 scenes and for most of them I am only there to state out the obvious. In a lot of the scenes I only appear in case the audience doesn’t understand what’s going on. I’m there to repeat what happened and why- “I’m sure he did this for a reason. He did this to lure the enemy away from his territory. He used someone else’s trust to resolve his own problem.” A lot of my lines are like that (explanatory)- in case you don’t understand the story. So just... leave me, a mere second male lead, alone. Thank you. I’m begging you. LYN: In that drama my main theme is to be “company”. I accompany all the other actors in their growth. I help them accomplish their goals. 

C: Is that Ning Yuanzhou’s photo behind you? LYN: Huh? Oh, yeah, it is. One of the makeup artists (?) drew it for me. C: I want to see it. LYN: Why do you want to see everything?? - /grabs it anyway/

LYN: The makeup jiejie, Xiao Li, drew it for me. When it’s dark and you turn on the lights it reflects, too. It looks sparkly and nice. She drew me a picture, so I’m very thankful. It’s something meaningful, so I placed it back there. LYN: Right now I am a tool used to show you a picture. Every main character here said, “Come! Show us the picture!” and I said, “Yes. My Lord/Lady, please take a look. Is it to your satisfaction?”  C: Let’s see it with the lights off. LYN: You’re watching my stream and you want me to turn off the lights?? I’ll leave them on. LYN: ~ There’s no way! No way I’d turn off the lights. ~

LYN: Stop making a fuss, now. Let’s do this- I... Hold on, don’t say anything for a sec. ... Friends. I think my neighbors are fighting. My neighbors are fighting. Let me go take a look. I hope nothing bad happens. Let me look. I’ll play you a video. - break #1 LYN: I’m back. /whistles/ Let me dry my hands. /flaps/ Alright.  LYN: My neighbors weren’t fighting. They were watching Romance of a Twin Flower. It just started airing today, right? I sang a song for it. You can take a look. It just started airing today. You can go watch it. The song I sang for it is a little... angsty. I also wanted to try out a different style. C: You really know how to promote a show. LYN: Of course. Don’t you already know my track record? I’m all about the price-product ratio. The song is called 长相诺 (Long Promise) and the drama is called Romance of a Twin Flower. There are a lot of familiar friends acting in that drama. If you have time you can watch it. // Yes, there are familiar friends. In this industry it’s really easy to get to know one another. That goes for actors and singer alike- it’s really easy to know one another. Without knowing it, you get introduced to one another. I mean, there will always be friends of friends. Ding Yuxi- It seems like I don’t really have any connection to him but he’s filmed Love You Seven Times with Chaoyue, and CY and I are friends. Right? Then also, I went out to record a show and we had dinner, which he also attended. We had a meal together, and then got introduced.  C: Do you know Peng Xiaoran? LYN: I do. This industry is a little small... It’s very easy to get to know whoever you want to know. I know her. It was also one night I went out to eat with a few (actor) friends.. and PXR is friends with those actors. We had a meal together and were introduced. We’re all friends! Everyone is friends, we all know each other. LYN: He Changxi is also in RoaTF, right? I know him, too. There’s another old friend in RoaTF, called Yi Daqian- you should remember him, right? You tell me, isn’t it a small world? I’ve done two shows with him. We’re all acquainted. If you want to get to know someone there are an infinite number of opportunities. But there’s a prerequisite- whether as an actor or a singer, I haven’t been doing this for very long. Unlike some actors who I’m working with, who have been in this industry for 10+ years. They must know hundreds of people, because they debuted earlier than I have. I’ve only been around for a few years; I don’t even know that many people in the music industry and there’s a limit to how many in the film industry I know. Usually you get to know someone only after you’ve worked together

C: Trending at #49. LYN: Is the topic “LYN’s ugly”? “LYN-so-ugly-he-’exploded’“? It’s not that, right? Probably not?

C: Zeng Shunxi. LYN: ZSX- Of course I know him, he’s a very good friend. I asked him out for a meal the other day... he didn’t take me up on the offer. LOL, no. I can’t joke around about my friends. Sometimes when you joke, the other party takes it seriously and they’ll really think that you’re making fun of them or something. LYN: ZSX is about to switch filming locations- he’s going to be in another city for filming soon. He’s about to leave, and we’re both currently in Hengdian, so I wanted to get together since we didn’t know when the next time we would see each other would be. He agreed, and told me to look for him when I wrapped up for the day. I wrapped at 9p- and I thought I would come home and get ready and we could meet up at 10p to grab a bite or chat. But he ended up wrapping later that day, at around 11p, so the plans fell through. It was too late. It’s alright. We could try to reschedule for some other time. 

- /comments telling him not to mention other artists, so that he doesn’t get called a clout-chaser/ LYN: Alright, alright. I know. It’s fine, it doesn’t matter.  C: Talk about Daimi. LYN: There’s no need. LYN: /in English/ Daimi. Daimi, come here. // Look at me, I speak English to my dog~~ // Daimi. Come here. Please. // *You have to add the “please”. LYN: Come! Little Miss Ungrateful, come! Alright- let me ride off of your popularity. Greet everyone, or say something. 

LYN: Little Miss Ungrateful? Ms. Want-a-Sausage? Want a sausage? /Daimi’s ear twitches/ You want one? Do you? Want a sausage?  C: Daimi looks a little sloppy today. LYN: She looks alright. We haven’t done any beauty treatments for her lately so she may be a little sloppy. We’ll do it when we find the chance. She doesn’t have any work lately, she’s just been hanging around with me. We’ll talk when she has work.  C: She looks down. LYN: She’s not down- she was sleeping and she’s not quite awake now. She’s had a busy day. She goes out when I go to work and she comes home when I come home. 

LYN: Remember to watch Romance of a Twin Flower... and... Chong Zi. and The Starry Love. and uh... let me take a look. Warm on a Cold Night. These dramas are all worth a watch. C: Chong Zi is already over. LYN: That means you have money- you’re a rich second-gen? You must have VIP. If you don’t have a VIP membership, I don’t think it’s ended yet, right? The movie, Manifesto- you can check that out, too. 

C: Under the Microscope was good! LYN: I watched it. I need to check out what other people are shooting nowadays, and see how the other actors are performing. To learn from them. In this industry it is better to expose yourself to all kinds of media. Under the Microscope was a pretty good watch... though I didn’t have time to watch in its entirety. I saw a bit of it and was planning to finish it off when I had a break.  C: Who acted in it? LYN: What do you mean- the main character is played by Zhang Ruoyun, isn’t it? I did watch it! Also, when I sing OSTs I always do a bit of homework. I need to know who the actors are and what the plot is about. Only after I figure that out, do I sing the OST for it. It adds another layer of understanding.

LYN: Right- there are a lot of friends lately who are saying they want to go out and play. That’s your freedom of choice, but as your big brother I do want to say a few words. When you go out, please don’t get into any fights with any other groups of fans. Alright? Don’t fight. You have to be more righteous. I know that my fans are made up of more mature jiejie-s, so you can teach others to be more mature as well. Don’t fight. The second thing is when you go out, you have to be careful! Don’t lend money to others so easily. Be careful when you’re pooling funds to live together, too. I know that if you want to come out to watch my concert you might pair up with another fan to book a hotel room and live together. I think that’s fine, but you have to be careful of your personal possessions like your bank card, wallet, phone, etc. Put them under your pillow. Don’t trust others too easily. Not that I am expecting everyone to be a bad person, but it’s better to err on the side of caution. Alright? Watch your belongings. Don’t lend money out. Even if you think you know each other well, don’t lend money. I don’t allow it. That’s the most important. I don’t want money exchanging anyone’s hands. That’s just a matter of maintaining a good community. That’s all I have to say on this, okay? Just be careful. Be happy when going out to play, and be safe when going home. C: Can I borrow money from you? LYN: Of course you can. But I won’t. Are you satisfied with that answer? It’s both magnanimous and rational. You CAN borrow money from me, but I won’t lend you any. C: That’s not very satisfying. LYN: You’re not satisfied by that answer... ? It just goes to show that not everything in the world is going to be to your satisfaction. In this world not everything is going to be to your satisfaction. What can you do? You adjust. A lot of people say I’m ugly and I’m not satisfied with that. The problem with that is- I can adjust. Find the answer within yourself. Not finding satisfaction is your own problem.

C: Are you going to the marathon in Hengdian. LYN: I’ll pass. Ning-ge’s main theme is “weak”. I’d need to have trained for some period of time before I ever thought of running a marathon. If I just try it straight out, I might run myself to death. I’ll pass. I’ll just focus on filming for the drama. If you want to run, you can go. Watch out for your safety, of course.

