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captainwans · 2 months

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AM ERA! (smau)

— ALEX TURNER

arabella series

pairing: alex turner x fem! actress! reader

summary: some iconic and memorable moments on social media during the am era.

timeline: 2014

note: to clear up any confusion, the song arabella in this universe/series is based on a movie y/n did. + and also this format / layout is heavily inspired by my love @ithinkimokeei 🩶

masterlist!

Liked by yourbestfriend, katiee_cook_ and others

yourinstagram she’s got a barbarella silver swimsuit … 🪽

ㅤ View all the comments

username THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING ‼️

username doing cartwheels across the highway- 🤸‍♀️ why are they so attractive

username mom and dad looks so hot

breanahelders looking beautiful wifey 😙

yourinstagram got it from you <3

elizabetholsenofficial because i love waking up in the morning getting hit by visuals 😩

username lizzie is so real for that

username mother

username alex looks so fucking good i wanna jump off a cliff

username the fact that y/n didn’t know arabella was about her until a fan told her during a comic con panel will forever not be iconic

username lmao even the mcu cast was shocked that she didn’t know 😭

username had to replay that funny moment between y/n and scarlett where scar almost had a whiplash bc y/n had no idea

username our baby is so clueless it’s so cute

mileskane who’s that sexy cinnamon bun on the left? 😏

yourinstagram definitely not your man

username IM CACKLING SO LOUD

username pls y/n is so savage i love her

mileskane and you’re claiming him as your man?

username ohh dramaaaaa

yourinstagram and what if i did? 👀

username GASP- does this mean that alex and y/n are dating?!!!

mileskane it’s okay luv it’s just a phase it will go away ❤️

username hahaahahahahah miles

username i’m crying this is too funny

katiee_cook_ this comment section is so funny me and jamie are dying from laughter

yourinstagram mileskane unfortunately it is not just a phase 🥲

username wait y/n does this mean you and al are together?!! hello??

username girl you can’t just leave us hanging like that 😭😭 we NEED TO KNOW

username wait so arabella is actually about her?

yourbestfriend those of you who haven’t watched arabella clearly shows

username fr the song doesn’t even make sense if you haven’t watched the movie

username CAN SOMEONE PLS CONFIRM IF THEY’RE DATING??

Liked by username, marvel and others

enews to answer the question on y/n’s famous instagram post… the answer is YES! (📷: unknown)

ㅤ View all the comments

username I KNEW IT

username IM CRYING HAPPY TEARS FINALLY

username idk if i wanna be him or be with her

yourbestfriend same

username y/bsf/n is so real for this

username they look so happy

username mileskane has been real quiet ever since enews posted

username i’m fine (i’m not)

username now who leaked these pictures of me and my man? 🤫

yourinstagram first miles and now i have to fight my way through fans 😭 this is a battle

mileskane yeah username get in line 🙄

username speaking of the devil… hi miles!!

username and he has arrived!!

username good luck dealing with seventeen year old girlies who want you dead 🥲

username bro what is marvel doing here liking this post i’m cackling

marvel don’t blame us we were just as curious as you folks 🙈

username alex could do better than this pretentious hollywood whore

username who are you calling a whore???!

yourbestfriend say that again i dare you bitch

breanahelders if you don’t have anything nice to say then keep it to yourself.

officialelizabetholsen jealousy doesn’t suit you honey. keep that energy elsewhere and let us celebrate this beautiful couple ✨

mileskane yourinstagram do i need to kill someone? just say the word love

username username the gang coming at your bitch

Liked by breanahelders, yourfriend and others

yourinstagram okay… this is the last one i promise 🤭

ㅤ View all the comments

username queen we don’t mind post all you want

username THE HAND REPLACEMENT ALEX

username bi panic

katiee_cook_ obsessed 😍

yourinstagram with you 😙

username the way this music video has a chokehold on me-

youtube the visuals, artistry, lyrics, aesthetics, cinematography is just *chef kiss* ✨✨✨

username even youtube is speaking facts

officialelizabetholsen gorgeous gorgeous 💗 we miss you on set, babe!

yourinstagram miss you more, bug!! 🎀

username a match made in heaven

mileskane we get it you guys are couple goals 🙄

matthelders here we go again 🤦🏻

yourinstagram do i complain when you get to have him all by yourself on stage?

mileskane that doesn’t count!

yourinstagram you’re such a drama queen

username their dynamic i love them sm

username miles and y/n fighting over alex is so real bc same

username yourinstagram how does it feel to be a rockstar’s gf 😩 how does it feel to live our dream

yourinstagram it feels amazing 🙈💗

#alex turner masterlist #alex turner angst #alex turner fluff #alex turner fic rec #alex turner x reader #alex turner imagines #captainwans navigation #alex turner one shot #alex turner fic #alex turner imagine #alex turner fanfic #alex turner #arctic monkeys x reader #arctic monkeys masterlist #arctic monkeys #alex turner x fem! reader #alex turner social media au

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love-studying58 · 3 months

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happy Masters of the Air release week. In honour of the series due to release on the 26th, I wanted to list a few faces we’ll be seeing throughout the series. I want to particularly note the crewmen of the 100th in hopes this makes sense to viewers who either a) didn’t have time to read any books based on the 100th bomb group, or b) want to read Masters of the Air by Donald L. Miller during/after the tv show aires. My lovely friend on tumblr @kylaym was happy to message me on instagram regarding who’s who for most of the 100th bomb group posts. She gets that everyone in uniform looks the same; same haircut, moustaches, masks, everywhere, etc. She mentioned it is always better to remember a bunch of lads as groups and crews than as individuals!

Here we gooo..

Colonel Neil “Chick” Harding

A West Point graduate and the school’s football coach prior to the war. Harding was a seasoned aviator who truly emulated much of the 100th’s attitude. He exhibited an appreciation for his crew’s mental and emotional well-being.

Major John C. “Bucky” Egan and Major Gale “Buck” Cleven

Two of the squadron commanders, Majors John “Bucky” Egan of the 418th Bomb Squadron and Gale “Buck” Cleven of the 350th, had piloting skills which matched their personalities. (Found top row 3rd and 4th members from left to right).

Captain John D. Brady

He served as a pilot in the 418th bomb squadron and was shot down during the mission to Munster on October 10th, 1943. (Shown here on the far left). He flew overseas in A/C #42-30071 “Skipper” as 1st Lt. Pilot. 2nd Lt’s being Lt. John L. Hoerr [Co-Pilot] and Lt. Harry Crosby [Group Navigator and Captain].

M/Sgt. Kenneth A. Lemmons

He served on the 351st Bomb Squadron and was one of the first crew chiefs assigned to the 100th Bomb Group. After being a part of the U.S. Air Force's ground crew, he was subsequently promoted to the position of flight chief. (Shown above in the front).

Harry H. Crosby

Harry served as a navigator in the 418th Bomb Squadron and later became Group Navigator for the Hundredth, however, his struggle with airsickness often hindered his ability to navigate. (Found above beside Brady on the right). Harry Crosby replaced Lt. Payne on the crew of Douglass.

Payne is found above on the right, beside Harry Crosby.

Lt. Howard B. “Hambone” Hamilton

He was a bombardier mostly known for flying with Brady’s crew.

On the October 10th Munster mission, crew #32 was led by Major John C. Egan as Co-Pilot. Near the initial point “Mlle Zig Zig” was hit by Flak, resulting in the following:

- Sgt Clanton passing away

- wounding Howard Hamilton and Roland Gangwer. (Both ended up spending a long time in the hospital).

- the surviving crew members bailed out but were taken prisoner.

Hamilton is seen above on the far left. Beside him on the left is Lt. James Douglass and Captain Frank Murphy.

Captain James Douglass

Served as a bombardier in the 418th Bomb Squadron with the Everett Blakely crew. (Seen above in the first picture beside Blakely).

Major Everett E. Blakely

Was a career officer of the United States Air Force. He was a highly decorated pilot of the B-17 bomber with the Bloody Hundredth Bombardment Group of the 8th Air Force. He is most commonly known for his crew’s plane “Just a Snappin”. On a mission to Bremen on October 8th, 1943, his plane was severely damaged by flak and enemy fighters. He later became the Group Training Officer (Shown above on the right and next to Major John Egan in the second picture above).

Blakely’s Crew:

Major John Kidd- Command Pilot

1st Lt. Everett Blakely- Pilot

2nd Lt. Charles Via- Formation Officer in the tail (SWA on the mission during Black Week)

1st Lt. Harry Crosby - Navigator

2nd Lt. James Douglass - Bombadier

T/Sgt. Edmund Forkner - Radio operator

S/Sgt. William McClelland - Ball Turret Gunner (WIA on the Black Week mission)

S/Sgt. Edward Yevich - Waist Gunner (WIA on the Black Week mission)

S/Sgt. Lyle Nord - Waist Gunner

S/Sgt. Lester Saunders - Tail Gunner (KIA on the Black Week mission)

Lt Roy Claytor

Roy Claytor was part of the 350th Squadron. Above, he may be flying as a command pilot in this mission or practice with the Claytor Crew.

He is seen above on the left, beside Cleven.

Major Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal

Rosie joins the unit in late 1943. He becomes one of the 100th's most reliable pilots.

Rosenthal's Crew:

[Shown left to right; top row than bottom row]

Sgt. Loren Darling - Waist Gunner

Sgt. Michael V. Boccuzzi - Radio Operator/Gunner

Sgt. John H. Shaffer - Waist Gunner

Sgt. Clarence C. Hall - Top turret gunner/engineer

Sgt. William J. DeBlasio - Tail Gunner

Sgt. Ray H. Robinson - Ball Turret Gunner

Lt. Ronald C. Bailey - Navigator

Lt. Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal - Pilot

Lt. Clifford J. Milburn - Bombardier

Lt. Winifred 'Pappy' Lewis - Copilot

Lt. Curtis Biddick

Lieutenant Curtis Biddick was known as a ‘hard luck’ pilot but was recognised as exceptionally expert and courageous. ‘Every time he went out something seemed to happen,’ said one of his buddies. On one raid he brought his plane back with 1,700 shell and bullet holes in it and two wounded men aboard.

He clashes due to his English colleagues embarking on night-time raids.

Richard Snyder

Biddick's co-pilot and was part of the 418th Bombardment Squadron.

Okay.... So I truly hope this helps going into Masters of the Air tomorrow. I can't wait to see all the bomber boys spread their wings and fly. This tv series is going to be an absolute wreck (in the best way possible). Thank you to everyone who enjoys my posts. Love y'all.

#hbo war #masters of the air #austin butler major gale buck cleven #austin butler masters of the air #callum turner #john egan #barry keoghan #@mads-weasley

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hy0ung · 2 months

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Okay, let’s do this. This is going to be a long post with screenshots, so be patient. Little “exposed”

Honestly I debated a lot if i should do it or not, and i was willing to leave it behind and move on. But this person’s “pronunciation” was what made me decide to post this. You all might had noticed that I’ve deleted all my posts and i explained that was because someone was using the same identity as me. I didn’t mentioned them before, but the acc im talking about is @minzica / @minztarot . When they followed me, i followed back and welcomed them, just as i do with everyone who follows me and is also a ateez tarot content creator. Then, someone pointed out that their profile was really similar to mine and then i wasn’t able to unsee it. It annoyed me. I thought i was being sensitive, and asked for guidance: if i was overreacting or not.

As you can see, i didn’t even mentioned their @. People guessed it right way (specially the instagram one), and it confirmed my suspicions. Then i posted it here, just as a vent. I also didn’t mentioned any name because i really don’t want a fight. But to my surprise, people came to my asks already knowing who it was. People asked me to expose them but i didn’t wanted to do so, until now. I slept and when i woke up, they already had unfollowed me. I was ready to move on, because they had changed all their blog and delete their posts so i thought they might felt bad and were shy to send an apology or something. But then, i received more messages about it. Basically, 4 accounts felt like they were being copied too. One of them, the ‘robbed’ reading had the same name and the same format. Minz didn’t even changed the name form the hard hours one. People started to think about scam, but idk if’s the case. But by stealing readings styles and all, people felt suspicious.

