#i had another text post in mind but i fear it would be too controversial with the state of the society rn.....

[eightyones]

#Oscar piastri #i had another text post in mind but i fear it would be too controversial with the state of the society rn..... #81.gifs

[heyidkyay]

And I'm petrified of being alone, now |

Part Twenty-Three

Matty Healy x reader

Summary: She’s just trying to get by, really. What with being a single parent to her four year old son whilst simultaneously trying to kick start a successful career as a radio presenter. She’s got everything she’s ever wanted though, friends close by, a mum who’s merely a phone call away, and of course her baby boy. What else is there to wish for? But then, it’s not long before her relatively normal life gets upended and turned on its head, and she’s suddenly forced to deal with situations she’s never even thought to imagine.

What happens when one mention of a certain controversial singer on her show sends a flood of unexpected challenges her way? 

Authors Note: Another update this week?? I'm as shocked as anyone else, but hopefully this one will make up a little for the last! It's longer and a little less, um, idk, I can't say emotional?? because that would be a lie:/ Still, there are some developments! Also, it'll make sense a lot later but the 2nd image and the use of a Ride song are used in this one!

Hope you enjoy! Also thank you for all the love on this current series, it means a whole lot and keeps me writing xx

Warnings: similar to that of the last post! so pls look back there if you'd like to know!:)

> Last update: look back here if you'd like!

Masterlist

“I said no.”

Stressed was a feeling beyond words at this point. The past couple of days all I’d had was press hounding at me, calling and texting, emailing at all hours of the fucking day. They wouldn’t let up, even after I’d stayed silent. Adi reckoned it was mostly down to Teddy’s involvement in the whole thing. I didn’t want to think much more about it, although I knew she wasn’t wrong.

“Give me a reason at least?"

I shot a scathing glare over my shoulder before turning back to the filing system I’d taken to reorganising. It was my first morning back at the studio since... yeah, well Finn had Teddy- another factor to my current load of stress- whilst Adi was off doing something or other. I hadn’t asked, fearful of putting more of a strain on her current friendship- relationship??- with Ross, so instead I’d just chosen to tidy and rearrange the entire setup we had going on here. Because that was perfectly normal. And not a fucking way to evade talking or thinking about the mess that was my life. Okay?

“I don’t need a fucking reason, I just don’t want to.” I retorted, hissing slightly when I suddenly cut my thumb on the edge of a document. I withdrew my hand quickly and raised it towards my mouth, letting my eyes slip close for a moment when I heard a footfall step closer.

“Let me see.” Jamie sighed, probably thinking I’d done something worse to my hand than just a papercut. To be fair, the cabinet was old. One of them filing types from the ninety’s that we’d gotten for a score down at some boot sale, so I wouldn't be surprised if one of us did eventually end up losing an arm.

I shook my head and pushed the cabinet drawer closed, “It’s fine, just a papercut.”

Jamie huffed an amused chuckle before settling down on the edge of the desk nearby. It was Adi’s, you could tell from the sheer amount of shit she had accumulating it.

“One thing after another with you.”

My head tilted towards him with a deadened expression, “Ha ha.”

The older man raised his hands up in a mocking surrender, showing he hadn’t meant any real harm. “Too soon?”

I kicked at the toe of the leather boots he wore in retort as I moved towards the kitchenette, aware that he was just trying to lighten my horrendous mood but not really in the right mind for it. 

“You want a brew?” I asked, not bothering to give him an honest reply to that question of his. Too soon? Yes, that was all too fucking true.

“Have a coffee if there’s one going.”

I dipped my head in a slight nod, filling the kettle and setting it to boil before snagging the coffee often reserved for guests on the show from a shelf nearby.

Jamie moved to better face me on Adi’s desk as I did so, wearing that same expression he’d turned up in, all concerned and weary. It bothered me a bit, seeing as though it was all I had garnered since the press had had their field day with my life, but I could also understand why. They all just seemed to feel for the idiot stupid enough to fall into another of Matty Healy’s traps.

“Stop.”

“Stop what?” He wondered around a light chortle at my demand, hands falling to rest between his thighs.

I gestured towards his face whilst I poured a splash of milk into my mug, “Looking at me like that, like I’m gonna break or something.”

With a sigh, he pressed his lips together. “You know it’s not like that.” I rolled my eyes in return but he just bounded on, “You know it’s not, I just care is all.”

I forced out a breathless chuckle, “That why you’re here trying to get me to hear him out then?”

To be fair to him, Jamie had come right out with it when he’d first popped by, having messaged me asking after my whereabouts earlier this morning. I’d told him, having spoken to him quite a bit over the last couple days, and then found him on the doorstep. 

Jamie had been good with everything. He’d let me vent, rally against one of his friends and clients, question his own motives- and hadn’t even complained one bit. But now he was here asking me to give Matty a chance, a lot like he’d done that first time around in that small cafe all those months ago.

“I know you’re angry, you have every right to be.”

“Of course I’m fucking angry!” I immediately shot back at him, the rattle of the teaspoon ringing out as I dropped it into a mug, “I wouldn’t care if it had just been me he’d gone and fucked over! But he brought Teddy into this shit, Jamie. My son! So tell me, how am I supposed to hear him out after he’s done something like that and then lied about it? For weeks, mind you.”

Jamie looked back at me, wearing that ‘this meant business’ mug of his. I slumped at the sight, pressing my knee against one of the lower cabinets to continue stirring the drinks. I didn’t care, I didn’t care, I didn’t care.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Mouse.”

My eyes slipped closed at his words and I took a second to just breathe. Because I wasn’t angry, not really. I was hurt and humiliated, and just so fucking sad. Fed up with it all, if I was being honest. Enough so that I knew that Jamie was being truthful here- and not just because it was a fact that I hadn’t spoken to Matty since things had fallen apart, but also because I hadn’t had the heart to ask Teddy about things yet. Or if ever.

The kid was four. Four, and asking after a man every night before he fell asleep and then as soon as he opened his eyes the next morning.

He knew something was up, he was smart like that. But what was I meant to do- to say? When I was just as confused as he was.

I’d ended up leaving him with Finn today, having had no other choice in the situation because the nursery was closed for an inset day, or some shite like that, and it seemed I had no other friends than the few around me. 

Could quite literally count the lot of them on one hand. 

But still, Finn and I’s relationship had still been rather rocky after that whole incident with him and Matty, and hadn’t improved since. In fact, he’d been a little unbearable about everything, always one to toot his own horn whenever he was right about something. But it was always slyly and I couldn’t help but feel as though it was a constant dig, like even when he wasn’t commenting on it he was still thinking it whenever he looked at me.

Which felt so horrible to think, let alone say out loud. He was my best friend. So I’d kept my mouth shut and just dealt with it, like I did everything else in life.

“He’s messed up about it.” Jamie then spoke, his voice having startled me a tad, breaking me out of my musings. He was watching me again, only when he did it, it didn’t feel as condescending as everyone else's. Like he understood my position. And I guessed that he probably sort of did.

“I bet.” I scoffed quietly, an airy titter escaping through my nose, and then I turned to toss my teabag away.

“It’s true.” Jamie shrugged, then nodded in thanks when I pushed a coffee his way. “He’s been ‘round Ross’s ever since shit hit the fan, hasn’t left the flat. Driving the lot of us mad, but he’s torn up, Mouse.”

Tongue in cheek, I wrapped my hands around my cup and propped my hip up against the counter, staring into the still swirling liquid. “Serves him right, I guess.” I replied with a soft shrug of my own, though we both knew I didn’t quite mean it.

Jamie looked over towards one of the windows to the right, most of them were either way too long or too tiny for the space, an odd build, but this particular one gave way to the skyline lying over the remainder of the city. I often wondered what the lower levels might look out at, thinking it was probably the majority of the surrounding buildings, and couldn’t help but feel a little thankful that we’d managed to snag this unit.

When he glanced back over at me, I took a sip and let him speak.

“A lot went on, that much I know, and it’s your choice how you deal with it. But, I saw the two of you. I saw him change. Which is stupid to say, I know, but it doesn’t stop it from being true. He was different with you, he actually tried in other aspects of his life and not just with the band and the music. He looked genuinely happy.” He smiled softly at the eye roll I gave, but it didn’t appear to deter him. “Don’t get me wrong, I know you didn’t fucking cure him. Don’t work like that, does it? But you helped. You and Teddy both.”

I looked away then, back towards the window, unable to really help it, and instead allowed my eyes to trail over the clouds which powdered the dusty blue sky. 

“It was different. Things were different, and I know that there was love there. There couldn’t not have been. The way he looked at you…” Jamie shook his head ever so slightly as he breathed out, unaware of just how deeply his words had cut. But then he peered over at me and I found myself already looking back, air caught somewhere in the swell of my lungs. 

“Don’t.” I choked out, the grip on my mug having tightened tenfold. “Just,” I shook my head.

Jamie put his coffee down on the desk and moved to stand, hands raised to convey he wasn't a threat. “I’m not saying this to hurt you more, love. Just telling you how I saw it.”

I licked at my lower lip, casting my eyes downwards. Our silence stretched and all could be heard was the odd car horn and chirp from beyond the walls of the studio, until-

“Anyone here?”

I blinked back the tears which had started to well in my eyes and sniffed, head shooting up just in time to spot a familiar giant ducking their head under the beam of the doorway, limbs following right after.

George entered but then stopped short when he spotted his manager stood by me, and I laughed to myself at the way the pair of them seemed to eye one another, before stepping in, “Didn’t hear you ring the buzzer.”

Kind eyes darted over to find my soft smile then, welcoming him in, and so George finally moved in closer, laying the jacket he wore to rest over one of the armchairs.

“Yeah, someone was just leaving and let me in.” He answered my unasked question, shrugging as he added, “Dunno whether they recognised me or if they just let anyone up.”

“Probably the second,” Jamie piped up, seemingly having broken himself from his previous bout of surprise, “This lot ‘round here don’t give much of a shit about crap like that.”

I rolled my eyes, but was glad to have a reason to smile slightly. “Or they spotted the BFG making his way over and wanted to avoid pissing him off.”

Jamie cackled whilst George just shot me a narrow-eyed look, “Hilarious. That pot just boiled?” He asked me as he wandered over. I nodded in turn and moved to grab him a cup, only faltering when he lowered my hand with his own and shook his head. “I got it.”

I dipped my head slightly, blinking before taking a step back to let him work. He made a quick go of it, rummaging around the cupboards briefly to find what he needed and only asking for the spoon I still held for some odd reason when he was near done. 

Jamie appeared to have been watching him too, a calculating glaze to his eyes, and he chose that next moment to speak up, “How you been anyway, George? Not seen much of you lately.”

Something unspoken passed between them when George glanced over at him, but I couldn’t tell what.

“Good, busy.” Was what the taller decided on, throwing Jamie a quick smile when he crossed to toss his own teabag in the bin before settling on the counter to the left of me. “You?”

It almost sounded sarcastic, not how he said it but simply because he’d asked it at all, knowing everything that had recently occurred. It must have been a right nightmare for Jamie these last few days, what with him being the band’s main man.

Jamie just laughed though, goodnaturedly, though it was apparent that he was still trying to suss out what was going on, what with George’s sudden appearance. Seeing as I’d never once mentioned him to Jamie.

See, things with George had all started after that studio session Teddy had attended, followed by my wishing him a happy birthday just before Matty had gone and done what he did best. Wrecked it all.

Teddy had become all too smitten with the drummer since he’d first been introduced to the band and their many songs and music videos. He enjoyed the guitar he’d been gifted an awful lot, often playing with it and practising, but each time any sort of song played on the tele or the radio, or even in the car, it wasn’t hard to note the way Teddy instantly mimicked George’s swift movements, pretending to drum along to whatever beat heard. 

George had messaged me on Instagram later that same day, seeing as how apparently Teddy’s appearance at the studio had stuck with him, and asked after him a little. It seemed strange worded like that, but George reckoned that Teds had a real streak of a musicality about him, even as young as he was, and wanted to see if Teddy would be up for learning some more. 

Which had been a Godsend, honestly, what with how the next couple of days had gone down. I’d given him my number via dm just before the storm had started and then the afternoon that had followed the plethora of articles he’d called.

He’d asked how I was at first, almost consoling me in that easy way of his, so full of little words, which had been all too refreshing in truth.

I’d had texts and calls off of practically everyone I knew, even Ronan, the utter prick. And none had managed to soothe me quite like George’s had, seeing as the man had been there too. Not quite in my position, sure, but near enough. He’d even let a little of it slip when he’d popped on over that same day, bringing a bag of takeaway and a roll up drum mat as a gift for Teddy, who had been cooped up with me on the sofa for most of the afternoon. 

The two of them had bonded over it rather quickly, Teddy having been caught off guard by George’s sincerity almost as much as I had been. But then I'd found myself getting to know the drummer too and very much appreciating the unnecessary gesture he’d made for me, even with the pair of us not knowing one another as well as we could have.

I had no idea what was going on between him and Matty, I hadn’t had the balls to ask, but he’d mentioned he hadn’t heard much of anything from him since the night of his party, as well as the fact that his girlfriend, Charli, had been just as annoyed with everything that had gone down.

I knew he’d be stopping by at some point today, we’d made plans to get lunch once he’d heard I was back at the studio on my own, but not recording. I reckoned he was concerned and this was his way of showing it, but it was hard to tell with him most of the time seeing as he’d made it out as though I was doing him a favour here. An effort I came to find I much appreciated. 

“Work, you know how it is.” Jamie replied after a long pause. He was still standing in the same position he’d been in since George arrived, but seemed to move then, picking up what was left of his coffee and pouring what remained down the sink. “But I’d best be going, got a couple calls to make. You gonna be at the studio tomorrow?”

George hummed around his next sip, pulling away with only a dip of his chin. “Should be.”

Jamie smiled, nodding, “Good, I’ll let the rest of them know then.”

I caught George’s slight wince at that, though he didn’t protest his manager's comment. It made me wonder.

Jamie turned to me then, shucking on his jacket. I perked up, not having realised that he really was rushing to leave now. “Remember what I said, alright?”

I blinked, but then nodded. How could I forget? I wanted to ask, but instead said, “You don’t have to head out so quick.”

He sent me a reassuring grin as he flipped over the collar of his coat. “You won’t miss me much,” He then teased before roping me into a hug, “Weren’t lying when I said I had a couple calls though, so it’s best I get out of your hair whilst I still can.” 

I smiled softly at the sound of his lighthearted chuckle and nodded before following him over to the door, “Stay safe.”

Jamie rolled his eyes, all too used to my typical parting now, though amused by it all the same. “Can’t promise anything.” He retorted with a smirk, shuffling over the threshold whilst his eyes flickered back to where George still stood once more. “So, about before?”

I inhaled shakily, though Jamie didn’t seem to notice, fingering the pockets of his jacket in search of his mobile. “I’ll think about it.” I told him.

He flashed me a grin at that, pleased, then let his heel trail over to meet the top step of the metal grating. “Talk to you later then.”

I nodded and watched for a second as he descended the staircase, head bobbing down the first set before he turned and disappeared from view. Sliding back inside, I shut the door quietly behind me, taking a second to steel my nerves before facing the room again.

During that time, George had seemingly gone and made himself comfy on the settee, his mug settled on a coffee table coaster. I moved to join him after putting both mine and Jamie’s cups under the tap to rinse before just leaving them to soak.

George was fiddling with something when I sat down beside him but shuffled over a tad to allow me to get more comfortable, “So what was that about?” I questioned.

“With Jamie?” He asked and I nodded, even though I reckoned he already knew what I was on about. 

He shrugged slightly and I noted the way his finger trailed over a slip of folded paper, it was creased as though it had been played or fiddled with a dozen times too many. My brow seemed to furrow at the sight of it. 

“He tried phoning a few times but I’ve not been too keen on answering, learnt that I’ll just get dragged into the drama if I do.” George finally answered, and for some reason I felt a wad of guilt pool in my stomach upon hearing it, even though I hadn’t been the one to cause this mess.

Or maybe I was just kidding myself.

“Sorry.”

George huffed as he turned to peer over at me, elbows resting on the tops of his knees. “Nothing to be sorry for.” He told me and then gifted me a sweet smile, “None of this is on you. Just thought we were in the clear, you know?” He looked away at that and his smile dimmed into something smaller, almost sadder. “Figured I wouldn’t have to go dodging my mates calls anymore, or be roped into cleaning up everyone else’s messes.”

He reached a hand out to settle on my knee then, probably having noticed the way I was chewing on the insides of my cheek, or maybe the fact that my lip was now trembling. I’d never felt so shitty. So at fault for something I hadn’t really seen coming, nor could I prevent.

“Not your fault, remember?” He reiterated to me, squeezing my joint softly before pulling away. I sniffed before looking up at him with a tiny smile. 

“Promise I don’t usually cry this much. Just been a shitty week is all.” I told him, laughing pitifully as I toyed with the hem of the jumper I’d put on earlier that morning when I’d purposefully avoided the hoodie that had been left on my desk chair, as well as the cupboard full of clothes that didn’t belong to me.

I felt the settee dip slightly before I found him sitting right beside me, lifting an arm to wrap me up in a hug. His cheek came to rest on the side of my head and I felt my heart break that little bit more, because it reminded me that in a second, or two, I wouldn’t have that sense of protection he now offered, shielding me from the rest of the world.

“You’ve been put through the wringer.” George murmured and I had to laugh just a little bit, he laughed too, the sound of it reverberating through his chest to where my head rested. “Fucking cry if you want to, alright? No judgement here."

I spluttered a little on my next chuckle, smiling as I wiped at my eyes. George’s arm just tightened its hold by a fraction, as though he knew it would make things that little bit easier. We both sat there like that for a while, and I appreciated the fact that he was okay with a bit of quiet. That he didn’t run scared from it or try to start up an awkward conversation simply to fill it.

Silence was something I’d come to realise that George often favoured. Because sometimes that was all you really needed.

I don’t know how long we continued like that before he shuffled and pulled that same piece of paper from earlier back into view, holding the corner of it between his forefinger and thumb. I pulled away slightly, looking down at it and then back up at him with a small frown.

“What?”

George merely blinked, staring down at the paper with an odd look before he finally placed it in the hand I had resting on my thigh. My frown only deepened.

“What is it?” I asked him, finger trailing over an edge just as he had done when I’d first spotted it. When I went to unfold it from the opposing corner, he stopped me. 

Confused, I turned to raise a brow at him, only to find him already looking back at me. He bit into his lower lip and then flattened his mouth into a stern line, “I found that when I was last in the studio.”

My chest tightened for some reason, but I was still so baffled. “Okay?”

We were sitting up better now, George’s arm having slipped from my shoulders to come to rest in his lap, fingers trailing over his left hand’s rigid set of knuckles.

“I figured you should see it.” He added in his usual drawl, though his eyes flickered up from the paper to catch mine then and I realised it must've been important. He seemed wary enough to warrant it.

I went to unfold it once again, but then his hand really reached out to stop my own, “I don’t know if I should be here when you do.”

That alone made me even more curious, although there was an edge of caution that now warred at me. “Why?”

George gifted me a gentle smile, the hand that still laid over top of my own squeezing kindly. “I’ll go grab us some food, alright? If you want to open it then do, if not. I won’t mention it again.”

He moved to stand then but my hand shot out to grab at the sleeve of his arm, “George.” But I didn’t know what else to say, I knew I was fearful though.

His fingers moved to meet mine, resting there for a short moment, “It’s your choice. Just, I couldn’t keep it from you.”

I swallowed thickly as he pushed to his feet, the scuff off his heavy boots bouncing off the hardwood floors. Slowly he moved to grab his jacket, giving me time to say no, to deny his offer. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t do much of anything really.

The door shut behind him with a soft click a minute later and the quiet of the studio suddenly consumed me. When I glanced back down at the paper I held once more I saw the slight tremble of my hands. I forced myself to exhale, but even that was shaky.

I was careful as I unfolded it, listening to the rustle it made before scrawled lines that had bled through to the other side caught my attention. Pausing, I took a moment to just look at them and then thoughtlessly hurried to reveal the rest of it, taking in its full form. My throat tightened at the sight of familiar scribbles.

You had me from the start  Pulling all the stops out  On the down low, secretly  But I think you knew your psychology  Was working on me  Infatuated  And doing this all wrong  You've got  My number and my name  And you've got me going  Yeah, you've got me going  Can I see you every day?  Do you love me  Like I love you?  Ah, you've got me going  Yeah, you've got me going

(Song: Ride - Future Love)

It was as if something in me had shifted and then turned, sparking itself its very own flame on a bone too sharp and growing and growing until its singed edges burnt and blackened every part of me. 

I must've sat there staring down at it for ages. Crying silently and alone in an empty room, something I’d been avoiding doing since this had all started. Though I supposed it had been inevitable.

His words. His thoughts. Bared to me on a single page. Him none the wiser to any of it. Probably having not even realised it was gone, or missing. And George had read it. He’d seen it and still, after everything, had given them to me.

A tear dropped from my chin then, blotting the page and I could only watch on as the dark ink appeared to cling to it, seeping further and further into the paper. Smudging the ‘Do you love me’ enough so that my breath stuttered and I was suddenly moving all too quickly for my mind to catch up with my thoughtless actions.

Not even a second later my phone was in my hand. 

Messages now To: Jamie O (glasses!) When can he meet me? 

–

Matty had always had a thing for Sundays. 

There was just something about them. Not all that Godly shite that people preached about it being holy and the first day of the week, ‘cause to him Monday would always hold that title- and Monday’s fucking sucked dick. 

No, it was because there was just something peaceful that settled on Sundays, it took him back to simpler times, of days when he’d just been a kid and roast dinners were spent ‘round his nana’s house. Or when Newcastle would play on afternoons and his dad would finally be home to watch with him. 

There was just something about them, you know. He didn’t much believe in luck, typically only the bad sort. But if someone held a gun to his head and told him he had to claim a day which would forever work in his favour, it would just have to be Sunday.

Still, he was unsure on where he currently stood with that sentiment as of late. Seeing as how he was currently in the backseat of a cab, jittery hands clinging onto shaking knees whilst rows of houses, broken up by hues of green and blue, rolled on past him.

It hadn’t been a last minute thing, but it felt much like it. The anticipation was getting to him, he knew that much, sweat licking at the back of his neck whilst his shoulders worked their way up to the lobes of his ears.

Jamie had somehow managed it.

Called him up late last night just before Ross had headed off to bed to tell him that she would finally see him. Jamie’d asked if he’d be alright going alone or if they’d prefer a buffer there, but Matty had immediately declined. So he was doing it alone. Though he couldn’t help but wonder if that had been a misstep on his part, if it would have made things easier on her having someone there, or maybe just given him some semblance of relief as the car slowly drove its way over to her house. The very place he hadn’t stepped foot in since the night of George’s birthday party.

But he hadn’t earnt that reassurance. Felt wrong to bring somebody else along either way. So he was stuck, toying with his phone, hoping or praying that a text wouldn’t come through saying that she’d gone and changed her mind.

It had been just under a week since he’d last seen her. But it felt as though time had dragged out slowly, mocking him or maybe even torturing him for all of his many wrongdoings. 

He fretted over what she might say when she caught sight of him, he himself having only spotted the state he’d worked himself into when he’d been getting ready that morning.

There were heavy bags set beneath his eyes from where he hadn’t really slept and his cheeks were hollowed in that way that they used to revert to when he’d have a particularly hard weekend way back when. If the papers caught wind of him he already knew what the first articles would say, what they would so obviously claim. But he knew the truth, just hoped that she would know it too.

He was startled from his mind at the jerk of the car pulling up onto the nearest curb. His eyes widened in sudden alarm when he realised just what that meant and then caught the look of dismay that crossed the driver’s face when the bloke looked back to announce that they’d arrived. If the man didn’t already think he was on something, then now he definitely did.

Matty swallowed stupidly and then tried for a smile, struggling to undo his seatbelt with the kickstart of shaking that overtook his hands. The driver took pity on him though, turning away to fiddle with something up front that probably didn’t need fiddling with, and finally Matty’s thumb managed to catch the button.

Releasing himself from the confines of the car, he paused just before the door could slam close behind him, handing the man a couple notes in tip, if only to apologise for his edgy behaviour or buy himself a little more time if the driver had somehow managed to suss him out even with his hat, hood and scarf. “Cheers.” He said.

The man blinked at the onslaught of cash and then nodded repeatedly, “Yes, thank you.”