C: Why did you start calling yourself “da-ge”? LYN: It’s nothing- just a random address. Just colloquially, I’ll say “Today your Da-ge, I, etc etc.” I don’t mean that I want to become your “da-ge”. It’s just a way to relax the mood when chatting with my fans. It’s just a form of address. You can also call me “xiao-di”. I’m just a little brother, you can look after me. But I personally think that calling myself “di” would be making myself out to be too young.

LYN: /to Daimi/ Alright, it’s about time. You can stop squirming around. Say goodbye to everyone. /waves her paw/ Okay. You can go. LYN: Hold on, let me give her a sausage. C: You just give her one when you say you will? LYN: Erm... my dog’s got a pretty cushy home life. Unlike me- I didn’t have a good time growing up. But she is growing up in MY house, so I’m going to let her be a rich second-gen. My dream is to make my dog a rich second-gen kid. She can eat whatever she wants. She has the best tasting dog food, too. LYN: I’ve been caught in the rain before, so I just want to hold the umbrella for other dogs. C: I want to go to your house and be your dog. LYN: There’s no need for that, alright?! No need. Lao-mei. Let’s not play something so deep. I had such a positive mood going in my stream, I don’t need you to turn it in such a weird direction. Don’t mess around. Stop messing around. I’m not joking.

C: I’m so sleepy, I need to go now. LYN: Go. If you’re watching my stream and you’re sleepy, just go to sleep! You don’t need to tell me. If you wanted to have manners and/or respect me enough to find the need to tell me, go leave a message on my weibo. Don’t type those words into my stream. When you do that I think that my stream is so boring that I’ve made you sleepy! It brings my mood down in one instant. You can’t be like that. Leave a message on my weibo, and you will have already been polite enough. When I receive the news, it won’t affect my mood either. Alright? Our main theme is “positivity”.

C: Can you still maintain your hairline when shooting guzhuang dramas? LYN: I can. /clears his throat/ If I can’t, then I’ll try my best to.

C: Ning-ge, you’ve made a number of things your “main theme” for tonight. LYN: In an album only one song is the title. In my stream every topic with me the main topic.

LYN: Someone asked if shooting guzhuang dramas has a big effect on my hairline. I've been wearing a wig during all of my streams lately, do you really not understand what’s going on? Of course, it has nothing to do with the acting. PLEASE don’t think you’ve understood anything.

C: The main theme is “company.” LYN: You’re wrong. Our main theme is “main theme”. Everything is a main theme.

C: Can you sing? LYN: I really want to, but my voice is a little tired today. When I first started the stream I tried, but I found that I’m not in the greatest condition today. So I won’t sing. I don’t want to negatively influence drama’s broadcasts.

LYN: Our main theme is “hairline.” C: What is “main theme”? LYN: /sigh/

C: If you’re not singing then I’m going to go sleep. LYN: Go, go. They love my music so much that if they can’t hear it then they’re sleepy! Go, rest. I’m going to stay and chat for a while longer before I go. I need to remove my makeup, take a look at tomorrow’s scenes, and that’ll be about it. Tomorrow we start shooting my opening scenes, so tonight I'll force myself not to eat- so that I can look a little slimmer on camera tomorrow. Our main theme is to “make myself look thinner.” LYN: Filming is just like this- a lot of actors have the same thought. Most of them, not all. When we first start filming, let’s say for a 40-episode drama, it’s rare that they start shooting from the first episode. Because the actor hasn’t quite gotten used to the role or found the right mindset yet, and also because you need some time to get used to the crew. Usually when we’re about a month or a month and a half into filming, that’s when the actor’s condition is the best. Because if you wait any longer than that, then the actor’s going to be tired. So most of the times the production will arrange to start shooting the early episodes about a month or a month and a half into filming. Right now I’m a bit thinner than I was when I first entered the drama crew. If we start shooting the early episodes now, then I might look a little better than I do when it gets to the later episodes (sequentially). But the viewers are tolerant. As long as they’ve acknowledged the role or believe in/like the character in the first few episodes, then it doesn’t matter how ugly you start to look later on. But if you show them a bad image* from the start, then they’re going to lose it. If you look bad in the very first scene they see you in, then a lot of them are going to stop watching. That’s a small secret I learned during the filming process. * [t/n: zhu tou men de // he uses a term like.. “pig-headed fool” (in relation to the SIZE of the head)]

C: The speaking volume is low. LYN: Is it? How about now? Is it bigger now? Hello, hello? /adjusting the settings/ How about now? It’s better, right?

C: Our main theme is to “have the viewers in your grasp”. LYN: No- there’s no way to “have the viewers in my grasp”. You want to respect the viewers, not think about ways you can control them.

C: What in the world is “zhu tou men de”? LYN: It’s just an expression. Like... have you ever had a whole pig head during the New Year? You know, when you go to the market you and buy a braised pig’s head? There are times when you liken someone to that braised pork’s head, and that’s when you use “zhu tou men de”. It’s just an expression... to mean that someone has a fat head and big ears. C: I’ve never had it. LYN: If you’ve ever had it then there’s no need to go out to look for it specifically...

C: You’re already very thin. LYN: But on camera it’s a different story... Some actors, too- if they... have some meat on their bones and their stature is more stocky/muscular, in the camera that will come across as silly and not sharp. Even though you look very good in real life- they’re strong and serious. But in the camera it’s a different story- you look bulky and there’s no clear waistline or frame. It just looks one-dimensional, on the camera. It doesn’t come across nicely. This is what I have extrapolated from being yelled at for being ugly so often. You won’t understand it as well as I do. LYN: I’m already considerably thin. At 1.9m for my weight- it’s thin. But as long as you stand in front of the camera and your condition is just the slightest bit off- if you’re having a bad face day: your dark circles are a little too dark and your eye bags are just slightly more prominent than usual- it all shows on the monitor. All of these cameras are operating on 4K resolution, now. And it’s pointed straight at your face. Your condition is very important. They can see all of your pores and probably the (microscopic) mites that live on your face, too. LYN: Shooting a drama is much different than shooting an ad, where I can maintain a good condition for a day at most and it will be enough. Shooting a drama takes 120 working days. We’re working for four months straight- there’s no way you can maintain your condition for all of that time. Even the most handsome person can’t maintain that image/good condition for all 120  days. There are always going to be off-days. What can you do? Just do your best to try maintaining a good and balanced state.

LYN: I didn’t used to care- I never thought about this problem before. I was thinking, “I’m here to act and it doesn’t matter how I look. The most important thing for an actor is to bring the character to life. All I have to think about is why the character is saying what they are and at what time, and what prompts them to say their lines?” I used to think that was all an actor had to care about, but now it turns out that... that’s not only the case.I never used to take visuals into consideration- even when I was shooting for Heroes (SYXSSYX). There was never a day I wasn’t satisfied with my makeup. I would just get in in the morning, let the makeup artists work on me, then go to set however they made me. On set- I’m the type of person who has oily skin- so after one scene the makeup artist might come over and say, “Ning-ge, let me touch up your makeup. Let me blot it.” and I would tell them, “No- I don’t need it. I think a person in the martial arts would should look like this- with oily face and all. Our main theme is “texture”, don’t blot the oil for me.” They would reply, “But your makeup is running!” “No, no. Let it run! That makes it more realistic! This is what I want. It’s okay you don’t need to worry about it.” “But your wig is coming off a little in the back...” “Oh, it’s coming off? Then you can fix that. But you don’t need to fix my makeup. Martial artists are all about the fighting and killing- we have no time to worry about looking pretty. There’s no need. As long as they can tell it’s me, that’s fine.” LYN: I used to be like that. Honestly. Whenever it came to a point for a close-up and the makeup artists wanted to touch up my makeup I would always tell them they didn’t need to. I wanted it to be more realistic. Our main theme is “realistic.” I’m an actor, I didn’t come here as an idol, so I thought it would be okay if I looked a little haggard and it would fit the character well. I thought by doing that it would fit the image of someone who was wandering in the martial arts world a little better. I probably had that in mind when I made those decisions... but it came back to slap me in the face. I used to be like that. I would rather myself look worse- the worse the better. For example when we were doing the jail scenes- I told them to make me as dirty as they could. I told them not to consider my looks. Because I’m an actor, and I wasn’t there to worry about it I looked good on camera or not. That’s what I was thinking, and I’m not trying to compliment myself (for being professional). I just thought it was the proper thing to do. But now it seems like, to me, it was not necessarily the proper thing to do.