Now: why do i decided to talk about it and expose their @. Minz made a pronouncement, which you can read here. Honestly, it looks like they are making fun of me and the others for feeling frustrated of being copied. “Is just an aesthetic and i don’t see the issue”, well, we do. Because is not just an aesthetic, it’s our identity. Every blog has their own and everyone respects that. Is not just a color, or a template, as you tried to make it look, minz. Is it all, combined. That’s what makes my blog look like me, and what makes the other’s readers’s blogs look like them. People recognize us by it. This is a branding. Imagine if someone steals yours. You won’t be happy if someone out there stared to act like you. If you liked my blog and wanted to be inspired by it, good, i feel honored. But inspiration is not copy and paste, and wasn’t just me. The main reason why i am posting this, is because your words about the situation where indeed insensible with the ones who felt frustrated.

You said in your post, that you don’t like being accused of lying, but then you lie again? You said you were new to the community and didn’t knew how people do the things but then…you knew. I remember that i saw this comment and also the person does too.

Okay you wanted to fit. I get it and i understand you, i felt the same when i started and i think mostly of us felt the same. But just copying one thing from each blog, won’t make you fit honey. Being yourself will. I got that you were talking about deleting your posts and i don’t doubt that you were only unsatisfied with your readings. But the fact that you changed right after my rant received attention and people expressed how they also noticed and how unhappy they were, is kinda suspicious. Also, you said you felt an hostility. Let me stop you right here. You deleted it too, but i remember very well that i welcomed you when i followed you back. Our community is very open with new accounts and we always try to get along with each other, support each other. If you felt that ‘hostility’ is probably because people saw the similarities and felt uncomfortable. Im coming here to explain to you, since you made clear in your post that you don’t get why so many people felt unhappy about the situation. But don’t invalidade how we feel about it just because ‘wasn’t your intention’. We have all the right to feel this way. It was our time, our creative work to create our stuff to it just be copied like this. I honestly think that if you felt really sorry, you would at least tried to talk with someone, explain the situation, but no. You deleted posts, changed and all, might not be the case as i said, could be just a coincidence, but, it felt really suspicious, specially because the situation. People felt that

Im not here to start a war, i’m really not. I’m here to explain directly to you and to anyone else who wants to understand our frustration. You will always be welcomed into our community, but please: be yourself, don’t be insensitive about how people feel, and when you want to apologize, do it to the people who felt it. I was really against about coming here expose all the situation, but after all, wasn’t just me who felt like this and your words where hurtful. I just hope you understand, we can move on, leave it behind and keep being the friendly community we always had been.

#hy0ung.zip #ateez #ateez tarot

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yellowchap · 2 months

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Anyone want some fae critters? You’re gonna have them anyway >:)

Friend and I found a pixie trend on instagram which has a moth/butterfly for every day of the year and u and ur friend draw each other as your birthday bug so that’s what we did lol

//I’ll link the post down the bottom\\

Here’s mine of him + his evil sausage dog

And this is the one he did of me HGJHKGKJGGJK im still crying about it 😭 if I was like 2 inches tall, he was right, I’d be naked all the time

This may look like an utter mess but idc how the formatting is lol, but he is a Vicaroy Butterfly which is a monarch MIMIC and I am an Atlas Moth which I wasn’t expecting 🎉 but pretty wicked

Link to the post, also I think it’s a contest? My friend and I just did ours for fun by ourselves and just took the pixie/fairy thing and didn’t pay much attention to anything else XD

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Natalie Belle (@natabelle_arts)

instagram

#chappiesstuff #artists on tumblr #art #digital aritst #digital art #trendingreels #pixie #fairy art #fairy #goblincore #moth #butterfly #character design #fairycore #fantasy #whimsical #Instagram

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jmdbjk · 1 year

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Twitter

Yes, I paid this hellsite (Tumblr) $8 as a joke to acquire two meaningless blue check marks that are apparently only visible on the Tumblr website, but not the app... anyway... I laughed and appreciated Tumblr’s humorous poke at Twitter’s troubles, so here is $8, thank you, Tumblr.

All jokes aside... if you didn’t know Twitter was a hell hole since a long time ago NOWWWW we are seeing in real-time the depths of struggle over there.

My bird app timeline is in shambles. Trending is broken. Paid blue check marks have been taken away? Restored? Discarded again? Whew the whiplash.

News of Twitter staff/executives getting laid off/fired/resigning in the thousands... what a rough time.

BTS Twitter users are panicking trying to decide where to go if Twitter disappears. They are afraid of losing all their ARMY friends. The anxiety is real. I don’t blame them.

What are their choices? Instagram: primarily for images, not so much for words but I think the algorithm is wrong... Facebook: (puh-leez) is the closest thing but for real? nah... Reddit: very wordy, but hard to follow format that is nothing like Twitter... Youtube: duh, made for video not words... Tumblr: definitely made for words but not really made for back and forth banter even though we make it work...

The Twitter environment, though very dynamic, is inherently very fleeting. It is excellent for “in the moment” moments.

I use Twitter to stay informed. But without the aid of a curated timeline and trending topics, it’s not a very good fandom experience at all. It takes some strong curating/blocking accounts/muting words and topics to wade through the shit. And it takes diligence because if you are like me and you are clicky, you click on shit and then the bullshit starts creeping back onto your timeline.

Compromises were made but I have cleared out 613 tons of toxicity and Twitter has been very useful and mostly enjoyable for the last six months. Until now. There is a lot of upheaval. The security of our privacy info is in question.

And even more seriously is the ripple effect. Wall Street Journal reports that the paid for Twitter verified blue check mark has indeed been halted due to accounts impersonating corporations and celebrities. Word is going around that pharmaceutical companies have lost billions in stock market value because imposter accounts are making false statements.

Major takeaways from this is that nothing is permanent. Even $44 billion investments. And Twitter, social media in general, yields a lot of influence in the world whether we like it or not.

I would never pay Twitter for a blue check mark. I talk too much to use Twitter effectively. So I am staying here. With my check marks that mean nothing except that I appreciate when someone seizes the opportunity to take a jab at someone else who is too big for their britches (and who apparently does not have the ability to think through their actions).

Welcome to those of you defecting from Twitter to Tumblr. We might not be light on our feet over here but at least we can write as many words as we want at one time, emphasized with a lot of images, and these posts are easily accessible.

#twitter vs tumblr #those stupid blue check marks were their downfall #who da thunk?#oh i forgot to mention our hashtags are more fun

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rantingofasmallorganism · 1 year

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February 6th 2023: Birthday Bashes, Possible Promotions, and Creating Controlled Chaos

Dear endless void that is the internet, so much for posting once a week huh.

It’s been 12 days since I posted and much has happened in those days. This past weekend I went to the keys to celebrate my best friend's birthday, we have this little “not so private” beach we go to when we visit the upper keys and we spent the day inebriated, swimming, and eating. Of course, cause underage drinking is frowned upon by the law, we hid our drinks in our reusable Starbucks cups and called it a day. Personally, I used strawberry acai with lemonade mixed with Alani Nu Breezberry and watermelon-flavored malibu.

Now, before I disclose the following information, I feel the need to mention that the drinking took place from around 10:30 in the morning till about 2 in the afternoon. Also, I had eaten before drinking and stopped before I had lunch. So throughout three and a half hours, I consumed about thirteen ounces of malibu on my own along with some sips of soju.|

We had lunch at this small burger place called M.E.A.T eatery and taproom. What made us decide to spend our money here wasn't a photo of the food or even the fact it was featured on "diners, drive-in, and dives", but a shirt we saw on Instagram that said, "You can't beat our meat."

Now I am an adult turning 20 in late March. I make monthly car payments and insurance payments ahead of time. In addition to this, I am a full-time student and work almost full time and am in line to get a promotion. I'd say I am responsible. However, there is a little part of me that I can only describe as a 14-year-old boy who has to laugh at things like that. "You can't beat our meat." God damn was the right. Those burgers were so good. On top of that their smoked potato salad has me drooling just thinking about them.

Overall we had a blast, we donned cowboy hats and played country music and what my cousin likes to call "old white people music". This consists of music such as that of Jimmy Buffets' "Margaritaville". We got back to my cousin's house, and dinned on pizza, soda, and slutty brownies while watching "Crazy Rich Asians". To say I love that movie is an understatement. It was a fucking masterpiece. Just absolute gold. From the script to casting to costume and set design. A solid ten out of ten.

Now today has been crazy. I woke up late and missed my first class, what a fucking joy, my only other class for today is my journalism class. This, my dear void, is where I sit and type up what you're reading. This is funny because we are on the topic of different media formats and my professor mentioned blogs and social media. She asked who has a blog and I raised my hand. Technically I have two, this one and another one on this same hell site but It's a fanfiction blog. She asked how many followers and what type of blog.

Did I answer honestly?

Of fucking course I didn't, at least not completely.

I said it's a blog where I test different concepts I want to write on and different writing styles and that I had somewhere between 900 and 1000 followers. Which is all true. What I left out was that it is a fanfiction blog mainly catering to the shows supernatural, sherlock, and marvel. I am a junior in college majoring in psych and pre-med. I do not need my cohort to learn that I am a fanfiction writer. It's not something I am ashamed of, but I know the jokes (usually are made lovingly) would never end, and that not what I need.

Some might think "pre-med and psych? Why are you taking a journalism class?" A shocker for many people (including my father), people actually have hobbies. Mine is writing. So I like to learn of all forms and styles. Creative writing, journalism, creative writing, academic research. I want to know all of it and everything that there is to know. I've published a book, won writing contests, and still run a blog, and post my ramblings onto this public forum as if it's a private diary as a way to vent. To say I like writing is an understatement. Speaking of liking things and hobbies. I like...No. I love variety. I had to rinse and repeat and I love the spontaneity of life. I also need to keep to a routine so I don't spiral out of controll and lose track of life. Recently, I've felt almost that my life has become stagnant again. I cannot put words to the way I hate stagnation.

Yes, I know people need to rest after making progress to recharge and restock energy and resources before continuing on tackling long-term goals. But I hate to stay still for too long. Usually, I need to do something small to change up my day and its scratches the ich until I find my next footing. This time it wasn't as simple as changing the scenery while doing my homework. I almost impulsively went for a walk in the forest area near my house.

Is this the type of activity that causes a person to die in a horror movie?

Yes.

Was I aware of this?

Yes

Did I do it?

Why?

I got a call from my boss.

For the past year or so I have been trying to become a shift manager at my job. Not only for the five-dollar pay raise but also due to the fact it would look great on my resume and offer me experience that would do me good in the long-term future.

It got to the point where I've been frustrated with my job. I've been trying to move up the ladder and haven't gotten anywhere but getting fewer hours. Granted it has been the slow season for our industry and job but still. It's aggravating.

Then an angel shines down upon me and stops me from being a stereotypical dumbass horror movie character and my phone rings. My manager tells me about the opening, how to apply, and what the application and interview process looks like. Any idea of venturing into a body of woods by myself evaporated faster than it spawned and I applied to the position as fast as possible.

Now the chaos I've been looking for. The new energy flow in my life. Trying to land that position. Aside from trying to get straight A's this semester and taking a break during the summer, now I have this. Especially since I'm taking almost four months off from school and have open availability with my job. At 20 an hour, for a 60-hour paycheck, I'll make more than my monthly expenses. I'll make more in that paycheck than I do currently in a month.

I have earned this promotion, I've busted my ass and done anything and everything I can short of trying to seduce the higher-ups, and I set standards in life that prevent me from doing so.

Now I depart from this post and I am off to use the restroom and head home as my professor is ending class. Have a great day and stay safe. Till next time.

-your blogger

#free write #diary entry #diaryposting #online diary #personal diary #online #ranting

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cboeck-webdesign · 9 months

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An online business without social media

An online business without social media can it work? For many, this sounds unimaginable. Social media marketing and an online business are so closely linked in our minds that doing without seems almost absurd. Especially since the big social networks are very content hungry, many want to distance themselves from social media. Personally, I don't think you have to give up social media, but you should use a channel that you really rely on. In this article you will learn if an online business can exist without social media.

