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kkyujikoo · 3 years

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These are my... 2...? Maybe 50, cents about the whole "freejk" thing. I'm gonna be extremely petty and at some points a whole lot sarcastic and it's gonna be long but I had to say it. As soon as I get my computer I'm gonna make it under read more, but the app does whatever it wants, as we know.

Listen, this ain't my first fan rodeo, and not even the first fan rodeo where I've been directly or indirectly accused of being some sort of pervert or delulu. I've been in fandom spaces since I was a teen, I was shipping mlm couples when queerbaiting in TV shows was still something that was seen as the norm rather than some cheap disgusting trick. I was there when fanfic spaces saw "slash" fics as something "different" and to be tagged with a more mature rating even when they just looked at each other.

I was in BBC's Sherlock's fandom and I shipped Johnlock during the hiatus between S3 and S4, at this point I'm not even feeling it when people call me delulu or a weirdo.

So, yeah, take this with a grain of salt: as a person who has seen thousands of times fandom drama unfolding and has lived too much of it... This whole situation is so ridiculous it makes me laugh. Like, yeah, it's maddening how people will blame anyone and everyone because they don't even see their own bias and homophobia, granted, but like... It also makes me laugh for the sheer dumbassery of the reasoning behind it all?

Like... Y'all are getting mad and for what? Because it sure as hell isn't the invasion of privacy, since y'all are watching the same content we're all watching and you're paying to see it the same way everyone else is. If you don't want to "invade their privacy", you should just... Stop watching content that isn't their music videos, RUN episodes or interviews. Memories and any kind of dvd/video that shows what they're doing behind the scenes shouldn't be part of their job as musicians, and therefore we're intruding in their privacy... Or aren't we?

Or maybe it's more nuanced than that: maybe the content they release on dvd/on their official channels is part of their job as entertainers, and it's been approved, and it's a small window THEY are granting us.

You know what's the REAL invasion of privacy and what REALLY invalidates someone autonomy? When you, who maybe aren't even paying to see that content (which is something I understand, like, dude, I'm not covered in money either), DEMAND what kind of behind the scenes content you want when I swear ABSOLUTELY NO ONE has asked you. Once again: you don't like it? You think it's some huge invasion of privacy? Don't buy it. Don't interact with it. Convince your friends to do the same. For all I care, just go and petition to boycott this kind of content. I know you won't do it, because... That's the thing, isn't it? It's not the invasion of privacy that bothers these people.

Y'all aren't mad because we get into their business or else you would have gotten real mad when we were privy to REAL private moments like people crying their hearts out.

No, no. Y'all are mad because it's "shipping content" and "fanservice" which apparently bothers you because it lacks authenticity.

Pick a side, lovelies: either you DON'T want to invade their privacy, and thus all the content they release should be focused on what fans want to see, or you WANT to know how they interact TRULY in private.

And here's the catch: "shipping content" can be anything. Shipping existed WAAAAAYYY before the word for it was invented, same way with fanfictions. Shipping means, literally, "seeing two (or more) people interact and thinking they would make a good romantic pair". That's it. That's quite literally it. Everything else is just some nuance of the concept of shipping, but at its core, it's nearly impossible to ban all shipping content when it's a group of seven people, because they should for real go in social distancing mode to do so. Most people who have parasocial relationships tend to have "ships" whether they know it or not, because we've all, at least once, looked at a dynamic from the outside and thought "oh man they look cute together". So, even if, o dear ones, your wishes were granted... What the hell do you mean by "shipping" content? Should they just film solo clips, avoiding talking about the other members? But wouldn't that be fanservice, since it's focused on pleasing the fans? (Which, ultimately, is what fanservice MEANS, and I hate to break it to y'all but the whole concept behind entertainment and thus all the content BTS releases it's... For the fans. Like, they're not going out of their way to just meet our expectations but they're certainly doing fanservice by the mere act of releasing bonus content.)

But it's not even quite that, is it? Because no one bats an eye if it's Tae kissing Nj's cheek. I've seen no hashtag against everyone - and I mean literally every one of them - wolf whistling at Nj. It's okay to show intimacy... Because they're bandmates and it's okay to be close to someone who you see basically 24/7, I hear you. And it's also okay when people see that and gush over that closeness, because it's such a nice thing to see.

Soooooo... We've got to free JK from whom exactly? From what?

Are y'all mad cause people pointed out there's very little way a bruise that stayed for a whole ass night could be a quick bite? Because that doesn't harm jk, at most makes fun of him and jimin and their poor excuses (seriously, guys, next time consider using mosquitoes or "I was doing stuff". It'll be equally embarrassing but at least the meme will be funny), and it's literally... A fair observation. Like. It's a hickey, people are gonna make jokes about seeing a hickey and poor excuses of covering it up in the exact same way they're gonna make jokes over jimin falling out of chairs. And yeah, a hickey is AT LEAST something that happens in a sensual context. Like, I could understand "people who are extremely familiar with each other will have different body language/touch in areas where usually you wouldn't see friends touching each other", but that's not. Not a hand on the thigh. It's a hickey on the neck. I don't even know a more stereotypical placing for a hickey. But once again, are y'all mad because someone is pointing it out? Because that's not being delulu or even being a shipper, really, it's just commenting on something that was approved to be shown and discussed in something that was released BY THEM.

Are y'all mad at hybe for showing something that literally fell onto their hands? Cause like, unless someone (I'm counting on Jimin, since as we know Jungkook was busy spinning him round and round and had both his hands busy) called at hybe headquarters to say "yo bang pd substitute, is it okay if I give my friend jk here a hickey? Cause he's being really annoying rn and he has to pay", I highly doubt anyone expected Jungkook to come to rehearsal all neatly marked up. Or idk, maybe someone at hybe asked them "we need Jungkook to come in with a hickey but refuse to say it's a hickey, so that fans will feel reeeeally served." That sounds perfectly plausible too. Or a good marketing strategy.

Now, if you're a big company and your objective is to have some footage of the rehearsals for a concert, and the fandom is too good at noticing stuff for their own good, and one of your artists comes in with a very visible mark, and he and his bff bropal4lyfe come n with a story about how they were playing and a bite happened, you've got three choices: 1. Cut the artist out of aaaaalll the footage. Someone would have noticed the "bite mark" anyway, you best believe that. If you don't want anyone to notice it, you gotta cut him in most of the footage where it's visible. 2. Keep the hickey, discard the explanations. You could do that, but also it would feel a lot more unfaithful to everyone involved. Also they clearly worked their ass off to invent an explanation, come on! They truly tried to do their best inventing something that was not "it's a mosquito bite", they should get some credit! 3. Keep the bite, keep the explanation.

Notice how none of these solutions include the biting never happening because... They couldn't prevent it? The only thing they have any control over is how they're framing each "accident". And that's not an easy job.

I applaud you, people on the editing team.

So... On whom should we cast the blame now? Ah, yes, I think it's finally time for the ultimate scapegoat of this fandom: Jimin. Which is funny, cause... You know... If this were really about privacy, or being "victims" of shipping... This should be about freeing him too, you know? But obviously Jimin does it for attention, while Jungkook, poor angel that he is, doesn't even know what shipping is.

Furthermore, don't we all know how much Jimin imposes himself in Jungkook's life? To the point where he, multimillionaire man feels compelled to share a car with Jimin even if they're both late in the process. And can't you see how uncomfortable he is, draping himself over Jimin, making Jimin drap himself over him?

Oh lordy, truly such an awful eight years Jungkook spent, choosing to have vacations with someone who made him uncomfortable, spending free time with him, even having to suck his ear in public to the point you can see his saliva just because Jimin was sad :( truly an all-around bad time for Jungkook, as evidenced by alllll those times when he said Jimin was pretty, cute, and all-around knowing every little thing about Jimin. I absolutely concur, the dude would be so much more happy if jimin was not in his life.

Did that sound weird and absolutely ridiculous and a really absurd joke? Because that's what y'all sound like to me. Like. Jungkook is out there living his best life, getting hickeys and showered in affection and y'all paint him as a fucking martyr??? I'm sure he's really truly desperate that Jimin holds him in such high regards 😭😭😭 I can see him suffering whenever he starts doing his own serendipity rendition 😭😭 and when he claimed you are me, I am you as his and Jimin's only 😭😭😭 I cannot believe this poor baby 😭😭😭

I've reached a point where every time I hear this stuff I laugh because the levels of twisting reality when it comes to jikook are extraordinary, Jungkook will have a literally blissed out face and people will cry in outrage.

But coming back to my point: let's pretend you're not mad at Jimin and the possibility that jikook are dating: are y'all mad... At the hickey? Because at this point it seems like the only feasible solution. And if you are, do not worry: I'm sure Jungkook's skin was throughly healed by his boo. A kiss soothes even the worst pain, doesn't it?

#jikook #that freejk dumbassery

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greenorangevioletgrass · 4 years

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OKAY SO I was scoring through the #distractinglysexy hashtag where women scientists just snapped at mysoginist men scientist who think women just cry in labs by posting pictures of them looking hot with lab equipment under the said hashtag. And I just couldn't get the image of Peter in a labcoat sjsksjksjs CAN YOU WRITE SOMETHING ON IT PLEASE SENPAI 💙💙💙💙

OMGOMGOMGOMG I LOOKED IT UP ON INSTA AND I LOVE IT

okay so like

you’re a kickass biochemistry grad student and dating your classmate peter parker

but the world still sucks and you still get undermined in your field bc you’re a girl and you like to dress up nice and look fly

you’ve told this to peter (he’s seen it a bunch of times himself) and he’s like “pleaseeee let me kick his ass” but you’re like “no, i can take care of myself” bc yaaasss gurl

one night he’s just hanging out and working with you when he notices how fucking cool you look with the goggles and gloves and lab coat and intricate braids, all focused and in your element

and he’s like “can i.. can i take your picture real quick?” “um knock youself out” “OKAY don’t mind me”

and goes on to take the coolest pics of you sksjdfhksdjh

“ooh you can post it on instagram with that #distractinglysexy hashtag!!!” and you’re like hell yeah you’re gonna show em how smart and badass you are

and then he came up with the genius idea of “OOH what if I do the sexy poses in the labcoat????”

so after your work is done, you set out to do an impromptu photoshoot

(in his defense, peter looks hella cute in a labcoat. that’s how you developed a crush on him to begin with.)

but he’s doing the over-the-shoulder look, the “ooh-you-caught-me-in-my-labcoat”, and the biting-the-finger pose, and “the kim kardashian” (which is just him puffing out his chest and stick his butt out and wrapping the labcoat real tight around him) and you’re dead

you’re full on squatting on the floor laughing

“DON’T LAUGH AT ME I LOOK DISTRACTINGLY SEXY”

“i know i know im sorry you’re very sexy” you pull him by the collars of the lab coat and kiss him

bc he’s your distractingly sexy funny nerd of a boyfriend 💕

#this got cracky im sorry hehe #or am i hahah #kriti🍓#ava writes #peter parker imagine #peter parker headcanons #peter parker fluff

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fictionalrambles · 4 years

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Shadowhunters Fandom Story - Part Fifteen

Submitted by jwrites_

Five Favourite Fics:

1. What's It Gonna Be by @lemonoclefox

Why I love this fic: I'm a sucker for Pride & Prejudice. San was able to take that dynamic and put it all in a modern day telling of it. I can't count how many times I've read this. Sometimes I read it all the way through, other times I go and find my favorite parts just to get that rush of emotions it never fails to give. The enemies to lovers is done perfectly, the dialogue is great and flows seamlessly, the way she tied in the storyline between Simon, Isabelle, Valentine, and Alec together was genius. I truly love every word of this story.

Favorite scene: Awkward - love - confession - in - the - rain

Favorite quote(s):

(Yes. Love confessions are great but have you ever overheard someone say something rude about you and then have the opportunity later that same night to be able to casually call that person out for their comment?)

"Her friend is..." He trails off, as though searching for the word, and Magnus can imagine him gesturing in the meantime. "Interesting," Jace eventually settles on, pointedly.

"Who, that Bane guy?" Alec says, and as he does, Magnus is hit with a wave of intrigued surprise. Does Alec like men? Interesting. The assumption could be wrong, of course, but Jace's tone implies that that's why he's mentioning it. "He's a bit over the top, don't you think?"

He sounds almost disdainful as he says it, as though Jace's mere suggestion is laughable, and Magnus's intrigue immediately shifts to offended annoyance. He straightens a little where he stands, reluctantly affected by it.

"I mean, love songs are great," Magnus admits lightly. "But stringing a few pretty words together does seem a bit unoriginal when everyone does it."

Simon shoves him lightly in offense, and Magnus can't help but laugh.

"Then what do you suggest?" Magnus is taken completely by surprise when he realizes that it's Alec who's speaking, and he turns to him. The guy's expression is neutral, but seems genuinely curious.

"Oh, I don't know," Magnus says, swirling his drink around in his glass. He shrugs. "I suppose I'm more a fan of showing and not telling. I'd much prefer someone showing interest in what I like and who I am, than comparing my eyes to the night sky, and whatnot." He gestures airily, then hesitates. He suddenly can't seem to stop himself, the memory of the Lightwoods' overheard conversation bubbling to the surface. "I think most people can appreciate that. Even if some of us are a bit over the top."

--Okay...I'm gonna go ahead and throw in a love confession~

"Look, I don't expect anything from you," he says, as though the words are hard to say. "You've made your feelings pretty clear, and I respect that. But I heard you talked to my mom, and with the stuff you said to her... I guess it just kind of made me a bit hopeful, or something. A bit." He clears his throat, while Magnus just listens. He turns to watch Alec's profile as the young man struggles to find the words, eyes on the view in front of him. "Either way, I'll admit that how I feel hasn't really changed. Maybe it should have, but..."

Alec shakes his head, and Magnus feels his throat go dry. He wants to interrupt Alec, wants to say and show everything that's bursting out of his chest, but he waits. Alec takes a deep breath then, turns to him. He looks determined.

"If you want me to," he says steadily, "I'll go. I'll leave you alone, I promise. You won't hear from me again." He pauses, licks his lips. "But if you don't want me to, if something has changed since last time, somehow... I'd really like to know. Because that would be pretty great."

2. 42 North 71 West by @lecrit

Why I love this fic: I was blessed with the opportunity to witness Lu working on this fic from its conception to its end. I was there and still I am blown away at the way she was able to work the time jumps. I remember thinking with every chapter I read, 'Wow. The way she is telling this story is amazing. She is amazing.' Lu has a way of presenting so much honesty in her characters. She writes them in a way that feels so real, that you can't help but understand their fears and hesitations even though it hurts. The story is a back and forth told through scenes set in the past and present. You get to see what they were and where they are. The story is beautifully heartbreaking. And she was able to make me enjoy a story that dealt with politics? What? Sorcery, I tell you. -- also, the bench.

Favorite scene: This was almost impossible to choose and I took way too long trying to pinpoint just one. But I'm going to go with one that I hold very dear. When Magnus goes to visit Alec on his birthday and he finds Alec playing the song he only plays when he's sad. That's all I'm going to say because I don't want to spoil~

Favorite quote(s):

“Magnus,” Alec breathes out.

The name feels almost foreign, as if he hadn’t uttered it in too long and now his mind is troubling to catch up with his mouth. Still, it manages to make Alec’s heart stutter.

“We should’ve stayed on that bench in Boston,” he murmurs.

The good thing is, he knows where to go to find his way back. It is inked on his body, engraved into his soul, sealed into his heart.

3. Lead The Way by Clockworkswan

Why I love this fic: Because it takes the wonderful adventure of Doctor Who and packs it in with Malec. This is the ultimate fun and feel good but you will also cry at one point fic. I always go back to it if I want a wonderfully written Doctor Magnus and his adorable companion Alec. Seriously, even if you're not into Doctor Who, give this fic a shot. It's written in a way that you will get so caught up in the adventure that you won't even realize it's based on something else. And if you're a Doctor Who fan, you're in luck with all the little Easter Eggs Heather left throughout.

Favorite scene: I really don't want to spoil anything. The planet of Ablorix. This will mean nothing if you don't read the fic (so you should ;])

Favorite quote(s):

Magnus extends a hand. It’s just like before, when they were in the hallway a couple of weeks ago. It’s just as inviting as it was the first time.

“How about it, pretty boy? Name a star. Any one will do. Or a date,” Magnus says. The double meaning is evident when he winks. He pauses then, and his expression shifts, growing solemn.

A clear shift in his demeanour happens. Magnus turns from playful to sincere in the blink of an eye. Although, there was also a serious tone to it. Magnus looks at him, and understanding eyes meet Alec’s hesitant ones. “Alexander, you seem like a man in need of a break, and I am very much a man in need of a friend. Adventures are always a quick way in figuring out what you want. What do you say?”

What does he say?

He says yes.

Of course Alec does.

Before Magnus can think of a good retort, he tries to ignore the clenching ache his stomach gives at the sight of a confident, smirking Alec Lightwood watching him so openly. He settles for pointing in a random direction. “I have to go and see a dog about a man. Meet back here in five?”

“Uh, isn’t the expression, ‘see a man about a dog’?”

“Not when the dog ran off with the man’s wife. A rather big scandal, it seems. The president wants me to try and step in. Smooth things over, so to speak.”

At that, Alec just stares blankly.

Magnus holds up a finger. “Yes, this is normal for me. No, you may not come along. Go.”

4. Love & Other Drugs prequel of Our Love Is A Harsh Chord in the Semi-charmed Kind Life series by @la-muerta

Why I love this fic: I'm kind of cheating here by listing two fics but they're a package deal. Love & Other Drugs was a smutty one-shot that left me wanting

more...

backstory. Let me tell you the pining and 'unrequited' love between those two demanded a story to be written. Which is why when la_muerta ran a poll on whether or not she should start it or another series first, I campaigned for this one like it was my job (I lost but I still got the series eventually so did I really lose?) The writing in this and with all of la_muerta's fics will hook you. The sadness over the back and forth between them is done so well. It's angst that will grip you and hold onto you until you eventually finish. Just go on the twitter hashtag of #OLIAHCfic and see my screaming.

Favorite scene: Probably the LSD scene.

Favorite quote(s):

Alec was still here, in bed with him.

How many times had Magnus wished that he could wake up with Alec in his arms? He didn't dare to move, wanting the dream to last a little longer, but Alec was already stirring.

he'll wonder if life would be a little easier if he wasn't hopelessly in love with Magnus, but it is a fact of who he is now: Alec Lightwood is 6'3, has dark hair, is gay, and is in love with Magnus Bane.

They are lying next to each other now, turned on their sides and face to face. The world is no longer warped and weird, but glowing and perfect. Magnus is tracing a path of lightning down Alec's body with his fingertips, and in a moment of clarity Alec understands that in Magnus' eyes he is as beautiful as he thinks Magnus is (it is the first thing Alec forgets when he wakes up sober later).

Words aren't enough to express how he feels, but they've always understood each other better when clumsy words don't get in the way.

5. The Lonely Hearts Hotline by @unrestrainedlyexcessive

Why I love this fic: It's funny, it's endearing, it's heart wrenching, it's sexy, etc. The way Alec is written in this fic is one of my favorite characterizations. The way his situation can resonate with so many young adults today. That feeling when you're an adult and you feel like you should know what to do with your life and who you should be but the truth is, you're still just as lost as always. Being an adult sucks tbh and even when you're an adult, sometimes life doesn't quite feel like it. Alec's character and growth in this fic is beautiful. (I also really loved Jace in this fic)

Favorite scene: A tough choice. Probably the office party and follow up scene in Magnus' office.

