#and at the same put the biggest focus on the company itself (since many of the issues are systemic)

[monarchisms]

Gonna be honest, I know it’s kind of selfish, but I’ve been watching AH since before I knew I was trans and I’ve always loved Michael the most/found the most comfort in his content, so the fact that he’s both apologized and been forgiven by the people he wronged has been like the one thing keeping me sane during all of this blowing up. I of course love the new members as well and I’m also very fond of them, but Michael has held a little place in my brain since high school

Anyway, very sorry about all of this since I’ve been following you for a very long time for your quality AH posts and it sucks that this is all going to hell. Hope ur doing okay. Love the new url!

honestly, that's pretty valid

i also take solace whilst looking into everything that's blown up since. like, a few seconds to think "i'm happy that the people i like through their content try to be good people at the end" before looking back into The Horrors

[sadquickchristmassnowman]

Overall what do you think of mythic quest? It's on my list to watch. How would you intrigue someone to watch it

(just want to preemptively say that I know this ask has been sitting in my inbox for months and I am so sorry for taking so long to get back to you)

I absolutely love mythic quest. It's my #4 sitcom of all time, which might sound not very high, but numbers 1-3 are taken by the good place, community, and it's always sunny, and I mean. there's no beating those. anyway

I don't know how much you know about it, so I'll give a quick introduction. mythic quest is centered around a video game studio, which produces a video game of the same name. season one opens with them launching their new expansion: Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet. the show follows around the different employees of the company as they each chaotically try to achieve their goals. there are a lot of sitcoms centered around a workplace (the office, parks & recreation, brooklyn nine-nine, superstore, just to name a few), so I suppose you could say mythic quest follows a similar sort of formula to those. but, I think it's super unique and has a lot of stand-out qualities, which I love. it's difficult to make something so unique, to do things on tv that have never been done before (or, at the very least, are rarely done) and I think mythic quest does a great job with all of that.

for one, the types of interpersonal relationships mythic quest portrays are extremely unique. it's hard to go into detail without spoiling too much, but I'll do my best. the show is definitely an ensemble sitcom (a whole gang of "main" characters), but I'd say the show focuses mainly on Poppy and Ian, and their relationship. but, they make it explicitly clear that they are NOT romantically or sexually involved. there's a few jokes here and there, but they react with disgust every time. their relationship is 100% platonic, throughout all three seasons that are out, and it is the FOCUS of the show. how many tv shows have done that? hell, how many stories, period? it's so incredibly important to me, especially as someone on the aroace spectrum, and it makes mythic quest that much more unique and interesting.

(disclaimer that of course there are some people who ship poppy and ian together, which is just kind of. objectively wrong imo. but yk. people can do whatever they want I suppose. the point is, that ship will never sail in canon.)

the ONE current romantic pairing is a lesbian couple!!! that is just SO wild to me. literally none of the other main characters have any sort of (canon) romantic subplot or anything. and the lesbians don't get put through a ton of heartbreak and unnecessary drama either!!! there's pining, there's slight miscommunication and the characters themselves go through some things, but the relationship itself??? pretty much thriving, even through the end of season three. again, SO incredibly important to me.

the character work, writing, and acting is also exemplary. given that mythic quest is already on your list to watch, you probably know some of the actors who are in it: namely, Rob McElhenney, Danny Pudi, David Hornsby, Ashly Burch, etc. The show was created by Rob McElhenney, Megan Ganz, and Charlie Day, who all obviously worked together on iasip. Megan actively writes for MQ, Rob stars in and writes, and Charlie has been pretty hands-off since the show actually got up and running, but who knows. maybe he'll have a cameo one day. David, Danny, and Ashly have all also been involved behind the scenes. I'm sure there's other stuff I’m missing, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head, production and acting-wise.

one of the biggest things that makes mythic quest unique is that, once a season, they have a "backstory" episode, which provides context to a different aspect of the show. the first time I watched season 1 and the backstory episode came on (it's called "A Dark Quiet Death") I had to double check that I didn't accidentally click on another show lmao. I didn't know What was going on. the backstory episodes from seasons 2 and 3 have more immediately recognizable connections to the main story, so they're easier to follow right off the bat, but yeah. the mythic quest backstory episodes are absolutely fantastic. it allows the writers to play with different story layouts, deviate from the established feel of the show, introduce different characters, etc. I could talk about each one for hours, but I won't right now. but yeah. those episodes alone would make the show worth watching.

a few other things I love: danny pudi playing mean, brad as a character in general, the chemistry the characters and actors have, the way it's shot is beautiful, the post season 1 specials (quarantine and everlight), how fleshed out and real the universe is (so much so that I thought mythic quest was a real game for a while), the animations they use as scene transitions, the multitude of background details that I notice more of on every rewatch, the sheer complexity of the characters, the diversity and representation (queer characters, mental health issues, familial trauma, etc), and god so much more. I could go on and on and on about this show. because this ask was so long ago it's possible you've already watched it but if you haven't please do! if you're not the asker and you haven't seen mythic quest and are reading this, ALSO please do! and let me know what you think afterwards If You So Choose. as we've pretty clearly established, I am always super down to talk about my favorite shows :)

TL;DR: mythic quest is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone. unique episode/season layouts, dense worldbuilding, great writing and acting, lesbians, hilarious yet occasionally heart-wrenching plots, complex characters, and so much more. give it a shot. you won't regret it 👍👍👍 (plus season 4 is coming out this year!!!)

[newscoverage112]

Types of PR Agencies in India

Over the last 25 years there had been a lot of brand that established themselves in the market. Though it hasn’t been that long but they have somehow managed to gain enough customers for themselves. 

Some of these top PR agencies in India are:

Burson Cohn & Wolfe – Founded in 1953 this company’s journey had been quiet remarkable. Having proclaimed itself as archetype it’s name has been at peak if you search for top 10 PR agencies in India.

Adfactors India – It is one the most known brand amongst the marketing professionals. Having established in 1997 which would seem quiet young in the eyes of many people, it has managed to come a long way since it’s initial days. Known for it’s over the top creatives it one of the most sought after firms in noida.

Waggener Edstrom – Formed in 1983, it is seen as one of the biggest PR agency in existence till date. They have a massive team of content creators, PR experts, strategist who proves their client with extraordinary experience. This is why it is considered at the best PR agencies in India.

Edelman – It is a name known by every individual if they are in corporate world. Known for their needle like focus to implement the strategies for their clients. They believe in giving the best of everything to their clients by providing them with content that will keep their audience on toes. Being a public relations agency in India it has a vast market.

If we talk about organic PR agencies in delhi,then there in total 7 different types of PR agencies in total worldwide.

These agencies consist of :

Strategic Communications – This type of PR mainly focus on the planning part to fulfill your goals. Though strategies are import for all kind of business but for PR it is all the more entirely different segment. It is driven mainly by client’s objectives.

 

Media Relations – Communication and media relation is essential to any kind of PR firm but maintaining is important. As these media outlets will take the brand story further.

 

 

Internal Communications – For most companies nowadays internal dialogues matter a lot. Especially after the surge of social media when it has become became very easy to expose the truth about companies. Having a good relation with in the organization and companies is mandatory as these people can further grow your popularity with zero cost.

 

Community Relations – As you go ahead with your company you are bound to build certain group that shares similar tastes which can be done via blog writing, podcast, and social media channels. The community can help you up the ladder on their commitment to you. Hence, maintain good rapport with them should be worked on.

 

 

Crisis Communications – This what people majorly know about PR despite all the other feature that a PR agency does. PR people are professionals when it comes to handling the crisis at its root and helping organizations to deal with it.

 

Public Affairs – Apart from communities and employees the relationship is also maintained with external bodies like leader, politicians, TV personalities etc. This is basically to add some more value to your organization

 

 

Online Media Relations – Today no one is alien to building a strong online presence for your business. Not only it helps in putting you on the map but also act as a portfolio for you and you business. Based on the activity of your business you can build a community for your business with people who are into same kind of interest.

 

The PR agencies are mainly based on these types of PR.

[silvercrystalwhump]

Weddings and Wrecking Balls

TW: Owen Grant and everything that he entails, implied noncon, fear response to previous abuser,

Vincent Shield and Owen Grant belong to @ashintheairlikesnow

Tag List: @whumptywhumpdump

_

Vincent’s fingers run idly over the velvet seating of his limousine. Celebrity weddings are almost a yearly obligation of his to attend. Like clockwork, as spring rears its head a pair of camera-cooing stars drink until they forget about the temporary marriage they just created. To his disapproval, Vincent is expected to attend these events. His Publicist tries to get him in every photo, dance, and tabloid on the event as he could.

Today, however, is different.

Vincent looks up at Dmitri who sits across from him. Adorned in a pink suit and black tie that was a result of compromise.

“I’m still wondering how you managed to convince me to let you do that,” Vincent sighs as he takes a sip of water.

