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banananutsmuthie · 2 years

Text

The Dangers of Owning a Smartphone

Idol(s): Yena [IZ*ONE]

Word Count: 5.1k+ words

Content Advisory: Titfucking

A/N: Dedicated to @friskyriskywhisky based off this ask. Sadly, I did not finish this fic in two sittings, so I guess I lost frisky's bet :(

need your cock so bad. Come to my place RIGHT NOW and fuck me

And just like that, any productivity you had for the day evaporates.

That’s the power of Yena’s texts. It isn’t just her words—you’re used to Yena’s frequent booty calls by now. No, it’s the picture she sends with it that drives you wild.

There she is in stunning high resolution, kneeling on her bed, playfully pulling on her high pigtails. Her gaze exudes the confidence of a woman who knows what she wants, screaming to be dicked down. Her tongue licks at those famous dick-sucking duck lips, further supporting just how bad she wants it.

Zoom in and you can see every minute detail of her sinful body: every ridge defined in her exposed midriff, every goosebump running up her glistening thighs, and even that perfect cleavage reserved for your eyes only. But what really commands your attention is her outfit and the lack of coverage it actually provides. There’s subtle holes in her purple knit top and skirt; the image at any lower fidelity would’ve missed the lack of clothes underneath. Thank God for smartphones then, to be able to capture Yena’s perky tits and pussy lips, visible through her knit outfit in all its intended high-def glory.

“Holy shit, is that Yena?! You didn’t tell me you were dating my ult bias!”

You should’ve known by his unmistakable musk that Wooseok was in the vicinity. You turn around to see him hovering over your shoulder gawking at Yena’s zoomed-in body.

That’s the danger of owning a smartphone when you date Yena.

“Wooseok, what the fuck! Why are you at my desk?”

“Seeing if you wanted to do lunch, but it looks like you’re already eyeing dessert,” Wooseok replies with a sly smile.

“Keep your voice down! No one’s supposed to know.”

Wooseok’s hunger can no longer be satisfied by lunch alone. His eyes widen, hungry to know more about that delicious Yena body. His firm hands grasp at your shoulders, playfully shaking you as a congratulatory gesture. “This motherfucker! Banging idols now? What’s she like in bed? Fuck man, you gotta tell me everything!”

“Dude, I’m not talking about this with you.”

“So I take it we’re not doing lunch today then?”

Wooseok already knows the answer. Normally, lunch out with the work bestie talking shit about the other co-workers is a welcome break from the monotony of writing a review for another tired 80’s-inspired title track overloaded with synths. But knowing there’s a full course meal of duck being served just for you superseded any previously agreed upon lunch plans. You get up and start to walk toward the elevator without even answering him, but Wooseok tugs at your wrist and holds you back.

“At least tell her that her biggest fan says hi!”

“Now why would I do that?”

“Dude. We work for a tabloid. An idol dating scandal? That’s a headline. That’s my headline. Just tell her I said hi and I won’t say anything. She’ll know who I am, I’ve been to all her fan signs.”

“Ugh, fine.” Wooseok finally lets go, allowing you to enjoy your lunch break.

* * *

“Yena?” you holler through her apartment.

“In the bedroom, oppa!”

As you approach her room at the end of the hall, you can hear Yena’s feet shuffling, then a thud followed by the coils in her mattress giving way. It all makes sense when you finally turn the corner and stand in the open door frame.

It’s almost like a murder scene in there. Her purple panties play the part of the victim, lying lifeless on the carpeted floor. Splotches of her bodily fluid splatter across various areas of the room, and of course, the weapon of choice, her bullet vibrator, still left at the crime scene next to Yena’s undergarment. The lone suspect sits atop the bed, her legs spread wide, face unable to hide her guilt and naughtiness, beckoning you to interrogate her insides.

But first, there’s the matter to resolve with Wooseok.

“You know, you shouldn’t be sending me explicit texts and photos when I’m at work, Yena.”

“Why not? I know you love it, oppa!”

“That’s not the point! My coworker Wooseok saw the text! He started asking what it’s like sleeping with his IZ*ONE bias and asked me to tell you he’s your biggest fan. It was kinda creepy to be honest.”

The speech falls on deaf ears. Yena lunges off the bed to pepper you with neck nibbles. As her hands grasp at your biceps, her perfect breasts press against you, allowing you to feel her perky nipples through her top.

“I know you didn’t come here to just talk,” she says.

Her fingers wage a war with your button down shirt, but it isn’t so much a war as it is a slaughter. Yena’s fingers are too skilled to even consider it an even fight, swiftly undoing each button with the precision of an experienced surgeon. Her lips follow the exposed skin trail left in the wake of her destruction, leaving pink lipstick marks down your chest until no buttons remain fastened. All it takes is a small tug at the hem, and your shirt becomes a useless decoration on Yena’s bedroom floor, joining her crumpled up panties and glistening vibrator.

“You don’t know how bad I’ve wanted this. Been thinking about your cock all morning.”

Yena’s knees crumble to the carpet with a soft thud as she firmly plants herself in front of you, licking her lips as she finally makes way to the spoils of her war. Your belt buckle doesn’t even stand a chance; Yena aggressively pulls down your pants and underwear with ease, her eyes lighting up like seeing a long lost friend when she finally sees your cock.

But then she looks back up with a look of mild frustration. “This won’t do.”

“What?”

“Need you to get hard for me, oppa. I want your big hard cock in me and I want it NOW.” Yena hastily pushes you onto the bed. “Close your eyes for me, oppa.”

Yena disappears behind your shut eyelids as you follow her command; the lack of a concrete visual aid only heightens your other senses. Shivers run down your back as Yena’s cold fingers wrap around your flaccid cock.

“I bet you imagine me under your desk secretly giving you a blowjob while Wooseok is in the next cubicle over, not knowing his favorite idol is giving you head. Go ahead, imagine it.”

Turns out she was listening earlier about Wooseok after all, but he becomes a distant memory as the subtle sound of Yena’s breasts clapping against each other from her aggressive handjob drowns out any other thoughts. As she swiftly strokes, Yena’s wet, pouty lips surround your tip, helping to evoke the image she’s attempting to paint. Your imagination finally conjures a representation of Yena to fill in the visual void: her face is full of cock, stuck between your parted thighs under your desk discreetly trying to milk you.

Her longing eyes meet your gaze, begging you to get hard for her, longing to feel what it’s like to be mouthfucked in such a public space. A tear streams down her cheek as Yena’s lips tighten, the confines of her tiny mouth shrinking until your tip manages to poke at the back of her throat. Unable to contain you anymore, she pulls off, her slobber trickling down your shaft as she continues stroking instead.

“Look at that, getting hard for me at the thought of office head. You like that, don’t you?”

“Mhmm. Go on,” you respond, eyes still closed, letting your imagination take you wherever Yena wants.

“I bet you thought of abusing your media privileges to get backstage at one of my concerts. But that’s not the only thing you’re abusing, is it? Catching me in the middle of a wardrobe change and abusing my used hole from behind. Can you hear that? That’s the sound of my fans screaming my name for an encore not knowing I’m screaming your name and chasing a different kind of encore.”

The office disappears. Suddenly, you find yourself in a dark corner backstage staring down at Yena’s sweaty bare back, her safety shorts pulled down to her ankles as she props herself up on some musical equipment cases. The sound of her clapping breasts serves as a proxy to the image of Yena’s ass cheeks rippling against your crotch with every imaginary thrust. Her pussy tightens as you thrust faster, but in reality, you know it’s just you getting harder to Yena’s maddening strokes.

“Mhmm. What else, baby? Fuck, keep going.”

“Bet you’ve jerked off in the office to all my teaser photos late at night after everyone’s gone home, even though you know you can get this pussy any time you want. You probably even imagine your idol girlfriend squirting all over your desk while you’re doing it. All of that while you try to meet your deadline for all those reviews you do for K-Pop girl group comebacks. But you know what, oppa?”

The room goes silent. The sudden lack of euphoria causes a blank image again, and so you open your eyes to see your fully-erect cock throbbing between Yena’s tiny hands. Satisfied with getting you hard, Yena’s hands have stopped stroking but continue to grip harshly around the base of your shaft.

“What?” you ask, praying that there’s more to this lunch break than just a quick hand job.

“None of them can sing the way that I do when you ram this big cock into my tight little pussy.”

She pumps one more time, putting your tip back into her mouth and giving the most sensitive part a lick. Her mouth delves deeper. Her hands fall off your cock, making way for those greedy lips that have now consumed the length of your shaft. Yena groans but refuses to come back up for air, then you see why: her hand reaches for your phone, placing it in front of her and propping it up against your stomach. After a few screen taps, she finally pulls off, saliva dribbling from between her lips.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“You told me not to send you explicit photos, so I’m saving them instead so you can pull them up on your own time and jerk off to me whenever you want. See?” Yena turns the phone around, showing off the picture of your cock fully in her mouth, her eyes watering from holding it in so long.

That’s the perk of owning a smartphone when you date Yena.

“Fuck, Yena, you’re so fucking naughty.”

“Good. I’ve been thinking of shedding my bubbly image, maybe try a more mature concept.”

“Oh, yeah? How mature we talking?”

Her knees are an irritated pink as she gets up off the carpet. Yena arches down to give your tip one last lick before releasing you from her grip, finally backing up to allow you one final view of her outfit before it becomes one with the floor. Like your button down shirt, all it takes is a simple tug for Yena’s scratchy skirt to slide off her hips, and gravity does the rest.

Yena’s perfect pussy is always such a sight to behold. It was already unbelievable that she agreed to a date when you first met; it was meant as a joke to ease the tension when you first interviewed her. But to now have been to her apartment for the umpteenth time, to know the nymphomaniac hiding behind her squeaky clean idol image, and to have that body all to yourself whenever you wanted? This whole thing could’ve easily been mistaken for another one of Yena’s imaginary sexual concoctions.

This time, without your eyes closed, it’s clear all of this is as real as it gets.

“This mature enough for you, oppa?”

Yena’s hand sits just inches from her face. As she parts her fingers, you can see the look of excitement in her eyes admiring the strings of your precum and her earlier slick webbed between her fingers. She shuts them back together and sticks them into her mouth, sucking the cocktail off her digits and letting out a moan of satisfaction. She leaves a trail of saliva as she runs her fingers down her neck, through her cleavage, and across her tight core until her pilgrimage leads to her clit. Her other hand grabs at her chest, Yena now rubbing herself in her most sensitive regions, unable to hold back a muted moan even through a bitten lip.

“Mmm, I don’t think it’s mature enough. Still too much clothes. How about you take that top off?”

Yena chuckles. There is lust in her eyes, scheming a plan on how to best present her breasts. She doesn’t want to just take it off; she wants to make a show out of it, and so Yena finds a loose string in her top and tugs. The more she pulls, the further her top unravels, slowly stripping away the last of her decency and exposing her chest little by little. Her underboob starts to get exposed; her breasts look so supple in this teasing state, leaving you in a stupor. Yena catches you licking your lips, and she pinches off the long string of yarn before going any further.

“Why’d you stop?” you ask.

She doesn’t need words to answer when she can use her body. You prefer it, even, knowing just how well she’s used it in the past. Yena doesn’t even break eye contact as she moves toward you on the bed, once again kneeling between your legs and guiding your stiff member underneath what’s left of her top and in between her breasts. Thrust upward, and your tip manages to escape through the other side of her cleavage. Now you see why she stopped at exposing just her underboob.

“God, Yena, your tits are fucking amazing.”

“Yeah, bet you never thought of titfucking me, huh? I’m actually surprised we haven’t done this yet.”

Yena purses her lips, conjuring saliva that drips down to her chest below. Her fingers start to rub, lubricating her cleavage with her bodily fluids. The sight alone causes you to throb uncontrollably between Yena’s pillows. She finally gives the command when she’s finally done.

“Fuck me, oppa.”

The feeling is somewhat unfamiliar as you push and pull against her chest for the first time. It’s euphoric, not unlike thrusting between Yena’s pink walls, but it’s the velvety softness hugging your shaft from both sides that really makes it extra special.

Yena lets out a moan. It’s just as pleasurable for her as it is for you, it seems. You increase your speed with each subsequent thrust, causing Yena’s contained breasts to heave heavily with rippling waves forming on the surface.

“Tell me how much you love fucking my tits, oppa.”

It’s hard to even answer her with how much focus it takes to thrust between her chest, but she takes your grunts as a sign of approval. Yena smiles back up at you, and you can’t help but think of ruining that pretty little face, those perky lips, and that blessed chest. Grab at her pigtails like they’re handle bars, and Yena purrs like a Harley. It stabilizes you, allowing you to rev faster between her breasts.

“Fuck, Yena, you’re so fucking amazing.”

Yena winces, but it’s not like she isn’t used to rough sex. She loves it, only goading you on more.

“Oh, I see you like it rough,” Yena says in response. “I can play that game, too.”

She reaches for the bullet vibrator on the floor, turns it on, and tucks it between her chest, wedging it under your shaft for mutual stimulation. Yena’s words come out in a raspy vibrato: “You like that , don’t youuuuu~?”

The feeling is intense: muscles spasming, toes curling, fingers tugging tighter on Yena’s black locks. It’s almost a little too much, feeling like you could cum on Yena at any given moment with how mind-numbingly good it is. You respond back with a low growl, surprised that it comes out with the same pulsating pitch as Yena.

Keep going. Yena’s saliva has long been dried up between her chest, leaving her skin in a reddish irritated state where your skin roughly rubs against hers. Somehow, fucking her tits still feels as good as the first thrust: with every push, beads of sweat begin to percolate down her neck and upper chest thanks to the hot and humid action, flowing down her cleavage and starting the lubrication anew.

“Cum all over my chest, oppa. I want it everywhere.”

You want to be defiant to her words, to hold out just a little longer and enjoy every moment. Yena can see it in the way you bite your bottom lip, can feel it in her hair tangling even tighter in your grasp. You try to look away, hoping that avoiding eye contact with Yena will prolong the inevitable. You try to think of anything else other than fucking your girlfriend’s tits silly. You try everything, but it isn’t nearly enough.

“It’s cute that you think you can hold out any longer, oppa.”

Yena grasps across her body underneath her breasts with one hand, pushing her chest together and suffocating your cock even more. Her other hand grips at your tip; with each thrust between her chest, she strokes, only further stimulating you. With her bullet vibrator still wedged between her chest and the underside of your shaft, there’s not much you can do to prevent the inevitable, and so when Yena tells you to cum all over her chest, you do as she says—there’s no negotiation.

“Fuck, Yena!”

You toss your head back and thrust upward one last time, holding her in place by her pigtails to ensure she receives the full force skyrocketing out of your cock. Yena grabs at your exposed shaft that throbs in her hands, coaxing every last drop out of you. Each of Yena’s strokes beat in time with each explosion that sprays her chest in white until there’s nothing left to give.

Yena’s chest is a mess, nothing but a wasteland of cum. Even her lips are painted in white as it drips in globs down her chin and back into the used crevice that heaves heavily around your softening cock. She grabs your phone again, taking more pictures of the artwork you just painted on her, lips protruding and proudly showing off your cum like a trophy.

“These look so great, oppa. You’re gonna love jerking off to these later!” Yena takes a second to admire the photos she took before finally slipping out of her top and turning off her vibrator.

Yena desperately looks around for something to wipe off the sticky load you left her. There’s no towels or tissues to be seen. She debates even using her skirt but eventually settles on her panties to wipe herself down, the purple undergarment now a creamy white as she tosses it toward the headboard.

“Now it’s my turn. Need you to make me cum.”

Yena pushes you down onto the bed, swinging one leg over you and hovering over your softening cock.

“This won’t do,” she says again.

“I don’t know if I have the strength to go again, Yena.”

“Maybe this might change your mind.”

Yena lowers herself onto you, her glistening pussy rubbing against the underside of your shaft, gyrating against you to change your mind. Her lips part ever so slightly at just the slightest pressure your tip exerts, revealing just how wet she already is. You can tell she wants to push further, wants to fill herself up with your cock, but if there’s one thing that Yena enjoys more than sex, it’s the chase.

She knows just how hypersensitive your cock is after an orgasm, and so she grinds harder to get you erect again. Let her. It’s what she’s good at.

Slowly, your cock starts to grow again. She continues, letting your shaft glide between the smoothness of her outer lips. When your tip pushes against her clit, she lets out a moan, causing you to leak a little more cum, her rosy slit now tinged in a hint of your white glaze. Yena pulls away with a smirk seeing you at full erection. She’s done her job, sowing the seeds in your mind to sow your seed in her.

“I guess you can just go back to work if that’s what you really want.” She feigns disinterest, looking away as she starts to dismount. By now, it’s a game of chicken seeing who’s the first to break, but the thing about Yena is that she never loses. Of course not. Who would dare turn down sex with Yena?

Tug at her hips and pull her back in. You know how this goes. This isn’t some random one night stand, this is Yena: idol, sex extraordinaire, owner of your cock. And so the moment she feels your fingers gripping her ass and pulling her back in, she knows she’s won.