Favorite quote(s):

The problem with being a new grad, in general, is that the world and job force demands you have experience, but you have to live a certain number of productive years on the planet to gain that experience.

Early adulthood is no man's land. You don’t have the experience to matter and no one wants to pay you to gain it, hence how he ended up in the precarious situation he’s in: dodgy sex work by night, an even dodgier roommate, and desperately hoping an internship eventually turns into an actual paying job.

Magnus runs his tongue down the knobs of Alec's spine. "You're so beautiful," he says, pausing.

"I'm really not," Alec insists, eyes fluttering closed.

"Why are you so kind to everyone except yourself?"

"I'm a work in progress."

"Aren't we all?"

#shadowhunters #shadowhunters fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfiction blog

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girls-scenarios · 4 years

Text

The Statement

Idol: Wonyoung (IZ*ONE)

Prompt: Izone Wonyoung and idol reader is at isac together and while idol reader is interacting with fans, fans notice that the reader and wonyoung have matching rings and everyones like "tHeYRe dAtInG ThEY hAvE tO bE dAtInG HhHhHHhHHhH" and in the end the couple admits theyre dating uwu thank youuuuuu

Writer: Admin Kiwi

A/N: I am seriously SO excited that we are FINALLY getting an IZ*ONE comeback! I was so sad when my pre-order was canceled back in November, it was the one refund I never wanted to get, but finally! Our girls are back! I can’t wait to see them again, I’ve missed them so much. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy, and please support IZ*ONE and their comeback!

You hadn’t really been thinking when you slipped the ring on your finger that fateful morning. It was more out of habit than anything else as you sleepily got ready for the long, taxing day ahead of you. The Idol Star Athletics Championships were never easy. You’d been training for weeks leading up to the championships, before and after your normal promotions, so you were to tired to think about what the simple ring on your finger could ignite.

“Don’t be too obvious when you interact with IZ*ONE,” your leader warned you as you got in the car, sending you a look. “In fact, probably don’t interact with Wonyoung at all in front of the cameras.”

“Yeah, yeah.” You were pretty used to this by now, so you yawned and leaned your head against the window, pulling out your phone to send a text to your girlfriend. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”

-Good morning and good luck! I’m sure you’ll be amazing as always

Wonyoung’s response was almost automatic.

-Good morning and good luck to you too! I can’t wait to see you!

You smiled at the long list of emojis she added to the end of her text, then laughed softly when she sent you a selfie of her and a sleeping Yena, the other girl’s mouth half open.

-She’s gonna kill you for that

-But it was just too funny kekeke

-See you soon! Maybe lol

Your manager started to talk, probably saying something important, so you put away your phone and tuned in, trying your best not to fall asleep.

The building was crowded, teeming with life despite the early hour, and as your group shoved through the back area, you caught sight of IZ*ONE walking towards you. A smile spread across your face and you ignored the snickers from your group as Wonyoung smiled brightly back, waving her long arms at you in greeting.

There wasn’t enough time for a proper talk in the rush of preparations. As the two groups politely (and a little awkwardly) greeted each other, you quickly reached out, catching Wonyoung’s hand and laughing as she blew you a kiss. Thankfully, there were no cameras back here before the competitions started, so this wasn’t against the rules. You touched the familiar ring on her finger affectionately before letting go, turning back to watch her pass.

“Good luck!” She called, waving again, and you waved back.

“You too, see you later!”

“You’re so whipped,” one of your group members said with a laugh as they turned back to look at you, and you shrugged, used to the teasing by now.

“Okay, but I’m dating Wonyoung. Of course I’m whipped for her.” Energized by her touch, you moved forward with a quick step, throwing an arm around your member’s shoulder. “Let’s get ready to win some competitions!”

Most of the day went by uneventfully. As soon as the cameras were on, you avoided IZ*ONE and pretended you were much more interested in the competitions and fans. All ISAC recordings went by mostly the same, so you knew the script. You had all of your best reactions in store, and you knew exactly what groups to interact with to make your fans scream the most. You’d also trained enough to be confident in winning your competitions, and even if you lost, it wasn’t that big of a deal to you.

This was just ISAC. It didn’t matter that much.

Eventually, you found yourself bored enough to leave the circle of your group and wander over to the area where your fans were seated. As you approached, they began to cheer, and you grinned, waving your arms excitedly and jumping to make them cheer louder.

You would just entertain yourself this way for a while.

The night was almost done when your leader let out a surprised hiss and caught your wrist.

“I thought I told you not to even look at IZ*ONE,” they whispered, pulling you aside, and you raised your eyebrows, confused.

“What do you mean? I haven’t done anything.”

“Look what’s trending.” Your leader pushed their phone into your face and your mouth dropped slightly, your heart stopping.

There on the screen was your name, trending right there beside Wonyoung’s name and the names of your groups. But why? You were sure you hadn’t done anything. Had someone who worked there exposed the two of you?

“What’s going on?” You asked, feeling a little lightheaded.

“That’s what I wanted to know.”

Hesitantly, you clicked on one of the hashtags. Then your heart sank. It wasn’t an employee. It was fan photos of the matching rings.

“Well, shit,” one of your group members said, peering over your shoulder and wincing. “That’s going to be hard to dispute. Those are obviously couple rings.”

“Why would you wear a couple ring to an event like this?” Your leader said, looking a little pale, and you shuddered, shaking your head.

You really weren’t looking forward to what your manager was going to say.

Surprisingly. your manager actually didn’t seem too upset. Instead, he just sighed and ran his hand over his face like he’d seen this coming for ages.

“Figure it out,” he told you, “the company is breathing down my neck because they want to make a statement.”

“Aren’t they going to deny it?”

“I don’t know. They said they wanted to consult you. Plus, they’re also talking to IZ*ONE’s company about the issue.”

“Oh. I guess I’ll call Wonyoung tonight then.” You couldn’t help but feel some anxiety as your manager nodded and walked away, leaving you alone to walk into the dorm. Your members decided that the teasing could wait for the night and didn’t say anything as you headed for your room. Your roommate even settled down onto the couch, allowing you some much-appreciated privacy.

Wonyoung answered the phone after the first ring.

“I’m guessing you saw the news,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “The fans saw our rings.”

“I saw,” you said, falling back onto your bed. “I didn’t even think before I put the ring on this morning.”

“Me neither. I didn’t think fans would notice.” She sighed and you could hear the nerves in her voice. “My manager is upset with me. But the company said it’s up to me if we want to reveal it or deny it.”

“It would be hard to deny it,” you admitted, feeling horrible. You wished there was something you could do to make her feel better. “My company said the same thing though.... What should we do?”

“I don’t know. I’m really nervous.” She sniffled on the other end of the line. “I’m too afraid to check the trending tags to see what people are saying.”

“I know. If you want, then we can deny it,” you assured her. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

For a moment, the both of you were quiet. Then she sighed. “I don’t think anyone would believe us if we denied it. And plus, I love you. I don’t want to deny that.”

Your heart swelled with affection and you bit your lip, conflicted. “I love you too. But I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you.”

“Yeah.... How do you think our fans are reacting?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been too nervous to check too. But what I saw when we looked at the hashtag earlier was all positive. And I know that people have been more accepting of idol relationships recently.”

“You’re right....”

Swallowing, you made your decision. You loved Wonyoung, and you didn’t want to hide it. And your real fans would understand that. “I’m okay with revealing it if you are. I love you so much, Wonyoung. And I’m willing to take responsibility for whatever happens in the future. I don’t want to be forced to leave your side.”

“I love you too,” she said, a slow smile showing through in her voice. “I’m scared, but I think I’m ready. Since I have you, I’m ready. Can we see each other soon? Please?”

“As soon as possible,” you promised, smiling again. “I can never stay away from you, you know that.”

She giggled. “I know. So should I tell my company to confirm it?”

“Yes.” You were confident in your decision. “I’ll tell my company too. And whatever happens we’ll brave together.” You were nervous, yes. But it would hurt worse to pretend. You were ready to face the truth, and so was she.

“Now that we have that settled, I just want to talk to you. You did amazing today,” she said, and the pressure lifted off your shoulders. You smiled and settled into your bed, feeling much more at ease. You couldn’t have asked for a better girlfriend.

“So did you. You’re always amazing, though. My wonderful, brave, amazing girlfriend.”

#femifics #iz*one #izone #wonyoung #iz*one scenarios #izone scenarios #wonyoung scenarios #girl group scenarios #kpop scenario #girl groups #kpop girl groups

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lovelylogans · 4 years

Note

:o Please please rant about the 100 and Bellamy!! I was only marginally into it so I don't know much but I love to hear your meta on literally everything!!

all RIGHT. spoilers for the 100 past this point! also i’m gonna go ahead and preface this with a warning about racism, and also that a lot of this is based off stan twitter, but like. they aren’t Wrong.

oh, also, i’m gonna go ahead and drop my stan twitter: i rarely make original posts, but, ya know. it’s a jumble of content. feel free to follow if u want.

also! there’s this whole thread of hiatus drama, if you want a fuller picture than what i’m giving you.

so a quick, general sum-up of some plot that goes into this Whole situation: the sixth season of t100 took place on a different planet, after t100 spent ~5 seasons on earth, so this introduced new characters and also the concept of interplanetary travel. in the season six finale, hope (the daughter of a character, diyoza, who was still pregnant with hope, because ~time travel~) stepped through what’s called “the anomaly,” says “i’m sorry,” and stabs octavia, dissipating her into green mist. bellamy, octavia’s brother (who has had Issues and a Lot of storylines centering around octavia, which is a whole other topic of conversation (ft. bellamy’s storylines centering around white women (bob morley, who plays bellamy, is half-filipino) octavia’s treatment by fandom vs bellamy’s, and you can probably tell which side i’m on by how loudly i screamed “YEEEEEESSSSSSS” when bellamy said “you’re my sister, but you’re not my responsibility anymore” after SIX SEASON of—okay you see, i’m getting off topic)

anyway, the season closer was that octavia went through the anomaly, which (this is important!) a fair amount of the main characters saw (gabriel, hope, echo, and bellamy, namely) bellamy, in that same season closer, was running through the woods alone, yelling for octavia. season ending. good hook!

and then.... nothing.

seriously. the hiatus between season six and season seven of the hundred (the LAST season of the show, EVER!) there was next to no promotional material. no bts pics, no tweets from cast/crew, nada. nothing. which stirred up quite a bit of complaint in the fandom—one, it’s the last season, can we not have some promotion, and two, it’s the last season, and there’s no promotion by cast/crew/the cw, why is this happening?

seriously. the season seven teaser clip that got aired between episodes on the cw was released before the trailer. it became a meme, how long we were waiting for the trailer. like it was... what, 19, 20 days before the season aired, and all we had was like a stitched-together character poster?

there was also some drama throughout the hiatus, ft. the fandom getting on the news for not getting content in the hiatus, jessica harmon (who plays a guest role, nylah, and whose brother plays murphy) getting snappy at fans on twitter for asking for promotion, and isaiah washington, who played thelonious jaha (a character that died in s5) telling a minor (and also going into their dms!) that he’d call the fbi on them, good times, the 100 fandom is a Disaster and i live a nightmare every day

and then. the trailer drops.

which starts “where is bellamy?” like. people. were SEARCHING for bellamy. people were trying to be optimistic, but rapidly people were also coming to, like, the worst conclusions. however as always t100 fandom did have some jokes, so like, ya know

people were looking forward to other promo: the poster, and also, there’s this tradition of countdown bts photos for the show, and since bob and eliza (who plays clarke, the female lead) just got married, people had high hopes!

and then came the poster (which had no bellamy, or characters at all) and then the OFFICIAL poster (which had characters, but still no bellamy) which started the hashtag #whereisbellamyblake, because, seriously, he’s the male lead and it’s the last season. also bonus screengrab of this from jroth (the lead writer’s) mom’s twitter lmao

so people rightfully had questions: the excuse that was being given was that including bellamy would be “spoilery,” except, like, it’s a poster? and the only shot of him in the trailer was him being dragged along the ground despite the fact that he was the thumbnail for the trailer? like, okay, which led to some twitter meltdowns, and some more, and again people were fearing the worst, because like, see lexa, jason has a BAD track record when it comes to fan-favorite ships. people were HEATED, people were RANTING, it was a MESS

also. the edited posters were pretty funny, okay, then bob and eliza, bless them, dropped some a+ twitter content, and things calmed down a bit

and then, countdown days started. usually, the order goes bob on one more day, and eliza on show day. except this year? eliza was one more day. which. people were going nuts. because it was a tradition! and keeping BOB out of a behind the scenes where there weren’t any spoilers? it just seemed unprofessional—especially damning, given jason’s past history with ricky whittle, who played lincoln, and was bullied off the set. people were worried that, one, this was affecting bob’s storyline, and two, well. remember that thing about fan-favorite ships? here’s a whole thread of that, btw. and a video of ricky whittle, here.

it is a genuine fear of a lot of the fandom that jason will, in all his pettiness, not give in to bellarke. which is kind of nutty, given that it’s the core relationship of the show, and he himself had said that he’d been foreshadowing it. bellamy and clarke are literally “the head and the heart” of the show.

oh, yeah. so hard cut to the showday pic.

cast. crew. writers. everyone.

except? no bob.

people lost their gotdamn MINDS.

there’s a lot of subsequent drama; the fact that apparently they’re pushing through clarke/gaia (even though there was ??? no previous evidence of this??) still no bellamy for four episodes (seriously, it took clarke, like, two episodes to even cotton onto the fact that he was missing at all) a lot of criticism of jason (he’s shamed shipping and also, lmao, is trying to push through a spinoff?) and just. Yeah.

i’m really burnt out when it comes to the 100 fandom; i’ve unfollowed a lot of the t100-centric tumblrs i used to follow, once the show is over i’m gonna unfollow a lot of the twitters and just, yeah. i care about bob and eliza, and i care about bellarke, but the fandom wears me out and the unprofessionalism of a lot of what’s gone down has kind of just? made me lose interest? they’re recycling storylines (esp centering around octavia and bellamy) and continuity doesn’t seem to really be a priority. i just... yeah. i mostly care about bellarke and the fact that i bond a lot with one of my real-life friends through this show. if bellarke doesn’t happen, i’m gonna be like Really... disappointed, mad, irritated? like. imagine. it’s literally So Easy. the actors got married, ffs, you’ve gotten in trouble for ending two ships via very tragic death (in the same season, even!) like how is this Not Clicking

anyway that’s my (entirely too long) rant about t100!!!!

#the 100 #the 100 spoilers #not ts #Anonymous #ask

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bucksbisexual · 4 years

Text

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY LAST ONE OF MY OPINION POSTS HERE GOES EP12:

[breathes in]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

i’m so fucking happy with this ending

it’s such a good happy ending this is truly what the gays deserve i’m just happiness in physical form rn

i don’t even know where to start but i’ll try to make this as chronological as my brain allows me because my memory do be sucking

i’m gonna put a keep reading because this shit will get loooooong kjshfkf okay let’s do this

so.. we start with PETE EXPOSING NON(T)’S BRAT ASS!!!!!!!!!! FUCK YES THATS MY BABY THATS MY BOY!!!!!!!!!!

kao’s mom being a fucking badass and telling her BOSS how to do shit. i love her yall I LOVE HERRRRRRRR

also kao’s mom telling kao that she wasn’t the most amazing person ever was so cute because you can see kao’s light bulb turning on sjfkhsgsh please i love them

yes i will say i love x after every single one of these u can’t stop me

from the teaser i thought kao would dashi run run run to pete’s house but thankfully he took a taxi lmao

at least he didn’t run there because he had to run from pete’s house (or may i say, mansion) to the POOL my man is a whole athlete oh my god

KAO YELLING HE LOVES PETE!!!!!!!!!!! IN THE MIDDLE OF A CLOSED SPACE WITH PEOPLE IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!! AND HE DOESN’T GIVE A FUCK IF THEY HEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THATS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT BABYYYYYYYY

also a beautiful parallel to the scene from ep1 (i noticed there’s a lot of parallels in this episode we stan character development and repeating things just so the viewers can see how consistent the couples are)

the kiss from that scene............... beautiful amazing gorgeous idk many words in english to describe how i felt while watching and how i feel about it

to that i think we cut to sunmork but i don’t remember what happened because of the kiss KJHFKSL SORRY

anygays i rlly like how this whole episode is sun being a clingy bih and mork gay panicking while trying to act like a confident gay when he knows that sun outconfidentgays him i love them lmao

okay after that i think it’s petekao having food with their parents all together and god i looooooove this scene

pete’s dad being the lgbt ally dad all of us lgbt fellas with homo/transphobic dads wish we had will never fail to make me soft i love that man pls be my dad too

also kao’s mom :-(( i love her she respected her son’s decision on not coming out until he was ready even though she already smelled it (reminds me of my mom lmao) and was always there for him even when kao didn’t say anything :-(((((((((((

petekao bickering will never get old i swear i love every time they do because that’s so..... men it makes their characters more real

i know there’s a lot (not that much because i admit this episode was kinda short?? idk maybe it’s just me) between that scene and this one but THE SQUAD EATING ALL TOGETHER AGAIN!!!!!!!! AND THEM TEASING PETEKAO!!!!!! PLEASE I LOVE THEM

pete literally not knowing how to stop the audio and broadcasting live TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY that time when he told kao he loved him through the teddy bear...... peak pete culture

the fact that ppl love them and they have a whole hashtag on twitter makes me soft because usually when someone is famous in bls the fans hate the other part of the couple but in this one??? oh no honey we stan petekao in this household hate is not allowed it’s actually prohibited illegal

okay let me backtrack a bit skjfhsjf

OH YES I FORGOT!!!! manow wanting to talk with mork was so weird when i saw the teaser for the episode but after seeing them talk i was like oooooh okay i understand

sun saying “what’s your girl saying to my boy” is probably one of my favourite lines of this drama KLHSJFLF

rain reading their lips fskjfjsf and when mork said “fuck you rain” HIS FACE SKJFHKSJSLFJ HE WAS SCARED SHITLESS but also the end of this scene was so cute i love these three

i just did a bit of skipping through the episode to try and actual make an order out of this mess and the petekao+parents thing comes now,,,,,, anygaYS

then it’s more teasing between sunmork blah blah

then MORK SPEAKING THE MF TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!! quoting the actual dialogue “it’s my choice to tell or not tell anyone. i should get to decide”

OUTING SOMEONE ISN’T COOL!!!!!!! IT’S NOT OKAY!!!!!!!!!!! NO LGBT PERSON WILL EVER WANT TO BE OUTED!!!!!!!!!!!!! DON’T DO THAT SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rain had good intentions but it doesn’t mean that it was right of him to do so

okay this got serious,, sun going to rain’s bed with not one but Two pillows when barely two people fit in that bed.... oh to be that iconic and carelessly gay

back to petekao because we will never get enough of these two (which is why i’ll probably watch the our skyy episode tomorrow just to cry over these fools)

it’s so weird to see tay being like this after watching him being himself in other things like the live lunch and taynew meal date and other things i’ve randomly watched during this week to retain myself from finishing this series in a night ksfjhsfkshlks

also kao helping pete shave and pete being like do u like my moustache or should i shave it for u my lord SFHKFJ the domesticity and just the feeling of two idiots being in love i love them with my whole heart

kao staying at pete’s house because it’s both of their first days as interns and kao!!!!! he works for pete’s dad!!!!!!! pete’s dad accepted him into his company!!!!!! i love them

also the bickering between those three sjfkhs “hello im pete im from thailand” “that’s all you’ll say today” THAT WAS SO FUNNNY SKJFHSKFHSFJSFL