Matty exhaled shakily and then dipped his chin in another goodbye, stepping back onto the curb and watching the cab pull away before he found himself alone once more.

This was it, he supposed.

The street hadn’t changed much in a matter of days but his mind made it seem as though it had. As though suddenly he didn’t belong. The odd man out.

He shoved his hands into the confines of his pockets, pivoting on his heel to face what he’d come here to do. But nothing had prepared him for the way his stomach suddenly bottomed out at the sight of her front door.

The sound of a car horn a way away spooked him, causing him to jump, but did eventually force him forward off the curb and onto the cracked pavement. He stared down at all the dips and curves they had to offer him the entire way up the path until finally, he reached her front steps.

If anyone asked, Matty would tell them it was as though he’d been working on autopilot when he pried the silver knocker up from the wood and let it rap twice. Though that would be an utter lie. His head screamed at him the whole while and his fingers blurred before him when he’d raised them up to grasp at the chilled metal. 

He’d never felt so sick, just standing there, the seconds slowly trickling into minutes, or perhaps even hours. It honestly felt as the day was slowly growing colder the longer that he stood there, staring at a coat of familiar paint, before finally hinges creaked and the door opened, revealing a sight that would’ve surely cured sore eyes, if only it hadn’t gone and broken his heart first.

It wasn’t immediate, the effect the past couple days had had on her. It was more in the way she held herself, the sadness which clung to her every fibre, the way she wouldn’t quite look him in the eye.

She stared, caught in a standstill, and for a long moment did nothing before silently and slowly she withdrew enough to allow him through.

Matty didn’t dare utter a word, let alone breathe. Careful to avoid brushing against her or stepping on her toes as he slowly crossed over the threshold to get in, though the hands he’d hidden in his coat pockets curled into fists to keep himself steady.

The first thing he noted upon first entering was the significant state of the flat, it wasn’t messy or untidy by any means, but looked nothing at all like a house typically inhabited by a child should, or at least a monster as chaotic as he knew Teddy to be. It was almost as though Mouse had been expecting a letting agent to pass through with a couple dozen couples, what with how clean it was. He almost reckoned that if he were to crouch down right there he’d probably be able to make out the seam of his jeans in the reflection of the floors.

“You can just hang your-”

“I know.” Matty whispered, not intentionally meaning to cut her off but unable to help himself anyway. 

It hurt, feeling as though he was just a guest in a place he had practically considered home not too long ago. He coughed lightly and shrugged off his coat to do so anyway, hanging it up where he usually did, something which made him pause for a split second, wondering whether this could possibly be the last time he’d have the privilege of doing so.

“Right.” Mouse murmured somewhere behind him, snapping Matty out of his thoughts. She stepped on by him just after, eyes trained on the end of the hallway until they reached the living room, “Erm, I’m just starting on a brew. You can wait here if you want.”

He wanted to follow after her, to fall down onto his knees and fucking sob there at her feet, but he was scared he’d dirty her floors or more than likely end up looking like a total knob. He would. Fucking felt like one just from thinking it. So he did as instructed, moving towards the sofa, taking note of everything and anything the room had to offer him. 

Matty’s eyes flickered over to the kitchen doorway when he realised she’d stopped there, fiddling with her nails before she caught him looking and dropped her hands. “Just realised I didn’t ask if you wanted anything.”

God, it was so fucking strained.

He took a short breath in and attempted to smile, “Tea sounds good.” Was all that he said, and watched on as her brow wrinkled, head tilting with it.

“Uh, I still have that coffee you like. The one you brought over, if you’d prefer.” She told him and he recognised her confusion for what it was, or maybe it was just her weariness over letting him know that his stuff was still where he’d left it. Or, maybe, just fucking maybe he was reading way too much into everything.

“Tea’s good.” Matty murmured, feeling a little less tense now that he knew that she was sort of sitting in the same boat. “But thanks.”

Her chest rose and fell with her next breath and he watched her nod with difficulty at him, still not meeting his eye. “Right, just be a sec then.”

She disappeared past the door with that, whilst he simply stood and listened to the run of the tap and then the flick of the kettle, feeling stupid for having missed something he hadn’t even realised he’d taken note of before. 

But that was just typical, wasn’t it? To miss something so mundane now that it was no longer expected.

Once he heard the clink of mugs Matty allowed his gaze to roam, trailing over the bundle of neatly folded throws settled on the wicker basket by the sofa, ones he knew that if Teddy was here would still be scattered all over the floor before the tv. 

There were a couple of coasters laid out on the coffee table, though the fruit bowl had since been removed, something he knew Mouse did whenever there were only a few pieces left or none at all. There would probably be grapes or something of the sort in the fridge though.

She had a couple of receipts left out on the shelf below the mirror she’d hung up on the wall when she’d first moved in, and the picture frames beside them were still the same. Only one was missing, and he knew which. 

He noticed that the candles over by the lamp were new though, expensive if he remembered rightly because he was sure that he’d spotted them round someone else’s place recently. He wondered briefly over who could’ve gifted them to her, knowing that she much preferred her usual scents, only ever splurging on the larger Yankee Candle jars they had to offer in the local Debenhams.

He found himself smiling at the thought.

It was then that she shuffled back into the room though, stalling his observations. She carried two mugs in her hand and a small plate loaded with biscuits on her forearm. Immediately Matty moved to help her, taking the plate from her even with knowing that she had it handled.

“I could’ve managed.” She murmured, though not unkindly, and then thanked him quietly once she’d gone and placed the mugs down. 

Matty followed her lead, settling the biscuits near the edge of the coffee table, between the two coasters, before fumbling for a second over where to sit. Squeaks seemed to take to one end of the settee so Matty perched on the other, though closer to the middle crease than the arm.

“You got hobnobs?” Matty finally asked, breaking the silence again, eyes flicking over to the plate he’d just held before shooting back over to find her.

She blushed faintly at his comment, then shrugged. “You like them, don’t you?”

Matty scoffed lightly, a soft smile limning his lips, “Yeah, but you hate them. Once claimed that they were like digestives only after being shat out.”

She wrinkled her nose at that, though Matty was quite sure he could spot the mirth that flickered across her face. “Want them or not?”

Rolling his eyes in fond exasperation and knowing not to push it, he picked one up and settled in a little more comfortably into the sofa cushions.

The silence would’ve been almost unbearable if she hadn’t had the foresight to have turned the tv on low before he’d arrived. So whilst a documentary played on one of the many BBC channels, Matty struggled with himself to find the best thing to say. Though he needn’t have bothered, she was always one step ahead.

“So, I think I should start by saying that I um, I know I held a lot of expectations.” 

Almost simultaneously, Matty frowned.

She just wrung her hands together once before thinking better of it and laying them flat in her lap. Matty merely wished to reach out and take them in his own. “And I get that it must’ve been a struggle for you, to basically go from like one end of a scale and then jump right off the other side. But, I-”

“What are you on about?” Matty interrupted, unable to help himself in truth, so beyond baffled by the sudden speech she’d started. She stopped and blinked over at him, finally looking him in the eye. At last.

“What do you mean?” She retorted with a pinch between her brows, “Listen, I planned this all out, alright? So can I just get out what I want to say?”

Matty stared, then forced out a breath of air. “Squeaks,” She shuttered at the name, closing off slightly, enough so that Matty took quick note and wished he hadn’t said a thing, but yet, he still carried on. Desperate to save any blundered attempt he’d make. “Look, this weren’t on you. None of it was, okay?”

Her eyes trailed back over towards him at that, though her expression was almost unreadable. Matty struggled with that bit the most, he’d always been able to read her for the most part.

“So, this crap about expectations and me struggling with whatever idea you’ve made up in your mind is stupid.” Her eyes narrowed then and he watched her work her jaw, obviously none too happy about his retort. He withheld a heavy sigh, “I’m not- Look, I’m not trying to be difficult I’m just saying that- What I’m trying to say is, that every relationship has goals or expectations, that’s normal. But nothing you ever did forced me do what I did. That shit? It was all on me. It was me being insecure and scared, yeah? So, don’t go trying to excuse it. Because I’ve had people do that for me for far too fucking long now and hearing it come from you...” 

He sort of felt himself slump at that, a little bitter and resentful over the fact that she’d since come to think of it that way. As though his mistakes were all just down to her and her inability to do right by him. He realised though, belatedly, that if anyone else had done exactly that, or even attempted to, in any other scenario he just might have taken up the offer and ran with it. But this was her, this was Squeaks. 

She was quiet for a time, then she picked up her mug, eyes trained on the movement of it before, “What then?” 

“What?” Matty frowned once more, shuffling forward in his seat in an attempt to catch her eye again.

“Why did you do it then? Why’d you lie, why didn’t you tell me about Teddy?”

That knot he’d been feeling for weeks now. The one at the very end of his tongue, all tied and tangled in the back of his throat, suddenly shrivelled up and slackened, leaving a bitter aftertaste and a plethora of guilt behind.

Matty’s gaze wandered over to the window, to where Teddy’s guitar sat in its stand just before a heavy set of grey curtains. He withheld the urge to pick at his nails as he searched for the right words to give her, wanting so honestly to tell her the truth, to give her a play by play of what had happened in detail, as well as every thought that had gone through his mind. 

“It wasn’t what it looked like for a start.”

Mouse scoffed a little at that, and Matty couldn’t be mad at it. If he was sat on the other end of this he’d been doing more than just that, he’d be up in arms, tossing shit about and raving to all who would listen.

Still, his eyes trailed down to where his hands now laid in his lap and he pressed his thumb to his palm. “We were on the highstreet, on the way back here.” He started, voice quiet as his stare tracked the faint lines of his hand, “The guy you saw in the pictures came out of nowhere really. Me and Teds had just been at that ice cream shop a way down, I didn’t even spot him until he was there, in my face.”

Matty wet his lower lip, mouth suddenly going dry. Mouse just waited.

“Teddy was quick to hide behind me, you know? The loudmouth didn’t even really notice him until the last minute. But you have to know, all I wanted was to get him out of there. To avoid staying too long and attracting the wrong sort of attention. Okay? So I’d said I had to get going as soon as he'd spoken, told him I didn’t have time to stay and chat.” 

He took a quick breath with that, eyes still centred on the deepest groove of his palm. “But then he, then he brought up Luke. Said something about the funeral he didn't go to and wanting to celebrate his life.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Squeaks’s hands still from their previous bout of fidgeting. “But I told him I was clean. He didn’t believe me at first, which,” Matty huffed out a self-deprecating laugh, “Well, I can’t blame him for that, what with my track record.”

He heard her inhale then and looked up, it seemed as though she was going to say something but thought better. So Matty bit down on the insides of his cheeks to keep from asking before he exhaled slowly, digging a nail into that groove.

“He got a bit aggy, started calling me a toff and whatnot, because I 'spose I was just a rich boy who bought him a couple grams of coke every now and then.” He clucked his tongue thinking about it, but eventually shrugged. “Then I don’t know, he must’ve looked down or something ‘cause that’s when he,” Matty paused and his gaze shot over to her, then away again, “That’s when he spotted Teddy.”

Mouse wrinkled her mouth, then tried to nod, obviously wanting him to continue. Though she kept her eyes trained on the rim of her mug.

“That’s when he said some shit and I reacted.”

“Said what?”

Matty startled a little at the sound of her question but was hasty in his attempt to answer. “Just, he reckoned that Teddy was mine and that I had to have knocked someone up. So now they were just using me for the money.”

Her eyes slipped closed and her fingers tightened their grip on her cup.

Swallowing thickly, Matty went to continue, “I shoved him and told him to do one- that’s what they caught in those photos. I didn't take anything he offered, I didn't even look back after. Just walked away, thinking of Teddy, trying to get him out of there. The bloke, he kept on shouting, saying some crap about this and that. But I carried on walking.”

Matty was proud of that fact, even with everything that had happened since. Not too long ago, a different version of him would have handled it all too severely. It was a step, a tiny one, sure, but it was progress.

“Then what?” Mouse voiced, prompting him along with just a look.

“Then we walked home.” Matty replied, feeling that familiar cloud of shame dawn over him. “We didn’t really speak, I- I was a bit of a mess, trying to figure out what to do next, what to tell Teddy, to say to make it right again. But Teds, he,” Matty hauled in his next breath, all too fucking close to bawling, that he could admit. “He called for me and I looked down at him. All I could say was sorry, Mouse.”

She nodded tightly, the knuckles she had wrapped around her tea cup had whitened.

“He,” Matty felt the corners of his mouth lift as he remembered the bittersweet memory of Teddy trying to soothe him, “He told me it was alright, that we were okay, but I just kept on saying sorry. He said that the bloke was just a bad man, and I assured him of that. Wanting him to know that we were okay, that the guy was long gone. But then he-”

Matty stopped altogether then, a picture of Teddy's little face coming to the forefront of his mind, and Squeaks immediately took note.

“Then what?”

Her eyes were so full of emotion, but which ones he wasn’t too sure. Still, the sight tightened every muscle in his chest as he forced himself to finish what he’d started. “He said we couldn’t tell you.”

Matty knew he couldn’t have imagined the sharp inhale that sounded from her then, as though she'd just received a blow to the chest. And he so desperately wanted to reach out, to wrap her up and just fucking hold her. But he couldn't. It wasn't his place.

He watched on as she licked at her top lip though, blinking back the wetness that shone in her eyes, “Why?” Her voice cracked on the question but she did not cry.

It was a simple answer. “He didn’t want to hurt you.”

Mouse stood then, placing the cup down with some force before she hastily made her way over to the front window. Matty stayed seated, unsure if he’d be welcome near her.

“It fucking broke me, Squeaks.” He admitted after a moment, his lips now tingled with the sheer amount of effort it took for him to not let his emotions get the better of him. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You should have told me.” Was her reply, sharp and cutting, enough that it fucking wounded. Because Matty knew that she was right.

“I know.” He answered.

“You should have fucking told me, Matty!” She repeated, turning then to face him. He saw the tremble of her shoulders, the curve of her mouth and how it quaked. He stared, couldn't bring himself to look away.

“I know.”

He swallowed, throat almost aching as much as the hole that made up the majority of his chest. 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

“I don't know.” He murmured, mostly to himself.

#the 1975 #fic #matty healy #angst #radio host #reader #x reader #x you #george daniel #ross macdonald #the 1975 band #adam hann #fluff #humour #smut #matty healy fic #matty 1975 #matty healy x reader #matty x reader #matty healy x you #ao3 #fame #strangers to lovers #mum reader #kid fic #getting together #SLOWBURN #mutual pining #Warnings #aipoban

[jieanette]

A Collection of Depictions of Michael and Gabriel

I made this as a Twitter thread earlier this year. I decided to post this on Tumblr because why not? Since this format is more effective and fitting than on Twitter.

Also, I made this thread with the intense purpose to ship Michael/Gabriel

Keep in mind that some needed some speculation, and I took all of my info on Wikipedia. I did some research myself but I got lazy during it so a lot of info may be wrong or inaccurate, so please be mindful of that. 

The first time they’re mentioned at the same time is during The Book of Daniel (Daniel 10:13), where a ‘man in lenin’ told Daniel the Prince of Persia had resisted them for 21 days from delivering the message to him and that Michael had helped them. Some people speculate that this could be Gabriel because of Daniel's initial (They were introduced earlier) and current reaction to them, which is fear (or more precisely, trembling on hands and knees). But others say that it wouldn’t be them because their name are not mentioned during the passage, and that Daniel had met Gabriel before, so it’s weird for him to choose to be scared twice. 

Another thing that supports the man being Gabriel is that the man in lenin is mentioned again in The Book of Ezekiel, where they followed the orders of God to mark those who would survive the massacre of Israel. Drawing a mark can be interpreted as ‘sending a message’, and it fits considering Gabriel’s role in the New Testament is sending the news to Zechariah and Mary about the birth of John The Baptist and Jesus. 

But again, this is pure speculation. This angel may or may not be Gabriel. The reason I put this here is because this is the very first depiction where Michael and Gabriel (sort of) are mentioned together in the canon Biblical text, and possibly the only canon depiction from the canon Bible. And also I wanna be delusional and think it’s Gabriel for personal reasons anjkdhsjd

Carrying on, in Judaism, there’s a quote saying, “When a man is in need, he must pray directly to God, and neither to Michael nor to Gabriel." Michael and Gabriel are said to be the guardian angels of Israel.

In Kabbalah literature, Gabriel is portrayed as working in concert with Michael as part of God’s court.

In Eastern Orthodox, Michael and Gabriel are considered to be the guardian angels of the Church.

Within Anglicanism, there is a controversial proposal written by bishop Robert Clayton that proposes that Michael is the Logos (a title connected to the trinity) and Gabriel is the Holy Spirit. 

I actually tried to check it out myself, but it’s like, 400 pages long and I can’t be asked to read the entire thing so I just skimmed through and read the parts where Michael and Gabriel are mentioned. I could only find Gabriel being mentioned as the Holy Spirit, I’m sure that the previous pages did mention Michael as the Logos, but again, I’m too lazy to go back and practically gave up by the end of it. So it’s better to read it yourself if you’re interested.

Fun fact about this depiction by Robert Clayton is that apparently, it was so controversial that the government ordered his prosecution, but he died before his scheduled examination.  

Moving on, in Islam, Michael is often paired with Gabriel. A version of a hadith by an-Nasa’i, Muhammad is quoted saying that Michael and Gabriel came to him and sat down by his left and right side respectively. With Gabriel telling him to recite the Qu’ran in one mode, while Michael telling him to ask more until he reached seven modes. 

According to another hadith in Sahih Muslim, Michael and Gabriel accompanied him on the day of the Battle of Uhud.

In artistic depictions, the two Archangels are depicted together since the 8th century e.g the stone casket at the Notre Dame de Mortain church in France.

Though there is another artistic depiction of them, in the reproduced image of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, an icon of the Cretan school, depicts Michael on the left carrying the lance and sponge of the crucifixion of Jesus, with Gabriel being on the right side of Mary and Jesus.

Another artistic depiction is Justice Between the Archangels Michael and Gabriel by Jacobello del Fiore.

Soo that’s all for this blog. If you made it this far, thank you so much!! If you have any extra information about them, or correct or clarify any info, feel free to do so!

 It means the world to me that you’re willing to hear my ramblings. Hope you gained something from this and have a nice day!

Sources:

#megaten #megami tensei #smt #law #michael #gabriel #archangel #angel #bible #bible study #ig??? #idk what to tag here lol

[potteresque-ire]

Not sure if this has circulated before, but here’s a link to Henry Jenkin’s reactions to 227, largely as responses to an interview he did with Sanlian Lifeweek magazine (三聯生活周刊), a publication modelled after TIME magazine and published under China Press Publishing group (中國出版集團), the largest and state-owned publisher in China. The magazine asked for Jenkin’s opinions on the fandom-related aspects of 227 back in March, 2020. Henry Jenkins, as many may already know, is among the most renowned scholars of (Western) fan culture ... if not the most renowned.

Personally, I find this article to be quite limited in perspective, because 227 had a significant non-fandom-oriented, sociopolitical component ~ and hence its scope, its chaos, its damage. IMO, 227 stopped being a fan war, stopped being about solos, cpfs, and even Gg the moment AO3 was shut down ~ the powerful Chinese state had intervened, and the incident necessarily became a political incident. That One Fic on AO3, the conflict between solos and cpfs about whether and where That Fic should exist was at most a lighter left at the scene of what would become the blaze; it wasn’t even responsible for igniting the first fire. Most i-turtles (i-fruits?) are probably aware too at this point: if fan wars are sufficient to start 227, then there wouldn’t have been a 227 ~ because 227 would have been every date of the year.

Fan culture is fundamentally transgressive, and what that means can only be defined in the context of the subculture’s “mainstream” sociopolitical and cultural environment. I therefore find the article’s attempt to transplant Western fan culture’s observations / theories / analysis / conclusions to the incident without explicitly comparing, addressing in depth the differences of the pre- and post-transplant environment to be ... prone to rejections (as organs are after transplantations!)—exclusion from being useful or valid. And this article was very short on such comparisons or address. Jenkins being a fandom expert aside (and he was careful about not treading outside his area of expertise), early “antis” of 227 presented themselves as crusaders for the freedom of speech and, by late March when this article was published, the heated debates surrounding the incident on Chinese social media had already led to embarrassment for multiple powerful state publications. It was probably a wise choice to not make another dive into the political aspects of the incident.

Being a new(-ish) turtle who joined the fandom a full half-year after 227, I’ve been backtracking, trying to really understand the incident, which remains very much beyond comprehension in many aspects. The discussions I’ve dug up that have most fascinated me have been those in non-fandom spaces, by non-fandomers / politics enthusiasts who barely knew who Gg was, who didn’t know That One Fic involved more than one idol and had zero knowledge about solos vs cpfs. In these discussions, “antis” are not referred to as “antis” because while the action of the so-called “227 coalition” was to kill Gg’s career, that wasn’t considered its ultimate goal ~ its ultimate goal was to warn whoever tried to clamp down the freedom of expression that their opposition was strong enough, populous to fight back and take away whatever, whoever those who attempted the clamp-down care the most about. In this case, “Gg fans”—I put this in quotes because eventually, no one would know who would lurk behind those pro-Gg Weibo IDs (and the anti-Gg ones as well)—were the perceived enemies of creative freedom. Gg, assumed to be the one, the symbol of what “GG fans” cared about the most, naturally became the target of the coalition.

Gg wasn’t special in that sense ~ and that was perhaps, the saddest thing I found about this incident as a Gg fan (without quotation marks); Gg could be any idol who achieved top fame at the moment, who had enough fans to make the point known. The coalition was therefore not “anti-Gg” in its ideological sense. It was anti the fan circle culture that had cemented Gg’s popularity, that had already been known to deal extremely poorly with dissent—complaints had been abound that c-ent was no longer fun for bystanders because the latter could issue no critique, not even doubt, about an idol without the fear of being reported, torn down by fans. The coalition eventually grew to include anti the many happenings, the many censorships and imprisonments in the past few years that had silenced the creative crowd in China, happenings people dared not speak about beyond a loud grumbling ...

The coalition tried to take down Gg, because they couldn’t take down the force that had shut down AO3, that was truly responsible for the silencing. They played the Hunger Games in the Weibo arena instead of challenging Who The Real Enemy Was, because some might not have given much thought about  The Enemy; some might have thought the Enemy too invincible to be worth the effort; some might have got too carried away by their blood thirst, the cruel schadenfreude of shredding a beautiful, successful young man into pieces, and forgot why they were there in the first place ... 

And that was only the political side of 227. 227 was also widely suspected to have a commercial component, which added another layer to the symbolism behind Gg the Idol ~ pretty much as soon as 227 happened, netizens investigated, tried to uncover the chain of capital behind Gg. With the scent of money was the memory of filth associated with it, in a country not exactly  unknown for its corrupt business practices. Much like in The Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Idol is believed to be forged with gold; it is ungodly, tainted. Whether Gg the Person was identical to Gg the Idol, Gg the Symbol mattered to few. That Gg *was* a person seemed lost to many ... 

I’ll have to dive into the non-fandom aspects of 227 with more rigour. As much as I'd love to leave 227 behind, every time I see Gg, I see its legacy on his face, in his smile, and perhaps, I’m not the only one ~ ADLAD cast him as Patient #5 because of 227′s effect on him. Put it another way, 227 is already modifying, writing Gg’s career trajectory ~ a trajectory that is undoubtedly under scrutiny by many who wish to duplicate his success but circumvent his pain. And every time I see a young idol—Gg, Dd, and anyone else—I wonder if the hurt of 227 can happen to them (again) because the crux of the incident has never been resolved; the oppression and silencing have remained strong as ever. 

Anyway (sorry for the rant) ... what I found noteworthy about this article was the quotes the magazine highlighted in its published form (in Chinese), which weren’t highlighted by Jenkins on his own website. They reflected what the magazine would like to be the take-home messages of the interview. I’ve listed them below; all of which had Jenkins as the speaker:

[Pie Note: About Real Person Fiction (RPF) in Western fandoms]

“American fans often do have some shared norms about what is and is not appropriate to write, mostly having to do with protecting the privacy of other people in the star’s life. Writing about the star is seen as fair game; writing about their family members is not.”

---

[Pie Note: About GG being “cast” as a transgender woman in The One Fic that started the incident; gender in fandom]

“We write fan fiction as a form of speculation and exploration. For some people, it may be one of the few spaces in the culture where they can express who they are, what they are feeling, what they are desiring. And for others, it is a place of “what if” where they explore in fantasy things they would not necessarily desire in reality.” 

