#also listen to my playlist!!! its organized in intended listening order!!!

[topchomp]

YOUNG & TRAGIC ⬤ // a sad, sad nona playlist

[novafire-is-thinking]

Behind the Playlist - Transformers: Prime Edition (Part 8 of 22: Dreadwing)

Link to the other posts in my Behind the Playlist series

✧ ✧ ✧

I present to you the second playlist I organized in “story order.” I believe an honorable warrior like Dreadwing deserves to have his story told in this way.

Intended overarching themes and/or qualities: Honor, Betrayal, Vengeance Denied

My personal favorite(s) from this playlist: Endless Bonds and Broken Promises, Crystal, Whose Side Are You On, and Lament From The Grave

✧ ✧ ✧

Full song list and explanations under the cut:

Dreadwing by Brian Tyler

Self-explanatory name.

Soldier by Fleurie, Tommee Profitt

First and foremost, Dreadwing saw himself as a solider whose sole purpose was to serve Megatron faithfully.

Endless Bonds and Broken Promises by Krale

This instrumental piece encapsulates the grief Dreadwing may have dealt with after he felt Skyquake’s spark disconnect from his and the resulting determination to confirm what he’d sensed.

This Is a Call by Les Friction

Even though Starscream certainly wasn’t Dreadwing’s favorite for the part he played in his brother’s demise, Dreadwing primarily blamed the Autobots and thought of Skyquake’s death as a call to action.

Crystal by J.T. Peterson

To me, this one is representative of the doubts that began to set in about Megatron and what the Decepticon cause had become under his leadership. Dreadwing began to see how far the faction had drifted from its original vision, especially when Megatron welcomed a “desecrator” like Starscream back into his ranks. Things became crystal clear; Dreadwing came to his senses quickly and was no longer blinded by loyalty or duty.

Lay Your Weapons Down by UNSECRET, Sam Tinnesz

“We're losing all the reasons for our hate / Have we gone too far to find escape? / Lay your weapons down

Lay your weapons down / Lay your weapons down / Don't need to do this / Can't make it through this / Lay your weapons down / We can't fight anymore”

Again, Dreadwing realized how far the Decepticons had strayed from their original course. In his mind, they’d lost any real reason for their hate and were “chasing vapors.” When he willingly betrayed the Decepticons by returning the Forge of Solus Prime, Optimus attempted to appeal to him. Dreadwing chose instead to go his own way and wash his hands of either side before seeking revenge for his brother’s disgrace.

Avenge by Michael Vignola

This song matches the tension in the medbay when Dreadwing was determined to end Starscream’s life.

Whose Side Are You On by Tommee Profitt, Ruelle

“Betrayal burns and there's no hiding / It cuts deeper than a razor blade

There's a war in my head and I don't understand / How we ended up here / There's a tear in my heart where your lies left a mark / And now nothing is clear

Whose side are you on?”

When Dreadwing realized he’d been shot through the spark by Megatron, the shock on his face said it all. I like to imagine that he looked down sadly at the gaping hole in his chest and whispered to Megatron, “Whose side are you on?” as he was leaving to rejoin the Allspark.

Casualty by Hidden Citizens, Tash

“Call me a casualty / The cost of catastrophe / The damage, damage, damage is done / Call me, call me another one”

Lament From The Grave by Tommee Profitt, Stanaj

The Albanian language paired with the background instrumentation is hauntingly beautiful. Also, the name of the song is perfect.

Bury Me Here by Shaheen Fahmy, Epic Music World

I wouldn’t be surprised if Megatron ordered that Dreadwing’s body be dumped in some remote place on earth. There was bound to be at least one ‘Con left who remembered the exact location after the war, and I headcanon that Optimus made sure Dreadwing received a proper Cybertronian burial. Optimus is the sort of bot who would do that as a way of honoring a former enemy he respected.

✧ ✧ ✧

Notes:

This post series is in alphabetical order. Next up are Jack Darby and Knockout.

As I add more songs to the playlist, I’ll update this post.

[cvrnelivs]

— ( harry styles, cismale, he/him ) &. * — meet ( cornelius ‘ oliver ’ edwards ) ! ( he ) is ( twenty five ) years old and has lived in st. helens for ( two ) years . when they’re not helping the town prepare for halloween , they work as a ( baker ) . around here, they’re known to be ( idealistic ) & ( intuitive ) yet ( unpredictable ) & ( destructive ) and apparently their favorite fall activity is ( visiting the farmer’s market ) . safe to say it really wouldn’t be halloweentown without them !

hiya! i am kt &+ underneath the read more is a LOT of info about my bb, cornelius/oliver. ** insert clown emoji but make ‘em yee-haw ** if you’d like to plot you can reach me on here or at space cowboy#8536 on discord !! <33 v excited to interact with y’all and your bbs !!

( DISCLAIMER : THIS IS LONG - WOW !!! just felt a lot of muse !!! apologies !!  ) 

𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖘

name: cornelius oliver edwards.

nicknames: ollie, ol, lee !! literally whatever - “hey, you” dkjfgn

gender: cismale. pronouns: he, him.

age: twenty-five.

birthday: june 27th.

zodiac: cancer !!

orientation: pansexual / panromantic.

occupation: baker // aspiring filmmaker.

languages spoken: english & french.

𝖎𝖓𝖘𝖕𝖎𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

- PINTEREST - featuring his wardrobe, his home, his aesthetic, some character inspo and olive, his german shepard pup !!

- SPOTIFY PLAYLIST - what oliver is currently listening to !!

personality type: INFJ-T / THE ADVOCATE

moral alignment: chaotic good

style-wise: oliver is v stylish, but isn’t overly flashy by any means. he’s intuitive in the sense of what works and what doesn’t. willing to explore the latest wardrobe craze, but also just likes what he likes and likely won’t venture out unless pressed by another to do so. post coming soon for his wardrobe !!! they say that the cancer man’s clothing is selected to reflect “ sophistication over flash “ but kdgjn i’ll let ya’ll be the judge of that. he’s v much harry inspired clothing wardrobe, but also tones it down with some casual looks, especially with being in the bakery and getting his hands dirty in creative aspects !!

𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉

   oliver was born in kent, england. he’s the youngest in his family of three, having an older brother and sister w/ two loving parents. when he was nine, his family packed up and moved to southern california, where they resided until oliver left for college on the east coast - his family trading off between living back in england and on the west coast throughout the year. upon moving to a new country at a young age, oliver truly found himself via escaping into various books and movies. often attempting to write his own and would force encourage his siblings to act his skits/plays out for his parents enjoyment. growing up, oliver also enjoyed playing all types of sports ( his parents kind of threw him in hoping he’d make friends ), but when it came down to it, athletic abilities-wise, there truly wasn’t anything that he wasn’t ‘ good ‘ at, and that’s simply because he’s always been such a competitive individual / as well as a perfectionist. that competitive/perfectionist energy caused him to go home and practice a skill or trick for hours in order to be able to come back the next day and whoop everyone’s asses. throughout highschool ; oliver was a v dedicated student. although he’s a bit reckless and loved to goof off, he was always acing classes and applying himself. he genuinely cares for others, you could’ve seen his ass volunteering at a soup kitchen with his mom on sundays and what not, as well as take part in various clubs and sports ! just SOFT and sportythings.

   post-high school, oliver attended NYU double majoring in film & television and dramatic writing. despite his extensive and well received portfolio, oliver has always been a perfectionist and overcritical of his work, unwilling to share his projects with anyone until he deems them to be ~ perfect ~ himself. after graduating, he spent a year traveling, trying to find a bit of inspiration around him and taking up odd jobs to get some $$ of his own, dog walking, attempting his best at being a handy man, etc !! he moved back home to socal, and eventually made his way up to st.helen’s after he was sent a job posting for the bakery in town !! although he knows he doesn’t want to pursue a career in baking forever, he’s enjoying his time while trying to find a bit more muse for his future film&writing career.

   overall, oliver can come off as a bit reserved, and distant whether that be a result of his untrusting nature of others, or simply unfamiliarity. it takes a bit of time before he feels comfortable to share his true opinion / commentary / only doing so when he feels secure to do so. he’s not necessarily unfriendly, just a bit distant / lost in his thoughts. which varies, as with most ppl ofc, upon person to person and his level of comfortability among them. despite his often lack of conversation, he abhors an uncomfortable silence to settle and will fill it with nonsense to simply avoid the feeling altogether. so, if you ever want to catch him rambling, just making him uncomfortable dkjfngdf. he definitely approaches most things with a bit of ‘ tough love ‘ . he doesn’t mind getting into a quarrel or two if he knows its worth the outcome he’s envisioned. oliver will tell others when they are fucking up, and if they are throwing a punch as a result - catch him leaning into it, which explains his bout of reckless antics. he can come off as a know it all, when it comes to advice giving, but more so because he thinks he’s really good at analyzing others and situations they are in, not necessarily because he’s lived through them himself, he’s just rather intuitive and able to empathize quite easily with others despite his verbal admittance of it. when it comes down to this binches reckless bits, he just feels so intensely that he ends up numbing himself in the aftermath of it all ( especially bc he’s definitely not sharing those feelings with the people around him ), therefore he’s willing to put himself into harms way in order to get a bit of that - happiness / pain, it doesn’t matter to him as long as he no longer feels overwhelmed by numbness. so, if ya see him with some scrapes and stitches ~ mind ya business. but he’ll likely try to drag somebody else into it, and make it seem like it was their idea. but if he is truly comfortable with somebody, he walks a fine line of won’t stop talking, especially if it’s an interest of his, and comfortable silence.

𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖞 & 𝖍𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖙𝖘

he is a CANCER, therefore in this essay i will..... kidding but here’s some fun cancer info i saw that applies to my bb !! at first he appears to be wistful, sarcastic ( maybe a lil crabby ) , shy, distant and mysterious. this personality remains if he isn’t completely comfortable around somebody. but overall, that’s just his facade, his ‘smokescreen’ of sorts to scare off the world from his outwards persona. underneath that layer ( makes me think of shrek metaphor with onions // don’t mind me ), BUT he’s gentle, kind and affectionate ( if you manage to make it to that level * bell dings * ) !!! overall, oliver is a sensitive soul, a bit emotional although he’d rather d*e than show that to others. likely will internalize anything that can hurt his feelings / a low blow and will do something chaotic as a result later on bc of it. very polite, and a little worldly, he is truly the epitome of old-school gentlemanly manners. chivalry coming as a second nature to him !!

that was getting ramble-y, so continuing HERE. but when it comes to romance, as per the cancer man, the concept of love is a mystery, one that oliver is trying to attain. however, his shyness and innate distrust of others make it difficult for him to allow himself to fall in love. his guard is always up when it comes to his emotions, and it’ll take a bit of prodding before he’s willing to speak up on what’s desired from him. he’s v picky when it comes to finding the “ partner of his dreams “ - but he’s def willing to throw himself into the romance of the situation, i.e. buying flowers, riding white horses, and slaying metaphorical dragons. the traditional side means that he will shower his partner with thoughtful gifts, wine and dine them in the best restaurants, and try to grant their every wish. he will take the garbage out, fix that wobbly shelf, navigate on road trips, and kill more so trap and release bugs for his partner, and most important of all he will do it all without being asked. his loyalty and keen attention to the needs and wants of his potential partner. so basically, more so willing to showcase through actions than speak on it. it’s the little things, right ??!?!?! he def cherishes not just the act of being in a relationship, but what it means to become one with another person in mind, body, and soul.

prides himself on being able to make a mean cup of coffee, likely the worst person to watch a movie with bc he knows exactly how it’s going to end after only watching five minutes of it, he has a godawful sense of direction, will walk in circles for fifteen minutes before even raising a question about it/noticing ( but he refuses to acknowledge it. )

his house, car, workspace, junk drawer, closet….you name it - it’s organized, practically sparkling. often times arranged by color, and / or style. nothing is ever out of place, and if it is - there’s trouble brewing. but, more than anything, if he’s visiting somebody’s place and it’s messy, he will spend a solid thirty minutes picking everything up before doing whatever it is that was intended.

likes : reading, flowers, handwritten notes/letters, deep cleaning, baking, curating soundtracks for his film projects, watching the history channel and true crime docs and playing / watching hockey !!

dislikes : artichoke, clutter, sandals ( fkjgh ), unrealistic plotlines in movies &+ burnt coffee.

habits : smoking cigarettes - although he’s been meaning to quit. likely has a severe caffeine addiction, although he’s now normalized having six cups of coffee throughout his day. he’s an early riser, no matter how little the amount of sleep he’s received, he’s always the first to rise - for his early morning runs !!

strengths: creative, insightful, inspiring, convincing, determined and passionate, decisive, altruistic, intuitive !!

weaknesses: sensitive, extremely private, perfectionist, low-key always needs to have a cause / purpose, can burn out easily !! 

overall : oliver truly strives to be kind, and genuinely wants for everyone to get along. treat people with kindness and the like. he has the best of intentions, but often times that can get a bit muddled with the way he goes about things due to his bit of chaotic energy / as well as his often points of getting lost in his thoughts. he won’t realize he’s been quiet for the last three hours unless it’s mentioned to him. he will do anything to lighten a dark mood, and will sacrifice / throw himself under the bus if its needed. however, he also is the type to cause the dark mood depending on the day. wahoo! his more reckless antics increase when he’s feeling a bit emotional !! but he’ll likely try and convince somebody to propose the idea so it’s not on him. 

𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖔𝖒 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘

in an attempt to throw himself into the town’s traditions and what not, after moving to st. helen’s oliver decided it was upon himself to put on a very spooo0ooky haunted house! so, catch him converting his home into a haunted house for the month of october !!! nothing cheesy either !! it’s more a psychological scare dkjgn with some gore elements !! EnTeR iF yOu DaRe !!!

he bounced around playing sports growing up, but favored ice hockey and field lacrosse out of them all.

HE WANTS TO JOIN A BOOKCLUB PLEASE !!!!!!!! or at least have some casual moments of silence with another reading. plz and tysm.

he is a vegetarian ! he has been since his freshman year of high school and has no plans on eating seafood/meat ever again.

he loves fancy wine ~ he’s cultured. visits seb’s winery v often !!!

he can play the drums !!

he collects vintage matchbooks and the stickers off of various fruits ( he puts them in a little notebook - can be found on his bookshelf ).

saves handwritten notes and letters from pals.

he loves to garden !!!! he has a specified rose shearing hat.

to make things a bit simple, he has all of harry’s tattoos !!  might add more along the way !! stay tuned, folks !!

𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖓𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘

honestly, i am so up for anything !!! please accept this ramble of ideas thrown below.  if you have any other ideas, lmk !!!! <3333 :’-)

( 2 / 2 ) - BFFZ : the z for an added emphasis dkfjgnd. somebody who likely has a key to oliver’s house, they can enjoy one anothers company as well as the bouts of comfortable silence. you know how best friends are but kdjfngd still !! whether they are likeminded or polar opposites that just flow ~~ down for anything !! even a trio of sorts ?!

( 0 / ?? ) - MUSE(S) : somebody that he often strikes inspo from for his short films and what not !! or has starred/he plans to have them star in his future compilations of sorts !! can be simply from their own ideals, their look / ~vibe~ dkfjgn // whatever !!

( 1 / 1 ) - RIDE OR DIE / CHAOTIC COMPANION : it would be wrong to say one is the more likely the bad influence over the other, although oliver may just be. these two find themselves bounding into, well hell, ( i guess??? ) together. playing on one anothers impulsiveness and if one ends up in the back of a police car, the other is handcuffed to them. and yet despite the length of their potential injuries, they find themselves thinking of something crazier to subject them to the next time around.

( 1 / 1 ) - GUARDIAN ANGEL / GOOD INFLUENCE : with ollie being a bit chaotic in nature, he needs somebody that is likely going to steer him clear from all the ideas that’ll bring him to the brink of disaster. he’s impulsive and in that desperate attempt to feel again, he’s very likely to bring a bit of mayhem upon himself. so while they may be worrying and attempting to talk his ideas down, he’s trying to get them to go along with his plan. it may be rare that he actually takes their advice, but when he does it seems to be for the best.

( 0 / 1 ) - PARTY FRIEND : these two know how to have a good time together. despite the amount of alcohol they are throwing back and the shenanigans they find themselves in as a result, this is a time where they also find themselves confiding in one another. if you look at their camera rolls, it’s likely they have tons of embarrassing and unflattering videos and pics of one another, in between their sob-worthy confessionals and venting/rants. these two trust one another, and although they love getting wreckT together, they find themselves discussing very raw and personal details. likely the only person oliver confides in, simply bc he’s completely plastered.

( 1 / 1 ) - SIBLING-LIKE RELATIONSHIP : these two have a love/hate relationship, very sibling like filled with pranks, competition, teasing and playful banter. however, when it comes down to it they have so much love and respect for one another. they know that no matter what happens they will always have one anothers back and be supportive of the other. truly a pure content filled relationship.

okay quick mention, ENEMY PLOTS ?!?!?!?!?!? i would live for one. i can’t imagine oliver being hardcore nasty, but i’d like to see whatever version comes out for this. so let’s get it djfngjakdfg maybe they just hold different viewpoints on the world and what not and clash, anything really !!! v open !!

( 1 / 1 ) - MENTOR - oliver needs a bit of structured or unstructured guidance, all depending on what their deemed mentor is wanting to impart on him, a bit of wisdom or slight chaos. kdjfgn he’ll take anything !! life advice in any and all aspects. maybe they come into the bakery, or maybe they help him with his garden. who knows, i certainly don’t know how they met, but we’ll figure it out ?!?!

RANDOM LITTLE IDEAS : maybe they’ve heard of one another in town, but haven’t quite met yet! or maybe they see each other around all the time, but have yet to introduce themselves to one another but low-key maybe in some online forum for the town together ?! who knows some fun things kdjnfg i AM OPEN !

ooh maybe a slowburn of sorts ?! something spicy to wreck ollie’s and my life with.  dkfjgn we can base this off of chemistry !!! :’-) 

[nomattertheoceans]

Feysand prompt - the jacuzzi

Soooooo @quakeriders​, let’s talk. I know you ask for this like more than a month ago, but LISTEN --

No I don’t really have an excuse actually xD I just hope you’ll enjoy it!! It has the Inner Circle and guests, it has the Jacuzzi, and the summer night, and they party, and Feysand “getting busy”... ;) It gets very NSFW, so be warned.