Dmitri, looking at Vincent, chuckles, “What? Getting the flamingo pattern for the inner lining of this suit. The only people that are going to see it are me and maybe you. Plus, MawMaw found it charming.”

“You are my plus one to the wedding of a world renowned fashion designer and an actress known for modeling,” Vincent says as he messes with the cuff of his suit jacket, “Please don’t tell anyone that you did that.”

“Oh please Vee, I look good in everything.”

Vincent rolls his eyes. The only reason he was comfortable with bringing him along is that Luis refused to have any paparazzi at the event. Only one of his photographers would be taking photos of the event and she would be glued to the married couple.

“I’m surprised you managed to get on good terms with Mary Anne,” Vincent says as he glances out the window, “In only a few minutes of conversation and she speaks the world of you.”

Dmitri gives Vincent a smile only he can give, “What can I say, people just love me.”

Vincent returns with a shrug and fusses a bit with his vest, “So do I.”

Dmitri smiles, “Calm Down Vee, your suit looks fine. We’re almost there and I doubt anything will go wrong since the love birds shooed off the cameras.”

He adjusts his tie for the fifth time since they left his house, running a finger over the purple and gold fabric. “I know, I wouldn’t have bought you if I wasn't certain.”

Dmitri reaches forward and takes one of Vincent’s hands. Pulling it away from him, Dmitri gives him a small kiss on the knuckles, “It’s gonna be okay Vee.” He squeezes the hand before letting it go.

Vincent nods just as the venue pulls into view. There are not the swarms of cameras that usually sit outside of these places. He puts the invitation in his hand and feels the car roll to a stop.

Dmitri gives Vincent a final smile before stepping out of the limousine. Vincent, throwing on his acting face, follows after.

The venue is relatively small compared to previous weddings he had attended in the past. It had a bit of charm about it that gave the place a welcome feel. Vincent flashes the invite to the doormen and they enter. Purple sashes and soft fairy lights draped from white columns and soft music plays in the background. People are already talking near the doors to the Procession.

“Vincent!” one of his costars and ex (sort of) walks towards them. Estelle, an actress with as much prestige as Vincent, if not more, steps up to them. “It's good to see you, who’s this?”

“Estelle this is Dmitri, Dmitri this is Estelle,” Vincent introduces the two.

“It's good to meet you,” Estelle smiles back.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Dmitri says, “If I may ask, aren’t you two-”

“Publicist reasons,” Estelle and Vincent say in unison, “Nothing personal.”

“Ah,” Dmitri nods, “I assumed as such.”

Estelle shakes her head, “Unless they disguise each other just assume that those breakups were for appessing paparazzi means.”

“That makes sense,” Dmitri says as his eyes scan the crowd.

Vincent looks up at the clock, 4:51. The Procession starts in about 10 minutes thankfully.

“Hey Vincent,” Estelle says, ripping Vincent out of LaLa land, “Were you here for Coriane and Anthony’s wedding last October?”

A laugh bubbles out of Vincent’s throat, “Of course, I had to send him four suits before I got approved for the obnoxious dress code.”

Dmitri chuckles, “Anthony McKay? Didn’t he divorce her within two months of that marriage?”

Estelle nods, “Here’s an interesting trend for you, the stricter the dress code at a celebrity wedding the shorter the marriage will last.”

Vincent shrugs, eyes dashing between the conversation and the door, “That was an explosive divorce.”

Dmitri and Estelle begin to talk and their voices slowly fade as Vincent zones out. His eyes unfocus and the lights seem to sparkle and twirl around in his vision. For a moment, he slinks into the background, enjoying the mindless chatter of those around him.

It’s nice.

“Question Vince,” Estelle stays drawing him back to reality, “How is that new show going? You haven’t committed to a show since you moved to your company now?”

“Oh you know…” Vincent starts as his eyes focus around a terrifyingly familiar tan sport coat, “I- sorry. Just liked the director, worked with him before.”

Estelle says something, but Vincent doesn’t hear it. Blond hair, almost matted in tiny places, combed but barely groomed… bile rises in his throat. He can’t move. Every fiber in his body coils in on itself and dies. The room gets too quiet yet far too loud. Please don’t turn around.

With the same nonchalant throw of his shoulder that he did in every laid-back situation he was ever in, he turns a heel, double-taking when he sees Vincent. A smile so harmlessly venomous that Vincent almost pukes right there and then. Owen Grant raises a hand and sends him a tiny wave.

“Vince the procession doors are open,” Estelle chirps, “You two can sit with us.”

“Thank you,” Dmitri says as his gaze wanders back to Vincent, “...Vince?”

Vincent, forcing himself to rip his eyes away from the omen of pain and death across the room, walks behind Estelle, “Coming.”

Dmitri steps up next to him, concern slowly materializing in the crease of his brow and behind his eyes, “You alright?”

“Just a long day.”

Dmitri pierces his lips but, to Vincent’s relief, doesn’t press the matter. They walk through the doors and Estelle sits next to another actress whose name is on the tip of Vincent’s tongue. He and Dmitri sit down next to them.

Vincent is too aware of the hairs rising on the back of his neck. It almost feels like he is existing under his skin, squirming but still simultaneously. His breathing is too loud, it’s almost deafening.

His eyes scan the room, barely glancing at the door. His eyes, for a spiral-inducing second, meet with glazed green. I’m going to puke.

Vincent can feel his presence choke him just as well as he did with his hands. Owen starts to talk and Vincent realizes with increasing horror-

He is sitting less than three feet right behind.

Everyone falls silent as the Procession begins. Vincent stares at the altarpiece and becomes far too apparent of his breathing. The lights are not bright enough anymore and the organ music drowns the sound of him hyperventilating as inconspicuous as possible. Of course, this event was too good to be true. No paparazzi allowed, No wedding crashers. Why wouldn’t he be here?

Time is chained to deadweights in the Procession.

Vincent feels a weight on his shoulder and the smell of a cologne he knew wasn’t Owen’s. His eyes flicker to Dmitri’s face. It’s saturated in concern and he mouths, Are you okay?

Vincent gives him the tiniest of nods and with it the biggest lie he could ever tell.

Dmitri raises an eyebrow. Vincent watches his eyes flick behind him and his face harden by a hair.

Just then, saving a guilty Vincent from Dmitri’s gaze, the doors to the possession room open. Mary Anne, the bride dressed in her gown, begins her walk down the aisle. Vincent spins his head around to watch like the rest of the guests.

Yet, a plague of stale air dries in his lungs when he sees Owen out of the corner of his eye. Not watching the bride. Watching him.

As she makes her way up to the altar, Vincent feels a foot poke at the back of his ankle. I’m not going to look down. The minister begins to speak. The words do not sound like words. Nothing is solid except for the tapping at his ankle.

Vincent’s eyes look down for what feels like years. A single shoe, a shoe he saw so many times thrown to the side when he was tied to the man’s headboard, now rubs at the side of his leg.

Please, Dmitri, don’t notice this. I do not want to explain this.

Vincent falls into the back of his mind, something he hasn’t done in years. The Procession passes like white noise. Nothing feels real to him.

The Procession ends.

Vincent stands.

So does Owen.

“Vince! How have you been? It’s been too long,” Owens asks with a smile that hides a sadistic, vial longing. Vincent freezes, instincts screaming for him to run but his body not knowing where to, “Fine.”

Just as Owen opens his disgusting mouth, Dmitri steps in between them and looks at Vincent, “We need to talk. Now.”

Vincent watches Dmitri’s entire body dwarf Owen in size. Dmitri, a whole ten inches taller and far broader than Owen could ever hope to be, stands like a wall between Vincent and his waking nightmare. Now, with a mountain standing in front of him, Vincent realizes where he is.

“Yeah, sure.”

It is almost to him that his only thought at that moment was Thank you for being mad at me.

Vincent lets Dmitri pull/drag him out of the Procession hall and into a quiet hallway and only then does he let him go.

“Vee, what happened.”

“Nothing happened, it's just nerves.”

Dmitri leans back on a foot and sighs, “There are very few certain things in this life and one of them is that you are a terrible liar.”

“I’m just a little frazzled Dmitri!”

“You were nearly crying!” Dmitri says as he drops his voice to a whisper, “The last time you did that was when you came over to my apartment and we tried to have---”

Vincent slams his hand over Dmitri’s mouth and growls silently, “Shutthefuckup.”

Dmitri pulls the hand off of his face, “If you’re so worked up then we can leave.”

“I can’t leave!” Vincent sputters, despite very much wanting to leave, “You can’t just leave someone’s wedding!”

“Yes you can, the door is less than 100 feet away, we can go if something is freaking you out so much!”

“I don’t---”

“Hey you two,” Estelle says as she whips around the corner, “Dinner’s out in the dining hall.”

Vincent instantly pulls up his acting face and smiles at her, “Just about to go!”

He grabs Dmitri and it’s VIncent’s turn to drag someone. He can’t leave this wedding. He would get ripped apart for it and he’s already done enough tearing at his reputation recently. Just stay near Dmitri and away from Owen.