“Good,” Yena says with a smile, “I knew you couldn’t resist.”

“Shut up,” you playfully tell her.

“Fill me up, oppa. Don’t go slow, either. Hard and fast. I’m already so close.”

You thrust upward into Yena, penetrating her easily as she lets out a sharp exhale. It’s effortless with how much she already got off on her vibrator and with how familiar she is with your cock. It’s home for you, living between her warm, inviting walls. You’d stay longer inside her and enjoy the moment if you could, but Yena wants hard and fast, so you give her exactly what she asks for.

Pull out halfway, slam back in, then repeat. It isn’t hard; you’ve done it before. Each thrust sends Yena’s head back further as she shuts her eyes, letting you do all the work. The cum you left on Yena’s pussy lips earlier starts to lather your shaft, creating a warm, creamy mess that starts to drip out of her slit with each penetration.

“That’s it, oppa. Fuck, you’re so big.”

Your nails dig deeper into her hips, gripping her firmly as you mindlessly fuck Yena into oblivion. She sucks in through gritted teeth, soldiering through the pain and taking in all the pleasure of your ramming cock. Yena’s breasts, still glistening with a mixture of sweat and leftover cum, bounce wildly up and down, keeping time with your pelvis crashing upward against her body.

“Ugh! So fucking good! Can’t believe how fucking good this cock feels in me.”

It’s too much to handle, having to do all the work while Yena stays stationary above you, screaming at the top of her lungs like she’s riding a roller coaster. She isn’t gonna shut up any time soon with how much she’s enjoying herself either, so you roll and toss her onto the bed; you’re the one hovering above her now.

Yena giggles. For how commanding she’s been during this lunch break, she still loves getting forced around and used like a rag doll. Her eyes open, giving a signal to push her further, to use her like a sponge and soak up all your cum.

“That’s it, oppa, make me your cumdump. F-fuck, right there, oppa, right there!”

Turn her around, force her diaphragm against the mattress so she stops quacking. It still isn’t enough.

“Stop being a tease and stick it back in! Fill my hole with cum, oppa. Make me dripping wet.”

You grab her soaked panties, the one she tossed on the bed after wiping herself off—there’s no reason to let all that cum go to waste. Ball it up and shove it into her mouth. She did say to fill her hole with cum; that’s her fault for not specifying which hole.

“Mmpph!” Yena cries out.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

It’s a good pacifier and she loves it. Yena can only let out muted moans as you thrust back into her from behind. You push your hand against the small of her back, causing her ass to perk up for you and forcing any air out through her nose in an audible exhale. You give her ass a good slap; watch as it ripples against your crotch. Yena squirms and jerks forward, letting another moan escape between her cum-soaked duck lips.

She grabs at your phone again, unlocks it with a tap of “2909”—her birthday, of course—and starts to find the right angle for another photo to add to the growing collection. Leave it to Yena to make it Instagram-worthy, crawling a little to the left to make sure the sunlight hits her face just right, tilting her phone for the perfect shot.

“Mmm?” Yena asks as she lifts the phone up to let you admire the photo now saved for eternity in the cloud.

You like what you see on that tiny screen as you continue to pound her from behind. It’s the first time seeing her gagging on her panties between those protruding lips. Cum leaks down the corner of her mouth, catching between her cleavage in the bottom of the photo. The high angle also manages to capture her tiny, squishy butt and your tireless cock pistoning between her reddened cheeks.

“Looks so good, Yena. Such an obedient duck.”

You collapse onto her back; it’s exhausting trying to make your duck cum. One hand reaches underneath her, her nipples still hard as they’re pinched between your fingers. Your other hand grabs at her throat. She gulps, and you can feel that lump of cum going down her trachea. You run your lips on the side of her sweaty neck, tasting the tang of her sexual frustration.

“You’re so fucking tight, Yena. So close, aren’t you?”

Your hand releases Yena’s throat to reach out for her vibrator at the edge of the bed. You slide it underneath her, feeling around until it touches her clit. One flick is all it takes to turn her vibrator on, and she shudders, throwing her ass upward towards you when she feels that sensation pulsating against her sensitive hood. It’s too much for her. She tries to escape, tries to prolong the inevitable, but you push her back down with your cock and let her feel it, her own toy vibrating at maximum speed against her needy pussy.

“Ngghh~!”

Yena’s hands now grasp harshly at her bed sheets. Her crescendoing moans fight their way through her makeshift gag, back arching as her face drowns in her pillow—every telltale sign that Yena is close.

“It’s cute that you think you can hold out any longer, Yena,” you tell her, teasing her with the same sentiment she gave you earlier.

A couple more thrusts and Yena can’t take it anymore. She finally succumbs to her orgasm, her body convulsing, core tightening, pussy pulsating. You let her ride it out by continuing to thrust into her, but you start to feel yourself arriving at the same end as Yena.

Your grunts join Yena’s moans. Her walls constrict against your shaft. Warm bodily fluids flow out from between her pussy lips. You can’t tell if it’s yours or Yena’s. Doesn’t matter. You keep going until both of you are too drained to continue, stopping only after Yena’s flailing body eventually goes limp.

“Yena?”

You flip her around to make sure she’s still alive. Yena’s eyes stare off past the ceiling in a daze. Her breasts act as buoys, floating up and down with every inhale and exhale. Below, her bedsheets are marked with her essence in a huge puddle soaking into the polyester. Your own cum drips onto the bed sheets out of her pussy that’s almost unrecognizable behind the overflowing load.

You pull out the used lingerie out of her mouth. It’s completely clean, your cum now lining her stomach like the foie gras meal she is.

“That. Was. Amazing,” Yena manages to express, every word coming out in a drawn out breath.

You collapse once again, this time next to her, your arm reaching across her bare midriff for a quick cuddle. Yena grabs your phone one last time, taking one last picture from between her legs and capturing the collective mess.

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to work, oppa?”

You glance at your phone in Yena’s hand noticing it’s been nearly an hour since you clocked out of the office.

You lunge out of the bed. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“Man, these photos came out great, too, oppa!” Yena’s eyes widen as she scrolls through your phone, admiring all the photos she took while you hurriedly put your clothes back on.

“Can you hand me my keys and phone, babe?”

“Sure thing, oppa. Let me just put these photos in a secure folder for safe keeping.” When she finally finishes, she hands you the phone along with your keys.

“Gotta go,” you tell Yena, kissing her on her cheek. “I’ll call you later, maybe dinner tonight if you’re not busy?”

“Sure. And tell Wooseok I hope he enjoys the rest of his day!”

“Cool, see you tonight.”

* * *

It’s nearly 3:50 PM before Wooseok finally comes back from his lunch break.

“Dude, where have you been? It’s almost 4!” you tell Wooseok as he walks past your desk.

“Holy shit, dude. Those pictures your girlfriend sent me were so fucking hot. Completely drained me. Almost didn’t come back to work.”

“Photos? What photos are you talking about?”

Wooseok pulls out his phone, making sure no one else in the office can see all the photos Yena took of herself with your phone. “She texted these to me from your number,” he says with a big grin.

You hurriedly pull out your phone and confirm that Yena did, in fact, send all of the photos she took while at her apartment to Wooseok along with a message:

Hi Wooseok oppa! This is Yena, hope you enjoy these pictures of me 😄 consider it fan service for being one of my biggest fans and a sign of good faith that you won’t leak my relationship. See you at the next fan meet xoxo

There isn’t anything you can do about it now except to pray that Wooseok’s loyalty to Yena is strong enough to not ruin her career as well as yours.

“Please, Wooseok—”

“Don’t worry, I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Wooseok says after noticing the look of horror on your face. “But I’m definitely keeping these photos.”

And to think this all could’ve been avoided if you didn’t use Yena’s birthday as your passcode.

That’s the danger of owning a smartphone when you date Yena.

#kpop smut #izone smut #yena smut #male reader #reader insert

785 notes · View notes

hollowtones · 9 months

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final thoughts on zapper?

1st world isn't as bad as I remember, 2nd world is rough, 3rd world feels actively mean, 4th world is mostly kind of boring. If child-me had played past world 2 I think I would actively hate video games today.

Sound design is consistently real weird and unpleasant but sometimes that wraps around to being funny

Level design doesn't usually feel very interesting & if you're trying to get all collectibles it sometimes feels tedious. The best bits are the little self-contained bonus rooms & the levels where things are more puzzle-focused. I don't think it really needed a boss fight at the end but I'm glad there was only one, rather than one for each world / each level.

Individual art assets are okay, but sometimes levels are a little hard to parse visually & paths you are allowed to take aren't very clear. Issues with depth perception. Fixed perspective makes it hard to see details on the models I thought were cute. (At least we have Dolphin free camera...)

Visual theming of levels feels really, really incongruent, outside of the first world. I still don't know if I like this or don't. But it sure is noticeable!

The jump button snaps you in weird directions sometimes & every time it makes me scared for my life. It straight up killed me in some of the moving platform segments. Sometimes the jump lets you get to very high platforms and sometimes it makes you jump over them and go into a pit.

Camera's weird. Zoomed in too close, very easy for things to just get you from off-screen. When you have to deal with moving platforms it feels straight up nauseating (& I basically never get motion sick!! This game got me!!)

Music is good.

This Did Not Need A Lives Mechanic. Getting knocked back to a checkpoint feels fine. Having to redo entire levels from the start because of bullshit getting me made me feel like a ghoul.

A lot of hazards have weird hitboxes. Spikes can kill you after retracting. An object can be fully moved past your location but if you move parallel to its trajectory it'll sometimes kill you anyway. Slow-moving enemies in front of you need the world's widest berth. Moving platforms in combination with hazards is a special hell. A couple times I was killed by a seeming act of god.

Mercifully short.

Zapper as a character is like if someone went "what if Gex didn't talk" and that's real funny to me. Also very funny that they gave a cricket lightning powers instead of, like... sonic / music powers. I guess "a wall of noise so loud it kills slugs and explodes bricks" wasn't cool enough for a radical, sardonic wise-guy.(??)

lol the bird has tits

This is just a Frogger game. It's kind of blatant. You can very clearly see the bones of "Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge" in all of it. (The four screenshots I have seen of that game make it seem like its level design was much more easily readable at a glance, though. Four screenshots do not paint the picture of an entire game, but...) Honestly, I can respect the "we have Frogger at home" angle to it. They clearly wanted to make a game like this again, and good(?) on 'em for doing it, I think.

Didn't like it very much. Had a laugh, at least.

It's no "Claymates". (Future scholars will debate what she meant by this for decades.)

#I feel like I'm forgetting something here but this is basically all my thoughtz.

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nyctophilevamp · 9 months

Text

Two Different Worlds

Genre : Angst

Pairing : Kim Gyuvin x Black F!Reader

Summary : Y/N And Gyuvin Met by Chance . Though From Two Different Lifestyles They Grew Closer To Each Other. Would Their Lifestyles Be The Thing That Keeps Them Apart ?

Y/N Last Name Is Greene So Yeahhh. Switches P.O.V

Y/N P.O.V

I took another sip of the cheap alcohol I was drinking. My first college party and it's boring. My senior year I heard all good things about these college parties.

“It's so fun.”

“The music makes you wanna shake ass like you're in a strip club”

“The people are going to be hot”

Well, all was complete bullshit. No offense to rdm music but fuck if they play one more rdm song I think my ears might explode. And Everyone here isn't up to my liking so no one is attractive.

Fuck why did I come?

Hearing the music change to slow r&b, I look up to see someone walking over to the circle of people I'm surrounded by with a wine bottle.

“Let the real fun begin,” she says. So we drink wine and what? Goodness, these people aren’t fun at all.

“SPIN THE BOTTLE” Someone else from the circle shouts. Hmmm spin the bottle maybe this could be a little fun.

Ten people sat down in the circle including myself. 5 girls and 5 boys.

Scanning the circle I locked eyes with a black-haired boy. He was the first attractive person I'd seen all night. His lips were a rose-pink color that glistened every time he took a sip of his drink. His dark brown eyes kept contact with mine never breaking away. Hmmm, this night just got better, I thought as we both smiled at each other.

When it was my turn to finally spin. I hoped it landed on the person I was making eye contact with all night. To my pleasure, it did. He put his cup down before starting to come over to me before someone in the circle shouted.

“7 MINUTES IN HEAVEN” Goodness please stop yelling. Looking over at him, he tilted his head over to a door, which I assumed to be a closet. Standing up we walk over to the closet with the partygoers cheering behind us. Finally stepping into the closet which turned out to be a pantry full of snacks.

The light switched on and I looked over at the mystery boy. He looked at me before speaking.

“You look even better up close, I'm Gyuvin,” He said holding his hand out. Shaking his hand I told him my name.

“So aren't most people supposed to kiss during seven minutes in heaven,” I asked him as he stared at my face like he was studying every feature.

“Most people do but I just wanna talk to you Y/N,” He said while sliding down to the floor and then proceeding to pat the spot on the floor next to him. Sitting down beside him, we sat in silence for a good two minutes. It wasn't awkward, it wasn't uncomfortable, it was two college students sitting down in a pantry together. Something so simple felt so right.

“I like photography and beautiful things,” he spoke breaking the silence. Looking over at him to see him already staring at me, we both laughed. Maybe we were drunk or maybe we just bonded well over nothing.

That was the first time I met Kim Gyuvin.

1 Year Later

Y/N P.O.V

"And if we zoom in we can see the moon and its details up close," Gyuvin said as he zoomed in on his camera. We were on the beach, sitting in the sand watching the moon and the stars.

Me and Gyuvin started to date two months after the party and today would be our tenth month marking. So we decided to hang out at the beach and have a picnic date.

Picking up a vine of grapes I started to eat them while getting closer to the camera.

"Wow, you can see everything. It's like a telescope," I said intrigued by the way his camera caught every detail of the moon.

"Yeah, that's why I like it so much. Wanna take pictures?," Gyuvin asked standing up and extending his hand. Taking his hand I stood up and he grabbed the camera in his other.

"Let's go by the rocks," I said pulling him along with me. Looking back he nodded while smiling at me.

The next day when we were studying in the library Gyuvin slid a box over to me.

"Open it," he said while his cheeks were a light shade of red. Laughing a bit at his flustered state I opened the box. To my surprise in the box was a silver ring with a pink heart on it and the pictures we took at the beach.

"Omg, Gyuvin are you proposing to me?" I said in a playful tone causing his cheeks to go red and making him choke slightly on his drink.

"It's a promise ring. A promise that one day we will be married," he said while looking everywhere but at me. Taking his hand I stood up.

"Let's go get ice cream and I also have something to give you,"

We sat in a booth eating ice cream. Reaching into my bag I pulled an envelope out and slid it over to him.

He look at it with a raised brow before opening it. His face morphed from

Confusion to excitement.

"There's no way you got Arctic Monkeys concert tickets. Do you know how much these are going far? I mean thank you but these are so expensive how did you get them?" he said throwing a million and one questions at me.

Laughing I took another bite of my ice cream before swallowing. "Money isn't a problem for me, let's just go to the concert and enjoy it. Okay?" I reassured him and he nodded his head with a smile.

A week later we were at the concert as the band played I Wanna Be Yours. The crowd shouted along to the lyrics including Gyuvin and I. Two hours spent screaming and singing along with Arctic Monkeys was the best night. After the concert we went to an abandoned road and sat in the tunnel while drinking the beer we got. Gyuvin finished his drink before letting the can roll down the tunnel. He stood up and walked to the other side where there were spraypaints on the ground.

"Are they empty?" I asked as he picked up the can and shook it. He looked back smiling at me and started to write on the walls with the spray. Going over I picked a purple spray paint and wrote our initials with a plus sign. He looked at me and laughed.

"Middle school things, Y/N," he said while spraying a heart around our initials in black spray. Dropping the can he grabbed my face and pulled me in for a kiss.

"I love you," Gyuvin said and my heart picked up its pace as it was the first time any of us ever said those words. Smiling and kissing him again.

"I love you too Gyu," I said while we hugged.

One month later

Gyuvin P.O.V

It's been 11th months since me and Y/N started dating and it's been the best year of my life. Ever since we started dating I felt complete with her around. I would do anything for her, no matter the consequences.

Tonight she was coming over for a movie since we both didn't have any classes today. Making sure everything was set up I walked, well more like ran over to the door to open it. She stood there not realizing I opened the door too lost in thought before looking up at me. The stress on her face was replaced by her smiling at me. Hmm, that's weird.

Pulling her inside she took off her shoes and walked over to the couch. I immediately started to tickle her when she sat down, making her start laughing and begging me to stop. After about two minutes I let her go and helped her sit up.

"Are you okay?" I asked her when her breathing became steady. She looked at me with a fake smile and nodded her head.

"Y/N talk to me. Please I know there's something wrong," I said hoping she would tell me something. She hesitated before speaking.

"My parents are back in town. And before you say that's a good thing. It isn't at all, whenever they come back they always want me to do something for them to please the public eye and it's frustrating. And next week they want to have dinner with me and I just feel like there's more to it," she said while rubbing her leg up and down.