THE MESSAGE IN THE TEDDY BEAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KAO CALLING PETE LOVE PLEASE IM GONNA CRYYYYYYYYYYYY I LOVE THESE FOOLS

okay so the squad eating together is right after this but i already talked about it ksjfhsfh next!!

idk if it’s a big time skip or a small one but guess what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MANOW AND RAIN ARE DATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY STRAIGHT BABIES YES I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU AAAAAAAAAAAAA

manow is so pretty and rain is so cute they’re both so lucky my bisexual ass is crying

pete being “angry” at kao being so handsome,,, a mood

but also.. pete being possessive was h*t

there i said it and i don’t regret it

random but i will miss kao’s annoying ass saying “about aboyz” sjfkhsfh

pete being like “i will have to give u more love bites (ffs gmmtv just say hickies we are all at an age where we know what love bites are) so no one flirts with u” and kao being like “bitch try me” sjfhksfj i’m loving bratty kao

also that scene turned into furry kao real quick KJHDKJFSHJF

okay now it’s: mork’s birthday party time!!

rain and manow arrive first and are the cutest couple around because the two main gays haven’t arrived yet (being gay AND punctual? not possible)

sun and rain fighting in the kitchen was peak siblings culture skfhksjf

mork being ready to leave his own birthday party with a stranger who also plays pokemon go just to have a battle................ dumbass bisexual energy

said stranger is eARN FROM 2GETHER!!!!!! FILM IS IN THIS TOO!!!!!!!! first the girl who plays yuri in yyy and now film who plays earn in 2gether is here too??? damn wlw keep winning (also headcanon: theyre dating/seeing each other because LESBIANS periodt)

okay petekao arrive and wont u guess whats their present for mork,,,,,, the mf TEDDY BEAR and kao rlly says that they should use it since theyre so lip sealed lmao

rain and manow literally gave mork a present not for him but for sun im- i love these two

MORK FINALLY SAID YES TO BEING BOYFRIENDS OH MY GOD DUDE U ACTUALLY HAD ME WORRIED THERE FOR A SEC

also sun being a whole koala and being a horny bitch is so funny sfhskfjskl my man has his priorities set

their last scene is so cute :-(( poor rain will have to live with this until he moves out sjfhksjf

oh boi the ending is near hhhhhhh

kao teaching his class an equation that ends up in i < 3 u is the most kao thing i’ve ever seen

also kAO IS BOOKED AND BUSY BABYYYYYYYYYY GET THOSE COINS HONEY

pete being like “u haven’t spent enough time with me lately >:-(” was cute jhkfjs my man is needy of kao and i understand that because have u seen kao? exactly

kao teasing him with not having forgotten the cup this time and pete being his possessive self was.. splendid

every reference to something that happened with non(t) hurts but also i love how they just tease each other because they know that now their relationship is stronger than it’s ever been and that nothing and no one will come between them

the scenes they show during the last last scenes :-((( BOYFIES!!!!!!

and i love how they decided to end the show with them holding hands in public

i would explain why i do but it’s 6:26 am and i’ve been writing this for at least half an hour already and my laptop is heating up a lot and im sweating because it’s hot in here so get down on the floor pipiipipipipipipi

kdjhkdfhs sorry im not sleepy this is just my brain without a filter it’s just gay shit and a big repertoire of songs

god okay that was my opinion on the last episode of dark blue kiss...........

needless to say that i will eat every bit of content related to petekao after this because writing this i already miss them and i can’t wait to watch our skyy tomorrow idk where but i will

i really really REALLY liked this drama and it’s one of the two bl dramas (not counting the untamed) i’ve given a full 10/10 rating on mdl because it’s THAT good

everything about this drama is just.. chef’s kiss i love it i will probably rewatch it when my plan to watch is empty but it’s a pretty long list so.. hopefully i’ll ignore that and just rewatch sjkfhslf

i’ll of course watch kiss and kiss me again just for the petekao, the squad and rain scrumbs because i’m sure that the petekao compilations don’t show everything

but yeah im just.. i love this show it’s been a rlly long time since i started writing this but i’m still happy because it’s so good and truly gave us a good happy ending and i swear i cannot emphasise enough how important good happy endings in lgbt media are!!!!!!!!!!

anygays im hungry and ready to submerge myself in the dbk tags, see u all tomorrow for my our skyy petekao episode version of this,,,,,

till then, stay safe ! bYE

#dark blue kiss #dbk the series #dbk #dbk reaction

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lokisasylum · 4 years

Text

If you’re a Taehyung stan, please read this

Okay, at first i wasn’t gonna talk about this because its kind of a touchy subject, a little controversial and honestly I don’t feel like giving clout to this person. So for the sake of this post I will not even mention her name.

(No, no, wait. Don’t get any wrong ideas. This has nothing to do with Shipping Wars or the whole Tae-hates-Jimin-agenda blahblahblah.)

I don’t know if you guys have noticed that a fairly new youtuber arose with this weird AF channel, messy as hell videos and honestly people in general were ignoring her, almost little to no views and zero comments.

But what drew my attention was that in the past days (5-6 days or so), she suddenly starts mentioning Taehyung in her videos (title and all) along with L*e J*nghyun of CN//Blue. And the first thing that came to my mind was:

“Oh my god... not this shit again with the whole B*rning S*n issue and people still trying to connect Tae into this whole mess.”

Because we KNOW how hard people have been trying to create scandals out of nothing for BTS. So, of course I stupidly clicked on it to see what it was all about.

AND HO-BOY ....WAS THIS ALOT TO UNPACK...

So this girl, who is NOT Korean (could be American, but I’m not sure), Is dead-ass alleging to have not only met Le* J*nghyun through tumblr was it? (and maybe later on they kept chatting elsewhere) But that she somehow got into an ONLINE RELATIONSHIP with him for a span of 4 years. A relationship that, according to her, became toxic real quick. Making her a victim of (online) abuse by this Idol.

Now, you might be wondering: “Okay, but what the fuck does this have to do with Taehyung?”

So get this.

This girl?? Is not only claiming to have been in an ONLINE relationship with a Korean Idol that she says she met on tumblr or whatever. But she is also stating that Taehyung is a direct witness to this “relationship”. Because according to her, she and Tae have been “really close friends/best friends (ONLINE)” since 2015 and they have this “special bond/relationship” where Taehyung supposively used to call her on her cellphone frequently.

BUT NOT ONLY THAT!

That Taehyung himself tried to stop or warn her about getting into that relationship with J*nghyun. That he “called her the same day that she accepted” and now “regrets not waiting a few minutes longer” to for his call, otherwise “she wouldn’t have accepted.”

OH MAN HOLYSHIT, BATMAN!

I know!

This all sounds like some deep ass AO3/Wattpad level, Idol/fem!reader, scenario type of shit.

But wait! THERE’S MORE.

This girl is reaching SO FAR that she made up this WHOLE ASS analysis/theory stating the following:

- That Taehyung has been living with a lot of regrets since then. (Funny she would say this, when there’s a post she wrote on her twitter saying that she didn’t recognize Taehyung UNTIL RECENTLY since she “met him in 2015 [ONLINE] before he became famous” as if BTS debuted in 2015 instead of 2013. So her story is full of contradictions all over)

- That whenever he sings, he is singing TO HER.

- That all of his solo songs (Stigma, Singularity, 4 O’ Clock, Scenery and even Winter Bear) were ALL written by him, ABOUT HER and what she went through and the guilt he “still feels” for not being able “to save her”. So this “makes her happy” to know that “Tae still thinks about her all the time.” (When WE, as ARMY, KNOW that Namjoon is the one who wrote Stigma based on Demian, 4 O’ Clock which is a song Tae secretly dedicated to JIMIN, and Singularity. Whereas Tae wrote and composed the last two [Though he did needed help from Namjoon for Winter Bear since its 100% in english and he didn’t know if he had worded it correctly].)

That the reason WHY Taehyung refuses to speak of the issue is because Le* J*nghyun’s company is secretly blackmailing/threatening BTS/Bighit to keep quiet (But how could she possibly know this when she doesn’t speak Korean, has never been to Korea and doesn’t seem to have any online friends in the kpop fandom. Much less K-armys unless she’s following or buying info from sasaengs and EVEN THEN--).

But if you think that’s bad/borderline delulu???

The worse part is that she has both a Twitter and Instagram where she writes these things EVERY SINGLE DAY, AT EVERY HOUR. Talks about Taehyung ALOT and in a very creepy, almost stalker-ish matter (also, she ONLY speaks of Taehyung, she never mentions the other members by name, only BTS as a whole/group). And uses every single trending topic/hashtag she can find for the day to bring attention to her posts.

If the trending topic is TrumpsImpeachment? She’s using that.

MentalHealthAwareness? Yep, been there done that.

sexscandal and politics? She’s using those too.

EmpoweringHumanity? BreastCancerAwareness? She’s using it.

A new Anime trending?? She’s on it.

OH AND DID I MENTIONED THAT SHE IS TAGGING BTS AND TAEHYUNG TOO ON THESE POSTS?

NO?

WELL SHE IS.

*EXHALE....*

I... don’t know what this girl is trying to prove, I dunno if she’s just a regular clout chaser/anti spreading rumors/overly obsessed fan cause she is even calling herself “one of many Armys”. And I honestly found it so offensive from her part to be calling herself an ARMY so freely, while at the same time saying that she was gonna expose Taehyung and get him dragged into this scandal one way or another if he, himself, doesn’t "come clean” on his own.

And the reason why I won’t mention her name here is because this is slowly starting to blow up and a lot of people (from different fandoms and even NON-Kpop fans) have started calling her out on her bullshit while also reporting her accounts for slander. I can give you the name through private message, but not here.

So if you guys ever come across something like this or this person and it seems shady as hell. Don’t give the person any attention, just do the typical thing we do: Ignore, Report, Block, and Walk Away (If you can send a screenshot to K-armys to have them report it to Bighit, do so as well).

Don’t engage, because its very clear that this girl is hungry for attention and I’ve seen her use the “mental illness” and “race card” (since she is also a po*c) way too many times in her defense. So for all we know, she could be just trying to provoke the fandom/s and cause a reaction or get a few to attack her directly so that she can come around and drag everyone like it has happened before.

==================

UPDATE: After receiving much backlash & hostility for her behavior, the girl had no choice but to come clean with her claims. And admitted that she did in fact made everything up from the beginning and in addition also admitted to having a serious (personal/emotional/mental) problem which made her believe (in her mind) that she really did have this relationship with an Idol whom she has never met.

#Taehyung #kim taehyung #bts taehyung #vmin #taekook #Army #bts army #vhope #vope #tae stan #bts #bangtan #taejin #taegi #bantansonyeondan

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rendiggitydog · 5 years

Text

Tiny Boi

“Good morning Ren.” A soft voice beckoned him to wake up.

He sat up slowly, cracking his back and yawning widely. He opened his eyes, and- “Where am I?”

It was a spacious room, filled with all sorts of knick-knacks covering the walls and high counters. There were quite a few brewing stands bubbling away in the corner, blowing vapor into the air. In the middle of it all, Scar stood, watching Ren carefully. Something felt… off.

“You’re at ConCorp, how are you feeling?”

“I feel fine, except the room looks funny in a weird way.” He rubbed his eyes in an attempt to fix it.

“Well, I didn’t mean for this to happen, but… stand up, okay?”

Ren was confused by Scar’s nervousness. He threw himself onto the floor, but nearly fell over from vertigo. His head was level with, if not shorter than, the slab he jumped off of. Scar crouched down, anxiously awaiting Ren’s response.

“Did you do this?” He stared at the cluttered tables, now understanding why the room looked strange. It also explained why his voice felt so high-pitched.

“I really didn’t mean to! Cub gave me a tipped arrow, so I was gonna try it out on myself, but I was bumped and the arrow went flying! It hit you instead, so I brought you back here.” Scar explained, wringing his hat. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I feel fine, it’s just weird to see everything from this angle.”

“Well, I don’t know how long the effects last, so I think it’ll be best for you to stay here.”

“Aw, cmon my dude! It’s so boring in here, can’t we go to the shopping district? Just for a little?” He pleaded, blinking sweetly.

Scar just sighed. “I have some chores to do, wanna help?”

Scar set his hat on the ground, and Ren clambered on excitedly. Scar carefully lifted the hat back on his head, and the two set off.

They collected diamonds from a couple ConCorp stores before they ran into another hermit at the post office.

“Hey Scar, how are you?” Doc greeted as he pulled a letter out of his box.

“I’m alright, and you?”

“I’m good too!” Ren chimed in.

“What? Where is Ren?” Doc looked around, before spotting the little Ren on Scar’s hat. “Why hello!” He started laughing, and then couldn’t stop. He squeaked quietly for a minute before he could catch his breath. “Oh… Ren, is that really you?”

“In the flesh!” Ren stood proudly, looking up at Doc.

“Well then! I’d better go before I get shrunk too! Bye!” Doc shot off with a rocket, laughing.

“That went well!” Scar sighed a breath of relief.

“Well yeah! Did you expect the dude to freak out?” Ren chuckled and held onto the brim as they left the post office.

“Oh, I remember what I needed to do! Let’s go visit Sahara real quick.” Scar walked into the large entrance, gaping at the enormous room. “They’ve made a lot of progress…”

“Hashtag shop at Sahara!” Ren laughed.

Scar shook his head, making Ren almost tip off. “For shame, you sellout!”

“Who’s a sellout?” Iskall flew in the front door.

“The voice in his head!” Ren sang from out of sight. Iskall was too short to see him on top of the hat.

“Wait, the voice in your head sounds like Ren? And I can hear him too?”

“No, take a look!” Scar giggled as he pulled the hat off his head carefully.

“Party pooper!” Ren pouted.

“Ha! Look at you! You’re so tiny! And you sound like a kid!” Iskall wiped the tears in his eyes.

“I’m adorable!”

“C'mere, you.” Iskall held out his arm and Ren clambered up to his shoulder.

“I’m your parrot! Squawck!!” Ren screeched, making Iskall laugh again. “What’re you up to, my dude?”

“I was gonna finish up some redstone with Mumbo, wanna help?”

“Absolutely! Thanks Scar, see you around!”

Just be safe you two!“ Scar called as they flew away.

"Mumbo is gonna freak. Out.” Ren giggled.

“Hey Mumbo, I got a new parrot for the parrot room!” Iskall greeted.

“Ugh, Grian has plenty, we don’t need more!” Mumbo’s voice echoed from somewhere behind the redstone.

“I dunno man, I think you’ll wanna see this one!” Iskall giggled.

Mumbo sighed, and appeared from around a corner. “What is it-” His eyes were as big as dinner plates as he spotted Ren sitting on Iskall’s shoulder. “How- Really-?”

“I’m the best dancing parrot you’ve ever seen!” Ren did a tiny sexy dance.

“Hey! Not on my shoulder, perv!” Iskall laughed and picked Ren up by his suspenders.

“Put me down!” He growled. “I’ll bite you!”

Mumbo giggled and Iskall laughed. “I’d like to see you try, pup!”

Ren wiggled around, managing to bite Iskall’s wrist. Iskall yelped and dropped Ren, who fell to the floor with a bounce.

“Ren! Are you alright?” Mumbo crouched down, carefully rolling Ren over.

“I’m fine, it was only two hearts.” Ren brushed himself off, glaring at Iskall.

“Sorry man!” Iskall chuckled.

“Do you want to come with me?” Mumbo held out his arm and Ren crawled up. Mumbo instinctively cradled him in his arms, and the two headed to the contraption Mumbo had been working on.

It was rather peaceful for a long time, until Ren felt stabbing pains in his legs. “My pins and needles are killing me!”

In an instant, the two were on the floor, a regular-sized Ren sitting in Mumbo’s lap.

“Well hello…” Ren put his arms around Mumbo’s neck, winking.

“Can you- get off my legs?” Mumbo squeaked painfully.

Ren hopped up quickly. “Sorry dude! You good?” He gave Mumbo a hand up.

“I’m fine, the question is, are you alright?”

“Back to normal and never better! That was actually really fun! I wonder if Cub has any more of those arrows…”

#hermitcraft #rae writes #goodtimeswithscar #rendog #cubfan #mumbo jumbo #iskall #this came out of nowhere in my brain #no idea bro skslkkjk #docm77

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summerlouisecooke · 4 years

Text

Inside the deceitful mind of a fake book review fraudster

“Chaos and Grime” author accused of making dozens of sockpuppet accounts on Amazon and Goodreads to write glowing reviews of his own book.

On January 1, 2020, a foreign exchange student based in Xiaogan, a suburb of Wuhan China, using the alias Jacob Acerbi published a new book on Amazon titled Chaos and Grime: A Year in the Life of a Chinese City.

It claims to be a memoir about his year in China, but the synopsis paints it more as a fictionalized romance/thriller:

“Jim and a local peasant girl meet and fall in love. Yet their relationship must remain secret, for reasons that put both of their lives in jeopardy. Their story leads to devastating revelations about what really happens to China’s “leftover women” and how the authorities stop at nothing to try to prevent such knowledge from getting out.”

The synopsis is also laced with every cliched China-book buzzword lifted right out of a Peter Hessler press release:

“a window into the lives of Chinese peasants...takes you where no memoir has dared to go...a complex portrait of contemporary China....in the midst of this rapid and chaotic transformation...a society in flux...”

Most audaciously, the book claims to be “OFFICIALLY BANNED IN CHINA BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY'S MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS (on March 9, 2020)”:

However, since there was no statement made by the General Administration of Press and Publication (新闻出版总署) about this book, and since publishing and censorship do not fall under the purview of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国外交部), we can reasonably deduce that this claim is exaggerated if not outright fabricated.

The Amazon reviews are (so far) all positive, albeit SO glowing that one can’t help but wonder if they were purchased on one of those Buy Amazon Review sites based out of Bangladesh or Russia (you write the review yourself and pay them a fee to post it).

This 5-star review by Warrior Lodge (who also reviews office chairs and windshield wipers) seems particularly suspect:

“The author's attention to detail is total, resulting in world-building quite unlike anything I have ever read. I admit that I read it in one sitting; such is the level of immersion. This book should be required reading in Asian studies classes in colleges all over the United States.”

###

SO…let’s hop on over to GoodReads, where users are more discerning and critical, but where fraud and manipulation by self-published authors desperate for attention are also rampant.

Uh oh! Several 1-star reviews, from real, regular GoodReads users who recently participated in the author’s free giveaway:

“This author is vindictive. Like his reviews, and you're all good! Dislike them, and he's rude!” and “The subtitle should have been: A Bunch of College Kids Get Drunk A Lot and Have Indiscriminate Sex. It just happens to take place in Wuhan.”

Along with more exalting reviews:

“I cried at the very end (and a couple of times before that).” and “The attention to detail is stunning. I, as others have said before me, have never seen anything like it. Jacob Acerbi is some kind of mad genius.”

Some GoodReads users also participated in a discussion on the book’s page about if Chaos and Grime would be a good choice for a woman’s book club.