---

[Pie Note: Whether GG should be held responsible for his fans’ behaviour]

“Under these circumstances, I would not hold a performer responsible for his fans’ behaviors but the performer is responsible for their own behavior and fans may respond negatively to performers who over-react to the existence of alternative fantasies and insult or hector their audiences.”    

---

[Pie Note: About AO3 and why fans were so upset about its closure] “Keep in mind that AO3 is a particular kind of platform. Alongside Wikipedia, AO3 is one of the greatest accomplishments of participatory culture in the digital era.”

---

[Pie Note: About the “problematic” content on AO3]

“Among my findings were that fan fiction sites can be a valuable space for young people to acquire skills (and receive feedback) on their writing from more experienced writers who share these same passions ... That said, while teens have participated in fandom, a large part of those on AO3 are adults, engaging in adult conversations on adult topics.”

---

[Pie Note: About media text in the new media era]

“First, I would stress the proliferation of media texts at the current moment ... We have access to a much broader range of media content than ever before and in this context, fans play a constructive role in curating that content, helping some shows get greater visibility ...  Second, these texts have become more malleable”

---

[Pie Note: About idols not producing “good” media texts]

“Rather, the question should be what are fans finding meaningful about these performers and the texts they generate. I start from the premise that human beings do not engage in meaningless activities. I may not immediately recognize why something is meaningful but my job as a scholar is to understand why cultural materials are meaningful to the people who cherish them.”

---

My understanding of this selection of quotes is this: this state publication (as others) was quite ready to forgive Gg, to put this incident behind. It could choose to not publish this interview; it could choose to leave out certain quotes, or not do the highlighting that cast both AO3 and Gg in a positive / innocent light. But it did all these things. This article furthers my impression that the state never intended 227 to blow up the way it did, and that it did—enough for stories about it to be found in non-China websites, and in English—was what I’m still trying to comprehend. 227 was, admittedly, how I was first introduced to Gg beyond Wei Wuxian. And as I got to know Gg, like Gg, my want to understand 227 only becomes stronger, perhaps because only through comprehension I feel I can find peace for the GG fan (again, without quotation marks) in me.

Maybe I should email Dr Jenkins and ask if he’s looking for a PhD candidate. 5 years of research and thinking ... maybe that’s what it’ll take. 

I feel I’ve already started anyway. 

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

The 1st Billboard Hot100 #1 win Night - a Masterclass in PR

by Admin 1, with a little help from Admin 2

This might not be a topic that’ll interest many, but I think it’s a fascinating thing to look at. We all know PR is a very powerful thing, and everyone, especially someone like BTS, makes use of it all day, every day, in many different ways. I’ve always been curious about different tactics and strategies used to further certain agendas or cover certain things, or steer conversation in certain directions if another direction didn’t suit the intended course of action or conversation.

A very curious case for the implementation of an obvious PR tactic, for me, is the saga of the night in which BTS achieved their first Billboard Hot100 #1 win with Dynamite on September 1st 2020. Some may ask ‘but Admin 1, there was no PR involved, what are you on about?’ to which I say: continue reading, please, it might become clear as you do.

Contrary to what some have taken as gospel, the events of that night and who was where are not as clear as some will make you want to believe. And before I dive into things, I would like to make one thing crystal clear: I am by no means calling anyone a liar in this, and I am no members anti, nor an anti of any ship. This isn’t about shipping, at least not in the traditional sense, and it has nothing to do with my preference of ship either. Instead I want to highlight how effectively shipping/ships are used as PR tool.

Now that that’s out of the way, here we go:

The initial tweets and weverse posts:

As the events of the announcement of the BB Hot100 top 10 unfolded, ARMY and the members waiting and then celebrating, we saw posts by Namjoon, Seokjin, Yoongi, Taehyung and Jimin pop up on twitter and weverse, crying and celebrating, sharing their disbelief at what had happened. Jimin mentioned crying together with Yoongi while Seokjin mentioned Namjoon sharing the news in their BTS group chat. Further details about who was were didn’t really appears besides the mention of Jimin and Yoongi falling asleep around 7 am on the sofa together. The thing I’d like to draw attention to here, because it’ll become important later, is that none of those posts mentioned Jungkook.

The celebratory vlive:

The entirety of the vlive isn’t really all that important to this, the only thing I’d like to highlight is what Taehyung said, being this:

1st the live translation version:

How vlive editors translated it:

Regardless which version you “prefer”, it boils down to Taehyung being too lazy to go to Jimin and instead asking Jimin to come to him so they can sleep next to each other/together, and Jimin calling Tae while crying and telling him about their #1. The only drastic difference would be word choice on whether Tae meant his room or his apartment, as people argue that “my place” is ambiguous but I’d say it was meant as his room (most likely within the dorm) since otherwise it wouldn’t make sense for him to ask Jimin to come to him halfway across the city in the middle of the night. But, whether or not that interpretation is correct or not isn’t really even all that important for this masterclass in PR.

The only thing you need to keep in mind is the implications of his words: Taehyung wanted Jimin to come to him so they could sleep next to each other/together.

The press conference:

Now this is where things get very interesting and where PR comes into play. The interesting thing to note is that Jungkook spoke about how he found out about their #1 first, while Jimin spoke about it much later. 

So, what did Jungkook say?

Basically he found out about the news not from the group chat, which we know is where Namjoon had posted about the news, and also not from another member. No, according to him, he found the news online and wasn’t even sure if he could believe it. This is important so remember that.

Now, the final piece that’s important to this is what Jimin said, who spoke about the night about 11 minutes later. The relevant part is this:

To summarize, Jimin found out around 4 am, stayed up crying until about 7 am which is when he fell asleep from exhaustion. The most interesting part in all of this is that he starts out by recounting the events using “I”, “I was basically crying...” and “I was really shocked” and yet suddenly, despite having told us the entire timeline of his night already, he mentions being with Jungkook and his sentences switch to “we” and he briefly recounts the night again but changing the story to “we” instead of “I”. Interesting.

Masterclass in PR:

Now that we have all three pieces of the puzzle, here is why this is a brilliant masterclass in PR. Timeline wise we have Taehyung’s initial story of wanting to spend the night with Jimin and Jimin calling him, this indicating that they were most likely at least in the same apartment (keep in mind their dorm is gigantic so it makes sense for them to call and text even while both are at home).

This was very controversial, going as far as causing fights between ARMYs and even accusations being thrown at our wonderful translators on twitter that they mistranslated his words, even though all of them basically translated Taehyung’s words in an identical manner (many of these translations though are now gone, or at least I’m unable to find them). What that means? Portions of ARMY rejected his version of the story.

Up next is what Jungkook said, that he found out online without the mention of any members or any indication that he’d seen their GC. I think here is where a mistake happened. Based on what Jimin said later in the press conference, this seems like a deviation from the plan. But, regardless if that is true or not, his words were completely ignored by basically everyone, and especially those who rebelled against what Tae said in their vlive.

Now, here is where the magic happens. What do you do when you have a loud portion of the fandom being displeased with the story of how an event went down, when a member of the group you do PR for might’ve told a story too true and private, or when a member of said group inadvertently revealed he might’ve not actually been with any of the other members but somewhere else completely? You use the wonderful tool of shipping to draw attention away from the thing that doesn’t fit, and instead give the people what they want. And that is what Jimin did. By saying “I was with Jungkook”, despite not having mentioned him in the night itself nor in the vlive, he completely rewrote the truth. Those who rejected both Tae’s and Jungkook’s words latched onto what Jimin said and turned it into gospel.

And this is PR magic. Give the people what they want and they will forget the thing you’re trying to cover up. Suddenly anyone who doubted the validity of that statement (Jimin was with Jungkook) were called haters, antis, were accused of calling Jimin a liar, and thus they were silenced out of fear of being hated or dog-piled. Because Jimin’s words are the ones that suited people most. Not what Tae said, or what Jungkook did. People wanted Jimin to be with Jungkook, and not potentially with Taehyung, so PR went and gave them exactly that.

We know that in the world of idols the true private lives of idols are being kept as secret as that is possible to achieve. What this whole switch of narrative and the three contradicting stories tell me is that the first and second one were likely the truth, the first story true yet too private to have the focus be on it while the second simply didn’t fit the people either, especially since it implied that Jungkook wasn’t with the members and might’ve spent his birthday somewhere else and with other friends instead, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing at all but considering JK already was involved in unpleasant press earlier that year, it might’ve just caused another such situation if people were to actually think about what he said. So a more idol appropriate version of the story was created, one that mixed truth--Jimin was crying and awake until the morning--with a white lie--he was with Jungkook--creating the narrative people wanted and covering up the truth people did not want.

And that’s how you do PR, how you change the narrative to cover what people are not supposed to focus on with a tool much more powerful than the truth.

Whether or not my conclusion is true or not, whether you believe me or not, that’s up to you. I merely tried to present an as unbiased as possible point of view at the night and what I think is the only logical explanation for why the events didn’t match up. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what the truth is, and what the members were truly doing that night isn’t important either. It’s their business, their private life, something they are not obliged to share with us and also don’t owe us. I just thought it was an interesting discussion to have.

#discussion #BTS #discussion on PR and BTS first Billboard Hot 100 number 1 #Jimin #Taehyung #Jungkook #a masterclass in PR #bangtan sonyeondan

[baby-hyena]

You’re Beautiful | a KHSxJJH Fanfiction

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JU JI HOON!!! 🥳 

Note: Here's the 2nd part of JJH's point of view. If you haven't read the 1st part, here's the link 😊 https://baby-hyena.tumblr.com/post/616744455208353792/tenerife-sea-khsxjjh-fanfic

 Song used: You're Beautiful cover by Ju Ji Hoon

 ~

My life is brilliant

Ji Hoon couldn't sleep that night. He's been rolling over his bed to find a comfy position but he still couldn't sleep. The filming finished late. He decided to workout a bit. He thought that maybe exhausting himself will put him to sleep. But he's still wide awake. When he lay down on his bed to try to sleep again, a small voice speaks at the back of his mind. Go to her, he blinks at that thought. He reaches for his phone to check the time and it's midnight. He sends her a text asking if she's still awake. But 10 minutes later, he got no response. He gets up and decided to go to her house.

My life is brilliant

When he arrived at her house, the lights were off. She's asleep, he thought. He was hesitant to go inside. It's not the first time though, it's just that he still fears that she might not want him to be there. He shook his head and exhaled, then he went inside. Good thing he knows her passcode. When she gave him that, he was over the moon. He knows it's such a small thing but it made him so happy. It made him so happy because that means she trusts him and it was enough to make all of his hesitations disappeared.

My love is pure

He took off his shoes and went straight to the couch. Strangely, he suddenly felt exhausted. But before he lies down, her book shelf caught his eyes. He went near it and there he saw her pictures. She has kept her favorite photos from her different photoshoots. He smiled when he saw the different sides of her. He saw her versatility in acting, but he was amazed that she can do the same in her photoshoots. She's truly an icon, he thought. One photo caught his attention. He didn't recognize her because she's wearing sunglasses and has really long hair. But he recognized the place. It was that place.

I saw an angel

It was August 2013 when he went to Segovia, Spain. He wanted to see the world, to wander, to explore. He wanted to experience different cultures. Besides, he's been working for his two upcoming movies that year. So he took a break for a month to travel. He was enjoying the view and taking pictures when he heard something familiar, "Okay, that's a good pose. Keep it up." It was spoken in Hangul. He looked around to find the voice. There he saw a photographer, taking pictures of a beautiful woman. He was stunned.

Of that I'm sure

She has long hair, a body to die for, long legs and everything that made Ji Hoon swallowed. The way she poses makes him hold his breath. He's been modelling for a long time but he's never seen a model as beautiful as her. He couldn't help but to steal a picture of her using his camera. He went near the site, enough to see her face but also enough to hide if ever he gets caught. When the photographer shouts, "Cut! Let's have a break." Ji Hoon got the chance to see her face when she took off her sunglasses. His heart skipped a beat when their eyes met.

She smiled at me on the subway

The woman smiled at Ji Hoon and his world stopped. He smiled back at her, shyly and awkwardly as he turns his back to leave. That day and that trip became memorable to him. And when he came back to Seoul, he gets to know who the woman was when the news article came out. It was the actress Kim Hye Soo. She was on a photoshoot that day in Spain for Cosmopolitan. Knowing this, he bought the magazine and watched her drama Queen of the Office. This was when he started admiring her because he noticed how good she is as an actress. He watched every movie and drama she's in and he became her fanboy.

She was with another man

Ji Hoon worked hard on his career. He wanted to start again after being in a controversy. But more than this, at the back of his head, he wanted to be that good of an actor so when he'll be given the opportunity to act with Kim Hyesoo, he'd never fail. And he never did. He was always jealous of the actors that gets to act with her. He'd always wish that one project with her would land onto his hands and he'll never waste that chance. That's why when he got Hyena; he didn't decline, even when he also had events for Kingdom 2, even when he didn't get any rest. It's because he didn't want to miss this chance. With her.

But I won't lose no sleep on that

Whenever Hyesoo compliments him for his acting, it feels like an achievement. It's not the awards and nominations that made him feel successful, it was her. He feels like his years of acting finally pays off just because he was finally recognized by his idol. He was inspired by her, in every set, in every scene, he gave his all. And now he's finally here, this close to her. Who would've thought that he'll ever get this lucky? He yawned then smiled. He'll finally get some sleep that night.

'Cause I've got a plan

Ji Hoon is having a bad dream. He's dreaming of Hyesoo pushing him away, cutting him off from her life. When he wakes up, he found her beside him looking for something under the couch. His heart was relieved when he saw her. "What are you doing?" He asks her. She looks at him while showing him what she's holding, "Oh, I dropped my airpods." Ji Hoon stares at her and thinks; I'd like to wake up to this face for the rest of my life. He'd notice her feeling conscious because of his stare. He'd smile. "Why are you staring?" She'd ask him. He'll smile at her with his dreamy eyes. I don't mind staring at you all my life, a voice in his mind speaks but he utters, "Nothing."

You're beautiful, you're beautiful

They say, the right one will not make you nervous or shake you on your knees. When you found the right one, you'll feel calm and comfortable. That's what Ji Hoon feels as they eat breakfast together. He's calm and comfortable. Yes, he can feel his heart pounding because of happiness; because he's with her. But he's never felt this calm before, as if he has everything he needs; as if everything in his life was already fulfilled. And in that moment he knew, the feeling of being home; of being with the love of his life. I hope this lasts, his heart whispers.

You're beautiful, it's true

Ji Hoon knows how much Hyesoo loves taking pictures. It's one of the things he learned about her. He saw her gigantic lenses in her house. And because he also loves being in front of cameras, he'd always pose for her. Or perhaps, he just loves catching her attention. "Let me see." He says to her after she took a photo of him. "Here." She shows him a picture she already edited with her mischievous smile. He'd frown then pout, "I wanna see my face." Then they'll run and play around the set like two little kids teasing each other. Ji Hoon has never been so happy.

I saw your face in a crowded place and I don't know what to do

Days passed and Ji Hoon slowly notices her cold feet. She won't let him drive her home anymore. He noticed how she makes up excuses so he won't be able to drive her home. Whenever he texts her to bring her food, she'll always say she's not in her house or that she already ate and stops him from coming. He'd let her, thinking he should give her time. But he's starting to be afraid. Did I make a mistake? Did I make her feel uncomfortable? Am I annoying her too much?, all of these thoughts are keeping him awake in that 2 days of not being with Hyesoo. But this question almost broke his heart; What if she doesn't feel the same way?

'Cause I'll never be with you

After that 2 days, another day came and they finished filming early. Ji Hoon sensed that Hyesoo's going home already so he went to her. Please, let me drive you home today, please let me be with you today, his heart has been wishing that all throughout their filming. He's crossing his fingers behind his back as he asks her to let him drive her home. When he knew he's about to get rejected again, he cuts her off, "Please, pleaase? I won't talk, I promise. Just let me be with you today. Please." He's that desperate, thinking that she probably don't want a talkative person. Maybe she's fed up with me, he thought. That thought hurts, but when he heard Hyesoo says, "Okay, just for today." his heart jumped and he couldn't hide his smile.

Yes, she caught my eye, as we walked on by

Ji Hoon would steal glances over Hyesoo all throughout the drive. He's not talking, just like he promised. He'd sigh, he didn't know he'd miss her in those 2 days. When they arrived at her house, he wanted to ask her if he can stay, but he stopped himself. Instead he just smiled at her and said, "Nothing, go inside. It's cold." He doesn't know if his desperation to be with her shows but that's what he feels. Hell, he's willing to risk everything. Just to be with you, his heart speaks. He watched her go inside her house as he feels his heart breaks little by little.

She could see from my face that I was flying high

Ji Hoon leans on his car and crosses his arms to keep his hands warm. He just stood there outside her house. He's thinking of how to tell her how he feels. He plans to tell her after Hyena ends. He knows if he tells her now, it could affect their work. He smiles at his thoughts. He recalled his first confession, he was in middle school. He was so nervous but his friends were supportive and they helped him. Too bad he got rejected. After that, he focused in his studies then his modelling career. And when he started acting, that's when he became famous among women. He didn't have problems confessing then since it’s the other way around.

And I don’t think that I’ll see her again

Ji Hoon never thought he had to confess again after a very long time. He never thought he'd meet someone who'd make him fall head over heels. He smiles at that thought. He once said he's scared of marriage because it never turns out well. So he promised himself, he'll never get married for convenience, unless it's true love. Unless it's true love, he whispers as he looks at Hye Soo's house. He shivers when the wind blows.

But we shared a moment that will last ‘til the end

He knew he found the one. He knows his heart so well; he's never felt this way. His train of thoughts stopped when he couldn't take the cold any longer. So he opens his car's compartment for some hot packs. He gets three packs, but he thought he'll stay there for a while so he gets it all. He inserted it in his coat, and he closes the buttons so it won't fall out. Then he puts his hands in his pockets. He leans on his car again to stare at Hye Soo's house. Just for today, he thought and smiled.

You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful

Ji Hoon never thought he’d get this close to Hye Soo. He never thought he’d see her as a woman; more than just his sunbae or co-worker. Everyday he’s with her, every moment they shared, even the littlest moment, he will never forget. It’s like his life has been dull and bland, until he met Hye Soo, then he began seeing things differently. He’s known for being quirky and goofy in his interviews and filming set, but it’s all because he wanted to diminish the awkwardness between him and his co-workers. But with Hye Soo, he’s quirky and goofy, but mature and serious at the same time. He wanted her to feel comfortable around him, but more than that, he wanted to make her happy.

You’re beautiful, it’s true

He doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. He plans to stay, to be with her for a very long time. He plans to choose her over everything else; even his career. He lets out a deep breath as he shivers. He gets cold easily, it’s his weakness. But for some reason today, he feels stronger. He has never stood outside in the cold before. But standing there, in front of Hye Soo’s house, made him feel like he can stand there forever.

Yeah, I saw your face in a crowded place and I don’t know what to do

He was looking down at his shoes because he feels something tingly somewhere in his ankle. Then he heard Hye Soo’s gate opens. He lifts his head and there she is, in front of him. “Hey! What are you doing out here?” He’s startled a little, but he smiled sweetly at her. “Nothing, I just wanted to be here.” He answers her but his heart speaks otherwise, I just wanted to be with you. She asks him how long he has been there; he opens his coat to show her the hot patches. Suddenly, he felt the cold all over his body. “I never left since I drove you home.” He smiled faintly.

‘Cause I’ll never be with you

Worry is written all over Hye Soo’s face and Ji Hoon can see it. He knew he’s crazy when that made him a bit happy. She’s worried about me, he smiled at that thought. And when she pulls him inside, he feels like he could die of happiness any moment. Before, he’ll feel guilty for worrying his mom whenever he gets sick because of the cold. But now, it’s different, of course he still feels guilty for worrying Hye Soo and bothering her. But thinking that she’ll take care of him and he’ll get to be with her, makes him like the cold a little more than before.

You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful

When they’re finally inside her house, his guilt started eating him up. He looks at Hye Soo and he realized she’s going somewhere because of her outfit. I’m such a bother to her, he thought. So he draws back and pulls his hand from her, “I’m sorry, I’m such a bother. I’m okay now, I’ll go home.” He said to her while smiling. He tried to hide his faintness from her; he doesn’t want to think that he’s forcing her to take care of him. So he’ll just leave. I’m okay, now that I saw you, he thought.

You’re beautiful, it’s true

Hye Soo blinks when he pulls back his hand, but she grabs it again. “Stay. I’ll make some soup.” She said to him while pulling him. She made him sit on the couch and he lets out a deep sigh. Hye soo went to her kitchen. Ji Hoon lies down; he never thought he could miss a couch like this. This is crazy. Crazy but comfy, he chuckles at that thought. He stares at the ceiling then he crosses his hands on his chest. He’s still freezing.

There must be an angel with a smile on her face

He feels dizzy so he closed his eyes. His mind and his heart are all over the place. He can’t help but to be happy at the moment. He’s cold but he feels warm. If it takes him to stand in the cold that long just to be with Hye Soo, he’ll gladly do so. If it takes him to give up his career and live his life with Hye Soo, he’ll drop everything for her. Even if he’s so afraid of commitment, responsibility and marriage life, he’s more than willing to face his fears head on. Hell, he will gladly risk everything just to be with Hye Soo; even if it’s his health or his career. A lifetime with her doesn’t compare to everything he has now.

When she thought up that I should be with you

He’ll plan his confession after the filming ends. He knows they can’t have a normal date outside so he’ll just show up in her house and just like the usual; they’ll eat together and drink their coffee. They’ll watch her favourite indie movies and listen to David Bowie’s songs. Imagining these things feels therapeutic for him. He smiles at his thoughts. He’s excited to tell her how he feels; to tell her how much he loves her.

But it’s time to face the truth

Of course, Ji Hoon would naturally feel afraid of the consequences. He’ll think how hurt he’ll be when Hye Soo doesn’t feel the same way as him. He has to be ready in case Hye Soo rejects him. It’ll be hell for him, but he won’t force her into something she doesn’t really want. If ever Hye Soo rejects him, he’s willing to let her go. He’ll still love her though, in a distance. He probably won’t be able to get over her forever. Ji Hoon will always be her fanboy. And he’ll remember every memory he had with her. He’s about to tear up when he heard Hye Soo’s steps coming over. He kept his eyes closed.

I will never be with you

“Ji Hoon-ssi, here’s—“ he heard her say. Ji Hoon doesn’t know why he kept his eyes closed when his mind is wide awake. He felt her presence, beside him. Ji Hoon’s heart is pounding hard, as if he’s having palpitations. But he’s not; it’s because of his excitement and anticipation. What is she doing? he asks in his mind. She puts a blanket on him and he felt her hand gently massaging and running her fingers through his head. It’s relaxing so Ji Hoon felt his heart calm a bit, but the next thing he knew, his world stops because he’d hear Hye Soo whispers, “I love you.”

~

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Well then.

I recently discovered this "Gem" of an article and oh boy. This is next level insane conspiracy. *The article in question*

https://reclaimthenet.org/no-pixels-for-fascists/

Now the article is not promoting the context in it so much as covering it as a horror story. And at first I believe it to be satire...... But sadly it is not. First if all. Censorship is BAD. Many people will always argue with this because, "hate speech" or, "violent speech" but fact it, the people arguing for censorship so it because they believe that nothing they can or will ever say will be censored. Fun fact mind you. The term, "useful idiot" plays a big part here. See, people in powerful places don't ACTUALLY care about you or your views. They care about power. Consider for a moment why EA is backing this campaign. EA is a game publishing company that has been in hot water MANY times over the past several years. Up to and including incidents like putting out a game that was supposed to have some level of historical accuracy, but with "their version of history". Then there was the loot boxes controversy that literally started a legal war against predatory loot boxes in games, of which EA is literally the worst offender.