"Wait, public eye?" I said confused, why would it matter to show off for the public eye? Are her parents some people of relevance? Then everything clicked her last name was Greene meaning she was related to the CEOs of Greene Corporations. Looking over at her with wide eyes she just nodded her head. Instead of asking further about it, I spoke again.

"Maybe it's nothing bad and they just want to see you after two years," I said hoping that would ease her some. Instead she just smiled and grabbed the remote going through the movie selections. That night we didn't talk much after because her thoughts still plagued her.

One Week Later

Y/N P.O.V

Checking myself in the mirror one last time I walked over to the front door and walked outside to see my parents designated driver waiting by his car.

Walking over we greeted each other as he opened the door for me, thanking him I sat back and texted Gyuvin that I'll call him later.

The drive to my childhood consisted of me overthinking everything my parents could ask me for and how I would tell them I had a boyfriend I was madly in love with. The thing is my parents don't want me to date anyone who isn't rich or planning to become rich. Which doesn't make sense because as long as I love that person it shouldn't matter. Right?

Well, I was completely wrong because here I am trying to bite my words back as my parents just told me I'm getting married. Married to someone I don't even know, I knew this was a bad idea coming here and even speaking to them again.

"I'm sorry, marriage? Yeah, you guys have completely lost your minds," I said standing up getting ready to leave. They're always wanting me to do something for their company and the public but this? Marriage? Yeah no they could do whatever they want, freeze my cards, cut me off, even blacklist me but there is no way in hell am I getting married to the mayor's son. Turning my back my father spoke telling me to sit down and that this is house and I will respect him. Sighing I turned around and sat back down.

"I can't marry him, I have a boyfriend father," I said looking over at my father and then over to Kim Taerae my alleged husband. He was attractive for sure but I didn't know him and I love Gyuvin so why would I even think about marrying someone else? When I made the statement it was like all hell broke loose. My mother and father hit me with a thousand questions all at once and I answered every single last one. Like I said nothing can make me marry someone else.

Everything went silent, so I stood up and started to walk away. My father spoke up again.

"You marry him or your boyfriend loses everything," my father said while standing up and leaving the dining room. My mouth dropped and my body became rigid. I don't remember much but I do remember that by the next month, I was moved in with Kim Taerae and I didn't speak to Gyuvin again.

One month later

Gyuvin P.O.V

Checking my phone to see if I got any missed calls or texts from Y/N but nothing. It's like she disappeared after that night with her parents and she left with no explanation. She was no longer enrolled in the university we went to and her apartment was rented out by someone else. She never called me or texted me. I don't know if she's okay or not but I truly hope she is.

I stood up to check my mailbox downstairs. After I came back to my apartment I sat on the couch and went through the mail. One caught my eye because it had Y/N's name on it. It was a letter, quickly opened it. I read every word on the paper at least ten times. She broke up with me through a letter. Told me we weren't meant to be and that something was off through a letter. It felt like I had been stabbed in the stomach and the blade had poison on it that slowly spread through my body.

I cried for two days before deciding to go over the address that was on the envelope.

Knocking on the door of the house a man answered looking confused as to who I was.

"Is Y/N here?" I said trying to get a better look inside the house. Instead, he stepped out and closed the door. Looking down at him I raised my eyebrow.

“She is and who are you?” he said looking me up and down.

“I'm her boyfriend. Who the fuck are you?” I said doing the same head gesture. Why the hell was she in a house with a different guy after breaking my heart over a damn letter.

“I'm her fiance,” he said. My breathing became quicker and my heartbeat was heard in my ears. Fiance? She's engaged. For how long? Is this why she left me? For another guy?

“Look I don't know what relations you and Y/N had but you need to leave before I call the police,” he said. Ignoring him I walked around him and banged on the front door of the house. If she was here she needed to give me an explanation in person and not some shitty ass letter. Banging again I was so mad I didn't hear the man on the phone with the police. Finally, the door opened and there she stood. She didn't look happy, I don't know if it was because she saw me or if it was because of the situation. But whatever it was I didn't care I wanted answers.

“Gyuvin what are you doing here? How did you find this address?” she said shocked.

“I found this address from the stupid ass break-up letter you sent me. A letter Y/N? Come one were adults but you can't even sit me down to talk about how you got a fiance?” I said letting whatever was on my mind come out into the open. The man that was behind grabbed onto my shoulder and turned me around telling me I needed to leave. Amid my anger, I punched him and I didn't stop. We continued to fight on the grass.

I didn't know who I was mad at anymore. If it was myself, my Y/N, or her supposed fiance. But it all came clear when she finally was able to pull us away from each other and went over to him immediately. Touching my bleeding lip I saw the flashing colors of blue and red lights and just sighed.

Y/N P.O.V

Looking up at the sound of sirens I saw their officers come out of their car and tackled Gyuvin. Restraining him and pushing his arms behind his back to put the cuffs on him.

Standing up I went over to them. Telling them to let him go but they said they couldn't just because the damn mayor's son called. Calling Gyuvins name he looked back at me with tears in his eyes and swollen lip. For the first time, the love of my life didn't look at me with a smile on his face and that broke me more than anything could. Feeling someone tug my hand I look over at Taerae pulling me back into the house.

The next day I went down to the station to see him. He sat there in a lone cell just staring at the wall. After checking in with the officers I went over to the cell. When he saw me he immediately stood up and came over to me. I owed him an explanation so I gave it.

“My parents would ruin your life if I don't agree with what they say. I can't do that to you Gyuvin. I love you too much to see everything you've worked for be ripped away from you because of my selfishness,” I said with tears running down my face. He caressed my cheek and told me it was okay.

“Y/N I love you and I don't care about my career. Yeah, photography makes me happy but you make me happy. If you're taken away from me, I'm going to be way more sad than I would be over some photos so please don't leave me. Stay with me and we can start a life far away from this place. Please,” Gyuvin pleaded with tears in his eyes.

Gyuvin P.O.V

I pleaded with tears in my eyes. I can't lose the girl I love over some family bullshit. I can't allow her to marry another man over her family image. I can't image myself and her with different people. I just want her and my life would be complete. She leaned in kissing my lips through the bar and stepping back before shaking her head.

“I know my parents Gyuvin. ,” she said dropping my hand. “They're going to find us and still make our lives a living hell. We are from two different worlds Gyu. Maybe we weren't meant for each other in the long run so I won't do that to you. I'm sorry,” she said before walking away.

Yelling out how that was complete bullshit and she knew it. She didn't stop walking out of the police station and left me there to accept my reality. My world was ripped from me because of an image. An image her family wanted to uphold. Sliding back down the wall I ran my fingers through my hair silently crying to myself. I thought of all our time together and how

That was the last time I saw Y/N Greene.

The End

@yunjinsboothang

#angst #x black reader #zb1 x reader #zb1 taerae #zb1 gyuvin #gyuvin imagines #gyuvin x reader #gyuvinangst #black kpop stans

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fremedon · 2 years

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Brickclub 5.15.4, “Five Less, One More”

Oh god this chapter.

Okay. Taking things in no good order:

I love Enjolras so much here, even though he doesn’t do a lot in this chapter. His original order to leave is given “with an almost angry tremor,” which is I think the most displeasure we ever see him express verbally.

And it’s not obeyed. When he advised sleep, we were told his advice was an order and yet was not obeyed; here, we get

Enjolras, the man of principle, had over his coreligionists the sort of omnipotence that emanates from the absolute. Still, notwithstanding this omnipotence, there was a murmur.

Leader to the tips of his fingers, Enjolras, seeing that they murmured, insisted.

To no avail. Enjolras is the leader of the barricade, but he is arguing from reason and not authority; it takes his logos, Marius’s ethos--the appeal to authority as the barricade’s savior--and Combeferre’s considerable pathos to make the insurgents willing to accept the plea to save who can be saved. But at that point, when the only question left is deciding who will go--

“Citizens,” continued Enjolras, “this is the Republic, and universal suffrage reigns. You yourselves choose who ought to go.”

They obeyed. In a few minutes five were unanimously designated and left the ranks.

The one order of Enjolras’s that’s ever obeyed, and of course it’s the one to adopt universal suffrage.

There is a short moment, while Enjolras and Combeferre are fetching the uniforms, where he might have told Combeferre about the old woman in the Rue de Cygne. Combeferre says Enjolras told him “just now.” If he actually did--if he’d noticed and thought to bring it up--it certainly does underscore an evolution towards valuing human connection, which after all is his personal arc and this scene is where we see that.

And yet.

It’s such a weird a random detail, and I can only make sense of it in three ways:

1.) Enjolras is more shaken than he can let on in public, hasn’t had time to process any of the feelings we just saw him stuff back inside last chapter, and alone with his second-in-command has babbled randomly in the way we saw Combeferre doing while he was gone. I would like to this explored in a fic, but it doesn’t feel hugely likely.

2.) The old woman was the mother of one of them--possibly/probably Combeferre himself--and he knew that and brought it up for that reason. I have seen this explored in fic, but it also doesn’t feel all that likely.

3.) Combeferre is just lying. Which seems likeliest.

Combeferre’s last speech was all over the place, and the rest of his dialog at the barricade will be equally scattershot--rhetorically and morally. But here, embodying some of the the book’s hardest questions, he finds its moral center and his, and the result is one of the best-crafted pieces of rhetoric in the entire book. It’s believable as an off-the-cuff speech--emotional, circular, picking a topic and spiraling. He describes the plight of their bereaved elders in affecting but not graphic terms; zooms back to general principles and spirals in deeper on the fates of young women, describing prostitution in specific but not graphic details; zooms back out and spirals back in on the plight of children with the story of the young orphan that just. keeps. going, through want, through sickness, through death, and ends on the dissection table. It’s a tour de force. (Do people do this as an audition piece? Someone should do this as an audition piece.)

In the middle of it, there’s that jarring line, “My friends, there is a tomorrow--you won’t be here for that tomorrow, but your families will.” Hearing Combeferre’s certain faith in the future turned into a warning, or a threat, always gives me shivers. There will be a tomorrow; what we do today has consequences.

This is the moment at which Combeferre has his greatest moral clarity, both at the barricade and in the book--as @everyonewasabird has pointed out, he’s looking through to the book’s beginning and seeing Fantine here. But it’s also his moment of greatest hypocrisy--he’s been a hypocrite since he picked up a weapon, but the text specifically reminds us, at the end of his speech, that his own mother is living, and he is choosing to abandon her. Like Enjolras, like all of them, his mother is the republic--but he’s not about to let anyone forget their mortal mothers, either, or the consequences for them.

Or for their children. Prouvaire’s last words were “long live the future,” and Combeferre reminds us of what that means, in practical terms, and how useless it is to die for the abstract future while damning the embodied one. He equates a chosen death at the barricade, for those insurgents with children and the ability to leave for their sakes, with abandonment:

"Suicides like the one that is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide has a narrow compass that is not to be broadened. And as soon as it affects your family, suicide is murder.”

We’ve been arguing over whether Marius would have taken Cosette with him in his search for death. It seems like the barricade has already burnt that capacity out of him:

Despair, too, has its ecstasy. Marius had reached that stage. It was as if he were watching everything from the outside. As we said, things happening right in front of him seemed to him far away. He could get a sense of the overall picture but he could not see any details. He saw people coming and going through a blazing brightness. He heard voices speaking as if from the bottom of a pit.

However, he was moved by this. This scene had a point to it that pierced even him and roused him. He had only one thought now, to die, and he did not want to be distracted from it. But in his morbid somnambulism he thought that in going to his doom there was no ban on saving someone else.

Good for Marius. I mean that unironically, good for him--that is literally not something that might have occurred to him earlier, and now it has. (And also, hoo boy Hugo is sure writing from experience there about the somatic experience of traumatic dissociation.)

Because, in the race to the bottom between him and Valjean of who can be the most utterly oblivious--Valjean has listened to at least the end of this speech, possibly the entire thing. And he appears, and gives his uniform to save the fifth man--averting that fatal number four--without having so much as left Cosette a note.

Valjean’s self-destruction has swerved enough that he’s here to save Marius, even if he doesn’t know it yet. And by a miracle, he will--but he could so, so easily have left Cosette entirely alone, with no idea how to retrieve her fortune and knowing no one else in the world except one servant and maybe the portress.

#brickclub #lm 5.15.4

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exploring-the-inner · 2 years

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Gratitude, Guilt and Grit

Lord and savior,

Recent weeks have been pretty positive and for that, I’m so grateful! I’ve gone from 5 scheduled hours per day to 7. And thanks to Qasim’s unfortunate departure, Bryan has come on board full throttle with a pocket full of measures to make things run much more smoothly. Rather than stretching myself thin doing scheduling, chasing fill, QA, training and more… Loretta and I have help in the form of a lovely young lady named Jackie. I’m still staying late every now and then (without pay) and this really upsets my husband. But I don’t foresee the unpaid overtime being nearly as wild as it once was.

I feel quite guilty as I haven’t been as tuned into you, God. Bible study, praise and worship and our little moments like this have been few and far between. Please forgive me. I think about you all day long and love you more than my mind can comprehend. I apologize for spending my time elsewhere instead of with you. I must admit, work still drains me so much mentally I even feel physically tired after work. The weekends should be when I find time to really spend with you, but this past weekend I put family time and mental rest over you and that was not ok. I’m so sorry.

As for the third and final “G” / grit - I pray that you continue to help me prove myself as a more than capable part of my work team and not as its weakest link. I pray that Loretta isn’t bad mouthing me to Bryan or Steph. I pray that I’m not making mistake after mistake. I pray that my overall speed and precision make noticeable improvements.

I’m down on myself today because I was slow to submit one of today’s inspection forms and overlooked a crucial bedding issue on that form. The funny thing is, I nailed making sure I had the right info for the bed but got yanked by Loretta and overlooked adding the info to the form. I was in the middle doing its QA when she flew back into Zoom seeming super irritated, drilled me about a number of things in efforts to catch up (and perhaps to ever so passively imply that I was dropping the ball?) I purposely projected an upbeat, unaffected demeanor but it really did throw me. Next, Steph asked me about my Monday hours. It was a serious decision I had to make and I gave that some time and ran it by Oscar. Next, I called the partner about an issue with the Wifi box and before I knew it, Bryan was asking why the form had not been submitted and why it was taking so long. After having to publically explain myself about that, I didn’t feel right for the rest of the shift but continued to work like nothing was wrong. Then came the bedding issue was brought to my attention by the client. Wasn’t a huge thing at all, but the whole time I was praying that Bryan didn’t notice since bedding is one of the core things we cannot get wrong with the inspection. Perhaps to some, I may appear to be overreacting, but overall, I need you, Lord. Qasim knew I was great at my job. Bryan, Jackie, even Loretta. They haven’t spent enough time with me to know that I’m one of thee best that my company has to offer.

I shared with Oscar today, for no particular reason: “I am thee only black person on my POD.” Does that have any real meaning? Not truly. Besides, I’m a conservative after all so I’m definatley not one to cry racism and play the black card. But I’m my heart I know that I must work harder and be better than the rest of my colleagues to be recognized as completely capable. My mistakes MAY be weighted with heavier implications simply due to my being a minority. If I were the only white in an all black office for a black organization the same would be true. My mistakes might be more noticable and people might say, “That while girl is a problem.” I pray that will never be the case for me here. I want my superiors to have complete confidence in me. Without that, without YOU, I wouldn’t be able to help my husband pay our bills. I pray for intelligence and for near superhuman attention to detail. I pray for the ability to flawlessly and quickly execute every task that hits my eyeballs. Please let Bryan like me. Please help me to achieve a sterlingly spotless reputation. Help me to quit having to EDIT my errors out. Help me do well despite Roman and my other family duties. I know I’m going on and on but Jesus. I need you so much. *Gasp*

I heard you:

“If you need me so much, you should seek me so much, you should study me so much and absorb me so much and I will take care of the rest." I love you so much Lord God!!

Amen.

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cosmogreys · 2 years

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Topaz detail video tutorial

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The standard deblock settings don't do much in handbrake. Many of these free videos and tutorials will walk you step by step through the entire process, making sewing a breeze and as frustration-free as possible. Otherwise it would have become too confusing. And then encode a bunch of tests in handbrake slightly increasing each parameter and then check all the results. I Used losslesscut to cut 15seconds of the original footage to create a test files. I also set Denoising with NLmeans and sharpening/Lapsharp. Footage was 438P low quality x264 with heavy blocking and aliasing.