The asking user, named Jasmine, a black women in Missouri, has only reviewed 1 other book. The rest of her GoodReads profile is activity exclusively about Chaos and Grime.

A quick reverse-image search on TinEye reveals that “Jasmine” is actually the photo of the late Jazmond Dixon of St. Louis, who died on March 24, 2020, from Coronavirus. But perhaps Jasmine is Jazmond’s twin sister who really, really loves obscure China expat memoirs, so we will give her the benefit of the doubt for now.

Jasmine is new to GoodReads, but just three days after opening her account she started a group called Missouri Ladies' Reading Group which instantaneously attracted 4 other women (all also brand-new GoodReads members; only one of them, an elderly woman named Helen Lim, has her account set to public, so we can view her activity. Just like Jasmine, her activity is also exclusively dedicated to Chaos and Grime. According to TinEye, her avatar is a stock photo.

Reading “their” discussion about Chaos and Grime is a thing of cringey beauty. Presuming that these are all sockpuppet accounts, the conversation that ensues on the Missouri Ladies' Reading Group is essentially Jacob Acerbi talking to himself over the course of 114 (and counting) posts! I’m talking VERY in-depth and lengthy analysis. That’s an autistic-level of focus and obsession (unmatched only by my own autistic-ish determination to document all this):

Glenda (also an elderly black woman): “I was talking to my pastor about this book today. He's gonna read it.”

Vanessa: “The underlying point that he was attempting to illustrate through these evasions and equivocations was the significance of the common law precept of...”

Jasmine: “With the amount of content condensed in this book it could easily be 1000 pages long if each item was expanded into a more thorough discussion like the beginning of the chapter and the other romances. It is very unusual. I like this book a lot!”

Helen: “Jacob Acerbi has a story to tell and important related cultural phenomena to communicate, and so I think that the narrative voice is there to convey things as objectively as possible. Having this story coming from the voice of "Jim" would make it too subjective. Having it the way it is means that the author is making authoritative statements as a historian, which I believe he is.”

I’ve archived “their” entire discussion here:

1) https://archive.is/H8jhN

2) https://archive.vn/LxfU8

3) https://archive.vn/ADFs7

I encourage you to read it for an embarrassed, sad-cringe laugh, but also for a chilling glimpse into the mind of someone who might be suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder - or both. It’s as if Kevin Crumb (played by James McAvoy in the horror movies Split and Glass) had access to Chaos and Grime and GoodReads while locked up in his mental asylum):

But let’s go back to all those glowing reviewers (including Jasmine and Vanessa and Helen) on Chaos and Grime’s main GoodReads page. Click on any two reviewers’ accounts concurrently (for example Nelson and Olivia); provided they are set to public, what do you notice? Yes – THEY ARE ALL FRIENDS WITH EACH OTHER! They each have the exact same 10 or 11 friends (no other real GoodReads users), all whom are rabid fans exclusively of Chaos and Grime – no other books!

Someone also went through the trouble of creating dozens of new GoodReads Listopia reading lists with bombastic titles like “Most Anticipated Releases of 2020” and then voting up Chaos and Grime to the very top of each. And who were those 10 voters? You guessed it! Jasmine, Olivia, Helen, BH and the rest of the Chaos and Grime sockpuppet gang.

###

We’ve established that Jacob Acerbi is obviously very desperate for reviews of his new book, but can we really fault him? I mean, there was absolutely nothing in the newspapers about Chaos and Grime (very unusual for a book “officially banned by China”; the Global Times and the South China Morning Post definitely should have covered the big news), which leads us to believe that his publisher doesn’t have a very effective marketing department. So who is this publisher?

According to Amazon, Chaos and Grime was published by LSI Holdings. Strange name for a publishing house. Let’s have a look at their website.

According to ICANN the site was created on 12/28/19 – just three days before Chaos and Grime was published.

And yet, in their About Us section, they claim to “publish a large number of books each year.”

Okay, but in their Books section, they only show 4 titles : Waited. Long Enough, Looking for Nini, You’re Not A Hoarder, and Chaos and Grime. And among those titles, ONLY Chaos and Grime is listed on Amazon/GoodReads. None of the other books are found anywhere.

But that’s forgivable, because Wow! Check this out! All 4 books won multiple “literary awards”. No need to even name the awards, they were that good! And you wouldn’t believe which title won “Best Book”. Wait for it...Chaos and Grime!

LSI Holdings LLC must be some kind of indie publishing powerhouse! Who is this amazing team? Taylor Quill!!! And, oh cool, Melanie Boykins! And, yes!!!, the lovely Margaret Jiang in HR! She’s really great. In fact, they are all so legendary that none of them have need for LinkedIn or social media. Their sole online presence is on LSI Holdings:

###

But now I’m really inspired to read LSI Holdings’ award-winning literature, so I google Anish Rajmani, author of Waited Long Enough, which sounds like an epic read. Hmmm, seems she has TWO publishers – the other named Beadle Books.

What the…??? The EXACT same books as LSI Holdings (except for Chaos and Grime) and the exact same authors (minus Jacob Acerbi). And now I’m even more confused, because author Ash Marcus is suddenly black, and Charlie McMann is white...and a w-w-woman!

Something funny is going on around here.

Could it be that, on top of making fake Amazon and GoodReads shill accounts, Jacob Acerbi also set up a website for a fake publisher, to hide the humiliating fact that he’s, GASP!, a self-published author? After all, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly CreateSpace) allows paying authors the option to mask that they published via KDP simply by providing a “publisher” website.

Rounding out the elaborate ruse are:

1) Jacob Acerbi’s (very crappy) Twitter feed (with just 16 followers at present, though he is adding dozens of bot-followers by the day) with spammy posts composed only of hashtags:

2) Inserting Chaos and Grime on the Wikipedia page for Xiaogan:

3) A faux-foreword in his book written by one Afsana Sheeftahova, a “distinguished professor of humanities at the Tajik University of Geosciences” who is also an online ghost that doesn’t exist in this world:

###

So what’s Jacob Acerbi’s endgame? If it’s to make money selling his book, his long-con tactics are deceitful if not downright dishonest. Fake reviews and claiming fake literary awards are the equivalent of putting misleading labels on food; some suckers are going to pay their hard-earned money on something that’s just not as tasty as the slippery salesman said it was. That’s kinda lame, bro.

On the other hand, what if Jacob Acerbi is just trolling us? Having a good laugh while taking notes on how gullible the sheeple on GoodReads (which is largely a popularity contest) are, and how easily he can manipulate the site (which is owned by Amazon) before admin get wise and shut down his account.

He also seems to be purposely making a mockery of the tired and passe China expat memoir genre (Peter Hessler, Michael Meyer, etc.). Perhaps once upon a time Acerbi did really want to write a legitimate book about his experiences in China, failed to find an agent or publisher, then said ‘f*ck this and f*ck you’ and turned it all into a satirical social experiment. After all, the author’s bio is clearly taking the piss on all those self-important China Watchers and self-proclaimed Sino Specialists with their self-aggrandizing bios:

“Jacob Acerbi (Russian: Иаков Иаковевич терпкеницын; Chinese: 晉智明) is an American memoirist, historian, and philosopher known for his acute psychological, historical, and philosophical analyses, as well as his prescience as a "China watcher." His best-known work is the 2020 memoir about his life in the city of Wuhan, Chaos and Grime: A Year in the Life of a Chinese City. Widely regarded for its unique style and thriller-like dramatization of complex, controversial, and true subject matter, Chaos and Grime was banned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China almost immediately upon its release.”

And how can anyone take this slightly racist, slightly homophobic announcement on his publisher’s website seriously?

“LSI HOLDINGS PROMOTES CHILDHOOD LITERACY WITH SCHOOL BOOK PROGRAM - Shawneekwa Williams, only in the fourth grade, won an LSI Holdings Diversity Scholarship to attend the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in lieu of fifth grade. There she will study police brutality and trans activism for college credit. Great work!”

In conclusion, I admittedly have not read Chaos and Grime and don’t have any desire to (at this point I have read enough China expat memoirs to last me a lifetime). But I was very interested in uncovering just how low Jacob Acerbi is willing to go to promote his book (or troll us).

Now that I have tracked down his sloppy digital footprints and connected all the dots, I am left wondering: if he had put this much effort into his storytelling and writing craft, he might have actually found a real publisher, in which case, Jacob Acerbi would not have had to stoop to such shameless depths. It’s a little slimy, a little pathetic; but also a little funny.

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marigorbital · 6 years

Text

Dumb Ducks in the Water: Part 14

IT’S FINALLY HERE. Three actual years later, but it’s here.

A lot has happened in my life for the past three years and, to make a long excuse short, I was doing a lot of life questioning and dealing with events. And once I got out of my dark cloud, I decided to return to this fic while returning with my own writing projects. So I’m here to finish this fic, though I’m not sure how long it will take (I hope within a year?)--I’m just promising not to go MIA again, is all.

Anyway, some notes on this chapter:

- Listen, I did NOT plan on returning when the 3rd season of Free! came. This is pure coincidence, honestly. That being said, SO MANY THINGS HAVE CHANGED. Side characters have personalities now... Isuzu exists (I’ll have to, at some point, change Yukiko’s name)... People are in college now... Anyway, I want to remind folks that I started this fic in 2014/2015 and I’m trying to stay true to that, so anything that doesn’t match up with the current season is kind of like oh well for me.

- This chapter features tweets. Yeah. I used some website that make them look like they were written in 2009, lol, but we’re just gonna go with it. Also, want to give a shoutout to my best friends, who spent like five hours coming up with the twitter handles.

- Speaking of which, trigger warning possibly: cyber bullying (?) and rumors. Now, I generally try to keep this fic lighthearted, so I am also touching the mentioned subjects in a lighthearted manner for the most part, but I also know that if what happens in this chapter ever happened to me in high school, I would have been mortified. So I tried to respect that and take it a little seriously, which also pertains to the rest of the plot--but this is still Dumb Ducks. No PSAs, just some self-awareness.

- I am a little worried the quality is not up to par with this chapter because it’s been a while and I just wanted to get this chapter over with because I’d rather write other scenes, so I’m super sorry if it’s only sort of funny/cute or too serious. It’ll be better next chapter! (Which hopefully comes out by December?)

Anyway.

Start from the beginning or go to the handy-dandy tag page and pick up where you left off.

Enjoy.

------

It was still Tuesday.

But worse yet, it was time for him to face the swim team.

And to be honest, if you asked Nitori, that was kind of bullshit.

There he stood, observing the pool of sharks in the distance just waiting for him to make a move. A whole lot of damage had been done in the past eight hours since Rin shouted a profound WHAT THE FUCK at Nitori and Momo’s dorm doorway, which immediately stirred up a banana telephone game of epic proportions throughout Samezuka Academy. Pair that with the fact that both of the dimwits were publicly announced to head to the principal’s office together and that something amiss had happened in the cafeteria last night—and boy, oh boy, were the rumors trending the social sphere like something straight out of Nitori’s nightmares. They had gone viral, top of the chart gossip among their peers, who were all too ready to roast the couple into infamy.

It all started with a tweet.

Some rando on the basketball team had overheard Rin catching Nitori and Momotarou getting caught in an explicit position at their dorm, and what with the rumors of Samezuka’s swim team having more tea than a J-drama now stirring, this caught the attention of several bored teenage boys before classes had even started.

The sports news network was simple. Basketball passed the rumors around to get some details. One teammate asked who found out about this and were replied to with the captain caught them. Another asked, which one’s the captain?? And another replied, the guy who cries all the time.

Once the rumors spread over to other sports teams at the academy, the Samezuka Swim Team Thot Conspiracy began. It was the volleyball team who mentioned that both Nitori and Mikoshiba were sent to the principal’s office that same day, as sourced by a classmate in Nitori’s homeroom. A peculiar detail because how did the school find out about what the couple was doing in their bedroom? Did someone rat them out?

Then someone on the tennis team who was also in the culinary club mentioned, I heard they got caught doing shit in the cafeteria.

Cue the controversy.

This made folks on the baseball team wonder just how many times the two had done it and bets were being taken about when the relationship started. Someone on the bicycle team hashtagged the gossip thread as #bombezuka, which set off a flurry of well-intentioned, damage control tweets from students who didn’t want the reputations of Aiichirou Nitori and Momotarou Mikoshiba to get tarnished.

Things like who cares if they’re banging and let them live in PEACE to they’re not gay and who are we even talking about flooded social media circles as the rumor spread outside of Samezuka’s sports clubs and into the general student body. Did things get out of control? Naturally. Details were being made up, people weren’t entirely sure who was involved in the cafeteria fucking, and lavish erotic assumptions about who had the biggest dick energy on the Samezuka swim team were battling it out for all of this side of Japan’s internet to see.

One person assumed the captain (Rin) was angry because he was in a secret love affair with “the silver twink” or something. Another person insisted, Mikoshiba-san has been bragging about being with Nitori-san since last weekend. Another student saw them nuzzling faces on the metro train, claimed they were on a date. Oh, definitely, said another, saw them on the beach making out.

Eventually someone had the nerve to try to confirm some things with the swim team by messaging Toru Iwashimizu, who only responded:

But because Iwashimizu had responded, the #bombezuka thread had popped up on the rest of the swimming team’s Twitter feeds, who righteously had mixed reactions of freaking out to defend their teammates’ honor and freaking out because their suspicions had finally been confirmed.

To no one’s surprise, Nagisa Hazuki caught wind of the frenzy, despite being from another school entirely.

And with Rin Matsuoka’s name mixed in with the rumors, it did not take long before six degrees reached his younger sister Gou, who could not believe what had unfurled throughout the day without any comment by her brother. In a desperate attempt to get him to notice the Twitter storm, she tweeted:

The only silver lining of the tweetastrophe was that at least no one was being inherently meanspirited about the potential lust blossoming between Nitori and Momotarou, which was partially due to the swimming team’s notoriety. On paper, sure, the swim team was the pride and joy of the Samezuka Academy, but that’s not why they were famous among their peers. They were famous because the rest of the school viewed the swim team as a group of guys obsessed with swimming. They did nothing but swim. The whole point of the indoor swimming pool was for the team to practice even during the winter—when they didn’t even have to swim—or whenever it rained.

Barely anyone knew anything about the students in the swim team, so many folks figured they had the stock personalities of a school of fish. All going for the same goal to be a professional athlete and not much else. They were untouchable; their schedules surrounding practices, training camps, and swim meets, with not much room for dating in between. The only other thing people knew about them was their annual tradition of hosting a maid café at their school’s cultural festival, which no one could reasonably explain.

That was it. Listen, people figured if there was ever going to be a scandal coming from the swim team, it was probably going to be about some guy shooting up steroids in the locker room or wearing unapproved swimsuits for better aerodynamics in competitions or maybe even something crazy like the students were all brainwashed and manufactured into disciples of Poseidon himself to carry on the legend of Samezuka forever. They weren’t known for actual drama, not even while people heard about Rin Matsuoka swimming for some other school’s team halfway through a competition for some reason last year (that was weird, but okay) or even this year when some folks whispered about Sousuke Yamazaki having a hurt shoulder and, like, that was sad, but he still swam in the championship, so other students figured it wasn’t so bad. Hell, if you even heard about those two so-called incidents, you had to be real close to the swim team—and the fact of the matter was, what happened in Samezuka’s swim team generally stayed with the swim team.

So, when rumors spread about last year’s swim team captain’s little brother possibly dating this year’s captain’s ex-roommate, who some said might be next year’s captain, too, things got a little bit juicy.

To the student body of the Samezuka Academy, this was like finding out the royals were having incestuous affairs behind the castle doors, which got people thinking: maybe the reason no one had ever heard of the Samezuka swim team dating anyone outside of school was because maybe the swim team was dating… each other.

Yet, while folks were reveling in the swim team’s supposed love triangle plot twists, it was all at the expense of Aiichirou Nitori’s dignity. People were quick to forget that. It was one thing to be teased by his teammates about possibly dating Momotarou, but to witness his reputation get warped into being the promiscuous sexpot darling of the swim team was a level of humiliation Nitori had never known. He read tweet after tweet, seeing his name become the butt of a thousand jokes by students who he had never heard of, let alone spoken to.

It was a wild exchange. There were positive messages at first that called him cute, saying no surprise he’s dating someone, remembering him as the second-year breaststroke swimmer, saying how quiet in school he was, saying how small he was, saying well, if he’s still on the swim team, he must be good, right? They said he must be flexible, then mentioned Momo and Rin and Sousuke and Seijuro and damn near any teammate people saw him with at some point during the school year. They got more invasive, calling him relay boy, and assumed he was experienced, assumed he was bottom, assumed he was easy.

He cried about this, locked his dorm room and wept at his desk as he used his laptop to delete his Twitter and turn all his other social media accounts private before the gossip switched platforms. And once it was done and he could finally use his phone again without notifications stalling the system, Nitori stared at his last text message, one from Sousuke that read, emergency meeting at the pool now.

There stood Aiichirou Nitori at the entrance of the indoor swimming pool, with eyes puffed red and swollen, just like his ego.

“I hate this,” he muttered, his voice hoarse.

No one wore their swimsuits, which was good because like hell was Nitori going to do some goddamn laps after all the bullshit he went through today. As he sauntered down the gym in his hoodie and sweatpants, he looked down at the tile floor and listed the day’s events in his head. He woke up at 5:30 in the morning, broke into the cafeteria to smuggle in paper cranes, got caught, kissed Momo, had a nice breakfast, kissed Momo again but in his underwear so Rin could catch them—and thus the downward spiral set off. Today was the first day he started his first relationship. He should have been happy. It should have been a good day, really. But all Nitori felt was tired.

He was so, so tired.

“Honestly, fuck ‘em,” said Toru Iwashimizu, who sat at the edge of the pool with his feet dipped in the water. “Summer break is coming up anyway. They’re going to forget all about this.”

Most of the swim team sat down on the floor as a huddled group, with a few teammates just off to the side by the pool edge or by the wall. Nitori couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with anyone, knowing what had been rumored, but he saw someone approaching him and stepped back.

“Nitori-senpai?” whispered Momotarou, still in his school uniform. Not because he couldn’t get into their dorm room to change clothes, but because he chose not to.

“Where were you?” asked Nitori. He looked up at Momo then, pointing an incredulous glance at his manic kouhai, and didn’t care if anyone noticed their confrontation.

There was no question that Nitori-senpai looked like a wreck. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose and lips cracked at the irritated dry patches he must have wiped too many times, and his skin dulled from exhaustion. Once he found out about all the rumors, Momo’s first reaction was to go straight to his dorm room and talk with Nitori, but when he heard his senpai’s sobbing and how obviously hurt he was, his next impulse was to stop the madness. For the past twenty minutes, Momotarou went to several sports teams and people whose names he recognized in the tweeting threads and made a small statement to each of them in person. He needed to come up with a better solution, he knew that, but it was all he could think of for now.

He told them, you have hurt someone I care about.

“I was trying to fix this,” he told Nitori, even though he also knew the concept of fixing their shattered reputations might have been impossible by now.

“How could you possibly fix this?”

“Oy, Ai,” interjected Rin, who like the rest of the swim team had been taking note of Nitori’s dejected state. “That’s what we’re all trying to do now. Come up with a way to fix this mess.”

Fix messes, huh, Nitori thought. It seemed like he was always caught in some mess that needed to be fixed, at least for the past four days. Eventually the escalation must stop and crash, that’s what he was learning. He just never thought it would crash on him.