LYN: Now I’m singing to a different tune. It used to be that when I was filming and someone wanted to touch up my makeup I would tell them “No, it’s really okay. I just got into character and my head if full of lines and emotions- if you touch up my makeup you’re going to break my concentration.” Now it’s not like that. As soon as I am in front of the camera I immediately start looking for the makeup artist. /pans his head/ There they are. “Hey! Blot the oil for me? Can you touch up my makeup here?” “Are my wrinkles obvious today? No? Still, suppress them for me.” “Are my eyes swollen today? They are? No? Okay, then.” “Hey, can you see my jawline through the monitor? Is it defined, or has my jawline become one with my neck? // Oh, you can see it clearly today? Then does that mean that it wasn’t as defined yesterday?? No- yesterday and today are the same? Oh, ok. Good. ” “We talked so much, blot the oil again, quick. // My eyelids- philtrum- chin, chin- my forehead, here- cheekbone, cheekbone! Okay, good! :)” LYN: I have a totally different mindset now than I did before. In terms of requests for my makeup- they’re totally different. Because filming for a whole day, there’s no way the makeup will hold up. By the end of the night all the makeup is pretty much gone. Before, all I was left with was spots but I didn’t care. Now, luckily the makeup artist is more familiar with me- they’re the same as for YNGS, because it’s the same makeup artist crew- now they say, “Ning-ge. Your face this afternoon is a little lacking. We’ll retouch it after you have lunch. I’ll reapply your makeup so that you look as smooth and white as milk.” They’re really cute, saying, “Don’t worry Ning-ge. I will protect your milky skin for you.” I’m happy, too. LYN: Very cute, very cute. Our main theme is “milky skin.”

LYN: So yeah, I’m totally different now when filming than I was before. I have to monitor, at least a little. I used to not monitor the playback at all- not because I didn’t take it seriously, but because I didn’t have the guts to see myself. I’ve met a lot of other actors like this- They don’t dare to watch themselves on the screen. After each take the director or producer will watch the playback to watch out for any inconsistencies or if they want to do a retake. I didn’t used to watch the playback- very rarely. Nowadays I always want to see it. I just want to check.. if the camera angle was a dead one or not. For example, if they put the camera here- it’s directed right up at my double chin! Because the drama I’m shooting for now, there’s a bit of a height difference, so if there’s a camera at my height then when I’m looking at her- I’m looking down. The camera won’t be able to catch my eyes, then. It looks like I’m closing my eyes and that’s no good, so the camera needs to be lower, aimed up from the bottom so it can get the right angle for my eyes. That’s why sometimes the camera will be set up at a really dead angle for me- pointed right at my chin. I watch the playback to see how bad it is. LYN: You all take selfies, so you know. The best angle is from the top down, because you want to look slimmer. But if you shoot from the bottom up, that’s- I haven’t met many people who could withstand that angle. I HAVE met some who could withstand that angle, but very few. In any case, I can’t. Our main theme is “dead angles.”

C: Ning-ge, 360 degrees, you don’t have any dead angles! LYN: ...Alright. You keep using this lie to trick yourself. That way, you will always be my fan- a die-hard one, at that. You are the 1 in 2464. Keep walking with me forever, okay? use this lie to trick yourself forever. LYN: All 360 degrees of me are all dead angles. It doesn’t matter what angle you take a picture of me from, it’s going to be ugly. The back of my head, even, is flat. There’s no good angle, I’m telling you.

LYN: /sigh/ Anyway, later when the drama airs, please don’t think I didn’t put any consideration into my appearance. I’ve started to make an effort. But if I still come out ugly... then that just means my foundation/base is too lacking. I’ve already held myself to the highest standards for this drama that I could. There is no going higher. I’m already considered as having “milky skin”. X’D When have you ever seen me apply chapstick for my previous dramas? The previous dramas also had reuters- have you ever seen me apply chapstick in any of them?? Nowadays when I’m on set I just slather the Givenchy lip balm onto my face. I’m not just using it because I have collaborated with them and want to promote their product- that’s not what I mean. But honestly, it works well.

LYN: My main theme nowadays is “my lips.” I’m in a group chat with some of my fans, and I saw the other day... it seemed to be a compilation picture of nine different male artist’s lips. I saw a vote- I don’t know where it came from, it was just a picture. They cut out the lips of nine different male artists and numbered them 1 through 9. The prompt was: “Which pair of lips looks the best?” Very luckily, I was one of those nine male artists. The results... not humbly speaking, I had the most votes. Of course, it’s not because I was the best looking (pair of lips), but because the picture was well-chosen. In the end I got the most votes. But once they found out that the answer was “Liu Yuning” everyone was backtracking. They were saying, “LYN? LYN’s ugly. /suspecting their eyes/ He’s ugly, but these lips look pretty nice.”  LYN: Anyway- my makeup artist is in charge of my skin, so I will take charge of my lips. LYN: After they found out the results of the vote and knew that those lips belonged to me, people went crazy. They couldn’t believe it. “There’s no way. LYN”s very ugly. I- uh.. erm.. I voted wrong!” XD LYN: My main theme is “milky skin and heart-shaped lips.”

LYN: Honestly, my lips are pretty nicely shaped, I think. Even though when I first started streaming someone told me that my lips are protruding... It’s been two hours, and I’m still holding a grudge about that. In regard to my looks, the place I think I lack the most is my eyes. My nose is pretty nicely shaped- I know that a lot of my face relies on this nose. My lips are aright too. I don’t think they count as ugly. My eyebrows- honestly my eyebrows are pretty thick. If I don’t maintain them, I’m Crayon Shin-chan. They’re like this now because we maintain them with a brow razor. If I didn’t do anything with them, I’d be Crayon Shin-chan. They’re very thick. The only place I think I’m lacking a little is my eyes. LYN: I’m aware that when I’m shooting for the drama- like the previous one YNGS- there are the Six Paths (六道堂). Of them, I am the leader. The remaining four (five?) and I make up the Six Paths. I took the four of them and we made our way into the martial arts world together and complete missions together. There’s one scene where we’re standing in a row, facing forward towards the future with eyes determined to complete our mission. The camera pans from face to face, and the fifth one in line is me. Me eyes were just- just a small crack. If you gave me a solo shot it would have been fine but after panning from person to person: big eyes, big eyes, big  eyes, big eyes, a small crack. It was really obvious. The comparison of the eye proportions, in the same frame- you can tell that my eyes are truly small. But you can’t tell just looking at me alone. These eyes are... “killing” me. 

LYN: Have you ever thought about this problem.. have you ever thought... that everyone online who curses me out... the content and remarks... have you ever thought that I am the one who wants them to say these things? Have you thought about that? Everything they say about me is what I WANT them to say about me. LYN: Oh, sorry about that. All of a sudden I went into a role. Sorry. LYN: Our main theme is “supporting the dark side.” C: Ge, this is a little too perverse. LYN: Don’t copy the way I speak. :p LYN: You just have to consider the reverse psychology of things. Make “turning evil” our main theme. I said that one thing and now all my anti-fans will think about it for the whole day. C: Ning-ge, do you pay money to have people diss you, then? LYN: Am I crazy?? How could you trust me so easily? I must be sick- I must be completely immoral. Paying people to diss myself?? I don’t need to put myself to gain popularity like that. I have work. It’s not like I need to create any news for myself. I don’t need it.

C: Are you going to be on The Truth Season 2? LYN: Hm? They haven’t asked me anything. If they don’t ask me to be on it... then I can’t go. I’m not as smart as Guo Qilin, who negotiated and signed for a second season for himself. His punishment for the first season was to sign a contract for the second. But if they don’t invite me to be on the second season, then there’s no way I can go. Have they started recording already? I don’t think so?? There is no second season yet, right? LYN: Our main theme is “cute.” No, there’s no second season. There shouldn’t be one yet...

C: Ning-ge, are you a real person? If you are then grab the mic. LYN: I’m sorry, I’m an AI. // Grab the mic... to prove that I’m a real person, not a fake one?

LYN: Friends, if you still haven’t subscribed to me weibo yet, please do so. I am Modern Brothers Liu Yuning. If you have time you can come watch my streams and check out my weibo. Thank you. C: You’re going to stop streaming? LYN: No. I’ll stop in a bit.

C: Can you change a hairstyle? LYN: I won’t change it tonight. I think this one is fine. Let me change the glasses for you.