TOPAZ DETAIL VIDEO TUTORIAL HOW TO

If your source is shyte and the reult isn't much anyway you don't need 2gb for 20min of footage.Ī few days ago I felt handbrake did a slightly better job using its filters. Video Tutorials - Topaz Systems Video Tutorials Learn how to use Topaz software applications, utilities, and plug-ins pDoc Signer Video Tutorial Fill-out and sign forms and PDFs with a biometric signature using your Topaz signature pad or GemView tablet display, without the need for Adobe Acrobat. 720P source with mild noise (like perceived lack of sharpness detail in hair or face) can be freshended using Artemis Medium. When you buy Video Enhance AI, you get access to the application as it exists today and all future updates, major and minor for one year. Though it isn’t a perfect software, having clear performance issues regarding processing speeds and the occasional unresponsiveness of. I know I can't expect perfect 4K output from the input I have, but seeing what AI can do with other videos I just feel like I'm really not getting the most from it, but it feels like it's definitely a 'me' issue and not a software one. The Topaz Video Enhance AI software is a premium application that makes use of highly advanced AI based technology to deliver the kind of results you’ll hardly see from other video enhancement applications. Select the masking tool and set zoom to 200. I've seen a few tutorials, but none of them really deal with the type of video I've got to work with. Click on the AI Mode Auto button to see the mode the AI selects. Processing usually takes 1.5 days for 25 minutes on my surface lap-puter. Open Topaz Sharpen AI Stand Alone or Photoshop. Except when the foorage is maybe 480 P VHS and very soft (like low quality xvid quality). I find the Artemis Medium Quality model to be the most effective on all footage. Sometimes it does a great job other times it just can't help it. This makes it more cost-effective, faster, and better integrated into your workflow than a server-based video upscaler. Este modelo es perfecto para imgenes antiguas que desea reutili. Video Enhance AI is standalone software for both Mac and Windows, which means it uses your existing hardware to directly process videos instead of offloading work to a remote server. The results vary with the quality of the source and the model used to enhance videos. Con Video Enhance AI, puede tomar su metraje de SD a HD con un increble aumento de calidad. As I found using Theia Finetune will crash processing randomly when set higher. I have the VRAM share in its settings slightly above average. Video Marketing Concept - Viral Videos on Youtube. This Topaz software uses the processors built in IGP. Top free images & vectors for Topaz labs denoise tutorial in png, vector, file, black and white, logo.

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I use a MS Surface Pro 7 with (mobile) i5-1035G4.

#Topaz detail video tutorial

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actionfigurebullshit · 2 years

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Back before the TV Room (fka Back to Start)

An idea: What if Chaos Corridor returned to its original beginning, which was Moxie and Greta in the elevator? Establishing shot of the Cascadia- do we do an impossible zoom on the ship to their elevator? It can be done; I call it a “zoom quilt”. Divide the screen into nine rectangles, and then zoom in on the center one until it fills the screen. The center image will then contain a blown up version of the middle square, and more details start to come into focus with each zoom. They did this in the opening to Star Trek First Contact, and with it now in HD, you can see the transitions, but it’s still an impressive shot.

LOCATION: CASCADIA, DDSMV, INTERSTELLAR SPACE, AT LARGE FRIDAY, 2:19 PM, LOCAL TIME

Some kind of place and time card in a nod to Jane’s Wonderverse. Or not, if it doesn’t work, but I like the idea of there being something that establishes it’s Friday afternoon and the work week is almost over.

Then we jump back in the week to see how we got here.

I’ve even thought about changing it up quite a bit to where we see more of the week...

I want to tweak it a bit, because I went off course from the idea I had in mind for this post.

You get that “Under Construction” music, but it’s a zoom to the Cascadia. You could make a dorky nod to original Star Trek by using one of the times they go by with the couch to replace the Enterprise fly by. I know which scenes I’d use. Anyway, we get our credits on the screen, and it ends with them crashing into the boiler room. Cool. Music over.

FOUR DAYS AGO...

We think we’re going into “Move Along Home”, but instead, the gang is watching TNG’s “The Royale”. Instead of getting a “remake” of this groundbreaking, original scene, they’re watching something else. In this scene, Trent want to take a Brent break and Start Trek before getting too deep into Star Trek. Douglas tags along. Greta wants to call Moxie and ask where she’s at.

Wait up for me, will ya?

Nope. Don’t call Moxie. Why not- oh... right. I forgot. Okay, hold on, and let me.

The phone is ringing.

Guys! Shit! The boys take off. Uh... Chief Engineer Greta speaking, how may I help you?

Greta! Whassup? Heh. Remember that?

Yup.

Hey, listen. Herman and I were putting together a little video and, uh, I was wondering- are you busy?

Well, we’re down our little TV room we put together... (Wilhelm cough.)

What time is it right now?

It’s about a quarter after--

Dammit! I’m missing teevee time!

Then cut to another shot of the ship, where Moxie delivers her original log, ending with “...for no reason.” Then cut back to “Okay, let’s see what on ___ today!”, and it continues as it appeared on my computer seven years ago.

It’d be hilarious if the music we see at the end of Moxie’s decommissioning cuts, not to the elevator, but Newton getting out bed happy as a clam, and putting on command water wings on.

“Attention all hands... this is your captain speaking! As of 12:01 AM, this Tuesday morning, by order of the Department of Deep Space Motor Vehicles, I have been placed in charge of this vessel. There’s gonna be changes around here, so watch out... because I will be putting up signs for all departments and divisions to see. There’s gonna be some changes around here, and I want you all to keep up.”

After his tour, a row where everyone is standing at attention saluting him, he returns to Moxie’s office and calls for Trent, Moxie, Douglas, and Greta to come in for schedule reassignment.

Maybe cut to The Gang making comments like “Oh, here it is.”. The other shoe is dropping.

Maybe, like last time, Trent has to go off and have a smoke.

“No! You can’t!” cries Moxie.

“What’s Newton going to do about it?”

“Fire you.”

“And?”

“Moxie won’t be able to rehire you.”

“What?”

Later on, when we get caught up to Friday’s lunch break, the scene plays out a little differently, maybe replace the animation to where we get a fantasy scene of them having a good time in the boiler room.

I don’t know how much of the “before Sneaky Sofa” stuff should be in the very beginning. The pep talk? It doesn’t seem to fit in very well in either spot.

Somehow, it all gets figured out, and then we continue with the C&S scene. Maybe there could be an additional scene of the couch getting moved that can be overlaid with a shot of the Cascadia moving through space. When you get this shot, you can either just fade out, or zoom out to where you just might see a glimpse of what’s to come. Just a taste.

I want to continue work on this in some way for October. Tis the season!

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rayonjudo8 · 2 years

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barnesbabee · 3 years

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collab || J.Y

ᴋɪɴᴋᴛᴏʙᴇʀ ᴅᴀʏ 2 - ᴋɪɴᴋᴛᴏʙᴇʀ ᴍ.ʟɪꜱᴛ

Summary: Two famous porn stars have a fun collab together.

Pairing: Jeong Yunho x gn!reader

Words: Just enough

⚠ although there is no mention of gender, the reader wears makeup and lingerie, so if you are uncomfortable with that, don't read ⚠

As Yunho dried his hair with a small towel, he heard the familiar ding sound from his social media. He had just finished uploading the edited version of his live stream, so it wasn't unusual for him to be contacted by a bunch of people right after, however, he didn't expect to see you.

You weren't well known in the porn scenario, as you were fairly new and the competition was vast, but your 'Around The World' series had become a huge success and a major hit for its originality.

Yunho was quite a fan of the series, so when he saw your message, his fingers were crossed.

Y/N: Hello! My name is Y/N, I'm not sure if you know my work, but I am a porn star that is currently doing a series called 'Around The World' where I... well, fuck people all around the world. My next stop is South Korea and I have seen your work before and I think our style is very similar and I would love to do a collab with you! Feel free to check out my work on my page, I hope to hear from you soon! xoxo

The tall man squealed like a high schooler getting a text from his crush, he's always wanted a collab and now he was about to get one in one of the biggest series of the moment!

Yunhxxx: Hello Y/N! I am aware of your series and I am a fan! I would love to do the collab with you! I'll send you my number so we can talk about the details more comfortably :)

Part of your anxiousness died down at his response. Most porn stars were very polite and kind in front of the camera, and in business discussion, all for that quick buck, but you'd find, with your series, that a lot of them were just assholes with a huge ego. You had a good feeling about Yunho, but you didn't want to get your hopes up and then be disappointed.

The arrangements didn't take long, as you were both excited for the collab to happen, making it very easy to communicate. Yunho was kind enough to offer his own home for you to sleep in, arguing that 'whoever fucks me gets to sleep in my house for free'.

Yunho spent the weekend preparing everything for your arrival on Monday morning: he cleaned his whole house, stocked his fridge and cabinets with all sorts of food, and sanitized every toy of his. By the time he received your 'I'm on my way!' text, his house was the cleanest it had ever been.

The man showered, put on his best cologne, and applied some dark eyeshadow under his eyes. As he stood in front of the closet in his briefs only, he wondered what he should go for. A sophisticated look? A sexy look? An outlaw-looking look? He wanted something to get you immediately attracted to him. Yunho wanted to make you feel good, not to make you act as if you felt good.

Ultimately he chose a black button-up and black suit pants. He decorated his long fingers (that he had come to learn was something many people liked about him) and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.

Yunho was aware of his innocent appearance. He had had his cheeks squeezed one too many times, so he caught on quickly. However, the man loved to play with his looks. He loved to make people wonder what kind of person he was, with a cute face, yet an intimidating look.

Before he knew it, his doorbell rang. Yunho took one last look in the mirror, just to make sure everything was in its place and walked towards the door. The first hello wasn't awkward at all, as you'd already had a few zoom calls to discuss what would happen in your collab, just to make sure there were no misunderstandings.

Once you stepped in with your suitcase, you couldn't help but notice how neat, modern, and well decorated his house was. The walls were white with big windows, and the furniture was a mix of grey, light blue, and white. Yunho lead you to the guest room where you'd be staying, and it was a lot nicer than you expected. The bed was high and large, the duvet was grey with a bunch of fluffy white and red pillows decorating it. In front of the bed was a modern black vanity with lightbulbs around the squared mirror, and against the wall in front of the door was a black, sliding door wardrobe, with a large, orange, and red abstract painting of a couple. His house looked simple yet classy, with just the right amount of colour and decoration. You took a look at him, his dark look contrasting the house.

"You already got prepared?"

Yunho looked a little puzzled for a second, but then understood. "Oh! Oh no, you've just arrived, you must be tired! This is just... how I dress?" He said, feeling a little embarrassed.

You took a good look at his outfit.

"You always dress like that? Wow..."

Yunho's cheeks became a little red at the comment, and he stumbled over his words as he thanked you. He was used to receiving compliments when he had his clothes off, but with clothes on? Not so much... Before closing the door, Yunho told you to feel at home, and that when you were ready you could start setting everything up in the room he used to shoot.

The man had never felt that nervous, so when he finally closed the door, he immediately headed to his living room, and found the whiskey bottle he kept for emergencies. He poured a generous glass and sat on the couch, scrolling through his phone as he waited for you.

You were pretty much used to the routine, and since you had a stopover in a neighboring country and spent the night there, the trip hadn't been too tiring. You sat on the very convenient vanity and re-did your makeup. You liked to match your look to your type of content, so you went for a dark look: dark purple lipstick, a heavy, black smokey eye, and loads of mascara. You made sure to apply a lot, so it would run down your face and give the viewers the fucked out look they loved to see.

The lingerie matched your makeup: black lace lingerie with some bling here and there, and a garter belt to accessorize. You grabbed your robe from your suitcase and exited the room.

"Yunho?" You called, peeking your head from behind the wall.

"Hm?"

His eyes widened when he looked up. You were completely different from the person he had met.

"I am ready if you are!"

He nodded and stood up, downing the rest of his 2nd whiskey cup in one go. Yunho took you upstairs and opened the door to his 'studio'.

In the center of the room was a carpet, and a big, empty space behind it.

"I usually move the bed or the couch over there, depending on what I want to do that day. I found that it was easier to move the furniture than the whole set up." He explained, pointing at the empty space.

Against the wall, opposite of you, there was a bed, much like the one on your bedroom, and a nice, black leather couch. Beside you there was a closet, where Yunho kept all his toys, accessories, and streaming outfits. Other than that it was just the usual setup: a desk with a computer, professional lights, and a camera.

Yunho walked over to the couch and moved it with ease to the empty space.

"So we've already decided?" You asked.

The man smirked as if simply entering the room turned him into a completely different person.

"I already have everything planned out for you dear, it would be rude to have my guests work."

You blushed slightly, and sat on the couch, waiting for the green light.

You watched as he opened the closet, displaying his wide collection. He picked a bunch of stuff that he set on top of a towel on the floor.

"Alright, that's about it."

You cocked your head to the side, in confusion.

"You're not getting dressed?"

Yunho reached for the choker he had brought and softly placed it around your neck, tying it just tight enough. He hooked his finger on the big metal ring on the front and tugged on it. You followed his silent command and knelt on the ground, in front of the couch.

"I'm already dressed, for the concept we're gonna try."

You were getting curious and excited. You stayed still as he started up the live stream. Yunho turned on the lights, set up the camera, and pressed 'Start Live Video'. The screen counted down from five, until the live started.

Yunho sat on the couch behind you, and placed his large hand on your head.

The man smirked as soon as the comments started raining.

There was a mixture of fuck yeah's and happy cheers as they recognized Yunho, and became excited for what was to come. The live was obviously happening on your account, although you would always split the tips with the person you worked with.

"Hello," Yunho started, and you let him take the lead "welcome to the 24th edition of Around The World, I am today's guest, and we have such a great show for you today, don't we?"

Yunho tugged on your hair, making you wince. You looked at the camera and nodded.

The 30 dollar donation ding sounded, announcing that someone had made a request.

'Make her sit on your thigh'

You let Yunho take the lead once more, hooking his finger on your choker's hoop and pulling you up, to sit on his thigh. You hummed as you rolled your hips, causing friction between your core and his thigh. Your hand ran along his torso, feeling the fabric of his shirt.

"He has too many clothes, don't you think?" You asked the camera, in a flirty tone.

There was a rain of comments agreeing with you, and you immediately got to work, unbuttoning his shirt slowly. His dick print was already very visible in his pants, and you could now understand why he wanted to wear that look.

You removed his shirt, slowly and teasingly, as the viewers praised Yunho's toned body.

The male hooked his finger on your underwear and snapped it against your skin. Your little whimper at the sudden pain made him smirk.

Yunho ran his hands along your body, making you shiver from the cold metal of his rings.

Tips and donations rained down with many requests, and so you went back on the floor and laid your head on Yunho's thigh, your face mere inches away from his hard-on. You perked your ass up and traced the shape of his cock with your finger.

"What do you think? Should we reward them?" Yunho asked, petting your head as he stared into the camera.

As expected, everyone gave you the green light to continue, so you slowly opened his fly, to find he had no underwear on. You freed him from his pants, gripping his length in your hand. You kept eye contact with the male, and although you were a professional, you were always nervous when you had to take dicks on the bigger side.

You spat on his tip, and played with his cock for a second, before slowly inserting it in your mouth. Yunho groaned and threw his head back, taking in the warmth of your mouth. His hand was tangled in your hear, gripping it and tugging on it from time to time.

"Shit, you're doing so good..."

Yunho was very vocal, to your (and the viewer's) pleasure.

The 50$ notification ding sounded, and a message played right after.

'bby I wanna see you jump on his cock'

Yunho smirked and gripped your hair, in a firm, yet not painful way. He swiped his thumb across your bottom lip, cleaning the remaining saliva.

"Hmm, you know what, so do I."

You stripped from your underwear, in a sensual way for the viewers (and Yunho) to enjoy.

Yunho slapped his thigh, and you climbed onto his lap, slowly but surely sinking down on his length. You gripped onto his shoulders for stability and groaned as every inch of his cock disappeared inside of you.

His hands gripped your ass, spreading your cheeks in a beautiful way for the camera to see. The male helped you, as you rode him, not only by holding your hips and guiding you, but also by snapping his hips up against yours. Filthy slapping sounds along with the mixture of your moans echoed in the room, and the donations were reaching their peak.

"F-fuck baby you're s-so good, you're doing so well."

You gripped his shoulders harder, as his praises drew you closer and closer to your edge.

"They're c-close! Should we l-let them cum?"

It was impressive how professional Yunho was. How he looked so immersed in you, so tired and fucked out, with his fringe sticking to his forehead and eyes burning into your soul, yet he didn't forget to interact with the viewers.

There were many people leaning towards yes, begging to hear the way you sounded as you came, and so he worked hard until you screamed his name and tightened around his cock. He let you rest and recompose for a second, but the way you clenched around him made it impossible for him to hold it in any longer.

"Shit, get on the ground."

You gladly complied, and got on your knees for him, immediately sticking out your tongue, as you could predict what would come after.

Yunho jerked himself off to your fucked out face, and soon a string of curses came out of his mouth, as he spilled all over your face. He smirked and wiped some of his cum off of your face with his thumb.

"Say ah, pretty baby."

You smiled and opened your mouth. He inserted his finger in your mouth and you happily licked it clean.

Yunho cupped your face with his hand, and smiled.

"You behaved so well, I might have to reward you again."

His head tilted to the side, pointing to the couch, and you followed. You sat down on the couch, and Yunho knelt in front of you. His arms wrapped around your thighs and pulled you forward, so your hole would be of easy access to him.

The man teased you, as his tongue danced around your hole, not quite getting where you wanted him. You rolled your hips up, earning a slap to your inner thigh.