How useful is social media marketing for your business?

Is social media a waste of time or can you really generate more traffic for your website? My experience has shown that it depends on the network. Generating traffic works best for me on Twitter, paid Facebook Ads and YouTube. On Instagram, the reach has plummeted since I haven't posted anything in a while. And that is the crucial shortcoming. The algorithm knows no pause, as soon as you stop, you literally drown in the beautiful landscape of social media. But I think demonizing social media is also wrong, especially if you enjoy creating reels or videos. It can be a perfect complement to your business.

Can you afford to do without social media?

If you have a blog or a website that revolves around the topic of Instagram tips or social media marketing in general, it makes sense to use these networks as well, of course. If you've built up a large reach or are networking with others on LinkedIn, it's also worth continuing to use these channels. Of course, it's also a personal question whether you can or want to do without social media. After all, many are extremely attracted to TikTok and spend a lot of time on it, even if they don't have an online business. I don't miss anything in the process, and I quickly realized that I can do without TikTok and Instagram just fine. Of course, if you can attract customers via social media, that's another criterion in favor of using social media marketing. As a rule, however, only a small fraction of customers come via LinkedIn, Facebook or other networks.

What are the alternatives to social media?

However, there are still a few alternatives to social media. One of them I've already mentioned is advertising via platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok Ads. But that can get expensive quickly, especially if you want to promote multiple items. With Pinterest, you can get cheaper traffic depending on your niche. Interior design, DIY projects and recipes work especially well here. My experience is that blog themes and web design work less well. But I also have to admit that I don't post here every day, and here we go again. You should be creating and posting 30-40 pins a day. But I honestly didn't feel like doing that. So I checked Pinterest off for good. However, most traffic is likely to come through Google, probably around 90% of all websites. That's why it's so important to develop a good SEO strategy and optimize your posts for the search engine. Another way to build reach can be to have your own podcast in your niche. Moreover, a podcast also offers variety for your readers and an additional content format. So you see, there are definitely alternatives to social media.

Email marketing instead of social media

For those who already have a list, a newsletter is of course a great way to generate traffic and promote your products. But in most cases, you get new subscribers through social media and Pinterest. However, here you can also get new subscribers through your blog, ads or a landing page. Another advantage of email marketing is that this channel is yours and you set the rules. So you are not subject to any algorithm and there is no danger that your content will disappear into nirvana. And of course, you can also use Messenger as a mouthpiece to your customers.

Online marketing strategies with sustainability

I once saw a nice graphic of outer space that had the individual networks for planets. The further out the social network was, the better it was. Here lay blogs, Pinterest and YouTube. Right up against the sun should be TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. The longer your post or video is discoverable, the better. That said, Twitter works pretty well for me, too. The key drawback with the blue giants, of course, is that you have to post every day. It's important to realize that each social network has its own advantages and disadvantages. While blogs, Pinterest and YouTube can provide stable long-term reach, platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Twitter require continuous activity to stay visible. If you're willing to post daily and put in the effort to create regular content, these networks can still be effective. Twitter is known for its fast-paced and short-lived nature. Tweets have a limited lifespan and can quickly get lost in the news stream. Therefore, it's important to post regularly and actively to ensure a continuous presence. However, if you build an engaged community on Twitter and share relevant content, it can lead to good success. It's critical to develop a balanced social media strategy that takes into account the strengths and specifics of each network. While some platforms focus on long-term content, others focus on topical and short-term content. The continuity and quality of your posts are also important factors for social media success. Also remember that there are other ways to generate traffic and reach for your website besides the major social networks. Email marketing, influencer collaborations, and search engine optimization are other important channels to include in your overall strategy. By understanding your target audience and targeting your content to the different platforms, you can make the most of social media's potential and effectively generate traffic for your website. Conclusion - Online business without social media does it work? The question of whether an online business can work without social media is not an easy one to answer. Social media undoubtedly has many benefits and offers a variety of ways to increase your reach, attract customers or strengthen your brand. The major social networks are known for generating high levels of user activity and attention. However, there are also good examples that deliberately distance themselves from social media and still have a thriving online business. These online marketers or independent bloggers often rely on alternative marketing strategies, such as targeted search engine marketing, email marketing or focusing on niche markets. Read the full article

#OnlineBusiness #SocialMedia

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gdwessel · 1 year

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Please Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself, or Meet The New Blog, Same As The Old Blog

Hello there.

The changes are complete for this blog. This is no longer the Strong Style Story site for Japanese wrestling, exclusively. Thank you for your years of reading this site, and listening to the associated podcast that I was doing with @damascenocs that never did quite do its final episode. Oops. I hope you stick around for this new era of this particular blog. As I say in the header, I may still do posts about Japanese wrestling. In fact, I plan to in an upcoming post.

For those of you just tuning in, my name is Geoffrey D. Wessel, and I write comics. Occasionally they actually get made, and published. One such book will be War Birds, written by me, drawn/lettered by Steve Parkhouse, a legend of comics whom younger readers/viewers may know as the co-creator of the comic book Resident Alien that is now the hit SyFy TV show Resident Alien. The cover is above. It's due out in March 2023. This hasn't been solicited by Diamond yet, although you can pre-order it on Amazon. I'd hope you could get it through your local shop, comic or book, once the solicitation hits.

A book I self-published in 2013, Takedown, got colorized and crowdfunded for re-release last year through Florida indie publisher Cosmic Times, and you can get that in print or digitally. There's a Phil Hester variant cover for this one you may like.

Some of you may remember my early 2010s self-published series Keeper about a serial killing soccer/futbol player. This isn't available in any format anymore, even digitally, since Comixology got snarfed into Amazon Kindle entirely. I also had a strip in David Lloyd's (of V For Vendetta fame) Aces Weekly digital comic anthology, about fascists getting control of the White House. It seemed like such a far-fetched concept at the time. Additionally, I had a story in the Eisner- and Harvey-nominated anthology Outlaw Territory 3, that is also no longer in print anywhere. (It also didn’t win either an Eisner or a Harvey.) There is every possibility I may repost some of these older stories here at some point.

Despite not currently doing any wrestling podcasts at the moment, I have a comedic (sometimes) podcast about soccer/futbol that I do every couple of weeks or so called Busting Balls. Should check it out. We swear and do a lot of political takes on this show. The next episode will be the big milestone Episode 75, so tune in if you'd like. It’s on Soundcloud or you can search “Busting Balls Podcsast” on Spotify.

I'm on more social media than I care to be, but here we are. You can find my various spots on my Linktree page, which does not have my Hive account listed, but it's down as I'm writing this anyway. Most socials I am at gdwessel so that's pretty easy to find. At my Linktree is a signup for a mailing list that I've yet to post on, and who knows, it might never happen. Or it might. I don't know. There’s also my Mastodon link. And FB, IG, Twitter, etc. And CoHost, but I really don’t think that one is going anywhere.

If you want to see my old gdwessel.com site, it's here, although not been updated since early 2016, so not much of anything of note there anymore, I don't think.

I am planning some things, and they may actually come to fruition.

I hope to post more often, across a wide array of subjects, and even share a few other Tumblr posts I come across. I may link my Instagram to this blog too, but I don't know yet. There are a lot of questions I don't have answers too at the moment.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope to see you here regularly.

#comics #resident alien #steve parkhouse #phil hester #puroresu

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mcmansionhell · 3 years

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Underground, Part 1

[Author’s Note: A year ago, when waiting for the DC Metro, I came up with an idea for a short story involving two realtors and the infamous Las Vegas Underground House, typed up an outline, and shoved it away in my documents where it sat neglected until this month. The house recently resurfaced on Twitter, and combined with almost a year of quarantine, the story quickly materialized. Though I rarely write fiction, I decided I’d give it a shot as a kind of novelty McMansion Hell post. I’ve peppered the story with photos from the house to break up the walls of text. Hopefully you find it entertaining. I look forward to returning next month with the second installment of this as well as our regularly scheduled McMansion content. Happy New Year!

Warning: there’s lots of swearing in this.]

Underground

Back in 1997, Mathieu Rino, the son of two Finnish mechanical engineers who may or may not have worked intimately with the US State Department, changed his name to Jay Renault in order to sell more houses. It worked wonders.

He gets out of the car, shuts the door harder than he should. Renault wrinkles his nose. It’s a miserable Las Vegas afternoon - a sizzling, dry heat pools in ripples above the asphalt. The desert is a place that is full of interesting and diverse forms of life, but Jay’s the kind of American who sees it all as empty square-footage. He frowns at the dirt dusting up his alligator-skin loafers but then remembers that every lot, after all, has potential. Renault wipes the sweat from his leathery face, slicks back his stringy blond hair and adjusts the aviators on the bridge of his nose. The Breitling diving watch crowding his wrist looks especially big in the afternoon glare. He glances at it.

“Shit,” he says. The door on the other side of the car closes, as though in response.

If Jay Renault is the consummate rich, out-of-touch Gen-Xer trying to sell houses to other rich, out-of-touch Gen-Xers, then Robert Little is his millennial counterpart. Both are very good at their jobs. Robert adjusts his tie in the reflection of the Porsche window, purses his lips. He’s Vegas-showman attractive, with dark hair, a decent tan, and a too-bright smile - the kind of attractive that ruins marriages but makes for an excellent divorcee. Mildly sleazy.

“Help me with these platters, will you?” Renault gestures, popping the trunk. Robert does not want to sweat too much before an open house, but he obliges anyway. They’re both wearing suits. The heat is unbearable. A spread of charcuterie in one hand, Jay double-checks his pockets for the house keys, presses the button that locks his car.

Both men sigh, and their eyes slowly trail up to the little stucco house sitting smack dab in the center of an enormous lot, a sea of gravel punctuated by a few sickly palms. The house has the distinct appearance of being made of cardboard, ticky-tacky, a show prop. Burnt orange awnings don its narrow windows, which somehow makes it look even more fake.

“Here we go again,” Jay mutters, fishing the keys out of his pocket. He jiggles them until the splintered plywood door opens with a croak, revealing a dark and drab interior – dusty, even though the cleaners were here yesterday. Robert kicks the door shut with his foot behind him.

“Christ,” he swears, eyes trailing over the terrible ecru sponge paint adorning the walls. “This shit is so bleak.”

The surface-level house is mostly empty. There’s nothing for them to see or attend to there, and so the men step through a narrow hallway at the end of which is an elevator. They could take the stairs, but don’t want to risk it with the platters. After all, they were quite expensive. Renault elbows the button and the doors part.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he says as they step inside. The fluorescent lights above them buzz something awful. A cheery metal sign welcomes them to “Tex’s Hideaway.” Beneath it is an eldritch image of a cave, foreboding. Robert’s stomach’s in knots. Ever since the company assigned him to this property, he’s been terrified of it. He tells himself that the house is, in fact, creepy, that it is completely normal for him to be ill at ease. The elevator’s ding is harsh and mechanical. They step out. Jay flips a switch and the basement is flooded with eerie light.

It’s famous, this house - The Las Vegas Underground House. The two realtors refer to it simply as “the bunker.” Built by an eccentric millionaire at the height of Cold War hysteria, it’s six-thousand square feet of paranoid, aspirational fantasy. The first thing anyone notices is the carpet – too-green, meant to resemble grass, sprawling out lawn-like, bookmarked by fake trees, each a front for a steel beam. Nothing can grow here. It imitates life, unable to sustain it. The leaves of the ficuses seem particularly plastic.

Bistro sets scatter the ‘yard’ (if one can call it that), and there’s plenty of outdoor activities – a parquet dance floor complete with pole and disco ball, a putt putt course, an outdoor grill made to look like it’s nestled in a rock, but in reality better resembles a baked potato. The pool and hot tub, both sculpted in concrete and fiberglass mimicking a natural rock formation, are less Playboy grotto and more Fred Flintstone. It’s a very seventies idea of fun.