LYN: I changed a color. LYN: Makeup artist-laoshi, is my face oily? It is? Then I’ll blot it, okay? // Now I have to be wary of my face being oily on my stream.

C: You have so many glasses. LYN: It’s not a lot. Here’s another one. And another. And another. And here. Here. One more. Another. /continues pulling out his selection of glasses/

LYN: Our main theme is “wholesale.” Sometimes I just like to change up a pair of glasses on my streams. There are some friends who have been watching my streams for a long time now. I can’t change the person, so the least I can do is change up my look. My staff told me, “Boss, don’t wear a hat today. The past few streams you keep wearing that same hat.” So today our main theme is “going hatless.” I didn’t wear the cap today to change up the “flavor”. I even found my suit jacket to wear.

C: Why wear the wig? LYN: This is my own hair. Can’t you tell? LYN: It’s because I’m in guzhuang all day and I need to wear the headgear. I don’t know if any of you have ever worn a wig before? The headgear is much like a wig, in that it needs to be combed down to our heads and the edges are glued down. You own hair is wrapped under. After a whole day of filming the hair is awfully flat. If I wanted to style my hair at all I’d have to wash it first and then style it- the whole process would just take too long. You’re not just washing your hair, your washing your body. To wash your body, you’d have to remove the makeup. After I remove the makeup, I’m so ugly how could I stream?? Then I’d have to put it back on- at least some foundation- it’s just a little troublesome. I already get off work late so if I work on making myself presentable after that it would be too late to stream. After all that consideration I just decide to put on the wig, as long as you don’t find it ugly. Just watch for entertainment, and that’s the end of it.

C: There’s a beauty filter, but you still need the makeup? LYN: The function of the beauty filter is not as great as you might think. Also, I’m an actor- what type of beauty filter do you think I’m using? At most I have the blur tool on- so that my skin looks better. Milky skin. Other than that I still have to have a little eyeliner and fix my eyebrows. LYN: I appear often on tv, if I tried any other beauty filters it would be too exaggerated. They announced the video for Weibo Night, right? When I saw the playback I immediately turned to my staff and said, “You edited that too fiercely.” It wasn’t me anymore. I never even looked that young when I was sixteen. Then my staff told me, “Boss, we didn’t edit it. You filmed that yourself using a filtered camera. That was your own doing. We didn’t touch it. We sent it to weibo after you finished recording it.” In that moment I was thinking, “Ah... then I... I overdid it.” I didn’t know what it would look like, because it’s not like I take very many selfies. I just turned the filters on and shot the video without looking it over after. I found out later it didn’t even look like me. It’s not their fault, it was mine. The beauty settings were on too high. I didn’t even look that young when I was sixteen. LYN: Our main theme is “beauty filters.” C: Your main theme is “milky skin.” LYN: No, that’s just because the makeup artists gives me a good base. C: Main theme is “blue tool and brightener.” LYN: XD

C: Ning-ge, how could you stay up all night and still be awake in the morning? LYN: I can’t stay up as well as I used to anymore. For many years I was working in the bar, so I got used to staying up at night. But this year I can’t seem to stay up anymore. Around 9p I’ve started getting sleepy. Around 9-10p. Sometimes I get so sleepy that I can’t hold me eyes open anymore. LYN: There are times on set that requires you to wait around for a bit before they get to your scene... what do I do? I take a little nap. A little half hour to an hour long nap. I’m getting old. A lot of fans are telling me not to shoot guzhuang dramas. I’m already so old, if I don’t do it now then when do you expect me to?? Huh? Those friends who are trying to convince me, tell me when you want me to act in guzhuang dramas. When I’m 45? I want to try shooting some more while I’m still nice and pretty. Do you think I would still be able to film the same type of content when I’m 45? I need to seize the time I have now and film while I can.

LYN: There are other fans still, who want me to try acting in a serious drama. They tell me to stop acting in guzhuang dramas and pick up some serious ones. First of all, the world and I don’t owe you, and there aren’t so many scripts out there who are clamoring for me to act in them. They’re not just all sitting there waiting for me to pick them. The first thing is that no good scripts have come to look for me. Secondly... I think I should still film the current types of dramas while I can. Do you still expect me to be able to play the Leader of the Six Paths when I’m 45? I’ll play Wei Shao when I’m 45?? It’s not realistic. At that time there’s no turning back- this market won’t need me anymore. When that time comes, I can act as whatever I want. I’ll take what I can get. It’s just that simple. Don’t try to be too ambitious. Just because I’ve been shooting dramas for a few years does not mean that I should try to aim for something “deeper” or “better”. I’m very clear on what I want. I’ll do what I need to, when I need to do it. Everything else can be accomplished at any other age. But once you reach that age, you can’t turn back and do what you’re pursuing now. There’s a right time and age for everything. At this point in my life I think this is the most appropriate.

LYN: I’ve seen a lot of choices people in this industry. A lot of people you can tell are students with just one look. What I mean by that is some people are very well suited to act in school dramas. There are handsome young men and pretty women who are very well-suited for school setting dramas. I believe that if they ever act in one, they would be famous for it. But they never have. They don’t like school dramas. I don’t get it. // Like me right now. Even if I wanted to act in a school drama, I can’t. There was a script that came to me, and wanted me to play a college student for some period of time. It was only a very short period of time, but I hesitated. Once you’re past a certain age you can’t act in some things even if you wanted to, you know? I can act as a school principal, though. Or maybe a PE or music teacher. But if you want me to act as a college student I wouldn’t be able to handle it. C: Ning-ge, act as a student who was held back. LYN: My class is made up of 17-18 year olds but I am a 30+ year old held-back student? This role is difficult to act. First you have to think about why they were held back- because they were bad at studying? Why were they bad at studying? There are two possibilities: 1) they don’t like to learn, or 2) low iq. His intelligence couldn’t keep up, so he kept being held back. Let’s go with this latter scenario first. It’s difficult to act as someone with low intelligence- look at me. Do I look like someone with low iq? Yes. But I don’t want to act as such a character. Is that a good enough excuse? I don’t want to... Then, the other scenario- he doesn’t want to learn. What’s the meaning behind that? Now we’ll circle back to a previous topic- say the camera is panning across all of your classmates and finally lands on you. How terrifying is that?? The first row of students is made up of bright and youthful smiles and then it gets to you- an old face with heavy wrinkles. From the viewer standpoint it looks like a parent/guardian broke in to listen on the class. 

C: University for the Elderly. LYN: Oh? Are there any stories that center around older people going to college? Are there any dramas like that? Especially something the masses can watch? It can be promoted like this, “Our drama is a school drama!”  and then you take a closer look- and it’s a University for Elderly. Is there anything like that? No way~ C: There are stories about retirement homes. LYN: ... LYN: Friends, it’s like this... I said I could no longer act as a student... but that doesn’t mean you should automatically categorize me into the “retirement home” genre. I know I have a head full of white hair right now, but you can’t hurt people like that. I just said- according to my own conscious- I can’t act as a college student or any student.  You can’t just turn around and say, “Alright, Ning-ge. Then we have content about retirement homes.” LYN: If you wanted to kill me, don’t do it with the age blade. LYN: I said I didn’t want to act as a student, so you’re pushing me to retirement??? Our main theme is “extremes.”

LYN: Happy New Year, friends! Thank you for spending the new year with me. It’s the year 2023. I wish you health and success in your careers! LYN: Thank you for spending another year with me. Here, as long as the clock strikes past 12a, it’s the new year. Let’s to bigger and better in this new year. If you still haven’t subscribed to my weibo, please do so. LYN: Here, Modern Brothers Liu Yuning, will give you a New Year’s greeting!

C: The background is so fake, LYN: It is a little fake. Excuse me. I’ll make it better next time. Everything you say is right. I won’t fight with you. C: Another year older.

LYN: Let me see when I have to wake up tomorrow. LYN: I need to be in hair and makeup by 6:30a. If I’m there by 6:30a and it takes me 20 minutes for travel, I’d need to leave the house by 6:10a. If I leave the house at 6:10a, I’d need to wake up, wash my face, brush my teeth, apply a face mask for 10 minutes... then I need to wake up at 5:50a. I’m sorry, everyone. I’ll need to leave first. LYN: I wish everyone had a relaxing, happy, and wonderful night. It was great to have you and I hope you enjoyed yourself. I hope to see you in the next stream. If you haven’t subscribed to my weibo yet, please do so. If you have the time you can come chat! Goodnight, everyone. 

#Liu Yuning #lyn livestream #(2:57:49) #i can't think of topics to put here #but eyyyy #weibo night's breakthrough actor of the year award recipient LYN!!!