This is part of my Feysand fic “I made you a promise” universe, and is a direct follow-up to this prompt that I wrote for @awesome--username :)

And also… @quakeriders I think I remember you telling me your birthday was around the 21st or 22nd? Sooo Happy Birthday!! 

Feyre moved into the townhouse a week later. Packing her place didn’t take long, seeing as her stuff consisted of maybe four or five boxes of clothes, a few books, and one or two kitchen pots. That didn’t stop their friends from coming to “help.”

This is how they found themselves carrying her boxes through the jam-packed subway on a Saturday afternoon.

“Eight people to carry ten boxes, seriously,” Rhys grumbled under his breath as the subway came to another stop, one of many before they were to make it to the townhouse. “This is ridiculous.”

“You’re just grumpy because you had to take the subway,” Clare said, punching him lightly in the arm. “It won’t kill you.”

“No it won't, but it would have taken a whole of thirty minutes to get everything in my car and bring it over. I can’t believe we’re wasting all this time.”

Sitting across from him, Feyre and Cassian laughed in unisson.

“Come on, you guys moving in together is a big deal, we all wanted to be here,” said Mor, standing beside Rhys. “Plus, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to enjoy free beer and pizza!”

“Oh, because we have to buy you pizzas now?” He asked his cousin, but Elain was the one answering.

“It’s a tradition Rhysand. Moving always comes with pizza and beer for the helpers.”

He rolled his eyes, but Feyre could see a small smile inching its way onto her boyfriend’s lips. She nudged him with her foot, and said:

“Come on, stop being grumpy, we’ll make a party of it. It’s been a while since someone got drunk in the jacuzzi!”

He laughed out loud at that, and they kept on chatting until they reached the right subway stop.

***

Putting away the boxes was over about as quickly as packing them had been. Elain arranged her sister’s books beside Rhysand’s, Mor helped Feyre organized the dresser to fit her clothes, and Cassian and Azriel started a sword fight with wooden spoons while they were putting away her very few kitchen utensils. 

Then there was the long process of ordering pizzas who would please everyone, an excruciating thirty minutes during which Rhys had to rewrite the order five times because someone had changed their mind.

But finally, they were all chilling out on his rooftop terrace, pizzas and beers being passed around, the loud clubbing music coming out of his laptop. Mor’s playlist, obviously.

Not his terrace. Their terrace, Rhys thought as he took in his girlfriend lounging in the jacuzzi with Cassian and Alyss, a bottle in her hand, eyes closed as she laughed at one of his brother’s jokes, her neck resting on the edge of the tub. Gods, she was gorgeous. And she was living with him. Starting tonight, they would see each other everyday, he would get to hear her singing off-tune when she was painting, he would get to see her with messy hair before they went to bed.

Asking her to move in had been a spur-of-the-moment impulse, but once she’d said yes, nothing else had made sense. Of course they would live together. He didn’t even know how he had been able to wait more than ten months to ask her.

As if she could feel his eyes on her, Feyre looked at him and gave him a soft smile, one that he knew was intended only to him, one in which he could feel all the love she gave him everyday. He smiled back and got up from the chair he’d been sitting in, walking towards her.

“Rhys! Nice of you to join us!” Cassian shouted, clearly already drunk. “I was having way too much fun by myself with these lovely ladies!”

“I’m not getting into the tub, Cass,” he answered as he approached, putting his drink on the ground to encircle Feyre with his arms. She looked up and grinned at him, and he took a minute to admire her body inside the water, her skin covered only by a black bikini, her long, lovely legs laying down in front of her. She moved a hand to his face and plunged her fingers into his hair, pulling him towards her.

He didn’t know if there would ever come a day when he would get tired of her kisses. Their lips met and started moving slowly against each other. But he could feel what she wanted, and within seconds, her tongue was brushing against his lips, deepening their kiss. He felt a fire building inside him under her touch, and immediately felt the urge to climb beside her inside the water.

“Ahem… Guys, keep it PG, alright? We’re still here with you, remember?” Cassian interrupted, and Rhys felt Feyre chuckle against his mouth and move away from him.

“Sorry, Cass.”

Rhys settled behind her outside the tub, keeping an arm around her in the water as she resumed her conversation with Alyss about some new movie they were going to see. He looked around, from Mor and Clare dancing wildly in front of the stereo, to Azriel and Elain talking quietly in one corner of the rooftop. They didn’t need that many people to move out from Feyre’s old place, but he sure as hell was glad they’d come.

***

Everybody went home eventually. Alyss left first to free her babysitter, and she was followed by Elain around midnight. Azriel offered to escort her home, and they left the others to party until much later. Mor and Clare, who’d been slowly growing closer during the evening, also left together, clearly headed to Mor’s place a couple of blocks down the road. From the terrace, Cassian and Feyre watched them walk away in a very tight embrace, their laughs resonating in the quiet street.

Cassian was the last one to leave, practically pushed out the door by Rhys after a good hour and a half of talking about the new tattoo designs he was creating. Leaning on the frame of the front door, Feyre laughed at the sight of Rhys struggling to get his brother in a taxi, and turned back inside the house, waiting for him.

After a minute, strong arms encircled her from behind, and her boyfriend’s fingers intertwined with hers. She felt the warmth of his breath against her skin as he whispered in her ear.

“Hey roomie.”

She couldn’t stop a grin from forming on her lips at the words. They were living together. Officially. After so many months of spending as much time as they could together, they had finally taken the final step. His house was her new home, and she could feel her heart racing at the thought.

“Hey,” she answered, letting go of his hands to turn around in his arms.

He kissed her lips quickly. “Are you happy?”

She waited for a minute before answering. “I don’t know.” The worried look on his face was worth every second she waited to continue. “I mean, I was expecting getting to spend some time in the hottub with my boyfriend, but instead I had to stay in there all alone, I don’t know what to think about that…”

She gave him a mischievous smile, and he chuckled. “Oh you know, the night doesn’t have to end now. I would hate for you to spend your first night here disappointed.” And with that, he let go of her and started climbing the stairs, losing clothe after clothe on the way.

She followed after him, and soon he was turning the jacuzzi back on and climbing inside in nothing but his underwear. She took off her dress, climbed after him, and innocently sat on the opposite side of the tub, a shy smile on her lips. She wanted to play tonight. Rhys stared at her for a moment, clearly knowing what she wanted but trying to see if she would break first. As if that would happen. And sure enough, after a mere few seconds -

“You’re not coming closer?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you asked me to come here with you.”

“I never said I wanted to cozy up with you, though. We have all this space, might as well enjoy it, don’t you think?”

His smile didn’t falter. He knew what she was doing. “Sure, whatever makes you happy.”

They fell silent, staring at each other relentlessly for a good minute, the night silent except for the noise of the bubbles around them. The bright light coming from the tub mixed with the warmest shade of yellow coming from the other lamps scattered around the terrace, and all of the shadows surrounding them worked perfectly to underline Rhys’ toned chest and muscled arms.

She wanted to win this game they were playing. She wanted him to cave and finally take her in his arms, she wanted him to whisper sweet nothings in her ear about how irresistible she was.

But more than any of this, she wanted to touch him.

Without dropping her gaze, she moved to him, and straddled him. He smirked and let his hands drift underwater to find her hips, steadying her against him. Immediately, she let her fingers roam his chest, all the way up to his shoulders, his neck, his hair. He lowered his mouth on her neck and started scraping his teeth against her skin, not quite touching her, not quite pulling away.

“You lost, Darling,” he whispered in her ear, and the feeling of his breath sent shivers down her spine, all the way to her core.

“I don’t care,” she answered, and she turned his face to capture his lips with hers. Their kiss was instantly passionate and she moaned against him as his hands left her hips to move up to her hair, untying her hairband and tangling his fingers in her hair to keep her against him. She let a hand slide back down to his chest, and slowly grazed his skin until she reached the edge of his underwear, slipping inside it to grab him softly.

He groaned into her mouth, and tightened his grip around her body, massaging her hair and her neck with his fingers. Feyre felt a delicious warmth spread in her belly, and she was thankful for being seated on top of him, because she wasn’t sure her legs would have held her up much longer.

Especially when he let go of her lips to whisper “this is clearly in the way,” as he started working on untying the top of her bikini. She chuckled, but didn’t stop stroking him, and she could feel his hand trembling as he took off her swimsuit. The next second, one of his hand was caressing her breasts, and the other was travelling south to rub the inside of her thighs. She let out a gasp of pleasure as he slipped his fingers under the fabric, and plunged inside her.

“It wouldn’t be nice to let you have all the fun now would it?” He breathed against her skin, at the same second his fingers started moving in her, in the pattern he knew drove her crazy everytime.

“Rhys,” she found herself gasping against him, unable to restrain herself under his touch. Unable to focus on anything other than what he was doing to her, she linked her arms around his neck and let him drive her to the edge of the world, as a rush of pleasure crashed onto her, making her moan and gasp and cry out his name under the starry sky of Velaris.

After what seemed like an eternity, she felt the blissful waves recede, and her breathing started to slow down. She moved her head to the side, and found Rhys looking at her with nothing but love and desire in his eyes. She could still feel the hardness of him brushing between her legs, and immediately felt the need for him inside her. But Rhys seemed to understand her intention, and he talked before she could say anything.

“Maybe we should move this to the bedroom?”

She smiled, and only answered: “To our bedroom.”

His eyes softened at the correction, and he gave her the most tender kiss she could have wanted in that moment.

“Come, my lady, let’s get to our bedroom.”

[coffee-obsessed-writer]

When You Least Expect It: Part One

Jensen x Reader, Jared Padalecki, Leo Caprini (OMC) platonic

A/N: This is a slow burn fic that I have been working on for a while. Its a story I wrote for myself and just wanted to share with everyone. Yes, the “Dee” in the story is who you think, but there is no intended hate on her or their actual marriage. It is a work of fiction, that is all.

Part one is from Jensen’s POV. There is also a playlist to go along with the series. Some are just songs I imagined playing or being played as the story took shape in my imagination, or they are songs actually being used in the series. I will link them when that’s the case. Hope you enjoy it! xo

Series Summary: After a hard breakup, Jensen decides to throw himself into organizing a Music Festival in Austin that is meant to raise money for a few of his most cherished charities and organizations. As he throws himself into planning it, he stumbles upon a spirited, undiscovered performer, who he convinces to come aboard to help plan and coordinate the event with him.

What transpires after that takes both Jensen and his new friend, by surprise. But when their respective pasts come back just before the event kicks off in Austin, they will both have to decide if the unexpected feelings are worth perusing, or if they should just walk away and go on with their lives.

Series Warnings: Language, Break-Ups, Angst, Fluff, Smut (that’s it for now)

Series Playlist: “When You Least Expect It” (Spotify)  [Youtube Playlist Coming Soon]

*Banner created by me; pics & gifs found online

“You sure you feel up to this? We can just hang out at the hotel if you want.”

“No,” Jensen said. “I need to get out, get fresh air. I need to breathe. Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE board meetings? It’s why I’m not an office guy. I would suck at it. What happened to let’s meet at a restaurant, have a meal, a drink and just talk stuff out?”

“Alright man, whatever you want,” Jared agreed and took a few tentative steps to cross the street. “But, remember, you were the one that wanted this all to happen ASAP. The guy is on vacation with his family and putting aside time for us. If he wants to set up in his hotel conference room…” Jared trailed off and shrugged before making his way across the street.

Jensen waved him off and followed in his friend’s footsteps and as they made their way up onto the boardwalk, they were both relatively relieved with how deserted it was. October at the Jersey shore wasn’t exactly ‘in season’ but it was a nice enough night that they could have encountered a lot more people.

“This is good,” Jensen smiled, as they strolled down the boardwalk. He inhaled a deep breath of the salty air and exhaled slowly. “I get that. But it's important to get this stuff finalized before I go back to Austin and start making firm plans. ‘Cause before you know it, it’s back to Vancouver. Doesn’t leave much time to get things in motion.”

“Could always push the festival back a year,” Jared suggested, knowing Jensen would never agree. He was like a dog with a bone where this festival was concerned. Once the idea to host a three-day event in Austin came about, Jensen was bound and determined to make it happen, all in a year’s time.

“No, its gotta be next year,” he said, gesturing with his hands that was his final decision. “It's fine. I’m better now that I’m out of that conference room. It was like a million degrees in there. This, this was a good idea. Maybe we find a small bar, grab a beer, some grub. Just relax a bit.”

“Until your phone rings,” Jared said unintentionally sharp.

“Come on, Jar. I don’t wanna—” he sighed and stopped walking. “It's over, alright. She left and honestly it sucked.”

“And the festival is your way to distract yourself from that.”

Jensen gave him a reprimanding look but couldn’t deny his claim.

“It was six months ago, and yeah, it took me a while to get over it. But it wasn’t like we were married, and she wanted something else. I’m done waiting for her, okay? I get it now, she’s not coming back. So, you can stop worrying. And yeah, maybe the festival is my way of moving on. Work is work, and while it keeps me busy enough, I want to do something more. Organizing this thing through the brewery, it’s gonna be great. It's going to help a ton of people and bring some recognition to a few great charitable organizations.”

Jared walked by his side quietly, listening and waiting for Jensen to stop rambling. When he did, he asked a simple question completely throwing Jensen for a loop.

“That all sounds great. It really does, and your intentions are on point, Jay. But… what happens when it’s over?””

He hemmed and hawed over an answer, sputtering and stuttering before just giving up and shrugging his shoulders. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be fine?”

“Perfectly. Fine.” He nodded as confirmation. “In fact, so fine, I won’t even remember whats-her-name because I’ll be swimming in fine.” His tone oozed sarcasm, only to be made more punctuated by his expression.

“Jensen…” Jared sighed. “Just stop. It's fine, I get it. I’ll back off. Let’s go get that beer and whatever.”

He shoved his hands in his pocket as the autumn wind kicked up his hair as it rolled in off the ocean. He started to look around at the different booths, only a few of which were open and functioning that time of year. A little further down the boardwalk, Jared spotted a place that could be just what they needed.

“Come on, let’s check out this place,” he motioned his head towards a bar/restaurant called The Beachcomber. Jensen shrugged in agreement as they headed towards the building.

Walking through the front doors, they were met by a quick blast of warm air from above. There was a smattering of tables with patrons, but mostly they were empty. They made their way towards the back of the bar, where there were tables open that overlooked the ocean. Claiming one, they sat down and grabbed a menu to peruse. Not too long after, a waitress came by and took their orders. If she had recognized them, she didn’t mention it and went about her business as usual.

“I don’t want to keep bringing it up,” Jared started, after the waitress came back with their drinks.

Jensen sipped his beer. “So, don’t.”

“I just—I thought you were going to propose? You told me you wanted too. She left because you couldn’t make the commitment, Jay. Why didn’t you go through with it?”

Jensen just shrugged and looked out over the ocean to think before answering Jared’s question. “I don’t know… at the last minute, I just couldn’t do it. The idea of settling down with one person is terrifying, man. It may suit you and Gen, but I don’t know if it’s for me.”

“It’s not like you’re some playboy. You are monogamous as hell. So, what was it really?”

“Maybe I just couldn’t see my future with her. You know, settling down, kids, the whole nine.”

Jared nodded slowly, finally understanding. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Because that makes me sound like a dick.”

“You are a dick,” Jared teased and threw a piece of the napkin at his friend.

Jensen mocked him with a fake laugh and went back to his beer. “Yeah, yeah… moving on. Let’s talk about the important shit. I want tomorrow to go as smoothly as possible so we aren’t sitting in the pits-of-Hell conference room, so will you have a chance to look through all the contracts?”

Jared nodded and sighed. “Mhm. But really Jay, that shit needs to just go to the lawyer. I know you want everything to be perfect, to go smoothly. And I have no doubt that it will… but can’t we just concentrate on the creative stuff? Gen and I got a lot of the marketing taken care of. You and Jason, Robbie too, right? Y’all got the music covered. The festival will go off without a hitch and Random Acts will take in a bunch of money, as will the Austin Y and the crisis hotline.”

“Yeah, music is coming along. I just don’t have anyone that fits the vibe, you know?”

“No, I don’t. What vibe is that?”

Jensen shrugged. “I don’t know… this I guess,” he motioned towards the beach and the boardwalk, “I wanna bring this to the Brewfest.”

“Why? I mean, it's great here, but what makes it so special?”

“Can’t put my finger on it. Have you ever been here in the summertime? Dude, it's amazing. Just the whole vibe of the place…”

“That’s why you’re so intent on having these meetings with Leo. You want him to bring the boardwalk to Austin.”

Jensen shrugged again and nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, alright. I will help you make that happen then. Tomorrow, we’ll just have to convince him.”

“Well, lookit you. Being all motivational and shit.”

“Rah Rah!” Jared teased and shaking his hands like pom poms.

“How are we friends?” he asked and shook his head with a sarcastic eye roll included.

“You’d be lost without me and you know it,” Jared mocked and raised his glass in salute. Jensen nodded in reluctance agreement and clinked his glass against Jared’s.

The food was dropped not too long after that, and they enjoyed their seaside dinner as the sun set behind the houses to the west. About an hour after they arrived, dinner and drinks were finished, and they debated on staying or going back to the hotel. Deciding to stay for one more round, they settled in and kept an eye on Game Six of the World Series happening on the TVs above the bar.

Somewhere around the fifth inning, the volume got turned down, and the customer’s attention was asked to look towards the small corner stage. Behind the riser, was the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean and a smattering of small boat lights on the horizon. Though the sun had just set a little while ago, the moon was already nearly full, hanging low in the night sky.

Jared was intent on the game playing out over the bar, even though there was no sound now. Jensen sipped at the rest of his beer and decided to keep his eyes on the stage. An older man, maybe in his mid-60s, welcomed the crowd and thanked them for patronizing The Beachcomber. His thick New York accent made Jensen smile, especially once he took in the man’s overall appearance of his slicked-back salt and pepper hair, white tee shirt and black leather coat.

Right out of the damn Sopranos, he thought and chuckled to himself.