Then, of course, there’s the house. That fucking house.

A house built underground in 1978 was always meant to be a mansard – the mansard roof was a historical inevitability. The only other option was International Style modernism, but the millionaire and his wife were red-blooded anti-Communists. Hence, the mansard. Robert thinks the house looks like a fast-food restaurant. Jay thinks it looks like a lawn and tennis club he once attended as a child where he took badminton lessons from a swarthy Czech man named Jan. It’s drab and squat, made more open by big floor-to-ceiling windows nestled under fresh-looking cedar shingles. There’s no weather down here to shrivel them up.

“Shall we?” Jay drawls. The two make their way into the kitchen and set the platters down on the white tile countertop. Robert leans up against the island, careful of the oversized hood looming over the electric stovetop. He eyes the white cabinets, accented with Barbie pink trim. The matching linoleum floor squeaks under his Italian loafers.

“I don’t understand why we bother doing this,” Robert complains. “Nobody’s seriously going to buy this shit, and the company’s out a hundred bucks for party platters.”

“It’s the same every time,” Renault agrees. “The only people who show up are Instagram kids and the crazies - you know, the same kind of freaks who’d pay money to see Chernobyl.”

“Dark tourism, they call it.”

Jay checks his watch again. Being in here makes him nervous.

“Still an hour until open house,” he mutters. “I wish we could get drunk.”

Robert exhales deeply. He also wishes he could get drunk, but still, a job’s a job.

“I guess we should check to see if everything’s good to go.”

The men head into the living room. The beamed, slanted ceiling gives it a mid-century vibe, but the staging muddles the aura. Jay remembers making the call to the staging company. “Give us your spares,” he told them, “Whatever it is you’re not gonna miss. Nobody’ll ever buy this house anyway.”

The result is eclectic – a mix of office furniture, neo-Tuscan McMansion garb, and stuffy waiting-room lamps, all scattered atop popcorn-butter shag carpeting. Hideous, Robert thinks. Then there’s the ‘entertaining’ room, which is a particular pain in the ass to them, because the carpet was so disgusting, they had to replace it with that fake wood floor just to be able to stand being in there for more than five minutes. There’s a heady stone fireplace on one wall, the kind they don’t make anymore, a hearth. Next to it, equally hedonistic, a full bar. Through some doors, a red-painted room with a pool table and paintings of girls in fedoras on the wall. It’s all so cheap, really. Jay pulls out a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket along with a pen. He ticks some boxes and moves on.

The dining room’s the worst to Robert. Somehow the ugly floral pattern on the curtains stretches up in bloomer-like into a frilly cornice, carried through to the wallpaper and the ceiling, inescapable, suffocating. It smells like mothballs and old fabric. The whole house smells like that.

The master bedroom’s the most normal – if anything in this house could be called normal. Mismatched art and staging furniture crowd blank walls. When someone comes into a house, Jay told Robert all those years ago, they should be able to picture themselves living in it. That’s the goal of staging.

There’s two more bedrooms. The men go through them quickly. The first isn’t so bad – claustrophobic, but acceptable – but the saccharine pink tuille wallpaper of the second gives Renault a sympathetic toothache. The pair return to the kitchen to wait.

Both men are itching to check their phones, but there’s no point – there’s no signal in here, none whatsoever. Renault, cynical to the core, thinks about marketing the house to the anti-5G people. It’s unsettlingly quiet. The two men have no choice but to entertain themselves the old-fashioned way, through small talk.

“It’s really fucked up, when you think about it,” Renault muses.

“What is?”

“The house, Bob.”

Robert hates being called Bob. He’s told Jay that hundreds of times, and yet…

“Yeah,” Robert mutters, annoyed.

“No, really. Like, imagine. You’re rich, you founded a major multinational company marketing hairbrushes to stay-at-home moms, and what do you decide to do with your money? Move to Vegas and build a fucking bunker. Like, imagine thinking the end of the world is just around the corner, forcing your poor wife to live there for ten, fifteen years, and then dying, a paranoid old man.” Renault finds the whole thing rather poetic.

“The Russkies really got to poor ol’ Henderson, didn’t they?” Robert snickers.

“The wife’s more tragic if you ask me,” Renault drawls. “The second that batshit old coot died, she called a guy to build a front house on top of this one, since she already owned the lot. Poor woman probably hadn’t seen sunlight in God knows how long.”

“Surely they had to get groceries.”

Jay frowns. Robert has no sense of drama, he thinks. Bad trait for a realtor.

“Still,” he murmurs. “It’s sad.”

“I would have gotten a divorce, if I were her,” the younger man says, as though it were obvious. It’s Jay’s turn to laugh.

“I’ve had three of those, and trust me, it’s not as easy as you think.”

“You’re seeing some new girl now, aren’t you?” Robert doesn’t really care, he just knows Jay likes to talk about himself, and talking fills the time.

“Yeah. Casino girl. Twenty-six.”

“And how old are you again?”

“None of your business.”

“Did you see the renderings I emailed to you?” Robert asks briskly, not wanting to discuss Jay’s sex life any further.

“What renderings?”

“Of this house, what it could look like.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jay has not seen the renderings.

“If it were rezoned,” Robert continues, feeling very smart, “It could be a tourist attraction - put a nice visitor’s center on the lot, make it sleek and modern. Sell trinkets. It’s a nice parcel, close to the Strip - some clever investor could make it into a Museum of Ice Cream-type thing, you know?”

“Museum of Ice Cream?”

“In New York. It’s, not, like, educational or anything. Really, it’s just a bunch of colorful rooms where kids come to take pictures of themselves.”

“Instagram,” Jay mutters. “You know, I just sold a penthouse the other week to an Instagram influencer. Takes pictures of herself on the beach to sell face cream or some shit. Eight-point-two million dollars.”

“Jesus,” Robert whistles. “Fat commission.”

“You’re telling me. My oldest daughter turns sixteen this year. She’s getting a Mazda for Christmas.”

“You ever see that show, My Super Sweet Sixteen? On MTV? Where rich kids got, like, rappers to perform at their birthday parties? Every time at the end, some guy would pull up in, like, an Escalade with a big pink bow on it and all the kids would scream.”

“Sounds stupid,” Jay says.

“It was stupid.”

It’s Robert’s turn to check his watch, a dainty gold Rolex.

“Fuck, still thirty minutes.”

“Time really does stand still in here, doesn’t it?” Jay remarks.

“We should have left the office a little later,” Robert complains. “The charcuterie is going to get –“

A deafening sound roars through the house and a violent, explosive tremor throws both men on the ground, shakes the walls and everything between them. The power’s out for a few seconds before there’s a flicker, and light fills the room again. Two backup generators, reads Jay’s description in the listing - an appeal to the prepper demographic, which trends higher in income than non-preppers. For a moment, the only things either are conscious of are the harsh flourescent lighting and the ringing in their ears. Time slows, everything seems muted and too bright. Robert rubs the side of his face, pulls back his hand and sees blood.

“Christ,” he chokes out. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Jay breathes, looking at his hands, trying to determine if he’s got a concussion. The results are inconclusive – everything’s slow and fuzzy, but after a moment, he thinks it might just be shock.

“It sounded like a fucking 747 just nosedived on top of us.”

“Yeah, Jesus.” Jay’s still staring at his fingers in a daze. “You okay?”

“I think so,” Robert grumbles. Jay gives him a cursory examination.

“Nothing that needs stitches,” he reports bluntly. Robert’s relieved. His face sells a lot of houses to a lot of lonely women and a few lonely men. There’s a muffled whine, which the two men soon recognize as a throng of sirens. Both of them try to calm the panic rising in their chests, to no avail.

“Whatever the fuck happened,” Jay says, trying to make light of the situation, “At least we’re in here. The bunker.”

Fear forms in the whites of Robert’s eyes.

“What if we’re stuck in here,” he whispers, afraid to speak such a thing into the world. The fear spreads to his companion.

“Try the elevator,” Jay urges, and Robert gets up, wobbles a little as his head sorts itself out, and leaves. A moment later, Jay hears him swear a blue streak, and from the kitchen window, sees him standing before the closed metal doors, staring at his feet. His pulse racing, Renault jogs out to see for himself.

“It’s dead,” Robert murmurs.

“Whatever happened,” Jay says cautiously, rubbing the back of his still-sore neck, “It must have been pretty bad. Like, I don’t think we should go up yet. Besides, surely the office knows we’re still down here.”

“Right, right,” the younger man breathes, trying to reassure himself.

“Let’s just wait it out. I’m sure everything’s fine.” The way Jay says it does not make Robert feel any better.

“Okay,” the younger man grumbles. “I’m getting a fucking drink, though.”

“Yeah, Jesus. That’s the best idea you’ve had all day.” Renault shoves his hands in his suit pocket to keep them from trembling.

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon!

There is a whole new slate of Patreon rewards, including: good house of the month, an exclusive Discord server, weekly drawings, monthly livestreams, a reading group, free merch at certain tiers and more!

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#architecture #design #fiction #las vegas #underground house

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hopefullystillatheatrestudent · 3 years

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i'm so excited about you taking asks again ahhhh okay so. if you'd absolutely had to choose. what would be your top 5 cockles moments, and why? thank you ily <3

here’s the thing: there are so many routes i could go down with this, because cockles moments come in all shapes and sizes and formats. these include moments from their panels, their bloopers, the footage we get when they don’t even know they’re being recorded, stories being passed down from photo ops & autographs(one of my personal favorite ways to get cockles, tbh, because they’re all insane), and social media(tweets to each other, instagram posts & comments, etc.).

SO! since many a list like this has already been made, and i want to stand out from the crowd, what i’m gonna do is definitively give the number one spot to each of these five categories.(i might even throw in honourable mentions because they’re so despicably in love that they warrant that. i really put my whole pussy into this, guys, i hope you’re happy.)

disclaimer: these are my own personal opinions. but that also means i’m right. so. enjoy.

number one: top cockles panel moment

so we’re starting off with a bang, because how do you even BEGIN to rank what atrocities jensen and misha commit at jibcon. every single one they’ve had is damning in it’s own right, for different reasons.

however, considering just how much unabashed fuckery they’ve given us to sift through, it’s a good thing i do have a personal favorite despite it all. it’s heartwarming, the sweetest thing i’ve ever seen, AND it’s jarringly cinematic - mainly because it has a whole ass arc to it that was years in the making. it might even be surprising to some people, but my favorite cockles panel moment, and what i consider the one that encompasses their entire gut-wrenching journey from 2008-2013 in the most sweepingly romantic gesture possible, is this one.

i want this burned into my retinas. i am not even joking. when i'm through with my explanation, let me convince you why this is thee most romantic cockles moment of all time.

first, some history: people call this the resume off, but many seem to forget the botched attempt at a resume off a year prior. and yes, you guessed it: it's during their break up. it's a juicy time period for a reason, guys. it came across as exceedingly one-sided and VERY awkward. let me refresh your memory as to just how bad it was, and just how hard jensen was trying and ultimately failing at winning misha over: the funniest part of the whole resume off in 2013??? every joke/bit had literally already been made/done. they were just going through the motions again, but the difference THIS time...is that misha reciprocated jensen's energy. it. is. fascinating. i want to get into it more detail in another post, and i'll link it here when i'm done, but the main takeaway, i think, and the main difference that showcases how much they've grown in a year, is that in jib 3, misha flat out refused to do an accent, and this time around, he indulges jensen for literal minutes. when i tell you they're crazy, they're crazy. i can't wait to actually dive into it later.