[formulaaone]

I did. some thinking, and realised that Williams don’t have as many options to replace logan as the media portrays.

Firstly, Felipe Drugovich is an Aston Martin Academy driver, and he is in fact the only one so far as i’ve heard. Aston Martin would definitely not let him go, because if they had to find someone to replace Lance or perhaps Fernando in 2025, he would be the first choice.

Secondly, Mick Schumacher has had strong rumours to be running in WEC for Alpine, which means that he is unable to race in f1 at all if the rumours come out as true. Although Toto is pressuring James to bring Mick in, I don’t think James would have a change of mind

Thirdly, Williams did make a statement that they want to solely focus on their academy drivers, so Fred, Liam are automatically out. I love the guys, but they have tied themselves to other teams. Besides, Williams actually does have four more academy drivers in formula 3, but none of them are the level where they can skip f2 and automatically join f1. they are great, Zak o Sullivan finished P2 in the championship actually, which is great but I think he needs to go through some more racing experience in the feeder series before he can compete with Logan for the seat.

So most likely, Logan is safe and secured for his seat, I feel like media has been continuously throwing random rumours out of nowhere because they are so desperate to find out the lineup of 2024.

Besides, it’s not that Logan has been doing absolutely shite — yes, he crashed a lot of times and as a logan fan I do believe he needs to clean it up quickly, but I feel like most of the time it’s bad luck. sometimes it is his fault, but a lot of times he either gets nicked or conditions screw his race up. Taking Qatar sprint for example, since he’s running old spec it is not as resistant against the windy conditions as Alex’s car is, but at least he didn’t shag it into the barriers and his car is safely in one piece, which is quite great. It also not like he’s the only drivers that was affected by the wind yesterday, so I don’t get why people are blaming him for losing grip to the wind. He is a rookie and his weak point is that he takes more time to adjust to a track or to a car, and this sprint format did not help at all, which is FIAs fault anyway.

In fact, I believe he is spectacular at trying to improve during the timing sessions like quali and Sprint Shootout, he’s done pretty well and even in the sprint he was chasing Alex. In a track like this, not suitable for his car or even for others, it is good to see him improve.

Overall, I firmly believe that he is secured for 2024 and I hope he can restart afresh for next year and do really well, as well as hoping the car is good for next year to help him even more.

i agree with everything you said. he was actually doing great the entire weekend, during quali and practice he never had any deleted lap times. however he really struggled when the track limits were adjusted yesterday. but that is to be expected i guess, if you’re a rookie and was only given 10 minutes to adjust to the new limits. even Liam struggled too. Oscar is in another league, of course.

as for the possible replacements, I think Williams won’t replace him, but if they will i think they will go with Drugo. but even that is so far fetched. as you’ve said, AM is kind of hesitant to let him go, and some reports suggest that there’s something going on behind the scenes in AM with Lance. also Williams will not replace their own rookie for another rookie who’s not affiliated with them. i just don’t see it. Mick might be with Alpine WEC next year, if you noticed they’ve been posting him a lot in their socials. Liam will not leave Red Bull especially now that he’s basically guaranteed an AT seat in 2025. Helmut hinted very recently that he’s losing confidence with Checo, so Liam might be in that AT seat even before 2025. the reason why i think Drugo is the closest option is because of the fact that he had rejected every guaranteed seat that was offered to him in Indy and FE for next year. the reason for that is either he believes he has a good shot for the Williams seat or he just made a really, really bad decision.

also, have you watched Logan’s interviews lately? he seems not bothered at all. even after the sprint race yesterday. either he’s confident that he can hit James’ targets or he knows something we don’t.

speaking of targets. in James’ recent interview, he said he’ll give Logan until the end of the season to prove himself. it’s really nice that they are giving Logan all the time and opportunity, so we might not hear anything until Abu Dhabi. just like last year when Logan got his super license in the exact same track 😉

ok im babbling now im just gonna end this here

[johannstutt413]

Everything below this line is sad. If you are not in a place to experience secondhand grief, feel free to skip this post.

You’ve been warned.

About two years ago (not really sure anymore), I lost a friend of mine to COVID. I didn’t know how to grieve, so I didn’t, but I had a reminder of a different kind of loss today and wondered why it hit me so hard. So, in an attempt to take a couple steps towards figuring out how to deal with the emotion without burying it in logic, I’m doing two things today.

The first is the bowls pictured above: Mexican lasagna, because we made lasagna together, and she was a Latino-American ball of sunshine. The one on the right is hers, my roommates and I are gonna leave that one be for a while (hopefully the cats respect that), the one on the left and the rest of the pan are for the household. Yay lunch.

The second is talking about her, and I’m doing this here because I can trust Tumblr to leave this public but not broadcast to a mob of people who will assault me verbally for needing an outlet. As I’ve done so often (albeit not much recently), I’m gonna tell a story. A true story this time. Here’s another chance to leave before things get really emotional.

I met Alicia in my freshman year of high school; she was running for class president, and I’d just arrived a few days late to the school year because I’d transferred out of Big-Ass Public School to Small Charter School. We had a couple classes together, and we talked to some of the same people, but ultimately the only reason it went any further was because she asked me for my phone number. I was on a pay-per-minute plan which I rapidly started chewing through (and eventually upgrading to a normal unlimited talk/text plan) almost exclusively because of her. We got to know each other pretty well as friends; I asked her out on a date in a rather muddled way, and for the next couple years I lived in a limbo thinking I was in some will-they-won’t-they teen drama.

That was not the case.

She was a leading member of the school’s robotics club; around junior year, I joined that club because she was in it and my parents wanted me to build on my college application checklist. It was not a good fit, and I took that out on a few people, her included. I tried ghosting her. She didn’t make that easy. I appreciate that now a lot more than I did then.

During senior year, as everyone made plans, we chose disparate paths: she chose to attend the local college for a degree in social work, because if anyone could save the world it was certainly her, and I decided I wanted to be anywhere but where she was. That ended up being enlisting; i joined my country’s military for a few reasons, but the honest truth was trying to escape responsibility for taking the closest relationship I’ve had with someone and throwing it away through pettiness and poor reading of social cues. It may be the one thing I hate that my autism has contributed to.

Training took a while; when I was about to leave for my first duty station, I went back home to say my goodbyes to family and friends, her included. We cleared the air between us - on my end, for the first time ever, for her it was more of an “oh that explains a lot.” We wished each other the best. Our lives continued without really intersecting too much.

COVID wasn’t a bad time for me - it hit before I actually started working, so I had time to kill, and it a way it saved my prospects as a service member because I was flunking the physical requirements hardcore and the lockdown bought me some time. I started writing fanfic seriously, leading to this blog here. I’d made new friends based on shared interests and occupation, we played DND together, and I was sure that despite her severe medical conditions which put her at risk that she was behaving wisely. She wouldn’t have any issues with COVID, I told myself, and she told me once I believe. She was always smarter than she thought she was… but she needed to see people too, she needed that social interaction, and she was working as a cleaner alongside her classes.

I don’t know which of those actually killed her. I don’t particularly think it would make it any easier.

I didn’t know what to do with the news she died. So many emotions flooded my field of vision I didn’t process any of them; when my folks told me there would be a funeral, I skipped out, didn’t think it do me any good to stand in front of a grave with some amount of people and say words to a person who couldn’t hear them… I’m sorry, past me, but you really fucked us there.

A few years passed. I’ve gotten into a couple other fandoms since then - namely, Hololive and by extension the game Weiss/Schwarz which has Hololive cards in it. A streamer from that group, Tsukumo Sana, had to quit streaming as that character after I joined the fandom, and it hit me much harder than I expected. I thought I was feeling other people’s pain, and until today lumped it to the side with that assumption. It didn’t occur to me that I was feeling echoes of my own pain refracted in another form, one loss reminding me of another. I simply carried on with my business, crying on very rare occasion. Crying takes up to time, and I only had so much of that to do what I wanted to with it since by that point I’d started doing what the military trained me for, what I volunteered to do.