He watched the stage, eager to see some Sinatra wannabe come out and try to charm the crowd. But when the girl with the guitar came out instead, he sat up a little straighter in his chair and glanced over at his best friend to see if he was paying attention.

He wasn’t.

Jensen couldn’t take his eyes off her, not solely because she was beautiful; which she was… stunningly so. Her beauty wasn’t what made him sit up and take notice. It was the way she held her guitar; gripping it as if it were her lifeline. He observed her closely, surprised that she seemed nervous. When she strummed the guitar and brought the melody to life her nerves faded away; she was suddenly confident and assured. Her voice carried on and as the lyrics of “Dust in the Wind” filled up the back end of the Beachcomber Restaurant, Jensen found himself immersed in the moment.

He went to the bar that night in search of a hot meal and cold beer. Jensen didn’t expect to find a solution to some, or even all, of his problems. But the longer he sat and watched her perform, he started to feel that maybe everything will work out for him after all.

She played through a short set and it was clear the other people in the bar couldn’t care less about the magic he was witnessing. At one point, Jensen looked around and was shocked how little people were paying attention. How did they not hear her voice, feel her words, or get touched by her vulnerability? He was more in shock about that, then the girl herself. Yet, the more she played, the more he was drawn in and attentive to every note, every word, every second.

By the end of the last song, she gave a slight bow and turned to scurry off stage. Jensen clapped eagerly for her, as the last few remaining patrons gave her a half-hearted attempt at applause. He was floored that he was the only one who took notice of her and turned to say as much to Jared, who was on his phone nodding emphatically.

“Yeah, got it. Ten tomorrow morning. Yup, thanks, see you then,” he said into the receiver then ended the call and tucked it away before looking up at Jensen. “You ready to go?”

“No, I… did you hear any of that?”

“Hear what?”

Jensen ran a frustrated hand over his stubbled face. “The girl, the music… did you hear it or did I just imagine that whole thing happening?”

“Oh, I heard it. It was good. I was just sort of engrossed in the game. Anyway, we should go. It’s getting late and Leo’s attorney said he wanted to reconvene by ten.”

“Can you just give me a minute? I want to see if I can catch—” just as he was standing up from the table and surveying the bar, he caught a glimpse of the guitar girl heading out of the doors and sprinting out into the night seaside air. He slumped back into his seat and sighed. “Nevermind… let’s go. I guess I can come back tomorrow night and see if she’s tending bar,” he mumbled more to himself than to Jared.

When Jensen looked back up and saw the way his best friend was looking at him, he shrugged and wrinkled his nose as if he was being chastised for something.

“What?”

“Dude, stalk much? Besides, we have a two o’clock flight out of Atlantic City. Bob is expecting us back to set Sunday morning.”

Jensen groaned. “Shit, I forgot. Alright, well, it’s the modern age, I can use a phone and try to get in touch with her—”

“Jay… chill. She’s just a girl, sure, she’s cute but, what is the big deal?”

Jensen opened his mouth to explain and suddenly felt stupid. She was just a girl; a girl that had a voice that could calm the Kraken, and a mastery of a guitar that could rival most of the greats. Even just hearing a few songs, he knew she was that good; but she was just a girl.

“I’m not taking away her talent, but unless you’re sweet on her or something—”

“No, it’s not that,” Jensen started, but then opted to change the subject and waved it off. “You’re right, no big deal. It’s late and we should get some shut eye before tomorrow. If we’re lucky we can settle all this with Leo, have the contracts in place for the festival and be back home in less than twenty-four hours.”

Jared nodded and felt a bit of his concern wash away. “Ok, good. Just stay focused on the work in front of us and we may actually pull this off.”

Later that night, as Jensen stretched out in his hotel’s king-sized bed, his eyes finally drifted closed and her face was there with him. It was partially hidden in the shadows of a stage, only hints of her features could be seen through the fogginess of the room and the singular light shining down upon her. But it was her. She was humming a tune, something familiar but in his unconscious state was unable to identify what it was. Unbeknownst to him, he began to hum along in his sleep, and a smile touched his lips.

In his dream, she smiled too and reached out a hand towards him. His dream self hesitated but then slowly walked around to the climb the stairs that would take him to her. Just as he joined her, she was gone, but he could still hear her voice humming the familiar melody. From the stage, he looked out and saw the crowd of one. She was there, her face still shrouded in a gradient of darkness, but her voice was clear and comforting. A sudden hit of a snare drum made him look away, and when he looked back at her, she was gone leaving a swirl of grey smoke in her wake.

Another hit of the snare drum pulled him out of the bar, and yet another out of his REM sleep. The alarm pinging on the table beside the bed continued yanking him from a dream he would later come to realize was way more profound than he thought. As he sat up, fully awake now and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sighed as the last few vivid images of the dream dwindled away, leaving only the melody firmly stuck in his mind.

The next morning’s meeting went off without a hitch. After Jared and Jensen met with Leo Caprini and his lawyer, they had a catered breakfast and stood around chatting for a while. Jensen expressed an interest to see more of the town if not for their flight out that afternoon. As if fate heard him and stepped in to correct it, both his and Jared’s phones went off simultaneously. Jensen kept chatting up Leo as Jared excused himself to check the text message that came through from the show’s EP.

No rush back. Set is closed for another three days. Will call with details later.

When Jared returned, Leo and his lawyer were in a sidebar. He held up his phone so Jensen could read the message.

“You get one too?”

Jensen nodded. “Yeah. Wonder what the hell is going on?”

“I’m going to give him a ring on the way back to the motel. But three more days? Shit. I might as well go home for that. Gen and the kids just got back from her folks’ place last night. Could do with a few days home before we get back at it.”

“Then you should. We’re all done here if you want to head back and pack up, get a new flight and all that.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Jared said, with obvious signs of relief washed over him. “You coming?”

Jensen considered it for a moment. “Nah, I think I might just hang here. If I’m gonna do this, might as well do it right.”

“Sure you’re not just gonna get a pizza, pint of ice cream and sit in the room pining all night?”

Jensen drew in a deep breath and tried not to murder his best friend with his glare. “Positive.”

Jared wasn’t wrong though; despite Jensen’s consistent protest he was over it, he was not, in fact, over it. He did miss Dee and would find himself wishing she could come back. But then he would remember that he couldn’t commit, though he did often question the reasons for it. Was it because she really just wasn’t the one? Or was it because he knew she was getting complacent with him and someone else had caught her eye. He wasn’t perfect in their relationship, and he had certainly gone through the laundry list of his shortcomings. The feelings just felt uncertain where Dee was concerned but the distraction of the festival was to combat constantly living in that state of ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?’. He just prayed that it actually worked.

Jared held his hands up in relent. “Alright, sorry. I’ll stop. I know what you said, you’re done waiting. And that’s good. But, I also know you can get mopey about it when no ones around.”

“True, however… I am moving on. All in to the festival and that’s it. No dating, no relationship bullshit. Just diving head first into trying to pull this off.”

Jared shook his head and chuckled. “Man, I still don’t get what you plan on doing with all this. I mean, I read the contracts, I sat in the meetings, but I guess I just can’t envision it all yet.”

“What’s the hangup?”

“I don’t know… Austin is pretty great as it is. Why bring in other flavors when you have the ultimate chocolate already? You know?”

Jensen busted out laughing and slapped his best friend on the shoulder. “That’s one way to put it. Honestly, it’s the vibe of the place. Dee and I came here years ago, and this boardwalk was hoppin’. Families, first dates, best friends… arcades, rides, food… the food alone is worth it. Yeah, Austin is fucking great, but I want this festival to be the biggest thing to ever happen there. I want people to come from all over to see how special Austin is--”

“And I get that, so why bring a New Jersey boardwalk vibe to Au--”

“Because, son, ain’t nothing else like it anywhere in the world,” Leo interrupted as he rejoined their conversations, giving the much taller man a hearty slap on his shoulder. “You Texas boys sure do got a gorgeous bit of country down there, no one is disputing that. But this here,” he turned and made a sweeping gesture towards the boardwalk ocean that lived across the street, “this is somethin’ special.”

“No argument there,” Jared mused and gave the man a curt smile. “Well, if we are gonna be changing flights, we should get back--”

“Actually, since there’s been a change of plans, I think I might stay here, spend an extra day or two getting to know the area, brainstorm on the festival a while…” Jensen shrugged trying to stay indifferent, but felt a ripple of excitement at the thought.

They had a silent exchange, which Leo watched in amusement. “You boys are somethin’ else!” he chuckled wildly as he proceeded to pull his cell from his pocket. “Since you’re sticking around, Jensen, let me call my assistant and tell her you’ll be comin’ round. I’ll have her give you a tour of some of the must-see places, get a feel for what parts of our little utopia here you wanna cart on down to Texas. Sound good?”

“Sounds, amazing,” he said as the three men moved towards the elevator bank. “Just what I was hoping for.”

An hour later, Jensen was strolling into the hotel bar and scanning the near empty room. Leo had mentioned that his assistant would be there waiting to take him on the promised tour of the boardwalk and businesses Leo maintained there. However, all he could find were two older couples having an early bird dinner, an awkward first date going down at the bar, and a lone woman in a booth pouring over paperwork.

Jensen shoved his hands in his pockets and slowly began to circle the room, hoping that the mystery assistant would reveal herself. As he rounded the corner, he looked up and noticed the woman in the booth. She had finally picked her head up from staring at the papers strewn on the table in front of her, stopping Jensen in his tracks.

It was guitar girl, the singer from the bar he saw the night before. His feet felt frozen to the ground. When he got himself moving again, he walked towards her with no idea what he would say, just that he needed to say something to her. Tentatively, he approached her table, unaware of the large, goofy grin he was unintentionally wearing.

“Hey, hi! How are you? I’m, uh--I saw you at--Uh, what was the name of the place....” Jensen stammered until he saw her confused expression.

Seeing her close up, he realized how many of her striking features he’d missed in the darkened atmosphere of the bar. He took a moment to appreciate just how beautiful she really was, before continuing with his awkward greeting.

“Oh man, uh, let me start over. Hi, I’m Jensen. I saw you sing at a bar last night, and--” he stretched out his hand then to shake hers, and inadvertently struck her glass of iced tea, causing it to splatter all over the papers that were spread out across the table.

He watched, in horrific slow motion as the mixture of liquid and ice made a rapid path across the table, soaking and smearing the ink of the pages. Jensen glanced up at the woman as her face contorted from confused to panicked, to disbelief.

“Oh… shit! I’m--I’m sorry… here, let me get that--”

Jensen lunged for the napkins and began to pat the papers dry, as the women stood and did the same. A waitress scurried over with more napkins upon seeing the mishap and Jensen took them gratefully, trying to save as many of the documents as he could.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he said, again, finally causing the woman to sigh and slid out from the booth.

Seeing that some of the tea landed on her pants, Jensen felt his face flush with embarrassment. He went to apologize again and she stopped him by holding up a hand.

“Don’t. Just… don’t. Its fine,” she said flatly, and wiped at the growing wet patch on her pants. She looked up, but avoided his apologetic gaze and called for the server. “Hey Marci, can I get a handful more napkins, please, hun?”

“Sure thing!” she called back and disappeared behind the bar.

“So, what was it you wanted?” she asked Jensen, finally taking a moment and looking him straight in the eye.

He stuttered to a smile and shrugged. “I just wanted to say I was a fan--”

“I see you two found each other!” Leo’s voice bellowed through the bar.

Jensen turned, surprised to hear him, and then quickly turned back to the woman to see her expression to be just as confused as his was.

“Well, damn, (Y/N), leave you alone for an hour and you’re already a mess!” his wild cackle made all the heads in the barn turn to stare.

“Actually, Leo, this is my fault. I spilled the iced tea, and--” Jensen stammered before getting interrupted.

Leo waved Jensen off. “No worries, son. I’m sure she understands, dontcha, sweetie?”

“Sweetie?” he couldn’t help mimic Leo’s word sarcastically. A thousand thoughts flew through his head about the nature of their relationship until Leo laughed and shook his head.

“No, no… she’s my niece! She’s a damn good assistant, too! I suppose I should make some formal introductions. Jensen, this is my niece, (Y/N) she operates as my assistant, a bartender, a coin clerk and a sometimes rock star, ain’t that right?!”

(Y/N) smirked, and nodded to appease her uncle. Despite their initial encounter, she reached out her hand to Jensen to shake it. “Nice to meet you,” she said and quickly withdrew her hand.

“This is the fine gent I texted you about.”

“Oh,” she replied and looked back at Jensen. “Well, small world, huh.”

“Yeah, I’d say,” he said with a snort, accompanied by a goofy kind of grin, but instantly regretted it. He thought that (Y/N) seemed unimpressed and, maybe even mildly put out by the entire sequence of events.

“Well, anyways, will you be able to take him around today? I have a bunch of appointments I need to keep, or I’d take him myself.”

“Sure,” she replied. “Where do you want me to take him?”

“Shit, (Y/N), you’d know better than me. This is your town, sweetie. Go on and paint it red with the boy!”

“Uncle Leo…” she chastised and shook her head. Turning to Jensen, she again gave her best professional smile. “I just need to go change, but I only live a mile away. I’ll run home, meet you back here in about thirty minutes.”

Jensen nodded as casually as he could, “Yeah, that sounds great.”

“Then my work here is done! Come on, (Y/N), I’ll walk you out. Jensen, my boy, you’ll be in good hands with this one. Any questions you have, any input you need, (Y/N) here is the girl to give it to ya! No one knows Seaside better than she does.”

“I’ll be back shortly,” (Y/N) said as she gathered up the still soaking wet papers and as delicately as she could, piled them with the envelope and slapped them with a thwamp against Jensen’s chest. “These were your contracts, by the way. Hope you don’t mind waiting for new copies.” She shrugged, her eyes ablaze with satisfaction.

(Y/N) was fierce, he could tell that right away. As he watched her leave, Leo must have said something that she found funny, because she threw her head back with a laugh. He couldn’t hear her, but wondered what it sounded like. As he waited at the bar for her to return, there were a lot of things he wondered about where guitar girl was concerned. Mostly, the tenor of her voice and the way she played stuck with him and how it felt so in contrast with the steely-eyed, guarded woman that he had just met. Jensen was more than just intrigued by her; he was curious to know how many more layers there was to this woman, to his guitar girl.

Just before she reappeared, dressed in a Ozzy T-Shirt and ripped jeans with a pair of brown suede sandals, it was then Jensen realized it was the longest he’d gone without one thought of Dee crossing his mind.

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[icharchivist]

Hey, how do I get into hypmic? Is it an anime? A song based thing? Like I see some music videos but also there's apparently a plot so that can't be it right? It seems interesting but I'm lost

aaHH HEY!! welcome welcome! 

Oh my god i’ll try my best to make it not sound as complicated as it is. 

Hypmic is a mixed media series that is mainly told via songs and drama tracks, so it’s a little tought to get into, but we also get side content with a manga. The only struggle is to find all you need online but i have a drive file with all the songs/elements in chronological order, so i can send that in private if you want to (the fandom tends to try not to share stuff publically because the right holders are very serious over not letting things spill too much)

the plot is a little cheesy and it’s mostly just for characters’s moments and excuse for songs but tbh I have so much joy out of it i don’t even want to belittle it for that, it’s the best kind of cheesy i love it so much.

the place to start is here, this video:

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The translation of this song in particular can be found here. As you can see in the video there is also the profile (name/age ect.) of each characters.

You’ll find all the translations available on this website. They only translated the first battle season (the second one just started recently) and so far we only have summaries of the new seasons thanks to this twitter account.

The general structure of the series, as it is narratively intended to be consumed, is that each Album has about 3 songs and 2 drama tracks. So you just need to get into the albums in a chronological order to get about everything. The rest is honestly just bonus, even if we’re starting to get more unique content in the manga adaptation lately. 

(there are previews of each albums on youtube, and the full songs of all the ensemble songs and of the latest album’s songs, you can find them in this playlist to give you an idea at least of if you’re interested in the sound.)

The Project: Was started by Ichiro’s VA specifically to bring spotlight to the Rap scene in Japan. Each songs are made in collaboration of multiple rappers who get promoted with it. Meanwhile it is also a passion project for the 12 main seiyuus involved who all get to develop their characters with it. Each divisions generally works with different styles of music and ambiance. Each Divisions also get different plots and different development through them, evolving with very different themes.

The Story (at least what you need to know before getting into it): 

After World War 3, the new Government in place in Japan banned all weapons, only allowing them to be remplaced by Hypnosis Microphones, Microphones that can cause multiple physical and mental injuries depending on your flow, your way to use words, the truth of your words, ect... Some more extreme uses in skilled hands can do as much as create violent hallucinations or even healing.

Originally the Government barricaded itself in Chuukukou, the center of the city, and left the rest of Tokyo to fend for themselves in territories battles. As time went by and the territories battles were organized in a way for only 4 major divisions to be in the control of the city, Chuukukou however siezed the opportunity to organize Gladiator Battles with said 4 representants and fight for more territories between themselves while entertaining everyone, as the battles are treated also like they were idols. It’s of course more a way for the Government to keep a control over what’s going on outside and keep a close eye on the powers outsides its walls. 

Those Four Divisons are divided as presented in the above video: 

Ikebukuro Division is taken care of by the Buster Bros!!, Ichiro Yamada, Jiro Yamada and Saburo Yamada - three brothers working odd jobs together. Yokohama Division is taken care of by Mad Trigger Crew, Samatoki Aohitsugi, Juuto Iruma, and Riou Busujima Mason - a Yakuza, a Corrupted Cop, and an Ancient Marine  Shibuya Division is taken care of by Fling Posse, Ramuda Amemura, Gentaro Yumeno, and Dice Arisugawa - A Fashion Designer, A Writter, and A Gambler.  Shinjuku Division is taken care of by Matenrou, Jakurai Jinguji, Hifumi Izanami, and Doppo Kannonzaka - A Doctor, An Host, and a White Collar Worker. 

I am keeping it as vague as possible so if you get into it you get to discover why those bands even formed and what sort of dynamic they ended up creating with each others. If the fact those combinaisons of characters intruigue you then i’m encouraging you to get into it even more because it is fantastic ahah.