He immediately regrets that decision

Dinner goes well or as well as it can go with Owen’s back to Vincent and every couple of minutes he looks over his shoulder and smiles at him.

He realizes he should’ve just left.

Toasts go around, the Best Man, the Maid of Honor, a few others. Just as Vincent thinks it’s about to all end, a quiet ringing from someone tapping a crystal glass with a metal knife. The sound vibrates into his head and makes his teeth implants hurt.

Implants that Owen caused him to get.

Owen stands with a smile that curdles Vincent’s blood, “I would like to make a toast to our lovely couple.”

I want to die. Right here. Right now.

“We have all seen our fair share of weddings, some more disastrous than others, but I believe I can confidently say this has been the best that I have attended in a long time.”

It’s because I’m here, isn’t it?

“And from just looking at you two I can tell that your marriage will be a long and prosperous one,” Owen moves his gaze to Vincent’s eyes and he beams a sickeningly hopeful simile, “And I hope that mine is just as prosperous as yours.”

No, never, fuck off.

Owen raises his glass and locks his eyes to Vincent’s, “To our prosperous friends.”

Vincent looks down at the table as he raises his glass, trying to ignore the beating eyes eating at his flesh. The wine, as he drinks, tastes like death.

Dmitri pokes him in the leg and leans down to a whisper, “Do you want to head out, you’re still freaking out.”

He is, he can feel his fingers shake around the glass. Vincent’s vision spins under the weight of Owen’s gaze. It’s almost like he can feel the twisted fantasies building behind Owen’s eyes. A dam of thoughts that Vincent knows all too well what happens when they are released.

He, ripping him out of his stewing, feels Dmitri’s hand on his thigh, “When everyone gets up to dance we can disappear, okay?”

Vincent gives him a tiny nod as he takes the first mouthful of cake. His eyes do not leave his plate. His own thoughts begin to seem distant to him as if he was observing them through thick glass.

Nothing feels real.

Is this real?

People begin to trickle out of the room, smiling as they take people and in hand. The newlyweds beaming as they float across the dining hall to the dance floor, taking everyone’s eyes. Vincent stands and leans into Dmitri, “I’m going to head out, you wait a few minutes and then leave so no one suspects anything.”

“Alright,” Dmitri says, flashing a warm smile, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Vincent stands and skirts the crowd, heading out towards the empty hallways where he can leave. The weight across his shoulders lifts as the door approaches. He can breathe.

“Vince, Wait!”

The weight comes slamming back into his lungs, knocking the air out. His muscles turn to ice as Owen’s footsteps. Instinctually, and to his dismay, he turns around and faces his banshee.

“It’s been ages, I’m so happy i could catch you here.”

Why?

“Yeah… it has been a while.” Not long enough.

Owen strides up to Vincent with sheer confidence as a guiltless sibling. He chuckles, “Well he kinda stole you away when we were first talking so I’m glad I caught you alone!”

“Um, I-”

“Since you have been so distant since we last spoke. Time’s really flown hasn’t it with all your success,” Owen interrupts, leaning casually back on a leg.

“Yeah,” Vincent says, his vision blurring, “I need to go Owen.”

As Vincent spins around to leave, Owen steps forward and grabs his shoulder. His nails dig into the suit shoulder and pull back slightly, “Just five minutes.”

“I need to go,” Vincent breathlessly says, beginning to shake, “I don’t have five minutes.”

“Really?” Owen chuckles as he leans over Vincent’s shoulder. He can feel the pressure of Owen trying to pull him back ever so gently. The slight figure of Owen’s face curses Vincent’s periphery.

If Dmitri sees you like this you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.

“No,” Vincent states with as firm of a voice as he can muster, “I don’t.”

He pulls away from Owen’s grip and walks out of the venue, feeling Owen’s gaze fade as he walks through the silent parking lot. The air in his lungs finally has the room to move as the finite particles escape into the cool night air. The limousine is silent as he slides onto the velvet seats. Vincent taps the window to the driver’s section and quietly says, “Drive up to the main doors when Dmitri steps out.”

A nod later and Vincent rolls up the divider between the driver and the guest seats. He throws off his suit jacket onto the chair next to him. He feels the vehicle lurch forward and watches as the light spills inside as Dmitri slides in.

“Are you alright?!” Dmitri says with hushed alarm.

Only then does Vincent realize he’s crying. He reaches up and wipes the droplet of salt and fear from his face and just fades. The world is there yet it’s not, Vincent can’t tell what’s changing around him and time just slips through his fingers.

Everything focuses again when he’s home.

Dmitri had wrapped a quilted blanket over his shoulders and they are now sitting on his couch. Vincent feels Dmitri’s body heat and arms wrapped around his torso. He sits forward a little and stares at the clock, 9:03.

“I’m sorry,” Vincent murmurs, his voice hoarse.

“Don’t apologise Vee,” Dmitri whispers back, “But what happened?”

Vincent stands up, wobbling on his legs for a moment. Seeing his jacket and Dmitri’s tossed onto a chair, he sighs, “It’s- complicated.”

Dmitri sits forward, eyes both tired and concerned. “Vee, you… you clocked out of a solid hour and a half. You don’t do that unless.”

“Dmitri.”

Dmitri falls silent, his loosened tie falling off his broad shoulders. He slowly stands, eyes drooping under the weight of sleepiness, “I need to head back home before it gets too late.”

An air of guilt falls between them and Dmitri walks for the door. A longing bleeds in Vincent's chest, to spit it out and get it over with. Those are not the words that leave his mouth.

“Wait- I- Can you just stay tonight. It's- I’m- just- please.”

Dmitri pauses and nods. The silence loses weight as Dmitri steps back from the front door. As Dmitri starts to pass him for the stairs, Vincent pulls him into a hug. Burying his face in Dmitri’s chest, he tries to use his warmth for even a drop of comfort. Dmitri wraps his arms back around Vincent and the two stand there in the dark living room.

Vincent only hopes that the nightmares that will come are short-winded.

[j4ya]

Hey Jaya!

Since you're 28, I guess you have job?

So, how did you get a job

And is it the job you were trying to get, like, is it what you wanted when you were in your college years?

Sincerely,

A worried college student

Hi!!

When I got my first job, it took a lot of applications. But the first thing I told my parents after graduation was that I was taking a month off. I’d been through so much stress and everything and I told them to give me a month break and then I’d throw myself into job searching. And that really helped reset my head!

Neither my job then nor my job now align with my major but honestly most people don’t find jobs within the exact field they studied in nowadays. I did a lot of college recruiting at the companies I worked for and many are just looking to see that you completed a degree (shows you have a set of skills and ability to learn and work with others, meet a deadline, etc) and did it well, which is why I push so hard for majoring in something you’re passionate about that you’ll do well with. A higher GPA can look more impressive for the job you’re applying for than the major itself.

Also if you’re willing to relocate, your chances of finding a job you like go up 1000%. If you’re young and you can afford it (many companies give a relocation bonus too) then do it. Most people I know my age are working in a different state than they grew up in/went to school in and I don’t know anyone who fully regrets it. You learn a lot, including independence and financial management, it helps you grow up a ton.

So don’t worry about trying to find something exactly in your field. Find something you wouldn’t mind doing, especially for your first job. Something that uses your strengths and hopefully a company that’s willing to invest in you through training and such. Once you have one professional (post-college) job on your resume then that becomes the main focal point from then on, so any future jobs will focus more on your work than what you did at school. For that reason you want to find a first job that’ll really help you grow, learn to work in a professional environment, and give you diverse experiences.

Once you start looking for jobs, commit to it. Looking for work is a job in itself. You might have to submit 100s of applications — don’t let that get you down. My biggest tips would be to take advantage of any resumé help being offered, to do practice interviews so you become comfortable with it, and to stay organized.

1) Make multiple versions of your resume depending on the fields you applied for. I was applying for recruiting, analyst, and marketing roles, primarily, and I had different resumes for each of those fields. I fine tuned them to show off specific skills for each field, highlighting certain functions or leadership roles that aligned with the job. Look at examples online and play around with your formatting. Your resume for your first job shouldn’t be more than one page — most recruiters won’t even look past the first page, so only keep what’s important. But don’t forget that you can adjust margins and reduce font size to make everything fit.

1a) I can’t stand cover letters but you’ll probably need them. Look at examples to make sure it looks like you want it to and make a template that you can easily fill out for each application so you don’t have to spend too much time on it. But again, you can make specific versions depending on what kinds of jobs you’re applying for. And always proofread before you send to make sure you have the right company and job mentioned on there!!

2) Do practice interviews with anyone you can. You need to become familiar with the pressure and situation. Get your family, friends, professors, counselors, anyone that’s willing to help to do it. Before you sit down for an interview, write out all the questions you think they might ask and practice your responses!! This really helps! It’ll make you sound more confident and prepared as well. Also always have at least one question to ask the recruiter. Ask them about what they like about the company, or what challenges they’ve faced and overcome in their role, something like that.