This is where Weiss/Schwarz comes in. I’m a creator, I create things, and that includes custom cards when I get into a new card game. A while back I made some Ina and Sana cards because neither of them had enough to play a full deck with just the two of them represented as characters. I mentioned this yesterday in a Discord server for custom cards, and someone suggested a set that gave additional cards to all of the retired characters - the ones the casual majority are aware of, at least - would be nice to have. I started working on that this morning, and seeing lovingly created art of these characters before and after they retired, before and after thousands of people’s’ best wishes for those people were crushed by circumstances beyond their control, before and after those characters essentially “died”… I finally made the connection. I wasn’t feeling the level of grief i have been for anime characters whose seiyuus (voice actresses) had stopped acting for. I was feeling grief I’d kept repressed for years by this point because it felt easier to do that than reflect on myself…

Alicia, I’m sorry it took this long for me to figure that out. I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you when you were dying, that I didn’t go to your funeral, that I ran in the opposite direction from anything to do with you because I didn’t want to be wrong about my chances at more than a friendship with you. I’m sorry to myself I buried all this shit in the deepest corners of my mind to avoid having to experience temporary pain, because now I’m experiencing the pain and the guilt of knowing I could have dealt with this better. Hindsight’s only 20/20 when you’re not half-blind, but I’ll try not to have such thick sunglasses on going forward.

I loved you, Alicia. I still do. I hope that the God you served with such fervor tells you that, and that one day I’ll be able to say it you personally.

I hope you enjoy the lasagna. I’m gonna eat mine now. Until we see each other again, friend.

-Johann

#personal #working through some shit

[inazumaeveryday]

Day 5

Location: Kidou’s house

Kidou: Good morning, mar.

Ugh… I feel a little heavy this morning. 

mar: (His body feels heavy…?!)

Option 1

mar:Could it be Occult’s curse?!

Kidou: Haha! You really believe in it?

Option 2

mar: Maybe it’s because you ate a lot yesterday?

Kidou: True, I can’t deny that…

*

I think I got carried away and ate too much yesterday.

Maybe I should go easy on breakfast today… I have to make sure I’m in perfect physical condition.

Location: in the car

Kidou: It’s already been five days since you started living here.

I’m getting used to going to school with you.

At school

Location: hallway

Domon: Ah, Kidou-san! The commander’s asking for you!

Location: Kageyama’s office

Kidou: I’m coming in.

Kageyama: I’m sure you’ve already heard about Raimon’s next opponent.

Kidou: Yes, they’re playing Occult.

Kageyama: It seems like the daughter of Raimon’s chairman promised to let the soccer team participate in the Football Frontier if they manage to win this match.

…And Endou is trying to talk to Gouenji.

Kidou: I see… It’s only a matter of time before Gouenji joins the club, then.

Kageyama: Kidou. There’s only one thing to do about this.

We’ll have Domon transfer to Raimon.

Kidou: You want Domon to go there?

Kageyama: There are simply too many uncertainties surrounding Raimon right now. We need to be prepared for every eventuality, do we not?

Domon: Yup~ It’s just to give a little boost to our data collecting for a while, right? It’s not like I’ll be staying there forever~

I was thinking they sounded kind of interesting anyway, so just leave it to me!

Kidou: …Alright.

I’ll be counting on you then, Domon.

Location: hallway

Kidou: I guess information on Gouenji is worth more than I thought if it means having Domon transfer to Raimon to get it…

…It’s not my place to question the commander’s decisions.

*

Narukami: Kidou-san, do you have a sec?

A girl asked me why girls can’t join the soccer club as managers earlier…

To be honest, I was kind of wondering about that too~

Kidou: The soccer club’s managers just have to be boys.

It’s not really a rule… more like a tradition, I suppose?

I don’t really know why, though. Just that it was decided by the commander.

Narukami: So that’s how it is~ I’ll tell her that.

Location: classroom (social studies)

Kidou: The names of world history figures are pretty hard to remember…

I have no problem with names when it comes to soccer players though.

Location: hallway

Henmi: Ah, Kidou-san! Do we have shooting practice next?

Henmi: I heard that you got a perfect score on the test the other day!

What’s your trick to be able to concentrate that well?

Kidou: I just happened to feel great that day. Though maybe the goggles help a little?

Location: shooting range (PE)

Kidou: Aiming at a target with a gun is similar to aiming at the goal in soccer.

Location: hallway

Kidou: Maybe it’s because I didn’t eat much this morning, but I’m getting really hungry… haha.

I can’t wait for lunch.

Location: classroom (Japanese)

Kidou: The bookshelves in my room are full of biographies and stories about soccer.

Wouldn’t it be nice if soccer was its own genre of literature?

Location: cafeteria

Genda: The food Kidou made yesterday was sooo good!

Henmi: Huh? What are you talking about??? I wasn’t invited…!

Have another dinner party, please! I want to eat Kidou-san’s home-cooked food…!

Kidou: Sure, we can have another one whenever you want.

Location: schoolyard?

Kidou: mar, come play dodge-soccer with us.

It’s like dodge-ball, but using your feet instead of your hands to handle the ball.

You’re out if the ball hits your body. But hitting my cape doesn’t count!

Location: classroom (math)

Kidou: They say you can predict the outcome of a match with analysis and statistics alone.

I don’t think soccer is that predictable.

Location: hallway

Kidou: Domon, about the transfer… That decision was really sudden. Are you really fine with it…?

Domon: Don’t you worry about it, Kidou-san!

I’ll slip right in! They’ll never even notice the impostor in their ranks!

Kidou: …Is that so.

Then I’m counting on you, Domon.

Location: classroom (English)

Kidou: We’re translating an English newspaper today.

This page analyzing foreign soccer teams looks interesting.

Location: hallway

Sakiyama: Kidou-san, mar-san, good work today!

Kidou: Oh, Sakiyama. I wanted to ask, what do you think of the new training menu?

Sakiyama: It’s great, as I’d expect from you! It’s really helping me work on my weak points.

Kidou: Glad to hear it. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of your training.

Club activities

Henmi: Kidou-san, did you hear about Raimon?

Kidou: What about them?

Henmi: Ever since that practice match against us, there’s been rumors that they’re actually a pretty good team…

But some of them even go as far as saying Teikoku cried over a single point!

Kidou: Listen, Henmi. We did what we set out to do in that match, and that’s all that matters to us.

Henmi: I know that, but…

Apparently, they’ve been getting countless requests for practice matches since then…

Kidou: …Oh?

Henmi: Shouldn’t we be looking into that?

Kidou: There’s no need to. A little mouse already slipped in there.[1]

After school

Location: Kidou’s house

Kidou: Food really does taste better after a hard day’s work.

…But I should be careful not to eat too much again.

Location: empty room

Kidou: Hm? You’re exploring the house, mar?

Ah, that room is…

mar: (The room is empty…)

Option 1

mar: Ah, there’s a penguin in there!

Kidou: Haha, yeah. It’s just a stuffed animal though.

Option 2

mar:Did one of your family members live here?

Kidou: No, this is just an empty room.

*

Kidou: The Kidou house receives a lot of overnight guests, so we have several rooms to accomodate them. This is just one of them.

Location: Kidou’s room

Kidou: I see. I expected as much…

Got it. Thanks for the report.

*

Kidou: Oh, mar.

Looks like Gouenji was playing soccer with Endou and the rest of the team earlier. He might play in tomorrow’s match against Occult after all.

mar: (I wonder who’s always calling him…)

Option 1

mar: Who are you always talking to on the phone?

Kidou: Who? Well, it depends on what the call is about…

Option 2

mar: As usual, information gets to you fast!

Kidou: Guess it does.

*

Kidou: I have my own team of informants.

They’re the ones calling me, if you were curious.

I’m still not sure if Gouenji officially joined Raimon or not, but if he plays in tomorrow’s match against Occult…

Raimon just might have a chance to win.

*

Kidou: I'll do some stretches to take the strain off my entire body later.

It'll help me sleep better too.

Callback to what Domon said earlier (that he's a smart mouse who'll slip into Raimon). I didn't think it sounded very good to say it like that in English though so that's not how I wrote it sorry haha

#everyone say thank you everyday!!+ for expanding on domons situation and his relationship with kidou

[whentommymetalfie]

Hello! :)

I stumbled across your story „Breathe again“ and couldn't stop reading. The same applies to the sequel "Home to you" and also all other stories from your other AU.

I want to tell you that you are an excellent writer and your stories are stunningly beautiful to read. Your writing style is so good that you effortlessly create images that take the reader into the time and the story. I'm almost in love with your Margate! What's more, you've captured the characters beautifully - each and every one!

I think that especially "Breathe again" and also "Home to you" are sometimes very challenging for you as an author to write. It's a very sensitive topic, but your implementation is so good! Tommy's psychological and physical condition sounds absolutely believable because you take the time to work through the entire trauma (and the ones that you also burden him with ;)). You don't rush through it or provide a spontaneous miracle cure, but look at each individual layer chapter by chapter, but in a way that is not boring, but entirely appropriate to the topic - albeit at times very painful to read. ;)

I love every single character interpretation of you and also the self-created characters like Esther (bless her!) and the good doctor Adelman.