And to make their battles worse: the Four Leaders, Ichiro, Samatoki, Ramuda and Jakurai actually used to be part of a band together, The Dirty Dawg and were very close. Until something happened leading to their breakup and some level of resentment- different for everyone of course. And obviously this gets addressed as the battles go on. 

I’ve personally got into the saga by just knowing vaguely about the characters and listening to the music available on youtube and ended up... well. Loving the songs so much I needed to know the story behind them. So i personally i do recommand listening to the songs on youtube, and if you like the vibe, just dive into it ;O

Before moving on, reminder, all of the translations available for all i’m talking about are on that website. 

The Structure of the Main Series, is therefore by Albums: 

The four first albums (Buster Bros!! Generation / Mad Trigger Crew Bay-Side / Matenrou  Clinical Sound / Fling Posse - F.P.S.M) are the Introductions albums: Each about one of the division, has one song by character to present them, and 2 drama tracks setting up their dynamics (the first drama tracks of each album is available on youtube if it serves as a starting point - the second drama tracks explore the relationships more in depth and are not available online.)

Then you need to listen to the Battle Anthem / translation

Then comes the Battle Season: 

-War War War, BB VS MTC. It has one group song per band, and a rap battle song where they face off, alongside with two drama tracks that basically moves the main story up while establishing the dynamics between the divisions. (as a word of advice storywise, listen to the group songs before the drama tracks and to the battle song after the drama tracks) -Battle Battle Battle, FP V M. Same formula as Warx3. -Death Respect, The finale of the winners (that I won’t reveal yet). The album itself only has the battle songs and remix of the groups songs. -The Champion, with a song announciating the Champion, AND a Song about the Past of the Four Leaders when they used to be together. Along with two drama tracks, one basically concluding the Battle Seasons and the characters’s arcs, and a Prequel Drama Track about the leaders’s past.

There are yet no translations for the Prequel Drama Track. 

Then we have the preparation for the second Season as it starts with Hoodstar.

The last released Album’s name is Enter the Hypnosis Microphone.   The album countains:  -All the 3 ensemble songs -All the 4 group songs  -4 New Group Songs that are all available fully on Youtube. 3 out of the 4 had been translated. (Ohayo Ikebukuro, Stella, Papillion. Dead Pools wasn’t translated yet) -5 Drama Tracks: One per division and one finale one that conclude this arc in particular. Only summaries are available. 

That’s the core of the story, that’s where you should focus on. Like I said I can share the full discogaphy in private. We’re being secretive but we just keep it private, so if you are interested my file should be clear about the Order and all.(I also have the translations saved in those files for better accessibilities - if i share this file you will just need to follow the numbers and you should be fine, just ask me about it and i’ll send it gladly, i just don’t post it in public)

ON A SIDENOTE: we get mostly Official art releases via magazines and such so it can be hard to find again. as much as i hate zerochan in term of how it deals with fanarts, its official art sections is pretty solid so you can find a few of the official arts HERE if curious.

Another note: the winners during Battle Seasons are determined by the audience, the fans, us. As a result the plot is always everchanging by our own involvement with it. We get to decide the winners just like Chuukukou is supposed to do and that’s a fun gimmick. for now we’re not in a battle season but soon :3c

If THEN you decide to go into deep, There a few manga, and you can find the translated versions of it there. (only three of them had been translated). 

the manga are hard to find and incomplete so i wouldn’t encourage you to seek them yet unless you get into deep. The two first manga that were translated are adaptations of the first drama tracks. it seems the volume version that recently came out also adapted the second drama tracks but we hadn’t got to see them yet.  The Third manga (ongoing) is set before the Prequel about the Leaders, before the met each other and it sets up more the politics of the world (warning the politic worldbuilding is slightly cringeworthy). I wouldn’t recommand it before you’ve reached the Champion album. It is also not over yet.  Now two new manga are ongoing and i only have chapter 2 of each in Japanese so @.@ but they seem to cover unique new side stories for the characters with some lore dump. We get translation threads over the twitter i linked once in a while.

Other bonus: They started releasing Duets for some characters, which are super hard to find (i have them though so it’s fine, we just have no translation of them except the translation threads). The Duets so far are mostly joke songs + a drama track to give it context. We got a Samatoki&Ichiro, Jiro&Saburo and Hifumi&Doppo duets so far. More seem planned. They came out with the volume versions of the manga. 

Others bonus: They have made 2 full lives yet where the Seiyuu came out as In Character as possible to play and sing their songs. It’s mostly bonus content to see how they set up some of the songs ahah. (I have them but it would take me time to share them)

Upcoming: there will be a ryhtmic/visual novel mobile game, but we have no idea how much it will be involving plot or just gaming device ahah. But it’s coming. 

I think this is as much as a vague taste i can give about the series. If you’re really curious i can send the file right away, and you can take it at your own rythm.

and since i’m publishing it that’s an invitation for anyone who would want it. 

I hope it makes it clearer and i sure hope you are still curious about it :3c 

Take care! :3

[kristenkaisinger]

The Expansion of Spotify

Over quarantine and the pandemic period, I noticed that my usage of the Spotify app heavily increased. I have been a fan of this phone application for a few years now, but with extra time on my hands the music service seemed to provide me with some joy and relaxation in the midst of all of the craziness. In addition to music streaming, this successful and easy-to-use application provides access to a wide variety of podcasts. Listening to podcasts became one of my favorite activities to pass the time while stuck at home during the COVID-19 outbreak. When I think about Spotify and its functionalities, I truly believe the company does a fantastic job of differentiating from the competition. First and foremost, the company offers a student-discount, making the application popular among the student population. It is because of this student discount that I began using the application a few years ago, instead of subscribing to one of the company’s major competitors, Apple Music. In addition, I also find the application to be incredibly easy to navigate in comparison to other services. Spotify organizes its content in a way that makes music selection easy for those who do not have time to create their own playlists or search for a desirable station. For instance, one of my favorite functionalities of the product is the ability to simply click on a genre or activity and receive a plethora of songs. Not only does the application organize music selections based on genre, but takes this a step further by offering suggestions based on consumer activity or moods, such as “sleep”, “workout”, “wellness”, and “chill.” These offerings are something that sets Spotify apart from competition and likely attributes to their consistent success. These functionalities definitely increased my usage of the app during the difficult times of the pandemic. For example, when I began to feel overwhelmed, I would look to Spotify’s “chill” or “wellness” playlists to provide some relaxation. These product features provide Spotify with a competitive advantage, and will assist the company with continuing their growth for the long-term. 

As I was reading some articles on this popular service, I was intrigued by the company’s history. I was unaware that the application had been available since 2008. The service originally launched during this time in Europe, as it is a Stockholm-based company. At the time of its origination, the music-streaming industry was still the introductory stage. However, it is quite clear that over the past few years music-streaming has become a daily activity for many. In 2011, Spotify launched their service in the United States and was able to grow by grasping a large number of new consumers. Further, Spotify was able to see extensive growth as music-streaming became more popular. After five years of being on the market, Spotify had about 30 million standard users and 8 million premium users. More recently, Spotify has accumulated 345 million standard users, and 155 million premium users. It is evident that the music streaming service has been in the growth stage for quite some time now. Based on industry trends as well as the company’s consistent growth rates, it appears that Spotify’s growth will not be slowing any time soon. 

Spotify continues to pursue new opportunities for growth in order to stay competitive in the industry. The company recently announced that they will once again expand their global footprint like they did in 2011. However, the plans are much more extensive than entering just one new international market. The company intends to launch the service in 85 new markets including 40 African countries. Additionally, the service will be adding 36 new languages to the application. These growth strategies are likely to bring much success to the streaming service as it is anticipated these decisions will introduce the app to more than one billion consumers. Spotify strategically planned this growth during the pandemic period in order to counteract a potential decline brought on by the COVID-19 world. 

Moving forward, I am curious to see what expansion opportunities Spotify will pursue beyond establishing new market locations. The decision to enter new markets and provide numerous language capabilities is definitely an indicator of the company’s desire to continue to secure opportunities for continued growth. I wonder...what is next? For instance, Spotify did not always offer podcasts on their service. Instead, the company saw consumer interest in this sector take-off, and decided to provide access to such programs on their application. Spotify saw and pursued an opportunity to attract more consumers and provide more capabilities for their subscribers. I am interested to see what other methods Spotify will utilize to continue to sustain their position in the industry. Will the application continue to offer more functionalities as consumer interests change? Will such changes have a positive impact on the number of subscribers? It is my prediction that as long as Spotify is able to increase functionalities while also remaining a low-cost product, the application will continue to thrive in the future. Based on the company’s history, it appears that Spotify is an organization that continuously pursues opportunities for growth, and such activities have proven to be successful thus far.

https://www.statista.com/chart/15697/spotify-user-growth/ 

https://www.statista.com/chart/24253/global-availability-of-spotify/ 

[orbemnews]

Restaurants Fought for Covid Survival, With Some Tech Helpers The past year has crushed independent restaurants across the country and brought a reality to their doors: Many were unprepared for a digital world. Unlike other small retailers, restaurateurs could keep the tech low, with basic websites and maybe Instagram accounts with tantalizing, well-lit photos of their food. For the past decade, Krystle Mobayeni had been trying to convince them that they needed more. Ms. Mobayeni, a first-generation Iranian-American, started her company, BentoBox, in 2013 as a side job. She wanted to use her graphic design skills to help restaurants build more robust websites with e-commerce abilities. But it was a hard sell. For many, she said, her services were a “nice to have,” not a necessity. Until 2020. The pandemic sent chefs and owners flocking to BentoBox, as they suddenly needed to add to-go ordering, delivery scheduling, gift card sales and more to their websites. Before the pandemic the company, based in New York City, had about 4,800 clients, including the high-profile Manhattan restaurant Gramercy Tavern; today it has more than 7,000 restaurants onboard and recently received a $28.8 million investment led by Goldman Sachs. “I feel like our company was built for this moment,” Ms. Mobayeni said. The moment opened a well of opportunity for companies like BentoBox that are determined to help restaurants survive. Dozens of companies have either started or scaled up sharply as they found their services in urgent demand. Meanwhile, investors and venture capitalists have been sourcing deals in the “restaurant tech” sector — particularly seeking companies that bring the big chains’ advantages to independent restaurants. “A lot of what’s happening is reminiscent of what we’ve seen in the broader retail sector in the past decade,” said R.J. Hottovy, a restaurant industry analyst and an investor at Aaron Allen & Associates. “Covid accelerated the transformation quite a bit. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to redefine the experience.” Part of what Ms. Mobayeni offers restaurants is a one-stop shop and the ability to own their customer data. Many restaurants rely on third-party vendors, such as DoorDash or UberEats, to handle delivery. But those companies charge significant fees and retain customers’ data because the transactions go through their websites. That’s not such a big deal when delivery is 20 percent of a restaurant’s income stream, but it’s a game-changer when delivery becomes 100 percent of income — and you can’t contact any of your customers. “Restaurants realized they had to think of themselves as larger businesses and brands,” said Camilla Marcus, co-founder of TechTable, which connects the hospitality and tech industries. “You have to expand into other things: e-commerce, delivery, products. You have to think outside the four walls.” Helping restaurants deepen relationships with customers is where Sam Bernstein saw an opportunity. Before the pandemic he ran a tech start-up that connected students to housing, similar to Airbnb; when universities sent students home last spring, his revenue fell to zero. He went to his board of directors and offered to return what investment was left and close down. Instead the board suggested he regroup with a smaller team and new vision. “It was an existential crisis, as you can imagine,” he said. Mr. Bernstein laid off all but 10 employees and took them for a brainstorming retreat. They considered dozens of business models, looking for the right problem to solve. The more they discussed options, the more the members of the team realized they were all interested in food and hospitality and wanted to help restaurants. They hit upon the idea for a site that would allow customers to “subscribe” to their favorite restaurants. The new firm, Table22, would help chefs develop and market subscriptions for monthly meal kits and wine clubs, for example, and then manage the sales, recurring billing, scheduling, data analytics and more. In exchange, Table22 takes a percentage of each transaction. Table22, which is based in New York, went live with its first restaurant in May. Since then, it has grown to more than 150 restaurants in 50 cities. Late last year, the company received about $7 million from investors, who include David Barber, owner of Blue Hill farm and restaurants. Shelby Allison signed up her Chicago bar, Lost Lake, for the service on a cold email from Table22. She was hesitant at first, planning to listen just long enough to learn how to create a cocktail subscription service herself. “We get lots and lots of calls from these tech companies trying to help — or prey upon — us struggling businesses,” she said. Today in Business Updated  April 16, 2021, 1:30 p.m. ET But she was impressed by the low service fee and the fact that Table22 shared customer data. She started the service in October, hoping for 30 sign-ups; 100 people joined. Ms. Allison now has 300 subscribers and five employees working on the make-at-home cocktail boxes. “This will 100 percent stay in the future,” she said. “I love this program. I thought it might cannibalize my to-go business, but it hasn’t at all.” Ping Ho considered signing up with Table22 to host the wine and meat clubs she offers at her Detroit restaurant and butcher shop, Marrow, and wine bar, the Royce. She decided against it, however, because her existing subscription platform, Zoho, gave her the essential tools. “It’s a bit more work, but there’s more agency,” she said. But because her website was mostly informational, she realized she did need help offering online ordering and a delivery system for the butcher shop. So Ms. Ho turned to Mercato, which enables e-commerce for independent grocers. In a bit of fortuitous timing, she had signed up a month before the pandemic struck. When stay-at-home orders were issued, she was able to quickly begin offering grocery items, such as milk and eggs, in addition to meats. Her sales jumped “tremendously” she said, although they have flattened out in recent months. Still, Ms. Ho intends to maintain the service. Mercato began in 2015, but 2020 was its year. In February 2020, the service had 400 stores across 20 states; it quickly ramped up to more than 1,000 stores in 45 states. It continues to grow and has added some big-name clients, including the Ferry Building Marketplace on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, with dozens of merchants. “We’re trying to give independent grocers a sustainable competitive advantage,” said Bobby Brannigan, founder and chief executive of the company, which is based in San Diego. It’s a mission that he has been training for all his life. Mr. Brannigan’s family owns a grocery store in the Dyker Heights area of Brooklyn, where he started working when he was 8, stocking shelves and delivering groceries. “It’s ironic that I’m back to doing what I was doing as a kid in Brooklyn,” he said. Last March and April, Mercato brought on hundreds of new grocers each week — clients that weren’t used to having online orders or weren’t used to the sudden volume of orders. Some stores that were accustomed to 10 orders in a day were flooded with hundreds, Mr. Brannigan said. Thankfully, his dad already had him build tools into the system that would allow grocers to limit the pace of orders and schedule them. Mr. Brannigan is also adding more data analytics to help his clients better understand what their customers want. They can now see what was bought and what customers searched for. “You’re amassing a valuable treasure chest of data that lets you sell the products they want today and that they want tomorrow,” he said. Of course, not all solutions are tech-centric; sometimes, it’s just a grass-roots community of chefs helping chefs. Alison Cayne, for example, has been giving free advice to chefs looking to create packaged goods, like her line of Haven’s Kitchen sauces. Having that extra revenue stream was critical when she shuttered her Manhattan restaurant and cooking school last spring, and she wants others to have the same options. “This is all very much from my perspective, not the supercapitalized, venture capital-backed, cool-kids business,” she said. “I just want to help them take a brick-and-mortar business and develop a product and build a brand that makes sense and is sustainable.” In Detroit, the grocer Raphael Wright and the chefs Ederique Goudia and Jermond Booze developed a “diabolical plan,” as Mr. Wright called it, to offer a weekly meal kit cooked by Black chefs during Black History Month. “Black food businesses are hurting in the city, so we thought, what if we created this meal box in a way that celebrates Black food and Black contributions to American cuisine?” Mr. Wright said. They named the project Taste the Diaspora Detroit and brought together Black chefs and farmers to create the weekly dishes — like gumbo z’herbes and black-eyed pea masala. The three organized all of the e-commerce and scheduling, which allowed chefs to participate even if they weren’t tech-savvy, and created the packaging and inserts that told the history of the meal. They topped it off with a paired Spotify playlist. “Being a part of this project woke everyone up and made them think they have a little hope they can push through,” Mr. Wright said. They hope to reprise the service for Juneteenth and are currently talking to funders to support the effort. Source link Orbem News #Covid #Fought #Helpers #Restaurants #Survival #Tech

[y3dissertation]

PROPOSAL

 Why you have chosen this question.

I wish I had something more autonomous in school to help with my anxiety as it can be difficult for some to ask for help.

The main option for the NHS’s ways to deal with it is through counselling which can “help a child understand what’s making them anxious and allow them to work through the situation” (NHS, 2019) and the best way to deal with this would be through early intervention and learning this from a young age, 7-11.

I want children to have something they feel familiar with to help them get through challenging experiences. Children are highly familiar with technology and start using it from an early age. This means they often turn to the internet to find help and advice for situations that they are going to. I intend to design an app to provide children with the advice and help they need for mental health. There are a lot of apps out there for mental health for adults, but nothing that really relates to the anxieties and depressions that come with a high school setting.

Adults may be more likely to use apps regarding mental health, as they are more educated on the necessity of good mental health.

One adult in eight (12.1%) receives mental health treatment and only 3% receiving psychological therapy

(https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-people-seeking-help)

This could improve by teaching children from a younger age to seek help or create your own solutions to problems or dilemmas.

A lot of adults seem to use an on-going prevention to prevent emotions get uncomfortable.

This is via the use of applications and online platforms to support and boost each other.

Many adults are able to seek the right support with the right knowledge. Apps are a good way for the ever-changing and fast-moving society of today. There is a lot of difficulties finding time to seek advice one to one and even budgeting/paying for something that would be beneficial.

If, as a society, we can all be finding a fundamental treatment, at an early intervention), to something before it progresses into something much worse there will be a more efficient way of living and the people that REALLY need the help will be treated as early as possible.

However, if an app was effectively targeted at children and promoted within schools as a helpful resource, this could potentially create a large impact upon children’s mental health and their ability to cope with changing situations. This would then help the next generation to gain better mental health than generation Z and Millennials.