2a) I know this seems obvious but dress up for the interviews, even if it’s remote. It shows that you’re putting in effort. If you’re remote then make sure you have good lighting & a plain/non-distracting background. Keep your phone on silent and stay engaged when they’re speaking.

3) Make a spreadsheet to keep track of where you applied, when you did it, who you talked to, etc. Track which resume/cover letter you used as well and what kind of job it is. ALWAYS SEND A THANK YOU EMAIL RIGHT AFTER THE INTERVIEW. This makes an impression and keeps you on their mind. When it comes to following up, I think a week is a decent time to send an email out. If you don’t get a reply then, send another follow up in a couple weeks. Past that if they don’t reply (sucky of them tbh) then I’d assume you didn’t get the job. But that’s fine! Keep going at it!

3a) Don’t be afraid to fight for your pay. It can be really anxiety inducing and stressful but especially if you see a similar job pay more than the job you’re applying for, you have every right to request more pay. DON’T say yes to the first salary offered — that was a mistake I made. It never hurts to give a higher salary request, you’ll almost always get an offer higher than what they initially started with.

Lastly, don’t be disheartened. Just because you didn’t get a job doesn’t mean you won’t get a similar one or another one within the same company. Honestly I used to just sit and apply for every open relevant position in a company if the company was good because that makes a big difference. Keep your morale up. It never hurts to apply, even if you’re underqualified. You never know. Be confident in your skills!

And I’ll also say, this may not be something everyone can find or be picky about, but if you can find a job that has good benefits, if the company is great, go for it. Put as much as you can into your retirement — if you can, commit to the max percentage, especially if your company matches your contribution. If they give you insurance, take advantage of it. Go for dental and vision checkups, visit your doctor. Don’t put this off until you lose it. Take advantage of EVERYTHING your company offers. Trainings, expos, employee groups, etc. These all help develop your professional experience.

I hope this helps!!

Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any other questions! Good luck & I believe in you!!

[deonideatta]

hi hi i heard you like chief kim and i'm here to get all the intel on why it's a good drama 😊 and what you love about park jae bum's other dramas 😊 pls let me know if there's romance bc that's the oxygen i breathe when i watch a show 💕

Hello!!! Thank you for asking me about Chief Kim!!!! I can go on about it for ages lol. This got a bit long so i’m putting it under a cut

Chief Kim (aka Good Manager) is a comedy office drama with 20 eps, and it aired in 2017. There isn’t a main romance plotline, but don’t let that put you off! It’s an incredible drama in so many ways. (tho there is a subtle romance side plot, but it doesn’t involve the main character and it’s never the main focus, though it is cute). It does feature a bromance that was so great that the two actors literally won an award for it tho lol, so there’s also that!

In a way, the general premise is somewhat similar to Vincenzo in that it’s the main character and an unlikely team of others fighting a big corporation. The comedic tone is also more or less the same. The drama follows Kim Seong Ryong (the titular Chief Kim, played by Namgoong Min), a man with a talent for handling numbers who goes from running a seedy accounting firm to quite accidentally becoming a champion of employees rights in one of the biggest corporations in the country. He originally joins the company with the goal of embezzling a lot money and moving abroad, but he gets swept up in office politics surrounding high executives and the sinister goings on surrounding the position he was recruited for, as well as the shady things the higher-ups want him to do and the suspicion of the other members of his department. Eventually he starts to work alongside them to fight the corruption of the higher ups, and quickly becomes the bane of top management’s existence by being so incredibly annoying that they begin to regret hiring him.

It’s the kind of drama that really gets you to laugh, while still being incredibly heartwarming. The main character is so unashamedly funny, and the character dynamics are all so warm, and none of it ever seems forced. The first tag for the drama on MyDramaList is “character development”, and that says a lot! There’s so much growth that goes on for all the characters, even some of the villains! It’s especially funny because to begin with all the good things Kim Seong Ryeong does are completely by accident, and he’s annoyed but also pleased with all the attention it gets him. Over time he begins to own it, and begins to actively try to stand up to the corrupt people at the top of the company. The other highlight for me besides the humor is definitely the characters. From the eccentric main character, to the no-nonsense second in command in his department Yoon Ha Kyung, to the aggressive finance director Seo Yul who is always eating (one of my all time favourite characters, played by 2PM’s Junho), to the janitor lady who always roasts everyone, there isn’t a single dull character, whether good or bad. And Seo Yul gets one of the best character arcs I’ve ever seen in a kdrama. You get to watch the characters struggle and triumph, and you feel for them because their struggles feel so real, and the drama really gets you invested in them. You see the ways in which they fight to survive as normal working class citizens and you want them to win.

It differs from Vincenzo in that the main character isn’t considered evil and loses his less savoury traits over the course of the drama (his character arc is one of becoming a more upstanding citizen), and the message is one of fighting against corporate greed using the corporate system against itself in order to make things better for the average working citizen. But there’s the same plotting, and the same feeling of rooting for the protagonist team to win as you watch them plot and plan. I never rewatch things, but i’ve rewatched Chief Kim twice already and i’m looking forward to rewatching it again soon (just writing about it is making me want to rewatch it right now lol). It especially hits well for me because i love office dramas, and the humor and the bromance are just right. (Also, not entirely related, but it’s the first drama Kim Seonho was in!)

Another Park Jaebum drama i can definitely recommend is The Fiery Priest! It’s also a comedy action drama with 20 eps (released in 2019), and it follows Kim Hae Il (Kim Nam Gil), a catholic priest with a real temper, as he works to solve the mystery surrounding the death of a senior priest. No romance there either, but it’s got the same humor as Chief Kim and Vincenzo, and the same overarching found family trope (that really shines for this one). It’s darker than Chief Kim, but not as dark as Vincenzo. The plot is very intriguing, and it’s the kind of drama you feel compelled to keep watching to see what happens next. And the host of characters in that drama is still one of my favourites to this day. Every character was incredibly written, and they all played vital roles in the overall story. Again, lots of character development all round, and great character arcs not just for the main character (even for a few of the villains!). Plus it was lovely to watch the various characters interact, get closer, and build relationships. Such an iconic squad. Not to mention how funny it is?? And the fight scenes??? In fact, I enjoyed it so much that when I checked Park Jaebum’s page on MyDramaList after watching it around June last year and saw Vincenzo as an upcoming project, I added it to my plan to watch list immediately even though there was only a single line of synopsis lol. It’s also got an absolute banger of a soundtrack!

When you think about it, all three (Chief Kim, TFP and Vincenzo) can be simplified to “guy with dubious past sets out to fight corruption and creates a great support circle in the process”. All three are dramas of finding people who care about you and are willing to fight alongside you, and fighting for your convictions/what you think is right. Each main character starts out as a somewhat solitary figure, and you get to watch as they each find people who are willing to fight alongside them and support them. What exactly those specific convictions are varies in each drama, but Park Jaebum writes the character development arcs incredibly each time, and the relationships between the characters are so real and so satisfying to watch. And yet the integrity of the main character in each drama is never compromised either, it’s shown that they can grow and become better without losing themselves. The growth is also in the way that they learn to work with and rely on others, because teamwork makes the dream work. And then to cap it all off he lets them have victories, and he makes it SO satisfying??? There are highs and there are lows, and you feel all of those right there with the characters, which makes the victories feel so so good. In each we see the ensemble cast get involved with the fight and the plotting, and we get to see all their epic plans and their execution, and the victories they win that build up over time. And it’s so satisfying to me! I love it a lot, just thinking about it is making me smile lol. It also shows how well humor and darker/more serious plotlines/events are balanced in the dramas, neither is compromised in favour of the other, but it always works so well that the humor never feels forced or out of place. As someone who doesn’t like overbearingly dark shows, I really appreciate that. They all give you lots to laugh at, while not losing any of the plot to the funny.

Of course there are differences, notably the romance, and the fact that Vincenzo is bad vs bad rather than good vs bad like the other two. They deal more with redemption (especially The Fiery Priest), but that works for the stories that are being told, and it’s very well executed.

It’s worth noting that Park Jaebum also wrote Good Doctor and 4 seasons of God’s Quiz. I haven’t checked those out yet, but I’ve heard good things about all of them. He also wrote Blood, I haven’t seen that one either but opinions seem to be split on how good it was. All of those are medical dramas (which is the reason I haven’t watched them lol, i can’t stand medical dramas) from before 2017, when he wrote Chief Kim. It seems he’s been on a roll since then, good for him and good for us lol. You can see everything he’s written on his MyDramaList page.

Overall I enjoyed the Park Jaebum dramas I have seen for first and foremost the comedy, but also for the warmth of the character relationships and for how well developed/written each character is. And I love how he balances the humor with more poignant/darker moments, I laughed a lot watching all three dramas, but I’ve cried over each of them as well. It’s a good balance to have, it gives you a good plot to be interested in, but doesn’t keep you stressed and sombre the whole way through. I’ve seen people say that Vincenzo wouldn’t be as good if it wasn’t so wacky, and I fully agree. It’s the same for both TFP and Chief Kim, and that balance is definitely what I appreciate most in Park Jaebum’s dramas. I know I will laugh, but I also know I will get an incredible plot and incredible characters, and that’s really important for me. Plus I know I can trust that there will be a good ending because the writer cares about his characters.