I really want to give you an absolutely big compliment and thank you for writing so many great stories that have plots(!) and are then also implemented in an absolutely exciting and addictive way. I wish you (and your readers) that you continue to find pleasure in writing, even if it is sometimes exhausting.

Thank you, thank you, thank you(!!!) for all your great stories and the many enjoyable hours of reading!

All the best from Germany (and therefore apologies if I may not have found the right English words :)).

I often take very long to reply to messages, especially long ones, because 1, I like to keep them in my inbox and go back and look at them, and 2, I never feel like my replies adequately convey how happy they make me and I don’t want to sound like a broken record. But here we go! 

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful message❤️❤️ I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, it means so much that you took time out of your day to write to me. It’s something I’ll never take for granted. 

I feel (and hope) that working on Breathe again and Home to you has pushed my abilities as a writer. I think that’s also why it’s such a slow process, because as you say it’s a series focused on many delicate subjects that I hope to convey in a way that rings true. And also portray the characters in a way that feels true considering the circumstances, while still taking some liberties to make the story work. I can never be quite sure if I succeed, so your words mean a lot ❤️❤️❤️

I was very hesitant to add Esther to begin with, she was actually a hotly debated topic (in my own mind) when I first plotted this story out. But now I really couldn’t imagine this AU without her, and I’m so happy to know other people like here too. 

Progress has been slow, but I love writing. I mean, not every single second of it, sometimes, as you say, it’s sort of exhausting and you just gotta push through, but I love the overarching process, and that moment when the chapter finally falls into place. And I'm happy to share it with you, and anyone else reading. 

Sending you all the best from Sweden❤️ (and I think you’ve found the perfect English words) 

#breathe again verse #❤️❤️❤️

[teejaysnow]

Translation: Manusoverlevering, part 2

Here's part 2 of the youtube video translation, from 24:21 to 43:23 (also, there will probably be two more parts, rather than just one - otherwise this will begin to feel too much like work...)

Any mistakes are there for your enjoyment - I'm a Swede translating Norwegian into English, which gives me two extra languages to føkk up. Ooops.

Also, there are a lot of starts, stops, pauses and unfinished sentences going on during the panel - I haven't cleaned that up, you're getting it just as it was said. So, yeah. Sorry, not sorry.

Anyway, translation (hopefully...) under the cut because, once again, it's looooong...

[link to part 1]

Christopher Pahle: It’s nice when scenes are so well improvised that it seems like you’ve just been really good at writing them.

Julie Andem: I… Yeah. I remember that scene, or the filming of that scene as really exhausting, it was like at the end of the day and everyone was tired, and I know that there’s a really funny blooper from that scene where we’re running out of time to shoot so I’m trying to communicate during the take, I think it was to Marlon, that he should move, and then the whole group began to move, so they remained standing in a small herd. So it was a lot of not very good stuff we returned home with from that scene too.

Henrik Holm: And a lot of takes.

J: Yeah, there were quite a few takes of it too.

David Sjøholt: And you were… you were doing it after… after another one. We had an earlier recording that day, so it was like…

J: Yeah, it was pretty late in the evening when we did it.

D: Mmm.

J: But, yeah…

C: But, but that reaction where you suddenly realise who Even is is first of all really, really funny, but it’s also nice how it’s played out, how did that come to be?

D [shrugs]: I don’t know. I really don’t know, it’s just like… how improvisation works, it just happens and it just… I remember so well, um… when it happened, you got so flustered that you said ‘Henrik’, you didn’t say that your name was Even.

H: I think we all said our own names in that scene.

J: Marlon says Marlon, doesn’t he?

H: Yeah, he does.

D: That too, but it was, yeah…

J: But you are a bit, like, what’s so great with you is that as soon as you get a bit bored because nothing happens, like I think, if I’d have to guess, what you felt here is that you felt that Tarjei, or, slash Isak, wasn’t mocked enough, or it being embarrassing enough for him…

D: Maybe, I don’t remember… I guess it was… Yeah, that was probably it. It was so little that was happening.

H: But it… I remember very well that we did it so many times. And you’re very good at that because you always dared to do different things because you were the character that you were. I remember that you always played around with, like, how we boys communicated with each other, the comments you threw in were different from scene to scene, right? So it’s like you say, when you said that I got completely flustered and was just like, “uh, Henrik?” 

D: I’m very…

H: So after a while I remember that it became our task, so… in that scene I remember hearing Marlon about to say “Maaaarrrlllo-” and I’m just like [speaks very quickly] “pleased to meet you”.

D: That’s true, and it’s like...

J: You said it in slow mo.

D: But… I shouldn’t sit here and be praised, because that part is really easy to have. It’s you…

H: You should get all the praise.

D: …who should get all the praise because you have all the boundaries, I can pretty much do as like, it’s just like [he shrugs].

H: Yeah, but that’s, like, so subjective. You think it’s easy, but for most people, having that sense of humour, timing, and playfulness… that really did a lot for the boy squad and what kind of mood they were in.

J: Definitely.

[Audience and panel applauds an embarrassed David]

C: Is there anyone of you that doesn’t like to improvise? I have a feeling it’s a condition to be a part of Skam.

J: A bit, yes. Really.

H: It was part of the audition.

J: Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of impro during the audition.

C: Carl Martin, you also like it, right?

Carl Martin Eggesbø: Yeah, I really like to improvise, yeah. It almost became a bit like, when we recorded it was a bit because I, too, failed to learn the script. So then I had to, yeah… mm.

C: Are there any improvised scenes that were left on the floor of the editing room that you’re missing? Where you’ve thought, “Damn that that isn’t in”?

J: There is so much good left on that floor.

C: Is there anything in particular that you can think of? Or the rest of you?

J: No… or can you?

CM: No, nothing spec… or, like, it was really exciting to see when the clips were released what had been selected. Because I just remember, at least for my part, it was… there were so many different clips. So it was really exciting to see what was kept in and what worked and contributed to, well, adding on to the story.

C: Right. How many times did you record the coffee spitting… How many takes for that?

Ulrikke Falch: That was pretty fast, wasn’t it? 

J: Yeah, I think so. It was… you were totally awesome. In the script it just says something like…

U: We’re a couple.

J: …Vilde and Magnus are a couple and in love in an annoying way. I think it says.

D: Spit coffee and…

U: I spit coffee, yeah.

CM: Don’t you remember that?

D: Yeah, I remember it but I just remember that it was kind of different, and…

J: Ulrikke…

U: You liked it.

D: Noooo.

U: It seemed like you were in on it.

D: Yeah, I was, but…

H: You liked it.

U: You opened your mouth.

H: You enjoyed it.

D: It was a lot of fun. Definitely.

J: And Ulrikke is absolutely amazing…

D: Yeah, fucking hell.

J: …at impro, like, she’s made me laugh so much on set that I’ve peed myself a little bit, like it is, it is completely random what comes out, like it’s a party. It’s like I can’t make myself say “cut” even if we’re running out of time because I just want to sit back and watch what comes out, what her next strategy to keep the scene running will be. It’s just so much fun.

C: What is going on in your mind when you’re doing it?

U: It’s images, images appear and I just follow the images. Um.

CM: That is… What does that mean, I can’t…

U: No, I can, I can begin and then I see a light and I think “what else gives off light” and then there are fourteen different alternatives and then I pick one of them and then there are new alternatives there, and…

J: Yeah, there’s that kind of association, you’re really good at association, and it’s just like, “how did you end up here?”

C: Don’t the rest of you have any techniques like that?

H: I don’t recognise myself there. But is it acting in general or is it the character?

U: It’s mostly Vilde, it’s when you know the character.

H: Mmm. Because when you say it like that, then I can really see it. And you do it so brilliantly.

D: That was really wild to listen to. Cool. Wow. A light.

U: There are images.

D: Like, a light.

J: It’s not always a light, though, it’s an image of a light, it’s just an example, it’s not always a light.

U: Yeah, of cou… there’s an improvisation light in the far distance and then I follow it…

D: Whoa… whooooa… light…

U: No, that’s not it.

H: Yeah, but you are so present, that’s what it is. You’re so present that you can just stand there and just pick things from… from… who knows where it comes from, if you understand what I mean? 

U: Yeah, but that’s the thing, that I’m good at improvising on my own but I’m not so good at improvising with others. And I never felt like I was. Julie, can’t you say that I was? No, that wasn’t what I meant.