Lack of support during home life. Just a simple ‘you can do it’ can make a huge different to a child’s mental health.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1988-13564-001

·     Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement. By Elliott & Dweck, 1988

organizing the information in an orderly log provides a more clear picture, which makes the decision-making process much easier.

https://positivepsychology.com/mood-charts-track-your-mood/

Due to increased demand for mental health services, the waiting time to receive therapy can vary. The 28-day maximum waitingstandard for NHS psychological therapy services should be a right for everyone who needs them. (https://www.mind.org.uk/media/494424/we-still-need-to-talk_report.pdf)

My app will aim to help individuals through this waiting period and provide consistent support for as long as they have the app installed. It will be available for all children, aiming to support them and help them to manage their emotions. I will address numerous issues that many children experience. In order to find out what areas to target specifically, I will conduct a survey among 7-11 year olds.

Alongside researching what issues are most pressing/ important to children, I will also research what stops them from speaking out and getting help. This will involve interviewing teachers and counselors to discover what they feel students need to help them overcome mental health obstacles. It is vital that I also interview teachers, as the lack of mental health services means that more pressure is put onto teachers to support and look after the students. 51% of teachers have revealed that the pressures of their job have led them to develop a mental health problem (https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/news/70-scotlands-teachers-lack-training-address-mental-health-problems-schools ) demonstrating the impact that this can have upon teachers and other supporting staff. Therefore, this app will help to relieve the pressure on teachers and counselors.

A study conducted by Torous et al showed that patients highest concern regarding mental health apps was their privacy (2018).

I have researched into mental health apps, analyzing what features of the apps are successful and looking into how I can use these features within my own app development. An example of an adult app that works well is ‘headspace: meditation and mindfulness’. The app works by playing a number of mindfulness podcasts in a way to help the user, suiting their needs. By allowing users to set times for the clips and listen whenever, it allows for flexibility and adapts around the user’s lifestyle; providing the support of a counsellor in your phone.

Another app for adults is Calm. Calm and headspace hold the oligopoly of the mindfulness apps on the market, (https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/top-iphone-android-apps#calm ). Calm helps you to manage your thoughts or maintain a general centre; physically or mentally. It has a playlist of over 100 guided meditations to help you to sleep or concentrate, helping with daily life and smaller struggles too. User reviews have stated that “It has very noticeable effects on my life - I feel calmer, more connected with others, less worried by ups and downs, and more loving” (Trustpilot, 2019). I would like to create an app that helps children to become less worried and be able to look upon problems in a calm, collected manner, allowing them to step back and face the problem in a new way.

I have also looked into an app which is able to track periods. Although this having little to do with mental health, I have found that it is extremely helpful in seeing my mood patterns throughout my cycle, tracking my reactions to things and having some important parts explained to me.

I feel this could be handy when preparing my app and using some on the layout to relate to the ‘journal’ style I hoped for.

I have looked into a child friendly version of a mindfulness app. This app is called “Smiling Mind”. I is a ‘collection of hundreds of meditations for a wide variety of ages and situations’ (https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/smiling-mind)

There are different options that can be suited to different people’s needs and timescales which help for children during timetables schooling and afterschool commitments.

‘You can also download meditations for offline use’.

Features I like about each of these apps and what I will use them for:

Features

Which app

What is successful?

How I will adapt this?

Calendar

Flow

Tracking how you are feeling and being able to see information in an organized way. Colour coded styles always work for large amounts of information and I hope to create something similar.

I will make this more user friendly for children as they will be able to see Colour/ days and numbers a lot easier than a normal calendar. This will make them want to use the app to record their feelings.

Feelings Tracker

Flow/ smiling mind

I will use small icons to symbolize feelings and how tracking feelings will help them to understand patterns in themselves.

I will use an element of fun by including emojis for the emotions. This way people who aren’t in touch with their emotions will be able to relate to a picture rather than figuring it out themselves.

Explanations  

Flow / Calm

I will explain why its ok to feel a certain way and tailor the newsfeed part of the app to what suits them.

Each area that is an explanation with be colour coded and defined by a different image that relates to the information within this area.

Personal forum

Headspace

Adding another part of the app that means you can discuss matters with other people a similar age will help. The only thing that could get a little difficult is having the knowledge of some things learned the wrong way through this area. – this function may get abused.

I will allow children to post thoughts and feelings but have them approved before making it onto the group page.

-        Refer to research made into anorexia sites.

Rules

Smiling Mind

Before entering the App I will lay out rules that will be easy to understand so there is no bullying within the app. This will also include being silly with the app as mental health is a serious and important part of life.

Have them simple and easy to follow. Also offer reminders throughout the app when they sense something is being abused or to make sure they’re behaving well.

STAT readings

Wigan family Welfare

As a Counselling service, they have to sent reports back to the schools they have been working in. with information from my app relating to how children feel at certain times of the day and week/ period. This could relate to what they’re being taught or other factors that could be affecting their lives.

Give the users knowledge that there will be certain confidential information sent to their schools.

More and more students are struggling at high school and with a general lack of mental health help and facilities, it is leading to students dropping out of school, self-harm and at the very worse, suicide.

http://www.marilyntucknott.com is a leading counselling course taken by teachers which helps them to deal with difficult issues a child could have. Marilyn provides help with the support, suggesting, ‘We need to talk and coach them towards resilience at a time of increasing challenge’. Meaning, with the right training, this can be dealt with individually – without the need of counselling support.

‘one in 10 children in the United States suffers from a mental disorder severe enough to cause some level of impairment’ https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/2401/scholarship-addresses-shortage-of-child-mental-health-providers.aspx

More often than not teachers go through a lot of stress. This is due to reports, test results, meeting criteria and following a lot of protocol as well as ensuring their students are happy and being taught. ‘Teachers are expected to act as parents, counsellors, disciplinarians, tutors, and more.’

(https://vantagepointrecovery.com/students-with-mental-health-disorders/)

51% of teachers also revealed that the pressures of their job has led them to develop a mental health problem

85% believe that mental health training would help them look after their own emotional wellbeing as well as that of their pupils. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/news/70-scotlands-teachers-lack-training-address-mental-health-problems-schools

This is why a lot of schools now have their own designated counsellor that is able to come into the school and take a little stress off the teacher’s hands.

‘71% of teachers told the charity that they lack the right training to help them address mental health concerns’

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/news/70-scotlands-teachers-lack-training-address-mental-health-problems-schools

https://schools.au.reachout.com/articles/tips-for-teacher-wellbeing

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/21/primary-school-teachers-not-trained-to-deal-with-mental-health-issues

•  What has it been like in the past and how has it changed since then?

https://www.oaklandcountymoms.com/bullying-then-vs-bullying-now-26829/

‘schools today seem to be at least trying to get better at early intervention’

There was no cyber bullying as there were no phones

almost half of children aged 8-17 who use the internet had set up their own profile on a social networking site. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/home

Why kids need to be happy at school

https://positivepsychology.com/mood-charts-track-your-mood/

It shows that, when individuals are more positive, they gather more information from the outside world.

How counselling helps

Counselling can help your child understand what’s making them anxious and allow them to work through the situation. (nhs,2019)

My solution to this issue is using something that children are familiar with, apps on phones and ipads, as a source of information and help for them to track their feelings but also have a completely safe and confidential place for them to express themselves, talk about difficult issues and get the help they need from professionals.

I will use a particular area on the app to explain a lot of the reasoning behind why they feel a certain way towards others and themselves.

Society needs more awareness of struggles and what other people could be going through. This will open a lot of younger people’s mindset and changing how they can deal with those around them suffering.

•  How will you change/fix the problem? Talk about your artefact.

My apps primary function will be a daily journal tracker, where students track their feelings, emotions and events to help them externalize their thoughts.

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentID=4552&ContentTypeID=1

understand them more clearly. And if you struggle with stress, depression, or anxiety, keeping a journal is a great idea. (https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentID=4552&ContentTypeID=1)

identifying negative thoughts and behaviours

Research why its helpful for young people to track their emotions. Provides clear progress and gives them a goal.

“If you can record how you are feeling and what you are thinking, you are better able to track your emotions, notice people or places that are triggers, and recognize warning signs of your strong emotions,” says therapist Amanda Ruiz, MS, LPC.

It will also provide helpful tips and mindfulness techniques when a students is getting bulling, approaching exams, or even problems at home. I hope this normalizes what they are experiencing and helps them feel not so alone. If this app is highly successful, then this will further normalize their emotions and make it socially acceptable to allow people to know that you’re struggling. “It’s okay to be okay” I also want there to be a chat options where they can ask for more professional advice when they need it.

•  Why is your solution a good one?

The autonomy and removal from school I feel will help students feel more comfortable in talking about their issues and specific events that they would otherwise not talk about to a member of staff at an institution.

I have made research into a local Counselling service, (wigan family Welfare) who have to display their findings and outcomes as a way of tracking the help they’ve made or if theyre a valuabke part of the schooling team. This way

I also want to use the data given from students to help inform schools, teachers and counselors of recurring problems in school so that they in turn can help students on a more personal level. It is important to note that this collection of data will be anonymous and confidential, in order to ensure the continued trust of the user.

•  Reference any text, audio, or video you can.

Obstacles

•  Funding?

I could apply for funding for this service from a mental health charity that specializes in helping children. They could also provide more knowledge and insight into children’s mental health.

I hope to get schools involved too, as they would benefit from the data we collect and perhaps we could regionalize the information so that schools are getting data from students in their areas to give them a more focused view of the data.

•  Usability.

As the app is going to be for high school students it needs to be exciting and well designed, keeping up to date with current trends and not feel too boring or clinical. I can use more modern features such as the left/right swipe gestures and it shouldn’t be too over complicated.

Examples of what apps are popular with teenagers and why you’ve chosen to select these features in this app.

•  Will there be any resistance from another party or people?

One thing I may have to consider is parents access to the data, especially if the students does self harm or commit suicide so this is an area I will look into.

Mention Facebook in this, as they have a debate surrounding access to individual’s accounts that have committed sucicide, breaching privacy laws.

•  Reference any text, audio, or video you can.

Relevant Projects

Any other references to past projects, similar ideologies or studies that have been taken in the past that are relevant to your project.

Sumary

•   What the problem is and what you plan to do about it.

In summary, there is an increase in high school students suffering from mental health and not enough being done about it. Support. I want to create an app for students to use and outlet and helpline for their mental health issues.

[amyddaniels]

On Being Badass—with Elizabeth Gilbert and Jen Pastiloff

Bestselling authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff have joined forces to bring enchantment and serious self-care to the women who need it most. Here, they teach us what it means to embrace creativity for embodied living beyond fear.

There’s a secret to making friends in adulthood, says author Elizabeth Gilbert—yes, of Eat Pray Love fame—and it doesn’t have to involve cocktails. The trick? Create something together. And bonus points if that something is also good for humanity or the planet. After all, it’s how her friendship with author Jennifer Pastiloff went from online to IRL. 

Gilbert and Pastiloff have plenty of practice in this realm: Gilbert’s creativity bible Big Magic (2015) has made her something of an authority in the sphere, spawning speaking engagements and workshops in which the curious flock to find a little magic of their own. Pastiloff, meanwhile, has long been leading retreats and workshops to get people to lighten up and love themselves—a theme that culminated with the release of her memoir, On Being Human, last year.

See also The Unexpected Ways Yoga Stimulates Creative Thinking

After Gilbert and Pastiloff met online, following each other and messaging over Instagram, the women bonded over their “passion to be of service and being really big dorks,” Pastiloff says. Out of those conversations, their workshop series On Being Magic was born. These one-day creativity and personal development sessions for women bring to life the wisdom inside each of their books—and are completely free of charge. With just one On Being Magic workshop under their belt (the second, scheduled for April, was canceled due to COVID-19 at press time), the project is still in its infancy, ever-evolving—and best put into words by the makers in chief themselves.

How did the idea to combine your superpowers come up?

Elizabeth Gilbert: It came from Jen and I becoming friends and wanting to make something together. When we started having the conversation about it, I said, “I want to do something, but I want it to be free. I want the people who come to this to be the kinds of people who don’t typically get to go to yoga or art retreats.” We really wanted to take care of women who are struggling, or take care of the women who take care of women who are struggling—people at organizations doing work for women’s issues. Our goal is to give people a day where they are pampered and loved and seen. We tell them at the beginning, “You don’t even have to do anything. If you don’t want to do any yoga or introspective work, you can just take one of these yoga mats and lie in the corner and sleep for the entire day. We’ll bring your lunch at noon. You’re tired. You’re tired, and we want to help you, and we want to love you up.”

See also 5 Poses to Boost Creativity

Jennifer Pastiloff: Yes. The idea was to get a group of women and non-gender-conforming humans and provide them with a safe space to write and explore and move their bodies and share and listen­—what I call “dorking it out.” We dance, and we sing, and we laugh, and we cry. It really is magic and vulnerable and intimate, even with 150 people. It inherently breeds creativity. And I think what really helps is that Liz and I are both so honest and open about ourselves that other people feel they can be that way too.

Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff

Creativity as a concept is so remarkably vast. How do you even start to define it?

JP: It’s hard for me to put it into words, because when you just asked, I wanted to get up and dance. I was like, “Wait, let me do it with my body!” Because to me, it’s about being awake and inspired. For a while, I was really getting in my own way. We all do that, right? I thought to myself: “Just make something. Make art. Write something. Make a cup of coffee.” This idea helps me feel alive. Because the truth is, it’s always within us. I think that’s what it means to be connected to Spirit. Now I’ll do my creative dance.

See also A 45-Minute Playlist to Revitalize Your Creative Spirit

EG: There’s an openness and a vulnerability to creativity as well. I recently posted on Instagram a picture of my stack of journals from last year. Then there were a million questions. Sometimes the questions people give me on Instagram make me want to weep. They were like, “How do you do it?” “What’s your system?” “Which kind of pens do you use?” I was like, “Oh my God, you guys, it’s a blank page! You get to do whatever you want with it!” But we cannot stop looking for the rules. We cannot stop wanting a tyrant to come around and tell us what we have to do in order to be OK. So instead of saying that, I opened up my journals and took some pictures of random pages. I put them on social media so that people could see what they look like because it's a mishmash: shopping lists, drawings, prayers, collage, other people's poetry. It’s a real creative gumbo on every page.

How do you tap into your own muse?

EG: I think that a good trick is to go back and figure out what you liked to do when you were eight and nine years old. Before we discovered sex and substances in our teens, most of us, we had other ways of feeling good, and they tended to be instinctively creative. If you’re like most humans, you were already anxious, because most of us grew up in imperfect families in an imperfect culture. Children create things to settle their nerves. My sister and I spent our entire childhood drawing and writing and putting on plays and making up stories. That’s what I do now to calm myself down. So let’s say that your dream is to be a great novelist, but when you were eight, the thing that settled you was coloring. Start coloring. It’ll lead you to your novel. Trust me. It’s like as soon as your neural pathways just go into that ease, the ideas will have an opportunity to come up. So do a different creative thing than the big dream if the big dream seems to be out of reach.

See also “How Yoga Helped Me Write a Novel—& Land My First Book Deal”

JP: When I feel like I’m the most uncreative human in the world, I stop and I look around for the five most beautiful things I can see in that moment. I call it Beauty Hunting. No matter where I am, I stop and look. I try to do it every hour. The more you begin to look around and pay attention—I mean, that’s all being creative is, right? We all have that divine creative spirit. We have to pay attention to notice it.

Why do so many people have a hard time believing they’re creative?

EG: I don’t have a tormented relationship with creativity, and I never have—and that makes me a unicorn. I’ve had a tormented relationship with everything else. Every single other thing that you can have a relationship with is complicated for me, except this. And I don’t know why I was given this clarity that says that this does not have to be a path of suffering. It’s a gift. Creativity itself is a gift of love for you. It loves you, and it wants to play with you, and it wants to communicate with you, and it wants you to be happy, and it will make you happy. We live in a culture that fetishizes the dark aspect of creativity and loves the story of the artist dying for their work. I never experienced it that way in my bones, and [with Big Magic] I wanted to show people what I know, what I just know in my sternum to be true, which is that torment is not the intended purpose of this relationship between humans and inspiration.

See also 12 Yoga Poses to Spark Creativity

JP: It comes back to what I call the Just-A-Box in On Being Human. We think we have to fit inside a box, all the corners neatly tucked in. Just a mom. Just a waitress. Just a yoga teacher. Just an accountant. We think we can’t spill out into the miraculous and often unknown Something Else, because who are we to be different? To bust out of the Just-A-Box?

We are what we repeat, and so many of us stop being playful once we are adults. We struggle with believing it’s inside of us because we forget. So we must do whatever we need to in order to remember who we really are. We stop repeating what brings us joy because someone, somewhere, told us we weren’t very good at that thing. As someone who has struggled with depression since early childhood, I used to think I had to be in the throes of heartbreak or depression to create something meaningful. Now that I’m on antidepressants—although I do have rare days where I think I have zero creative bones in my body and I should just watch Netflix all day (and sometimes I do)—I also realize that all we need to be creative is to create. Being creative does not mean being the best or even good. It means doing it. Make things and art and love and hugs and coffee. Small things. Big things. Things that can’t be called things or don’t fit inside the box. Create magic. Create it all.

Behind the Scenes: The Creativity Issue (; 0:18)

Both books, Big Magic and On Being Human, talk about living beyond fear. How does one take the first step?

JP: I realize the more honest statement for me is that I’m fearless-ish. I don't think I’ve ever been fearless. Instead, I’m afraid and I do it anyway. I was scared to come here, and here I am. So for me, when I wake up, I really work on my mantra or prayer—“Today may I not let fear be the boss of me.” A big part of it is acknowledging it and just not letting it be so loud. Just letting it coexist without letting it ruin my life.

See also This Month’s Home Practice: 16 Poses to Spark Inspiration

EG: Here’s the great paradox. You leave it behind by bringing it closer. The closer I bring my fear into the warmth of the center of myself and into the embrace of my love, the quieter it gets. The farther that I push it away, the louder it screams, the more that I want to orphan it, disown it, hate it, punch it, kick it in the ass, show it who’s boss. I mean, that’s all really violent language about something that’s an aspect of myself and that actually belongs to me, was born into me, and is part of my internal family. Right? So I’m really gentle with myself about fear. If I were going to coach somebody on how to get over their fear, the first step is to drop the idea that you’re ever going to get over it. Instead, pull up a chair for it. My fear sits right next to me with every book that I write. I don’t like to keep it far from me. I once heard someone say, “Your trauma is not the wound. Your trauma is the distance between you and the wound.” So when you bring it in, where it can be loved and taken care of, it’s much better than pushing it away, where it’s going to cause you problems. The farther away fear gets, the more trouble it’s going to bring to you.