Now with all of this in mind realize something VERY specific. Many people that were "right wing" were very much not happy about the "our version of history" crap because it was not how the franchise had been treated prior. ""Left wing" people were mostly against the whole predatory loot boxes thing. Grant you yes, there was a lot of cross over, but fundamentally these were split issues. Now consider for a moment what some people consider to be fascist in modern culture. It's pretty broad. And it has been escaping it's proper meaning by a long shot. But with all of this said, something people neglect to realize is that totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism are all basically the same. And all involve one fundamental truth. Absolute Control.........by ANY means necessary. Censorship is authoritarian by nature. Because when you can't speak, you can't spread ideas. Imagine for a moment Progressives, you finally get free speech removed. FINALLY these "right wing Nazis" can't spread their hate messages any more out of fear of fines, jail, or imprisonment. What doth the governing bodies do next? Maybe they ban protests. Maybe they don't ACTUALLY like gay people and ban pride parades or maybe remove gay marriage. And you think to yourself, "THEY CAN'T DO THAT! THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED T-". Yes they are. You literally handed them the keys and papers to the car....... And handed over your spares while you were at it. Meaning it's theirs now. They don't have to answer to you any more.

And that's the point. You THINK you can just take away people's ability to speak because you don't agree with them, but who's speech do you think they come for next? The people who helped put them in power. The people that handed them the keys. WHY?! You might ask? Because at that point, YOU are the biggest threat to them. You are the loud, violent, useful idiots that wished for absolute control over speech to adhere to your ,"moral compass". News flash. That power? Is all encompassing. And does not just go away when someone you won't like takes power. What's more, you actually TRUST many of the people in power at face value as if they actually care about you. They don't! You, to them, are only a means to an end. And think about it really. The biggest road blocks to freedom right now are mostly all people that label themselves, either left wing, or progressives. Any idea why you can't see your own folly? Because you have too much trust in people that have no real moral compass. Consider for a moment what you've been advocating for (not all of you).

Disarming the general public (2A)

Banning certain types of speech (1A)

Give full control of healthcare to the government (which they can then deny you of)

Give full control of production rights (to the people) by proxy also the government

You are literally advocating for the government to have absolute authority over everything. And it's funny too. They've got you believing that, "The rightous path to end *fascism*, patriarchy, racism, and bigotry,-" is to give them the power to make all of that much MUCH worse. What happens when a progressive get into office that is SO progressive, they legalize pedophilia? Maybe beastiality? Guess who speech gets removed next? Everyone against those ideas since one, you no longer HAVE the first amendment to protect you, nor a second to defend yourself. Then after that person, an extremist right wing LITERAL Nazi gets put in power? Guess what? Racism and bigotry are in full swing now. Welcome back to the 1800's. And guess what you can do about it? Absolutely nothing. And you know who's to thank for that? You are.

The above article also goes on to mention this, which...... Is basically insane-

Fact is, contrary to MOST news sources. GG was not a hate movement. The FBI confirmed as much. And calling "Trump and his associates" gamers? They can't even operate FB half the time. Their only experience with gaming is probably Pac Man. Also the article goes on to say "right wing people" are the problem. No they are not. Because of the text I wrote prior to this. Because they SEE the trap and they are the only ones fighting to keep us free. Them and a hand full of centrists and not insane leftists. Also, it bares noting that "right wing" and "left wing" are not the same in the US as they are in other places, but a lot of people don't fully grasp that. People still have this view of "the right" as hillbilly racists, who shoot people because they can, and wish death upon "the gays". But that's a far cry from the bulk of the right in modern days. Because consider for a moment if the left wing was identified by their extreme? Full government control, make people be gay by force, legalize all age dating/sexual acts, let everyone love everyone *most specifically animals*, and killing/imprisoning all "non progressives". That's your fringes.

The reason so many people literally can't open their eyes is because they honestly can't think for themselves. They listen to "news" media to get all their info, even though that info is often doctored to be as woke and untrue as possible. Do you know why? Because activist types of the progressive fringes are the loudest and most entitled of us all. Salon, Kotaku, IGN, Vice, BuzzFeed, Feminist Frequency, Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN etc. They ALL get their news stories from one another. And they are all activists who want to push a narrative. They have no reason to be honest. The more angry you get reading their stuff, the more you will come back to read their stuff. Basically a loop of hate. Because without it, they'd go out of business. They NEED you to click on, share, and parrot their stories. I mean consider this for a sec. When GG got big, who was it that would have taken the hardest hit from the information found out? Games journalists. Do you know why mainstream news outlets came to their rescue? To paint gamers as all being racist, sexist, bigots? Because if it had come out and gotten attention beyond the gaming sphere that games media was being dishonest and unethical in its practices, how long do you think it would have been until we started to consider the same about mainstream journalism. They KNEW this was bad for them. But they also knew they had dedicated fan bases that would spread their propaganda for them. And they used that. They used that to pin down a few bad actors (the fringe people latching into the coat tails of the movement) to paint the entire movement as hateful. And not only did they succeed in spreading those lies. Now any time they need to make people angry again, or they need something to hide behind, the bring up GG *GamerGate*. Because the article writes itself. And they know by talking about it, they can deflect all forms of criticism. Journalist has sexual assault allegations against them? It's just GG trying to hurt progressives. Black Face? Just a GG lie! They threatened me/my family. It's the perfect shield. So much so, even Hollywood had taken on the mantra. But they took it up a notch to just say, "my movie did bad because sexist man babies". And they all do it. They don't actually CARE about sexism or whatever, but they KNOW, even the mention of "those types" is basically a battle cry to misinformed people that only wish to form a hate mob and enact "justice" on these "bigots". Open your eyes. You're a tool for the rich and powerful and you can't even see it.

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 34: Breaking News

Chapters: 34/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Teen And Up Warnings: Mentions of nudity. death, internet misogyny  Relationships: Loki x Reader (Someday) Characters: Loki (Marvel), Reader, Thor, Brunnhilde, Heimdall  Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Loki Has Some Telling Dreams, Loki Has Some Legitimate Fears, This Is Why People Have A Low Opinion Of Journalists These Days, Clickbait More Like Clickhate Amirite Summary:  Fame can be particularly unpleasant

You stormed into the bathtub, naked as the day you were born, and the fury of you pushed him back against the wall. It was hard now to remember that you were mortal. Small. Helpless. It was hard to remember when you approached, wrapped in burning rage, like a force of nature. Thor could not help, for he too, was weak in the face of mortal women. Brunnhilde would not help, for she knew, as Loki now did, that he had made a terrible mistake. He looked to them for support anyway.

They were not there. There was only you and him, in a bath that seemed increasingly too small. The water lapped at your breasts as you splashed towards him. He had tried not to look, he had really tried. But you had demanded it. “Look at me!” You had snarled, and he had, and he remembered every inch of skin he had seen before your little fist had connected...

Not again. It wasn't that the strike had hurt exactly, he hadn't minded that. It was the anger, and the hurt underneath it. It was knowing that it was all because of how callous and thoughtless he had been, when he was supposed to be better than that.

“Look at me!” You demanded, and he did, resigned to what was to come. Your hand shot out and grasped the back of his head, fingers curling in his hair.

What?

In a single, smooth movement, you closed the last of the distance between you and him, sliding up against his body and capturing his mouth in a searing kiss.

His entire mind blanked, and he just stood, dumbfounded for a few moments, until everything caught up with him. Then he flung his arms around you, crushing you to his chest and returning the kiss with equal fervor.

Oh, this...this was so much better than being punched...

He poured passion into you, wanting more, more, more. It had been so long since he'd had this, and even then, it was with suspicion and apprehension hanging over him. But this felt so pure, so true. He didn't want to ever stop.

He kissed you ceaselessly until the water went cold around him, and even then, he didn't want to stop. But the cold was creeping up his body, so, so cold. Cold and...hard...

He drew back suddenly, to stare into your unblinking, rime-covered eyes. Your face, your body, rigid like a perfectly detailed statue.

Loki tried to leap away, shouting in horror, but the bathwater was solid, trapping him from the hips down. He flailed, the blue of his skin catching his eye.

Odin was there, perched on the tiles on the other side of the tub. He was saying something, but Loki could not hear over his own screaming.

He opened his eyes to the false night created by the hotels blackout curtains, immediately rushing to your bedside. You were breathing softly, slowly, and he almost thew his arms around you in relief, only drawing back at the last moment, for fear that you would freeze at his touch.

What was getting into him? First, out on the island, he had almost...done something before that bird had interrupted. Had he almost kissed you? Why? Why was he dreaming about it now, why was he craving something like that? Such things were not for him, surely he was still too busy, surely he was not meant for trivialities like romance. That must be what the dream was about. He was still too broken, too untrustworthy, too dangerous. It would only end in disaster.

At least it was now obvious that you didn't share all of his dreams. You slept peacefully, unaware of the warnings his mind was providing him. A warning. He should heed it. Banish all thoughts of soft affections and closeness. It was just a warning to keep his hands to himself.

He had been getting too comfortable by far. Holding your hand out in public, putting his arms around you, dancing with you. Crawling right into bed with you, the instant you allowed it of him! He even tried running to you for comfort after this nightmare, even though he was the one who was supposed to be protecting you! Even though he was the one who was a danger to you.

That dream was incredibly unfair. He had never once lost control over his form, not ever. Only the touch of another frost giant, or their magic, could force him to revert, otherwise, he had perfect control. He had kissed others, and not frozen them.

None of them had been mortal though. Or rather, none of them had been as weak and lowly as a human. So soft, so delicate. So fragile. So brief.

He paused a moment to regain control of his breathing. There was something so appealing about your vulnerability, especially since you lived your life as if mostly unaware of it. All humans did, despite being the most frail of the peoples  in the Eight Realms.

Retreating to his bed, he settled down, but did not sleep, visions of forbidden intimacy swimming just behind his eyelids.

                                                                               ******

You awoke, well rested and fresh. What lovely dreams you'd had. Traveling the universe, bathed in blue light, like a fading star. Something was attempting to communicate with you, not in words, but in impressions. It showed you dozens of worlds, peoples, stars, and other wonders. You could visit all these places, it promised, you could see all these things and more. All you had to do was learn how.

Bolstered by that potential future, you greeted the morning, barely noticing how quickly Loki switched places with Saldis, neglecting to tease you at all. At least you now knew you didn't share all of your dreams with him, not that you would have minded sharing this one.

You went out for breakfast with Saldis and Borgliot, and showed off your new puffin charm, and the seeds you had bought at the botanical gardens. Both women cooed over the puffin, just as charmed by the silly birds as you were. Saldis showed you a patterned, wool sweater she had bought to bring back to Andsvarr and a box of salted licorice for herself, and Borgliot had a bottle of Brennivin and a pair of very nice hiking boots for her brother, whom she told you was trapped on Vanaheim. There were a lot of families that had been scattered that way, with family members offworld at the time of Ragnarok, who had no way now to return without the Bifrost.

“We two shall meet again, I am certain.” Borgliot said. “In time, the Bifrost shall be repaired, and restored to its former power. We hast only to wait.”

Borgliot had time. She was maybe a little younger than the king, just young enough to have missed being discovered by the Valkyries before their last flight. Plenty of time left to see the Bifrost returned to full strength. You might not though.

Shame that. You did want to explore space, just like in your dream, but unless there was some breakthrough in building it, the Bifrost would be no help.

Saldis and Borgliot were going home today, since the trial was over, and they were no longer needed. Thor was swamped with press, and meetings with the local authorities, but he and Brunnhilde planned on leaving tomorrow, if they could conclude all their business by the end of the day. That would leave you and Loki alone in the city for two days after that, if you wanted to stay.

There was still a waterfall to visit, and more whale watching to do. Plenty of museums to visit, plenty of history to learn. Surely you could fill two days with education.

You saw the girls off on their horses with many well-wishes on their return, then rejoined Loki and Thor before the latter had to run off to another meeting. Brunnhilde, however, had other plans for you, dragging you away with her to input numbers into your new phone.

                                                                ******

Loki watched you go with some apprehension. The Valkyrie could be unpredictable as he was, and Loki was disinclined to fully trust anyone who reminded him of himself. Still, he was certain that she would not allow you to get yourself into any real trouble, and said nothing as the two of you left.

“So...” Thor said, a jovial tone in his voice that Loki recognized as meaning some kind of brotherly teasing was on its way.

“Yes?” He said testily, not really in the mood.

“You have been somewhat...indiscreet this week, don't you think?”

“I'm sure I have no idea what you mean.”

“Oh, well then, allow me to show you!”

Thor held out his phone with a majestic flourish. His newsfeed was clogged with article after article full of pictures; you and himself walking together, holding hands, eating meals, hugging, leaning on each other, just being together. Headlines speculated every possible thought, though most of them were centered on whether or not you were dating. There was one that showcased a picture taken of him carrying you in his arms, and leaping from the courthouse stairs. He looked terribly dashing to his own eyes. The headline shouted in bold text:

DEMON OR DISNEY PRINCE: Could the Controversial Prince of Asgard Have Rethought His Stance on Human Inferiority?

He snorted. Possibly. But it wasn't anybody's business but his.

Directly beneath that article was yet another-there were stacks and stacks of them-that featured you clinging to his arm with an unpleasant, clearly photoshopped expression.

HUSSIE OF THE MONTH: Supposed Victim Actually Shameless Social Climber? Pictured Here Brazenly Clutching The World's Most Eligible Villain!

“My, that one is unfriendly, isn't it?” Thor said, disapprovingly.

“I am not that eligible.” Loki protested.

“That's the part you're concerned about?”

“There's so many of them. They just go on and on; why are there so many? Look at this: 'Fantastic Frenemies? The Lady Doth Not Protest Too Much?' Ugh, 'Loki's Live-In Lady'? Look, this one calls her a doxie! How dare they publish that! Is there no oversight? I hope she hasn't seen these yet.”

“Uh, well...I'm pretty sure Brunnhilde was going to show her...”

“Oh no.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” You bellowed from where the Valkyrie had led you.

“Oh no.”

You stormed back up to him pointing at your new phone.

“Is this what you mean by PR?” You snapped. “I don't even recognize some of the words they're calling me!”

“I know, and I share your fury.” Loki assured. “I will find the addresses of these publishing houses, and I will utterly destroy them. No stone left atop another, I will raze them to the ground! I shall-”

“Loki!” Thor scolded.

“I shall write them a stern letter, detailing my disapproval!” Loki amended.

“It won't stop them.” You grumbled. “It's all clickbait, and it's all already out there. Once something's on the net, it's there forever. This is never going away.”

Loki placed his hands on your shoulders, leaning down to look you right in the face.

“Then we will do what those of us who are higher than they always do: ignore them. They are as ants to such as us, inconsequential and petty.”

You brushed his hands away. “That's easy for you to say, you aren't the one getting slut-shamed for no reason! Ugh! I need to take a walk or something.”

“Very well.” Loki said. “We can go-”

“I mean by myself.” You cut him off.

“My dear, I'm not sure that would be safe...”

“I just want some time to myself, is that too much? This shit is gonna spread like wildfire. By the end of the week, everyone's gonna see it. You get to be a prince, and I get to be a floozy. Great. I need to go stomp around a little. Meet me at the whale watching pier in a couple hours?”

“What? No, _____, I cannot advise-”

“See ya in a couple hours!” You stalked off, leaving him spluttering behind you. It was rude, and you knew it, but anger and distress burned through you, and you didn't want to take it out on him. Yeah, okay, Loki definitely had a bad reputation, but people weren't lambasting him sexually with no proof! You didn't need the added nonsense of dozens of news outlets accusing you of the same thing that murderer had!

So maybe you weren't a pure, untarnished virgin. But then again, as far as any of them knew, maybe you were! The point was, that it wasn't anybody's business but yours.

But they'd published it anyway, and were going to make a bunch of money off of it, and your dad, and Tara, and everyone you had ever known was going to see it, and so was everyone you hadn't even met yet. And it would inform their opinions of you, even if they didn't realize it, even if they tried not to let it.

And what would the people of Asgard make of it? You knew there were people there who already had a low opinion of you; you didn't want the general populace to get the impression that you were merely gold-digging trash.

“_____!” Someone called. “_____! You're _____, aren't you?”

You turned to face a small group of strangers, a few of whom you recognized from the courthouse steps. You drew back away from them. What did they want? Surely you couldn't have gotten yourself into danger so soon after blowing Loki off. That would just be embarrassing.

“Are you okay?” One of them, a young woman, asked. “Are you alone? Have you finally escaped the bastard? We can sneak you out, we think. Come with us, and we can get you home!”

Oh, they still thought Loki was some great, looming villain that you needed to be saved from. Well, it was several steps up from being threatened.

“It's...not that easy, you guys.” You said. It had been so long since you had spoken with someone who sounded like you, and these people at least seemed sympathetic.

“Has he threatened you? I'm sure there's somewhere you could go into hiding-”

“No, no, no, nothing like that. It's just that there's a lot going on, and I can't leave, I live here now-”

“And despite what you may have heard, I take very good care of her.” Loki said from directly behind you. He slid one hand smoothly over your shoulder, almost clutching, as the group of supportive protesters shrank away from him in fear.

“You wouldn't happen to have been following me while invisible, would you, your Highness?” You asked sourly.

You could practically feel his smugness falter, through the pressure of his hand.

“I might have.”

You tapped his fingers sharply, and he withdrew his hand.

“Just give me some time.” You entreated. He didn't say anything else, just walked back up the street with a barely perceptible hangdog expression.

“You can just...talk to him like that?” One of the terrified protesters whispered.

“Yeah, sometimes. He'll probably play some trick on me later, but it won't be so bad. Listen, you guys, there's been a lot of misunderstandings surrounding all this. C'mon, let's go talk about it...”

                                                                                                                                                    *****

Sofie put her phone away in disgust.

“Ugh! If I didn't need to ferry supplies back and forth, I might not ever go back to civilization!” She exclaimed.

“The pictures looked nice.” Frodi said. “They seem happy.”

“That only makes this disrespect worse.” Fritjof grumbled as Savane stirred their stew.

“Poor _____. She's really getting the worst of it.”

“She's an easier target.” Frodi pointed out. “She's not a god, and she's not threatening. There's nothing she can really do to get them to stop. Not that they've exactly spared Loki, but they can get really nasty at her expense.”

“Actually, I would like to speak with you about that.”

All four heads whipped around to face the unfamiliar voice, as Heimdall approached from behind the tents, the fire reflected in his eyes.

All four worshipers wordlessly moved aside to make room. With an appreciative nod, he took a seat.

“These gatherings are inevitable, and they are not unwelcome.” He began. “Truthfully, I find it flattering that any of you remember us at all, unreliable storytelling not withstanding. But even in the times of your distant ancestors, not everyone was welcoming of us. This hostility and confusion is nothing new.

The span of it, however, is. News traveled much more slowly in those days; there was more time to plan and prepare, to fortify ones position and allies. Now, there is less time for preparation, and people, including enemies, can move much more quickly from place to place. Your people could not fly, the last time I walked these lands. Now, you can traverse the whole of Midgard in mere days.

And now, entire camps of potential enemies have set up outside my city, motivated by hostility for one man, and confusion over one woman. I cannot look everywhere at once, and there are many things that currently require my attention.”

Frodi nodded. “And you want us to keep an eye out for potential trouble.”

“I want you to be wary of potential trouble.” Heimdall corrected. “I cannot advise that you enter into any kind of conflict. I do not believe that the majority of these people came here seeking violence, but that the minority who did might spread their influence if you are perceived as a threat. Eventually, there will be mingling. That too is inevitable. Welcome those who come to you, learn what you can. Many of these people do not truly understand the situation, and I cannot go explain to them myself without being seen as dangerous. It seems my presence stirs unease in much of humankind.”

This last was said with a pointed glance at Fritjof, who dropped his gaze.

“It might have to do with people having secrets, and you being able to see everything.” Savane pointed out bluntly. Fritjof and Sofie shot her quick glances.

“Probably.” Heimdall said, unperturbed. “Now, I am not conscripting you, and there is no reward I have the authority to offer, however, if these new people prove to be dangerous to your camp, I can move guards out here to patrol the borders.”

“That is very gracious. I'll inform the others. You too, Sofie.” Frodi stood, brushed himself off, and motioned for Sofie to follow. The two of them walked off into the camp, to visit the fires of others.

“Savane, I feel the soup could use some of your special spice blend.” Heimdall said.

“Yes, you see, that is exactly what I was speaking of earlier.” She said, but went back to her tent anyway.

“Fritjof, son of Jor, will you tell me why you set that tent on fire? You knew there was no one inside.”

“You saw.” Fritjof said apprehensively. “Of course you did. I believed its owner was the man who attacked Loki's seidkona, and I wanted him to have no shelter among us.”

“Decisive, but dangerous, don't you think?”

“If you saw me do it then you should know I had it completely under control.”

“And no one else knows? No one ever notices that your fire never goes out?”

“No. Will you tell them?”

“I will not. It is not mine to tell. But if you value your friends, you should inform them of what you are capable of. I do not believe that they will shun you for your difference. But then again, I was born to a people who value those with such special abilities.”

“I will think about it.” Fritjof said, but would not promise anything further. The thing that drove him out here in the first place, the thing that made him obsessed with blood and heritage, that thing was his own, and he did not trust it with anyone else.

                                                                     *****

“-And she was so shy that it took her weeks just to hold my hand.” Todd was saying. A group of newcomers had gathered around his tent to hear his stories about the woman who was rapidly becoming legend.

“She's so sweet and innocent. I really worry about what that alien has been putting her through.”

“Why didn't you follow her to the city?” Someone asked.

“Oh, I'm no match for a horse's speed.” Todd admitted. “And she's doing something important there, that shouldn't be interrupted. Did you know someone actually tried to kill her? It's terrible! That never happened back home. She's gotta go witness at his trial, and I hope they put him away for good.”

“I wonder if it was one of those fanatic at the other camp?” Someone else mused. “They're creepy. You know they actually think these people are real, literal gods?”

“Yeah, it's a little weird. Don't know why you'd wanna worship someone like Loki. Thor, maybe, he seems like a decent dude, but he's definitely flesh and blood, not a god. Just an alien. This is like some Fifties pulp novel: Aliens Stole My Girl! Poor _____. She's got to be so confused.”

“Hey dude.” Said another camper, who had heard Todd's lament more than a few times. “If she's your girl, then what's all this?” She handed Todd her phone, and he scrolled down through all the articles that had made you so distressed, outrage plain on his face.

“This is bullshit.” He declared. “Whoever those reporters are, they sure don't know _____! She isn't like that at all. But him-oh, we all know what a liar and manipulator he is! He's definitely deceiving her; she's just kind and naive enough to be twisted around by him.”

“I bet he's using her just to make himself look good.” One of them said.

“Well, don't fall for it.” The other camper answered, taking her phone back. “He's still the same bastard he's always been. You don't just stop being a power hungry lunatic overnight. No matter how harmless or friendly he might seem right now, it's all part of a plan. If he was really serious about not being Earth's enemy, he'd have turned himself in to justice, or make reparations to the cities he terrorized, or even issued some kind of apology! He hasn't done any of that, and he doesn't intend to! He thinks if he just waits long enough, it'll all go away, and he can just do whatever he wants with impunity! He kidnapped a woman from her workplace and put her in harms way. No amount of cute pictures can change that. Never forget what he's done! Never forget! Never forget!”

The cry went up, a chorus audible from the gates of the city.

#loki x reader #loki (marvel) #thor (marvel) #brunnhilde (marvel) #valkyrie (marvel) #Heimdall (Marvel) #marvel fanfiction

[bambyeol]

This Band (p.7)

B.A.M SEQUEL now updating daily!

pairing/s: band! park jihoon x oc ; band! bae jinyoung x oc ; doctor! hwang minhyun x oc

character/s: park jihoon, park woojin, bae jinyoung, ong seongwoo, kim jaehwan, ha sungwoon, lai guanlin, kang daniel, yoon jisung, hwang minhyun

genre: angst, fluff, music (band)

summary: never date your band mate.

warning : a sequel so I’d appreciate it if you’ll read B.A.M first. though you can always live dangerously and read this immediately.

This Band (p.1) This Band (p.2) This Band (p.3) This Band (p.4)  This Band (p.5) This Band (p.6)  This Band (p.9)  This Band (p.10)  This Band (p.11)   This Band (p.12)  This Band (p.13) This Band (p.14)  This Band (p15) This Band (final)

B.A.M p1 // B.A.M p2 // B.A.M p3 // B.A.M final

wanna one masterlist

song inspiration: Don’t Want To Be An Idol by VIXX 

Because I’m an idol, because I’m a celebrity 

I can’t hold your hand when we walk ...

--

She switched on the television in the lounge room,  continuously coursing through the channels with little interest, a blank expression on her face as the sound from the television droned out.

She felt numb from the hospital gossip and the anonymous messages; the curious glances from the staff, and the not-so-subtle interrogation just to prove that it was a far-fetched idea that she dated Park Jihoon.