Nitori looked up to evaluate the rest of the team, taking note of their worried yet puzzled expressions as they looked back at him. He saw Minami and Uozumi sitting up against the wall, their lips pursed as if holding back their own commentary until they felt safe to do so. Off to the side, where most of the team sat, lied Nakagawa on his back and yet he averted his attention up at Nitori, then began to sit up when he noticed Nitori staring down at him. Iwashimizu took his feet out of the water and turned toward Nitori, sitting cross-legged and cross-armed. They looked guilty, or maybe Nitori just wanted them to feel that way. He wanted to blame them for their casual teasing as some sort of fuel for the rumor fire, even if he couldn’t prove it as the catalyst to the day’s events.

There was a moment when he wanted to blame Rin for shouting so loud that morning, for getting involved, for being so known at school. It didn’t last long, though, because even with everything that had happened, Nitori couldn’t muster up the nerve to blame his senpai for caring about him and his reckless behavior. As he looked Rin directly in the eyes, Nitori noticed the accountability Rin felt for his part of the scandal, how much of a captain he looked during this crisis—if you could call it that, Nitori wondered, feeling dumb. God, he felt so dumb, standing dead center at an emergency swim team meeting—a meeting—over rumors about him fucking—fucking—Momo.

Over fucking Momo.

When it came to Momo, his anger was complicated. It wasn’t the rage of someone who felt betrayed or even the kind of frustration someone felt because of how stupid their friend was. His fury was much more personal, a fury that made him obsess over every bad mistake he made in the past few days because of Momo’s whims and how any sane person would have said no, would have said the line was being crossed, would have realized they were setting themselves up for a messy catastrophe, but not him. Truth was, as Nitori realized it after sobbing at his desk, that he was, in a way, having fun. And the reason he was mad was because it had been spoiled.

He looked back at Momo and weakly raised his hand with his fingers twitching in frustration, pulling the air as he pulled his thoughts together.

“Nitori-senpai,” said Momo, who stepped closer ready to accept any punishment he was about to be given. “I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this.”

Yeah, he got anxious. Yeah, what they were doing was stupid.

But it was fun.

Nitori got mad because he hated how everyone wanted to rewrite his memories. They weren’t there watching the sunset at the beach with Momo while eating ice cream after a day of dancing and shooting water guns. They weren’t there going into downtown to shop for origami paper and eating lunch while binge-watching anime in their dorm room, just hanging out together and enjoying each other’s company for like twelve hours straight. They weren’t there eating breakfast in a little kitchen shop, planning dates and dodging bashful glances on the morning of their first kiss. They had no idea how much of a big deal it was, how it felt, that first time. All they had was this idea of who they were—just a couple of zany kids, off to the side, doing nothing important, just messing around. Who were they to try to tell Nitori the story of (maybe) the first time he fell in love?

Momo and his big mouth, his stupid ideas, his dumb heart.

Nitori dropped his hand. He took one step forward and plopped his head onto Momo’s chest, letting out a deep sigh. First day of a relationship and he was mad. God, he felt so dumb.

“Is it worth all this?” he said to Momo. “How long are we going to hide this secret?”

This secret, of course, referred to the surprise party they were planning, which had clearly become the bane of their existence. What started out as a prank turned sentimental gesture had wildly spun out of a control as the basis of their public outing for all to jest—and there was still another half of the week to go through before it was even supposed to happen.

Yet, given the rumor situation, when the swim team heard “secret,” a slight misunderstanding prompted folks to speak up.

“Oh, well, you don’t have to hide anymore, Nitori-san,” said Minami from the back, a little preemptively. “We’re totally cool with it.”

“Uh,” Momo stuttered, looking down at Nitori, who merely closed his eyes and sighed further. “That’s not—”

“That’s right, Ai,” said Rin. “We’ll make sure this doesn’t get out of control.”

Sousuke also chimed in with a supportive, “You’re not alone.”

And while it was sweet how quickly the Samezuka Swim Team turned into the Momo-Ai Defense Squad, hearing the phrase you’re not alone had channeled the exact reason Nitori was furious in the first place. He wasn’t alone, was quite prophetically forced to not be alone—when that’s what he wanted. He gripped Momo’s shirt, tugged down at the neckline as his silent call for freedom, and whispered into Momo’s ear, “Fix this.”

As more teammates spoke up to lend their support, it dawned on Momotarou that despite the fact that there was no real plan on how to come out as a couple since they were originally just rolling with the team’s own suspicions, this was probably not it. This was not how anything was supposed to go. He wrapped his arms around Nitori, feeling his senpai give in the embrace and start to choke up. Things had gone too far over nothing and no amount of white lies could change the fact that Momo, frankly, messed up.

“Stop,” he announced, then groaned as he gave in to surrender. “We were just trying to plan a party.”

Huh?

Even Sousuke, who was helping plan the party, wondered why the flustered ginger had snapped out and revealed the party plans. Collectively, no one on the team could tie the connection between Momo and Ai’s relationship outing and a… party? Unless, maybe it was a coming out party? Were they gonna be that elaborate about announcing their relationship? Wouldn’t that be a little much? Was that even a thing?

“What are you talking about?” asked Rin.

But the truth had to come out, and so with Nitori still in his arms, Momo exasperatedly confessed, “It started with the bread, but then you saw the bread, so then we couldn’t use it anymore, but I didn’t want to give up on—well, see, I was trying to plan a surprise because, come on, look at this pool, it’s so big! Like, how am I supposed to be at this school and not put stuff in it, so then why not origami cranes? No one can get mad at origami cranes—because they’re beautiful—and it’s barely a prank if there’s 5000 origami cranes—I mean, that’s practically art—like, honestly, I think it’d even be a good idea for the summer festival, just putting it out there because I’ve been working really hard on making them, you can ask Yamazaki-senpai, who—actually—is the reason we started planning a party. Yeah, ugh, because it was just a really good idea and we couldn’t explain why we are on the beach on top of each other—but nothing happened! We weren’t even thinking about that yet! We were just having a good time and then Yamazaki-senpai was like oh, what are you doing, give me my radio back, you’re planning a party, right? And we were like, yeah, that’s a great idea because it was, so then we had to go through with it, which is why we were always together, but then everyone kept thinking we were together together because we took a shower together and like, yeah, okay, so I checked Nitori-senpai out, but who wouldn’t? Look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn’t—no, you can’t, because Nitori-senpai is an amazing person who deserves to be checked out and, you know what? I’d do it again, honestly.”

Momo took a moment to breathe.

“Ugh, not that it matters,” Momo continued, his confession getting louder, “because then everybody was getting suspicious because of how much we hung out and Yamazaki-senpai couldn’t take the cranes to the cafeteria, so we had to, and the freaking cafeteria manager came in too early, so we had to run and run and it was sunrise and Nitori-senpai looked beautiful and, like, that was the moment—I couldn’t just not kiss him, especially after last night’s failure, so I did and it was great and today was supposed to be a great day because today—TODAY—was the first time I’ve ever kissed someone and today was supposed to be special because I asked Nitori-senpai out on a date and he said sure and I was,” Momo panted before he calmed down and finished, “I was really happy about that.”

Nitori looked up at Momo, then softly uttered, “Momo-kun…”

“I’m angry, too,” said Momo, meeting Nitori’s gaze. “I ruined our first day.”

The team stood there, stunned.

It was a lot to digest, particularly since Momo gave no context to anything he said, just spouted out a stream of consciousness that only select people could put together in a coherent timeline. But while some team members were trying to figure out the missing details, Rin—who felt he understood most of the Momo speak—hesitantly spoke up and said, “So, you two were planning a party here in the gym?”

Momo and Nitori nodded.

“And you knew about this?” Rin asked, turning around to Sousuke.

“Yup,” he said.

“But you two,” Rin turned back to the frazzled couple, “weren’t dating until… today?”

“Right,” confirmed Momo.

“But I saw… you both… this morning,” said Rin, trying to make sense of the lewd scene he walked in on earlier in the day. Who hooks up on the first morning they’re together?

“We were trying to distract you,” explained Nitori, who stood straight while still in Momo’s embrace and motioned his hands toward their intimate hug. “And it worked really well because we ended up distracting the whole school.”

“I can’t believe this.” Rin threw his head back, trying to be respectful toward his kouhais’ newfound relationship, but also absolutely using every fiber of his being to contain his frustration over the day’s events. “You guys literally test me every goddamn day.”

Sousuke chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand.

“What are you laughing at?” snapped Rin. “This is a disaster!”

“Yeah.”

Still waiting for an answer or a punchline, Rin bucked his shoulders for Sousuke to continue.

To which he shrugged and said, “Oh, nothing. I just think they’re funny.”

“Oh my god,” groaned Rin.

A sense of freedom washed over the two kouhais, who both took in a relieved breath about not having to keep up the lies anymore. They looked at each other then and sort of smirked at each other. Nothing was fixed by confessing about the party and, now that they confirmed they were interested in each other, the dating jokes were probably only just beginning, but it was their truth and they just wanted to live in it. For a moment, neither of them wanted to feel anxious about what was going on around them, even as the team shouted more questions about why were they throwing a party in the first place or why were they showering together if they didn’t like each other then or why would they go to these extremes, dear god, and why weren’t they answering?!

Toru Iwashimizu, who knew very well that today was the first day of their relationship, called out to the team, “Let them have a day, guys. We’ll rag on them later.”

All Momo and Ai wanted was a simple moment together.

They lied on Nitori’s bed together on top of the sheets, facing each other with a quiet acceptance. So much chaos in one day, but for a moment, it didn’t matter. They could just enjoy being near each other. Give them a chance to get used to each other. Be with each other.

“I’m sorry I ruined today,” said Momotarou.

Nitori reached his hand out to Momo, twiddling their fingers.

“You didn’t really,” he said, accepting that fact. “You didn’t start those rumors.”

They scooted closer to each other, enough to press their chests together and nuzzle their necks like swans. Let them feel each other’s heartbeats, that’s all they wanted. Just enough to hear that they were still excited about each other even with clothes on, that their breathing was still deep for each other because they were comfortable in each other’s arms, that when it got quiet it was intimate, not awkward. Maybe they couldn’t have a first day, but they could have a first night.

“Can we kiss again?” asked Momo, who gently tucked some fallen bangs away from Nitori’s face in case he said yes and who noticed the faint blush creeping up his senpai’s ears.

“Sure.”

Their noses bumped, as they realized they weren’t sure how to tilt their heads for a kiss in bed. A soft giggle slipped out as Nitori pointed his finger to the right, and they both adjusted their heads for a second try. A sweet kiss for an evening, involving parted lips and heated cheeks.

Just a moment to relive that morning, that’s all they wanted.

Another kiss.

#dumb ducks in the water #momotori #momoai #free!#free! es #free! dive to the future #momotarou mikoshiba #nitori aiichirou #rin matsuoka #sousuke yamazaki #samezuka #ALSO let me know if the tweets don't show up and I'll just put the text back in #I hope you guys like this...

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emeraldwaves · 6 years

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Title: #pinkwall Chapter 2 Pairing: Promptis Rating: T Word Count: 2,580 Read on Ao3 Summary: As a last hurrah before graduating college, Prompto suggests he and Noctis take a road trip to L.A during their 2 week spring break. Prompto is desperate to snap pics in front of the infamous Pink Wall of Instagram and Noctis is hoping to finally confess his feelings for his best friend. Will either of them find what they’re looking for on their impromptu cross-country road trip?

Full fic under the cut! thanks to @liziscribbles and @youaremynewdream for reading this ahead of time!

Ohio is flat.

It’s so flat, Noctis wonders if he's going blind when he squints at what seems to be the never-ending road in front of him.

Driving through New York and Pennsylvania wasn't as bad, since there were mountains and scenery to look at, but Ohio is so flat; Noctis is trying not to fall asleep.

It's nearing 11 AM, and they're still almost 3 hours out from Cleveland. Noctis can't believe they've been driving for 5 hours.

Prompto's been doing his best, but there have been a few time he's fallen asleep. Noctis can always tell when it's about to happen because Prompto's voice starts mumbling, turning into ramblings about Instagram and pictures and graduation. He jerks himself awake usually, "I'm awake! I swear, Noct!" he insists multiple times.

Noctis can't be mad, because he looks so damn cute when he falls asleep. His head slowly tilts, his mouth drooping open against the side of the car.

"Suuure," he smirks. "That's why you were snoring so loud just two seconds ago?"

"I was practicing... my pig impression!"

Noctis takes a quick glance at him, raising his eyebrow. "I'll keep that in mind when we drive past the next farm. Maybe I can sell you off," he smirks.

"Noct!" Prompto gasps. "You wouldn't dare!"

"I dunno, if you're gonna sleep for the whole car ride..."

"I promise, man, I promise! No more sleeping ever!"

He pushes himself up on the seat, and leans his arm against the window. Noctis' eyes flick to the side. Driving with Prompto next to him is a little difficult; if only Noctis didn't wanna stare at him 24/7.

"Man," Prompto sighs. "Whoever said Ohio was flat wasn't kidding."

"You're telling me," Noctis grumbles. He taps his thumbs against the steering wheel. "At least you haven't been staring out at the empty road for hours and hours."

"True," Prompto groans, scrolling through his iPod to pick a new song. Noctis hopes he'll pick something that will simultaneously keep them awake and not give him a headache.

"Alright! Time to look up what there is for us to do in Cleveland!" Prompto says, pulling out his phone. He taps his finger against the screen, waiting for the page to load. "Maybe we can find some good places to take pictures! I want to document everything! But it's hard when all you see is flat farmlands," he mutters.

"What? You mean this scenery isn't the perfect subject for your Instagram?" Noctis says, gesturing to the flat plains in front of them. "I find it riveting."

"Ha-ha, very funny Noct," Prompto snorts, letting out a long sigh. "Dammit," he groans.

"What?" Noctis asks, not liking the tone of Prompto's voice.

"Ugh you're not gonna be happy about this," Prompto says, and the car moves ever so slightly with the shaking of Prompto's knee up and down.

"You have to go the bathroom again?" At this point, Noctis wouldn't be surprised; they've stopped almost three times for that in the past 5 hours.

"No... but... I'm starving!" he whines, flopping his head back against the seat.

"Prom..." Noctis mumbles, and he wonders if this entire road trip is going to be him dealing with what is basically the equivalent of a five year old. "That's why we bought snacks."

"Yeah. I'm hearing ya' Noct, I'm hearing ya', but I really want some real food!" Prompto begs.

Noctis sucks at saying no.

"What counts as 'real food'?" he snorts.

"I dunno, we stop, get out of the car, eat something good! You're getting grumpy," Prompto teases, nudging him with his elbow. "I think we both could use a quick break. It's not like we're in a rush to get to Cleveland!"

Prompto has a point. Neither of them are wanting to see anything in particular in Cleveland, and Noctis' eyes could honestly use a break.

"Alright," he sighs. "Look up somewhere to eat around here."

"Gotcha! Siri, find food near me!" Prompto says, shouting into his phone.

"Okay, Lionheart, looking up food near you."

"Did you... tell Siri to call you Lionheart?" Noctis asks, raising his eyebrow at his best friend.

"Uh duh! It's a badass name!"

Noctis snorts. "Sure okay..." It's damn cute though. Prompto has a way of making the dumbest things seem amazing.

"Oh! Here's a place! Five stars... only a few miles away... cheap prices... It's called Iggy's Place," Prompto looks at his phone. "It... says it's a diner but all the reviews say it's some of the best food they've had in all of Ohio."

"Guess we gotta go then," Noctis smirks.

"Woohoo! Food adventure time!"

They arrive at Iggy's Place twenty minutes later, and Noctis has to admit, he's starving too. The place is a couple miles off the main highway, and they haven't seen a car for miles. Noctis assumes it's because they're all parked at this damn restaurant.

"Man, this place must be real good if this many people are here," Prompto say. He holds up his phone, snapping a picture. The sun glints against the sign on the building, and Prompto gives Noctis a thumbs up. "Hashtag no filter needed."

Noctis rolls his eyes. "Come on, you were the one who said you were so hungry."

"Hell yes!" Prompto says, zooming past him as they both head into the restaurant.

It's no surprise it's loud in there. People are laughing and talking, most of the booths are occupied, and 50s music booms from a jukebox in the corner.

"Crowded..." Noctis mutters. He supposes it only makes sense for a popular restaurant to be crowded around this time.

"Awesome!" Prompto laughs, snapping a few more pics on his phone.

"Good morning!" A cheery looking waitress greets them. "Right this way!" she smiles and leads them to a table directly next to the kitchen. She places the menus down. "The coffee is one of our specialties, so if you need a good boost, I highly recommend it!"

Noctis twists his lips as he sits down. He's not the biggest fan of coffee, but they still have a few more hours to Cleveland, and it might be a good idea if he wants to stay awake.

"Dang this menu is huge!" Prompto says, snapping a picture of it. "We gotta document being at the most famous diner in all of Ohio!"

They both laugh as they flip through the menu. Noctis is currently torn between ordering breakfast food and ordering a sandwich.

"NO, NO NO!" A loud British voice yells from the kitchen. "I simply cannot allow you to quit right before the lunch rush!"

"Too frickin' bad! You're so picky about how people make your recipes, and I'm not dealing with it anymore!" The man storms out of the kitchen, followed by a man wearing glasses and hair spiked up in the front. The quitting man throws his hat on the ground by the front doorway, and Noctis blinks.

"Shit..." he mutters. "Maybe we won't be eating here."

"Trouble in paradise..." Prompto says, leaning over.

"Goodness... what am I going to do?" the man sighs tapping his forehead.

Prompto looks to Noctis, a familiar, dangerous glint in his eyes. No, Noctis thinks. He can't be...

"You're in luck, good sir!" Prompto says and jumps up from his spot at the table.

Dammit, Prompto...

"In luck?" the man blinks.

"Yup! Me and this guy here, we're... culinary students! I'm Prompto and this is Noctis," he lies and Noctis already knows this is going in a horrible direction. "We're taking a road trip to try out all the best restaurants in the country!"

The man frowns for a moment, but then looks shocked. "My diner is on that list?"

"Oh! Are you... Iggy, of... Iggy's Place?!" Prompto asks, grabbing the menu and pointing at the title.

"Indeed I am. Ignis is my actual name," he says. Noctis wonders why a British man is the owner of a random diner in the middle of nowhere in Ohio, but who is he to judge really. "I'm honored my diner has made your list," Ignis continues. "However, my main chef just quit so I'm afraid the service is going to be... slower than usual. I do hope you won't hold that against me."

"But see, that's where we can help! We can make your recipes!" Prompto says with a confident smirk. Noctis has 0 idea where this confidence is coming from however, since neither of them are chefs, and both of them have been eating ramen day in day out since they started renting their apartment together.

"Hm..." the man looks between both of them. "Normally, I would absolutely never agree to something like this, but I do love a good learning opportunity, and I need to make some phone calls anyway to see if my backup can come in earlier... so... why not!"

And here Noctis thought this was going to be a quick pit stop.

"Prompto," Noctis hisses under his breath. "What are you doing?"

"I dunno! Tryin' something out!" he says.

There's no way this won't be a disaster.

Ignis leads them to the kitchen, handing them aprons. "Alright. The recipe books are here," he says, patting a few large binders with his hand. No wonder the menus are huge.

"The servers pick up food here, and all the ingredients are either in the fridge, or on these shelves. Please don't try and do anything you think you can, just assist me when I need it."