And remember that everybody’s fear is exactly the same. But everybody’s curiosity is different. That’s what makes you unique. Your fear is the least interesting thing about you, because it’s exactly like mine. Guaranteed. In my workshops, I have people write letters from their fear to themselves, where their fear says what it’s afraid of. People weep as they’re writing it. It’s so vulnerable. And yet, every single one of those letters is exactly the f—ing same. Literally, I could write everybody’s fear letter for them, because there’s just one fear. But then when I have people write letters to themselves from their sense of enchantment, where their sense of enchantment gets to say what it loves, who turns it on, what’s exciting? Those letters just make me weep because every single one of them is completely different. So once you’ve started to follow your enchantment, which is sort of the same thing as your curiosity, you’re going to start to lead a life that doesn’t look like other people’s lives. If you follow your fear, your life will look like a lot of other people’s lives, because it’s just going to be a big no. 

Do you ever get imposter syndrome when you are trying to create?

JP: Hi, I’m having it right now. I’m sitting next to someone who sold 13 million books.

EG: I’m having it. I sold 13 million books.

See also Meditation to Boost Creativity

JP: I was leading a workshop in South Dakota with 60 people in 2013. I was talking about what we are afraid of. This woman closed her book and stood up, and she said, “I could do what you do.” And she started making fun of me around the room. “I could speak in your cadence.” It was awful. And you know what? I didn’t die. Here I am sitting here. The interesting thing is right after that happened, someone said, “So fear looks many ways.” Her fear was mean. Of course that triggered every ounce of my imposter syndrome until I realized that was just that person’s fear. Then I got up, and I was afraid, and I did it anyway—the next time and the next time and the next time.

EG: I think that you nailed it, Jen. With imposter syndrome, a voice in your head says, “Who do you think you are?” It’s amazing how powerful that voice is, because for many of us, all it has to do is ask that and you will crawl backward into your hole. You pull that filthy piece of moldy canvas over your head again and you hide in your dirty hole where you think you belong. And you always hear that question in a certain tone. It’s the sinister, demonic, “Who do you think you are?” It’s amazing how questions lose their fangs if you take away tone. Remove the sinister sound of that voice and just write it down on a piece of paper in a neutral, curious way: “Who do you think you are?”

So then I say to it, “Thank you. That is a great question. Who do I think I am? I think I’m a child of God. Not sure, but I’m pretty sure. What do you think you’re doing? I think I'm trying to write a book.”

Answer it. We never answer it. We just wither. They ask the question, and we collapse. Take the question seriously. Who do you think you are? There’s a story my friend Rob Bell loves to tell from the Talmud. There was some great, wise, ancient rabbi who was wandering around the desert one night, just in contemplation. He came upon a fortress. A soldier at the top of the fortress saw him below and said, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” The rabbi called up to the soldier and said, “How much money do they pay you to ask those two questions of people?” The soldier said what his salary was, and the rabbi said, “I will pay you double that to follow me around for the rest of my life and ask me those two questions every day.” Who are you, and what are you doing here? Those are really good questions. You should be asking yourself those questions all the time. So when the imposter syndrome demon comes to you and says, “Who do you think you are, and what do you think you’re doing?” be like, “Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to contemplate that. Who do I think I am? What do I think I’m doing?” And answer.

See also 11 Poses to Ignite Your Second Chakra and Spark Creativity

Join the conversation

Listen to Elizabeth and Jennifer talk about accessing the muse, healing from grief, and more, with Executive Editor Lindsay Tucker on YJ’s new podcast, The Yoga Show: yogajournal.com/podcasts.

[cedarrrun]

Bestselling authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff have joined forces to bring enchantment and serious self-care to the women who need it most. Here, they teach us what it means to embrace creativity for embodied living beyond fear.

There’s a secret to making friends in adulthood, says author Elizabeth Gilbert—yes, of Eat Pray Love fame—and it doesn’t have to involve cocktails. The trick? Create something together. And bonus points if that something is also good for humanity or the planet. After all, it’s how her friendship with author Jennifer Pastiloff went from online to IRL. 

Gilbert and Pastiloff have plenty of practice in this realm: Gilbert’s creativity bible Big Magic (2015) has made her something of an authority in the sphere, spawning speaking engagements and workshops in which the curious flock to find a little magic of their own. Pastiloff, meanwhile, has long been leading retreats and workshops to get people to lighten up and love themselves—a theme that culminated with the release of her memoir, On Being Human, last year.

See also The Unexpected Ways Yoga Stimulates Creative Thinking

After Gilbert and Pastiloff met online, following each other and messaging over Instagram, the women bonded over their “passion to be of service and being really big dorks,” Pastiloff says. Out of those conversations, their workshop series On Being Magic was born. These one-day creativity and personal development sessions for women bring to life the wisdom inside each of their books—and are completely free of charge. With just one On Being Magic workshop under their belt (the second, scheduled for April, was canceled due to COVID-19 at press time), the project is still in its infancy, ever-evolving—and best put into words by the makers in chief themselves.

How did the idea to combine your superpowers come up?

Elizabeth Gilbert: It came from Jen and I becoming friends and wanting to make something together. When we started having the conversation about it, I said, “I want to do something, but I want it to be free. I want the people who come to this to be the kinds of people who don’t typically get to go to yoga or art retreats.” We really wanted to take care of women who are struggling, or take care of the women who take care of women who are struggling—people at organizations doing work for women’s issues. Our goal is to give people a day where they are pampered and loved and seen. We tell them at the beginning, “You don’t even have to do anything. If you don’t want to do any yoga or introspective work, you can just take one of these yoga mats and lie in the corner and sleep for the entire day. We’ll bring your lunch at noon. You’re tired. You’re tired, and we want to help you, and we want to love you up.”

See also 5 Poses to Boost Creativity

Jennifer Pastiloff: Yes. The idea was to get a group of women and non-gender-conforming humans and provide them with a safe space to write and explore and move their bodies and share and listen­—what I call “dorking it out.” We dance, and we sing, and we laugh, and we cry. It really is magic and vulnerable and intimate, even with 150 people. It inherently breeds creativity. And I think what really helps is that Liz and I are both so honest and open about ourselves that other people feel they can be that way too.

Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff

Creativity as a concept is so remarkably vast. How do you even start to define it?

JP: It’s hard for me to put it into words, because when you just asked, I wanted to get up and dance. I was like, “Wait, let me do it with my body!” Because to me, it’s about being awake and inspired. For a while, I was really getting in my own way. We all do that, right? I thought to myself: “Just make something. Make art. Write something. Make a cup of coffee.” This idea helps me feel alive. Because the truth is, it’s always within us. I think that’s what it means to be connected to Spirit. Now I’ll do my creative dance.

See also A 45-Minute Playlist to Revitalize Your Creative Spirit

EG: There’s an openness and a vulnerability to creativity as well. I recently posted on Instagram a picture of my stack of journals from last year. Then there were a million questions. Sometimes the questions people give me on Instagram make me want to weep. They were like, “How do you do it?” “What’s your system?” “Which kind of pens do you use?” I was like, “Oh my God, you guys, it’s a blank page! You get to do whatever you want with it!” But we cannot stop looking for the rules. We cannot stop wanting a tyrant to come around and tell us what we have to do in order to be OK. So instead of saying that, I opened up my journals and took some pictures of random pages. I put them on social media so that people could see what they look like because it's a mishmash: shopping lists, drawings, prayers, collage, other people's poetry. It’s a real creative gumbo on every page.

How do you tap into your own muse?

EG: I think that a good trick is to go back and figure out what you liked to do when you were eight and nine years old. Before we discovered sex and substances in our teens, most of us, we had other ways of feeling good, and they tended to be instinctively creative. If you’re like most humans, you were already anxious, because most of us grew up in imperfect families in an imperfect culture. Children create things to settle their nerves. My sister and I spent our entire childhood drawing and writing and putting on plays and making up stories. That’s what I do now to calm myself down. So let’s say that your dream is to be a great novelist, but when you were eight, the thing that settled you was coloring. Start coloring. It’ll lead you to your novel. Trust me. It’s like as soon as your neural pathways just go into that ease, the ideas will have an opportunity to come up. So do a different creative thing than the big dream if the big dream seems to be out of reach.

See also “How Yoga Helped Me Write a Novel—& Land My First Book Deal”

JP: When I feel like I’m the most uncreative human in the world, I stop and I look around for the five most beautiful things I can see in that moment. I call it Beauty Hunting. No matter where I am, I stop and look. I try to do it every hour. The more you begin to look around and pay attention—I mean, that’s all being creative is, right? We all have that divine creative spirit. We have to pay attention to notice it.

Why do so many people have a hard time believing they’re creative?

EG: I don’t have a tormented relationship with creativity, and I never have—and that makes me a unicorn. I’ve had a tormented relationship with everything else. Every single other thing that you can have a relationship with is complicated for me, except this. And I don’t know why I was given this clarity that says that this does not have to be a path of suffering. It’s a gift. Creativity itself is a gift of love for you. It loves you, and it wants to play with you, and it wants to communicate with you, and it wants you to be happy, and it will make you happy. We live in a culture that fetishizes the dark aspect of creativity and loves the story of the artist dying for their work. I never experienced it that way in my bones, and [with Big Magic] I wanted to show people what I know, what I just know in my sternum to be true, which is that torment is not the intended purpose of this relationship between humans and inspiration.

See also 12 Yoga Poses to Spark Creativity

JP: It comes back to what I call the Just-A-Box in On Being Human. We think we have to fit inside a box, all the corners neatly tucked in. Just a mom. Just a waitress. Just a yoga teacher. Just an accountant. We think we can’t spill out into the miraculous and often unknown Something Else, because who are we to be different? To bust out of the Just-A-Box?

We are what we repeat, and so many of us stop being playful once we are adults. We struggle with believing it’s inside of us because we forget. So we must do whatever we need to in order to remember who we really are. We stop repeating what brings us joy because someone, somewhere, told us we weren’t very good at that thing. As someone who has struggled with depression since early childhood, I used to think I had to be in the throes of heartbreak or depression to create something meaningful. Now that I’m on antidepressants—although I do have rare days where I think I have zero creative bones in my body and I should just watch Netflix all day (and sometimes I do)—I also realize that all we need to be creative is to create. Being creative does not mean being the best or even good. It means doing it. Make things and art and love and hugs and coffee. Small things. Big things. Things that can’t be called things or don’t fit inside the box. Create magic. Create it all.

The Creativity Issue (; 0:18)

Both books, Big Magic and On Being Human, talk about living beyond fear. How does one take the first step?

JP: I realize the more honest statement for me is that I’m fearless-ish. I don't think I’ve ever been fearless. Instead, I’m afraid and I do it anyway. I was scared to come here, and here I am. So for me, when I wake up, I really work on my mantra or prayer—“Today may I not let fear be the boss of me.” A big part of it is acknowledging it and just not letting it be so loud. Just letting it coexist without letting it ruin my life.

See also This Month’s Home Practice: 16 Poses to Spark Inspiration

EG: Here’s the great paradox. You leave it behind by bringing it closer. The closer I bring my fear into the warmth of the center of myself and into the embrace of my love, the quieter it gets. The farther that I push it away, the louder it screams, the more that I want to orphan it, disown it, hate it, punch it, kick it in the ass, show it who’s boss. I mean, that’s all really violent language about something that’s an aspect of myself and that actually belongs to me, was born into me, and is part of my internal family. Right? So I’m really gentle with myself about fear. If I were going to coach somebody on how to get over their fear, the first step is to drop the idea that you’re ever going to get over it. Instead, pull up a chair for it. My fear sits right next to me with every book that I write. I don’t like to keep it far from me. I once heard someone say, “Your trauma is not the wound. Your trauma is the distance between you and the wound.” So when you bring it in, where it can be loved and taken care of, it’s much better than pushing it away, where it’s going to cause you problems. The farther away fear gets, the more trouble it’s going to bring to you.

And remember that everybody’s fear is exactly the same. But everybody’s curiosity is different. That’s what makes you unique. Your fear is the least interesting thing about you, because it’s exactly like mine. Guaranteed. In my workshops, I have people write letters from their fear to themselves, where their fear says what it’s afraid of. People weep as they’re writing it. It’s so vulnerable. And yet, every single one of those letters is exactly the f—ing same. Literally, I could write everybody’s fear letter for them, because there’s just one fear. But then when I have people write letters to themselves from their sense of enchantment, where their sense of enchantment gets to say what it loves, who turns it on, what’s exciting? Those letters just make me weep because every single one of them is completely different. So once you’ve started to follow your enchantment, which is sort of the same thing as your curiosity, you’re going to start to lead a life that doesn’t look like other people’s lives. If you follow your fear, your life will look like a lot of other people’s lives, because it’s just going to be a big no. 

Do you ever get imposter syndrome when you are trying to create?

JP: Hi, I’m having it right now. I’m sitting next to someone who sold 13 million books.

EG: I’m having it. I sold 13 million books.

See also Meditation to Boost Creativity

JP: I was leading a workshop in South Dakota with 60 people in 2013. I was talking about what we are afraid of. This woman closed her book and stood up, and she said, “I could do what you do.” And she started making fun of me around the room. “I could speak in your cadence.” It was awful. And you know what? I didn’t die. Here I am sitting here. The interesting thing is right after that happened, someone said, “So fear looks many ways.” Her fear was mean. Of course that triggered every ounce of my imposter syndrome until I realized that was just that person’s fear. Then I got up, and I was afraid, and I did it anyway—the next time and the next time and the next time.

EG: I think that you nailed it, Jen. With imposter syndrome, a voice in your head says, “Who do you think you are?” It’s amazing how powerful that voice is, because for many of us, all it has to do is ask that and you will crawl backward into your hole. You pull that filthy piece of moldy canvas over your head again and you hide in your dirty hole where you think you belong. And you always hear that question in a certain tone. It’s the sinister, demonic, “Who do you think you are?” It’s amazing how questions lose their fangs if you take away tone. Remove the sinister sound of that voice and just write it down on a piece of paper in a neutral, curious way: “Who do you think you are?”

So then I say to it, “Thank you. That is a great question. Who do I think I am? I think I’m a child of God. Not sure, but I’m pretty sure. What do you think you’re doing? I think I'm trying to write a book.”

Answer it. We never answer it. We just wither. They ask the question, and we collapse. Take the question seriously. Who do you think you are? There’s a story my friend Rob Bell loves to tell from the Talmud. There was some great, wise, ancient rabbi who was wandering around the desert one night, just in contemplation. He came upon a fortress. A soldier at the top of the fortress saw him below and said, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” The rabbi called up to the soldier and said, “How much money do they pay you to ask those two questions of people?” The soldier said what his salary was, and the rabbi said, “I will pay you double that to follow me around for the rest of my life and ask me those two questions every day.” Who are you, and what are you doing here? Those are really good questions. You should be asking yourself those questions all the time. So when the imposter syndrome demon comes to you and says, “Who do you think you are, and what do you think you’re doing?” be like, “Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to contemplate that. Who do I think I am? What do I think I’m doing?” And answer.

See also 11 Poses to Ignite Your Second Chakra and Spark Creativity

Join the conversation

Listen to Elizabeth and Jennifer talk about accessing the muse, healing from grief, and more, with Executive Editor Lindsay Tucker on YJ’s new podcast, The Yoga Show: yogajournal.com/podcasts.

[krisiunicornio]

Bestselling authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff have joined forces to bring enchantment and serious self-care to the women who need it most. Here, they teach us what it means to embrace creativity for embodied living beyond fear.

There’s a secret to making friends in adulthood, says author Elizabeth Gilbert—yes, of Eat Pray Love fame—and it doesn’t have to involve cocktails. The trick? Create something together. And bonus points if that something is also good for humanity or the planet. After all, it’s how her friendship with author Jennifer Pastiloff went from online to IRL. 

Gilbert and Pastiloff have plenty of practice in this realm: Gilbert’s creativity bible Big Magic (2015) has made her something of an authority in the sphere, spawning speaking engagements and workshops in which the curious flock to find a little magic of their own. Pastiloff, meanwhile, has long been leading retreats and workshops to get people to lighten up and love themselves—a theme that culminated with the release of her memoir, On Being Human, last year.

See also The Unexpected Ways Yoga Stimulates Creative Thinking

After Gilbert and Pastiloff met online, following each other and messaging over Instagram, the women bonded over their “passion to be of service and being really big dorks,” Pastiloff says. Out of those conversations, their workshop series On Being Magic was born. These one-day creativity and personal development sessions for women bring to life the wisdom inside each of their books—and are completely free of charge. With just one On Being Magic workshop under their belt (the second, scheduled for April, was canceled due to COVID-19 at press time), the project is still in its infancy, ever-evolving—and best put into words by the makers in chief themselves.

How did the idea to combine your superpowers come up?

Elizabeth Gilbert: It came from Jen and I becoming friends and wanting to make something together. When we started having the conversation about it, I said, “I want to do something, but I want it to be free. I want the people who come to this to be the kinds of people who don’t typically get to go to yoga or art retreats.” We really wanted to take care of women who are struggling, or take care of the women who take care of women who are struggling—people at organizations doing work for women’s issues. Our goal is to give people a day where they are pampered and loved and seen. We tell them at the beginning, “You don’t even have to do anything. If you don’t want to do any yoga or introspective work, you can just take one of these yoga mats and lie in the corner and sleep for the entire day. We’ll bring your lunch at noon. You’re tired. You’re tired, and we want to help you, and we want to love you up.”

See also 5 Poses to Boost Creativity

Jennifer Pastiloff: Yes. The idea was to get a group of women and non-gender-conforming humans and provide them with a safe space to write and explore and move their bodies and share and listen­—what I call “dorking it out.” We dance, and we sing, and we laugh, and we cry. It really is magic and vulnerable and intimate, even with 150 people. It inherently breeds creativity. And I think what really helps is that Liz and I are both so honest and open about ourselves that other people feel they can be that way too.

Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff

Creativity as a concept is so remarkably vast. How do you even start to define it?

JP: It’s hard for me to put it into words, because when you just asked, I wanted to get up and dance. I was like, “Wait, let me do it with my body!” Because to me, it’s about being awake and inspired. For a while, I was really getting in my own way. We all do that, right? I thought to myself: “Just make something. Make art. Write something. Make a cup of coffee.” This idea helps me feel alive. Because the truth is, it’s always within us. I think that’s what it means to be connected to Spirit. Now I’ll do my creative dance.

See also A 45-Minute Playlist to Revitalize Your Creative Spirit

EG: There’s an openness and a vulnerability to creativity as well. I recently posted on Instagram a picture of my stack of journals from last year. Then there were a million questions. Sometimes the questions people give me on Instagram make me want to weep. They were like, “How do you do it?” “What’s your system?” “Which kind of pens do you use?” I was like, “Oh my God, you guys, it’s a blank page! You get to do whatever you want with it!” But we cannot stop looking for the rules. We cannot stop wanting a tyrant to come around and tell us what we have to do in order to be OK. So instead of saying that, I opened up my journals and took some pictures of random pages. I put them on social media so that people could see what they look like because it's a mishmash: shopping lists, drawings, prayers, collage, other people's poetry. It’s a real creative gumbo on every page.

How do you tap into your own muse?

EG: I think that a good trick is to go back and figure out what you liked to do when you were eight and nine years old. Before we discovered sex and substances in our teens, most of us, we had other ways of feeling good, and they tended to be instinctively creative. If you’re like most humans, you were already anxious, because most of us grew up in imperfect families in an imperfect culture. Children create things to settle their nerves. My sister and I spent our entire childhood drawing and writing and putting on plays and making up stories. That’s what I do now to calm myself down. So let’s say that your dream is to be a great novelist, but when you were eight, the thing that settled you was coloring. Start coloring. It’ll lead you to your novel. Trust me. It’s like as soon as your neural pathways just go into that ease, the ideas will have an opportunity to come up. So do a different creative thing than the big dream if the big dream seems to be out of reach.

See also “How Yoga Helped Me Write a Novel—& Land My First Book Deal”

JP: When I feel like I’m the most uncreative human in the world, I stop and I look around for the five most beautiful things I can see in that moment. I call it Beauty Hunting. No matter where I am, I stop and look. I try to do it every hour. The more you begin to look around and pay attention—I mean, that’s all being creative is, right? We all have that divine creative spirit. We have to pay attention to notice it.

Why do so many people have a hard time believing they’re creative?

EG: I don’t have a tormented relationship with creativity, and I never have—and that makes me a unicorn. I’ve had a tormented relationship with everything else. Every single other thing that you can have a relationship with is complicated for me, except this. And I don’t know why I was given this clarity that says that this does not have to be a path of suffering. It’s a gift. Creativity itself is a gift of love for you. It loves you, and it wants to play with you, and it wants to communicate with you, and it wants you to be happy, and it will make you happy. We live in a culture that fetishizes the dark aspect of creativity and loves the story of the artist dying for their work. I never experienced it that way in my bones, and [with Big Magic] I wanted to show people what I know, what I just know in my sternum to be true, which is that torment is not the intended purpose of this relationship between humans and inspiration.

See also 12 Yoga Poses to Spark Creativity

JP: It comes back to what I call the Just-A-Box in On Being Human. We think we have to fit inside a box, all the corners neatly tucked in. Just a mom. Just a waitress. Just a yoga teacher. Just an accountant. We think we can’t spill out into the miraculous and often unknown Something Else, because who are we to be different? To bust out of the Just-A-Box?

We are what we repeat, and so many of us stop being playful once we are adults. We struggle with believing it’s inside of us because we forget. So we must do whatever we need to in order to remember who we really are. We stop repeating what brings us joy because someone, somewhere, told us we weren’t very good at that thing. As someone who has struggled with depression since early childhood, I used to think I had to be in the throes of heartbreak or depression to create something meaningful. Now that I’m on antidepressants—although I do have rare days where I think I have zero creative bones in my body and I should just watch Netflix all day (and sometimes I do)—I also realize that all we need to be creative is to create. Being creative does not mean being the best or even good. It means doing it. Make things and art and love and hugs and coffee. Small things. Big things. Things that can’t be called things or don’t fit inside the box. Create magic. Create it all.

The Creativity Issue (; 0:18)

Both books, Big Magic and On Being Human, talk about living beyond fear. How does one take the first step?

JP: I realize the more honest statement for me is that I’m fearless-ish. I don't think I’ve ever been fearless. Instead, I’m afraid and I do it anyway. I was scared to come here, and here I am. So for me, when I wake up, I really work on my mantra or prayer—“Today may I not let fear be the boss of me.” A big part of it is acknowledging it and just not letting it be so loud. Just letting it coexist without letting it ruin my life.

See also This Month’s Home Practice: 16 Poses to Spark Inspiration

EG: Here’s the great paradox. You leave it behind by bringing it closer. The closer I bring my fear into the warmth of the center of myself and into the embrace of my love, the quieter it gets. The farther that I push it away, the louder it screams, the more that I want to orphan it, disown it, hate it, punch it, kick it in the ass, show it who’s boss. I mean, that’s all really violent language about something that’s an aspect of myself and that actually belongs to me, was born into me, and is part of my internal family. Right? So I’m really gentle with myself about fear. If I were going to coach somebody on how to get over their fear, the first step is to drop the idea that you’re ever going to get over it. Instead, pull up a chair for it. My fear sits right next to me with every book that I write. I don’t like to keep it far from me. I once heard someone say, “Your trauma is not the wound. Your trauma is the distance between you and the wound.” So when you bring it in, where it can be loved and taken care of, it’s much better than pushing it away, where it’s going to cause you problems. The farther away fear gets, the more trouble it’s going to bring to you.

And remember that everybody’s fear is exactly the same. But everybody’s curiosity is different. That’s what makes you unique. Your fear is the least interesting thing about you, because it’s exactly like mine. Guaranteed. In my workshops, I have people write letters from their fear to themselves, where their fear says what it’s afraid of. People weep as they’re writing it. It’s so vulnerable. And yet, every single one of those letters is exactly the f—ing same. Literally, I could write everybody’s fear letter for them, because there’s just one fear. But then when I have people write letters to themselves from their sense of enchantment, where their sense of enchantment gets to say what it loves, who turns it on, what’s exciting? Those letters just make me weep because every single one of them is completely different. So once you’ve started to follow your enchantment, which is sort of the same thing as your curiosity, you’re going to start to lead a life that doesn’t look like other people’s lives. If you follow your fear, your life will look like a lot of other people’s lives, because it’s just going to be a big no. 

Do you ever get imposter syndrome when you are trying to create?

JP: Hi, I’m having it right now. I’m sitting next to someone who sold 13 million books.

EG: I’m having it. I sold 13 million books.

See also Meditation to Boost Creativity

JP: I was leading a workshop in South Dakota with 60 people in 2013. I was talking about what we are afraid of. This woman closed her book and stood up, and she said, “I could do what you do.” And she started making fun of me around the room. “I could speak in your cadence.” It was awful. And you know what? I didn’t die. Here I am sitting here. The interesting thing is right after that happened, someone said, “So fear looks many ways.” Her fear was mean. Of course that triggered every ounce of my imposter syndrome until I realized that was just that person’s fear. Then I got up, and I was afraid, and I did it anyway—the next time and the next time and the next time.

EG: I think that you nailed it, Jen. With imposter syndrome, a voice in your head says, “Who do you think you are?” It’s amazing how powerful that voice is, because for many of us, all it has to do is ask that and you will crawl backward into your hole. You pull that filthy piece of moldy canvas over your head again and you hide in your dirty hole where you think you belong. And you always hear that question in a certain tone. It’s the sinister, demonic, “Who do you think you are?” It’s amazing how questions lose their fangs if you take away tone. Remove the sinister sound of that voice and just write it down on a piece of paper in a neutral, curious way: “Who do you think you are?”

So then I say to it, “Thank you. That is a great question. Who do I think I am? I think I’m a child of God. Not sure, but I’m pretty sure. What do you think you’re doing? I think I'm trying to write a book.”

Answer it. We never answer it. We just wither. They ask the question, and we collapse. Take the question seriously. Who do you think you are? There’s a story my friend Rob Bell loves to tell from the Talmud. There was some great, wise, ancient rabbi who was wandering around the desert one night, just in contemplation. He came upon a fortress. A soldier at the top of the fortress saw him below and said, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” The rabbi called up to the soldier and said, “How much money do they pay you to ask those two questions of people?” The soldier said what his salary was, and the rabbi said, “I will pay you double that to follow me around for the rest of my life and ask me those two questions every day.” Who are you, and what are you doing here? Those are really good questions. You should be asking yourself those questions all the time. So when the imposter syndrome demon comes to you and says, “Who do you think you are, and what do you think you’re doing?” be like, “Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to contemplate that. Who do I think I am? What do I think I’m doing?” And answer.

See also 11 Poses to Ignite Your Second Chakra and Spark Creativity

Join the conversation

Listen to Elizabeth and Jennifer talk about accessing the muse, healing from grief, and more, with Executive Editor Lindsay Tucker on YJ’s new podcast, The Yoga Show: yogajournal.com/podcasts.

[s3venpounds]

1-98

thank you my dewd for giving me something to do! ngl was going kinda insane and i’ll take anything over doing chores tbh also sorry if this is hella late

weird asks that say a lot

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

coffee mugs usually because they hold more liquid and i use them for everything lol tea, coffee, alcohol, soda

2. chocolate bars or lollipops?

lollipops, i like having something in my mouth for long amounts of time(and yes pun intended)

3. bubblegum or cotton candy?

cotton candy oh my god. I have such a sweet tooth its ridiculous. I once bought 7 large bags of cotton candy from K days and ate them for the next 2 months even when they got hard and probably nasty lmao i just love that shit. even cotton candy flavoured stuff ( except vodka. thats a trap. )

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

shy, reserved, well behaved basically i was a wimpy little shit

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups?

I like them in glass cups so i can clean it afterwards and use it again later, waste makes me feel guilty

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

if its applied to me? pastel. I love brighter colors after i stopped wearing blacks greys and whites. they feel so good and look so nice. on someone im interested in? sportswear, formal, grunge, goth, pastel, tomboy. in no particular order. if its sportswear stuff that really highlights muscles and how toned they are just MMMMMMMM. formal is fuckkkkkkking attractive. like if the white collar shirt is unbuttoned halfway and the blazer is rolled up? or no blazer but with suspenders and the sleeves rolled up? OMG i will literally lick their collarbones idgaf

7. earbuds or headphones?

headphones, mostly because its just healthier for your ears, as much as i like earphones and use them more often i just prefer headphones cuz people usually dont bother me, i do dislike the hat hair though and how bulky they are

8. movies or tv shows?

im kind of a weeb so i much prefer tv shows with regular releases so im not waiting 6 years or something for avengers lol i need my fixxxxxxxxxxx

9. favorite smell in the summer?

after rain smell or during rain smell idk. carnival food? the ocean? just water scents i guess

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

dance or volleyball both of which im still doing to this day very happily c:

11. what you have for breakfast on an average day?

cereal, maybe some nutella, whatevers left over if someone cooked the night prior or just basic bacon eggs and rice. fried rice if im feeling lucky

12. name of your favorite playlist?

Emotions empty. YEET

13. lanyard or key ring?

lanyard. I’ve had the same spidergwen/ghost spider lanyard since like 2015 and i refuse to use another lol. it feels so cool to yank on the lanyard and swing it around

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

rock candy. hands down. that shit makes me nutty. like if i was an earth bender or some shit i’d make a giant club made of the stuff and smack people with it and lick it afterwards

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

the outsiders probably i mean its not like crazy favourite but like its the one i enjoyed the most out of the ones i was forced to read (i really hate being forced to do shit)

16. most comfortable position to sit in? criss cross as im doing right now lmao or sitting on one of my legs

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes? ah shit I just threw them out cuz they were old af but i had these nike high tops with the little puffy thing that inflates the sides of the shoes to make it more comfortable and it was so good in the winter and summer. it like breathed enough to let my feet stay nice and cool but it also stayed warm and never let snow get in my shoes cuz they were so high they acted like boots. i wore those for like my entire highschool experience

18. ideal weather?

raining. or breezy day. wind makes me sleepy and rain makes me excited to jump around in puddles and run as if my lifes calling is pulling me towards it

19. sleeping position? 

I always sleep on my stomach. its my most comfortable position and i knock out so easily if i do. apparently its a family thing too lol my siblings all outgrew it but w.e

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)? 

on a laptop or in my journal. the tapping of laptop keys makes me feel productive while writing in my journal makes me feel like itll be saved for the rest of my life

21. obsession from childhood?

psychology and the inner workings of the mind. why something thinks lowly of themselves, why someone thinks highly of themselves, how they came to this decision, why they thought to refuse this and that its really interesting to me to see peoples reasoning

22. role model?

not even a physical person but ALL MIGHT from my hero academia or boku no hero academia. yknow that phrase ? “ what would jesus do?” yeah its “what would all might do?” for me luuuuuuuuuuuuul

23. strange habits?

i dont really know any strange habits myself but im sure my friend justin knows a few

24. favorite crystal?

crystal???? uhhh i dont know much about this but i guess i would go with emerald? since its my birth stone?

25. first song you remember hearing?

a barney song. i shit you not.

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

I dont really like the heat all that much. summer is just suffering to me tbh lol like what do you do when youve taken off all ur clothes, ur AC is dead and your room is the highest room in the house where all the heat gathers? nothing. you do nothing. you cry and almost get heat stroke.

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

I loooooooooooove snowboarding im not good at it though but god damn its fun. specially with friends and learning together it makes me so happy seeing people grow c:

28. five songs to describe you?

fix you cold play(currently listening to this), im still here (treasure planet soundtrack) by john reznik, Good things fall apart Jon bellion, lost stars Adam levine, After Dark Asian Kung Fu Generation. is what i can say so far? i’ve got tons of songs i relate to those are the ones that just popped into mind

29. best way to bond with you?

be physical. touch me, graze me, be comfortable with me and hold up a conversation. As much as i like talking I LOVE hearing about the people im interacting with. hobbies, dreams, goals, nightmares everything. other than that? just spend time with me. any time is fine. i do prefer really deep conversations at like 3 am lol

30. places that you find sacred?

sacred to me? St. Clements park and not much else. a looooooooooot of shit has happened there. my first kiss, my worst break up, my best make up/make out, my best date. 

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

I got these leather boots that do a clack sound on pavement and i feel powerful as fuck. I got this really high quality black formal shirt from le chateau that breathes really well and highlights my figure. I have these black jeans with zippers above and below the kneecap that make me feel dope. so yeah full black lol. theres also this grey sweater i have that flows in the wing like a cape and i feel like a superhero when wind blows it behind me

32. top five favorite vines?

ok ok theres this one i cannot find again for the life of me but its like this asian guy sittin in a stall taking a dump and it cuts to an ice cream dispenser then some dude knocks on the door and the asian guy gasps and it cuts to the ice cream dispenser but goes backwards so the poop is like going back in and the asian guy goes like “ unnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhhh” and shudders and i like fucking collapse a lung everytime i think about it. some of king vaders anime parodies are fucking hilarious, the dude who made that vine where “ if johnny has 23 dish soaps” and he goes “ wait why does johnny have 23 dish soaps” and he goes “ mind your business david” while playing with dishsoap lmao. OH OH and that one where the kid puts random shit on his head to signify its his mom like where he goes “ I like ya accent where ya from?” “ im from liberia” “ *in a whisper* oh my bad I like ya accent where ya from” yeah this is longer than i thought i’ll stop it here i still got like 60 questions left

33. most used phrase in your phone?

“lmao” i’ve now used to as a similar term to lol. sometimes i say it in irl like “ le mao” and i internally cringe everytime

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

pizza 73, sleep country canada “why buy a mattress any where elseee” and some spotify ads cuz theyre fucking everywhere

35. average time you fall asleep?

midnight or 10 at the earliest

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

god... uhhh.. one of those rage comics those old ass black n white memes

37. suitcase or duffel bag?

duffel bag, i am NOT organized enough for a suitcase plus duffels i can carry across my chest like a backpack

38. lemonade or tea?

oof. lemonade from k days was really gooooooood. but tea is something im always comfortable with.. ill go with tea

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie? cake defnitely. cake tastes more mellow while meringue is like a burst of flavour right away

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

a dude OD’d during school hours or that time a dude had a seisure in class

41. last person you texted?

clarence

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

jacket pockets if i wanna look badass, pants pockets if im just being a panda

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket?

oooof. uhh leather or bomber. leather because i love biker aesthetic too and bomber just looks comfy

44. favorite scent for soap?

i dont particularly have one but i do like old spice or irish spring

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

SUPERHERO. HANDS DOWN. fantasy second and sci fi 3rd.

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

.... naked. only on days i cannot sleep at all

47. favorite type of cheese?

uhh fuck dude uhm.. toss up between cream cheese or parmesan

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

durian. I hate durian. its spiky on the outside, smells like burnt asshole but taste is redeeming

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people don't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

inside jokes with justin. just hanging out with the dude I had the best gut wrenching laughs of my life. laughs where my jaw hurt from laughing, i lost feeling in my cheeks, my face was red and couldnt stop crying. those laughs.

51. current stresses?

job security, love life, and friends who are currently getting more and more busy and cant hang out as often

52. favorite font?

IDK? Helvetica?

53. what is the current state of your hands?

dry and typing.

54. what did you learn from your first job?

People are stupid as fuck. and coworkers are dangerous thanks alex for throwing a kitchen knife at me

55. favorite fairy tale?

idk if it counts since disney always makes fairytales but treasure planet?

56. favorite tradition? 

probably christmas because i think its super important who you choose to spend it with and who you DO spend it with is a sign of how much they mean to you

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

dads abuse, my biggest break up, my friends attempted suicide

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

yknow the devil sign you make by closing your hand in a fist except your pinky and pointer finger? i can make my pointer and pinky touch. I also have been told my volleyball spikes have been really good recently. uhh my dancing I guess? singing?