On the other side of the screen, Jihoon sat along with his co-stars finding it more and more unbearable to continue with the press-con.

The atmosphere in the said press-con reeked of tension. Everyone was waiting, second guessing on dropping the question, but no one took the chance. No one dared to ask. Instead, they threw watered down questions, the usual “Can you say something about the drama?” or “How was working with actor X”

When the host deemed that the reporters had asked enough, and formally closed the discussion, Jihoon decided to finally take the leap. He was busily observing throughout the press-con, segregating the veteran reporters from the neophytes.

He knew from his experiences that the new ones always had the guts to ask the unwanted questions.

“Really? Is that all? I think Miss Kim in the back wanted to ask one more question.” He smiled innocently as he pointed to the young woman with the name tag Kim who dressed a little too fashionably for that boring press-con.

“Ahh, uhm” she stuttered, flipping fastly on her notes and shuffled through the set questions until she finally found the unasked question. Miss Kim looked around only to find everyone’s eyes on her, a nonverbal cue to pressure her into asking.

“Can you give us a statement regarding the controversy about you and your former bandmate, Miss Bae Riseul?”

Everyone held their breaths in suspense. Jihoon grabbed the mic. “Sure.”

Immediately, all the reporters who initially feigned disinterest regarding the issue held onto their pens, opened the voice recorders and started scribbling for notes. The cameraman immediately zoomed to Jihoon.

“To put it simply, during our days as members of B.A.M, Rise-- Ms. Bae and I did have a relationship with each other,” Jihoon started and everyone nodded along.

“We dated for two years before we broke up. After the break up, we quit the band although it was Ms. Bae who quit first to pursue her studies. I quit 2 months later and pursued becoming an idol. During those years, we didn’t establish any contact with each other. In the recent B.A.M concert, it was pure coincidence we ran across each other. The hospital visitations weren’t meant for her at all. Earlier this year, I was involved in a car accident. I was advised to undergo therapy for my knees.” He explained calmly and perfectly just as how he had it in his mind.

“What we are now are nothing but friends. It may be hard to believe, but we have both grown as individuals and clearly understand the extent of our relationship.”

“But, what about --” another reporter chimed in, but before he could even deliver his question,

“The only reason I took this chance to explain everything about us is because everyone has gone overboard regarding the issue. The other party became harassed over misleading news up to the point where her own safety has been compromised that may have even caused serious injury or death.” His eyes spoke of uncontained anger.   

“Ms. Bae may have been my ex-girlfriend, but regardless of who she was once in my life, it’s unacceptable to threaten someone and even hurt someone. I would like to remind everyone that the law is there to punish you, and I am more than willing to assist in tracking whoever tried to harass Ms. Bae in any form. And to the reporters, I hope that you’re aware that publishing false news could call for legal actions against you. That’s all.” Jihoon rested the microphone on the table and bowed before leaving the hall to prevent the media from swarming him with questions.

He didn’t know if his statement would do more harm than good, but he wished that his boldness and honesty would at least charm a few.  Everything blew to his favor though when netizens and articles suddenly painted their relationship in a positive light, and Jihoon’s actions as chivalrous and admirable. Although some remained to criticize Riseul, he was comforted that everyone was starting to turn over.

Soon, everything would be over. ---

He stood by the hallway trying to blend in with the numerous patients queuing for their check-up. He saw her from afar, standing out amidst the pool of plain white and greys in that hospital. He would have been able to find her anywhere because his eyes always followed her every step. And he couldn't help but find a small smile on his face upon seeing that the woman he loves so much conquered her fears and achieved her dreams.

She neared him while walking along some of her fellow doctors and he waved. Riseul to his direction, confusion on her face. The last time they met, she lashed out at him with how he managed to turn her life upside down again. It was puzzling how he was back so soon.

"Jihoon-ssi, are you here for your therapy?" Jihoon felt the forced civilness in her voice and a smile reserved for acquaintances. They were just a meter apart but he still managed to feel that he was just a stranger to her life now.

“I came to say goodbye since I’ve completed the sessions for the therapy,”  he answered. No surprise landed on her face.  

“Are you okay? Are you still receiving emails or did any one try to hurt you?”

“It’s all good now. Thank you, Jihoon-ssi” she hugged the clipboard she carried.

“You don’t need to thank me. I dragged you into that mess, and I really don’t want to let you go through that again so I won’t bother you anymore. I know that you’ll be uncomfortable if we practice for the Reunion together so I’ll just reject it. I won’t perform. So please, attend the reunion of B.A.M and sing again,” he bowed.

"Don't bow to me. It's making me uncomfortable." Riseul replied as she gazed at Jihoon's figure. He retracted and she tried to meet his eyes before breaking it off. Jihoon still had that same gaze, resolute and unfazed.  She tugged the end of her sleeves, her fingers fidgeting... a habit coming from her nervousness.

"It was nice meeting you again...Riseul-ssi." and he walked past her as he headed towards the exit of the hospital. Five years he wondered how she was, but now he's relieved, so it should be okay even if the tears threatened to fall.

She was his first love and looking back to their past, he wanted her to be the last as well.

His phone vibrated as he exited the facility.

One text message received.

I’ll see you in B.A.M practice. Don’t be late.

-Bae Riseul

He raised his eyebrows before breaking into laughter. It seemed like she wasn't planning to let her hold on him wear off anytime soon.

--

notes: I am back from the dead known as tumblr lag. 

finished a jaehwan fic and will post it after completing this

currently working on BAM side stories concerning other characters and who they’ll end up with ;) 

#wanna one scenarios #wanna one imagines #wanna one #park jihoon #park jihoon scenarios #park woojin #bae jinyoung #hwang minhyun #kang daniel #yoon jisung #kim jaehwan #ong seongwoo #bamsequel #beatsandmelody #wanna one angst #wanna one fluff #wanna one fanfic #wanna one fic #wannable #park jihoon imagines

[your-dietician]

Purgatory is a very real thing

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-football/purgatory-is-a-very-real-thing/

Purgatory is a very real thing

The days mostly looked the same for Jordan Anthony during the fall of 2020. He’d start around 6 a.m. at a Harris Teeter in Olney, Md., where he worked as a home shopper. He’d race around the store, fill customers’ online orders and bring their groceries to the parking lot for pickup. He’d work until 2 p.m., speed to the gym for an afternoon workout and then went to Dick’s Sporting Goods, where he’d stay until close.

Not too long ago, Anthony played linebacker and graduated from Michigan. He was an elite recruit – he ranked as the No. 106 overall player in the 247Sports Composite – and could’ve played college football anywhere he wanted.

He entered the transfer portal in December of 2019 expecting to have the same sort of options. His Michigan career had not gone the way he wanted but Anthony figured his recruiting pedigree would help him find home quickly as a graduate transfer with two remaining years of eligibility.

Yet after months of contacting coaches non-stop and waiting for any situation to manifest that’d allow him to continue playing FBS football, Anthony needed to start making money. That’s when fears of forced retirement manifested.

“I was definitely scared thinking about, you know, my time may be up,” Anthony told 247Sports.

Anthony said this in mid-June, a few weeks after he publicly announced his commitment to Troy. The former No. 106 overall player in the 2017 class, per the 247Sports Composite, Anthony waited 19 months in transfer portal purgatory before he found a home ahead of the 2021 season.

There’s an argument that he’s one of the lucky ones.

With the expectation the NCAA would pass a one-time transfer exception that would allow players to play immediately at their destination of choice, the 2020-21 cycle has seen a record number of transfers enter the portal. The debut portal cycle saw 1,720 players enter, per a source with direct knowledge of the portal. That number retracted to 1,695 in 2019-20. But for this offseason, that number has ballooned to 2,510 with more than one month remaining before the transfer portal annually resets August 1.

These mass exoduses across campuses nationwide – an average of 19.3 players have entered the portal per FBS team, including walk-ons – has led some coaches to sound the alarm bell. Nebraska head coach Scott Frost recently sparked controversy with his comments on the subject.

“There’s no question it’s going to be risky to put your name in the portal,” Frost said at a fan event.

The numbers support that suggestion. Using 247Sports’ internal portal database, 247Sports examined data from the 2019-20 portal cycle to gain a sense of where scholarship Power Five and FBS players (those who were announced as part of their team’s annual recruiting classes) land once they enter.

Of the 480 Power Five scholarship players 247Sports studied from the 2019-20 cycle, only 26.5% of them stayed as a scholarship player on a P-5 roster. Another 26.3% signed with a G-5 program. Overall, 47.2% of P-5 scholarship athletes went to the FCS, junior college ranks or did not find a landing spot. Among the 826 FBS scholarship players 247Sports examined, only 37.8% stayed on the FBS level.

  “It’s a tough situation and kind of a tough taste of reality,” USC Director of Player Personnel Spencer Harris told 247Sports. “It’s just a changing world and gives these players a good sense of where they’re at.

“They need to make sure they have all their information before entering the portal.”

***

Anthony remembers feeling hopeful when entered the transfer portal on Dec. 4, 2019.

He redshirted as a true freshman and played in 16 games over the next two campaigns, combining for 15 tackles and a QB hurry between the 2018-19 seasons. Anthony never did feel comfortable playing at 245 pounds, the weight Michigan asked him to when manning their middle linebacker position.

So once Anthony entered the portal, he spent the next six months reshaping his body. By June, Anthony weighed 228 pounds and felt ready for a comeback at a Power Five program. That was the goal. He also figured many of the programs that recruited him in high school would come flocking back.

“Going in I had the idea this was going to be easy,” Anthony said.

Three years is a lifetime in coaching, however. Many of Anthony’s high school recruiters had retired or moved to other jobs. Combine those changes with Anthony’s relative lack of tape – he took 131 snaps in his Michigan career – and Anthony often got passed up for more proven options.

Things started slowly in the portal for Anthony but picked up once bowl games and the Early Signing Period ended. LSU, Louisville, Illinois and many G-5 programs reached out and stayed in steady contact. Often, Anthony thought an offer was just on the cusp. He remembers thinking LSU was close until he saw the Tigers go with Jabril Cox from North Dakota State. Yet no offers ever came.

Often, contact with schools would cease without warning after one or two seemingly positive messages. Anthony remembers getting Twitter DMs like, ‘Hey would you be interested in playing in the SEC?’ Anthony would respond right away but never hear from them again.

“I was like, ‘Did I say something wrong?’” Anthony said.

He reshaped his body and felt ready to play by the beginning of the summer. But as COVID-19 raged across the country, Anthony did not yet have a home.

This led to a Michigan graduate and former elite recruit sitting out the 2020 season and working a pair of part-time jobs; a football lifer not yet ready to move on from football but also without any better short-term options.

“It was just tough for me mentally,” Anthony said. “That’s the reason I kind of just had to sit out. Not because I didn’t want to (play), but I didn’t have anywhere to go.”  

Anthony worked and worked out waiting for another chance. Once set on landing in the Power Five, Anthony opened up his mind to playing on the G-5 level. This time, in Year 2 of his portal existence, Anthony spent most of his time reaching out to schools. He’d follow coaches on Twitter. He’d DM and text a school’s Director of Player Personnel. Sometimes, he reached out to players in an effort to get his name out there. He tried that at Cal to no avail. Once, Tennessee’s fans started a mini-Twitter campaign to get his name on the radar with Vols coaches. Dozens of Tennessee fans followed Anthony hoping the linebacker-needy Vols would reach out. They never did.  

There were hopeful moments followed by disappointment. Texas was in some contact with Anthony but took two other inside linebackers (Ben Davis, Devin Richardson) instead. Anthony reached out to Liberty, a school that was really interested in him during the 2020 offseason, asking if the school thought he’d still be a fit. The Flames did and Anthony was ready to commit. But Liberty decided to use the scholarship elsewhere.  

Finally, Troy’s linebacker coach Andrew Warwick reached out. The contact stuck this time.

Anthony went from talking with Warwick to communicating with most of the staff. He took a FaceTime tour of the campus with Warwick as the guide. It didn’t take long for Anthony to decide to commit.

After 18 months it didn’t matter if it was Power Five or not. He had a chance.

“I’m so excited,” Anthony said. “Every day when I was at work that was all I was thinking about. I just need somebody to take a chance on me because I’m willing to prove how bad I want this.”

***

Anthony suggests there are two different types of players who enter the transfer portal: Those with proven production and everyone else. Those in the first category will find a landing spot without much issue. Those in the latter – no matter their recruiting pedigree – are much more dependent on their previous relationships and teams taking a risk.

Kater Johnson, a four-star signee with TCU in the 2019 class, entered the portal after just one year in Fort Worth. He had a similar experience to Anthony before ultimately signing with Butler Community College. 

“It’s humbling,” Johnson told 247Sports last year. “You realize within a few months, a year later, the whole process restarts. Once your class is through – I don’t want to say they don’t care about you – but it’s a business.”

  With only 37.6% of FBS scholarship players staying on the FBS level, it’s clear most players fit into that limited category. Not that every player wants to continue playing FBS football. Some transfers happily drop down to a lower classification so they can play. There’s no justification in criticizing any player who wants to keep playing. If Jake Bentley wants to go for Year 6 at South Alabama – awesome. 

Yet in a college football world where so much focus is placed upon FBS players and recruits are so hyped coming out of high school, those who enter the portal often do so with a lack of information. 

“When college football players are debating whether or not to enter the draft or not, they get a grade,” Harris said. “They have some information on where they might land in the NFL Draft and then they can decide whether they go back to school or enter the draft.

“There’s really not that information available to college football players (entering the portal).”

Contact with players is illegal before they’re officially listed in the transfer portal, so it’s up to players to self-evaluate their careers and opportunities before deciding to enter. These self-evaluation situations will only arise more often in the future.

With more players occupying college football than ever thanks to super seniors and a looming scholarship crunch on the horizon, the perils of the transfer portal seem unlikely to change moving forward.

Already on campus at Troy and prepping for the 2021 season, Anthony remains hopeful about the transfer portal following his year-and-a-half journey from Michigan to Troy.

“There were a lot of times I started losing faith and thought I might not ever play again,” Anthony said. “But I’m telling you, what’s meant for you is meant for you.”

Others like Frost, who saw more than a dozen of his scholarship players enter the portal this offseason, are far less buoyant when discussing the revolving door that is often the portal.

“Every kid who leaves any program thinks they’re going straight to Nebraska or Alabama,” Frost said. “And the reality is most of them aren’t. We’ve had some leave that have wound up in places like that. But I guess the right way to say it is Nebraska is a way better place for them, and they end up, in my opinion, in lesser places. But every kid thinks they’re going to get the same interest or more than they got coming out of high school, and it just isn’t true.”

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[altajackuniverse]

Ask Questions on Your Facebook Page to Get More Comments

How Asking Questions on Facebook Gets More Comments

  As a business owner, I hope you have made the choice to build a Facebook presence for your business.  It makes sense if you want to reach your target audience, engaging them and making a lasting connection. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to grow your audience using Facebook.  Especially if you don’t have the budget to boost posts or advertise. However, you can still use Facebook effectively without spending any money.  The most important thing that you do is to increase engagement with your existing followers.  Doing this also prompts Facebook to show your posts more widely. Do your visitors engage with you on Facebook?   Social Media Engagement Matters   As well as signaling to Facebook that people like what you’re posting, high levels of visitor engagement also means that: your readers will believe that you’re interested in them, and that you want to build a relationship with them you’ll build social proof.  If someone discovers your Facebook page and sees you’re engaging with your visitors, they’re more likely to want to join in.   There are several different types of engagement, including: People liking your Facebook page. People reacting to your updates on Facebook. People sharing your posts on their page or group. People commenting on your posts.   The engagement I like best is when visitors comment on your posts.  When readers leave comments, it gives you an opportunity to learn about them.  They’re not just going for the easy option of clicking “like”.  They’re putting themselves out there and responding to your post. This article is all about getting more comments on your Facebook page.  The most effective way I’ve found to do that on any medium, is to ask questions. That sounds pretty obvious, right?  I’m amazed how many of the pages I follow never ask questions.  They never take the opportunity to get me commenting and engaging with them. If you want to grow an audience of people who feel like they know, like and trust you, then you need to ask questions.  But not just any questions.  You need to ask the right types of questions.  

Nine Types of Question You Can Ask On Your Facebook Page

Ask A “Biggest Problems” Question   It may seem negative asking your readers to share their biggest problems, challenges, obstacles or even fears.  However, you’ll be surprised by the honest responses that come out in the discussion. You can even ask fairly specific things.  On a parenting page there might be questions such as: What’s your biggest fear as a parent? What’s your biggest challenge raising boys? What’s the biggest problem you have in the area of discipline?   These types of questions help you understand your pages followers.  The reponses can also help you choose future content topics for your blog. You may also find people mentioning problems you’ve written about in past articles or posts.  You can engage them and say, “Here’s an article with some tips on how to overcome that challenge”, driving people back to your archives.   Ask A "Question from a Reader" This is a technique commonly used by my friend Samantha Jockel from School Mum.  She’ll often write a post like this:  Her questions which always start with “A School Mum asks” are sometimes funny, sometimes start debates, and sometimes offer a way in to more controversial topics.  And they often get a lot of comments.If you don’t have any questions from readers, you might be able to create some by digging into:comments on your blogcomments left on your Facebook pageemails you’ve received.  Ask A “Share a Photo” Question   While this won’t work for every type of site, however asking your readers to share a photo or video can be relevant to many Facebook pages. This could work on many types of blogs.  Here are some I’ve seen. Parenting blogger – “Show us a favorite piece of your kids art.” Food blogger – “Show us the most recent picture of food on your phone.” Travel blogger - "Show us your favorite beach." Fashion blogger – “Show us your favorite pair of shoes.” Technology blogger – “Show us what you have in your laptop bag.”   You may not get as many comments as you would with other types of questions.  But you’ll probably get some really interesting ones.   Ask A “This vs That” Question   With this type of question, you get your followers to choose one of two options.  It might be something like “Are you a dog or a cat person?” You can also use this for a yes/no question such as, “Do you exercise daily? Yes or no”. Be careful if your question is likely to spark a lively debate.  We don’t ask about certain types of topics because the conversation can end up getting a bit negative.    Ask A “What are Your Dreams” Question   Ask your followers about their dreams and aspirations.  It helps you understand not only what your readers are going through right now, but also what they want to do or become. This gives you another opportunity to use your readers’ responses to create content that helps them move toward the dreams they have. People love to tell others about their dreams, ambitions and hopes for their future.  This type of question often receives a lot of well thought out comments.   Ask An “Accountability” Question   You’ll find this type of question used in a lot of Facebook groups.  They will often ask things like, “What’s your biggest goal of the week?” or “What do you want to achieve this week?” This can be a great way to get engagement because it gives you the opportunity to respond to readers later in the week. I left a comment on a post like this on Monday.  On the Friday the blogger left a reply to every single comment that mentioned a goal, asking, “What did you achieve…?” I hadn’t reached my goal.  However I got it done ten minutes after he left that comment.  I was really grateful that blogger took the time to keep me accountable.  And I’ll be going back to that page. If your page involves people trying to build a habit, learn something or become something, you could ask this type of question and then come back to encourage them and help build some accountability.   Ask A “Fill in the Blank” Question   This is a really easy and effective) type of question to ask.   For a blog such as Better Business Alliance I might ask: My first blogging platform was __________. And for a food blog you might ask something like: The word that describes my diet is ____________. or My favorite comfort food is _______________.   The beauty of this type of question is that it’s incredibly simple for someone to answer.  They just have to leave one word. Asking a “fill in the blank” question is often a good way to get someone to leave their first comment.  This is especially true if they’ve been following your page for a while without commenting.   Ask A "Question About a Blog Post"   When you share a link to a blog post you’ve written, you can add a question.  This will often encourage readers to read your post as well as comment. For instance, one post I shared a while back on Better Business Alliance was "5 Steps to Developing Your Unique Selling Proposition". As well as posting the link to Facebook (which automatically pulled in the title and image from the post), I added a question: “Why You Need to Develop a Unique Selling Proposition?” My goal was to get people reading that blog post.  But I also got lots of people answering the question.  We don’t normally get many comments on our links to blog posts, but in this case 3 people answered the question.  That particular Facebook post also had a higher-than-average reach. Hopefully you’ve already tried some of these types of questions on your Facebook page.  The key is to get into the habit of asking questions regularly, and mixing up the types of questions you use.   Ask A “What are Your Tips” Question   Although people are coming to your Facebook page to learn from you, in any community there’s a lot of collective wisdom. With this type of question you can say, “I want to hear from you today with your tips” about a particular area. You may not get as many responses to this type of question as you would to a “fill in the blanks” question. But the responses will be deeper, longer, and more useful. They’ll be valuable both to you and your other readers. And if you get permission from those who comment which you can do by mentioning how you plan to use some responses as future blog post topics.  Just be sure you give credit to the people who left those comments.  

Final Tips for Using Questions on Your Facebook Page

  You need to keep some things to keep in mind when asking questions on your Facebook page.   Always Stay On Topic   Make sure your questions relate to your topic.  Occasional off-topic questions can help build engagement, but don’t do it too regularly.  Your readers may feel that your page topic is getting lost.   Don’t Ask Too Many Questions   Mix up the types of post that you publish.  Share links, videos, pictures, and so on as well as questions.  Facebook seems to prefer this, and it’s likely to be better for reader engagement too.   Consider Using Facebook Live   Facebook Lives get more reach than other types of post.  So you may want to go on Facebook live and ask your readers a question.  Once your live video is over, it will appear in people’s Facebook feeds as a replay.   Be Specific With Your Questions   Don’t be too open ended with your questions.  You’re likely to get much better responses if your questions are focused.  You want to make it as easy as possible for people to comment.  If your questions are too open ended they may not understand how to respond.   Consider Using an Image   Using an image helps your question stand out in people’s newsfeeds.  It could be a plain image, or an image that includes your question text.  Spending a minute or two doing this could boost your engagement.   Be as Responsive As You Can Be   If people answer your question, they should get a response from you.  They’ve taken the time to respond to you, so take some time to respond to them.  That doesn’t always need to be with a comment.  You might use a “like” or other response, particularly if they left a “yes”/“no” or single-word comment.   Visit Our Web Accessibility Blog Visit Our Business Sustainability Blog Will You Adopt an Asking Questions Mindset?   I hope this helps you come up with lots of ideas for questions you could ask on your Facebook page to build engagement.  Of course, you don’t have to limit your use of questions to Facebook pages.   You can use questions in Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, on Twitter, or even on your blog.  Let me know if my article has given you an asking questions mindset?  Are your questions getting more comments from your visitors?   Read the full article

#BetterBusinessAlliance #contentmarketing #customerengagement #Facebook #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing

[mariabblackyr2]

All Ur Viral Phenomena R Belong 2 Us - Lecture&Seminar + Set Task

Meme Dolly Parton - ‘ get you a women who can do it all’, photographs for different platforms - loads of people have followed - how one thing starts another - popular culture 

This is America - Childish Gambino - actor, rapper, young, black pop stars, poet - made the video of this is America - nothing you don’t see everyday on TV, home truths, reality of America, Black lives in America - harsh reality of violence against race?, stereotypes, riots, gun violence  - his culture

A society full of racism and black stereotypes - trousers and dance link back to slavery (Jim Crow - famous portrayal of black people in America) and how black culture came to America and were oppressed - legacy of slavery represented in song and music video 

The music video is a viral phenomenon 

  1 in 9 black men are in prison in America - more of our age group in this room more black people in prison rather than college

Mayflower 2020 - board is white, posh British yet the mayflower played part in killing 95% of the indigenous Americans 

Due to the video being a global phenomena it got memed - mixed together two massive things - call me maybe 

Developed into photographic memes as well - links to American politics in meme - Bernie vs Donald - progression from calm to violence

“Viral phenomena are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. They get their name from the way that viruses propagate” - spreads like an illness virus 

Meme that describes a meme - explaining their links to culture, etc - read intertextually 

Meme culture needs to look back over years of culture to understand 

 Intertext - every text is talking through something 

“The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads; such as beliefs, fashions, stories, and phrases” - the meme about him creating the meme - in his books talks about how we are memes due to over genes copying themselves - how cultural information spreads “When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the same way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.” - we decide what a successful meme looks like

A virus population explodes by how many people it touches

Stanley Milgram - Conformity and Independence - if people were looking up in the street passers by looked up too - FOMO - memes are fomo - fear of missing out - we won't help until someone else steps out to help 

As humans we follow order to not be the weird link in the group - always trying to survive - are we really individuals? Following the leader within the group - been proven by social experiments in people were people are put in situations and filmed what they would do

‘That's clickbait’ - part of meme culture - we click on link

Hashtags -  ice bucket challenge - raising money for charity

#metoo movement - Tarana Burke launched me too movement - white washed out of the photograph 

Tarana Burke: "We owe future generations nothing less than a world free of sexual violence," she says. "I believe we can build that world." - against sexual assault  and harassment followed allegations from Harvey Weinstein

Great Thumberg image - cropped black women out of image that went out across the world - press said the image needed to be tightened - black young girls story is just as important but she got cropped out? Due to her race?