Prompto is smiling, looking insanely excited for something that is going to go horribly wrong. Noctis is just waiting for Ignis to figure them out and eventually kick them out of the kitchen, and probably out of the restaurant.

The worst part is, Noctis still hungry.

Ignis immediately gets to work, shouting orders at Noctis and Prompto to get him various ingredients.

"Noctis, eggs! I need eggs!" he calls out, and Noctis is far too tired for this.

He glances at Prompto who is putting together some sort of salad. The set up is messy, and he can see Ignis' horrified face as he rushes to Prompto's side, explaining that lettuce should really go in the small bowl first. Prompto gives a sage nod, as if he's learning the world's knowledge in this small diner in Ohio.

When he's done, he snaps a pic of his salad creation and he looks rather proud of himself.

The lunch rush is intense and it lasts for far longer than Noctis expects. He drops a few plates, and as the hours continue on and on, Ignis seems to get more and more frustrated. Noctis keeps expecting some sort of outburst, but the man keeps taking deep breaths, pressing his glasses up against his face. It seems to calm him every time.

But for Noctis, watching Prompto has been the most fun he's had in awhile. And Prompto is screwing up every order. Somehow.

"Apparently even a grilled cheese is beyond you," Ignis sighs, shaking his forehead.

Prompto laughs. "Are you kidding? This is my specialty!" he says. "Everyone loves their ends a little burnt."

"I can guarantee you they do not," Ignis says. "Make it again, and hurry."

Even though it's 'ruined' Prompto still takes a picture of it, as he has of every single dish he's either made or put together.

As if to prove a point, Prompto picks up the ruined grilled cheese and takes a large bite of the burnt crust. He winks at Noctis.

Noctis is mostly surprised Ignis hasn’t kicked them out yet. He feels bad for anyone who came here looking to try some of the ‘best food in Ohio’, because he has feeling it's not up to their standard today.

He mostly feels guilty for stressing Ignis out more. He's flitting from station to station, checking on other stressed out workers.

"No, don't chop diagonal!" Ignis says, shaking his head as Prompto chops through chicken. Ignis stands next to him and gently covers his hand over Prompto's. "See?" he explains, "Like this..." He pulls Prompto's hand up and down, showing him the correct motion.

Jealousy stirs in Noctis' chest, especially seeing how Prompto's cheeks are dusted with pink. Noctis is frozen, daydreaming about covering his own hand over Prompto's. He's sure it's warm, and the first few times Noctis would definitely be nervous-

"Noctis, let's focus!" Ignis calls out, and he's snapped from his daydream, focusing on the dessert plate in front of him.

By 4 PM, the lunch rush is finally starting to calm down. There are only a few customers left in the diner and Ignis lets out a sigh, cleaning his glasses on his apron.

"...Boys," he says, looking to Noctis and Prompto. "Now, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but the two of you... you are not culinary students... are you?"

Prompto bites his lip. "We are... students?" he says, his voice all high pitched and squeaky.

Noctis isn't the least bit surprised they got caught.

"I thought so... but I have to admit. I admire your ability to charge in and take a chance, and even with all the mistakes, it was... helpful to have extra hands in the kitchen, so... I do thank you."

Noctis' lips pull into a small smile. Leave it to Prompto to somehow get away with his insane lie. And as nerve-wracking as it was, Noctis actually had fun all day working in the kitchen. It's certainly something he never would have tried had it not been for Prompto. Never a dull moment, always an adventure...

"I suppose I owe you... so pick a meal from the menus and... it's yours on the house," Ignis smiles. "I won't even force you to make it."

Noctis is pretty sure they should owe Ignis, after breaking all his plates and messing up some of his patrons meals.

But he can't say no to free food, and it really is some of the best food he's ever had in Ohio. Actually, it's some of the best food he's had period. Prompto’s got a grilled cheese, made correctly according to Ignis, and Noctis has the most delicious burger… though it’s completely plain, much to Ignis’ dismay. He claims it doesn’t taste as good without all the toppings but Noctis still thinks it tastes perfect.

"This is amazing!" Prompto says, his eyes sparkling as he takes a bite of his small piece of cake. "We gotta come back and try other stuff next time we're in Ohio!"

Ignis chuckles, leaning against the bar counter. "Feel free to come back anytime, but don't be surprised if I don't let you in the kitchen."

"Aw," Prompto sighs.

"No, we understand," Noctis snorts. Even though the food is free, Noctis still leaves a good tip.

"Guess we’ll see you around Iggy!" Prompto waves as he head out the door.

"Do try and drive safe!" Ignis calls out. Noctis is certain that man will never trust him with anything.

"I can’t believe you did that, Prom," Noctis chuckles, sliding back into the car.

"Did what? Helped in the kitchen?"

"Helped is a strong word..."

Prompto frown and pushes Noctis’ shoulder. "C’mon man! The whole point of this trip is to have adventures! I figured, why not!"

Noctis can’t argue with that.

They get to Cleveland after the sun sets, but Noctis is so amused by their day, he can't bring himself to care.

#promptis #prompto argentum #Noctis Lucis Caelum #FFXV #final fantasy xv #FFXV fanfiction #roadtrip au #instagram AU #pinkwall

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abrclub · 6 years

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ABR Club Exclusive: Interview with Kip

If you've ever stopped by the merch table at an August Burns Red show, there's a good chance you've met their merch guy, Christopher "Kip" Hondru. Having been a fan of the band for nearly ten years, Kip and I developed a casual acquaintanceship through many merch table transactions over the years. While following ABR on The Phantom Anthem Tour in January and February, I had the chance to meet up with Kip in Milwaukee, WI where he gave me a tour of the historic Eagles Club venue and sat down afterwards to talk about tour life, photography, and how he spends his time when he's not on tour.

Photo by Ray Duker

David: How did you get the nickname Kip? Do you prefer Kip or Christopher?

Kip: It's something my sister called me when I was younger. Friends and family always call me that, and it just kind of stuck around. I'm told that Kip is a nickname of Christopher. In regards to which name I use when I'm introducing myself to somebody, it depends on who I'm with. If I'm with my friends, I'll introduce myself as Kip. If I'm some place where I'm by myself, I'll go straight to Christopher. I do like that name a little better, but I'm not picky. I was named after my grandfather, so I think that's why I like the name Christopher. I use Kip when I'm selling merch for ABR, unless I'm trying to be funny. Then I'll give them a funny name. Sometimes it's fun to mess with the kids [laughs].

David: How did you get introduced to ABR, and how did you start selling merch for them?

Kip: I grew up with a lot of the guys in the band, went to the same school (Manheim Central), and rode the school bus with JB. I've known Brent since second grade, so I've always been around and would always help out here and there with local shows. When I was in college I would go out with them during the summer or on weekends when time allowed it. In 2009 I came on full-time when our previous merch guy was looking to get out of it. I wanted to stop my 9-to-5 job and go on tour because my friends were doing some cool stuff.

David: Did you go to Manheim Central from 1st through 12th grade?

Kip: Yup, born and raised. JB and Brent went as well. Matt was homeschooled, and Jordan [Jordan Tuscan, the original bassist] was homeschooled along with Matt. Jon Hershey, the original singer, was in my grade. I knew him longer than I knew Brent, probably by about two years. JB was in the grade above us. Josh Bowman, our tour manager, was in JB's class.

David: What's it like in Manheim with August Burns Red? Does everybody know them, or know of them?

Kip: A lot of people do. When I meet someone and they're like "oh what do you do?", I tell them I work for a band. They'll ask "what band?" and I'll say August Burns Red, and they'll be like "oh I think I've heard of them!" or "oh I saw them in the newspaper the other day!" [laughs].

David: Where did you go to college, and what did you major in?

Kip: I went to The Art Institute of Philadelphia from 2003 to 2007 and majored in photography. I really excelled at digital output and large format printing. I also did a lot of traditional film photography as well and would mix the two mediums together, scan the negatives, and then print them out digitally. I used specialized cameras called large format cameras, which are unique to work with and something I enjoyed.

David: I know you have a camera collection. How many cameras do you have in your collection? Do you use them?

Kip: I'm not sure, maybe over 200. Not all of them are work. I try to use them, but other things have kept me busy recently. I always try to keep a camera around or on me. I have one on tour with me, but I've only shot two pictures so far [laughs]. A lot of what I shoot doesn't need to be rushed around, so I'm just amassing images. I have a spreadsheet of the cameras in my collection, but it's not up-to-date. I kind of stopped adding to it and recently sold a lot of cameras.

David: It's always surprised me that you're really into photography and collect cameras, yet you don't use Instagram. Why is that?

Kip: I was never much about posting and sharing a lot of things. I never really got into that. I'm trying to stay off my phone much as I can [laughs]. It becomes an annoying habit.

Editor's note: If you want to check out Kip's photography, visit www.christopherhondru.com.

David: You used to post on Twitter a lot about things that happened at shows while selling merch and you started the Shoes Got Weird photo series. What happened to that?

Kip: I just lost interest in that stuff. I do think that photo series was funny, as a quick off-the-hip kind of thing. That hashtag came out of one particular tour I was on. I was working for The Devil Wears Prada, and they would spend a lot of time at the mall on off days, so I would be walking around the mall with them killing time. We would walk into shoe stores, and I would be like "dude, shoes got weird! Look at these!", and then it just became a thing [laughs].

David: What's your favorite part of selling merch?

Kip: I can't pinpoint just one thing. It's a combination of a bunch of stuff, like traveling with my friends, seeing new sights, and continually meeting new people. Like you for example, and getting to recognize your face and getting to know your name, seeing you come back time and time again, and seeing how stoked you guys are as fans. It keeps me going just as much as it keeps the guys in the band going and excited. It'll be sad the day I stop touring, because I won't be able to see everybody who I'm acquaintances with as easily.

David: What are some of your favorite ABR merch items you've sold over the years?

Kip: I like selling guitar picks. They're fun, unique, and collectable. I've become a pick collector myself because of selling them, and I've met lots of pick collectors through that. Now I save some picks for certain people because I think they're great guys and I want to make sure they get some picks. I've got two of every pick we've sold ever since we started selling them at the merch table. Someday I'll put them all in a frame of some sort.

David: What are your favorite cities, venues, and places to eat on tour?

Kip: A lot of people ask me this question. My quick answer is I like a lot of the smaller college towns, particularly in the Midwest, like Spokane, Washington; Lawrence, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Des Moines, Iowa; Missoula, Montana. Those are cool because they're smaller towns, so if I wanted to check something out it's not far away from the venue. I usually have limited time before a show to go check something out, so if I'm close enough I can maybe ride my skateboard there in half the time I could walk there. It's usually a cool cheeseburger joint, burrito shop, or a bar/brewery that I'd like to check out, maybe a skatepark sometimes.

David: I didn't know that you skate. Do you use a longboard or a normal skateboard?

Kip: Cruiser board, and some longboarding. Not as much as I used to. I used to skate in the skatepark when I was younger. I'm not trying to do any tricks anymore [laughs]. I'm strictly cruising around. I like snowboarding a lot. I don't get to do that much, so that's where longboarding comes into play. Being on Warped Tour really got me into that because it had a lot of parking lot space, so it was an easy way to get around. We had a group of friends who liked to skate and we would find cool hills. That was always fun and something I enjoyed about going on Warped Tour.

David: So do you bomb hills a little bit then?

Kip: Yeah [laughs], I'm not trying to get max speed, but I will carve pretty fast.

David: Besides cities, what are some of your favorite venues?

Kip: One of my favorite venues right now is The Fillmore in Philadelphia. It's a newer one, beautiful, it's good on all fronts. It has good parking for us, and there's an easy load-in. It's also in a cool neighborhood. There's lot of things to do around there. I also like Philadelphia a lot. A venue a lot of us like in in Belgium. It's called AB Brussels. It's a scenic venue too and state-of-the-art. It's completely soundproof, like you'll walk outside and have no clue there's a metal show going on inside [laughs]. It's in a historic town with lots of cool architecture, which is something I enjoy about touring. I like architecture and history and being able to see something that had some kind of tie to the past and is still around. This building (the Eagles Club) is an example. I really dig that stuff. Anything that's an old theater that's still being used is cool to me, especially if I can find an old picture of what it used to be.

David: What do you do when you're not on tour?

Kip: A lot of different hobbies, odd jobs, and things to make money where I can here and there. I don't actually look for other tours, but if they fall in my lap, sometimes I'll take them. Lately I've been really involved with making cider. I've been a longtime home-brewer, so I started making hard cider and learning about apples and different apple products. Living in Lancaster County, PA, there's a lot of farm history and barns that I'm intrigued by, so I'm exploring local history back home through the history of the apple.

David: What's your favorite kind of beer?

Me: I like all kinds of beers and ciders and the whole gamut of the spectrum. I don't have an absolute favorite, but I definitely like something that's very flavorful and hopefully 100% real ingredients and no adjuncts if that makes sense. That sounds kind of nerdy [laughs]. So like a good farm-based or orchard-based cider, rather than random ciders you're gonna find at any bar.

David: If someone is visiting Lancaster, what would you recommend they check out?

Kip: Drive into the country side if you can. Go see the farms and see an Amish buggy. There's lot of cool things to see in the city as well. There's Central Market which is the oldest farmer's market in the country. There's good food and stands to get produce. There's tons of restaurants and cafes. A lot of people like Prince Street Cafe. I like a lot of bar restaurants like Pressroom, Taproom Spring House, Lancaster Dispensing Company, The Fridge, Quips Pub, Lancaster County Brewing Company, Horse Inn, and Isaac's Restaurant.

David: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Kip: Come to the 15-Year Anniversary Show! We haven't talked about it yet, but we might do some cool merch items there. This is the first time it's on the record, I haven't said this to anyone else, but there's a small chance I might bring some of my personal poster collection there. I have a flat file cabinet at home with photos and posters I've collected over the years that have been piling up.

#August Burns Red #Kip #interview #ABR Club Exclusive

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clarencenicholsonata · 4 years

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9 Expert Tips for Crafting the Perfect Instagram Bio

What’s the secret sauce for crafting the perfect Instagram bio?

Should you stuff this space with emojis, hashtags, and keywords? Or should you stick to the basics and only share a brief pitch, profile photo, and contact details?

Short answer: it depends on what’s right for your audience.

I’ve seen the best Instagram bios actually use a combination of all these techniques mix-mashed together.

Racking up those followers ain’t just gonna happen by itself. You need a super juicy bio to MAKE people want to follow you.

This guide is a blueprint for everything you need to make that magic happen.

You’ll learn the essentials of every successful Instagram bio, along with nine expert tips to attract new followers and convert them into raving fans (with real-world examples).

Let’s dive in. Instagram glory awaits.

Instagram for Business: A No-Brainer in 2020

Instagram is the second most downloaded app (after YouTube).

Instagram is so powerful, that companies like Wishpond have created awesome guides explaining how marketers should use Instagram for business growth.

Awareness is the name of the game. And Instagram does exactly that. It’s the reason why over one billion people use Instagram every month.

More than 90% of users follow a business, and 200 million users visit a business profile at least once each day.

Instagram users are active shoppers. Roughly 6 in 10 users log in daily; then, they spend an average of 53 minutes engaging there. Whoa.

Stats show a staggering 83% of users discover new products and services on Instagram. And 79% searched for more info after viewing a product or service, while 46% made a purchase.

So Instagram is a verifiable gold mine for growing brand awareness, guiding new leads to your website, and engaging with your current customers.

But this only happens if you have a solid Instagram bio that stands out and encourages people to follow your brand in the first place.

Let’s dissect the basics of an Instagram bio so you can hack yours for greatness.

8 Components of a Successful Instagram Bio

There are eight essential parts to every Instagram bio, and you’ll need to address each of them to take advantage of this limited space.

Let’s break down the Instagram bio of famous author and self-help guru Lewis Howes to give you a better idea of how each component works:

Like him, you’ll want to optimize each item, including:

1. Your Username: It made the most sense for Lewis to use his actual name as his username. But your username may be your company’s name or a close variation, depending on what’s available.

2. The Verified Checkmark: Go the extra step to show you’ve been verified in Instagram’s eyes, and your brand will appear trustworthy and legit. It also helps new followers feel certain they found the right account to follow.

3. The Name Field: You may be tempted to use this field to simply reiterate your name or username. But that’s actually not the best tactic for this space. Instead, you should use the name field wisely by adding keywords that describe more about what you do.

Despite Lewis using his real name in our example, we’ll show you how to go the extra mile with a better approach later on.

4. Your Bio:Here’s where we’ll spend the most time on optimization. Since you only have around 150 characters or less, you must create a brief, visually appealing message to introduce yourself. Don’t worry, you’ll learn how to do this by the end of this guide.

5. Contact Information: Lewis was smart about putting his contact information in both his bio and story links. This is something you may want to replicate if you have the room.

However, if you need all the bio space you can get, leaving your contact information in the Story Highlights works, as long as it’s upfront and visible.

6. Call to Action (CTA), plus website link: Make sure to leave room in your bio for a simple CTA. This will guide users to take the next step with your brand by visiting the link you provide. Lewis’ example does a wonderful job of this.

7. Story Highlights: Put some thought into your Story Highlights to offer your existing and new followers more information about your brand and quick resources they can interact with. We’ll dive into more (and better) examples of this throughout our guide.

8. Brand Photo: Your brand photo may be the first impression you make with your potential followers. So it has to be stellar and easily recognizable.

Stick with your business logo if it’s well-known and representative of your brand. Or choose to show the brain behind the brand, like Lewis does, so people feel like they’re interacting with a real person instead of a business.

Now that you understand the basic components, let’s dive into how to optimize your bio like a pro-level influencer.

9 Expert Tips for Crafting the Perfect Instagram Bio (With Real-World Examples)

Instagram wizards use nine unique techniques to create a bio that captures their audience’s attention and gets their followers to take action.

So you can’t just hand-pick your favorite ideas, cross your fingers, and hope you’ve done enough. Tackle each step, however, and you’ll have an Instagram bio worthy of the big leagues.

Here’s how:

1. Show Off Your Brand’s Personality

Your Instagram bio is an ideal place to show off your brand’s unique personality.

Now’s the time to show people why you’re different from your competition. Take the opportunity to use your brand’s color palette, relevant emojis that make sense, and creative copy.

These steps will help make your brand more personable with your target audience. And connecting on this level also allows you to resonate better with them.

Let’s check out two examples that follow this mantra:

My/Mo Mochi IceCream

My/Mo is an ice cream brand specializing in a variety of Japanese mochi flavors. But it’s not just their ice cream that stands out -- so does their Instagram bio.

While they don’t use any emojis (probably because there isn’t a mochi one yet), they do squeeze in snippets of their brand identity and personality in the short bio space.

You’ll notice the copy is funny, cheeky, and speaks directly to their audience. They also use their branded purple and white color scheme throughout their bio. All these choices are excellent to mimic.

Eric Stonestreet

Actor Eric Stonestreet’s Instagram bio shows off his personality and comedic sense of timing while talking directly to his (potential and current) followers.

It reads naturally and comes off as authentic and genuine, making it a prime example to follow if you’re trying to represent yourself and your personality within your brand.

2. Write an Instagram Bio for Your Target Audience

As you write your bio and try to weave in your own personality, it’s vital to remember that the focus should be on your audience more than your brand.

This may sound confusing since your bio is basically about you (or your business). So it helps to think in terms of what your target audience may be searching for, and what prompts them to connect.