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be?

EVERYTHINGS FINE WHY? BECAUSE I AM HERE!

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

My hero academia. hands down.

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

You got the makings of greatness in you, but you gotta take the helm and chart your own course! Stick to it, no matter the squalls! And when the time comes, you'll get the chance to really test the cut of your sails and show what you're made of! And... well, I hope I'm there, catching some of the light coming off you that day. TREASURE FUCKING PLANET BOIIIIIIIIIIS

62. seven characters you relate to?

jim hawkins, hikigaya hachiman, shoya ishida, natsuki subaru, Hinata Shoyo, Hiccup, roxas.

63. five songs that would play in your club?

oh god. uhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. learn to fly foo fighters? castle on the hill ed sheeran? man idk im not huge on clubs, just shit from like 2000′s rock bands that white person knows the lyrics to and probably screamed in their room when they were mad

64. favorite website from your childhood?

YTV when they first released those side kick things thos games were so cool except that one day where the sidekick turned into a monster i legit got scared lol

65. any permanent scars?

tons actually and i love em! they remind me that things happened and that i wont ever forget them. currently tryna get a scar for volleyball HEHEHE

66. favorite flower(s)?

i dont know much about flowers but roses and lavender is nice. and that flower in philippines where if you touch it, it like curls into itself. 

67. good luck charms?

the keychains people i’ve fallen for have given to me. like this one bullet bill keychain AB gave me when we first met in highschool. i still have it. its faded and chipped in places but i feel like it makes me feel stronger yknow?

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

birthday cake vodka. hands down. and i’ve literally tasted my own puss from an infected wound on accident

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned?

in philippines flies are always swarming around peoples food so what i learned was to rip up the napkin to look like that thing people used to dust the house and it keeps them away if you swing it at them

70. left or right handed?

right handed c:

71. least favorite pattern?

pattern? uhh anything disorienting i guess

72. worst subject?

math. 100% math. 

73. favorite weird flavor combo?

meatball marinara sub with like every sauce from subway

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

8. i think i have a high pain tolerance

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

i dont remember.. maybe like 6?

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

MASHED POTATOES.FRJISD

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

not a big fan of plants....

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

sushi from a grocery store. just cuz im not willing to pay 30 bucks for somewhat fresh stuff from a retaurant

79. which looks better, your school id photo or your driver’s license photo? school id funny enough

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

...what? i guess jewel tones?

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

FIREFLIES OWL CITYYYYYYYYY

82. pc or console?

console. i have a better understanding of how console plays vs computer. computer is too finicky for me and aiming is a lot harder. console i know how people on console move and how i move and how to aim. 

83. writing or drawing?

writing. if i knew how to draw though thatd be a different answer

84. podcasts or talk radio?

talk radio cuz i like to phone in and talk about my experiences lol i got to be on one actually it was dope

84. barbie or polly pocket?

uhhhhhh barbie?

85. fairy tales or mythology?

mythology!

86. cookies or cupcakes?

cupcakes

87. your greatest fear?

death. or atleast what happens afterwards

88. your greatest wish?

to be a hero. 

89. who would you put before everyone else?

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Z

90. luckiest mistake?

one time in gym class we were playing dodgeball and i slipped trying to run backwards and a dude threw a ball at me but i kicked it in a way it went straight up and i had enough time to catch it

91. boxes or bags?

boxes, much better leverage and storing is like a game of tetris!

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

lamps or overheads. sunlight has glare on my stuff and its hard to play and fairylights arent enough 

93. nicknames?

tin man, AG, metal man, poetry man, silverado, silver city, quick silver anything with silver really.

94. favorite season?

fall and winter. winter being the best

95. favorite app on your phone?

Epic seven

96. desktop background? its a picture of hinata shoyo from HAIKYUU!! doing a spike with wings on his back!

97. how many phone numbers do you have memorized?

only 1. thats my own lmao

98. favorite historical era?

uhhhhhh shit idk. they all seemed pretty shitty tbh..........

[theloniousbach]

“Clara, Robert, and Felix: Three Magical Years in the Lives of Felix Mendelssohn and the Schumanns,” Midsummer’s Music At The Clearing, Ellison Bay, WI, 6 July 2019

Piano trios are very connected to vacations on the Great Lakes, so I am pleased that our early July vacations to Door County have coincided with the seemingly annual concert of that format sponsored by Midsummer’s Music.  Last year we saw works by Schubert, Haydn, and Raff rather on a whim, deciding once we got here.  Thanks to being on the mailing list, we knew the program and could select this afternoon program at the folk school landscape architect Jens Jensen built in Door County.

That meant I played the works several times ahead of the concert so that we could anticipate favorite parts.  There was a chronological focus last year lacked, spanning as it did from Classical to late Romantic as all three works this year were composed between 1845-1847.  And all three composers knew and collaborated with one another.

Since the Mendelssohn #2 in C Minor is the work that triggered this fascination thanks to a family rehearsal with a history of science colleague who also is a skilled violinist, his cellist brother, and a friend on piano on another vacation, that time to the Traverse City, Michigan, area, I knew that would be the highlight.  It was and, at the musician’s request due to its intensity, it was the after intermission work.  

The original program had Robert Schumann’s in D Minor last.  That too would make sense as it too has a triumphant ending and great power.  It led us nicely to intermission, just as it could have led us out the door.  I also got a strong dose particularly in the second movement of what I treasure about chamber music generally and trios in particular—the conversational interplay of the instruments.  Of course, there was plenty of that in all 12 movements throughout the program.  I also like the sonorities of the cello and this third movement had a mournfulness that it led.

I experienced the intended order as that’s how I put together my Spotify playlist, so I got to have it both ways.

Clara Schumann’s work in G Minor is justly among her most regarded compositions.  The almost verbose spoken performance notes by the organization’s Executive Director James Berkenstock Itcalled attention to the second movement, the unlikely mash up of a scherzo but at the tempo of a minuet.  Listening for it, I put in my notes that it was at once stately and playful.  I also like the third movement’s somberness.

I will return to the recordings of this work as I was just settling in to my vantage point, so I was less aware of the piano’s intricacies.  I have to imagine that a pianist of Clara’s caliber would have given herself and others some serious fun.  But I was less attuned to the individual parts in this first work.

Sitting with a clear sight line for the cello and the piano keyboard (but also the sheet music albeit at 15 feet), I spent much of the R. Schumann and Mendelssohn intrigued with the shape of the piano lines (arpeggios vs. chords vs. melodic lines with at least a sense of the squiggles for the violin and cello to cue what I was hearing).  So, by then, I was noticing what the piano was doing.

And what the piano and the strings were doing, particularly with the Mendelssohn, were revealing familiar magic.  This is on the very short list of piano trios I know pretty well, whose intricacies I can frequently anticipate.  So I was delighted to hear and watch those parts unfold, to see how the drama happened, and above all to observe the lines from each instrument interweave.

The notes and comments drew attention to the distinctive theme that emerges perhaps a third of the way in the final movement noting that it evokes Bach’s setting of the chorale “I Present Myself Before Your Throne” with the further suggestion that near the end Mendelssohn offers his own setting.  I don’t know the chorale but I do recall (accurately I hope) that Kevin heard just a whiff of a Jewish melody in there at that point, a klezmer-y minor mode.  No matter what, it’s a highlight of the work.  I noted appreciatively the cello as at the start of the finale and the light touch of the presto in movement three.  But I generally wrote little as I was smiling in delight.

Jeannie Yu is the “new” pianist, joining David Perry and Walter Preucil whom we saw last year on violin and cello.

Once again, these musicians and this organization provide a strong series (the program for the year is rich and bears study as curation for other music to explore) that I am glad is becoming a Door County habit.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

By the time I moved to Chicago’s North Side, true dive bars had become rare as pearls in a sea of fakes. The wood paneling, fluorescent beer signage, and Spartan restroom facilities of the imitators conjure the working-class homeyness of the American classic, while the prices, clientele, and subsequent atmosphere undermine that nostalgia wholeheartedly. The transformation—from earnest to faux—is, of course, not unique to Chicago’s gentrified North and West Sides, but is a broadly urban phenomenon synonymous with the rise of brunch culture. Nearly two years ago, in Eater, Matthew Sedacca mourned the decline of the “great American dive bar” as it once existed in urban environments, hustled on as neighborhoods get hipper, rents go up, and middle-class patrons care more about a working-class aesthetic than the down-to-earth folks and cheap beer that occupy true dives.

On either side of economic crisis, dive bars traffic in fantasy. The supposed relic of Americana purity still exists in solidly ethnic neighborhoods and across the massive rural swaths of this country. Dive bars are romantic like pickup trucks are romantic, cherished as a symbol for a certain national way of life presumed to be fading. The fakes capitalize on this rosy vision, trotting out yellowed baseball memorabilia and putting American lagers front and center (never mind that that lager will run you $6). In turn, these icons have begun to suggest something different than what they previously stood for. The distinct blue and yellow of an Old Style sign, for example, was once a beacon for a certain kind of chill, affordable, neighborhood establishment, and sometimes still is. But now, it might also hang outside the type of bar where one would only order Old Style ironically, but more likely not at all.

Another increasingly common feature of these establishments threatens to further unravel the dive-bar aesthetic—the digital jukebox. More specifically, the TouchTunes digital jukebox. By no means the only digital commercial jukebox (other brands include AMI Entertainment and NSM Music), TouchTunes made itself a visible front-runner in a jukebox revival of sorts, in part because it allows users to choose music from their phones. In March 2016, the company—which has since merged with PlayNetwork—debuted an overhauled version of its mobile application which now “allows users to be the DJ and take control of TouchTunes’ jukeboxes” in 65,000 locations across North America. Through the app, these locations delegate musical, and therefore atmospheric, control to patrons and profit in the process. For dive imitators, these devices make it harder to maintain their neighborhood-bar veneer, while actual dives start to resemble their faux peers. TouchTunes erodes the premise of quaint regionalism as bars of all kinds transform into Top 40 danceries.

TouchTunes began simply as a more convenient version of a pay-for-play jukebox. Launching its first prototype in 1993, by the late ’90s TouchTunes distinguished itself as a leader in digital jukeboxes, anticipating the MP3 as the next wave in music storage and playback. “We at TouchTunes envision a world in which the hassles of operating a jukebox become a thing of the past,” said the company on a 1999 version of its website, “where operators effectively manage their jukebox and use that information and free time to really do business, to watch it grow, sit back, and enjoy music once again.” Compared to the CD disc-changer standard, with selections limited by available space, TouchTunes jukeboxes allowed businesses to download and store hundreds of songs for a lower cost. “You guessed it—THERE ARE NO CDs,” TouchTunes enthused in 1999, “(that is what we mean by digital).”

Decades later, the jukebox remains a visible feature of the brand, upgraded and multiplied across a range of fluorescent-lit products, which sometimes include additional features like a photo booth or karaoke, or perhaps the thing that most sets the company apart—integration with its app.

The TouchTunes app, working in conjunction with its jukeboxes, allows users to pay-for-play from the comfort of their barstools. Users “check in” at an establishment with the assistance of a Foursquare property called Pilgrim SDK that’s integrated into the app. Pilgrim SDK is a sophisticated approach to location intelligence more precise than just GPS that uses time stamps and foot traffic to determine a user’s likely location. Pilgrim SDK also allows TouchTunes to send alerts to users in range if the app’s location services remain enabled when the app is not in use (“There’s no wait! Play your songs now and see what’s hot at Generic Tavern!”). The check-in requirement forbids users from, say, fiddling with a jukebox several states away. (Not that anyone would want to do such a thing ...) From there, patrons interact with the playlist much the same way they would with a physical jukebox, purchasing credits and using them to add songs to the queue. Credits can be purchased in $5 (12 credits), $10 (24 credits), or $20 (48 credits) increments via credit card, PayPal, or Apple Pay. Song prices (in credits) are set by the venue and credits purchased are limited to that venue. (So if you purchase $20 worth of credits and your group decides to hop over to the next bar, you’re out of luck until the next time you visit the first bar.)

Like so many apps, there’s an obvious convenience to doing a seamless transaction via device that once would have required cash or a card swipe as well as actually standing up. Aside from in-app control, “I also like the anonymity of requesting a song on your phone,” Jessica Slavik, a 26-year-old account manager living in Lincoln Park, told me via email, instead of “walking up to a jukebox where everyone can see exactly which songs you’re requesting.” However, the anonymity works better in theory than in practice, I’ve found. (It’s hard to remain anonymous when you’re the only table belting the lyrics to Celine Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is,” to use a hypothetical example.) The app does consolidate the time otherwise spent flipping through the catalog, or waiting for someone else to finish their turn. Many customers can have the app open at once, purchasing credits and adding to the queue when it suits them.

Other in-app exclusives include bonus credits rewarded to frequent users and foresight into upcoming songs in the rotation. Slavik, at “Emerging Artist” status (achieved after playing 100 songs through the app), can see the next five songs queued at a given venue and considers this her favorite feature. “I am a Headliner,” a frequent user of the app, Patrick Murphy, a 27-year-old accountant who also lives on Chicago’s North Side, told me via email. “Is that good?” At his current status he can see the next six songs. (An “Opening Act” like myself, meanwhile, can only see the next three. Users begin as “Debut Artists” only able to see the next song in the queue.) This is a useful superpower to have, as anyone who’s ever been stuck in the bathroom just as a certified jam began to play can imagine. Users can avoid jostling the vibe by interrupting a series of soft-rock anthems with something from the party-rock family (or vice versa). It also helps avoid a close-quartered set of repeats, in the case of users who might otherwise request the same song. “Sometimes if I like the songs I won’t have to actually buy my own credits,” says Slavik. The curatorial responsibility becomes an exercise in communal playlist management, not unlike the jukebox of old.

An app, however, unlike a traditional jukebox, introduces a tension between the cooperative end result and an interface primed to make things personal. Accounts keep a running archive of prior check-ins, plays, and favorited songs, organized in the proprietary folder “My Music.” The app can also sync with users’ Spotify and iTunes accounts. These “personalization features,” says TouchTunes, are intended to “combine each user’s play preferences with the venue’s vibe to help users discover the music they have in common with each location.” The admixture makes itself known in a folder called “Hot Songs You Like Too,” popular songs at a given venue that a user has also favorited. But for the most part, users’ personal tastes outrank whatever “vibe” they’ve checked in to. Below the “Now Playing” queue, a hierarchy of scrolling rows sort activity into sections like “My Recent Plays” and “My Top Plays,” with “Hot At [Whatever Venue]” third in the list. Unless user and bar are already a match made in heaven, it takes real effort to attenuate one’s inclinations to match the location at hand—though what incentive is there to subsume your preferences to a greater vibe when you’re paying for the playlist?

With the older jukebox model, selection was necessarily limited but in tune with the character of a place. “No matter how much work was put into choosing a bar’s jukebox music, it was a selection. Certain music fit in certain bars,” Philadelphia magazine’s Dan McQuade lamented in 2012, after his favorite watering hole fell to the TouchTunes revolution. “Every bar’s jukebox is becoming the same.”

In an October 2009 column, The Bollard’s Chris Busby had a similar gripe: “TouchTunes dictates and homogenizes the experience of listening to music,” much like commercial radio.

But something about the nature of Busby and McQuade’s complaints smacks of rock-ist romanticism. Music is never a neutral topic and the staunch protection of a certain way of doing things resists cultural evolution and can amount to a subtle form of discrimination. The songs played on jukeboxes, be they radio hits or dad-music antiques, are selected by real people. But even with TouchTunes installed, some bars have found ways to protect their vibes—or seen another way, filter out certain clientele—with the targeted exclusion of certain genres. Last year, Gina Heeb of the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s The Daily Cardinal found that over a dozen popular rap artists—such as Drake, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, and Kanye West—had been deleted from the TouchTunes listings of prominent, campus-adjacent bars. One owner didn’t want “gangster hip-hop” at his establishment, which was, as he told Heeb, a “safety-driven” decision—a not-so-subtle implication that black music, which attracts black patrons, means danger. Not all vibes are good vibes.

But if there’s a happy collaboration between past and present, old and new regulars, I’m still not sure TouchTunes is it. The very features that make the app feel liberatory transform it into an un-fun experience for the bar at large as selfishness takes over the deeper into the night you go. Murphy admits he likes to “feel like the bar is at my mercy” when using the app, and while Slavik will defer the playlist when the songs align with her interests, “on the other hand, if I hate the songs, I’ll often spend extra credits to jump the queue and have my songs played first”—a feature called a “fast pass.” On a slow night, this places the song up next, but as the queue grows longer and these fast passes accumulate, you might still have to wait a while, even if you pay extra. “It does get annoying when so many people are also fast-passing that you get added to a 15-song fast-pass queue, which defeats the purpose of spending the extra money,” says Slavik. Fellow bar-goers can turn to adversaries, each one trying to get their songs played first. Sometimes a fast pass is the only way to ensure a song will be played before closing time.

While it’s a comfort to know that you will not be at the mercy of one bartender’s iPod, playing DJ isn’t all TouchTunes promises it to be. The app replaces the predictable rhythms of a local bar environment with the possibility of something choppier, if or when someone decides to supersede the sonic lay of the land. The classic contract between bar and patron is dated, but practical. You provide liquor and ambiance, I offer legal tender and agree to not make a mess. But while TouchTunes undermines that agreement, the most disruptive force is enabling people’s own desires. The age of social media and customized entertainment primes users to expect their tech to adjust to their habits and preferences. Just as auto-fill in web browsers intuits our favorite websites and Netflix adjusts to our tastes, TouchTunes most simply makes the personal more immediate.

Unlike its peers, however, TouchTunes projects the personal into a physical space, a synecdoche for the ongoing instability of what it means for a space to be “private” or “public.” Private enterprise is enfolding many once-public spaces—schools, transportation, and public-works projects, for example. Meanwhile, many private businesses, while not exactly making themselves more accessible, foster choice in a way that at least suggests an individualized experience—letting a public made of walking personal brands assert their tastes in privately owned places. But the ability to “build your own” sub sandwich or playlist comes with a surcharge. It seems many are willing to pay it. A new contract is at work here. They who fill the space control the vibe.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2HXILOI