Racial violence went up after brexit.

Memes that reference themselves  - intertext 

Can do anything with a meme - take on mind of their own

‘Meme’ from 1920’s developed into modern day meme - copied and spread of variations of images

‘Lonelygirl15’ - video blog of her on YouTube - her life portrayed through videos was fiction 

Donna Haraway: “the cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience”

A “fiction and a fact of the most crucial, political kind” - we are now cyborgs- links to use of technology and memes - written about years ago - we are them as we are so connected

Donald Trump - Memes - reaction - people laughed at something that wasn’t meant to be funny - people of the free world laughed at him - next hour, next day memes of it came out

Blue and gold dress - was a marketing ploy 

Banksy work shredded after brought fro record money - ‘going, going, gone’ - shredder built into the frame incase it ever sold at auction  - sotherbys shocked by stunt 

The next morning - different versions of shredded art appeared on Instagram

Game of Thrones - very dark - ‘grimdark’ fiction - we live through very dark fiction due to the world happening around us - e.g. The Wicther and The Alienist 

Grimdark is being replaced by ‘hope punk’ e.g. star wars

Explore what it means to be good - look for good characters in film and tv

Set Task:

For the set task I decided to explore the role that photographers has in the Me Too Movement.

https://aperture.org/blog/fashion-photography-metoo-era/

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/photography-me-too-women-portraits_n_5acfa0ffe4b077c89ce68b22?ri18n=true&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAL8hBrcNJnlzvM2G5iJo89bWhtItoVcfNQkqoYM08qJfDV5TI08ARgriyFvDBtvqbeBjOEfwAaBztNDTaQ6YPMfyRNNNzs1h8Kw6rfO9wgPQFIFIUEYd0kJKA7ihh_f9L_RHULvXPsvWHxAsg9oYHqHcGmd-Ss7tlt9vnpR9iKTb&guccounter=2

Seminar:

Viral phenomena applies to narrative and telling stories

Things go viral for many different reasons 

Cultural studies is a way of trying to read how culture works

Books: 

The Posthuman: N. Katherine Hayles How we become: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics 

The Cyborg: Donna J, Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto, 1984

How does this theme link back to previous lectures and seminars? It relates to the hauntology lecture with the idea of the end of history, stuck repeating the same things never coming to a conclusion. It also links to nostalgia with the past repeating itself within viral memes. Is creating memes and other viral phenomena a part of our collective utopia?

(Hills and Valleys- direct statement on federal government on women, birth control, family planning, controversial areas - depicts womens hips, vajazzle of government building  ) The art of going viral | Niki Johnson - ted talk -  gender, power and human rights, being clinically engaged is involved in her everyday life, one piece of work went viral twice - major world event at the same time the art was released,  had zero experience with media the first time - way out of comfort zone, art in the media is based on its ability is its public interest, meaning becomes unruly, piece had cultural significance, second cycle was virtual and newspaper

For the seminar task our group choose to focus on the most recent Banksy that has appeared in Bristol and went viral due to his Instagram post.

#contextualstudies

[ramsybaby]

  Truth be told, the existence and frequency of crimes being committed aren’t as mind boggling as I tend to express. The true riddle lies in what type of reward executors of the worst infractions could possibly be dedicating their lives, our lives, towards getting. With obvious and typical financial benefits aside (and threats of murder for noncompliance) there isn’t much room left to imagine other motivations.

What surprises me, I suppose, is that hundreds in power appear to not care what consequences will befall their own families, as a result of being connected to those who participated directly in the destruction and deceptions.

Especially when the hooves of their high and mighty stallions of “justice” are heard thundering across the broad quilt of our faces, each and every day.

In a world chock full of indignant “do-gooders” and exploited child spokespeople who are trained and rewarded to parrot those who hate us with every fiber of their being.

In the future (if there’s one left to be reached) the progeny of today’s criminals will more than likely suffer much of the same humiliations that current descendants of infamous figures have to endure.

I don’t see this habit changing much in the next few generations. As a matter of fact, with average IQs dropping as they are, we’re on a return trip towards average mindsets ruled by dark aged suspicions and fears; still throwing salt over our shoulders and ogling others for traces of  “bad joo joo” from the carriers of such deep-rooted corruption. What an unfair and heavy burden for any human being to carry. When they’ve struggled to build reputations amongst their clans and colleagues..only to be dashed on the grounds of historical evidence and assumptions of genetic tyrannical “cooties”.

Revenge. Disgust. Repulsion. Avoidance. These are the “gifts” those who knowingly destroy vital evidences leave their children. Lifetimes of opportunities dashed for the sake of single lifetime of kicks and privilege great grandpas Bush or Obama couldn’t shake and jollies which great-grand hyenas Clinton and Pelosi refused to drop from their sharp and dentured jaws.

From mortified sons and daughters, related to formerly esteemed editors of magazine dynasties to the innocent grandchild of a doctor forced to answer for tens of thousands of mothers bullied into the forced sterility and insanity. Be it by trial or the final and depressed contemplation of suicide. They will all suffer from this lack of foresight that all, who could have helped us, seem to be struck with.

The following is what I have determined are truths which will eventually drop into the light-with the aid of collectively restored mental functioning. I mention restoration because the ability to “think right” must be restored; or else we’ll never understand nor see the obvious things which we sadly struggle to see now. The things which are killing and sickening  us.

And will continue to kill and sicken us.

The following is a sampling of damages and the “odd and unexplained events” sure to be studied -along with other ongoing “trivial “ and serious offenses that I neither have the time nor the heart to address.

Lack of assistance re critical news for deaf citizens https://www.wcpo.com/news/national/fake-sign-language-interpreter-behavior

http://limpingchicken.com/2017/09/11/deaf-news-new-fake-interpreter-storm-over-hurricane-irma-emergency-newsflash/

An international corporation being forced to offer decent and necessary assisted services for the deaf. Although it’s an older article, there are still ongoing issues. https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-sued-by-deaf-group-over-lack-of-subtitles/

Mercury, admitted by even the World Heath Organization https://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/mercury/en/ as being extremely dangerous, being injected into millions of human beings and infants.

Their echoed assurance of Ethyl mercury being “quite different” from mercury; exposed as a lie thanks to scientific testimonials, including a 2017 report which specifically confirmed the two act in identical ways as far as damages are concerned, with differences being in the time of shelf life and residual tracing.

(Needless to say, this has been the worst and most publicized abuse)

  The increased crippling and damage caused to newborn babies by induced labor https://www.michigancerebralpalsyattorneys.com/causes-and-risk-factors-of-cerebral-palsy/labor-and-delivery-problems/cerebral-palsy-pitocin-cytotec-labor-inducing-drugs/

under the World Health Organization internationally pushed policies https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44531/9789241501156_eng.pdf;sequence=1

The refusal of assistance for the stopping of genital mutilation https://www.cbsnews.com/news/detroit-federal-judge-dismisses-charges-female-genital-mutilation-case/

  although we are obligated to numerous “women’s rights” laws , with the United Nations making worn out decades of promises to end such violence…which even their own soldiers are immune from being prosecuted under.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/announcement/frontline-uncovers-new-cases-of-sex-abuse-by-united-nations-peacekeepers/

View at Medium.com

(you will have to input the following article’s link-from top of the search bar area- manually)

The following are a few laws and instructions that can, at wretched least, be easily tied to the aforementioned insults and abuses. (Something that may have been worth investigating if we would have had enough human beings in positions of influence, strong enough and fearless enough to have put millions of children’s lives in front of their own narrow interests.)

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Which leads us to one parallel factor that is commonly shared by the majority of this worlds’ leaders. And which should evaporate any arguments which begin with idiotic “Bi-partisan” huffing and puffing. ..Ronald Reagan, as both governor and president, frequently referred to the tradition, whether as a moral principle or a reason for specific policies on issues such as abortion. John Kasich, then the governor of Ohio, wanted to set up a new agency to promote Judeo-Christian values. Mitt Romney saw it as “central to America’s rise in global leadership.” President Barack Obama invoked it to eulogize Shimon Peres. Then-candidate Donald Trump vowed he would be “stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values.” And Stephen K. Bannon repeatedly invokes it in his plans to promote European and American nationalism….

(taken from complete Washington Post article which can be read here https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/17/once-judeo-christian-tradition-united-americans-now-it-divides-them/) One can plainly see the spirit of agreement and cooperation includes all parties and differing POVs.

Agreements which include actual legislation that our politicians have been free to make decisions upon , in blatant and unchecked monarchial fashion, for many years. The most shameless molestation of our Constitution-marrying religious matters into the very heart of state affairs.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-joint-resolution/104/text

Finally, we have a last, but not least , “hint” of things not being as we’ve been forced to believe. A “clue” as to things not being as we depended on them being in order to operate within this “loving and respecting one another” snow globe. Choosing to look on the brighter side of matters, it’s a “hint” which can help us better maneuver what precious little is left of our lives, in order to avoid future and oncoming assaults. https://religiondispatches.org/holy-spit-why-do-ultra-orthodox-jews-spit-at-christians/

Never mind this bug eyed and open mouthed  “spit” into our face, regarding the witholding of “assistance” from “unworthy” human beings. 

When an entire fabricated piece of fiction of zombies in the land was vomited out from the guts of CDC instead of real and useful information (that used to be displayed so we could better save our lives) in the event of a true emergency.

https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/zombie/index.htm

It is these obvious damages and evils resulting from these types of connections which will plague the reputations and pain the consciences of the descendants- of the hundreds of leaders, academics, media monopolists, celebrities, clergy and all others…who have decided “to hell” with even the very children they promised to “love and provide” for.

Never mind us -the “dirty and revolting human beings that infect the earth” they rule over and claim embarrassing “superiority” over.

It’s simply a shame to see how many human beings, of supposed impeccable status and reputations, have ended up safeguarding the condition of their legacy with no better regard than pet waste scraped from the bottom of their well-heeled and “Louboutin”ed feet.

The “celebrated” multitude who bare their ugly teeth and have the naked nerve to dare accuse scores of us of “anti-Semitism” ; when in our own families we carry the DNA of mothers who had to watch their babies skulls get crushed in land stealing massacres, fathers who had limbs chopped off in attempts for freedom and those millions of families who carry the wounds of countless extermination programs…where their “betters” used them like any coward who has the audacity to use human shields.

If we were to be a bit more honest and a LOT less vain, we would see that the spiritual obligation to deceive us means we’ve NEVER been protected nor “loved” in the first place..by these all too mortal “men”.

Note;(As he predicted and as tyrants insist we remain terrorized by, as if we’re forever doomed to stay in the 200 B.C.s instead of 2020 A.D., he was murdered in the period before the Bolshevik uprising) The author is slandered (in a Wikipedia article) as being so ignorant as to have compiled a controversial translation of the Judaic documents, risking his very life, with the poorest understanding of the ancient language. As one can see, on occasion, he did include original text-meaning the door is closed on any such careless “fact” It is important work which resulted in one of the bravest moves a human citizen could have even imagined risking in the 15th century..especially while working under the severe eyes of the most dangerous merger of institutions that this world has ever been forced to suffer and exist under.)

photo By Sergey Nivens

  An Extreme and Wicked Lack of Concern Truth be told, the existence and frequency of crimes being committed aren't as mind boggling as I tend to express.

[kootenaygoon]

So,

For the my first few months at the Star in 2014, my editor Calvin would routinely set me up on dates with various important figures he thought I should know. 

One day I sat on the concrete steps outside our office with Mayor John Dooley, and took a selfie with him for our Facebook page. I met MLA Michelle Mungall and Fire Chief Simon Grypma. He had me book a face-to-face appointment at the Hume Hotel with Paul Hinrichs, the promoter Cass had raved about, and insisted I meet with an actor who was basically Nelson’s mascot, Lucas Myers. The Chamber of Commerce was just down the street, so pretty quickly I was interviewing the executive director Tom Thomson on the regular. There was Stephanie Fischer, the quirky old German woman who ran the Capitol Theatre, and Sydney Black, a singer and entrepreneur who was just beginning to mount a series of lavish, crowd-pleasing musicals. I started learning the names of some of the city councillors, like Deb Kozak, Paula Kiss and Donna Macdonald. But one of the most important contacts he needed me to make was with Nelson Police Chief Wayne Holland.

My interactions with cops in the past had been fairly benign, and rare — I once got a ticket for riding my scooter without a helmet — and my feelings about them were basically neutral. But there was a lot of hostility in town towards the NPD, with some residents questioning whether the force was even necessary. With 19 officers, it was the only department in B.C. serving a community that small, and with all the cannabis growers in town, as well as the off-grid weirdos and drug aficionados, they were bound to be at odds with some of the population. Calvin told me having a positive relationship with the police chief would help the paper navigate some controversial stories that were coming up. One in particular was already in progress: a young cop had punched a woman unconscious while off-duty, right in front of a trio of fellow officers. They all promptly reported him to Holland, and now the guy was going through a trial for assault. The optics were extremely bad, and tensions were high. I only had a slight grasp on all this when I showed up at the department, parking my RAV in the diagonal spot out front.

After announcing myself to a glass wall, a side door clicked open and a swaggering bald man with a bright red face appeared. He had a deep, radio announcer voice and a crushing handshake: “Call me Wayne.”

He ushered me down a hallway, introducing me to his secretary as we passed, and into a spacious office looking out at the downtown core. All along one wall were dozens of police hats, in different colours and from different countries, piled on top of each other and displayed proudly. Some of them looked more military than law enforcement.

“What’s the deal there?” I asked.

“Oh, my little collection. It started out as a little thing, just a few hats, and I guess you could say it’s grown over the years,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I counted them.”

I had an intense feeling of imposter syndrome as he settled in across the desk from me. Why was this guy making time for me? Didn’t he know I was just some dude? I started to babble, describing to him my background in creative writing, and told him about some of my experiences working with the police while I was at the Whitehorse Star. The relationship up there had gotten combative at times, and I’d learned that cops and journalists often have conflicting priorities. Solving a crime and writing a story about it are significantly different things. I told him I understood they had a job to do, and couldn’t always keep us 100% in the loop, but we also didn’t want to be relying on press releases or letting important events go unreported. 

We wanted to be proactive.

“It’s really important to me to have a strong relationship with the press, it always has been,” he said. “And I’ll tell you this: if you call me, and ask me a question, I’ll answer to the best of my ability. Ten times out of ten. I believe in transparency.”

“Really?”

“How about this,” he said, fishing out his phone. “I’ll give you my cell number right now, you can even text me.”

When Holland found out I was a writer, he mentioned that his wife Eileen was as well. She was working on a project about the Nelson Public Library. He shared stories about his family, and I did the same with mine. I knew a lot about the Downtown Eastside because my adopted siblings were from there and I researched it for my Master’s thesis, so I was interested to learn that had been his previous posting. 

We talked about addiction, and drug policy, and the safe injection site. He was suave, charming, and I couldn’t tell if I was getting played. The guy was captivating. It was easy to listen to him talk. And then the conversation turned. We hit a moment, and I felt it — he suddenly had an agenda, something he really wanted me to understand.

“I know this sounds dramatic, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call this a mental health crisis,” he told me. 

“And that’s pretty much the most important thing I’ve been working on, is campaigning for the introduction of something called Car 87. It’s a mental health program we had on the Downtown Eastside, and this city needs it desperately.”

I had seen for myself some of the situations going down on Baker Street. Paisley asked me to pick her up from the Kootenay Co-op more than once because she didn’t feel safe walking home in the dark. There were all these people, some Shambhala Zombies but others just garden variety homeless folk, who haunted the alleys and gathered around Wait’s News on Baker Street. They scared the shit out of some people, and whether you were willing to admit it or not, it was these people city council had in mind when it considered introducing an aggressive panhandling bylaw. Most of them weren’t violent, but some were. And every time somebody went screaming around breaking windows, or decided to take a shit on the sidewalk, a pair of officers would have to escort them up to the hospital and stand there awkwardly for hours while nobody came up with a proper solution. The number of mental health calls they were fielding was escalating, he said, and quite often they were picking up the same individuals repeatedly.

“The proper supports just aren’t in place, and so this work is being downloaded on to the police force. And we’re not trained mental health workers! We’re cops.”

Eventually I found a way to bring up Andrew Stevenson, and we laughed about his incredible escape attempt at the courthouse.

“Now there’s a story,” he said. 

“You wouldn’t believe the fear in the community, when all that was first happening. We felt like it was just a matter of time before someone got killed. I told the guys, I said ‘we need to take this guy down before someone gets hurt’. See, there’s another example of the issues we’re seeing with addiction, because that’s what was driving those crimes.”

“I heard he had arthritis or something?”

“He actually testified that he can’t remember most of the crimes because he was so high. You can decide for yourself how convenient you think that is.”

“I drove out to the bridge, the one he jumped off.”

“Oh, you did?”

“Yeah, I mean, he must’ve been out of his mind desperate.”

“I was stuck at a road-block, if you can believe it. It was actually my Deputy Chief, Paul Burkart, who was there for the arrest. Him and Nate, who you know, as well as Jarrett Slomba and Corey Hoy. There were some RCMP officers there too. It was pretty much all hands on deck to catch this guy. Everyone wanted a piece of him.”

“I can imagine.”

I told him about Paisley, and her new dessert business. She was just in the process of getting her treats on display at the Co-op, and Wayne promised to look into it. As he walked me to the door, he told me a story about the time he went out to Shambhala Music Festival. He was trying to show me that he was cool about it, that he wasn’t scandalized, despite the blatant drug culture of it all.

“When it comes right down to it, what they accomplish out there on that little ranch is incredible. They host around 15,000 people a year, if you can believe that. It becomes its own little city, and while it’s going on it’s the most populous city in the Kootenays,” he said.

“They’re beginning to do some really impressive stuff around harm reduction and drug testing. From what I hear, they’re leading the world with some of this stuff. You’ll find Shambhala is very polarizing in town, and obviously it has a huge impact, but I actually think they do a hell of a good job.”

The Kootenay Goon

[shitfics]

One of These Nights (3/?); jongyu; pg

Jinki knows that he’s gay. What he doesn’t know is how to handle a crush on someone as entwined in the music industry as he is.

part 1 - part 2

sorry again that this has been such a wait! ^^; this follows jinki through lucifer promotions and is more of the slow burn 8) and for the chat part...this is the day and outfit jong is referencing

thanks as always @yurilikesgirls and @jongyued for all their help!

slight warning for brief homophobia/relateable closeted gay feels

"Hyung, get off of your phone," Minho whines. "Don't you want to listen to the game?"

Jinki ignores him and lifts up his book. His phone is still tucked between the open pages of the trot history book, but hopefully pretending to read would keep Minho from bothering him. He didn’t know that Jinki had already finished the book last week, and only kept it on him for his discussions with Jonghyun. For every chapter, Jonghyun had been sending him commentary: stories of all the artists he remembers playing from his mother's cassettes at the record shop she had used to own, nostalgia for the genre’s simple two-beat rhythm, and requests for Jinki to sing him one song or another the next time they meet. When his phone lights up with another request -- and a promise to buy Jinki drinks if he sings it -- he smiles, unable to hide his excitement.

"You could at least respond to the people you’re around, you know," Minho huffs, apparently not giving up on getting his attention. “You look happier about your phone than your members, lately.”

In the seat behind him, Jinki can practically hear Kibum rolling his eyes when he sighs. "Just let him be, Minho -- he's probably texting Jonghyun again. The old man needs someone his age to talk with."

Jinki shoots a glare back at Kibum, then returns to his phone. It does help for him to have someone outside of the band to talk to, especially during promotions. When he’s forced to spend every waking with the members, untangling tensions and trying to smother any new problems before they blow up, he needs a lifeline to the outside world to keep from going insane.

The game cuts to commercials, and Gyeongshik switches his attention away from the radio to their conversation. “Is it that Kim Jonghyun? The one who wrote some songs for your last album?"

"Yeah, that one," Taemin answers. "Jinki's gotten real close to him lately."

"Huh." He blinks, letting the car roll a few feet ahead before stopping again. "You know, I used to listen to his radio show, but I haven't listened to his show ever since he started stirring up controversy online.”

Jinki leans towards the front seats with interest -- as much as Jonghyun had shared with him about his radio show, he had never mentioned anything going wrong. "He had scandal?"

"Yeah. He posted something about that movement -- I forgot what it was called already -- the one at that university, where some student left a letter on a board talking about all sorts of stuff.  Basically coming out in support of homosexuals," he explains, and Jinki freezes, skin immediately prickling at the subtle disdain his manager layers into the word. "I heard they had to filter the show's messages for a little bit after that, since he was getting harassment. He should have expected it, really, saying things like that online..."

The leather of the front seat creaks under Jinki's fingers when he clenches his hand before retreating. He fiddles with his phone as the other members speak, rereading Jonghyun's last message to distract himself from the nervous swirl of nausea in his stomach.

He hates hearing the words for people like him. Even when they’re euphemisms, and even when the person saying them doesn’t wear a disgusted curl on their lip as Gyeongshik does -- it makes him sweat. Jinki wipes his palms on his jeans and keeps his face carefully blank. He’s never been able to shake the fear that some small expression or gesture will somehow pull everyone's attention towards him when the topic arises.

Thankfully, an announcement of an upcoming soccer game on the radio saves him -- Minho knocks his elbows into Jinki and Kibum in his rush to turn up the volume on the stereo, and the conversation ends there, drowned out under the flood of stats and predictions that Minho throws out as easily as the paid commentators.

With a sigh, Jinki reopens his phone and taps out a half-hearted response to Jonghyun's last text and sets down his phone. Though he's certain the topic is over for now, his heart is still racing, and he can’t bring himself to add the jokes and faces he usually adds to his messages. The knowledge that Jonghyun would risk public blowback to support him is a small comfort. He won't risk coming out to him -- he'd already decided not to air that secret to anyone -- but it's nice to know that Jonghyun might not be disgusted by him if he did.

He lays his head back against the carseat. It’s hard to imagine a life where he would feel up to the risk. Maybe if he weren't an idol, he could tell Jonghyun, or a few close friends -- maybe he'd even have the courage to ask Jonghyun out, if it wouldn’t ruin their friendship completely. But he has four other careers resting on him keeping that part of himself hidden, on top of his own, and he could never bring himself to risk that. Not for a miniscule shot at a crush.

***

As always, Jinki’s stomach was full of butterflies when the time came for their new song to be thrown in the competition of music shows. And like always, he’d had his doubts of their success -- their new title track was radically different from the last, and the pants they’d had to squeeze him in for the performance only raised his doubts -- but somehow, it had all come together. They’d won their first award, danced through their encore, and finally filed back into the dressing room to pick confetti out of their hair before changing into their own clothes to head home.