You want to show new and current followers that you know what they’re looking for before sharing more about yourself.

Since this space is short (150 characters or less), so you need to think about this and test out a few variations. Your job is to hit on the important pieces first and offer supporting information next.

Check out how these accounts tackle this step:

Chocolate Covered Katie

Healthy dessert blogger Chocolate Covered Katie does a fantastic job of thinking about her audience before promoting her brand.

She uses a short, simple description to let her followers know what they can expect from her page. Katie also has a link to more recipes, along with Story Highlights of her delicious treats, to help people engage with her page immediately.

She even added some personality with the emojis in her bio and the monkey emoji next to her “Me” story. These are all smart ways to connect with your followers.

Kiwi Botanicals

Australian-based skincare company Kiwi Botanicals also does an incredible job of telling people what they can expect from their brand.

In one short sentence, everyone knows that they’re in the business of making “clean beauty skin and shower care with real Manuka honey.” It also tells US-based followers that they can buy their products at Walmart.

Since people know they can easily find their products right off the bat, they’re encouraged to learn more about the brand and stay in the loop.

3. Use Keywords and Hashtags (Where It Makes Sense)

Adding keywords and hashtags to your Instagram bio gives you a better chance of discoverability. When people search for these terms or browse the Explore page, they’ll find your bio with the corresponding keywords/hashtags, and check out your content.

So which keywords and hashtags do people use to search for your business? Make a list, and strongly consider adding them in your bio where they make sense.

These profiles use keywords and hashtags to grab new followers and push them to take the next step:

Nextiva

Nextiva is a business VoIP provider, based out of Scottsdale, Arizona. They’ve made an interesting use of hashtags in their bio. Specifically, they are focusing on branded hashtags, #AmazingService and #TeamNextiva as a branding element for their business. Basically, they have created their own hashtags, which is a unique way to stand out!

Days With Grey

Beth, a mom of three and activity creator behind Days with Grey, hits on a few tips in this guide. She shows off her personality, speaks directly to her audience, and gives people exactly what they’re looking for: new activities every weekday.

Despite only using one hashtag, #breakfastinvitation has over 2k posts for her audience to engage with.

Buy Buy Baby

Well-known baby brand, Buy Buy Baby does a phenomenal job of turning their brand name and trademarked slogan into hashtags (#buybuybaby and #babyhood). This helps them both promote their brand and come up in searches.

The Buy Buy Baby bio also contains relevant emojis, shares what readers can expect to find once they hit the follow button, and manages to offer two CTAs (share or shop).

4. Use a Compelling CTA

It’s great when you can pack your Instagram bio with personality. But it’s even better when your profile encourages users to take action.

So does your current bio prompt people with an enticing offer that’s too hard to resist? If not, how do you get to that point?

A clear CTA spells out precisely what’s in it for someone when they click on your link.

And these two examples show how compelling your CTA can be when done right:

Kayla Itsines

Fitness trainer Kayla Itsines has an easy-to-read profile explaining what she does and how new users can join in.

With her CTA and pointing finger emoji, people are directed to sign up for a home workout that’s part of her “sweat challenge.”

Using a full URL here shows people where they’ll be going and what they’ll be getting into once they click the link in her bio. This makes following her CTA appear more trustworthy and less risky.

Anna Victoria

Another popular fitness influencer, Anna Victoria, takes a similar approach to Kayla but does things differently (and better, in our opinion).

Not only does she offer a free trial -- something Kayla doesn’t mention in her at-home workout link -- but she also describes her workouts (30-45 minutes) and uses social proof (over 500k transformations worldwide) to let users know even more about her product before signing up to try it.

This is helpful because while Kayla uses a real URL for her CTA, Anna has a shortened URL in her bio.

If you can avoid a shortened URL, you definitely should. Seeing a full URL helps people know they’re not clicking anything spammy.

However, if you run out of space and have to use the latter, it is what it is. Just be sure to provide all the information someone would need upfront to establish that base layer of trust as Anna does.

5. Have Contact Information Available

Another thing you’ll want to squeeze into your Instagram bio, whether in your stories or the actual description itself, is a way for people to reach out should they have questions.

While users can send direct messages (DMs), it always helps to have an alternative form of communication in case people don’t feel comfortable DM’ing your account.

Let’s see a real-world example of this:

Lewis Howes

Remember our first example with Lewis? Did you happen to catch all the ways he gives people a chance to reach out? They can text the number in his bio for inspiration, or even text him directly.

6. Choose the Perfect Profile Picture

Instagram relies on visual media. So don’t be surprised if people make a snap judgment about your brand after only glimpsing the tiny thumbnail that is your profile photo.

That’s why it’s critical to choose an easily recognizable, eye-catching picture to make the best first impression.

If you’re using an image of yourself, make sure you’re not too far back or too close to the camera. Smiling helps make an immediate, personable connection. A shot of you at work or doing something relevant to your brand also makes sense.

If you’re using a brand logo, avoid using anything too small that may become hard to read or unrecognizable when resized for Instagram’s parameters.

So far, all of our examples have done well in this department. But here are two more for extra inspiration:

Official Gaetano

Let’s check out Don Gaetano, music producer and songwriter based out of Miami, FL. This was an interesting approach. He chose not to use a real photo of himself, but the illustrated version of his image actually stands out more. This image captures his essence and personality to give people an idea of who’s behind the brand.

Chrissy Teigan

Famous model and Instagram influencer Chrissy Teigan helps her profile picture stand out by going with a black and white theme. Naturally, she strikes the perfect pose too.

7. Space Out Your Bio. Make It Visually Appealing.

Even though your Instagram bio is short on real estate, you don’t want to crowd this tiny area with a wall of chunky text. Doing this will immediately turn away casual users who don’t feel like reading a novel to learn about your brand.

That’s why it’s best to give your text some much-needed breathing room.

Skip the paragraph info-dump and try to write short lines of informative text similar to a bulleted list. These are easier to scan and make a stronger impact.

It’s even better if you use relevant emojis as your “bullet points.”

A Color Story is probably my favorite example of this technique.

A Color Story

8. Add Emojis for an Extra Visual Pop

Adding emojis that tie into your brand imparts another layer of personality and helps you come across as more personable.

It shows new followers that even though you’re a professional account, you’re still fun, approachable, and relatable.

As the examples in this guide have shown, using emojis is encouraged and appreciated. However, it comes with a caveat.

You don’t want to use emojis just for the sake of doing so. That cactus or arm flex emoji may be trending, but if it doesn’t make sense for your brand, pick one that does.

If you’d rather take a more no-nonsense approach, you can use emojis that are symbols in the business world (such as blocks, circles, or dashes) for the same effect.

This profile shows you how to master either option (or combine them):

Pique Tea

Pique Tea uses emojis -- including the poop emoji! -- to emphasize the benefits of drinking tea in their bio’s fun, bulleted list.

Despite using the poop emoji, the brand still comes across as professional because the emojis actually reinforce the benefits and strengthen the impact of the text.

9. Use Story Highlights

Even though Story Highlights may be last on today’s list, don’t let them become an afterthought.

An amazing series of Story Highlights gives people a branded insight into what’s new or at the core of your company. And they’ll quickly guide users to learn more.

That’s why they deserve just as much attention as the rest of your Instagram bio.

And it’s why these companies have taken full advantage of them:

Pura Vida Bracelets

Costa Rican jewelry company Pura Vida Bracelets uses their Story Highlights to showcase causes they care about and share free downloads, travel tips, and FAQs.

Users gain an inside look at their company through neatly color-coordinated story highlights.

With this specific and well-thought-out order, it makes users want to click through each video and engage with the company before scrolling to the next profile.

Pique Tea

Pique Tea, the tea crystals company mentioned earlier, uses their Story Highlights to share information they want their potential and current followers to know.

This time, they offer people glimpses into what’s central to their brand: information about different types of teas, tastings and reviews, traditional Chinese medicine, etc.

Using Story Highlights this way helps people learn about your brand as if they’ve stumbled upon an expanded version of your bio in visual form.

Ready to Craft The Perfect Instagram Bio?

With all the examples and expert tips highlighted in this guide, you now have everything you need to create an Instagram bio that stands out, encourages more people to follow you, and guides them to take the next step with your brand.

Use today’s inspiration to write a profile bio that ticks all these boxes yet remains entirely your own, and you’ll be in good shape.

Don’t forget: crafting the perfect Instagram bio doesn’t happen on the first try. You should draft several versions to find the one that best shows off your personality and tells users why they should follow you.

Then, keep updating your bio as your brand and fan base grows to stay relevant in the sea of accounts vying for their attention.

How to Market on Instagram: 30 Ideas, Tips & Examples

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The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Marketing for Retailers and Brands

Instagram Marketing: 20 Excellent Examples & Ideas from Top Brands

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benjamintomes · 4 years

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This one landed differently.

What I’m about to say is probably gonna land differently too. Don’t start this unless you have a bit. It’s on the long side, a Snickers Bar and a beer might serve you well if you attempt to get through this.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this killing of an unarmed black man by law enforcement gripped the nation and the other ones did not. Is it any worse than the litany of other incidents that went almost completely unnoticed by both White America and other police officers? This one is terrible, no doubt. But so was the shooting of Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Dontre Hamilton, and Charles Kinsey, just to name a few. I’m glad it has been noticed by the public, but this should have been the instant reaction the first time it happened. We’re now onto a new phase of life that should’ve happened 55, 155, 244 or 401 years ago, depending on what you think or know about US History.

There was no reset button pressed, though. You can pick any point in US History, drop a random pin on it, and it will land where no real, tangible changes were made to ensure America was equal for everyone.

The new reality is that there’s a captive audience that sees the problem, but has looked away for so long, some can’t seem to enter the conversation without causing folks to get upset with them. Much of the inflammatory comments on newspaper articles and social media, I see a lot of genuine confusion over why there’s anger over seemingly ‘innocent’ comments. Those new to the issue, there’s a level of frustration and fatigue that’s been built up for years that is hard to get past. In Wisconsin, it’s so rare that white and black people do things together, simply starting a conversation on race presents its own set of issues.

Sadly, that’s going to be the easy part. What’s been recognized by those who see the issue for the first time is a tiny, corner piece of a section which, if panned out and looked at from a wider lens, is a familiar entity. Because it’s us.

Like an addiction, someone hooked on a vice has no real chance of beating it until the problem is admitted, owned, shared and attacked. It’s time for all of White America to look in the mirror and concede that there is an issue, and the issue is us.

America, we have a race problem. White people are out of control.

It’s not funny, because it’s true.

If its hard to hear, there’s a great chance you’re not part of the problem; you are the problem. This is the part of the show a few of you tuck your racist tail between your legs and wander away from the discomfort. To that end, please unfriend me. Not just here, but in life. I want to make it clear; if you are a racist, it’s best that you stay away from me. This isn’t going to get better until racism goes back to being a non-negotiable again. I can’t know you, won’t know you, if you engage in things that are racist. That’s because of how I feel.

Because of how you feel, there’s a second level of this. The status quo is changing. The micro-aggressions and passive-aggressive commentary on public forums aren’t going to be dismissed the same way as before. The toxicity from it is going to stand out more than you know. When this four year drama is finally over in November, an awful lot is going to be different. They’re not going to be quick to explain it to you anymore. If you’re one of the pack of people that hump posts on race like horny dogs that can’t wait to smear it with little snippets of white wisdom, don’t. People are fed up with you. I’m done making excuses for anyone saying bigoted things. If I see it, I’m calling it out and taking my own social distance from you online and elsewhere.

I’m not cynical enough to believe all white people are problematic. To be clear, though, this country was plotted, formed and planned on a color-based system and the statistics tell us it still is. An awful lot of white people have recognized the issues, and been involved for the common good, for years. That said, there are some wise words from both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King about the most dangerous faction towards racial equality, and that comes from liberal minded white people.

For today’s world, I would amend it a touch; primarily to include white folks convinced of how racist they aren’t, but actually are and don’t realize it. Might they be liberal? Sure, and some of them most certainly are. Of recent note, Amy Cooper and her fear of the terrifying black birder; she was sporting a mask in public, and even using politically-correct terms while trying to get him in trouble for existing while black. I don’t know what way she slants, but if I were a betting man I’d say left.

Prior to the last four years, I quite honestly, didn’t care what direction you leaned. I do now. I’d love to separate from politics, and prior to 2016, I could. I’ve had conservative friends for years, and in a previous context, I found nothing wrong with that word. I do now. My standards haven’t shifted, but what composes conservatism has. I can’t sit here and pretend that we’re in some past era, where the difference between political parties was marginal; split upon how monies should be collected and allocated, foreign policy, and the validity of some domestic programs or policies.

To pretend that’s where things are now is disingenuous and colorblind.

Conservatism had been long been rooted in financials; and still is, but it was not synonymous with hate. It is now. You can spin it, justify it, deny it, or look past it all you want, but the reality is the movement climbed in bed with racists, supremacists, billionaires and fascists. The current GOP is a Frankensteinesque mix of different groups with oddly grouped agendas, strange relationships and little in common with one another outside of their skin color. It’s no accident that the only real thing they have in common is race.

When Republicans decided to look past the open homophobia, xenophobia, racism and questionable past of Trump, they altered this country in the wrong way. Predominantly white voters, voted for a white supremacist campaigning on extra white lies, to sit in the White House.

Four years later, here we are with the worst economy in 70 years, the first legit pandemic to ravage this country since 1917, cities burning, 100,000 Americans dead, 40 million unemployed and the racial strife in this country is so bad it’s hard to tell tell if white people jumping in on riots is solidarity or a setup. It’s safe to say, that the great experiment of 2016 has been a colossal failure. Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He jumped in it and made it dirtier. In Washington DC, that’s almost impossible to do. But yet, here we are minutes from a Trump tantrum from him waging war on his own citizens.

Despite being over 3 years in to his term, prominent white people and his mindless clones are taking to the airways and blaming Obama for every single Trump failure, including racial tension.

If this is you, do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up. Now.

I grew up wrestling and then got into fighting as an adult. If any athlete I knew issued blame like the excuse-making racist in the White House, they’d be written off instantly as a loser. Not just by me, either. Any coach worth their jock strap would put an end to that type of excuse making. Yet, I’ve read other coaches celebrating and reveling in Trump’s blame games, retweeting gleefully things they’d beat their athlete’s ass for if they said after they lost or failed. Things our current US President Tweets should embarrass every American, if for no other reason that we put someone in charge that can’t even apply fucking grammar and punctuation to his threatening or whiny posts.

Just because the nonsensical speeches and single syllable words made sense to you, didn’t mean it was correct. If you read the Tweets, the rhetoric and don’t feel a bit insulted or ignore the bouncing orange ball in DC, you may not be bright enough to be involved in the conversation about it.

America’s become a laughing stock to the entire world. We put the most vile, crude, brain-dead simpleton in charge of this country. This isn’t a difference in political ideology. This is a difference in human decency. Most of you were so blinded by rage and hatred of Hillary Clinton that you lost sight of simple human decency. The signs were there. White America just didn’t care about them; just like they did with other killings of unarmed black men by law enforcement, dating back to eras most of you aren’t ready to hear yet. This didn’t start with Rodney King. Not even close.

It’s not that they went unnoticed; folks saw it. Instead of trying to understand, large sections of White America became a jaded peanut gallery on the posts and conversations of anyone concerned about an issue of race. I think they’re aware they’re being shitty, but don’t realize what they’re actually saying aloud when they comment publicly on videos of police brutality or any other racially charged post.

I’m not sure what inspires some of you to post publicly things like, “well, let’s see the rest of the video” when someone without a weapon on them was killed by a cop.

I see whatcha did there. You probably felt so witty, too. You wrote your lil comment and felt all proud. Thing is, what you really wrote was “I revel in the murder of black people.”

I get that isn’t what you wrote, but it’s the exact message you send.

Another unarmed minority is killed by law enforcement. The story hits. You comment again, “Well, if they would have just complied…” Or, better yet, you witty ones that opted to show just how racist you weren’t by hashtagging #alllivesmatter in response to the BLM movement.

Again, you make your lil statement, feel all proud because you publicly supported the police. Good job. Corn Bread Trophy for you. Hacksaw Jim Duggan would be proud of you. So too would Kid Rock. And fucking Chachi. You can do that. You can say things like “law and order” and “war on crime”. You can say you #backtheblue. I still see you for what you are and what you are doing.

So too can anyone that has spent time in the black community, or is part of it. Every time you write it, what is read is that you revel in the murder of black people. It might not be what you meant, but it’s how it lands. John Ehrlichman and Lee Atwater already laid out your codespeak, and if you don’t know those names, you aren’t really looking much into the side you align with. You are just dropping to your knees and blindly supporting them.

When kids like Trayvon Martin are killed, those same people wrote that he should have just complied. Oh, not Zimmerman, who disregarded law enforcement and went after an innocent kid any way. The racism runs so deep, people thought Martin should’ve listened to the fat vigilante. He didn’t, nor should he have. Zimmerman started a fight, got his ass eviscerated by a teenager, so he shot him, claiming self-defense. I read, from people I knew, that justified it as if Zimmerman were a cop. White people that did not know him paid for his defense...and offense; donations helped pay for a suit to sue Martin’s family.

It’s funny, cause I can go back and read things people wrote, and it’s no coincidence they were sporting red trucker hats a few years later. You can call your red MAGA trucker hat whatever you want. I call it a Klan hood. You can say thug as many times as you want, I know what you mean. Whatever level of slick verbiage you think you wield, you don’t.

The level of hypocrisy from so many of the problem is sickening. When Martin was killed, I read comments justifying it from people that actually ran away from cops with me, side by side, in another lifetime. I, for one, am thankful that when I ran away from cops when they busted keg parties in the 1980’s and 90’s, I was never shot in the back. Call me crazy, but if a member of Door County’s finest shot your son for running from a kegger, Karen would lose her mind. She’d scratch her Back the Blue bumper sticker off the next fucking day.

Even for the folks that are involved and see the bigger picture need to do more, including me. We all owe it to ourselves, the country and the population of people America set up to fail from the start. If you don’t agree with that, it’s time you educate yourself on the reality of your existence.

If you’re my age, it’s quite likely the history you were taught was wrong. At best it ignored the worst of us. At its worst, we were fed a ton of propaganda. We just never knew it, and unless you’ve pushed yourself to think openly and do independent research, it made you highly vulnerable to the actual fake news that’s been pumped into our social media streams by foreign outlets.

I cringe as people struggle to decipher a difference between a bullshit, unproven bit of looney bin material in memes and politically charged gifs and repost them without a thought. To be clear, I don’t care if you’re a boomer, a hick, or just plain stupid. Most of the stuff that gets passed around would look suspect to anyone that looked at it critically. Between the failure to recognize bogus material and the chosen oblivion of obvious signs Trump was a mistake, white credibility is severely damaged in America right now, even if you weren’t part putting Trump’s idiotic ass in office.

Too many people didn’t say a word while a fucking presidential candidate advocated putting Muslims on a register. Instead, you cheered and voted for him, despite this being a clear constitutional violation. Who cares, right? It didn’t impact you , and even though you didn’t know any Muslims, you’re sure they are bad. Also, you weren’t smart enough to consider how quickly that would radicalize people and create the problem you proclaimed to fear.

He mocked disabled people. You voted for him anyway.

He mocked women. You voted for him anyway.

He denigrated the outgoing black president and questioned his birth certificate. You voted for him anyway.