ANYWAY, the resume off culminates in this moment here. and, like, a million things happen in this gifset. actually, more like a million and one. the music starts playingneediremindyouthatthesongissingingintherain(h e l p), misha starts dancing, jensen 'perpetually fake grumpy' ackles lets misha think he's not going to join, misha sits down defeated, but no!!! that was jensen's plan all along(look at his stupid fucking smirk) and he offers his arm to his dance partner who immediately grins like a fool, jensen then leads misha into their kick step, they perfectly synchronise and let loose, and are then very clearly having the time of their lives, hanging off of each other with joy and ease. from their expressions alone i can tell that this moment is so. so. so. so! much more than what initially meets the eye. i mean-misha is fighting back the biggest smile i've ever seen. to me, it reads like jensen is offering something to misha, something that misha kind of gave up on expecting, and him offering his arm like that is like, a surprise to him in the best possible way(and it's so not platonic, let me just say that.) as soon as jensen did that, it ushered in a new era of cockles. this panel is jensen and misha's favourite for a reason, and i think this moment is the biggest clue as to why.

whew!!! ok. that took a lot out of me and that was only point one. moving on,

number two: top cockles blooper moment

cockles bloopers hold an extremely special place in my heart, because it shows just how fucking disastrous jensen and misha are. they are so goddamn infatuated with each other that they HOLD UP PRODUCTION ALL THE TIME TO FLIRT WITH EACH OTHER(???). let me repeat. let it sink in. jensen ackles; arguably one of the most professional actors on that show who puts everything he has into each scene, with mountains and mountains of notes to prove it: would rather hold up production to flirt with misha collins. this sounds fake. it's not. he does it. all. the. time. and here's the thing guys!!! i'm gonna let you in on a secret!!! misha loves it. he loveesssss it. on top of that-misha collins: overlooked because he's pranked and people assume he's unprofessional as well, but his only pranks are in retaliation/off-set, and he rarely if EVER causes problems if he can help it....lets himself get carried away when it comes to jensen making kissy faces at him!!! are you actually kidding me!!! i mean. misha. it's just a face. you've seen it a million times. i don't buy that it triggers something in you that strongly....you like it, and you like jensen's reaction. you can't fool me!!! lisa berry's face in that one gifset shows just how fed up the crew is with their gross, coupley boyfriend antics.

i could pull up so many examples. sooooooo many. but my favourite was sealed since the moment i saw it.

i actually already wrote an analysis on it but i can't find it :(((( which SUCKS because i really unpacked the whole thing. i'll try to summarise.

basically, a backstory is part of this too!!! jensen and misha both had a really really hard time with this scene(because it's explicitly romantic there i said it), they sat down for hours and poured over their scripts together, they were super super nervous going into filming, both of them, jensen especially, were super hard on themselves for their performances not being true to their characters but they both complimented the other's work(boyfriend moments fr). so, yeah. they weren't confident going into shooting. and how do they get themselves to feel better???? by cuddling each other, apparently.

a lot. a LOT. happens in this specific blooper. to the point that i saw it years before i knew about cockles and it raised all sorts of flags for me.

1) stop pulling my face towards your crotch(as a thinly veiled request that misha would, in fact, move jensen's face towards his crotch, considering it was jensen moving himself there in the first place. also, why so comfy down there guys???) 2) you're my baby daddy i know(in the most intimate voice i've ever heard please) 3) i know, i know, i love you too i didn't say i love you i know but you wanted to say it etc. misha's right, of course. that's what jensen meant.

it just reeks of comfort, familiarity and intimacy between the two, and it's a moment that is extremely sweet and silly at the same time. they're so <3

number three: top cockles found footage moment

WONDERFUL category. truly the culmination of the cockles experience. many people have said that shipping cockles doesn't work because 'they're just onstage you dummies!! they're playing it up for the audience!!!' here's the thing, love. i could not disagree with you more. once you climb your way up the cockles ladder, you soon learn that they are, in fact, playing their dynamic DOWN, not up. they really are just Like That™, and they could not care less about the paying audience, if we're being honest, considering how much time they take to giggle with each other and refuse to let the audience in on the joke. and i love them for it <3

anyway, my point is that this category is for all you naysayers out there, all you 'jensen and misha's relationship is just for show and is real life queerbaiting'(?????lordhelp???) oh yeah? ok, explain this.

he. he. he calls jensen sweetheart. literally enough said. there's nothing to really add here, except, misha and jared then immediately engage in damage control. jared's method is distraction and misha's is retconning('get out of the car, dude') this was what got me to buy into the cockles dumpster for GOOD good. you don't call your buddy sweetheart accidentally and sound so completely earnest while doing it! especially not when that buddy is jensen ackles!!! you think he would let any of his friends call him that? do you?

one more thing; if it was a slip of the tongue, little mouth thing or whatever, you think jared wouldn't have jumped on it immediately??? i can hear it now. 'did you just call him SWEETHEART???' yeah. that's what i thought. you know why he didn't? because it was too revealing.

number four: top cockles autograph moment

i mean, i think we all know what it's gonna be, and if you don't, well, do i have the piece de cockles resistance that is gonna send you over the edge.

if you haven't heard of this story by now, as a cockles, truther, i'm gonna go ahead and get you to read it, because there is no possible heterosexual explanation for any of it, and you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

spoiler alert: it's the story where phones weren't allowed in an auto session, jensen nuzzles himself in misha's hair, leans his full body weight onto him, holds his hand, etc. etc. i'm imploding just repeating this back, actually. also, just, the sheer amount of stories from photo ops where they tackle hug each other or slap each other's asses or sing romantic songs to each other or almost kiss is, frankly, a lot. if i could wish for anything, it would be to witness them in person.

and finally,

number five: top cockles social media moment

this one is super difficult, because there's obviously a lot to choose from. but you know what? full send, i'm going with this one:

i just. what to say about this. how often do misha and jensen watch sunsets together for it to qualify as ‘always’ ??? why are sunsets synonymous with their relationship??? that’s like??? a very romantic thing????? ‘this guy’??? the fact that it’s a CANDID??? i don’t know guys.

that could have been better but i am TIRED so. there you go rose ily

#cockles #cockles ask #liz answers #i really just. spend hours. writing about misha and his boyfriend.#why. why do i. do that #long post for ts

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charlie-rulerofhell · 3 years

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An interview with Måneskin: “It's not about out bodies, it's about our music”

Heyo, I'm back with another translation. This time the article is from the German Rolling Stone website who met with Måneskin after their TikTok performance at the Schwuz, Berlin, and posted the interview yesterday. Again there were some interesting questions asked (and the pictures they added to the article are quite nice, though severely lacking some Ethan content, but check it out!).

Again, I hope that no one has already gone through the effort and translated it or is currently working on a translation. Also this is an official invitation, if you stumble across any articles or video interviews in German that you would like to have translated just message me and I'll get to it! (or if you just wanna chat about Måneskin, my inbox is always open :))

Have a great day everyone!

Full article under the cut.

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An interview with Måneskin: “It's not about out bodies, it's about our music”

Jose-Luis Amsler

July 6, 2021

Måneskin are just what this generation has been missing. Passionate, corny, and full-on honest. In an interview with Rolling Stones, the ESC winners explain to us why they would never work in a normal job and why the hype for their appearance is sometimes going too far.

Damiano, Victoria, Thomas and Ethan are entering the nearly deserted dance hall, before they wait on stage in a red-blue spotlight. They are wearing glittering fish net tops, black tape across their nipples, leather pants, heels and make up. The camera men who are filming in portrait format (9:16) suitable for TikTok are whirling up the haze of the fog machine.

Måneskin are [in] Berlin to give a TikTok concert. A TikTok livestream of this scale has not been done often – tension is in the air. The four Italians don't know at this point that due to the stream the few people present are not allowed to clap or cheer. In complete silence and with slight uncertainty the four are crossing Neukölln's club Schwuz. A few puzzled glances are exchanged. Finally, Måneskin are striking the first chord.

Then the rich sound of Ethan's bass drum is tearing through the silence. It's almost as if someone has flicked a switch somewhere. There it is, the rock star presence that is hovering over everything they do, with an ounce of arrogance (in the best sense of the word). Singer Damiano is dancing lasciviously on his heels, and during an especially ecstatic solo guitarist Thomas is throwing himself down on the floor in a way it can only be done by a passionate 20-year-old musician who had never had to worry about the looming doom of an artificial knee joint [for 'passionate' the interview is using the term 'besessen' which means 'possessed', and although I think it's rather supposed to describe the way Thomas is 'possessed / obsessed' with the music, thus passionate for the music, you never know if they didn't mean to say that the way he dances looks 'possessed' … I mean, they might be on to something here ;)]. Around half an hour and about 120 decibel later, Damiano says their goodbyes with an almost shy-sounding “Okay, bye.” After the performance, we do our interview in the Schwuz.

Rolling Stone: It was a little bit weird, right, when you went on stage today?

Damiano: Yeah, that was really strange (laughs). They only told us after the performance that the audience was instructed to stay silent for the stream.

Vic: But at least they weren't silent because we were shit (all laughing). We are slowly getting used to playing without a live audience. I mean we are doing this now for more than a year.

RS: What do you think about these new kinds of concerts such as the TikTok livestream today?

Damiano: Well, at the moment it is the only option to perform anyway, so it's alright. But of course you cannot compare this to a proper concert.

Thomas: But it's pretty cool that so many people can experience our concert live.

Vic: Also we're gonna start touring again soon. Right now we are arranging some festival and gigs. In December we will be touring Italy and afterwards we are planning to go on tour through Europe. But we don't have anything fixed yet, there is just a lot going on at the moment.

“A lot going on”. Quite an understatement considering the recent journey Måneskin has made through the past weeks after their ESC win. Their singles “Beggin'” and “I Wanna Be Your Slave” went through the roof (also thanks to Social Media) and are currently dominating the international charts – lately they were also number one in Germany. There is barely a radio station that isn't playing the band on heavy rotation [would love to know what stations they listen to, have never heard Måneskin played in German radio tbh :( ], and everyone opening Instagram or TikTok these days is flooded by Måneskin content. Every second a new fanpage with the name of 'maneskin_obsession' or 'damianos_slut' is springing up like a (virtual) mushroom. It sounds like a cliche, but Damiano, Vic, Thomas and Ethan became international stars over night.

“Of course it's nice to get compliments. But sometimes they definitely cross a line.” – Damiano David

RS: How has your life as a band changed since your win at the ESC in Rotterdam?

Vic: I think we don't even notice a lot of what's happening. Right after the ESC we went to a studio in the countryside where we made music the whole day long. So at first we didn't realise that so many things were happening all around us – and that we had so many new fans. We're just now beginning to learn what's going on. We were at Sony yesterday, there were so many fans waiting for us. That was crazy.

RS: A large part of the attention you are getting now is about your outer appearance, your style, your attractiveness. Is that getting a little too much sometimes?

Damiano: Of course it's nice to get compliments (laughs). But sometimes they definitely cross a line. Especially when we just talk about our music or about a social or political topic that we care about. In those moments it's just completely inappropriate to reduce us to our appearance. Sure – when I'm posting a half-naked picture of myself on Instagram I know that I will get these kind of comments. And then it's totally fine, I mean in the end I'm posting the picture to show myself. But sometimes it's not the right place for it.

RS: And also you should be allowed to wear what you want without being sexualised, right?

Vic: Yes, absolutely. We are wearing these outfits because we feel good in them, not to put the focus on our bodies. And in general it shouldn't always only be about how you dress. We are musicians – so first and foremost it should be about our music. But I think it will still be a long way until we will reach that point.

“That the boys are wearing make up does not tell you what gender they are attracted to. Those things should never be equated with each other.” – Victoria De Angelis

RS: But still you are sending a message with your style against stereotypical gender roles. I guess it's also not only coincidence that we are in the Schwuz today, which is normally a party location and safe space for the LGBTQ community.

Vic: Yes, that is all part of the positive message that we try to send. We want to give our audience the feeling that they are free. Free to wear whatever they want to wear, be how they want to be and love whom they want to love. It's unbelievable that there is still so much intolerance in our times. That has always been really important to us so we try to talk about these topics. We also believe that the narrow-mindedness of society is an educational problem. When you grow up with people all around you telling you how you should be, you will never feel completely free. The more people are talking about it, the sooner things will change.