I definitely recommend checking out both TFP and Chief Kim after Vincenzo is done, especially since they’re so similar in terms of comedic tone and basic plot direction. If you ever get to watching either of them feel free to hmu to chat about it!! There’s lots of plot stuff that can be can discussed.

lol this got v long (i have lots to say about how much i love these dramas haha), but I hope it’s helpful!!!

[kitkatopinions]

The baby boy himself, Whitley!

(for the ask meme)

Whitley is so my baby, I love my child so much. I’m realizing I say ‘I’m really excited for this one’ for like every character I get for this ask game, but it’s because I’m having so much fun! These take a bit to write, but they are honestly so interesting to me, so as an fyi, if anyone does have any character they want to ask my about, but thinks they might be too late, or I might be uninterested, I’m still totally interested! It just might take me a bit to answer. :)

My top three ships for the character

Whitley/Oscar is my top ship for this in canon currently. It works best if Ozpin could somehow be separated from Oscar (which is theoretically possible I guess,) but yeah. Farm boy vs rich boy, they look cute together, their personalities could vibe, and they’re both snarky, but at heart caring and compassionate. Whitley/Mercury. I mentioned this in my Mercury ask, but I was writing a fic with @why-i-hate-rwby-now where Whitley and Mercury were thrown together and had to work together to escape their abusers, and I just kind of started shipping them while writing it. O.O Also Whitley/Penny is cute as heck and I could totally see her grounding him and also making him loosen up, while Penny thinks he’s funny and interesting.

My three least favorite ships for the character

Whitley/Blake. I don’t understand this ship, Blake just feels like more of an adult atm compared to Whitley - a literal child. (Yes, I realize I ship Whit with Merc, but A. I thought Merc was sixteen while I was writing that fanfiction and he acts kind of on the young side, while Blake has been acting ‘as an adult’ and being treated ‘as an adult’ for two seasons at least while directly talking to Whitley, and has always been more of a mature character for her age anyway.) But on top of that, Blake seems to treat Whitley like an in the way child and is kinda judgey to him, while Whitley barely seems to notice her. Whitley/Henry Marigold just feels bad. And Whitley/Yang. Again, Yang has been written as a nineteen year old demanding to be treated as an adult (though I wanna say she’s less mature than Blake) but also Yang is a hotheaded character and has been acting pushy lately, and that’s fine as a character flaw, but I feel like it just puts me off her for Whitley especially.

My biggest criticism for the character

He’s treated like he’s not a victim??? Like, his abuse and neglect and even his struggles are just... Not really gone into or acknowledged very much, Weiss acts like he has to prove himself before she can show him the slightest bit of sympathy or affection when she’s his big sister, his relationship with Jacques is glossed over and he isn’t given closure there, Willow’s neglect isn’t really acknowledged seriously, Winter seeming totally disinterested in him doesn’t feel like it even matters, Weiss is treated as blameless in her and Whitley’s problems. And the writing kind of frames Whitley as having gotten a redemption, when the worst things he did was be a bit of an asshole while in an abusive situation as like a fourteen-fifteen year old with no aura or glyphs or fighting ability. Emerald and Whitley’s volume 8 arcs should not be comparable! Emerald is a full on murderer and was still willingly working with Cinder to attack people as a nineteen year old woman, and yet she and Whitley are treated very similarly by the narrative (helping one person and then that ‘making up for’ their ‘past mistakes’ and then them just being on the good side and carrying the team’s actions until the pathways arrive and they both go to Vacuo. To be clear, I think this framing was too much for Whitley since he never even needed a redemption at all imo, and not enough for Emerald, the literal murderer of Penny who was just recently willingly helping Cinder try and murder Penny once again.) Whitley should’ve been treated as the child he is, he should’ve been treated as the victim he is.

My favorite thing about the character

His potential dynamics, but specifically with Weiss. He and Weiss both had almost the exact same upbringing, only Weiss actually had more support, but guys... The way the two of them coped had similarities, but were also very different. Weiss hid behind anger and sternness, Whitley hid behind peppiness and smiles. Weiss copied Winter, Whitley copied Jacques. Weiss was always afraid of people putting on acts around her, Whitley was constantly putting on acts as a means of survival. Each of them are plagued by jealousy, pettiness, judgmental behavior, and they both have good qualities that are similar, but they both are too prejudice against each other to see those good qualities and need to learn to understand where the other is coming from. Weiss is a fighter, but a follower, while Whitley seems to have a bit of a ‘fawn’ tendency, but plans and enacts schemes under the table (even if it doesn’t have to be, like with Nora! Whitley’s instincts were to just figure out how to help Nora and then go off and do it alone without telling any of the obviously antsy people with guns what he was doing - after he was spying on them lol.) I just love the possibilities that exist with two characters that are so similar, but so fundamentally different. Also I’d love to see him resentful of Winter and snarky and passive aggressive with her, and Winter not really getting the problem, and Weiss having to mediate between them. Idk, there are so many possibilities of amazing interactions and connections Whitley could have with the others, and he could be a really new, good viewpoint if he was allowed to flourish. And maybe became kind of a ‘guy in the chair’ more permanent part of the team. Like, I know we don’t need more character bloat, but let me dream!

A headcanon I have about them

Before Weiss lost her inheritance, Whitley was sort of tasked with learning everything but being head of the company, like he was learning the financial side of things, the technological side of things, ordering, inventory, scheduling, all about Dust and mine operations... And Whitley’s naturally academic and a fast learner, so he absorbed a lot of it. But yeah, I think Jacques was trying to train Whitley up to be a sort of always available PA of Weiss’s that could handle anything she didn’t want to do / was too busy to do, and that was something Whitley really resented too. His skillset was essentially being crafted around helping Weiss, but never learning how to actually manage the company itself and severely lacking in the social side of things, like he’d never be able to make a proper speech. Also, like pretty much everyone I think he plays piano and writes his own music compositions (which in my headcanons he subconsciously writes to include vocals only for him to then get bothered that even his music seems influenced by Weiss. XD) Also I know this is three headcanons, but if he had been trained to fight, he would’ve used duel pistols and would’ve eventually developed a ‘born out of trauma’ semblance.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

I’d just allow his status as a victim to be recognized and for him to have the sympathy I feel his character deserves. I’d have him and Weiss both framed as having contributed to their bad relationship, but Weiss - as the sister four to five years older than him - would be the one who makes the first moves towards repairing it, proving she has changed enough to put aside her pettiness and be there for the brother she does truly love. I’d also get Willow away from him, or at least let Whitley be angry and distant and not have their relationship fixed over the course of an in-universe day. This is why I say there should’ve been another Atlas season, which I think is what I’d do when it boils down to it. With every plot point coming fast and then being pushed on the back burner for the next plot point, there’s no time to focus on any of it or to give the character’s sufficient growth from it. So then things like Willow having her hand glued to Whitley’s shoulder feels very ingenuine, because their ‘growth’ was so rushed. So yeah, I’d really just add an extra season and let Weiss recognize that Whitley is also an abuse victim, make her be the one to start making steps to be there for him, and let things like his relationship with his mother come slower and not be an easy fix. Also I’d have Winter acknowledge that she has a brother more regularly and have her actually care about him, even if she hasn’t shown it well at all.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Whitley has no assigned character allusion and his name doesn’t offer very many hints, since it literally just means white meadow/field snow, but it’s easy enough to assume that like Weiss and Jacques - Snow White and Jack Frost - Whitley’s character allusion has something to do with the cold. I agree with the general opinion that he’s connected to ‘the Snow Queen,’ and is likely meant to be Kai, a once kind hearted boy who gets a piece of a magic mirror in his eye that only lets him see the bad in people and gets kidnapped by the snow queen. His best friend Gerda goes on a quest to save him - encountering a land of eternal summer and a talking crow amongst other things - and temporarily forgets him due to an enchantment, but then finds him almost frozen over and saves him by crying on him and through the power of her love that literally makes people and nature bend to her will, Gerda rescues Kai and dislodges the mirror piece from his eye so that he can be cheerful again. Pretty in tune with how the writers wrote things. I don’t mind this, but if Whitley is meant to be Kai and Weiss is meant to be his Gerda, there were two missed opportunities here that could’ve been great. One, Gerda is reminded of her love for Kai whenever she sees red roses, and Ruby and Whitley have a few similar mannerisms and kind of similar coping through their ‘cheery exterior’s’ even f Ruby’s lost all her sass and Whitley’s never had her spazzy, dorky, rough around the edges traits. I think it would’ve been cute and make for a more interesting dynamic if Weiss had mentioned to Ruby in volumes 1-3 that Ruby reminds her of her brother, and if it had made Weiss both harder on Ruby (since she and Whitley are estranged and he does drive her crazy a lot lol) but it also made Ruby all the more endearing to her and is one of the reasons they could be friends fairly fast despite Weiss’s early animosity (since she loves her brother and the traits he shares with Ruby compliment hers.) The next missed opportunity I can think of is that everyone thinks Kai is dead in the Snow Queen for a bit, but Gerda doesn’t believe it and goes looking for him instead. You could easily fit this into a narrative where everyone else has given up Whitley as a lost cause, but Weiss won’t believe that and is determined to help and to get close to Whitley again, which is what I think I’d want to go with. But also, a Whitley death fake out? That could be very good and very emotional. And it’d be easy omg. Weiss could think the Hound has killed him sometime during the fight (even if just for a moment,) but also if Whitley had been the first one to fall in the void instead of going through to Vacuo O.O 