He looked up at you, with a hint of darkness in his eyes.

"Behave."

It didn't take long for you to get what you wanted, as he started tongue fucking you, with the help of his fingers. You gripped his hair, and your back arched as your high approached once more.

You came quickly, with his tongue still inside you, and he held your trembling legs and body, to keep you stable.

He didn't move for a second, giving you time to breathe and rest. After you had recomposed yourself, he helped you up, and the two of you shared a heated kiss, Yunho's hands never leaving your ass, that he definitely had a fixation with.

You finished the stream by thanking the viewers and donors and shut everything off. Once everything was done, you sighed and plopped onto the couch.

"Do you not want to shower?" Yunho questioned, as he saw the mess in your face and body.

You chuckled.

"Yes I do, very much, but I'm so fucked out..."

Yunho very kindly scooped you up.

"Well, I wouldn't want my guest to work too hard, I'll help you out."

#ateez #ateez smut #jeong yunho #yunho smut #jeong yunho smut #kpop #kpop smut #kinktober #ateez kinktober #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #ateez gender neutral #ateez readder insert #ateez reactions #ateez reaction #ateez imagine #ateez imagines #ateez yunho smut #yunho ateez smut

667 notes · View notes

hoe-doroki · 3 years

Note

Can I have a bakugou smut where he had just come home from a hard day and he needs to blow off some steam and the reader has been horny all day so she/they do whatever he says. Sorry if this was long, it's ok if you don't do it. Thank you 🙏❤

Omg, not too long at all! Seriously, for requests for me, generally the more details the better, especially for what kinks you may or may not like, because then I can better cater it to you! Since you didn’t specify, you’re stuck with choking, degradation, and exhibitionism, because I like them, oops. Sorry it’s taken me so long to write this—I’ve been so excited about it the whole time but…there’s no but, I just didn’t write it until now 🤷‍♀️

minors do not interact

warnings: 18+, exhibitionism, degradation, choking, biting/marking, slight possessiveness

wc: 3.1k

a/n: Thanks to @dymphnasprose for making this gorgeous banner for me!

edit: I no longer write x reader but here’s my old masterlist - mobile | desktop

You heard him before you saw him.

It was the ding of the elevator that was first audible from the dining room table where you were working on your computer. Then you heard the heavy clomp of Katsuki’s boots coming down the hallway, already painting a picture of a frustrating day on the job.

When he shouldered his way in the front door, you saw that he was still in his full hero uniform. The roots of his hair were dark with sweat and Katsuki’s ire seemed to have made it all the way down to his fingertips, where he was clumsily batting at his shoelaces. As if anger and a glare would force them undone quicker than a nimble touch.

“Rough day?” you commented, standing up from the dark mahogany table and walking over to your boyfriend. Your hands were on your hips as you looked down at where he was bent over in the entryway.

He grunted as he cast his boot off. If he were outside, that shoe would have been flung halfway down the block, possibly with smoke coming off it. Inside your home, however, even the angriest Katsuki could only manage an angry shove before moving onto his next obstacle.

You didn’t press for more. You just watched as the second boot came off and your boyfriend stood up, knees cracking. He probably hadn’t so much as stretched at the end of his shift. He looked wound tight in every way, from his clenching fingers to the tension scrunching his face.

“Fucking cops stole the villain from under my nose,” Katsuki said.

The kitchen was just a few steps away, so you filled a glass of water and offered it to him. He downed it in a few gulps and was probably just a couple measures of force short from breaking the glass as he smacked it back down on the counter.

“But they were captured?” you asked. “That’s good.”

“The only good thing about it is that now they’re the ones that have to do the paperwork,” Katsuki growled. “I told fucking five-head that if I’m not needed, I might as well come home.”

Five-head was the name Katsuki used for his manager—with a deeply receding hairline—at the agency. Fortunately, Katsuki had only let the nickname slip to the guy’s face…a handful of times.

“Sounds like a rough day,” you said as Katsuki took his gauntlets off, treating them with more care than he had his boots. “You know, I’ve been a little bit…frustrated today too.”

Katsuki’s eyes, piercing when outlined by the dark cling of his mask, flicked towards you, hearing your intentionally placed drawl immediately. “That so?”

His tone was suspicious. Maybe it should have been, by the upward pull on your lips as you leaned in close to him, stroking his arm, still hot and damp from a day on patrol.

“Yeah.” You pouted, making your tone intentionally whiny as you blinked big, round eyes at him. “Or do you not remember this morning?”

That morning had been on your mind all fucking day. Katsuki’s alarm had woken you up, as it always did, and after the ringing had faded from your ears, your body had honed in on a different sense. Specifically, the morning wood that had been pressing hard against your ass. The boner that you’d wiggled back against, moaning as you trailed your fingers up and down your boyfriend’s arm—not unlike you were right now. Katsuki had kissed you on the cheek, and then on the mouth, and you’d expected a quickie before work. You’d felt yourself growing wet at the possibility, your cheeks heating at his touch.

But then he’d pulled away and left the room before you could so much as whimper in protest. It was like he hadn’t even noticed. Like his dick hadn’t been the one to start it.

You watched the memory from many hours ago work its way onto Katsuki’s face. An eyebrow rose—you could tell even from under the mask—and a low fire lit behind his eyes. “That?”

You leaned into his ear, latching yourself around his side so that your thigh just brushed against his groin and whispered, “I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

“Always so fucking desperate for me, huh?” Katsuki rasped, grabbing your thigh with his gloved hand and wrapping your leg around his waist. “You’re lucky I’m not cooled down yet.”

When his lips met yours, they were aggressive, pent up. You could taste the salt of forgotten trails of sweat that had run from his mask down his lips. He smelled manly with it, and smoky from his quirk.

“I’m gonna fuck you so hard you forget about this morning,” Katsuki said roughly before digging his teeth into your neck.

“All talk?” you asked your voice coming out as a gasp.

You were met with Katsuki placing both of his large hands on your ass, pressing your core against his hardening length. The pants on his hero costume were loose enough that he had room to grow and tent—or he would, if you weren’t grinding down on him without any pretense hiding your desperation.

Then, he let go of you. His hands were gone from your ass, mouth abandoning your neck. Without his support, you stumbled back, looking at him in confusion.

Katsuki, however, was grinning at you, lips shiny and flushed pink. “Strip for me, baby.”

After Katsuki’s inadvertent tease that morning, you hadn’t been able to help yourself and had dressed a little sexier than usual. You weren’t going to let Katsuki ignore you this time around.

You took off your clothes piece by piece, your eyes lingering on the garments and then flicking up to Katsuki, taking him in as he unzipped his pants and pulled his fat cock out. He stroked himself until you were left in nothing but a matching bra and panty set. Both were orange, matching the X over his chest and the palms of the gloves he’d just slapped to the floor.

“Fuck, baby,” he growled, taking a step toward you, hand never leaving his cock, “this is just what I needed.”

You were prepared to drop to your knees, stretch your mouth around that juicy cock, already glistening with precum right at the tip. Katsuki followed your gaze and caught your chin with just one finger, forcing your eyes up to his.

“There’s no need for that, sweetness,” he said. “Apparently, you’ve been patient all day. So if you’re a good girl and do what I say, you can have this cock right away. How’s that sound?”

“Good,” you said, nodding eagerly.

“Right answer,” Katsuki said, moving his hand to run his thumb under the band of your bra. His hand was feathering over the clasp when, suddenly, he snapped the elastic, earning a yelp out of you. “Now fucking strip.”

You removed your bra in a hurry, then your panties, leaving yourself totally bare to Katsuki’s roving eyes. Meanwhile, he was still dressed in the entirety of his hero costume, save for his boots, gloves and gauntlets. The spikes behind his mask were still in place, as was his belt. The only thing unusual was his thick cock hanging out of those black pants.

“Good girl,” Katsuki whispered. “Now be a good little slut and open the curtains.”

You stared at Katsuki for a moment. The windows took up the whole wall, floor to ceiling of your main living space. You lived near the top of your building—with the curtains open, you would barely be visible to the street, unless someone had a zoom quirk. But there were neighboring skyscrapers that would offer a view right into your apartment.

However, Katsuki didn’t have patience to spare today.

“I’ll go into our room and cum on my fucking hand if you don’t open the curtains.”

His eyes were stern, but not hard. Behind his mask, there was enough openness that you knew if you said your safe word he’d pull you into him, apologize into your neck just loud enough for you to hear, and make love to you slowly in missionary on your bed with all the windows drawn.

But this wasn’t a missionary kind of day.

You cocked your chin and walked past the leather couch and dining table over to the window. The curtains were drawn so that there wouldn’t be a glare on your laptop, but now you opened them, slowly but steadily. On your high floor, the afternoon sun was on the same plane as you. It was catching those late afternoon shades of bright orange that draped you in strands of golden luxe.

“You like that?” Katsuki asked when you looked over your shoulder, looking perhaps a little too self-satisfied. “You like everyone seeing what a slut you are? How fucking gorgeous you are?”

You could only moan as Katsuki came up behind you, catching your bare breasts in both hands and rocking his cock against your ass, just like that morning, but without the separation of your clothes.

“The thing is, sweetheart,” Katsuki whispered between kisses on your already bruising neck, “if anyone’s gonna see you like this, they’re gonna haveta see that you belong to me.”

One of Katsuki’s hands drifted back to his cock and slid it between your legs, through the stickiness that was already clinging to your thighs. He kicked your legs wider to make room for himself, thrusting between your pussy lips, forcing you to lean forward against the window for leverage. His dick dragged against your clit very intentionally, pulling groans out of you as your hips naturally rocked with his.

“So wet already,” Katsuki commented. “You really have been desperate for my cock all day, haven’t you? Did you touch yourself waiting for me?”

You’d thought about it. When Katsuki had left and you’d still felt that initial heat between your legs, you’d considered pulling out your wand and cumming against its rumbly, reliable vibrations. Your fingers had been itching for it, pussy craving the speedy finish it would provide.

“No,” you whined. “I didn’t.”

“Good girl.”

Your forehead fell against the window, eyes closed in the bright sunlight as the meaty head of his cock began to split you open.

“This what you wanted?”

“Yes,” you breathed, leaning your head against his shoulder, closing your eyes as he sunk into you. He claimed to be rewarding you for your patience all day, yet was going slow enough for you to feel every inch. You squeezed around him purposefully, trying to suck him in faster. He acted like he didn’t notice.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” Katsuki said when he finally bottomed out. He sat there for a moment, kissing your neck as you continued to flutter hopelessly around him. Then he pulled out and rammed back into you in one go, nearly knocking the wind out of you.

Katsuki cackled, squeezing the meat of your thighs in both hands as he pounded into you. “Do you really think I’d do this for everyone to see if I was going to do anything less than fuck your brains out?”

All that powerlessness that Katsuki had felt at work was now being turned around into sheer might—metabolized frustration being taken out on your poor pussy. He hadn’t been able to capture that villain, but now he had you in his clutches. That unutilized strength was forcing your breasts and one cheek flat against the glass as he let your body have it.

“Katsuki,” you whined. “More.”

“So desperate and needy today, aren’t we sweetness?” Katsuki said, driving his hips forward even harder. You could feel one of the grenades on his belt smacking dangerously against your ass. It was like Dynamight had found you on the street and dragged you down a back alley to fuck while on patrol. “Lucky for you, you’re asking for something I want too.”

You’d riled something up in Katsuki. In a mood like this, he might use you, cream his cock deep inside you and let you think that he was gonna leave you like that for a good few minutes before finishing you off on his tongue or his fingers, or going another round. But it seemed as though you’d just managed to maneuver yourself onto his good side today. He wanted the satisfaction of you squeezing around him, milking his cum out of him at least once.

One of Katsuki’s hands crept up your side until it reached your neck, gripping around it but not yet pressing in. His lips were on your ear, biting your lobe before whispering, “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes.”

The end of the word came out as a hiss as Katsuki’s thick fingers closed around your throat. His other hand crept to the front of your pubic bone, flattening the hair there as the tip of his pinky reached just above your clit. Intentionally not making contact under the guise of just being able to hold you closer to his driving hips.

Your face grew hot as Katsuki pressed against your windpipe, against the veins so that you felt your throttled heartbeat begin its desperate dance. As your breath grew short, everything became sharper. Katsuki’s cock hitting right against your g-spot suddenly hit less like sparks and more like a thick stroke of fire with every go.

“You like that, huh?” Katsuki taunted as he pulled your neck against his shoulder, his thumb and middle finger nearly meeting behind your neck. “You like me fucking choking you for the world to see? So everyone can see what a dirty whore you are?”

It wasn’t like you could respond with his hand that tight around your throat. You could do little more than whimper, the vibrations buzzing against the rough calluses on his palm.

“Heh, that’s what I fucking thought.”

The power trip only seemed to be stoking Katsuki’s spirit as he pounded you unabashedly in the window. You were bracing yourself with one forearm but used the other to rest on top of the hand he had just over your sex. You just wanted to urge him just a few more millimeters south. A few blessed moments of contact on your aching clit would tip you over the edge, you were sure. But Katsuki only pushed you forward, trapping your hand and his against the cold glass, condensation framing around your hot touch.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, his voice low and so far from apologetic. “I thought it was this cock you were so desperate for? And here I am, already so generous with my hand on your beautiful throat. ‘S that not enough for you or something?”

It wasn’t, and he knew it. His cock hitting your sweet spot and his hand keeping you just on this side of passed out would edge you from now until eternity. It would leave you burning in your core, dripping down your thighs, and desperate to cum until your dying breath. But it would never have you squeezing around him, never falling boneless against his chest. Not if he didn’t touch you.

Just when you were giving up, just when you were able to focus on little more than your head growing light, your vision narrowing on the blades of orange light on the buildings in front of you, Katsuki’s last three fingers came together, threading through your fuzz before they swiped furiously over your clit.

You jerked forward so hard Katsuki lost his grip on your neck, allowing you to cry out full throated as your orgasm took over, crashing into you with more power than you’d felt in months. Air felt like water as you gasped, nonsense falling from your lips as your thighs shook and Katsuki wrapped his now free hand around your waist to keep you upright.

Your raucous orgasm had Katsuki was groaning too, barely leaving your cunt as the last couple thrusts urged his seed out of him, painting your walls before you were done quivering yourself. Your cheek was flat against the glass as Katsuki leaned his forehead against you, breathing heavily once his orgasm had washed over him.

“Shit, how’s a guy not supposed to bust when you do that,” he said, slipping out of you and placing a chaste kiss on your shoulder. “Clamping around me like a fucking vice and screaming like that. If the neighbors didn’t see you, they sure fucking heard you.”

You might have mindlessly apologized, if you weren’t still struggling to get your breath back under you, your own recovery taking much longer than Katsuki’s. You felt him leave your back, your eyes blinking open to see the translucent reflection of him leaving the window as the sun fell behind one of the city’s many skyscrapers.

A moment later, you felt a washcloth between your legs, swiping at the combined cum that was already dribbling down your thigh. The cloth slowly trailed up and you shivered when Katsuki softly swiped it over your too sensitive pussy. Then the washcloth was gone from his hands and he was on your shoulders, gently kneading out the tension there as you lolled your head side to side to stretch.

“God, I needed that,” Katsuki said quietly. “You alright?”

“Yeah, that was amazing,” you replied, your voice raspy but dreamy as you began your slow descent back to Earth.

“Course it was.”

You turned around, raising an unamused eyebrow at Katsuki’s smirk and then walked back over to the corner of the room to pull the blinds back in place. Now that your lust was receding, you had no interest in flashing your tits and wrecked pussy to the neighbors.

“God, I need to take a fucking shower,” Katsuki said as he started dismantling his costume, starting with his mask. He hardly seemed to notice as he took off his neck brace and then his tank that he was giving you the exact same kind of strip tease that you’d given him just a few minutes ago.

“A shower?” you asked coquettishly as you sidled over to the dining table he was placing his costume onto. “Might there be room for two in this shower?”

“No,” Katsuki answered quickly, placing his grenades one by one on his shirt so they wouldn’t roll away. He didn’t so much as glance at you.

“No?”

Katsuki looked serious as he kept his eyes focused on his task, bending down to unstrapping his knee pads. When he stood up straight again, his grin was devilish.

“I think I like it better when you’re frustrated.”

#bakugou smut #bakugo smut #bnha smut #ask ana #not/sfw #katsuki smut #mha smut

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hehebread · 3 years

Text

[BKDK] Izuku keeps mentioning a Kacchan to reporters and they think that's his gf

this was a request on twt that i had way too much fun writing. warning for suggestive language!

“And is there…. a special person….or a group of people you would like to thank on air today? Anyone who inspired you? Anyone you would attribute your success to? An image of victory per say?”

Izuku’s eyes glimmer as the bright lights of the studio reflect on his irises. “Oh!” He jumps in his seat, his perfectly- coiffed curls bouncing as he nods frantically to the show’s host. “Yes! Yes!” Leaning forward with his hands on his leg, the camera zooms in on his face where the blush is painting his cheeks. “I wouldn’t be the hero I am today if it wasn’t for Kacchan!”