He called Mexicans rapists and criminals. You voted for him anyway.

He called for a wall to keep “illegals” out, while he was employing “illegals”. You voted for him anyway.

He said Mexico would pay for the wall. They didn’t. You voted for him anyway.

He told the country he’d eliminate the health care for the majority of America’s minorities. You voted for him anyway.

He called cast members on the Apprentice the N Word. You voted for him anyway.

He called countries with primarily black and brown populations “shithole countries”. You voted for him anyway.

He made a known homophobe his vice presidential candidate. You voted for him anyway.

He called Collin Kaepernick a son of a bitch for protesting peacefully. You voted for him anyway, and like robots, hated Kapernick because your master told you to.

Under normal circumstances, it might be argued that your vote does not necessarily define you. All of this was prior to being elected; all of it was known. If you chose that path despite all of that, you’ve already stated loudly and proudly that equality, decorum, tact, racism, bigotry and hate are not deal breakers for you.

If you regret it, just own it. Publicly; as publicly as you championed him. If you stand by the decision and think it’s been a great four years, well then, just call yourself a racist so at least we know to write you off from here on out.

He was sold as a change from the bad norms of Washington DC. Before elected, it was widely known that:

He had sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. He paid her off to stay quiet. You voted for him anyway.

He invited unethical and likely illegal help from a foreign nemesis. You voted for him anyway.

He had ties to Jeffery Epstein. You knew. You voted for him anyway.

He was backed by the KKK and other hate groups. You didn’t denounce them and voted for him anyway.

He refused to disclose his physical and accepted his boasting of amazing health and voted for him anyway.

He bragged of sexual assault. On camera. You voted for him anyway.

He gave speeches that were legitimately nonsensical. You voted for him anyway.

He screamed America first but was hiding dealings with foreign companies. You voted for him anyway.

He refused to release his tax returns. You voted for him anyway.

He mocked prisoners of war, from his party. You voted for him anyway.

He dodged the draft. Not only did you vote for him, you somehow branded him a military president.

People predicted a disaster, and boy did we get one. Every sign that this could go terribly wrong was there, and White America voted him in anyway. It’s been no better since then. It doesn’t make anyone look less racist to blame Obama for problems going down now, or refuse to put his portrait up like a petty child with insecurity issues.

When a white supremacist killed a white person protesting white supremacy, he called the white supremacists “very fine people”. You defended him and would’ve voted for him again.

Under his direction, Latino kids were placed in cages, separated from families, and sexually abused. You would’ve voted for him again.

His cabinet dropped like flies. Many called out illegal activity as they left. You’d have voted for him anyway.

His aides ended up in prison. You would have voted for him again anyway.

He sought out foreign help in an election, again. You’d have voted for him again anyway.

He was convicted of fraud through a cancer charity for kids. You’d have voted for him again.

He incited violence during a pandemic, calling for states to liberate themselves. You’d have voted for him again, anyway.

He’s referred to as a Foreign Agent by Russia. You’d have voted for him again anyway.

He eliminated the Pandemic Office and blueprint for how to handle one. You’d have voted for him again.

He called the virus that killed 100,000 Americans a hoax, and mangled the response. You might have voted for him anyway.

The man told America that they could inject fucking Lysol and play with some UV light to solve a virus. You…..were…..gonna….vote...for...

I can’t. I just can’t. Neither should you. This presidency is going to topple hard. When it does, whatever has been known about how shady the entire Trump family was will pale to what comes out from behind closed doors.

The Trumps are not alone.

Just a month ago, rallies were held by white people in even whiter communities surrounding the most segregated metro-area in the country, because, you know, hair cuts and money. So, sitting there, publicly demanding the entire state be reopened while black and latino people of Milwaukee were being disproportionately decimated just two miles away by the virus. It was no accident that the universal flag for racist losers and Nazi memorabilia were on prominent display. This disease preyed on communities already suffering from years of abuse and neglect, with armed white protesters screaming for the state to reopen. You can make the case that it was celebration of minority death. I mean, why bring universally racist icons if it isn’t?

For the life of me, I cannot recall a single supporter, present or otherwise, condemn it. Did anyone call out the people that brought the symbols of hate there? No. They looked away from it and accepted it. Not a soul said anything about it. To clarify, If you sport either one, you’re a fucking racist. Let’s finally drop the Southern Heritage thing. For fuck’s sake, Wisconsin isn’t even down south. If your heritage is rooted in treason, ownership of people, and preserving an inequitable society, you’re a racist. You can convince yourself of whatever you want to, but it can’t make you any less of a racist piece of shit. You’re either racist, dumb, or both. I am guessing both.

Racism needs to become a non-negotiable. It won’t, until it is identified, put on blast, attacked and destroyed.

I’m done being patient with mouth breathers, and to beat racism, there’s no room for it. There are way too many people with access to keyboards in small towns they never left, but are quick to declare themselves as experts on issues of race and diversity. If that’s you, stop it. If you haven’t been involved significantly in situations that provide context, you need to sit at the kids table on this one.

And, on that note, if you have spoken a negative word about the peaceful protests of Colin Kaepernick, and are silent now, shame on you. Trump’s rhetoric was bound to have explosive consequences. If you did that and are loud about the looting, you are a hypocrite of epic proportions. You also know nothing about violence, non-violence, or riots. You might not have tossed a brick but your fingerprints ended up on this mess anyway.

Racists are bullies by nature. If you’ve dealt with these folks, you might’ve concluded that there’s only a few stimuli that stands them down. Typically, a significantly bruised ego and violence do the trick. Violence is a hot topic of late.

Let’s be clear; MLK’s protests were hardly non-violent. The opposition to racial equality was so unbelievably strong, violence was automatically factored in before they even started. MLK knew he’d be beaten, sprayed with hoses, arrested, and demonized by the FBI and American public. White hate ran synonymous with violence. He knew his life was in danger. The hostility was so thick against equality that it wasn’t really peaceful as it was no -retaliatory. There was violence, and a lot of it. And, it was started by white people.

Looking at the videos from yesterday and the day before, it appears as if its is that way once again. If you are going to invoke the word of MLK, keep in mind, staying peaceful didn’t make things equal. The shit he was protesting for continued. In fact, every legal step in the history of this country to level the playing field for blacks and whites was met with immediate white resistance.

While we’re on the topic of MLK, he had a lot of worthwhile material that you won’t find on Pinterest memes used to passively show black people how you feel they should protest. For instance, he called rioting the voice of the unheard.

I think that last statement is telling, and a perfect way to close this out. I don’t know a thing about the Minnesota Governor, but read a quote of his that I whole-heartedly agree with, albeit on differing premises. He said, something to the effect of, “This has nothing to do with George Floyd anymore.”

To that I agree.

This is about a whole lot more. This is about the similar cases of brutality that were fumbled by justice. This is about a tone-deaf system that ignored the skyrocketing costs of things like college and rent, and growing disparity between the haves and have nots. This is about a refusal to make resources equitable. This is about unresolved residue from years of redlining. This is about disparities in education. This is about an America that, for the first time in history, won’t be a white majority.

And this is about the last four years, while people tolerated your intolerance and warped ideology. The rhetoric was wrong. If you can’t call the grifter in the White House a mistake as our country sits in the most epic pile of shit it’s ever been in, fuck you and the colorblind white horses ass you rode in on. Mistakes happen. Own it and move on. Right now, a lot of people paid attention to your odd devotion to the man spewing hate from the White House, and are waiting to see what you do with it. People are mad now, but when his tantrums turn to full-scale assaults on American freedoms, your support will not be so quickly forgotten.

I began working in urban education in 1995, when the nearly all-white college I went to, refused to place me in an urban setting, so I did it on my own. Since then, I’ve worked almost extensively in the black communities of Milwaukee and West Palm Beach, with a couple of short exceptions. 25 years, tens of thousands of hours and a lifetime of experiences...I have to tell you, though; the same bullshit doesn’t happen in reverse.

Not in Florida, not in Milwaukee. On this, I have context.

If you’re on a fence, don’t be. In 21 years I’ve spent much of it where I am the minority, I haven’t ever, not one single time, been made to feel bad for my race. I’ve not once been treated like I didn’t belong, didn’t fit in, or didn’t have a spot at the table.

When my son transferred to the urban school I teach at, he experienced the same. He’ll be one of two white kids in his graduating class, but was instantly treated with acceptance and inclusion. Why is that? You don’t have to be a historian to know if distrust and hesitation are going to exist, it should be coming from the other direction. It isn’t, though.

What I’ve almost never had, was a request to see what I do. The post humpers love to tell everyone what they think, but don’t really seek understanding. I make it pretty clear where I work and what I do. Nobody ever asks if they could shadow me, and see what I see.

And I wouldn’t mind it if people would.

My experience working with the black community has been profoundly positive and if you are sitting on a fence, the route to getting off of it requires getting involved in something.

There are answers to the issues we have, and they start with an overhaul of the US presidency and current state of affairs with American policing. As a fight trainer that’s been around a number of gyms, I can tell you that very few police officers put time into their skills in restraints. I am beyond positive that more time spent doing that would immediately reduce some of the issues.

It doesn’t solve the racism, but it does solve some of the things that are leading to needless death. It’s just one example that it is not an impossible issue to brainstorm on.

I have seen, for the first time, officers from other districts put out videos, passionately calling for you not to lump them in with the bad ones. It’s the first time I’ve seen this, and it is a massive step in the right direction. The next step is to get the good ones to validate they are the majority. Standing up to bad colleagues is a good starting point. I saw an example of that today, which is also a first. The window for good cops is open, but on a short timer. The good ones need to know the whole world is watching. For the public, there’s no way for anyone to look at an officer and know where they fall. That shouldn’t be. The good ones have the power to step up and ensure everyone can tell the difference by their actions when something corrupt happens.

The difference lies in action. When your partner abuses someone, what will you do? In my profession, I’m a felon if I don’t report potential abuse I see. It made my profession better. Will you step in front and prevent a death?

Would you accept me defending teachers that got it on with your kid? If a colleague beat your kid, and I blamed the kid, would you think the same of me? I wouldn’t, and be honest, you’d be fighting mad. I’d be lumped in with it simply for my defense of it.

As bad as this is, I strangely feel like there’s finally hope for tangible change. I don’t like seeing the looting or violence, but we’ve had black folks in this country for exactly 401 years now, and there’s not been a single one that you could call a good one for African-Americans. Some have just been less painful than others. That said, there are signs that Americans of all races aren’t going to accept terrible treatment of others. While a lot of Americans feel like they want racial harmony, I’m not convinced at all that’s what the government or even some police departments actually want. I think a lot of people fear racial unity.

I agree that riots can be the voice of the unheard, but they’re also not immune from manipulation. I also know they’re highly predictable, and based by similarly predictable public comments condemning the looting. It inadvertently provides proof there’d be incentive to nudge it along. Don’t confuse perceived tolerance with an acceptance of looting; rather, a wait for judgment until all video comes out. Sounds familiar, right? You do it for the officers, even when it’s not needed. Why not here? Other than the irony, there’s good reason to reserve judgment. I have questions. I’ve seen trays of bricks left out in streets on videos and have a ton of questions to be answered before I blindly take that bait.

It doesn’t even truly matter right now which side it came from. The only way things are going to finally level off in this country is with a complete blow out and with better leadership. The latter ain’t on the menu for November. Americans deserve better than the two candidates presented to us, and if the two on the ballot are the best we’ve got, we suck. The leadership will have to come from the people in spite of whomever sits in the White House.

To be clear, I’ll have no issue with the Republican Party if and when they the hate is run out of it. There’s no place in any party for homophobes, racists, xenophobes or idol worshipers. Several from within the party have spoken up, but are quickly drowned out by threats from above and folks that love Trump more than they love the country. For those wishing for the full demise of that party, that isn’t good either. An unopposed Democratic Party worries me as well.

That party might not have the same hate in it, but the brass is not in-tune with people willing to vote for them. I don’t trust them to make the decisions without a solid differing voice. They’ve got work to do too; in particular, around a few really sharp candidates in Corey Booker and Kamala Harris that have had little support and a demonstrated ability to work with the other side. Differing voices need to be heard when not uttering hate language.

Right now, the differing voice calls pandemics hoaxes, skipped holding their own primary, and treated election security bills like a kickball. It’s also attempted to restrict first amendment rights by threatening to take over social media. Until there’s no overt hate or deceit in that voice, it’s a game of lesser evils. Sorry, but presence of hate sells out the one on the right.

For now, anyway. Time will tell what happens from here. History has failed at every available step to make things right. When slavery sort of showed up on our new land’s doorstep 401 years ago, nobody spoke up enough. When our country was formed in 1776, Washington had a chance to put money where his mouth was, but didn’t. He called slavery wrong, but owned over 100. The country followed his lead. In 1807, violence erupted in Haiti and the surrounding area contemplated the future of slavery. Nothing was done. 1857, citizenship was removed from all free black people in America, little was said or done. 1865, Lincoln’s plan ends abruptly when he’s killed. The new president is impeached and undermined equality so bad even fellow southerners cringed.

Andrew Johnson also facilitated the start of the KKK by pardoning Nathan Bedford Forrest, a known war criminal, resulting in the deaths of thousands of African-Americans to domestic terrorism. The trend continues into our modern era. Our timeline needs a moment for significant change, and waiting isn’t going to work.

For a country coming out of a 2.5 month lockdown, with 40 million unemployed and 100,000 plus dead from a virus mishandled by a man that stared directly to an eclipse, that time is now.

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juliehamill · 4 years

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Kill Uncle: the second solo album or the first?

Kill Uncle/Morrissey Released 4 March 1991

Cover shot by Gino Sprio

Tonight on Twitter (Sunday 12 April, 2020) we are having a second #MozListeningParty with ‘Kill Uncle’. The needle goes on the record at 8pm and tweets about the album will be provided by co-writer and guitarist Mark Nevin. If you’d like to join in, you can follow Mark’s tweets @Mozarmyquiz and use the hashtag #MozListeningParty.

Back in April 2013 I wrote a piece for Sabotage Times for the Kill Uncle reissue. I’ve always felt that the album was too quick to be written off, in fact, a little bit ‘picked on’ and was never really given a chance to breathe by itself. To me, Kill Uncle has a special intimacy to it that reveals more about a particular point in Morrissey’s life; his character and vulnerability; than any other solo period. One to one on the headphones, there is an innocence and a gentleness to the songs and I often wonder if Morrissey doesn’t like the ‘orphan’ because it shows too much of who he is, or indeed who he was then. The production and songwriting on Kill Uncle is unspoilt. It is left exactly where it should be, for the humour, poetry and sadness to flourish into something, now with twenty-nine years of space around it, more appreciated that it has ever been. People get it now, I don’t think they did then, given the context of the charts. The singer’s guard is down, and I attribute that to the people he was working with at the time, in one of Morrissey’s favourite places, Hook End Manor.

Here is the original article. Kill Uncle: Morrissey’s second solo album? Or his first?

Monday 8th April sees the re-release of ‘Kill Uncle’, Morrissey’s much maligned and ‘difficult’ second studio album. With a lukewarm reception and a peak at number eight in the UK charts, it was considered a poor follow up to the roaringly successful number one album ‘Viva Hate’.

‘Kill Uncle’ was the black sheep of the album shelf that dared to explore; but the commercially unfamiliar ‘Morrissey territory’ dubbed it it barely playable on the radio and thus it struggled to make itself heard or be considered as a ‘Morrissey classic’.

Twenty-two years on, the importance of ‘Kill Uncle’ cannot be under-estimated. The fans rate it as one of the most treasured and heavily played Morrissey albums of all time; containing some of Morrissey’s most experimental and enduring songs to date, and the album that sets the metamorphic scene for the further blossoming of Morrissey’s brilliance.

‘Kill Uncle’ was Morrissey’s giant step away from all things Smiths. His first album ‘Viva Hate’ was co-written and produced by Smiths-producer Stephen Street. The romantic, melancholic beautiful debut - containing the hits Suedehead and Everyday is like Sunday – was immediately revered and adored by the fans, a warmly received solo album six months after the split, to rightfully lean on the shoulder of ‘Strangeways’ and stand proud as the Morrissey album for Smiths fans.

On ‘Bona Drag’ Morrissey continued to work with Stephen Street, as well as meet with some new writers, amongst them Kevin Armstrong [Piccadilly Palare] and Clive Langer - who birthed the musically epic November Spawned A Monster - only made better by Tim Broad’s Death Valley lust-fueled video of Morrissey at his most provocative. But Bona Drag was still a compilation of singles and b-sides, some of which were played on by ex-Smiths Andy Rourke, Mike Joyce and Craig Gannon, such as the pop-infused (and also newly re-released) Last of the Famous International Playboys and eminently danceable Interesting Drug.

The revolution came when Morrissey cut all apron ties with The Smiths and moved on, to find the ‘perfect’ tapes of Mark Nevin and the Madness piano-production of Clive Langer, to make the tentative yet comforting ‘Kill Uncle’. It was here that Morrissey made his first solo album; the Morrissey album for Morrissey fans; stripped back, laid bare and open to musical experimentation. In Our Frank his trademark lyrics are as brilliantly funny as ever: ‘sick all over/your frankly vulgar red pullover’ and in Driving Your Girlfriend Home they are deeply lovelorn: ‘how did I end up/so deeply involved in/the very existence/I planned on avoiding’. The high and almost woozy musical listening effect of Girlfriend is at times so real and wonderfully queasy that it could be the listener swaying as they ride along in the back seat.

The music darts and jerks in Sparks-influenced ‘Mute Witness’ starting out with dramatic digs then building to a fast crescendo, the timing and pounding of the Paresi drums deliberate start/stop most notably brilliant. Then at the other end of the KU spectrum is the melodic confessional-box ballad ‘There’s a place in hell for me and my friends’ breezing gently and very lightly, a good gust of wind possibly floating it into the clouds with the listener.

This is an irreverent and quirky album, and the listening experience has to be a committed and involved one, an investment in a track-by-track discovery of ‘who is Morrissey?’

Morrissey’s work with Nevin served as a springboard into rockabilly territory; with Kill Uncle’s bouncy Sing Your Life leading to later, greater moments such as The Loop and Pregnant for the Last Time. It was Nevin that also wrote I know it’s gonna happen someday - which features on his subsequent album ‘Your Arsenal’ - a gut wrenching ballad-of-hope which was later covered by Bowie, one of Morrissey’s (and Nevin’s) musical heroes.

Arguably, ‘Kill Uncle’ really was Morrissey’s first solo album, seeing an embryonic and mouldable Morrissey - solo for the first time; writing lyrics that reflected his vulnerability, bravery and insecurity of that period. It is not - and never will be - the Morrissey album for Smiths purists, but it is the album that marks Morrissey’s committed and true step forward into fresh and gentle solo ground; the album that transformed him into the formidable, indestructible and unique force of musical history that he is today.

Extended interviews about this Morrissey period with Mark Nevin, Andrew Paresi, Clive Langer and Mark Bedford are featured in ’15 Minutes With You’ available on Amazon.

Julie Hamill is a London-based Scottish author and broadcaster

http://www.atriumtalent.com/talent/julie-hamill- agent-julie-hamill-writer-broadcaster/

#Morrissey #Mozarmy #Kill Uncle #Morrissey solo #The Smiths #Clive Langer #Mark Nevin #Mark Bedford #Andrew Paresi #Viva Hate #Stephen Street #MozListeningParty lockdown

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