When Jinki returns to the dressing room, his phone is buzzing in his bag, and he already knows who it is. He rushes to give the staff a final bow and thanks, then passes their trophy over to Minho, letting him pose with it as he digs up his phone. He smiles at the string of missed messages from Jonghyun.

realjonghyun85: Jinki-yah!!!! Congratulations!!

realjonghyun85: I watched your performance tonight!!!

realjonghyun85: You got your first win!!! I'm so happy for you, Jinki-yah

realjonghyun85: Your live was so good he he ... did you eat the extra CDs I bought? Is that where they went?

majingki: Ahhh I’m embarrassed

majingki: Thank you hyung ^^

majingki: You're too nice TT I still need to improve more

realjonghyun85: And you’re so humble ... but that's why you keep getting better isn't it ^^

realjonghyun85: You have to let me buy you a meal when you're done promoting, alright?

realjonghyun85: Or I can buy you drinks for each win you get ... your pick

majingki: Well, I'm going to need the drink he he

majingki: But food sounds good too TT

majingki: Do I really have to pick between them?

majingki: And if I pick food, you'll buy meat right...?

realjonghyun85: Ah!! Stop being cute

realjonghyun85: You don't have to pick

realjonghyun85: Of course I'll buy you both~

majingki: You don't have to ^^;

realjonghyun85: Well, you can't stop me now!!

realjonghyun85: So really ^^ Let me treat my winning dongsaeng

majingki: Ok~

majingki: Thank you hyung ^^

majingki: I didn't realize you would be watching our performance

realjonghyun85; Of course!

realjonghyun85: I never miss any music show he he

realjonghyun85: Me and my sister usually watch them together

realjonghyun85: I wanted to watch it for you anyway

reajonghyun85: That fishnet open back shirt...

realjonghyun85: Interesting styles idols are wearing these days ... he he

majingki: Please, don't tease me about it... TT

majingki: It's not like I pick the clothes out

majingki: We just have to dress flashy for our concept

realjonghyun85: That shirt was different from your usual image

realjonghyun85: You looked good

majingki: Hyung TT You're embarrassing me

realjonghyun85: Am I?

majingki: Yeah ... I'm not used to wearing things like that ... but it was a bit fun ^^

majingki: Made it easier to not get as sweaty since it was open

realjonghyun85: Yeah, I bet...

realjonghyun85: You seemed to enjoy it as much as the crowd

realjonghyun85: They liked seeing that much of you he he

majingki: Hyung!!!

majingki: Why are you like this ... I'm blushing

realjonghyun85: Ah, I'm teasing you too much, aren't I?

realjonghyun85: Sorry Jinki-yah

realjonghyun85: It’s hard not to...

realjonghyun85: I'm a little drunk

majingki: Oh?

realjonghyun85: Yeah, noona bought us drinks to watch the show...

realjonghyun85: I’ve had a few he he

realjonghyun85: And she's already sick of me talking so much, so I messaged you

realjonghuyn85: Hopefully you don’t mind? ^^

majingki: I don't mind it hyung ^^

majingki: I like how talkative you are

realjonghyun85: Well, you're probably the first person to ever say that

realjonghyun85: Too kind ... my angel-hearted Jinki-yah

majingki: I’m just being honest hyung ^^

realjonghyun85: I'll believe you this time

realjonghyun85: But I should leave you alone ... I'm sure you want to celebrate the win with your members

majingki: Aw, you don't have to TTT

majingki: We'll probably just rest and eat...

majingki: Too tired for much else now

realjonghyun85: Well, I'll let you rest well then ^^

realjonghyun85: Noona is bugging me now anyway

realjonghyun85: She says I'm too drunk to be texting

majingki: You don't seem that drunk...

realljonghyun85: I know!! I told her you couldn't even tell!!

realjonghyun85: But I really am drunk ...

realjonghyun85: You just can't see my face he he

realjonghyun85: I'm actually all flushed

majingki: I wish I could see

majingki: It's been a while since you've been that drunk

realjonghyun85: Don't tempt me to send you a photo

realjonghyun85: That'll be embarrassing later

majingki: Why? ^^

majingki: You think I'll tease you about it?

realjonghyun85: Maybe he he

realjonghyun85: You're always a little unpredictable

majingki: Yeah? ^^

majingki: It's fun though, right?

realjonghyun85: Of course~

realjonghyun85: I always have fun with you

majingki: I have fun with you too, hyung ^^

realjonghyun85: Ahhh... you’re making me miss you more TT

realjonghyun85: I have to go now...

realjonghyun85: I can tell I'm getting ridiculous...

realjonghyun85: Better to inflict that on my noona than a busy idol like you

majingki: Okay hyung TT

majingki: I'll have to go back to the dorm with the members now anyway

majingki: But don't forget you can message me~ I'll respond between schedules

majingki: And come to my musical next week! Please?

majingki: I can probably meet you back stage ^^

realjonghyun85: Of course I'll be there! I know how hard you've been working

realjonghyun85: Later Jinki-yah!!

***

Jinki’s knee bounces double-time as he checks his phone for the third time in five minutes as he waits in the dressing room. He'd told Jonghyun to meet him backstage after his afternoon performance, in the short gap before preparations for the evening one. The last message from he’d gotten from Jonghyun had mentioned that he was bringing his sister along, so he hadn't even bothered to change out of his final costume from their afternoon performance, too afraid of being caught off guard.

With most of the other cast members out to grab food, the dressing room is quiet, and he hears Jonghyun's voice echoing down the hall even before a staff members knocks on the door.

"Jinki-ssi -- someone's here to see you."

Jinki jumps out of his chair and bounds to the door, swinging it open to grin widely at Jonghyun. "Youre here!"

"Shit, Jinki-yah!”  Jonghyun exhales, one hand thrown over his chest. “You don't need to startle me like that! And of course I'm here -- I'm only late when there's no schedule to stick to."

"Sorry, hyung." Jinki smile broadens when he sees that one of Jonghyun's arms has stayed stubbornly hidden behind his back. He leans to the side to try and steal a glance, heart fluttering at the possibility that Jonghyun had bought him a gift.

Catching Jinki's intent, Jonghyun steps back from the doorway before Jinki can tell what he's brought. "You look really different dressed like this." Jonghyun says, deflecting Jinki's attention from whatever he's hiding when he looks him up and down.

Jinki's nerves itch at the intensity of his stare. He fidgets with his belt, suddenly conscious of the extra attention it brings to the tightness of his jeans. "A good different, I hope?"

"Yeah, for sure -- I mean, I'm used to seeing you in makeup for shows on TV, but with these clothes, and your hair like this...you really look like a rock star."

"Thanks," Jinki straightens his back, confidence quickly soaring from the compliment. "I was a little worried I'm too soft to suit this kind of image."

"No, it really suits you, especially with the long hair--"

The sound of a woman clearing her throat interrupts him. "Are you ever going to move, Jjong? I can't get through the door to introduce myself with you standing there..."

"Right, sorry." Jonghyun shuffles quickly into the room, letting the woman follow behind in him. Jonghyun gestures to her, introducing her with a proud smile. "Jinki, this is my sister Sodam."

Jinki fixes the grin he had been wearing into a polite smile before he bows, making sure to bend to the full ninety degrees. He knows how much Jonghyun's sister means to him, and he wants to make a good impression. "It's nice to meet you."

"It's good to finally meet you too, Jinki." She smiles after returning the bow. "Jonghyun talks so much about you."

"She's just reciting cliches," Jonghyun mumbles, embarrassed. Sodam shakes her head from behind Jonghyun's shoulder, making Jinki grin. There's no reason for it, but having Sodam's approval of their friendship makes his crush seem a little less pathetic.

"We've gotten close these past few months, right? You don't need to be embarrassed about it, I'm flattered that you talk about me," Jinki says, feeling bold. When Jonghyun only shrugs shyly, Jinki points to the flowers in Jonghyun's hands. "...Are those for me?"

"Oh, right!" Jonghyun snaps out of his flustered state to hold the bouquet out for him. "We picked these up on the way for you."

Jinki takes them from Jonghyun hands, hiding his smile behind the thick bundle of flowers when he pulls them close. He doesn't want to look too delighted, but it’s the first time he’s ever been given flowers from anyone other than his parents.

"Jjong picked out the roses," Sodam says with a nudge at Jonghyun's shoulder.

Jonghyun jostles her back roughly. "I wanted to get something nice, and I don't know anything about flowers. I just grabbed whatever I could find."

"Well, they're really nice," Jinki says. He leans the bouquet back towards him, sighing at the fresh scent. "Thank you, hyung. I like them a lot."

Jonghyun scratches at the back of his neck, a pleased smile on his lips. "You're welcome."

Both of them rock back on their heels as the conversation stilts. When the silence begins to drag on, Sodam clears her throat. "So, how long can we stay back here before we get kicked out? I don't want to get you in trouble if we linger."

Jinki pokes his head out of the door. He'd found that he could judge how long they had before things got frantic by the pace of the stage crews' steps; that only half of them were only power-walking meant they still had some time left. "Maybe a few more minutes, since I still have to change...I think they want to go over some things before the evening performance."

"Well, we don't want to keep you, since you're the star of the show." Jonghyun grins at him. "But can we take a picture before we leave? I know you're going to wear this later in the show, but my phone doesn't have the best camera. I doubt I'm going to see you in an outfit like this again."

"Sounds great! I'll take the picture for you both." Sodam snatches Jonghyun's phone out of his hand. Gesturing for them to step back, she waves her hands, frowning as she tries to direct them. "Can't you get closer than that? This phone can't make a very wide shot."

Stepping closer, Jonghyun slings an arm over his shoulder and grumbles. "Lean down a little, could you? Your boots are too damn big."

Jinki snickers when Jonghyun stumbles on his toes as he tries to stand taller. "Having trouble reaching, hyung?"

"You're lucky I'm not allowed to mess up your hair tonight, Jinki-yah." Jonghyun's fingers snake under his curls to give a quick pinch at the back of his neck. "You're being extra cheeky."

When Jinki yelps, Sodam sighs, brows furrowed in exaggerated annoyance. "Can I take a picture of you two, or are you going to just play around?"

"Yes, yes, picture time, got it." Jonghyun points to the camera. "Smile, Jinki-yah."

Jinki faces the camera as instructed and beams, unable to help smiling brighter when he feels Jonghyun squeeze his shoulder and lean more of his weight on him for balance.

Sodam snaps a few more pictures, then claps her hands. "Alright, that's good." 

She passes the phone back to Jonghyun, who pulls up the pictures and holds it out so they can all see. Sodam rests her head on Jonghyun's shoulder and coos. "This picture came out so cute. You two look happy."

Sidling up on Jonghyun’s other side, Jinki stares at the picture, caught off guard by the brightness of his own smile. Did he always look that happy around Jonghyun?

Jonghyun hums. "It came out well, yeah -- should we use this one?"

"But your eyes are closed, hyung. Was that on purpose?"

"I do that a lot, haven't you noticed? My eyes get red when I fall asleep with my contacts in...it's the best way to cover that up." Jonghyun looks down at his phone again, this time tapping his way through the screen to twitter. "Do you mind if I upload it? You still have a few shows left to go, and your musical deserves some extra promoting. I know you've worked hard."

"Sure, go ahead," Jinki agrees. He's too pleased with Jonghyun's compliment to care that he usually avoids sharing things online. "It'll be nice to have it up there."

"Alright then, I'm uploading it..." Jonghyun taps and squints at his screen before he pulls away from it with a smile. "And it’s all done. Too late to delete it now."

Sodam only manages squeeze off a single question about Jinki’s career before before Jonghyun's phone buzzes violently in his hand, screen flickering every half-second with a new notification.

Jonghyun blinks at it. “Um...”

"You better turn that off completely during the show," Sodam says.

"I guess so," Jonghyun says, eyes wide as he opens up his phone. "That picture really took off fast -- is this why you never make your account public?"

Jinki shrugs. "Kind of. Too much attention can be a little overwhelming."

"Yeah, I guess...I didn't expect so many people to notice I posted something this quickly." Jonghyun taps rapidly at the screen, expression desperate as he tries to turn off the flood of notifications. "And now a lot of your fans are following me for whatever reason...how many can you possibly have?"

Jinki sticks out his lips in a fake pout. "Are you saying you expected me to be unpopular?"

"No." Jonghyun huffs. "I'm just saying I didn't expect people to follow me because of one picture with you."

"You should have expected it, Jjong -- Jinki's a celebrity after all." Sodam shrugs. "They're probably hoping you'll post more pictures with him later."

"Damn. I hope they aren't disappointed if I don't."

"We can take more pictures sometime," Jinki offers. "As long as you don't take any when we're out drinking. I don't want anyone to find where we're at, or see me drunk...I'd definitely get in trouble for that."

"I'm more likely to look drunk than you, so don't worry." Jonghyun laughs. "I'm not sure I want to do it anyway, it feels weird...like I'm using you for your fame."

"I know you're not like that, hyu--"

"You're telling me every costume designer went to get coffee?!" A booming voice from across the theater cuts Jinki off and makes Jonghyun jump. As Sodam snickers at Jonghyun’s reaction, Jinki cringes, able recognize the voice from across the theater.  

Jinki sighs and pushes back his bangs. "That was the director...he's a good guy, but I'm not sure you want to stick around. There'll be more of the yelling as we get closer to starting.”

"Alright. We should go and grab our seats, anyway," Sodam says. She nudges Jonghyun until he nods in agreement. "Good luck with your show, Jinki."

"I'll work hard." Jinki smiles, tucking the flowers under his other arm. "You two have good seats, right?"

"Very good seats," Jonghyun affirms. "I made sure to get the best. So you have to wave to us, okay?"

"I'll try, but I'm not sure I'll be able to see you with the stage lights."

Jonghyun laughs. "Don't worry about it then, just focus on your performance. If you make it a good one, I'll write up a review to please my new followers."

"You'll say good things about me no matter what," Jinki teases.

"You know I will." Jonghyun grins. Reaching in for a hug, he stops himself mid-way, pulling back before he crushes the bouquet of flowers against Jinki's side. Sodam's lips quirk in amusement at Jonghyun's awkward retreat when she turns her attention back to Jinki.

"Thanks for letting us backstage again. I'm going to take my brother away before he finds something else to talk about -- he can talk forever if you let him."

"Yeah...and I ought to get to work." Jinki swings his arms by his side, enjoying the playful glare Jonghyun sends him before he remembers to bow to Sodam. "It was nice to meet you. Thank you for coming to the musical."

"You too." She bows back.

Jinki watches them leave, waving to Jonghyun as he’s dragged away. The moment they step out of earshot, Sodam leans in towards Jonghyun's ear, chattering at him excitedly and glancing back at Jinki one last time.

Jinki catches her gaze with a knot in his stomach.

He should have concerned himself less with earning her approval, and more on keeping the butterflies that always fill his stomach around Jonghyun from affecting his behavior -- he can't shake the feeling that a part of her noticed he’s more fond of her brother than a friend should be.

 ***

 Jinki opens up his twitter the moment he gets back to the dorm, curious about what fans might have to say about his last performance of the musical. Though it was something he planned on doing anyway, Jonghyun's presence in the audience had emboldened him to give a little extra fanservice before the curtains had closed. Their fans didn't know it yet, but the only appearance they would have in Korea for the next year would be for their concert, and Jinki felt like he had to do something special to make up for it.

A picture of himself with his hands in the air and a broad smile on his lips makes him grin at the memory of that moment -- though he’d been worried about balancing the musical and its rehearsals in the middle of promotions, he’s glad he didn’t pass up the role. It had been nice to play a role outside of the polite and sweet side of him he always emphasized to fans.

Backing out from his search, Jinki moves on to his mentions, heart fluttering when he sees that a good number of them include the picture he took with Jonghyun. As silly as it is, a part of him can't help but be happy to see their names are being used side-by-side. Jinki scrolls down further, fully expecting the comments to be about the picture he had let Jonghyun take or the songs Jonghyun had written for their last album, but finds little mention of that -- instead, his screen is flooded with screenshots, taken on different phones at different resolutions but all evidence of the same thing: Jonghyun following one of his biggest fansites.

Jinki stares at his phone in disbelief, half wondering if it was a joke -- why would Jonghyun follow one his fansites? Closing it, he goes to Jonghyun's following list, seeing no mention of it -- he could write it off as an image edit that got spread around, but knowing Jonghyun, he has reason to be suspicious. He moves through a few random discussions amongst the fans, and the same ones that noticed him following the fansite were posting jokes about the unfollow that shortly followed it.

Jinki sets his phone aside and rolls onto his back, needing to stare at the ceiling to try and think. That’s enough evidence for him that it really happened. But it still seemed...odd. Jonghyun always talked about keeping up with the industry, so it could be about that -- but a fansite wouldn't tell him anything about musical trends. And updates on SHINee are easy enough to find on the official accounts he was already following.

The only reason for someone to follow a fansite of his would be to look at pictures or video of him, right? His mind hones in on that thought, building his hopes higher and higher until his heart is beating stupidly fast. Did he just follow the site on accident, after looking up pictures of Jinki? And if he did look up pictures -- how often did he do that? Was it because he wanted pictures of the musical, or was it a regular thing?

It had to mean something.

Reaching back for his phone, Jinki pulls up the image again to look at the timestamp one fan had given, squinting at the screen as he zooms until he can read the small 3:03 am printed in the corner. Jonghyun had followed his site only an hour after ending his radio show.

So Jonghyun gets home around 3am, and the first thing he does look at pictures of me?

Jinki swallows, cheeks growing warm when his mind jumps to other things Jonghyun might do late at night after work. There’s no way Jonghyun would look them up with that purpose in mind -- it's not like fansite pictures were revealing. But the idea is still enticing, enough for him to want to find out why Jonghyun decided to sign himself up for easy access to pictures of him.

It’d be easier to get information out of him in person, but he can’t stand to wait, so he opens up his last conversation with Jonghyun and starts with a teasing text.

majingki: Why did you follow my fansite hyung? ^^

Though his message is read immediately, Jonghyun’s response comes a few minutes later.

realjonghyun85: Eh? Your fansite?

majingki: Yeah ^^

realjonghyun85: I clicked it on accident!!

realjonghyun85: The screen on my new phone is so big, see TT I keep pushing the wrong buttons

majingki: But why were you on there hyung ^^ Are you a fan hehe

realjonghyun85: Well, you know I'm your fan

majingki: Yeah, I know ^^

realjonghyun85: How did you know I followed it, anyway?

majingki: I saw fans posting about it ... they put up screenshots ^^

realjonghyun85: Seriously? Wow... I have to be careful

realjonghyun85: They're like detectives

majingki: Careful?

majingki: You think you might follow one again? ^^

realjonghyun85: My hands are clumsy!

majingki: Do you look often? ^^

realjonghyun85: They take good pictures!

majingki: You should make one your phone background then hyung~

realjonghyun85: You really want me to?

majingki: I'm joking he he

realjonghyun85: Too bad, I'm going to do it now

realjonghyun85: This is what you get for teasing me Jinki-yah

majingki: Free promotion? Sounds like a good thing ^^

realjonghyun85: I guess so ... hehe

majingki: Pick something good ^^

realjonghyun85: No such thing as a bad picture from these sites, don't worry

majingki: Mm...

majingki: So you have looked at them a lot?

realjonghyun85: You know, you're always extra cheeky when it's late

majingki: ^^

realjonghyun85: Shouldn't you sleep?

majingki: I had to tease you first

majingki: But I guess you're right...

majingki: We can’t all stay up till 3am looking up idol pictures... ^^

realjonghyun85: Go to bed, Jinki-yah

realjonghyun85: You need your rest

majingki: Alright, alright ... I won’t tease you anymore

majingki: Thanks again for coming to the musical, hyung ^^

realjonghyun85: Of course!

realjonghyun85: You were great ^^

realjonghyun85: Sodam enjoyed it too, and she's not a musical person at all

majingki: ^^ Thanks

majingki: I'm glad she liked it ... I was nervous

majingki: But I’ll sleep now! Since hyung said I should!

realjonghyun85: Glad you finally listen to me  he he

majingki: You rest too ^^ Don't stay up too late hunting pictures~

realjonghyun85: I won’t!

realjonghyun85: Good night Jinki

***

"Hey, Jinki," Jonghyun greets him at the door and invites him in with a familiar hurried movement of his hands. "Sorry I'm not ready to leave yet. My friend is still here, we got caught up working on a new song together."

"That's fine." Jinki shrugs, toeing off his shoes before heading to wait on the couch. He's gotten used to catching Jonghyun in the middle an inspiration burst, and has learned to expect a small wait when he arrives. "You'll be done soon, you think?"

"Yeah, we're pretty much done." He walks past Jinki to the small music room. "Just let me help her pack her music and things, then we can--"

"Oh, I got it, Jonghyun." A woman steps out from the small studio, sheets of music shoved haphazardly into a set of folders under her arms.

Jinki stares at her, a sudden lump forming in his throat. He had always known that he couldn't be the only person Jonghyun worked with in his small apartment studio, but seeing first-hand that the person he’s working with is a pretty girl stirs a jealousy in him that he hadn't expected to feel. He wanted those moments all to himself.

The woman smiles at him broadly, then looks at Jonghyun as she comes to join them in the living room. "I didn't realize you were having a guest. I would have cut you off a while ago if I had known. I hate it when you're late to things."

"Yeah, well..." Jonghyun rubs the back of his neck. "I lost track of time, so I didn't think to say anything. But it's good we didn't lose the flow we had going, right?"

The woman rolls her eyes, obviously as familiar as Jinki is with Jonghyun's excuses. “You always lose track of time.”

"I know, I know." Jonghyun claps his hands together, eager to move the subject on from his habitual lateness, and gestures to Jinki. "This is the idol friend I was telling you about, Lee Jinki -- I guess you probably know him as SHINee's Onew.”

Before Jonghyun can introduce her in turn, she bows to Jinki. "I'm Sojin, Jonghyun's friend from high school. I usually play keyboard for him and help him write." There's a small spark in her eye as she pauses to fix her hair before continuing. "I'm sorry that we ran late, but I am glad I got to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too," Jinki says, trying to ignore her smile even as he returns it. She's pretty, in a heart-wrenching way -- the image of her and Jonghyun sharing the piano bench is enough to make his chest burn. He locks his hands together in front of him and bows to her, hoping his politeness will hide the jealousy still clawing at his gut.

"Ah, you're even more handsome in real life..." she muses, eyes bouncing over his face when he straightens. "Jonghyun always keeps such good-looking friends."

Jonghyun's eyes widen. He looks quickly between Jinki and Sojin, clearly as caught off guard by the blatant flirting as Jinki had been.

"Well, of course he's good-looking, Sojin -- he's an idol," Jonghyun huffs. "And a popular one, too. I'm lucky I ever get to see him at all with how busy he is."

Sojin shakes her head and sighs before heading to the door. "You don't need to hint at me like that, Jonghyun. I understand that you two had plans. I'll leave."

"Sorry, I don’t mean to rush you out." Jonghyun apologizes, but follows her to the door and opens it without hesitation. "We just don’t get to see each other much, and he just finished promoting."

"That's a shame." Sojin stops outside the door. "I hope to see you again when you're not so rushed."

Jinki smiles, hoping it comes across as sincere. "Yeah, you too."

"Later, Sojin -- send me those recordings when you get the chance." Jonghyun closes the door after her, then slumps back against it with a heavy sigh. He fixes Jinki with an apologetic look as he straightens. "I'm really sorry about that, Jinki. I could tell you were kind of uncomfortable with her flirting."

"It's fine," Jinki says. "Stuff like that happens."

"Still, though." Jonghyun pouts. "Let me know if you want me to tell her to back off, alright? I doubt you two will meet again, but I don't want you to feel put on the spot like that if you do."

Jinki shrugs. He already feels better now that they're alone, and the tinge of protectiveness in Jonghyun's voice is nearly enough to make him forget his earlier jealousy. "I can handle it, hyung. I have plenty of experience turning people down."

Jonghyun shakes his head, a wry smile on his lips, and reaches out to ruffle Jinki’s hair before he can protest. "C'mon, now you're just bragging."

"I'm not, really!" Jinki squirms away from Jonghyun, fixing his bangs back into place as he backs up into the other room to escape. "It's just true!"

"I'm sure it is..." Jonghyun mumbles, suddenly pulling his hands back. The corners of his mouth etching deeper in annoyance as steps over to the coat rack to retrieve his jacket. "You're really good-looking. Probably get tons of offers."

"It doesn't matter -- I'm not really interested in dating," Jinki says, hoping to placate Jonghyun, though his own mood has already soured.

His mind has already made connections he never wanted to make, and he can only imagine one reason Jonghyun would be upset about Sojin's interest in him. Since before they met, Jonghyun had penned dozens of lyrics about one-sided love, but never given a name to his muse -- and if it were going to be anyone, wouldn't it be the girl he'd worked on music with since he was young?

He pushes the thought away, afraid of sharpening the tension between them. No point in thinking about it, anyway, when he'd never have a chance.

When Jonghyun returns, Jinki forces out a smile, slipping back into his shoes and watching patiently as Jonghyun shrugs on his jacket.

"Let's go grab something to eat." Jonghyun steps past him and swings open the door, uncharacteristically rushed. "I've been cooped up in here all day."

"Sounds good to me," Jinki agrees. He follows Jonghyun to the elevator in long strides to keep up with his pace. When the door closes behind them, the blurry reflection of Jonghyun with his arms crossed is enough to keep him from trying to start a conversation, so he shoves his hands in his pockets and waits, counting the seconds between the ding for each floor to distract himself.