And it’s as if an earthquake alert dropped on the talk show. The host grows this devious grin on his face as he turns to the camera team and says, “Well, well, well, behind every great man is a woman after all.”

Izuku isn’t quite sure why the host is bringing his mother into this since the interview is reaching its end and he has already discussed her influence in detail very early on, but he doesn’t get a chance to ponder.

The host, Yamaguchi-san, leans into Izuku’s space with renowned interest and an interesting glint in his eyes. Izuku feels himself sweating in his oversized maroon-striped suit.

“So, Midoriya-san, Hero Deku, Rising Symbol of Equity and Hope, can you tell us more about … Kacchan?” His voice goes higher at the last syllable, almost sing songs, and Izuku is not sure if he should be worried or not, but he won’t pass an opportunity to gush about Kacchan!

“Ah, Kacchan is very … confident, hardworking, strong, and smart. Kacchan is a hero who knows how to lead a team and perform under pressure, an inspiration to both myself and our entire graduating class, and a”—Izuku can feel the heat rise in his face as he tries to hide in his colour— “a shining star who was closer to me than All Might!”

The host makes a loud ‘AWWW’ noise at the same time as the small audience in the studio. “My, my! Sounds like Kacchan is very important to Hero Deku! Don’t be shy! Tell us more! Is there a physical description to go with your precious person?”

“Ahm!” Izuku fiddles with his fingers as he avoids the gazes on him. There a long beat of silence before he manages to say, “Muscles….Blonde…..Sharp eyes….” With a vague gesture to his middle section, he mumbles, barely audible, “Big, ugh…..” Heart.

“OOOOOOOOOH!” The host goes wild and so does the audience. “So are we talking Hiromi Oshima type big or maybe Rio Natsume, or aaaah Aki Hoshino even ….?”

Izuku feels his ears ring in humiliation as he tries to process what they’re talking about. Something Kacchan has in common with all these beautiful women is his big successful career so Izuku nods. “Yes!” Then, a thought occurs and he rises in his chair. “Even bigger!”

After all, Kacchan’s net worth is higher than these ladies.

“BIGGER?”

“The biggest!”

“Oh my god!” The host is losing his mind now! “And is it … natural? Or did Kacchan get a little help from professionals?”

“No, no, no! Kacchan was a natural ever since we were in school together!” Izuku’s eyes shine with a fire to defend his childhood best friend, no longer trying to hide in his big suit. “No one helped Kacchan get this big!”

“That’s … amazing!” The host shakes his head in both awe and disbelief. “Now we want to see Kacchan in action! When the hero works around the city, defeating villains, does the size get in the way?”

Does Kacchan’s fame get in the way of his work? “Sometimes,” Izuku muses, “But Kacchan never lets the restless and perky nuisances stop him, y’know. With a little shake from his hands, and a few colourful words of wisdoms, nothing gets in the way!” Izuku laughs as he remembers Kacchan’s way of dismissing fans and reporters alike.

“Wow!”

“Of course, there are times where Kacchan’s big firm moulds become springy and hard to control, but I have yet to see an instance where that has been a major issue. ”

Kacchan is still having some adjustment problems with his new hero costume, particularly his grenade mould, but that’s as far as distractions go.

“Does Kacchan not use support?”

“Uhm, only when it’s a dire situation! Sometimes I’m even allowed to provide assistance!”

“You must be very lucky…”

“I am! It feels … exciting and … very special! Kacchan doesn’t trust just anyone, y’know! I can never quite get used to the trust we built together. We are one unit working together.”

“Do you use your hands…. Or something else?”

“Oh, hands! Yes! But anything works really! Whatever Kacchan is comfortable with and needs at the time. Black Whip, combo moves, an iron grip...”

The host furrow his brows and seems to be considering Izuku’s answer before he opens his mouth again. “Uhm, never mind.” He then turns to the camera, smile back on. “Our time is almost running out! Thank you, hero Deku for your time! We look forward to seeing you again in the big screen!”

The next day, Izuku wakes up to the headline: Hero Deku And His Mysterious Busty New Girlfriend: The Beautiful and Spunky Kacchan!

He’s doomed

He sees Kacchan early the next day.

Having spent the morning talking to tabloids and the host show agents about the misunderstanding and whether or not it was possible to take down the episode at least, Izuku slumps his head on his desk in defeat.

Oh, this is very bad.

He starts thumping his forehead on the wood in sync with the bleeps noises in the phone, already planning his funeral in his head.

Okay, so it seems the suspense around this girlfriend is raking up his popularity, but god, at what cost.

“Nerd, we need to talk.”

Izuku’s soul near flies to the roof at the sound of the door to his office slamming close. Fuckfuckfuck.

Kacchan stands before him with his hand on his hip, teeth snarled and looking ready to tear his flesh open. Oh, this is going to be fun!

After flashing a haughty glare at the glass door to scare away the nosy friends hanging about, Kacchan continues, “About the interview.”

Of course! Yes! His final hour is approaching. “Haahahaha, what about it?” Izuku feels his undershirt cling to his torso, sweat collecting on his face. He directs a shaky hand to a nearby chair. “Feel free to take a seat, Kacchan! You want me to get you anything? Water, tissues, uhm, a knife, a body sized bag, or uhhh, a shovel? I think I have some spare sheets of paper if you’d like to give me a chance to—“

“So…” Kacchan starts.

“PLEASE TELL MY MUM I LOVE HER!”

“…this Kacchan, huh?” Having completely ignored every single word Izuku just said, Kacchan crosses his arms and scowls. “Is she strong? How come I never heard about her before? Since when did you start dating this gravure idol and pro hero, huh?”

“Wha—?”

“So, you just go around giving everyone pretty nicknames now?” Kacchan snorts and his expression darkens before he slams his hands on Izuku’s desk. He looks at Izuku from under his chin, and Izuku swear he can see flames behind his eyes. He growls, “What’s her actual name?”

An alarm bell rings in Izuku’s ears and he stutters, “Ka— Ka— Kat— Katsuko! Bakugan Katsuko…….”

Kacchan’s expression doesn’t change and Izuku feels his heart leap to his throat. God, Kacchan is gonna call his bluff at any minute now. He’s going to reject him then he’s going to break his heart and his bones.

“What’s she like?”

Kacchan shifts forward slightly and Izuku is just know noticing the ample cleavage in clear view. Right there. In front of Izuku’s face. “Uhm. Ah, she’s very, ugh, im- pec— impeccable!! And strong! Muscl— mature!! Breasty too – I mean, pretty! PRETTY!” Izuku bites his tongue then swallows thickly. “Beautiful, actually!” Lifting his gaze to meet Kacchan, he whispers, “Gorgeous. Just the most amazing person in my life.”

Kacchan is staring intently with his sharp red eyes, and Izuku feels his chest swell with confidence he never had before. “Kacchan is my inspiration, and I just … love … Kacchan so much. I wish I had the courage to tell him— um, her that.”

“Are you two serious?” Kacchan asks, impassive but there is silent rage hiding behind his words.

Something flashes quickly through Kacchan’s eyes before he narrows them. It takes Izuku a second to recognise that it’s /hurt/ and then he realise what he has just done.

“No, no, no!” Izuku backtracks immediately. “I don’t even know her that well! In fact, she kinda smells and definitely has sweating problem.” Izuku needs to do damage control and come clean NOW. “You know what? I will call her and break up with her right now. Ha ha ha.”

What the hell is he saying? Who is he going to call?

Kacchan stands up while Izuku fumbles with his phone. “Don’t be a dick,” he says, before he heads to the door.

Izuku jumps from his chair and is ready to chase after him when Kacchan stops him. “How big?”

“Huh?”

“You said Bakugan was big.”

Ah, yes, he did. Tragically.

“Um, y’know just…” Izuku motions with his hands like he’s moulding two doughballs, palms up and fingers wiggling because he’s lost control of his life once he accepted his funeral date, but that’s not even happening anymore so what is he doing really.

He then makes am hourglass shape in the air and belatedly realises that he’s just outlining Kacchan’s shape in front of him. Izuku retreats his hands and puts them behind his back in shame.

Kacchan is looking at him funny. Like he’s trying to figure something out.

“Does she shoot aerial bomb or something? Is that a combat-style quirk?”

Izuku blinks.

Kacchan just sneers and turns around.

“Whatever. I’m doing a photoshoot this afternoon. The Sekushī clothing line is dropping a new summer set and they asked me to model.”

“Se- Sekushi?? You mean, like—” Izuku feels his face go impossibly red. “You’re saying that, you’re going to wear, like…..” his voice goes down to a whisper when he says “…..a b-b-b-b-b-bikini?”

“Swimwear,” Kacchan turns to say over his shoulder, “Among other things.”

The sexy smirk he sends Izuku’s way is doing very, very weird things to Izuku’s body and imagination, things too inappropriate to describe in a work setting.

Kacchan leaves but not without offering the most dangerous challenge to Izuku’s mental wellbeing. “Feel free to drop in.”

Oh, he absolutely will.

“Bring Bakugon.”

Oh, he absolutely will not.

Actually….

Maybe, he will.

Kacchan is going to ruin Izuku

#dekubaku #dkbk #bakudeku #bkdk #bnha #mha #boku no hero fic #boku no hero academia #my hero fanfic #my hero academia #izuku midoriya #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #katsuki bakugou #prompt fill #icewrites

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whump-a-la-mode · 3 years

Note

what about a villain ‘reformed’ by being given like nasea-inducing things (hsjahd i forgot the word) whenever they show violence? like they project a scene that involves violence in front of the villain and then give the thing so they become conditioned to feel sick at the mention of violence? idk :,)

This is such an interesting prompt, and honestly I wish I had time to do more with it! Conditioning is one of my favorite tropes, but I’ve only ever seen it with fear/pain, not nausea (and don’t worry I can hardly ever spell that word correctly either.) I hope I did your great prompt justice here! In a very weird way this is also pretty much what I did at work today so. Inspiration I guess??

For obvious reasons, please take care reading if you have emetophobia or are otherwise sensitive to depictions of nausea or vomiting. For this reason the story is beneath a readmore.

CW//Captivity, restraints, tied to a chair, restricted vision, IVs, very minor eye whump, nausea, vomiting, medical malpractice

“What the- What are you doing?!” Villains head turned on a broken swivel, struggling to look in every which direction at once. Yet, even if they could accomplish this goal, it would do nothing to provide their answers.

The room was dark-- they could see that. A sort of artificial darkness, nearly reminiscent of the interior of a movie theater, pausing to breathe between its shows. Yet, any attempts to gain further details were thwarted in an instant.

They couldn’t tell how many hands there were, and counting them would have been a waste of time as much as energy. Regardless, there were more than enough hands, more than enough bodies, to overpower them. To place them where they pleased.

And, in that instance, their intended location just so happened to be a chair.

The piece of blocky furniture was the only object in the whole chamber that Villain could definitively name. More than a chair, it resembled perhaps a block of metal, from which a seat had been carved.

They struggled, of course they did, lashing out with whatever limb was not at the moment held by strong grip. But, as soon as their spine was slammed into the chair’s flat back, that singular, final hope of escape was evaporated.

Those grasping and gripping hands found themselves with a new goal: Securing the thousands of straps that hung from the chair in which Villain had been forced. The leather grabbed their wrists, their arms, their ankles and legs, anchoring their chest and shoulders to rings that had been placed for that purpose.

“Let me go!” Even their screams were restrained, their lungs given nowhere near the room they needed to properly expand. “What are you-”

Villain’s voice was clamped shut alongside their jaw, teeth clacking together and sending a shot of dazed numbness through them. The arrangement was secured with an unseen apparatus, tightened around their head, holding their jaw closed, their vision restricted by dual pairs of blinders, allowing them to look nowhere but forward.

As though they had any freedom of movement remaining, the restraint device upon their head was forced back, secured to the chair’s back and allowing not a millimeter of squirming.

Their muscles strained, chest heaving, but they had been trapped within themself. Even their eyes could not close, something holding their upper lids firmly open.

Villain tried to scream, but had not the voice or breath for it.

“Good.”

A simple, single word, and the chaos ceased. With a series of nods and hums, the swarming mass of bodies cleared. Though, if any remained, such was invisible to the villain. Not even their eyes retained their freedom.

With a loud thud, the door closed, leaving Villain alone with the bare, tiled wall before them.

“Place the line.”

They inhaled sharply. Not alone. They had no indication of where the remaining people stood, but they were there. It was more than certain.

One of them drew closer- no, two, two sets of footsteps, approaching from either side. The villain’s eyes swiveled back and forth, only to be met by the restrictive blackness of the blinders, refusing to show them the slightest glance.

While one of the invisible strangers gripped their arm, the other took their head.

With the latter’s actions, their last vein of freedom was severed. A pair of heavy, over-the-ear headphones, placed over their skull and secured to the restraint that already existed there. When the other stranger acted, they could not so much as hear their footsteps.

Their sense of hearing stolen from them, Villain had no warning for the rubber tourniquet, gripping their arm, nor for the freezing alcohol wipe, or the sharp stab of pain that followed in the inside of their elbow. A whimper died in their restrained throat.

For several, agonizing, terrifying minutes (or perhaps moments), the world stilled. When it at last began to move again, it did not do so in the form of pain or touch. Instead, in their restricted vision, Villain watched as a projector screen was pulled down, until it filled every last inch of their sight.

The light that shot from the screen urged them to flinch, to close their eyes, yet they had the capability to do neither.

“A civilian managed to capture this footage, live from the scene.”

The voice sent a jolt of panic through the restrained villain, instinct insisting that their whirl around to locate its source. Yet, when logic returned to them, they realized quite quickly where the noise had come from: Their headphones.

Before them, the screen ignited to life, filling their field of vision with technicolor pixels.

A video.

The camera shook, ever so slightly, as it zoomed in on a far-off rooftop. As it did so, the two figures atop the building came into clear view.

If Villain had the capacity, they would have gasped. A friend and a rival. A villain and a hero.

The former struck first.

That was when the warmth began.

There wasn’t an ounce of comfort about it. Instead, it was a sickening heat. That exuded by the forehead of the fevered, flowing into their arm.

The villain could not feel as the sickness spread through their veins. Instead, it only made itself known when it reached their stomach.

On the screen, the villain sent a blast of ice forth, knocking their opponent to the ground with a crunch and shattering of crystals.

In their ice-cold seat, Villain’s body lurched forward, bile shooting from their stomach to their throat. Nausea struck them, all at once, twisting their intestines into balloon animals and making them dry heave until their throat felt to have been shredded by cat’s claws.

As though timed, when their desperate gagging at last ceased, so did the video. Of course, not an instant of rest was allotted. The next series of colors and sounds began in an instant.

“Thank you, everyone! It’s a delight to see you here at the 5th annual Festival of Heroes!”

The applause that burst from their headphones threatened to explode their eardrums.

This time, the warmth that flooded their veins came not with sickness, but, instead, with the soft heat of a blanket.

Beyond Villain’s restricted sight and hearing, two lab coats leaned against a wall, sipping coffee as though it were a synchronized sport.

“Do we really have to stand in here the whole time?”

“I guess, yeah. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“Eh, who knows. Come on, it’s only three hours.”

“Yeah, three hours we can’t be in the lab.”

“It’s like a long break, kinda.”

“Fair enough. How often do we have to do this?”

“Seven days a week.” The lab coat shrugged. “Until expected results are achieved.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

As though watching flowers flash by from the window of a roadtrip-bound vehicle, around Villain, the identical walls of the HQ sped by.

Their direction was irrelevant, as was their aim. There was one, singular thing that mattered in that moment: They were free, their limbs moving under their own control. No chair to hold them down, no blinders to restrict their eyes.

They didn’t care how long it lasted. It was a euphoric, momentary liberty, and the fact that it had happened at all was enough to keep them going.

They made it about two hundred feet. Two hundred feet of hallway, two hundred feet away from the Experimental Conditioning Center. They hardly managed to stop, retaining their balance by the slimmest of margins as they skidded to a halt.

The guard was at least twice their size. Perhaps more. There was no hesitance to their swing, nor was there any to the villain’s dodge, sending them out of the blow’s range.

And sending a shot of warm, sickly bile, directly into their stomach.

When the lab coats at last caught up to Villain, they had been reduced to shivering on their hands and knees as everything they had ever eaten, so it seemed, was expelled from their mouth in the form of green sludge.

“Do you think they’ll ever stop?”

“Dunno.”

“You’ve gotta admit, though, it’s kinda funny.”

“It gets less funny when you see it three times a week.”

#villain whumpee #doctor whumper #lab whump #sickfic #sick whump #hero villain whump #whumpblr #whump community

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unpopularwiththepopulace · 3 years

Text

A retrospective on some of Broadway’s most important female costume designers across the last century

How much is our memory or perception of a production influenced by the manner in which we visually comprehend the characters for their physical appearance and attire? A lot.

How much attention in memory is often dedicated to celebrating the costume designers who create the visual forms we remember? Comparatively, not much.

Delving through the New York Public Library archives of late, I found I was able to zoom into pictures of productions like Sunday in the Park with George at a magnitude greater than before.