J: Well, now that you mention it, you really sucked… No, you were really fantastic at it. And I think it’s really a lot of fun, especially in scenes with Lisa. Because Lisa doesn’t really like to improvise, but she’s really good at accepting everything that comes at her in a natural way. That scene where you’re talking about her having chlamydia in her eye. I think it said in the script, “discuss if Eva has chlamydia in her eye”, but when you began, like, “and you’ve touched your foo foo and then you’ve touched yourself there”, and how Lisa manages to keep a straight face in that scene, because I was completely destroyed, so…

H: There were a lot of times that we burst into laughter…

J: Yeah, there were some…

H: …I have to say. There must be some bloopers of that.

J: Yeah.

C: There is something else that is in the script that I think is very funny and interesting. So we can go back to the very first screenshot we planned to show. It’s from the Gabrielle scene, where you’ve written down, “I spent a long time looking for a song that Even would be feeling exhilarated by and it was really totally random that it was Fem Fine Frøkner but I ended up with it because the lyric was on point and Henrik managed to get exhilarated to it”. Have you… there it is, right. What I found interesting there is that what’s in the script is that it is Maroon 5.

[Julie laughs]

H: I never saw that.

J: Okay, but this has to be said, Maroon 5 is, like, my insert for anything daft. So in the script for the first season when William is coming up behind Noora, it also says “Noora puts on Maroon 5” because I just put that in and then I find a song afterwards. But it was never going to be Maroon 5, because it had to be over a minute and we didn’t have the rights, it had to be Norwegian.

C: Yeah, right. So that’s the reason that it says…

J: Yeah.

C: Yeah. Right. It would have become a pretty different scene if it had been Maroon 5.

J: Yeah. I really wanted Roxette, but we didn’t get…

C: Which one?

J: Yeah, what was it, name a title.

C: Joyride? That’s my…

J: Yeah, maybe.

C: …goto karaoke song.

J: Yeah. Maybe it was Joyride. Isn’t that, like, really upbeat so you feel like dancing to it?

C: Yeah, it’s very, like… maybe not dancing to it? I’m not going to sing it.

J: Are you sure?

H: That was what I said when she showed me Fem Fine Frøkner. I am not going to sing this.

J: But you did it, though.

C: You did it. 

H: I did it.

J: Just like Christopher now will sing Roxette, go ahead.

C: Umm…

J [laughs]: I’m just kidding.

C: It’s the one, “Hello, you fool, I love you”...

J: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was that one.

C: Yeah, yeah. [Julie hums a bit of the melody] That would have been something.

J: Because it had to be, yeah, yeah, but that would have worked in that scene. 

C: Yeah, yeah.

J: If we’d had the rights. Which we didn’t.

C: Yeah, because it’s only Norwegian songs that you…

J: That can be over one minute.

C: You’re clear on how lucky you are that you can use so much…

J: Yeah.

C: Um. I just have to rifle through here again. Yeah, uh, here. Carl Martin. It is back to Eskild and episode five which includes your big Pride monologue. Where you get to know some new sides, or more layers to Eskild. What were your thoughts when you got that script?

CM: Umm… There was a bit of a process in the beginning of that because I remember that we talked about how such a monologue, such a text, would come, and it was, like, I thought it was really cool because, like, when I was cast as Eskild, we talked a bit in the beginning that it was important that Eskild didn’t turn into a stereotypical, uuh…

J: Wooden?

CM: Yeah, wooden. Like a typical gay boy that it often becomes, yeah… often on film. And I remember that you asked me what I wanted and what I thought and we went back and forth and you sent me a text and I was a bit, like, I didn’t really know what I felt about the theme in a way? Um. And then I also fretted over doing that monologue because Eskild had been such a funny character all the way. And then he’ll suddenly become someone completely different. And also, during that scene he goes from joke, joke, joke to, like, deeply serious. So that was, like, really tough in a way too, because I felt like it was really strict what I said, that I thought Eskild was really strict with Isak in that … in that scene. Um.

J: I remember that I sent it to you, I have, because it’s been a while since I read that chat, I sent, before I sent the script, I sent just the monologue and wanted your input. And one day passed. And two days passed. And three days passed, and I never got anything back and I thought, like, oh f… he hates it, I’m going to have to rewrite it, and then I messaged you, and you were, like, “Yeah, I’ve read it. Shit…” A bit like you’re talking about it now, like, “I don’t really know, but it’s important…” and then you talked about it both from Eskild’s point of view and from Isak’s point of view. 

CM: Yeah, because it was a bit, like, for me it was a bit, like, what’s the… why is that monologue important, because it’s like, “Oh, gay rights, hallelujah”, in a way? Why is it that Eskild gets so… take it so… gets so serious just because of this? And I felt implicated in a way because I felt like I could just as well have been Isak. At the time that I got the monologue, I didn’t think Isak’s questions and the view that he held, I didn’t think it was that weird in a way? And when I had to act as counterpart to that, I had to take some time to understand it. And that’s why I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know what to say to how I felt about it. Umm. And it’s really not until after that episode was released that I, like, see, like, and I’ve talked to people who this monologue has really hit home with, that I’ve understood what it… what it really… what it really means. Umm. So in a way it was both an acting challenge, but also a challenge for me as a human in a way, that I should jump into it in a way. Because those thoughts that he… that Eskild had… I thought that he was this simple, nice guy, but he… he… suddenly he isn’t, and then I had to… it was also a bit, like, yeah, a bit of a turn.

J: Yeah, we had to do a turn with Eskild’s backstory. And it was, like, Eskild’s backstory was on its way into the script a couple of times but never made it in season three, or any season. Um. But we talked a bit about what he had to, what he probably had experienced to be where he was.

CM: Mmhm.

C: Is it something you can talk about?

J: Um. No, I don’t think, I think we should keep it a secret.

C: We’ll save that to…

J: We’ll save it.

C: …for Eskild’s season.

J [giggles]: Yeah, we’ll save it for Eskild's season.

C: But it is interesting, as you say, that he was, that the perception of Eskild was that he was funny and sarcastic and… sassy, and then suddenly he gets an extra layer, a little like what happens to Vilde in the last episode at home with her mother, although we’ve seen more seriousness in Vilde, but, what do you think that kind of… umm… Does it make it harder to laugh at the characters after you’ve found out those kinds of things, or? Does it add something extra that might…

CM: I think it’s just [cuts himself off because he thinks Ulrikke is about to speak. Ulrikke fakes a yawn instead.] I think it’s just [makes a face at Ulrikke] No, I think that it was really nice and I think it’s, I think Eskild’s had a lot of funny scenes after. So, so I really think, at least for Eskild’s part, I think it was super important and it was also, like we talked about in the beginning when Eskild was created, that even if he’s fussy and sarcastic, that doesn’t mean that you’re a simple person.

J: No, and also, has everyone forgotten how Eskild was with Noora in season two when she lies in bed and Eskild comes in and tells her that she doesn’t have to do everything on her own? You have actually seen that Eskild has a side that isn’t just silly and when it comes down to it, he can… he will be there. If he has to. He doesn’t really want to be there for long, but… but… but he realise when he has to go there.

C: Right, but… but you can also see in that scene that… you act it with a lot of heat and it is very clear that it is a sorrow in Eskild’s life that you might not have thought a lot… ah, yeah… he’s got… um, happy-go-lucky guy, and then something like that appears, it was a leading question, I think it adds a lot to the character, so that’s… I didn’t mean to set a trap for you, but… it is pretty interesting and pretty… I think… now I’ll just start talking here, but I think that it’s… when it comes, when such a thunderous speech comes from that kind of character, I think it hits a lot harder because you don’t see it coming. 

U: We had, at the beginning, because for me, it’s a lot about telling a story, and you have taught us a lot about that. At least I feel like I’ve learnt a lot about it. In the first season, the comments started flowing in with “Vilde sucks” and “Vilde is a bitch” and “Vilde is annoying”, so me and Julie talked a lot about that. First advice was to not read the comments, but I still felt that it hurt. But then, I think, at one point or another, you made a comment that was like, “I can make everyone love you just via one scene and I can get everyone to hate Noora just via one line”. That there is something with the way a story is told that you have a lot of power over. Yeah.

J: Yeah.

U: Yeah.

J: That’s true. 

#here it is #the promised translation of the manusoverlevering nationalmuseet skam juni 2018 video #well the second part of it anyway #i am not a natural translator #for the anon(s?) asking for it #my shit #my translations