Idk if we’ll ever get his character allusion confirmed, but if it isn’t someone from the Snow Queen, I feel like the whole fandom will say “What?!” at the exact same time. XD 

[consumedkings-archive]

a kiss after a long time apart + misolde xoxo

hi dove thanks so much for letting me consume my day with thoughts of Them : )) this went long but mostly because these two don’t know how to shut the fuck up !!! and thank you for making this gorgeous header for me with our little dark comedy sitcom vibes ;--;

i. parental disaster ✤ michael hughes x isolde khan

words: 3.2k

prompt:  “a kiss after a long time apart” taken from this list!

rating: mature, nothing explicit just some teasing insinuations

warnings: pretty much none! the biggest warning is the fact that somehow these two manage to ever keep their clothes on for anything. also softness, and isolde’s parents being nosy, and soli being in her feelings for .0000005 seconds

It shouldn’t be bothering her so much that he isn’t answering her calls.

It shouldn’t be, but it is, because while her parents chatter happily in her living room, she’s been trying to figure out how she can give Michael some kind of warning before he drops by. He always does, when he’s been gone for a while; comes straight from the airport to her house, sauntering in like he isn’t suffering severe jet lag, with that boyish smile on his face.

Of course, her parent’s arrival isn’t unannounced. Isolde had just—forgotten. Which is unlike her, in every sense of the word, unlike her in so many ways but no matter which way she looks at it, the fact of the matter is: her parents told her they were coming to visit, she had confirmed, and then promptly forgotten about it.

Isolde has a glass of wine in her hand that’s mostly untouched when, over the sound of music playing and pleasant chitchat, a car door closes and her mother says, “Oh, is that Michael?” with such warm surprise that it’s astounding Isolde doesn’t about fall over herself trying to get up from the couch.

A warning. He just needs a fair warning, is all, so that he’s not stressed out, since they hadn’t talked about it at all. That’s all. She’s not worried. That would be silly.

By the time she’s set her wine glass down and is picking her way through the tangle of family’s suitcases, Michael has already swept through the door and announces, “Honey, I’m—oh.”

He slows in the foyer, his gaze darting from her to the family members she’s collected in her living room: her younger sister, her father, and her mother. Michael clears his throat and shifts on his feet, the jovial expression quickly muting itself into what she can only imagine is his best fast-paced attempt at professional.

Avery chirps from the floor, “Hi, Mike!” and he waves—or does his best, anyway, when it seems like his brain is trying to calculate too many things at one time.

“Michael,” and she’s hurrying, her own frantic energy translating into a gesture that is only hands fluttering aimlessly, unsure where to land, “my parents are here. My dad, Basir, and my mother, Isla, and—well, you know Avery already, uh—”

“That’s cool,” Michael replies, and then closes his eyes for a minute like he regrets the words instantly. “I mean—that’s great, Soli, I would have showered first or somethin’, if—it’s really nice to meet you—”

“It’s okay, really,” Basir assures quickly. “We’re not worried about it. Isolde said you were away on business. We just got in a few hours ago ourselves.”

Her dad says it like that’s supposed to be comforting, or something, which she knows it isn’t because both her mother and father look perfectly pressed and as though they have been there for days already.

She can see the gears grinding laboriously in his brain, so she says, “I’m going to help him bring his things in,” and then promptly turns Mike around and pushes him into the kitchen. Too late, she thinks, they know his shit isn’t in the kitchen, but she’s already committed to their path, and the sliding door separating the kitchen and the living room will afford them some privacy.

This isn’t the way that she wants this to happen. She’d wanted plenty of time to prepare—calculated risks only, the kind that she’s sure she’s going to win because there’s no way she won’t. It’s not even a matter of being worried that her parents will like Michael; they will, of course. It’s a matter of him liking them.

And maybe a little about them liking him.

“I tried calling,” she says, once the door is closed, “I tried calling like—eight times, Michael—”

“I was on a plane!” It’s not anger hiking up his voice, it’s distress; he’s rummaging around in the cabinet, looking for something to calm his nerves. “And you know I like to just drive—”

“Straight here, I know.” She opens a different cabinet than the one he’s digging through and plants the bottle of whiskey he keeps there in his hand. It’s quickly followed by a glass to put it in, though she’s sure he’s considering the logistics of just drinking it directly from the bottle. “And you don’t check your phone because you’ve been working for weeks straight. Anyway, they’re only here for a few days, and they’re very excited to meet you.”

Michael makes a miserable little noise around a mouthful of whiskey. Fingers rake through his hair, tousling it all out of place as he stands in the middle of the kitchen looking entirely out of place. His brows furrow, and he presses his palm to his forehead like he’s trying to focus. “Okay, alright, uh—your dad is Basir, your mom is Isla, dad’s a diplomat and mom’s a professor of...P-...Uhh...Fuck, it’s—you’ve told me before, I know what it is—”

“Michael.”

“—does start with a p, right? There can’t be that many degrees that—”

“Mikey.”

“Yeah.”

Isolde cups both sides of his face in her hands. “It’s not the SATs, you don’t need to have an essay answer ready.” She takes the glass out of his hand and takes a swallow. “Also, it’s political science and psychology.”

“Oh,” he replies dryly, “if that’s all.”

“She also sometimes does independent studies for comparative world religions, or Latin, if there’s enough interest. She’s vegetarian, and my dad is not. He prefers whiskey over any clear liquor and my mom only drinks wine, except on special occasions.”

He watches her for a moment, the corner of his mouth ticking upward. “You wanna keep that glass? Sounds like you might need it more than me,” he prompts, and she finds herself smiling in spite of the way things could not have gone any less than she planned it.

“You were gone for longer than usual,” she says by way of avoiding acknowledging her stress. There’s a bit of a pout in her voice, and she busies her hands with pouring more alcohol into the glass so that she doesn’t sound so pathetic when she adds, “I missed you.”

“You did?” His voice bleeds with amusement, the cat that ate the canary, as he noses her cheek. “Isolde missed me? Tried and true reptilian ice queen—”

“You know what? They can have you back.”

Michael flashes a grin at her. He’s sidled close, crowded her up pleasantly against the counter. “I missed you too.”

He’s close. Not as close as she’d like—their ritual of shucking his clothes the second he walks through her door after a long business trip so that she can drag him straight into the shower foregone in lieu of their guests—but close enough that when his nose brushes hers, she’s reminded that she hasn’t had the chance to kiss him in quite some time.

But when Michael leans in to kiss her, she tilts her head back, just out of his reach.

“How much,” she idles, their company forgotten, “did you miss me?”

“I had plans to show you,” he replies lowly, “you know, before I found out I’d have to behave.”

“You always have to behave.”

“When it’s so fun to have you scold me?” He tilts his head. “C’mon, doll, you know me better than that.”

Isolde’s eyes narrow playfully, and when she opens her mouth to respond the only thing stopping her from reminding him what happens when he decides to inspire a scolding out of her is the sound of the sliding door creeping open and her dad’s tentative voice.

“Soli?” His voice is light, coddling. “If now’s a bad time, you know you can tell us. We won’t mind.”

Oh, right. That.

“No, daddy, it’s fine,” she replies instantly, turning as Michael disengages from her to fetch another glass out of the cabinet. “I was just—”

“Debriefing,” Basir interjects, not unkindly, because he knows her. A smile crinkles the corner of his eyes, the gesture warming his expression. “Your mother is wondering if Michael needs help finding his bags in the kitchen.”

“Oh, we’ll get those later.” Isolde takes the last swallow of whiskey out of the glass she’s commandeered from Michael. “Out in a minute, just making a drink.”

“Should I give your mother your wine, then?”

“She’ll get more use of it than I will.”

He waves his hand, sliding the door shut again, and Michael sets his new glass next to hers.

“He seems nice,” is what he offers after a minute.

“He is nice,” Sol agrees, reaching up and patting Michael’s shoulder. “And you’re going to have ample opportunity to experience it for yourself.”

He grimaces—surely, in anxiety and not in detesting the incoming interaction—and presses a quick kiss to her temple.

“I can’t wait.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

All in all, it goes well.