Once outside, Jonghyun waves for them to cross the street, still wordless even as he directs them towards their usual restaurant. It's not as if Jinki needs verbal directions, when they've been to this place a few times before and they're walking together, but they've never made the short walk in total silence -- even if they have nothing to say, Jonghyun usually fills the space in with his absent humming. Tonight, he steps alongside Jinki quietly, looking deep in thought as they navigate their way through the bustle of pedestrians to reach the restaurant on the corner.

Just after they settle into their seats and make their orders, Jonghyun's phone buzzes against the table. He glares at it accusingly.

"Sojin wants your number," he grumbles, fingers beginning staccato taps of irritation across the screen when he opens his phone to begin a response.

“Sorry.” Jinki slumps back in his seat, feeling guilty. "It's not a big deal. Just tell her you won’t give it out or ignore it."

Jonghyun's mouth twists when he receives another message. "You sure you don't want her number or anything?"

"I already said I'm not interested," Jinki insists. He kicks at the leg of his own chair, irritated that Jonghyun seemed to be taking out whatever jealousy he felt on him. "Why are you so upset about it, anyway? Is Sojin some one-sided love of yours or something?"

The silence that follows is enough to make Jinki regret the question the minute it leaves his mouth. He'd rather not know if that’s true, and the intense stare Jonghyun is giving him makes him think it is.

"...Are you asking me that as a serious question, Jinki?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Jinki snaps. "You've worked with her since high school, right? And you spend so much time alone together...it makes sense that you would like her."

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in her at all," Jonghyun protests. He pinches the bridge of his nose, hiding his mouth with his hand as he gives a soft laugh. "Really, I'm not interested -- I've never even thought about it. We just work well together on music, and share a lot of early memories...we’re old friends. It's never been anything more than that."

Jinki's scrunches his nose and eyes Jonghyun, still skeptical. "You're acting like you're jealous, though."

"I'm not jealous." Jonghyun scowls. When their food is set down a moment later, he reaches across the table to swipe a piece of Jinki's food before beginning his explanation.  "I'm just irritated with how she’s acting, you know? I feel like she only hit on you so blatantly because you're an idol -- I've never seen her be so pushy before about a guy -- and I don't like that she'd treat you differently. I don't want you to have to worry about that part of your life around me."

"I told you I’m used to it, hyung." Jinki says. "It’s not a big deal unless there's a crazy crowd, or it’s one of our sasaeng fans. The only reason I'm tense right now is because you seem tense."

"Yeah, and I'm sorry for that." Jonghyun sighs and relaxes back into his chair. He wipes his hand on a napkin, then wring it in his hands, staring past Jinki as he thinks over his words before continuing. "Plus, I just ... am a bit jealous, I guess. I don't have a lot of friends I can meet up like this, one-on-one. And now I keep thinking you'll meet some other girl I work with and want me to invite her along--"

"I wouldn't do that."

"I wouldn't blame you, if you did," Jonghyun says, smiling reluctantly. "And it's selfish of me to not help you meet people, isn't it? It’s probably hard for you to date, as an idol. But I just don't like the idea of sharing the little time I get with you ... I've really grown to like it."

"I like it it just being us too,” Jinki says, not realizing how it sounds until Jonghyun averts his gaze to avoid meeting his eyes as a shy smile pulls at his lips.

A flush crawls up Jinki’s neck. He rushes to add on his statement, not wanting to say anything suspicious. "I mean, I'm used to being stuck around four other guys and fans, and since they're both really noisy--" he cuts himself off, already feeling like he's making things worse. "I meant that the quiet's a nice change. And you’re a great friend."

At his words, Jonghyun's expression warms, and Jinki has only a half-second to try and calm the flutter in his heart before Jonghyun reaches across the table to squeeze his shoulder.

"You’re a good friend to me too, Jinki-yah. I’m glad we’ve gotten so close.”

 ***

Jonghyun’s coffee table is covered in a dozen dishes and drinks for each of them. All of the bowls are open and steaming, ready to eat, and Jinki can’t remember the last time he’s seen so much food.

Jinki stretches his legs out under the table with a satisfied sigh and reaches for the second dish Jonghyun had ordered for them to share. He hasn't eaten properly in ages, it feels like. The latest blowup between Jino and Kibum at the dorm had given him plenty of reason to avoid any common areas, and between that and schedules he'd missed more meals than he'd eaten. The chance to relax with Jonghyun and a movie (the first Lord of the Rings, predictably -- because Jinki always lets Jonghyun pick and they had just finished the books) had brought back his hunger with a force that had his mouth watering from the moment their food came to the door.

His appetite doesn't go unnoticed by Jonghyun -- probably because they're bumping elbows every time Jinki reaches across the table to grab another piece of meat from Jonghyun's side -- and he imitates Jinki’s reach by knocking back into him with deliberate force.

"Are you hungry or something, Jinki-yah?" Jonghyun teases. "You seem to be eating off every corner of the table."

"A bit," Jinki answers, covering his mouth with his hand as he gives a sheepish smile and finishes chewing. "I haven't had a full meal like this since promotions started."

"Idols, really." Jonghyun tuts and shakes his head. He puts a hand on Jinki's shoulder for balance and stands, then settles onto the couch. "I’m full already, so the rest of the food is yours. Eat anything left that you like."

"Thanks, hyung." Jinki grins back at Jonghyun before reaching for what was left of his soup, He looks up at the movie as he sips the broth, trying to figure out what he had missed so far. Though they had read all the books together, Jinki hadn't enjoyed them enough to remember all the details, and he still got lost in all the nonsense about elves and dwarves and magic.

He squints at the white-robed wizard on screen. "Why is Gandalf asking that guy for help? I thought he was a bad guy?"

"He is -- Gandalf will learn that in a bit. He ends up blocking the fellowship's preferred path to Mordor, and is the reason the fellowship has to go through the Mines of Moria, which is where Gandalf falls."

Jinki hums with feigned interest and slumps back against the couch. Though the movie isn't his kind of story, it at least gets Jonghyun talking, and Jinki is fully content to listen to his commentary and glance over his shoulder to watch his reactions for the next few hours.

When the credits begin to roll, Jonghyun sighs and flips on the lamp next to him.

"I'm not going to force you through the next movie tonight," Jonghyun says. "It's getting pretty late for you."

"Oh, yeah..." Jinki trails off, already dreading returning the dorm. "I guess I should be heading back, huh?"

Jonghyun raises a brow at him. "You don't sound like you want to go back.”

“Not really.” Jinki sighs. He unfolds his hands on the table to stare at them, trying to think what to say. He shouldn't be sharing, not when it's an issue among the members -- but he trusts Jonghyun.

Jinki takes a deep breath and explains. "Kibum and Jino are fighting lately. I don't really know what started it -- I was gone for that, and they won't tell me -- but Jino's been making little jabs and Kibum's been an ass at every chance he can be." Jinki bites his lip in guilt: it's his job to keep things running smoothly, and he'd been failing at it. "And when they aren't doing that, they're completely silent, and the whole dorm is tense. I've tried to get them to talk about it a few times, but they won't listen. Jino refuses to admit he did anything to offend Kibum, and Kibum won't talk to him unless he does."

"It's not your fault if they won't talk," Jonghyun says gently. "Can you stay with your parents for bit and wait for Kibum and Jino to smooth things out on their own? They'll have to, eventually, since you’re all stuck together."

Jinki shakes his head. "My parents still live in Gwangmyeong...it's not that far, but I would feel like I'm running away if I went there. I have practice for our repackage to worry about, too."

Jonghyun fiddles with the rim of his glasses, brow wrinkling thoughtfully. "You could stay here for the night, then, if you wanted. The couch isn't that comfortable, but you're welcome to it."

Jinki blinks, caught off guard by the offer -- he hadn't realized Jonghyun considered them close enough for that to be on the table. "Are you sure? I really don't want to impose..."

"It's not imposing, Jinki-yah." Jonghyun laughs and pokes his shoulder with a socked foot. "I offered. And it’ll mean I get extra time with you, too -- that's definitely something I've been lacking lately."

"Yeah." Jinki smiles back at him gratefully. "Let me tell the members I’ll be staying, just in case they wonder why I’m not at the dorm."

He pulls out his phone and fires off a quick message into the members' group chat to tell them he'll be staying at Jonghyun's. His message is been read immediately by all four of them, but only Minho bothers to give him a quick response.

Sighing, he tosses the phone aside. "Looks like I can stay. No one said anything against it."

"Hey, I'm sure they miss you." Jonghyun pats his back reassuringly. "If you’re going to stay, we can watch the next movie.” He tugs on Jinki’s shirt to try and get him to stand. “But you should get up here if we're for it -- staying on the floor like that isn't good for your back."

"Sorry, hyung." Jinki grins and climbs up onto the couch, holding out his empty bottle to Jonghyun. "Do you have anymore to drink? If I'm staying, a little more couldn't hurt."

***

A little more turns out to be a whole bottle of soju Jonghyun had found in the back of his fridge. And just like with the food, Jonghyun cuts himself off early and leaves the rest to Jinki, who’s all too eager to finish off the rest. The fact that he’s staying at Jonghyun's house for the night has nestled as a bundle of nerves in his stomach, and he’s counting on the alcohol to take the edge off. After he finishes the last drop, Jinki tucks himself back against the cushion of the couch. The room is already swirling around him, and he needs something to lean against when the last few swallows hit.

Even with the lights off for the second movie, he see Jonghyun looking at him out of the corner of his eye, clearly concerned about the amount of alcohol Jinki had managed to drink. For some reason, the worry is amusing -- maybe because it's so painfully in character for Jonghyun, or maybe because he's really just that drunk. But the more he thinks about it, the harder it is not to laugh, and soon Jinki is snickering, shoulders rising up to his ears as he tries to keep himself from laughing fully.

Jonghyun turns to him, frowning with worry when Jinki immediately straightens his face to try and hide his amusement. "You're really drunk, Jinki-yah -- you sure you're up for watching the rest of this?"

"I'm fine, hyung," Jinki says, enunciating carefully to fight against the heavy feeling on his tongue. "I'm having fun! I want to finish the movie."

Jonghyun narrows his eyes. "If you're sure..."

"I'm sure." Jinki nods. He tries to bump his shoulder against Jonghyun's when he opens his mouth to argue, but the shift in weight is difficult to calculate, and he ends up nearly falling over Jonghyun's lap.

“Whoa, careful.” Jonghyun catches him quickly and helps him up with a gentle push. He eyes Jinki with caution. “...Maybe movement is a bad idea for you right now.”

"Mm, maybe." Jinki nestles back into the crease between the back cushions of the couch. Jonghyun hadn't bothered to push him all the way upright, so he has good reason to stay put -- especially when that means leaving only a few inches of distance between them.

He looks through his lashes up at Jonghyun. He can’t not look, now that he’s realized how close they are.

A sudden heaviness pulls on his chest. He shouldn't be thinking about doing anything -- shouldn't even entertain the thought -- but the alcohol is a good excuse to let himself indulge. And Jonghyun never seems to mind closeness, so leaning against him wouldn’t be that different than helping him with billiards, except he's touching with no goal in mind but the pleasant fizzle in his stomach he can never admit to having. Jinki bites his lip and shifts closer a few inches at a time, still unsure if he wants his approach to be noticed or not.

Jonghyun makes no attempt to move away -- if anything, he seems to be leaning back towards him -- and Jinki gets bolder. He nuzzles his cheek against Jonghyun's shoulder, then moves lower, adjusting his weight until he's resting his head fully on Jonghyun's arm and his right hand is up against his leg.

At that, Jonghyun stiffens, and Jinki stops, suddenly afraid he had gone too far. "This okay, hyung?"

"It's fine," Jonghyun says, keeping his eyes locked on the screen. The shadows along his neck from the dim light of the television shift as he swallows, bending into new shapes when he adjusts his arm to rest behind Jinki's shoulders. "You still comfortable?"

"Yeah," Jinki breathes. The movie blurs as he adjusts to the new angle, a half-mixture of faces and movement that seems much less important than the soft and steady sound of Jonghyun breathing deeply above him. Jinki's heart pounds in his throat as what he’s done sinks in.

Jonghyun's arm is around him, and his cheek is pressed right against Jonghyun’s chest, and Jonghyun’s chest is warm and firm and everything he’d imagined it to be, the few times he’d dared to think about it.

He's had this kind of contact with his members before, but it had never felt this thrilling.

He tries to force his attention back to the movie with little luck. At every tense scene, Jonghyun's fingers tighten slightly around his arm, sending a buzz flitting across his skin that reminds him how close they are.

All he would have to do to kiss Jonghyun is lift himself a few inches and turn his head.

As the image in his mind gets more detailed, Jinki flushes, trying to ignore the voice in his head that tells him alcohol would be a perfect excuse for anything he might do. Shaking his head, he throws his attention back to the movie, needing something to comment on to end the silence that has his mind racing.

"The movies are way better than the books," Jinki says, flapping his hand at the screen. The camera pans out to fields and forests, and Jinki continues, mumbling under his breath. "I don't have to read all those boring descriptions of trees and nature or whatever...I can just look at them."

Jonghyun laughs softly. "You didn't like the books, huh?"

"They were a little boring, yeah..." Jinki trails off. He closes his eyes, enjoying the small shift of Jonghyun's chest against his cheek when he gives a mocking huff of offense. "But I wanted to read them since you liked them so much."

"Well, I'm honored you'd endure that for me," Jonghyun says. Despite his teasing tone, his voice sounds heavy, and his hand runs a small circle on Jinki’s shoulder. "Just tell me next time if you don't like what I pick, and we'll find something else."

"Okay." Jinki yawns and stretches out fully on the couch. "Will you be mad if I fall asleep, hyung? The movie's really dragging on..."

"I won't be mad. You don't like them either, do you?"

"Mm." Jinki closes his eyes to dodge the question. When the movie picks up into an action scene that takes Jonghyun's attention away from him, Jinki uses the chance to settle fully onto his chest.

Jonghyun's fingers whisper through his hair and push back his bangs. "...Jinki-yah? Are you falling asleep?"

Jinki gives a tired grunt. He's not sure if he will, but he's already slipped peacefully into the warm and content stage of drunkenness where he doesn't want to move. Maybe if Jonghyun thinks he's asleep they can stay like this all night.

 ***

 Jinki wakes up in a sweat. He doesn't remember going to sleep with a blanket on him, or the pillow under his head. Kicking off the blanket, Jinki stands, immediately reaching for the button of his pants. As always, he’d worn his best-fitting jeans when he saw Jonghyun, and though they aren’t uncomfortably tight, they're still too warm to sleep in, especially when he's still a little buzzed. Undoing the zipper, Jinki shoves them down around his knees and pries them off of his calves, nearly tripping over his feet as he tries to step out of them.

He swears under his breath until he kicks them off in triumph and collapses back on the couch. When he looks up, Jonghyun is standing outside of his room, looking frozen between heading back inside and moving on to the kitchen.

"Oh, hyung. Sorry, uh--" Jinki says, grateful that the dark hides the blush creeping up his neck. "I guess I fell asleep in my jeans and got too hot. I don’t really have pajamas or anything."

"Ah, yeah. I didn't think about that," Jonghyun says. His focus bounces between Jinki's face and the floor. Jinki doesn't need light to be able to tell that his cheeks are burning. "Do you want anything to wear?"

"I'll be fine, thanks." Jinki quickly lies down to cover himself back up with the blanket. The idea of getting to wear something Jonghyun owned sounds too enticing for him to feel right accepting, even if he would feel more comfortable with some kind of pajamas.

Jonghyun nods and shuffles off to the kitchen, still clearly embarrassed. The sound of him opening and closing cabinets is like gunshots in the tense silence, and Jinki stares unblinkingly at the ceiling, hyper aware of every movement Jonghyun makes. When he hears the pad of Jonghyun’s feet approaching him, he closes his eyes to seem asleep, reopening them only after he hears the clink of glass against the coffee table.

Jonghyun meets his eyes with a soft smile in the dark, and Jinki swallows, feeling a dozen hopes spark to life as the distance between them seems to shrink.

“Hyung?”

"I'm not sure you drank enough water to balance out all that alcohol," Jonghyun whispers. "I don't want you to end up with a hangover."

"Oh." Jinki smiles at his own stupidity, reaching out to take a drink from the glass. He must still be drunk, to be thinking there was a possibility of anything happening between them. "Thank you, hyung."

"Sure." Jonghyun ruffles his hair lightly. "Get some rest, Jinki."

"You too."  Jinki lays back down.

When he hears the door to Jonghyun's bedroom close again, he presses the heels of his hands against his eyelids, willing himself to forget the moment. The discomfort is distracting enough to pull him away from the rapid beat of his heart, but it's not enough to erase the image of Jonghyun in only a loose shirt and boxers from his mind. He hasn't seen Jonghyun without his glasses in ages, either, and that felt new too. It's not that Jonghyun looks better without them, but that it feels intimate now -- another part of Jonghyun dressing down at the end of the day, rather than dressing up to make a good first impression.

With a groan, Jinki rolls onto his side and forces himself to breathe slowly. He needs to calm himself down if he wants to get any sleep. The last thing he needs to think about is Jonghyun dressing down around him.

#jongyu #hyung au #long fic #the slowest slow burn #jong is a lotr nerd #i had to consult my wife on some shit cause i dun remember much about lotr

[wolfandpravato]

The case against court-packing

A 1937 Washington Post cartoon criticizing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan to pack the Supreme Court.

In recent months, prominent legal scholars on both sides of the political spectrum have proposed court-packing plans, or at least urged reconsideration of the longstanding political norm against court-packing. If such ideas take hold, it will be a very dangerous development.

In a controversial new paper styled as a memo to Congress, famed conservative legal scholar Steven Calabresi and law student Shams Hirji argue for a massive expansion of the federal judiciary. They argue that, at a minimum, Congress should add 61 new federal appellate circuit court judges (36% more than the current number), and 200 new district court (trial) judges (almost 30% more than the current figure). They also argue that Congress should replace 158 administrative law judges currently selected by executive branch administrative agencies with standard life-tenured judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. This would be a massive expansion of the federal judiciary, the largest in decades. While most of the Calabresi-Hirji paper is devoted to nonpartisan justifications for expanding the size of the federal courts (such as the growth in case loads), the authors also clearly state that one of their goals is “undoing President Barack Obama’s Judicial Legacy.” Thus, it is not unfair to conclude that court-packing is a major objective of their proposal, even if it is not the only one.

As Calabresi and Hirji recognize, implementing their proposal while the GOP controls the White House and the Senate would transform a Democratic majority among lower court federal judges into a Republican one. Moreover, they clearly hope to have the proposal enacted as quickly as possible, before Democrats get a chance to retake control of Congress in the 2018 election. For that reason, they argue that their plan can be adopted by means of the “reconciliation” process, which is not susceptible to filibuster by Senate Democrats (David Super argues that they are wrong about this).

Because of this court-packing aspect, the Calabresi-Hirji plan has drawn predictable outrage from liberal critics such as Linda Greenhouse, Dahlia Lithwick, and (more insightfully), University of Michigan law Professor Richard Primus.

Steve Calabresi is not, however, the first prominent legal scholar to challenge the norm against court-packing this year. Back in July, Harvard Law Professor Mark Tushnet (who stands at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Calabresi) urged Democrats to consider “expanding the Supreme Court to eleven (or more)” when they get the chance. Tushnet has doubled down on this idea in a recent blog post commenting on the Calabresi-Hirji plan. The ostensible rationale for Tushnet’s proposal is retaliation for the GOP’s “theft” of the Supreme Court seat to which Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, but which eventually went to Neil Gorsuch after the GOP-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings on the nomination. But in his most recent post on this subject, Tushnet notes – with admirable candor – that “[t]he rationale is not (on the surface) to ‘seize control of the judiciary'” (emphasis added). That, of course, suggests that “seizing control” is a major part of the rationale beneath the surface.

So far, Tushnet’s idea has not attracted as much attention as the Calabresi-Hirji plan. But that could easily change – and likely will if the latter gains significant political traction.

All of this newfound interest in court-packing raises the question of whether there is any reason to oppose the idea, other than short-term political self-interest. It is likely no accident that nearly all of the criticism of Calabresi’s proposal has come from liberal Democrats who dislike the idea of vastly expanding the percentage of Republicans in the judiciary.

As Richard Primus recognizes in the most thoughtful critique of the Calabresi-Hirji paper, court-packing does not violate the text of the Constitution. He points out that Congress successfully packed the Supreme Court several times in the nineteenth century.

But since the late 1800s, a strong political norm against court-packing has emerged. And both political parties have largely followed it. In 1937, the highly popular Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously sought to pack the Supreme Court in order to reverse judicial decisions invalidating many of his New Deal programs. That effort was blocked in Congress, in part through the efforts of senators of his own party, led by Montana Senator Burton Wheeler.

The mere fact that a political norm exists doesn’t mean it should be continued. Some norms cause more harm than good. But the norm against court-packing justified by more than just tradition. Court-packing is a menace to the role of judicial review as a check on the power of political majorities. If either the Republicans (per the Calabresi-Hirji plan) or the Democrats (following Tushnet’s ideas) succeed in packing the courts, the opposing party is sure to do exactly the same thing the next time they control the White House and both Houses of Congress. This is even more likely if court-packing can be enacted through the reconciliation process (as Calabresi and Hirj argue), and thus requires only a narrow Senate majority to pass.

Ending the norm against court-packing ensures that the judiciary will not serve as an effective check on the other branches of government at the very time when it is most likely to be needed: when one party holds both Congress and the presidency, and can thereby push through its agenda with relatively little opposition. Especially in a highly polarized era like our own, it is precisely at such times that the ruling party is especially likely to violate constitutional constraints on its power in order to score victories against the hated opposition.

This is precisely the outcome we should strive to avoid. As Burton Wheeler put it in a speech attacking FDR’s court-packing plan:

Create now a political court to echo the ideas of the Executive and you have created a weapon. A weapon which, in the hands of another President in times of war or other hysteria, could well be an instrument of destruction. A weapon that can cut down those guaranties of liberty written into your great document by the blood of your forefathers and that can extinguish your right of liberty, of speech, of thought, of action, and of religion. A weapon whose use is only dictated by the conscience of the wielder.

Our own time obviously features both war and hysteria. And, to put it mildly, few of our current political leaders are notable for their high-minded consciences.

Calabresi and Hirji argue that their plan is not a true break with political precedent, because it would merely expand the federal judiciary to the same extent as a 1978 bill enacted by a Democratic congressional majority under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. I think this 1978 analogy founders for reasons well summarized by Richard Primus:

[T]he 1978 bill was different from the current proposal in some notable ways. Twenty-one of the 35 new circuit judgeships were created in just two circuits: the Fifth and the Ninth. Population growth in those circuits had been especially steep in the preceding decades, and the Fifth Circuit expansion was a precursor to the division of that Circuit into two separate Circuits under a statute passed two years later…. In both Houses of Congress, most Republicans supported its passage. (Or, strictly speaking, we know for sure that that was true in the House, where there was a roll-call vote. In the Senate, the measure passed by voice vote, which suggests that it wasn’t a highly contested question.) The point here is just that although it’s true that a prior bill passed by a majority-Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President expanded the number of circuit judgeships by 36%, it would be a mistake to infer that that bill, like the one Calabresi and Hirji propose, was an effort to seize ideological control of the lower courts.

I would add that, in 1978, Democratic and Republican appointees were not nearly as polarized on constitutional issues as they are today. Republicans had much less to fear and Democrats less to gain from passage of the 1978 bill than Republicans would likely gain from passing the Calabresi-Hirji plan today, or Democrats from pushing through the Tushnet proposal after an electoral victory in 2020.

Unlike most of the other opponents of the Calabresi-Hirj proposal, I think Trump’s judicial nominees so far have been pretty good. Despite a few clunkers, they have, on the whole, been much better than I expected, and some are even outstanding. Judicial nominees are among the few bright spots, from my standpoint, of an otherwise terrible administration. I still fear that Trump may, over time, begin to make appointments on the basis of his own horrendous agenda on constitutional issues, instead of farming out judicial selection to the conservative legal establishment, as he has mostly done so far. But it is also quite possible that Trump will stay the course, even if presented with the temptation of the massive court-packing opportunity created by the Calabresi-Hirj proposal.

Regardless, the case against court-packing does not depend on the proclivities of any one president. As James Madison famously warned us: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Indeed, dangerously unenlightened politicians are all too common. The norm against court-packing is an important bulwark against their depredations – and those of the political majorities who put them in power.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/11/27/the-case-against-court-packing/

#Law #Lawyer