RS: Some artists who are advocating for these topics are accused of 'queerbaiting', that they are only pretending to be a certain way to gain more support from the queer community. Have you also been faced with those allegations?

Vic: Yes, a few times. But of course we never pretended to be anything. Some people accuse of us queerbaiting because we look and act the way we do. But that's flawed thinking. We don't believe that clothes are connected to a person's sexuality. That the boys are wearing make up does not tell you what gender they are attracted to. Those two things should never be equated with each other.

RS: This courage for free self expression that you are conveying is mainly lived by our (young) generation through Instagram and the like. What is your relationship to social media?

Damiano: For me it was almost scary at first. The more we grew, the more people were trying to twist all of my words. But over time you start to understand that with more fame you also get more criticism. The happier you look the more hate you will get. It's not only like that for celebrities. If you are brave enough to show the things that make you happy there will always be people that support you, but they are also those that envy you. Of course, this should never lead anyone to not express themselves openly but that's easier said than done.

Vic: We are also trying not to spend too much time on social media. In the end we just try to be honest with our fans and to avoid negativity.

[caption under the picture of Damiano: 'Is already being compared to icons such as David Bowie']

It's actually surprising how little power a win at the ESC holds in most cases. Almost 200 million people are watching this shining spectacle every year – and still, a few months afterwards it is hard to remember who those people were that got covered in confetti during the award ceremony. It's the well-known curse of a casting show that rests on the winning bands. When just next year a new sensation will come to marvel at, how much impact does a win have then? There are exceptions of course, like Lena who is until this day, 10 years after her win in Oslo, a part of the more famous music scene of German pop music. With their charisma, their unusual sound at least for our modern standards, and their contemporary message Måneskin could become such an exception, too.

It's likely also helpful that the band already had a standing in the Italian music scene prior to their ESC participation. Their first album 'Il ballo della vita' already achieved platinum in 2018, three years prior to Sanremo and the ESC. And then there is also the long way that led the four schoolmates to this point that helped them gain the necessary persistence. Because contrary to what some people might want to believe Måneskin are not a phenomenon that has just been deliberately bred to be this way by the entertainment industry for Eurovision.

“I have worked [in a 'normal' job] for a whole month in my entire life – it didn't really end well.” – Damiano David

RS: You were all raised in Rome, the capital of the catholic church. What was it like to start as a young progressive band in such a conservative environment?

Damiano: In the beginning, when we started as buskers, no one gave a damn about us anyways (all laughing). But of course … Once we got a bit bigger there were a few people who had a problem with us. For example when we went to Sanremo, there were quite many people who thought that the way we looked and acted we shouldn't be allowed to represent Italy. They didn't even want to listen to our music first.

Vic: Especially when it comes to appearance and sexuality, Italy is a little more backward than other countries. The church probably also has an influence there. They are often quite conservative of course, so many people grew up with such a [conservative] mindset.

RS: You once said that the song 'In Nome Del Padre' is an answer to exactly those people. What does the song mean to you?

Damiano: Back in the beginning [of our career] we had to deal with a lot of problems. They didn't want to let us play in clubs because we would take too much space as a band or because they didn't like our (fashion) style or because they didn't want to pay us. Italy isn't a good place for bands. Our musical style was also criticised a lot. Many people were telling us: Don't do that [rock music], you won't get popular with that in Italy, you will never achieve anything with it. Of course those comments were hurtful but they were also a good reason for us to continue with what we did. And we turned our sadness into anger. With that song we wanted to tell those people from back then: Fuck off and look at us, we did it!

RS: Did you ever consider working in a nine-to-five job and live a 'normal' life?

Damiano: Nah, not really. For one month in my life I worked [in a 'normal' job] – it didn't end well (all laughing).

Vic: We all made music since we were kids. It's a huge part of us, that we couldn't just ignore. And the most important thing is that you do something that makes you happy. At least that's what we believe. So we started from a young age to put all our time and energy into music.

Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Ever since we were in school together we always made music. That has always been our main focus and it is until today. We play and play and play because it is the only thing that …

Ethan: … we live for.

Damiano: Music has also something very therapeutic for us. Even when we are in a bad mood or fight with each other – yeah, that happens, too – then all of that is gone the moment we enter the stage. Maybe that's the beautiful thing about music – that it allows you to forget everything else. You're just standing on stage, having fun with your friends.

From most bands you wouldn't buy such a corny love letter to music. Mostly it just sounds like an empty phrase, a well-practiced quotable line. But when there is something that defines Måneskin and that becomes more and more evident during our conversation it's their uncompromising honesty. The four of them are definitely not lacking a sense of humour but they take their music very seriously. Which should not be taken for granted in a generation that has mainly produced sarcastic cloud rappers and has made cynical twitter comedy a national sport. And maybe Måneskin are exactly what this generation was lacking all along.

Still, the four musicians, all in the age of 20 to 22, are also prone to the constant need for self-expression, that has become an intrinsic part of today's life. This does not only reflect in the outfits of the band (always 'on fleek') and their Instagram profiles, but also in their lyrics. Their latest record 'Teatra D'Ira – Vol. 1' shows a clear theme: The album is an ode to individuality, accentuated by fast and hard sounds.

Sometimes this message fitting for a Disney movie [really? guess I have been watching the wrong Disney movies my whole life …] is wrapped in a contrasting loud and forceful packaging, but never so much that it becomes inauthentic or self-caricaturing [note: I'm honestly not entirely sure what they wanted to say with this sentence since it uses a lot of rhetorical devices that could be interpreted in different ways, but I'd say this sounds the most plausible]. And in the end, the thing that makes Måneskin so interesting is their unification of the spirit of this time – between TikTok hedonism and an omnipresent political statement – with the music of past generations.

“When you are twenty, you start to think about what the future will hold.” – Damiano David

RS: Your musical style is often described as classical 70s rock, but in fact there are many different influences in your music. Sometimes you groove almost into funk, sometimes it's more rapping than singing. How did this mixture come to be?

Thomas: It's just that we all have our own individual influences and then we meet somewhere in the middle. And we always try to stay open for experiments.

Ethan: Yes, we are very experimental in our song writing process.

Vic: We also don't want to limit ourselves to what is regarded as typical rock music. If rap fits better at some point then we just add that in. It just happens naturally without us thinking too much about it.

RS: So why was it still rock music in the end?

Vic: Because it's the style that we feel most represented by. But actually we just play the music that we enjoy playing. That's really important to us so that we can show something real on stage. We don't want to pretend to be something that we aren't or mock those people that really enjoy our music. You should always be proud of what you're doing and never fake anything just to sell more records.

RS: Is there something like an Italian rock music scene?

Vic: There are quite a lot of bands – but the most of them are much older than us or they are more going in the direction Indie rock. There isn't really a young rock scene, which we think is a pity. But ever since we got more famous people are telling us that they started listening to rock music because of us or that they bought their first guitar and such. That's incredibly nice!

RS: So you're saying that you also want to show this style of music to a younger generation. And you capture this contrast quite well in the song 'Vent'anni', which is a typical rock ballad but lyrically portrays the thoughts of today's youth. Where did the motivation come from to write that song?

Damiano: With the song I wanted to show that I'm just a normal guy, a really typical 20-year-old. I experience the same things that other people in my age are experiencing, I'm just doing another job than them. Also I wanted to describe this age as a whole because I think it's a really special age. At 20 you start to think about what the future will hold. I think it's one of the most important stages of your life. Since we (the four of us) are all in the same age, I then started to mix our experiences together. In the end the song shows what it means to us to be 20. There is a lot of good things – you are quite carefree and are looking at life enthusiastically. But on the other hand you're too young to do certain things and too old to do others. Some people are treating you like a full-grown adult, but …

Vic: … not entirely.

Damiano: Exactly. It can get pretty frustrating at times. We wanted to show our audience: Hey, we're also just 20 years old, and we're going through the same things as you. We understand you.

RS: Except that you are the ones who are becoming a world-wide phenomenon right now. How do you want to maintain this honesty?

Damiano: I think that we could just reach this point because we have always been authentic – for better or for worse. Also we are just trying to have fun with what we're doing together. That's something special that we don't want to lose. In the end we're just four friends who started to live their dream. It's actually pretty simple. Of course – we go on stage, we get a lot of attention, we give interviews – but when we come back home we're just four friends.

#måneskin #maneskin #måneskin interview #my stuff #esc #again if you ever want anything to be translated just hit me up i'm free most of the time #ig my blog is slowly turning into a måneskin fanpage for translations and shitposting #but tbh i'm not complaining #have a great day everyone and happy waiting for sooooon

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bts-reveries · 3 years

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the most beautiful moment in life | epilogue

The Most Beautiful Moment in Life.

We all knew that to get to the pretty parts of life, you’d have to get ugly first.

Hey, no pain no gain right?

Well I hope you liked our most beautiful moment in life. Thank you for going through the good, the bad, and the ugly. For running after Hana with Yoongi when she saw the grand opening of 24/7 Heaven. For walking with Huimang to Hobi’s door. For riding the train to Ilsan with Byul to meet Namjoon. For being with Jimin when he was scared and alone with Mingyu. For being with Taehyung when he finally met the one. For being with Jungkook and Rina when they got engaged. And for being with Jin and Mae when their perfect life wasn’t so perfect after all.

It was happy, it was sad, sometimes it made us mad… but I mean, that’s what we have to go through sometimes right? Not only does it make the story more interesting, haha, but it happens in real life. As cheesy as it sounds, rainbows come after the rain.

We started off happy, then went to parts that made us sad or angry.

That’s just what you go through to be happy sometimes.

The boys, the girls, the kids, they all fell apart at one point, only to reach their happy ending.

So hey

If you ever feel like you’re falling apart, maybe you’re just falling into place.

Maybe

Just maybe

You’re about to reach the most beautiful moment of your life.

Because right now, in real life, away from this one, we are all going through the same thing.

Yeah, the pandemic.

I know we don’t all live the same exact lives, but we all had it rough this past (almost) two years.

We might’ve lost a job, a loved one, connection with friends, got sick, got depressed, felt scared, and so much more. Because I have. Not every single one of those in that list, but most of them.

If you were here since daddy duties, that was the start of the pandemic. I believe the lockdown in my country happened when I was posting the intro for that. How crazy?!

For most of us, this AU has been a little escape. A world without covid as someone once said. Actually, a lot of you have told me that reading this AU and receiving notifications for updates etc. are what makes your day. Which means so much to me of course!

“Hey Miya.”

I look up from my laptop to see Jin standing there in front of my desk here at work.

“Hey Jin, do you need anything?” I ask, closing my laptop. I always brought my personal laptop to work for whenever it gets quiet. Being a receptionist here at Moon Studios is pretty fun, but of course, it does get boring sometimes.

“No, no, I’m good. I actually am about to head home, but Yeonjun is still here,” Jin tells me. He has a smile on his face. “You two should go out, isn’t your shift over in a few?”

“Uh.. yeah it is,” I say, letting out a shy laugh. “Sure, um. I’ll just finish this up and I can go and meet him.” Jin nods.

“Okay, I’ll text him to come down soon. See you again tomorrow,” he says, walking away.

“See ya!”

Okay, anywho.

This was fun. A lot of us have a special connection with these characters and don’t want to see them go. Some want to see Rina and JK get married, I mean, we have all been anticipating it since the beginning right? Some want Sarang and Hobi to finally have a baby. And some just want to see the kids grow up.

Because, well…

Life Goes On

!note to readers!

This is in the span of a few years, not everyone’s first pic, second pic, etc. is on the same timeline (does that make sense?)

The instagram post shows a preview of their lives after the most beautiful moment in life. No, they did not all get engaged around the same exact time, nor did they all get married the same time/year, and had kids at the same time lol. It just shows that after the most beautiful moment in life they went on with their lives and got engaged, got married, had kids etc.

It could be the same year or different years. (ex. Rina and JK could of gotten married the same year Sohyun and Yoongi got engaged and around that time, Sarang and Hobi got pregnant.)

No years or dates were specified in this epilogue.