Of course it goes well. Isolde knows that it will—even if the abrupt way the whole meeting has come about is enough to make her want to rip her hair out—but it’s still a comfort to watch it play out; Michael sitting on the couch close to her as she tucks her knees up beneath her on the floor and goads her father into playing her in a game of chess, Avery watching from the sidelines and her mother surveying with the same kind of amused, watchful gaze that she always does.

Isla asks Michael a lot of questions. She asks about his family, pleasantly gliding over it when it seems like he doesn’t want to express a lot about that particular subject, and what he does for work—another subject that he manages to delicately step through—and does he like living in Hope County? It’s very beautiful, has he ever wanted to live anywhere? Does he travel often for work? Is he an only child? Does he want children of his own?

“Mother,” Isolde scolds, pushing the black bishop into place. “Please do not interrogate Michael about if he wants to procreate with me or not.”

“Not you particularly,” her mother defends, “but just in general.”

“It’s important to know.” Basir frowns, watching as Isolde dispatches of his rook. “You should always be on the same page, you know.”

“Perhaps you should focus on this page we’re on now, before I checkmate you.”

He grumbles and takes a sip of his drink. Absently, Isolde reaches up behind her, fingers affectionately finding Michael’s as she studies the board.

“So,” Isla continues sweetly, “children?”

“Michael,” Isolde says, “you don’t have to answer.”

“I don’t mind,” he laughs, and when she looks at him over her shoulder with a scrutinizing gaze, he lifts his eyebrows. “I don’t mind.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t have a set number,” Michael allows, his fingers tangled with hers as she preoccupies herself with the chessboard. “I always think I’d be happiest with whatever my partner wants.”

“Good boy,” Basir praises, beaming. He waves a finger “You can always negotiate for a different number, but not if you try and set it in stone.”

Isolde sighs. “We will not be negotiating for children.”

“Why not? It could be fun.”

“You could make it a game,” Avery suggests, pulling the throw blanket more securely around her shoulders. “Soli picks the number, Michael coerces and negotiates.”

A laugh billows out of Mike behind her, and he says, “Nah, that’s too easy. I’d get whatever I wanted. Wouldn’t be any game.”

Isolde makes an indignant sound. It’s all play, because it’s cute that Michael thinks he can get whatever he wants when he wants it (and maybe there is a bit of truth to those words, but he doesn’t need to know the extent of his own power just yet). She squints at him.

“I’ve made men cry before, you know.” Michael mmhms at her. “Lots of men.”

“And I think that,” he agrees, giving her shoulder a little squeeze “is very attractive.”

“That’s what you want, my love,” Isla chides at her, coming to a stand and taking Sol’s glass out of her hands to carry it into the kitchen for refills. “Someone who likes even the most vicious parts of you.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Later, Avery has retired to bed—buzzed from a single glass of wine, no less—and her mother is talking to her about how busy it’s been at work, but Isolde is wrapped up watching her father make big, dramatic hand gestures while he smokes outside with Michael. The scent of the clove cigarettes her father favors drift in from the screen door out to the porch, and paired with the sound of crickets chirping in the late evening, she feels a pang in her stomach; something like longing, or nostalgia, but for the moment she’s in right then and there.

Perhaps sadness, that it will come to a natural end.

Her mother’s fingers card through her hair affectionately. “You seem tired, beloved. You both do.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, he does this often,” Isolde replies, glancing away from where her father is perhaps two cigarettes deep into some story he almost certainly shouldn’t be telling Michael, flip-flopping between Turkish and English in his excitement. “Or he was, until whatever’s going on out there started happening. How does daddy manage to sit on a plane for something like nineteen hours and he’s got all that energy still?”

Her mother makes an amused noise, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and pulling herself into a stand, sighing. “He’s perpetually propelled by his love for you and your sister, I am sure.”

“That’s a nice way to say manic.”

“It’s nice seeing you happy,” her mother continues, glossing over what is only a true statement about her father’s frenetic energy. “For ourselves, I mean. It’s one thing for Avery to tell us about how happy he makes you—”

She snorts. “What a gossip.”

“—another entirely,” Isla interrupts, “to see it in real-time.” She brushes the hair away from Isolde’s face. “You were always prone to loneliness, my girl. Ever since you were a baby, you preferred it over our attention.”

The words make Isolde’s chest feel tight. Prone to loneliness is something that only her mother could say and it not be an insult, only an objective observation. Stinging harder still is the knowledge that most of the time, being around people does feel stifling to her—except with Michael.

Isla flashes her a smile and makes her way over to the screen door, sliding it open and leaning against the doorway. “Basir?”

She can see her mother’s caught her father right on the tail end, because he stops and looks at her with bright eyes. “Yes, my darling? I was telling Michael about that French ambassador who—”

“I am sure Michael would love to hear the end of the story in the morning,” her mother coaxes. “It’s late. Come to bed.”

“Oh, alright. If you don’t mind, Michael,” her father tacks on, looking back at Mike, “waiting for the end.”

Michael’s eyes flicker, meeting hers through the doorway, an easy, lopsided smile sliding onto his face. “Don’t mind at all.”

“First thing tomorrow, then. And,” Basir continues, ushering in after her mother, “I won’t keep you up anymore, darling. Come on, come on, bedtime.”

There’s more chatter like that as they exit, murmured goodnights and the aggressive bear hug from her father that comes when he’s had more than one shot of whiskey; Michael closes and locks the sliding door and makes his way to where Isolde is tucked up on the couch. As he settles in beside her, their fingers interlock on the back of the couch and she takes in a little breath.

Handsome. He’s painfully, excruciatingly handsome, maybe even more so because she just watched him weather the storm that is her parents, noisy and nosy but well-meaning. The sigh that he lets out when he’s settled on the couch makes her think that he’s finally letting a breath out he’s been holding, even though he’s got no reason to be stressed about her parents liking him.

“I like them,” he tells her. “Your dad’s funny.”

“Don’t let him hear you.” Isolde drapes her legs over his lap, setting her mostly-empty glass aside. “He’ll never stop trying out his jokes on you.”

Michael laughs and leans in to brush their noses together; he doesn’t go right for a kiss, not straight away, and there’s this little thread of anticipation that pulls on her heart when she remembers how long it’s been since she’s had a real kiss from him. Weeks. That’s something criminal, isn’t it?

“Haven’t kissed you,” she murmurs after a moment, “not proper, since you got back.”

“Well,” Michael coaxes, “what on earth are you waitin’ for, then?”

“Thought maybe you’d want to use your negotiation skills for more than a kiss.”

The brunette grins, leaning in the rest of the way to close the distance between them and kiss her; at last, at last, something inside of her says, relieved to have him there at last, and she reaches up with her free hand to tangle her fingers in his hair and keep him there.

There’s no rush to it. It’s an unhurried, leisurely re-mapping, re-familiarizing, though she hasn’t forgotten and neither has he. Isolde kisses him like he’s been gone for weeks and that he’s not ever going to leave for that long again, which isn’t true—but she can pretend, for a little while, that it is.

And it’s a little alarming, how her chest aches when she realizes how long he’s been gone, how much she’s missed having him around, how much she—

“I feel like,” he says against her mouth, between what are now sparse liplocks peppering his words, “maybe I don’t have to negotiate for more—”

“Michael,” Isolde hums sweetly, “shut up.”

“Boy, but you’re sexy when you boss me around.”

“I’m about to get a lot sexier if you don’t start kissing me like you mean it.”

He pulls back, that little smile still on his face, his arm sliding around her midsection to pull her more comfortably against him. But he doesn’t go back to kissing her; he trails his mouth along the slope of her jaw, and kisses the hollow below her ear before he says, “I always mean it when I kiss you, Soli.”

Oh, no, she thinks, her throat feeling tight. She’s not going to cry, that would be fucking stupid, and she’d rather fucking die before she lets Michael see a tear slip out of her—but it’s the same kind of feeling, the overwhelmingly bittersweet feeling knowing that this moment is going to end and she’ll have to remind herself of it, later.

“I know,” she replies, softer this time when she kisses him. “Now stop ruining the moment with your sappiness and pitch your deal to me already.”

“Alright,” Michael puffs, “three kids, get started on the first one now—”

She groans, but not without affection, and he hauls her up into his arms bridal style to begin carrying her back to the bedroom.

He says, pleasantly, “We could at least get some practice in.”

“Sure, baby,” Isolde murmurs, pressing her face into his neck. “Whatever you want.”

And she doesn’t have to see the smile to know he’s got it plastered on his face when he says, “Told you it’d be too easy.”

[p1harmonyofficial]

[📰] P1Harmony Interview | EUPHORIA.

By Aedan Juvet

When we initially met P1Harmony in the fall of 2020, the six-member South Korean boy band promptly revealed themselves through a new, unexpected idea of creativity. Now, they’re back with a second EP to show a more comprehensive sound.