In doing so, I noticed myself marvelling at finer details on the costumes that simply aren’t visible from grainy 1985 proshots, or other lower resolution images.

And marvel I did.

At first, I began to set out to address the contributions made to the show by designer Patricia Zipprodt in collaboration with Ann Hould-Ward. Quickly I fell into a (rather substantial) tangent rabbit hole – concerning over a century’s worth of interconnected designers who are responsible for hundreds of some of the most memorable Broadway shows between them.

It is impossible to look at the work of just one or two of these women without also discussing the others that came before them or were inspired by them.

Journey with me then if you will on this retrospective endeavour to explore the work and legacy that some of these designers have created, and some of the contexts in which they did so.

A set of podcasts featuring Ann Hould-Ward, including Behind the Curtain (Ep. 229) and Broadway Nation (Eps. 17 and 18), invaluably introduce some of the information discussed here and, most crucially, provide a first-hand, verbal link back to this history. The latter show sets out the case for a “succession of dynamic women that goes back to the earliest days of the Broadway musical and continues right up to today”, all of whom “were mentored by one or more of the great [designers] before them, [all] became Tony award-winning [stars] in their own right, and [all] have passed on the [craft] to the next generation.”

A chronological, linear descendancy links these designers across multiple centuries, starting in 1880 with Aline Bernstein, then moving to Irene Sharaff, then to Patricia Zipprodt, then to the present day with Ann Hould-Ward. Other designers branch from or interact with this linear chronology in different ways, such as Florence Klotz and Ann Roth – who, like Patricia Zipprodt, were also mentored by Aline Bernstein – or Theoni V. Aldredge, who stands apart from this connected tree, but whose career closely parallels the chronology of its central portion. There were, of course, many other designers and women also working within this era that provided even further momentous contributions to the world of costume design, but in this piece, the focus will remain primarily on these seven figures.

As the main creditor of the designs for Sunday in the Park with George, let’s start with Patricia (Pat) Zipprodt.

Born in 1925, Pat studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York after winning a scholarship there in 1951. Through teaching herself “all of costume history by studying materials at the New York Public Library”, she passed her entrance exam to the United Scenic Artists Union in 1954. This itself was a feat only possible through Aline Bernstein’s pioneering steps in demanding and starting female acceptance into this same union for the first time just under 30 years previously.

Pat made her individual costume design debut a year after assisting Irene Sharaff on Happy Hunting in 1956 – Ethel Merman’s last new Broadway credit. Of the more than 50 shows she subsequently designed, some of Pat’s most significant musicals include: She Loves Me (1963) Fiddler on the Roof (1964) Cabaret (1966) Zorba (1968) 1776 (1969) Pippin (1972) Mack & Mabel (1974) Chicago (1975) Alice in Wonderland (1983) Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Sweet Charity (1986) Into the Woods (1987) - preliminary work

Other notable play credits included: The Little Foxes (1967) The Glass Menagerie (1983) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1990)

Yes. One person designed all of those shows. Many of the most beloved pieces in modern musical theatre history. Somewhat baffling.

Her work notably earned her 11 Tony nominations, 3 wins, an induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Irene Sharaff award for lifetime achievement in costume design in 1997.

By 1983, Pat was one of the most well-respected designers of her era. When the offer for Sunday in the Park with George came in, she was less than enamoured by being confined to the ill-suited basements at Playwright’s Horizons all day, designing full costumes for a story not even yet in existence. From-the-ground-up workshops are common now, but at the time, Sunday was one of the first of its kind.

Rather than flatly declining, she asked Ann Hould-Ward, previously her assistant and intern who had now been designing for 2-3 years on her own, if she was interested in collaborating. She was. The two divided the designing between them, like Pat creating Bernadette’s opening pink and white dress, and Ann her final red and purple dress.

Which indeed leads to the question of the infamous creation worn in the opening number. No attemptedly comprehensive look at the costumes in Sunday would be complete without addressing it or its masterful mechanics.

To enable Bernadette to spring miraculously and seemingly effortlessly from her outer confines, Ann and Pat enlisted the help of a man with a “Theatre Magics” company in Ohio. Dubbed ‘The Iron Dress’, the gasp-inducing motion required a wire frame embedded into the material, entities called ‘moonwalker legs and feet’, and two garage door openers coming up through the stage to lever the two halves apart. The mechanism – highly impressive in its periods of functionality – wasn’t without its flaws. Ann recalls “there were nights during previews where [Bernadette] couldn’t get out of the dress”. Or worse, a night where “the dress closed up completely. And it wouldn’t open up again!”. As Bernadette finished her number, there was nothing else within her power she could do, so she simply “grabbed it under her arm and carried it off stage.”

What visuals. Evidently, the course of costume design is not always plain sailing.

This sentiment is exhibited in the fact design work is a physical materialisation of other creators’ visions, thus foregrounding the tricky need for collaboration and compromise. This is at once a skill, very much part of the job description, and not always pleasant – in navigating any divides between one’s own ideas and those of other people.

Sunday in the Park with George was no exception in requiring such a moment of compromise and revision. With the show already on Broadway in previews, Stephen Sondheim decreed the little girl Louise’s dress “needs to be white” – not the “turquoisey blue” undertone Pat and Ann had already created it with. White, to better spotlight the painting’s centre.

Requests for alterations are easier to comprehend when they are done with equanimity and have justification. Sondheim said he would pay for the new dress himself, and in Seurat’s original painting, the little girl is very brightly the focal centre point of the piece. On this occasion, all agreed that Sondheim was “absolutely right”. A new dress was made.

Other artistic differences aren’t always as amicable.

In Pat Zipprodt’s first show, Happy Hunting with Ethel Merman in 1956, some creatives and directors were getting in vociferous, progress-stopping arguments over a dress and a scene in which Ethel was to jump over a fence. Then magically, the dress went missing. Pat was working at the time as an assistant to the senior Irene Sharaff, and Pat herself was the one to find the dress the next morning. It was in the basement. Covered in black and wholly unwearable. Sharaff had spray painted the dress black in protest against the “bickering”. Indeed, Sharaff disappeared, not to be seen again until the show arrived on Broadway.

Those that worked with her soon found that Sharaff was one to be listened to and respected – as Hal Prince did during West Side Story. After the show opened in 1957, Hal replaced her 40 pairs of meticulously created and individually dyed, battered, and re-dyed jeans with off-the-rack copies. His reasoning was this: “How foolish to be wasting money when we can make a promotional arrangement with Levi Strauss to supply blue jeans free for program credit?” A year later, he looked at their show, and wondered “What’s happened?”

What had happened was that the production had lost its spark and noticeable portions of its beauty, vibrancy, and subtle individuality. Sharaff’s unique creations quickly returned, and Hal had learned his lesson. By the time Sharaff’s mentee, Pat, had “designed the most expensive rags for the company to wear” with this same idiosyncratic dyeing process for Fiddler on the Roof in 1964, Hal recognised the value of this particularity and the disproportionately large payoff even ostensibly simple garments can bring.

Irene Sharaff is remembered as one of the greatest designers ever. Born in 1910, she was mentored by Aline Bernstein, first assisting her on 1928’s original staging of Hedda Gabler.

Throughout her 56 year career, she designed more than 52 Broadway musicals. Some particularly memorable entities include: The Boys from Syracuse (1938) Lady in the Dark (1943) Candide (1956) Happy Hunting (1956) Sweet Charity (1966) The King and I (1951, 1956) West Side Story (1957, 1961) Funny Girl (1964, 1968)

For the last three productions, she would reprise her work on Broadway in the subsequent and indelibly enduring film adaptations of the same shows.

Her work in the theatre earned her 6 Tony nominations and 1 win, though her work in Hollywood was perhaps even more well rewarded – earning 5 Academy Awards from a total of 15 nominations.

Some of Sharaff’s additional film credits included: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Ziegfeld Follies (1946) An American in Paris (1951) Call Me Madam (1953) A Star is Born (1954) – partial Guys and Dolls (1955) Cleopatra (1963) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Hello Dolly! (1969) Mommie Dearest (1981)

It’s a remarkable list. But it is too more than just a list.

Famously, Judy’s red scarlet ballgown in Meet Me in St. Louis was termed the “most sophisticated costume [she’d] yet worn on the screen.”

It has been written that Sharaff’s “last film was probably the only bad one on which she worked,” – the infamous pillar of camp culture, Mommie Dearest, in 1981 – “but its perpetrators knew that to recreate the Hollywood of Joan Crawford, it required an artist who understood the particular glamour of the Crawford era.” And at the time, there were very few – if any – who could fill that requirement better than Irene Sharaff.

The 1963 production of Cleopatra is perhaps an even more infamous endeavour. Notoriously fraught with problems, the film was at that point the most expensive ever made. It nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox, in light of varying issues like long production delays, a revolving carousel of directors, the beginning of the infamous Burton/Taylor affair and resulting media storm, and bouts of Elizabeth’s ill-health that “nearly killed her”. In that turbulent environment, Sharaff is highlighted as one of the figures instrumental in the film’s eventual completion – “adjusting Elizabeth Taylor’s costumes when her weight fluctuated overnight” so the world finally received the visual spectacle they were all ardently anticipating.

But even beyond that, Sharaff’s work had impacts more significantly and extensively than the immediate products of the shows or films themselves. Within a few years of her “vibrant Thai silk costumes for ‘The King and I’ in 1951, …silk became Thailand’s best-known export.” Her designs changed the entire economic landscape of the country.

It’s little wonder that in that era, Sharaff was known as “one of the most sought-after and highest-paid people in her profession.” With discussions and favourable comparisions alongside none other than Old Hollywood’s most beloved designer, Edith Head, Irene deserves her place in history to be recognised as one of the foremost significant pillars of the design world.

In this respected position, Irene Sharaff was able to pass on her knowledge by mentoring others too as well as Patricia Zipprodt, like Ann Roth and Florence Klotz, who have in turn gone on to further have their own highly commendable successes in the industry.

Florence “Flossie” Klotz, born in 1920, is the only Broadway costume designer to have won six Tony awards. She did so, all of them for musicals, and all of them directed by Hal Prince, in a marker of their long and meaningful collaboration.

Indeed, Flossie’s life partner was Ruth Mitchell – Hal’s long-time assistant, and herself legendary stage manager, associate director and producer of over 43 shows. Together, Flossie and Ruth were dubbed a “power couple of Broadway”.

Flossie’s shows with Hal included: Follies (1971) A Little Night Music (1973) Pacific Overtures (1976) Grind (1985) Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1993) Show Boat (1995)

And additional shows amongst her credits extend to: Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) On the Twentieth Century (1978) The Little Foxes (1981) A Doll’s Life (1982) Jerry’s Girls (1985)

Earlier in her career, she would first find her footing as an assistant designer on some of the Golden Age’s most pivotal shows like: The King and I (1951) Pal Joey (1952) Silk Stockings (1955) Carousel (1957) The Sound of Music (1959)

The original production of Follies marked the first time Florence was seriously recognised for her work. Before this point, she was not yet anywhere close to being considered as having broken into the ranks of Broadway’s “reigning designers” of that era. Follies changed matters, providing both an indication of the talent of her work to come, and creating history in being commended for producing some of the “best costumes to be seen on Broadway” in recent memory – as Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times. Fuller discussion is merited given that the costumes of Follies are always one of the show’s central points of debate and have been crucial to the reception of the original production as well as every single revival that has followed in the 50 years since.

In this instance, Ted Chapin would record from his book ‘Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’ how “the costumes were so opulent, they put the show over-budget.” Moreover, that “talking about the show years later, [Florence] said the costumes could not be made today. ‘Not only would they cost upwards of $2 million, but we used fabrics from England that aren’t even made anymore.’” Broadway then does indeed no longer look like Broadway now.

This “surreal tableau” Flossie created, including “three-foot-high ostrich feather headdresses, Marie Antoinette wigs adorned with musical instruments and birdcages, and gowns embellished with translucent butterfly wings”, remains arguably one of the most impressive and jaw-dropping spectacles to have ever graced a Broadway stage even to this day.

As for Ann Roth, born in 1931, she is still to this day making her own history – recently becoming the joint eldest nominee at 89 for an Oscar (her 5th), for her work on 2020′s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Now as of April 26th, Ann has just made history even further by becoming the oldest woman to win a competitive Academy Award ever. She has an impressive array of Hollywood credits to her name in addition to a roster of Broadway design projects, which have earned her 12 Tony nominations.

Some of her work in the theatre includes: The Women (1973) The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1978) They're Playing Our Song (1979) Singin' in the Rain (1985) Present Laughter (1996) Hedda Gabler (2009) A Raisin in the Sun (2014) Shuffle Along (2016) The Prom (2018)

Making her way over to Hollywood in the ‘70s, she has left an indelible and lasting visual impact on the arts through films like: Klute (1971) The Goodbye Girl (1977) Hair (1979) 9 to 5 (1980) Silkwood (1983) Postcards from the Edge (1990) The Birdcage (1996) The Hours (2002) Mamma Mia! (2008) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)

It’s clear from this branching 'tree' to see how far the impact of just one woman passing on her time and knowledge to others who are starting out can spread.

This art of acting as a conduit for valuable insights was something Irene Sharaff had learned from her own mentor and predecessor, Aline Bernstein. Aline was viewed as “the first woman in the [US] to gain prominence in the male-dominated field of set and costume design,” and was too a strong proponent of passing on the unique knowledge she had acquired as a pioneer and forerunner in the field.

Born in 1880, Bernstein is recognised as “one of the first theatrical designers in New York to make sets and costumes entirely from scratch and craft moving sets” while Broadway was still very much in its infancy of taking shape as the world we know today. This she did for more than one hundred shows over decades of her work in the theatre. These shows included the spectacular Grand Street Follies (1924-27), and original premier productions of plays like some of the following: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1928) J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan (1928) Grand Hotel (1930) Phillip Barry’s Animal Kingdom (1932) Chekov’s The Seagull (1937) Both Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) and The Little Foxes (1939)

Beyond direct design work, Bernstein founded what was to become the Neighbourhood Playhouse (the notable New York acting school) and was influential in the “Little Theatre movement that sprung up across America in 1910”. These were the “forerunners of the non-profit theatres we see today” and she continued to work in this realm even after moving into commercial theatre.

Bernstein also established the Museum of Costume Art, which later became the Costume Institute of the Met Museum of Art, where she served as president from 1944 to her death in 1955. This is what the Met Gala raises money for every year. So for long as you have the world’s biggest celebrities parading up and down red carpets in high fashion pieces, you have Aline Bernstein to remember – as none of that would be happening without her.

During the last fifteen years of her life, Bernstein taught and served as a consultant in theatre programs at academic institutions including Yale, Harvard, and Vassar – keen to connect the community and facilitate an exchange of wisdom and information to new descendants and the next generation.

Many designers came somewhere out of this linear descendancy. One notable exception, with no American mentor, was Theoni V. Aldredge. Born in 1922 and trained in Greece, Theoni emigrated to the US, met her husband, Tom Aldredge – himself of Into the Woods and theatre notoriety – and went on to design more than 100 Broadway shows. For her work, she earned 3 Tony wins from 11 nominations from projects such as: Anyone Can Whistle (1964) A Chorus Line (1975) Annie (1977) Barnum (1980) 42nd Street (1980) Woman of the Year (1981) Dreamgirls (1981) La Cage aux Folles (1983) The Rink (1984)

One of the main features that typify Theoni’s design style and could be attributed to a certain unique and distinctive “European flair” is her strong use of vibrant colour. This is a sentiment instantly apparent in looking longitudinally at some of her work.

In Ann Hould-Ward’s words, Theoni speaks to the “great generosity” of this profession. Theoni went out of her way to call Ann apropos of nothing early in the morning at some unknown hotel just after Ann won her first Tony for Beauty and the Beast in 1994, purring “Dahhling, I told you so!” These were women that had their disagreements, yes, but ultimately shared their knowledge and congratulated each other for their successes.

Similar anecdotal goodwill can be found in Pat Zipprodt’s call to Ann on the night of the 1987 Tony’s – where Ann was nominated for Into the Woods – with Pat singing “Have wonderful night! You’re not gonna win! …[laugh] but I love you anyway!”

This well-wishing phone call is all the more poignant considering Pat was originally involved with doing the costumes for Into the Woods, in reprise of their previous collaboration on Sunday in the Park with George.

If, for example, Theoni instinctively is remembered for bright colour, one of the features that Pat is first remembered for is her dedicated approach to research for her designs. Indeed, the New York Public Library archives document how the remaining physical evidence of this research she conducted is “particularly thorough” in the section on Into the Woods. Before the show finally hit Broadway in 1987 with Ann Hould-Ward’s designs, records show Pat had done extensive investigation herself into materials, ideas and prospective creations all through 1986.

Both Ann and Pat worked on the show out of town in try-outs at the Old Globe theatre in San Diego. But when it came to negotiating Broadway contracts, the situation became “tricky” and later “untenable” with Pat and the producers. Ann was “allowed to step in and design” the show alone instead.