Also, the OCs instagram profiles are in the order of the AU’s release, not the dates of when the events of their lives happened!

☻☻☻☻☻☻☻

the most beautiful moment in life

☻ epilogue ☻

pairings: BTS x OCs (yoongi x sohyun, hoseok x sarang, namjoon x byul, jimin x yuna, taehyung x bora, jungkook x rina, seokjin x mae)

a/n: now this wraps it up! i felt like i said everything i needed to say already up there. but here’s a bit more. this au is so so so dear to my heart. never have i ever thought it would make it this far. nor did i ever think that i would have this many people reading it! i have made so many friends from this series. you all have a special place in my heart! thank you to everyone who followed along since the very beginning, and even the ones whom just found out about us in the last member’s au. i didn’t think i’d be so attached to these characters, so just like a lot of you.. i want a part two. so with that being said, the most beautiful moment in life goes on. let this be a “part two” to the series, although it will be completely different in terms of format (???) i’ll have an official post on it later this week! until then, this isn’t good bye :)

taglist: @ramyagovindraj @sope-and-shine @jayhope88 @casspirit0705 @mygooie0 @fan-ati--c @spacxmann @princessjazzyjazz @sugaaddiction @ephyra1230 @starlitemotions @alittlestudycorner @justinetingball @somewhereofftheglobe @ygbubs @salty-for-suga @momma-said-that-it-was-oke @mikrokosmicjoon @taekookcaneatme @betysotelo18 [photos found via instagram and pinterest (mostly pinterest, so most of the pictures are unknown) here are the baby’s instagram:

jin: wooju_mom

namjoon: 2ah.in

yoongi: kimibbong1317

hoseok: nayun_mom

jimin: p_aiou

taehyung: no instagram, found on pinterest (jhanuul)

jungkook: tokki.daram]

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rantrambles · 3 years

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Ever get so upset you make a Tumblr account to vent?

I haven’t even listened to The Penumbra Podcast yet but it’s on my list because it’s insanely popular and the cosplays I’ve seen are hot as hell (A+ to all the cosplayers I’ve seen you’ve done great work). Now, with the recent news surrounding the podcast, I’ll wait till it’s done if I ever do get into it. I’m Asian and part of the LGBT community but I’m not nonbinary so I can’t say much about the trans represention in the art but I wanted to add my two cents on the matter as a person of color and someone examining the situation from the outside. Also, before I get deeply into it, I’m not the only person of color with opinions on this matter so if people have their own frustrations and criticism with the racism in The Penumbra Podcast and/or the new artist they hired, definitely listen to them too. These are my own personal opinions, and I’m sure other people will disagree and that’s fine. We’re all going to have different views on this so bear that in mind. Also, feel free to correct me or add anything if I’ve missed some information. Here’s a great breakdown of the whole situation for those that don’t know what happened. Finally, I was very hesitant to post this, but I felt it was important because I make a statement at the end on how race should be presented in a podcast format so if you are interested in making a podcast and want to have a diverse range of characters, please skip to the end to read those thoughts.

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not even that upset with the new artist that The Penumbra Podcast hired. I know that statement alone is controversial but I don't personally know them, and I’m not going to judge who they are as a person by a few pieces of art they’ve made. They are the least of the problems that I have here. Since the announcement and the backlash, I’ve been scrolling through the artist’s Instagram account and I can tell why people find the designs offensive, but I’m also comparing the designs to the artist’s other work, and I honestly believe that’s just their style. They’ve exaggerated the features of just about every character they’ve made, regardless of race or gender. From what I’ve seen the sharp angles and overly round curves in the anatomy that make some of the character’s features more jarring are how they prefer to draw. I’m sure they’re capable of drawing more realistic proportions but for the most part they’re art aims to call attention, be bold, and create distinguished features. Not inherently a bad thing on its own.

And yeah I’d understand the issue if this were a scenario where the artist heard how these characters acted in the podcast and thought “hey, obviously this character is a black woman because they are super strong and therefore must have big muscles, no other woman could look like that” or “hey, this character has to be Asian because they act super seductive sometimes better draw them as such.” But from my understanding the race was already decided by previous official artists and a general description of the characters were already generated by the audience, similar to how The Magnus Archives leaned towards drawing scrawny Jon with black, greying hair and dark skin. The new artists couldn’t really change those features even if those features aren’t described in canon because a depiction that strayed too far from popular fandom interpretation would make the character’s unrecognizable to the fanbase.

I think the reason this became such a big issue for most people is because the new Penumbra artist used their exaggerated art style when making these characters and people of color and nonbinary folks already see themselves drawn as these exaggerated caricatures all the time (with those images being used to further discriminate against them). I’m sure the artist didn’t mean for their art to be offensive, but that of course doesn’t change how it was received.

According to some, the poses and expressions the artists chose did not fully represent the characters entirely and only served to further perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and I��ll have to take their word for it because I still haven’t listened to the podcast so I have no idea how the characters act. But again much of the criticism is based on the one line-up and doing a deeper dive into the artist’s work I managed to find artwork that was much less offensive. Here some art where Vespa is depicted in a non-violent pose and one where Vespa is in a threatening pose but not an overly violent one. Here is Peter drawn in a non-seductive pose. Hopefully, the artist truly does keep the criticisms in mind as they work on the new official art. I’m just not the type of person that wants to get the pitchforks out and cause this particular person to lose a job they seemed really excited about over their old character line-up, especially when that person is also part of a marginalized group.

Again, that’s just my opinion on that particular artist. Those who are offended by their art are still valid in how they feel, and the artist should absolutely take their criticism to heart to better how they represent the characters.

What I’m more upset about is that I think The Penumbra Podcast should never have released official art for their characters in the first place and that’s their mistake that they refuse to own up about. They have made it clear that the story was never meant to portray characters of colors, a fact emphasized by the fact they hired mostly white actors from the start. They only started releasing art of the characters to get a profit. And the thing is they know what they did was wrong. All I had to do was search Penumbra Podcast racism and there is a note on their website saying that they archived some old official art.

“We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.”

I went to their shop and they still sell posters and pins with the character’s faces on them, but they are donating it to a good cause so hopefully that stays the same. However, I still find it a little uncomfortable that they are still selling character merch and have plans to continue selling character merch. They have no right to dissuade the fans that already found representation in the characters, but they also have no right to profit off the representation that was built, regardless if they made the story.

Let’s compare this to another piece of popular media. I love Avatar the Last Airbender and, I liked the ATLA voice actors just fine but there should have been more people of color doing voice acting behind the screen too. The voice actors for that show were mainly white too, however, the creators knew that they would be making poc characters. That’s what makes the difference. Did they still choose to go with mostly white voice actors? Yes. Could they have done better and pay more people of color? Also yes. But I’m not as furious at them because they did their research on the cultures they were basing the ATLA world off of and intentionally gave us a show where Asians could see characters that looked like them represented on the screen. The Penumbra Podcast did not do any of that. Again, they openly admitted that it was never their intention to make the character’s people of color when they made the podcast so that goes to show no research was made to properly represent specific cultures. The color of the character’s skin in their official designs therefore became more of aesthetic choice rather than representation, and it wasn’t even their aesthetic choice to begin with!

Race isn’t a color you can just throw onto the character because you feel like it. So I want this to be a lesson to anyone that wants to make a podcast: if you want to include poc characters please do some research into the cultures you plan to represent the way you would with any other form of media. Just because the audience can’t see the characters and just because it’s harder to smoothly introduce the character’s appearance doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be lazy on how you present the characters. Do research before you start writing the first episode and take the time to hire poc actors. Hiring poc actors is actually the least that can be done to show representation. Also, since the audience cannot visually see the race of the characters on a podcast and it can’t typically be described the way you would in a book, you’ll have to be creative. It’s not my job to say how, but my suggestions would be, before the fans come up with their own image of the character, you need to establish race in the first few episodes or release character profiles on a website so that the fans know you canonically intended the characters to be of a certain race even if you aren’t able to mention it in the actual podcast. If you are unwilling to do any of these then the best route is to avoid stating race at all and allow the audience to build their own representation into your form of media. However, once this happens, you are not allowed to profit off popular fan interpretations. You lose all rights to create official art or images of the characters. You cannot use “we have a diverse cast of characters” when you market your story. It doesn’t matter whether you created the content or not, you did not create the representation for those minority groups.

It’s one thing for fans to build their own inclusivity into a form of art like a podcast, but it’s another thing for the creators who never worked to make the representation happen to take advantage of the representation that the listeners built for themselves. Thank you for attending my TedTalk.

#the penumbra podcast #podcast #race #the magnus archives #diversity in podcasts #diversity #tpp #tpp fanart

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junko-and-riri-domain · 3 years

Text

push and pulls | ot7

↬ ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: ot7 x reader ↬ ɢᴇɴʀᴇ: fluff | requested | headcannon (paragraph form) ↬ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: none ↬ ʀᴇQᴜᴇꜱᴛᴇᴅ ʙʏ: anon ↬ ʀᴇQᴜᴇꜱᴛ ᴡᴀs: “cat and dog relationship with classmate!enhypen ? hehe headcannon or any format that you're comfy with :3 they could be highschool sweethearts in the end too 😭” ↬ ᴀ/ɴ:

i tried i'm sorry if this sucks 🤧

jake and jay’s are are like semi-suggestive (i think?) imma just say that they are semi-suggestive to be safe

i aint gonna lie i’m a sucker for Jay cooking 😪

jake & hoon’s are kinda short bc it’s like 1 am rn

Heeseung

Heeseung has always been good at everything no matter what it is. It isn’t to discredit any of his effort whatsoever, but as the school year continues everyone knows that things are just natural for Heeseung. Ever since your freshman year of high school, you’ve seen him as your main competition for 1st place in school. The problem? This man isn’t even aware of it. To you, he just breathes and wins the competitions, gets all the attention, and is at the top of everything. To him, it’s the only way you’ll even notice him. The competitions? It gives him a chance to stay after school to be with you. The attention? He’s only focused on yours. Him at the top of everything? Well, that one’s just because he’s Lee Heeseung. It’s after school one day and the both of you have stayed to help clean up the classes for extra credit. Like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances, his eyes drift to you whenever you don’t notice. Except for this one time.

“Stop looking at me!” you say, your eyes glaring at him. He’s taken aback as he never meant to offend you.

“Sorry,” he said, thinking that you’d just leave it at that. But instead,

“I know you’re fricking judging me Lee Heeseung.”

“What?”

“I can feel it in your eyes. I’ll always be second to you and I get it, you don’t need to rub it in, so just stop!” You throw the rag at the window, walking out of the classroom and he’s left alone wondering what the hell just happened. And suddenly the gap between first place and second begins to grow. To him, staying after school to study for competitions are no longer fun when you won’t even tell him to be quiet when he starts to sing. Your attention is gone just like his sanity. Being at the top never felt so lonely when you weren’t next to him. To you, staying after school becomes something you dread because of the silence in the room that you caused. Your attention seems as if it’s on everything but him but every day you have a hundred thoughts and all of them are infected with him. The two of you enter yet another school competition, making it to the top 3. Yet, unlike previous times, neither of you is in first place.

“In first place, we have Sim Jaeyun!” the announcer says. You and Heeseung look at each other in shock that the other wasn’t on the podium. Yet, you couldn’t care less. Because not getting first place causes you to go off on a rant that Heeseung joins in on. Staying after school turns into study partners at the nearby cafe which becomes study dates. Both of your attention is openly on the other. And while you’re both at the top academically, you become the couple goals everyone wishes they could achieve.

“ace of my heart 💞” you caption an Instagram post of a picture of Heeseung.

rest of the boys under the cut!

Jay

Culinary class is peaceful for Jay. He has control of everything, knows where the ingredients and cooking tools are, can do something he loves, and did we mention control of everything? As a chef, he learned what you were like the first few weeks of class. You were messy with apple peels next to the lime squeezer, engaging in a way of cooking that you defined as “organized chaos.” You didn’t use measurements, cooked things by eye, and used whatever seasonings felt right. It wasn’t that you were bad at cooking, he actually enjoyed your dishes. But your process was just something he couldn’t stand. And maybe he doesn’t really like you since you accidentally used the last of his honey when making cupcakes but that’s a story for another day. The culinary teacher decided to try something new to promote teamwork and for a week, the class would be in partners and cooking a dish new to both people. And who did Jay just have to end up with? You. As the two of you read the recipe for your first dish which was a dessert of sorts,

“What do you wanna use first, jackfruit or durian?” he asked. You looked up at him, a teasing smile on your lips,

“Durian, because it looks like you,” you said before making your way to the table where all the ingredients were.

“Inner peace,” he muttered to himself as he watched you walk off. The next day, you were making peach tarts.

“Yah, Jay, look here,” you said as you held up your phone and the peach. In the photo you took, the peach was next to Jay’s face, sort of comparing the two.

“Why’d you take a picture of me?” he asked. He didn’t really mind photos, knowing full well how good he looked but you taking one of him came completely out of the blue. As you glanced up from your phone after hitting post, you were unable to stop your laugh,

“Your hair looks like a peach,” you said with a wink as you went back to cutting the ingredients.

“Do I just, do I just look like food now?” he muttered to himself with a huff.

“I mean… I wouldn’t mind eating you,” you teased. You were smooth, he’d give you that. But, damn, he wanted to make you feel the way you were making him feel right now.

It didn’t take long for you to learn that Jay’s way of teasing made you flustered as hell. If you’d ask him to hand you something, he’d hold it above your head forcing you to have to jump up. It just so happened that he did this once right in front of someone else’s station and as you jumped, you almost knocked into them which led to his arm around you,

“Watch where you’re going,” he warned with a teasing edge as he handed you the carrots.

When you handed him something, he’d take it in a way that his hand held yours for a second but that second was enough. As the two of you cooked together, you entered your own world with no one else but the other in it. He was patient with your organized chaos, his own habits finding a place alongside your cooking routine. For the last day of working as partners, you two were to bake cookies. You put in a pinch of salt then some sugar when suddenly,

“YAH!” you hear from next to you. Met with Jay’s wide eyes as he looked in the bowl where you put the salt and sugar,

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

“I told you to taste the salt and sugar before you used it.”

“The first one tasted like salt so I put more of the second one.” He took a pinch of the sugar already in the mixing bowl then tasted it, a disgusted look appearing on his face”

“You put salt then more salt, good job y/n.”

“Huh?” He took another pinch then brought it up to your lips and as you tasted it,

“Why the hell is there two kinds of salt here!”

“One’s fine, the other’s coarse. I wanted to eat these y’know.”

“Fine, head over to my place after school and we can make cookies together.”

“That’s not funny. You can’t mess with cookies,” he muttered.

“Who said I was joking? We can even drizzle honey over it.”

Jake

Perfection doesn’t even begin to describe Sim Jaeyun. A gentleman, kind, smart, has an accent that you can’t help but sometimes tease him about, and obsessed with Layla were all things you couldn’t fault him for. But sometimes, just sometimes, he could be a little too nice. You couldn’t help but feel jealous at the sight of the girl chatting with Jake by the benches and her feeling his arm up.

“Geez, tell her to go away!” you wanted to say to him as you started walking towards them.

“Hey,” Jake said with a smile as his eyes landed on you. The same smile he smiled at her with.

“Are you ready to go?” you asked, trying not to sound pissed but couldn’t help yourself.

“Yeah hold up.” Jake looked at the girl, “Just text if you need help with anything else on the homework,” he said before walking off with you.

“Who was that?” you asked as the two of you made your way to the cafeteria.

“New girl, needs help with physics so she asked me for help.” Jake was supposed to help you with physics.

“You gonna help her on Tuesdays?” you asked, referring to the day Jake always helped you. If he did notice your jealousy, he didn’t say anything about it. Oh, but he did notice. And he kind of wanted to edge it on to see how far things would go.

“Should I? She can hangout with me and Layla.”

“See if she likes me better than Layla.”

“Might take you up on the offer, watch your words, y/n,” he said with a chuckle.

“Yeah? You introduce her to Layla and I’ll divorce you then take full custody.”

“I didn’t know we were married, don’t we gotta go out on a date first?”

“I don’t know, do we?”

“Let’s do it right now then.”

“Fine! Wait what-?”

Sunghoon

On the ice, you and Sunghoon went together like sugar and tea. Off the ice, you two were like the coarse salt that ruined the cookies in Jay’s fic. You and Sunghoon skated well together, putting on a performance that typically got you first place, but that’s exactly what it was. A performance. An act. Nothing more, nothing less. Neither of you talked when you saw each other after practice the next day at school. Neither of you actively told anyone that you knew each other more than most couples did. But there was just something about talking to Sunghoon outside of ice skating, acknowledging that there you had an ice skating persona as well as the persona you showed to everyone else, that frightened you. So both of you made an unspoken agreement that you’d keep your ice skater lives in the rink and outside of it. Except for right now where the transfer student who coincidentally just so happened to be an ice skater and was wondering if you’d be his partner for the upcoming showcase.

“Y/n already has a partner,” Sunghoon said, cutting in as he stood next to you. The transfer student’s eyes settled on Sunghoon,

“You’re Park Sunghoon, the guy who-”

“Almost made it into the Olympics? Yeah. And y/n and I are gonna do it together this year.” You weren’t quite sure how to feel about Sunghoon suddenly “claiming” you (not in a toxic way whatsoever, we don’t condone that here). But you did know that this meant Sunghoon knew of your existence outside of the rink.

“Says who?” you said, trying to see how this would go. He looked at you, fear flashing in his eyes at the thought of the two of you not doing this together.

“I thought, I thought we were? Are we not? We have our outfits planned and everything.”

“I mean… plans change, Hoon.” That nickname, the one only you were allowed to use for him.

“Do you not wanna do it together?”

“I’m just gonna… go,” the transfer student said.

“I do wanna do it together.”

“So then what’s the problem?”

“We kinda don’t have a relationship outside of the rink, Hoon.”

“We can make one, then. Right now.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

Sunoo

You’ve always held a level of jealousy towards Sunoo. Sunoo has always been the guy who’s everyone’s friend even if he’s popular, the type of guy who waves at everyone, greets them with a smile on their face, and gets people to attend class/school events. Whereas you’re more on the introverted side, not really liking people. When it’s lunchtime, you tend to eat alone not really giving a damn about everyone else. You’re not exactly an outcast, just more comfortable by yourself. You’ve always been jealous of how Sunoo’s open to people, talkative, and just overall likable. Because unlike him, people think you’re being mean when you’re quiet and it looks like you’re not listening to whatever it is they’re saying. Around school, Sunoo has earned the nickname Sunny while you’ve been given the nickname Winter. Everyone sees how you walk away whenever Sunoo waves at you in the halls. Everyone is aware of how you scoff whenever Sunoo does aegyo in front of you. Everyone notices how you get mad whenever he links his arm with yours. But it’s Sunoo who sees the glint in your eyes the second they meet his by your locker. It’s Sunoo who notices the slight smile that plays at the corner of your lips whenever he calls himself “ddeonu.” And it’s Sunoo who’s aware that no matter how much you protest when your arms link, you’re never the one to let go first. So he sits at the desk in front of yours during lunch, chatting his butt off about his day while stealing bites of your lunch. He gives you face masks with the excuse of “it was a buy one get one free deal and I don’t know who else to give it to.” He asks if he can style your hair playing it off as “practice.” Little by little, you begin to open up. When you see him in the halls, you start to give him a smile reserved only for him. When he does aegyo you tease him by saying that Jake does it better. And when he links his arms with yours, your pinkies intertwine. You bring an extra bag of chips for lunch and start making your portions larger to share with him. You invite him to the mall since you saw an online promo while walking by. You start to enjoy the way he plays with your hair, sometimes even craving his touch. Because we all know, the sun has its way of melting ice.

Jungwon

Yang Jungwon, the class president, has a 100% success rate in getting field trip forms submitted on time. Well, it would be 100% if it weren’t for you. It seems as if you’ve made it your life’s mission to do everything and anything that’ll piss off Jungwon. Every time there’s a permission slip that needs to get signed, he constantly finds himself having to remind you of it so that it’d get turned in on time. Yet despite this, you always turn it in a day later. When things are kind of slow in class, you’re always talking to someone and have earned the title of the chatty kid no matter where the teacher makes you sit. Jungwon has no clue how someone as big of a procrastinator as you, always chatting with people when you don’t need to, and has your music playing so loud that everyone else hears, gets the good grades that you do. But regardless of what you do, you don’t bring down the class average so he’ll give you that. It’s time for a new seating arrangement and where does the teacher have you sit? Right next to him. So he’s dreading it, knowing that for the next 2 weeks he won’t get any work done, have to deal with you chatting to everyone, and has to be the one to catch you up when you enter class late.

“Hey,” you say with a smile as you settle in the seat next to his. He likes your smile, he won’t lie. But you’re annoying as hell. One week goes by as a back and forth of you constantly making efforts to get on Jungwon’s nerves but he returns the favor while teasing you back. With the two of you as partners, he starts to notice some things about you. Things like how you play with your thumb before raising your hand to answer the question. He sees that your notes are full of rushed scribbles and you dot your i’s close to the center but not just there. Your binder is covered with artwork of things you like and photos of you and your friends. Amidst your chattiness and tardiness, he finds himself looking forwards to certain things. He looks forward to your messy hair as you rush in 15 minutes late and start scribbling your notes in an effort to catch up. He looks forwards to how your conversations become a distraction from lectures. And he wonders to himself, what it’d be like if he were a photo in your binder.

As the second week continues, you start to see things differently with Jungwon. His reminders become less annoying and more useful as you take it in mind. When you’re late, he already has a second copy of the notes waiting for you on your desk. He buys you stickers for your binder using the excuse of “I stole it from my sister.” Before either of you realize it, it’s time for a new seating chart.

“Guess you’re happy to get rid of me, Wonie,” you joke as the two of you stood up to head to your new seats.

“I want you to sit across from me,” you hear him say.

“Huh?”

“At the Eggy Cafe on our first date,” he says before heading to his new seat.

Ni-ki

Dance class, it’s exhausting. Countless hours spent practicing a choreography that only lasts for a few minutes. Constantly getting yelled at by your teacher when you take a wrong step. Continuously in an unspoken competition with the best dancer of the school, Nishimura Riki. Ni-ki fools around during practices, usually to get on your nerves. Whenever you buy bungeoppang at the stall in front of the school, half of it instantly belongs to Ni-ki as he takes a bite when you’re not looking. Whenever the two of you are the only ones who’ve got the choreography down, sometimes you’ll slow things down to piss him off. There’s a flow to Ni-kis dances that no one else can replicate, a flow he was born with and can never be taught. Everyone, including him, is aware of this. But you’ve always been different from everyone else. All his life, he’s been told how good at dancing he is but you criticize him. While the others applaud his performance, your eyes are watching his every move. He almost hates how well you can spot the mistakes he can’t even see on himself. But as time goes on, these little competitions start to develop between you two, even outside of dance. When dance class ends, the two of you race to see who’ll get to the bungeoppang stall first. Last one there pays for bungeoppang. This is the competition you let Ni-ki win, using “I’m already tired from dancing” as an excuse. In the mornings, you compete to get to first period. Loser pays for lunch. This is the competition where there’s a middle ground between you two. Sometimes you win, sometimes he wins, other times you enter class together. When walking home, you compete to get to the bottom of the stairs at the subway station first. Whoever loses has to carry the other’s bag until you get home. Ni-ki lets you win this one, using “If I ran any faster I’d trip,” as an excuse. These small competitions become the things you look forward to throughout the week, enjoying the thrill of small moments with Ni-ki. At one point, the two of you (on separate occasions) talked to Jungwon about the competitions, telling your side. To the both of you, he says the same thing. “Why don’t you see who asks the other out first and plans the better date?”

❦ written by riri (@enhykkul) | blog masterlist

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