The lack of harboured resentment on Patricia’s behalf speaks to her character and the pair’s relationship, such that Ann still considered her “my dear and beloved friend” for over 25 years, and was “at [Pat’s] bed when she died”.

Though they parted ways ultimately for Into the Woods, you can very much feel a continuation between their work on Sunday in the Park with George a few years previously, especially considering how tactile the designs appear in both shows. This tactility is something the shows’ book writer and director, James Lapine, was specific about. Lapine would remark in his initial ideas and inspirations that he wanted a graphic quality to the costumes on this occasion, like “so many sketches of the fairy-tales do”.

Ann fed that sentiment through her final creations, with a wide variety of materials and textures being used across the whole show – like “ribbons with ribbons seamed through them”, “all sorts of applique”, “frothy organzas and rembriodered organzas”. A specific example documents how Joanna Gleason’s shawl as the Baker’s Wife was pieced together, cut apart, and put back together again before resembling its final form.

This highly involved principle demonstrates another manner of inventive design that uses a different method but maintains the aim of particularity as discussed previously with Patricia and Irene’s complex dyeing and re-dyeing process. Pushing the confines of what is possible with the materials at hand to create a variety of colours, shades, and textures ultimately produces visual entities that are complex to look at. Confusing the eye like this “holds attention longer”, Ann maintains, which makes viewers look more intricately at individual segments of the production, and enables the costume design to guide specific focus by not immediately ceding attention elsewhere.

Understanding the methods behind the resultant impacts of a show can be as, if not more, important and interesting than the final product of the show itself sometimes. A phone call Ann had last August with James Lapine reminds us this is a notion we may be treated more to in the imminent future, when he called to enquire as to the location of some design sketches for the book he is working on (Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created 'Sunday in the Park with George') to document more thoroughly the genesis of the pair’s landmark and beloved musical.

In continuation of the notion that origin stories contain their own intrinsic value beyond any final product, Ann first became Pat’s intern through a heart-warming and tenacious tale. Ann sent letters to three notable designers when finishing graduate school. Only Patricia Zipprodt replied, with a message to say she “didn’t have anything now but let me think about it and maybe in the future.” It got to the future, and Ann took the encouragement of her previous response to try and contact Pat again. Upon being told she was out of town with a show, Ann proceeded to chase Pat through various phone books and telephone wires across different states and theatres until she finally found her. She was bolstered by the specifics of their call and ran off the phone to write an imploring note – hinging on the premise of a shared connection to Montana. She took an arrow, stabbed it through a cowboy hat, put it in a box with the note that was written on raw hide, and mailed it to New York with bated breath and all of her hopes and wishes.

Pat was knife-edgingly close to missing the box, through a matter of circumstance and timing. Importantly, she didn’t. Ann got a response, and it boded well: “Alright alright alright! You can come to New York!”

Subsequently, Ann’s long career in the design world of the theatre has included notable credits such as: Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Into the Woods (1987, 1997) Falsettos (1992) Beauty and the Beast (1994, 1997) Little Me (1998) Company (2006) Road Show (2008) The People in the Picture (2011) Merrily We Roll Along (1985, 1990, 2012, segment in Six by Sondheim 2013) Passion (2013) The Visit (2015) The Color Purple (2015) The Prince of Egypt (2021)

From early days in the city sleeping on a piece of foam on a friend’s floor, to working collaboratively alongside Pat, to using what she’d learnt from her mentor in designing whole shows herself, and going on to win prestigious awards for her work – the cycle of the theatre and the importance of handing down wisdom from those who possess it is never more evident.

As Ann summarises it meaningfully, “the theatre is a continuing, changing, evolving, emotional ball”. It’s raw, it’s alive, it needs people, it needs stories, it needs documentation of history to remember all that came before.

In periods where there can physically be no new theatre, it’s made ever the more clear for the need not to forget what value there is in the tales to be told from the past.

Through this retrospective, we’ve seen the tour de force influence of a relatively small handful of women shaping a relatively large portion of the visual scape of some of Broadway’s brightest moments.

But it’s significant to consider how disproportionate this female impact was, in contrast with how massively male dominated the rest of the creative theatre industry has been across the last century.

Assessing variations in attitudes and approaches to relationships and families in these women in the context of their professional careers over this time period presents interesting observations. And indeed, manners in which things have changed over the past hundred years.

As Ann Hould-Ward speaks of her experiences, one of her reflections is how much this was a “very male dominated world”. And one that didn’t accommodate for women with families who also wanted careers. As an intern, she didn’t even feel she could tell Patricia Zipprodt about the existence of her own young child until after 6 months of working with her. With all of these male figures around them, it would be often questioned “How are you going to do the work? How are you going to manage [with a family]?”, and that it was “harder to convince people that you were going to be able to do out-of-towns, to be able to go places.” Simply put, the industry “didn't have many designers who were married with children.”

Patricia herself in the previous generation demonstrates this restricting ethos. “In 1993, Zipprodt married a man whose proposal she had refused some 43 years earlier.” She had just newly graduated college and “she declined [his proposal] and instead moved to New York.” Faced with the family or career conundrum, she chose the latter. By the 1950s, it then wasn’t seen as uncommon to have both, it was seen as impossible.

Her husband died just five years after the pair were married in 1998, as did Patricia herself the following year. One has to wonder if alternative decisions would’ve been made and lives lived differently if she’d experienced a different context for working women in her younger life.

But occupying any space in the theatre at all was only possible because of the efforts of and strides made by women in previous generations.

When Aline Bernstein first started designing for Broadway theatre in 1916, women couldn’t even vote. She became the first female member of the United Scenic Artists of America union in 1926, but only because she was sworn in under the false and male moniker of brother Bernstein. In fact, biographies often centralise on her involvement in a “passionate” extramarital love affair with novelist Thomas Wolfe – disproportionately so for all of her remarkable contributions to the theatrical, charitable and academic worlds, and instead having her life defined through her interactions with men.

As such, it is apparent how any significant interactions with men often had direct implications over a woman’s career, especially in this earlier half of the century. Only in their absence was there comparative capacity to flourish professionally.

Irene Sharaff had no notable relationships with men. She did however have a significant partnership with Chinese-American painter and writer Mai-mai Sze from “the mid-1930s until her death”. Though this was not (nor could not be) publicly recognised or documented at the time, later by close acquaintances the pair would be described as a “devoted couple”, “inseparable”, and as holding “love and admiration for one another [that] was apparent to everyone who knew them.” This manner of relationship for Irene in the context of her career can be theorised as having allowed her the capacity to “reach a level of professional success that would have been unthinkable for most straight women of [her] generation”.

Moving forwards in time, Irene and Mai-mai presently rest where their ashes are buried under “two halves of the same rock” at the entrance to the Music and Meditation Pavilion at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge, which was “built following a donation by Sharaff and Sze”. I postulate that this site would make for an interesting slice of history and a perhaps more thought-provoking deviation for tourists away from being shepherded up and down past King’s College on King’s Parade as more usually upon a visit to Cambridge.

In this more modern society at the other end of this linear tree of remarkable designers, options for women to be more open and in control of their personal and professional lives have increased somewhat.

Ann Hould-Ward later in her career would no longer “hide that [she] was a mother”, in fear of not being taken seriously. Rather, she “made a concerted effort to talk about [her] child”, saying “because at that point I had a modicum of success. And I thought it was supportive for other women that I could do this.”

If one aspect passed down between these women in history are details of the craft and knowledge accrued along the way, this statement by Ann represents an alternative facet and direction that teaching of the future can take. Namely, that by showing through example, newer generations will be able to comprehend the feasibility of occupying different options and spaces as professional women. Existing not just as designers, or wives, or mothers, or all, or one – but as people, who possess an immense talent and skill. And that it is now not just possible, but common, to be multifaceted and live the way you want to live while working.

This is not to say all of the restrictions and barriers faced by women in previous generations have been removed, but rather that as we build a larger wealth of history of women acting with autonomy and control to refer back to, things can only get easier to build upon for the future.

Who knows what Broadway and theatre in general will look like when it returns – both on the surface with respect to this facet of costume design, and also more deeply as to the inner machinations of how shows are put together and presented. The largely male environment and the need to tick corporate and commercial boxes will not have vanished. One can only hope that this long period of stasis will have foregrounded the need and, most importantly, provided the time to revaluate the ethos in which shows are often staged, and the ways in which minority groups – like women – are able to work and be successful within the theatre in all of the many shows to come.

Notable sources:

Photographs – predominantly from the New York Public Library digital archives. IBDB – the Internet Broadway Database. Broadway Nation Podcast (Eps. #17 and #18), David Armstrong, featuring Ann Hould-Ward, 2020. Behind the Curtain: Broadway’s Living Legends Podcast (Ep. #229), Robert W Schneider and Kevin David Thomas, featuring Ann Hould-Ward, 2020. Sense of Occasion, Harold Prince, 2017. Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’, Ted Chapin, 2003. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, Stephen Sondheim, 2010. The Complete Book of 1970s Broadway Musicals, Dan Deitz, 2015. The Complete Book of 1980s Broadway Musicals, Dan Dietz, 2016. Inventory of the Patricia Zipprodt Papers and Designs at the New York Public Library, 2004 – https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/thezippr.pdf Extravagant Crowd’s Carl Van Vecten’s Portraits of Women, Aline Bernstein – http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/cvvpw/gallery/bernstein.html Jewish Heroes & Heroines of America: 150 True Stories of American Jewish Heroism – Aline Bernstein, Seymour Brody, 1996 – https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aline-bernstein Ann Hould-Ward Talks Original “Into the Woods” Costume Designs, 2016 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EPe77c6xzo&ab_channel=Playbill American Theatre Wing’s Working in the Theatre series, The Design Panel, 1993 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sp-aMQHf-U&t=2167s&ab_channel=AmericanTheatreWing Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, Mai-mai Sze and Irene Sharaff in Public and in Private, Erin McGuirl, 2016 – https://jhiblog.org/2016/05/16/mai-mai-sze-and-irene-sharaff-in-public-and-in-private/ Irene Sharaff’s obituary, The New York Times, Marvine Howe, 1993 – https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/17/obituaries/irene-sharaff-designer-83-dies-costumes-won-tony-and-oscars.html Obituary: Irene Sharaff, The Independent, David Shipman, 2011 – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-irene-sharaff-1463219.html Broadway Design Exchange – Florence Klotz – https://www.broadwaydesignexchange.com/collections/florence-klotz Obituary: Florence Klotz, The New York Times, 2006 – https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/obituaries/03klotz.html

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boneshine · 3 years

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Jack Stauber’s “Opal” Theory

Last night, I stumbled across Adult Swim premiering Jack Stauber’s “Opal” and got to enjoy it in its entirety. I’m a huge fan of his work, and seeing his latest and biggest animation to date was quite the treat in this season of tricks!

I really enjoyed the lore and thought I would (try to) explain my personal theories regarding the story.

If you haven’t watched “Opal”, I highly suggest you do so. It’s available for free on Adult Swim’s Youtube channel. Go ahead. It’s quite the ride.

SPOILERS BELOW CUT!

The first time you watch “Opal” and the second time you watch it, the story completely changes. The atmosphere changes. The characters change.

What you thought was a surreal tale about a young girl exploring a forbidden house and being consequently terrified by the residents inside transforms into a story where a young girl suffers in a neglectful and abusive household and tries to escape into her fantasies to cope.

You’re led to believe in the beginning that the girl’s name is Opal and that the residents mistake her for someone named “Claire”.

At the end of the story, you realize that “Opal” is actually Claire.

“Opal” is Claire’s fantasy. She pretends to be this happy and bright girl on a billboard in the distance (Opal’s Burgers), surrounded by a family who love and “see” her.

The story begins with “Opal” sitting in her kitchen with a burger while her “family” (the family depicted on the billboard) sings to her.

We see you, Opal

Your troubles are miles away

We see you, Opal

And in our eyes you’ll stay

These lyrics are important because no one in Claire’s house sees her.

From the dialogue/lyrics, each character that Claire interacts with in the house showcases how they never truly see her.

The grandfather watching television is blind. (“And the girls are singin’. They dance too, I assume.”)

The father spends all of his time in the Reflection Chamber staring at himself. (“Why do people look at me like the way you probably are right now?”)

The mother is always intoxicated and lying in bed and sees through a drunken haze. (“Who’s that?”)

None of these characters actually see Claire, which is why she delves into a fantasy persona where she’s given positive attention and love and affection.

The fantasy portion in the beginning, I believe, shows that Claire spends most of her time at or on the billboard until she has to go back to the house to sleep.

In Claire’s fantasy, “Opal” sneaks into the mysterious house next door (which her Billboard Parents warn her to “don’t mind the house across the street”), but she hears cries coming from the attic and goes to investigate.

The realization at the end is that the cries are coming from Claire herself, and her inability to escape her abusive household as she’s locked herself in the attic.

Let’s take a look at the rest of the household in detail...

There are three other residents in Claire’s home, which are represented by the billboard: The Mother, the Father, and the Grandfather.

The Grandfather

Claire’s real grandfather is a blind, obese chain-smoking man addicted to television. He struggles to breathe, coughs up blood, and scolds Claire for hiding his cigarettes, claiming that “it’s evil to help someone that doesn’t need help”.

Claire appears frightened and nervous around him.

When he demands that Claire give him his cigarettes, he soon grows concerned that she “smells weird” (because she had been outside) and won’t say anything.

Due to his blindness (and possible dementia), he mistakes her for a stranger, panics, and lashes out, yelling at her to “get out of his house”. In his panic, he falls out of his chair and screams as Claire runs away.

The Father

As Claire continues on toward the attic, the Father stops her. He sits in his Reflection Chamber in the bathroom, surrounded by mirrors. He is unable to see anything but his own face.

(It’s implied that he is delusional, as you can supposedly see the Father’s True Face at 11:09, which is distorted, grey, and horrifying)

Claire appears perplexed by him. It’s obvious that she isn’t used to him speaking to her. However, it becomes apparent that he doesn’t truly speak to her, but rather projects his own insecurities and feelings onto her.

He appears to be extremely narcissistic and unaware of the world around him. Religious themes collide with his self-reflection, as he rambles and talks about how “God is in his skin” and he considers himself in the process of becoming the world’s next “savior”. He spends all of his time fixing his appearance because “they turn me down so I live my nightmare”, and his need to be “seen by somebody somewhere”.

When she tries to leave, he raises his voice at her, only to calmly remark that “you could spare me a little time, you know; you act like I’m a complete stranger.”

Which, to her, he most likely is.

The Mother

Claire’s mother resides in a dilapidated room, surrounded by wine bottles, pills, and romance novels.

She lies in bed (or on the floor) underneath the sheets and grabs Claire’s leg.

She speaks with a slur, heavily intoxicated.

At first, she doesn’t recognize her daughter, but comments that “you’re being a person today, huh?”, implying that Claire often spends her time away from the family-- and for good reason.

She speaks morosely and in confusing tangents that reveal her inner turmoil about the family and her circumstances.

“Goodness exists. If I wait, Claire, and sit still... it will arrive.”

“You should be more considerate, obviously, but I forgive you. I forgive every single one of you... every night. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

“How did this get so bad? I feel terrible for all the things I... I feel terrible.”

“You and I don’t live, Claire. We survive.”

“Our adversaries are in denial. They don’t know the wrong they do. And they never repent how I want them to.”

(To Claire) “And you, you’re just like me. You’re just as powerless as I am, Claire.”

She lies back into the bed and drunkenly sings a lullaby.

The Mother’s Song

Mama needs a little girl to land on

Mama needs a little girl to fall in her arms

Mama needs a Mama’s girl to take good care

Mama needs a baby girl to hold her hair

After this, the camera zooms into the Mother’s rolling eye and a flashback is rapidly shown, including a hand dialing 9-1-1 on a phone, a child(?) being struck and falling to the ground, and what appears to be the Mother (or, perhaps, the Mother’s Mother) screaming in terror (or anger).

This is either a flashback to the Mother violently attacking someone, or a flashback of the Mother’s childhood where she herself was abused.

(It should be noted that the side of the Mother’s head appears to have a dent, implying she may have been the child.)

Claire appears absolutely terrified in her presence, most likely having suffered before from her physical abuse and escapes as soon as the Mother lunges at her, fleeing up to the attic and locking the door.

The truth about “Opal” is shown, and Claire quickly surrenders to her fantasy in her mind as her family beats on the door, where the camera zooms out and the story ends...

In conclusion, the world of “Opal” is a sad tale. Its themes center on fear, neglect, isolation, and abuse in its many horrific forms-- physical, emotional, and psychological. It focuses on Claire’s escapism in her mind, to imagine a happier life, far, far away from those who hurt her.

A forbidden house across the street, filled with dark and foreboding figures, and a little girl that just wants to be seen and loved.

#Jack Stauber #Opal #Jack Stauber's Opal #animation #art #artist #Stauber #claymation #stop motion #live action #Adult Swim #Halloween #horror #psychological horror #i might have to edit this later i'm sorry i'm very dizzy and have to go to work in an hour

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