At the beginning of their unity, the group hit theaters prior to the studio, with a cinematic experience that constructed a fictional universe around their identity, P1Harmony to familiarize fans with what they had to offer. Their debut of work was showcased through a film lens, before the group was prepared to launch their fusion of pop music, R&B, and rap, making the K-pop talents fulfill the precise artistry standards that many company-signed South Korean artists have refined.

On the heels of their album late last year, the group has readily fought to prove themselves, earning over 20 million views between two videos and a handful of respectable nods at the Seoul Music Awards in categories with other heavy hitters. Having found their niche, the group is now ready to present DISHARMONY: BREAK OUT to the world, and as a sophomore endeavor, there’s a newly discovered conviction from the charismatic members of P1Harmony.

On the new album, the group has returned to their rap and R&B merger, expanding their display of confidence on the lead single “Scared” with a strikingly effective balance of chaos and clarity. Though it can be easy to get distracted by all of the new exciting facets of the industry, P1Harmony’s return finds focus by overcoming any rookie-haze, shown through a series of new radio-friendly releases that still feels ingrained in originality. Opposite their aggressively produced single is something like a more R&B-focused “If You Call Me.” The song paints a picture of P1Harmony’s diligence for storytelling through their discography ― this particular track details difficulties of commitment. On its own, the song proudly announces its spellbinding range to listeners, driven by a sultry chorus without a single weak spot in the three and a half minutes.

On tracks like “AYAYA,” P1Harmony embraces a bit of an edge, or there’s the effortlessly confidence-inspiring “Pyramid” embodying an opportunity to let loose. The overall union of songs on DISHARMONY: BREAK OUT paints a picture of what the album could be like in a live setting, and that’s largely a culmination of all of the group’s interest in taking risks. That same fearlessness towards pushing your limits is what keeps any musician adapting, growing, and expanding in their catalog, which in ways is put on display in this expansive story from P1Harmony. That pure courageousness in the studio isn’t always the easiest path for an artist to take, but for a group like P1Harmony, there’s an obvious respect for discovering what their collective strengths are, and what the future could be.

With a new album out, and having time to reflect on the sophomore release itself, we spoke to P1Harmony about their favorite tracks, confidence, and experience the progression of their maturity for the first-year artists.

If your first album was a way to introduce you to the world, what would you say was your goal behind DISHARMONY: BREAK OUT?

KEEHO: Through this album, we wanted to express and share a positive message with our listeners and our P1ece! [official P1Harmony fandom]. Our second EP, DISHARMONY: BREAK OUT, is mainly about not being afraid of anything, gaining confidence, and being more vocal; it’s also about “breaking out” of the things that are holding us back and moving forward with our dreams!

JIUNG: With this album, I want to give a voice to those who have been silent and help build their confidence so they can walk the path they want.

INTAK: I want a lot of people to listen to our album and find us to be different from other groups, and that we have our own distinctive style.

JONGSEOB: If our debut album introduced us to the world along with our opinions about systematic problems and social issues, then our second EP is about finding solutions to those problems, and why “breaking out” and having your own voice is important. Our goal is to make this message clearer through this new album.

“Pyramid” feels a lot like a song that has some confidence to it ― was there a certain inspiration that helped you create that song?

KEEHO: I think we wanted it to be super grand and loud. I get inspired when I watch a very captivating movie and passionate songs help me build my confidence. I think we made this song with the conviction that we are the best!

JIUNG: I think we wanted to give that majestic and solemn vibe that comes from an enormous amount of confidence. I think that’s why the song has a cinematic sound and powerful lyrics.

INTAK: The word “pyramid” was enough for me to be inspired; I just kept drawing pyramids in my head while writing the lyrics.

JONGSEOB: While I was writing the lyrics for this song, I had pictured a pharaoh and the sphinx in my head, so I think there are a lot of words like “crown” or “top” in the lyrics. When I’m writing, I tend to hold onto one main keyword and build lyrics around that keyword.

“If You Call Me” was probably my personal favorite, and it has a really nice slow, R&B vibe to it that shows off a new side to the group. How did that song come together?

KEEHO: In our first album, we had a song that all six of us worked on, which was ‘That’s It.” So, this time around we felt like we needed to add a song that we all worked on again so that’s how “If You Call Me” came about. I like and listen to a lot of R&B and so do the members. We all thought we needed something more chill and serene since the album is packed with high-intensity tracks.

THEO: I tried to express what I felt [empathy] during a certain time when the members and I volunteered for charity work.

JIUNG: First of all, thank you for selecting this song as your favorite! The first time we had a meeting about this song,  we discussed and confirmed the general narrative, message, and what the song would like. There were so many ideas that were being tossed around, but we, as a group, made the final decision to do something that sounded different from all our other tracks, which were all aggressive and high-powered. We wanted to find new ways of expressing the same message, and since most of the songs are about prosecuting the bad and criticizing injustices to make a better society, we also wanted to convey altruism.

SOUL: It’s really a song that includes every members’ thoughts and melodies.

JONGSEOB: It was the first time we designed our own melodies. We all came up with a melody for the song, and then picked a melody line that we all thought fit the best. It was the first time we’ve worked like that and would love to continue making music this way together.

We also have “AYAYA” and that’s a little edgier, and I’m already envisioning some excellent choreography to pair it with ― is there a song that you’re most excited to perform for fans in the coming year?

KEEHO: I think personally for me it’s “Scared.”

THEO: I think “Pyramid” and its choreography is really charismatic, so I hope we get a chance to perform it at least once for our fans.

JIUNG: I want to show “Pyramid” as well. The choreography is very artistic and beautiful and fits the solemn vibe that the song carries.

JONGSEOB: I personally would like to perform “Pyramid” as well, because I really enjoyed performing the choreography, and I also think it’s a great song so I think it would be nice to show the full performance.

From the first few seconds of “Scared,” it’s apparent that you guys wanted to create something different and unique, which works considering “don’t be scared” is a lyric itself! Do you feel like you’ve grown more comfortable in trying different combinations of styles?

KEEHO: I was always comfortable. We always work with an open mind and like to experiment with a lot of different musical styles and sounds, and I’d like to keep making music that way!

THEO: I think we are comfortable with trying new things because we are so close and are always openly sharing our ideas with each other.

JIUNG: I’m not sure if I can say it was comfortable, but I’ve gotten used to figuring out how to deliver our message by experimenting with all kinds of musical styles and genres. There are so many ways to express our thoughts. We don’t want to be confined to one particular style, so we are always exploring and try to make music that sounds unique and sophisticated.

INTAK: I think I’ve gotten pretty comfortable, sharing my ideas and working together as a group to create music.

SOUL: Me too!

JONGSEOB: I’ve gotten comfortable, too.

Of all of the tracks, is there a song that you’d say has a majority vote as the group’s personal favorite on DISHARMONY: BREAK OUT?

KEEHO: I would say”If You Call Me” and then “AYAYA.”

THEO: For me, it’s “AYAYA!” The melody is catchy, and it has an uplifting vibe.

JIUNG: I think it’s “AYAYA.” I always sing this song out loud whenever it’s on in the dance studio or in our car. We also had discussed this song as a group and thought it was the most addictive track on this album.

INTAK: My personal favorite is “End It.” I think it’s the second-best track (after “Scared”) that delivers the message of this album.

SOUL: I like the powerfulness of “Scared.”

JONGSEOB: I think “AYAYA” since it’s been selected by the majority of the members. I also think it’s a feel-good, energetic, and addictive track,  so it’s one I listen to it a lot as well.

What was the biggest change that you went through in between album releases as a group?

KEEHO: I think we definitely matured. I mean, of course, we are still very young and still have a long way to go, but we learned a lot in the last few months. We all wanted to show our fans everything we’ve prepared and that motivated us to become more mature and refined.

THEO: I think we got more comfortable being on stage and have more ease when we are performing and doing our personal or personal gestures [individual signature dance move].

JIUNG: I think our teamwork has gotten better!

INTAK: I think we matured, gotten more confident, found more ease, and made improvements.

SOUL: I think we matured a little bit, and I definitely agree that our teamwork has gotten better.

JONGSEOB: I think we gained more conviction as well as confidence in ourselves and as a group.

What would you say was the song that changed the most over the process of making this album in particular?

KEEHO: It’s “Scared” and “If You Call Me.” I think for “If You Call Me” there were a lot of edits and changes because we all worked on it together.

JONGSEOB: I think we had the most edits for “Scared’’ since it’s our lead single.

JIUNG: Yeah, “Scared” had the most changes. Since it was our title track, we wanted it to be flawless and therefore, made tons of changes and edits during the album-making process.

Looking back at the process of crafting this release, what would you say the most satisfying moment was?

KEEHO: It’s definitely the moment when we finished “If You Call Me,” we worked on it for so long and even gave up a couple of times in the middle of the process, but we pulled through. We put so much effort since it was our first project together as a team, and so it was that much more meaningful and satisfying when the song was completed.

THEO: I think it’s when we see ourselves on stage performing what we’ve practiced really hard for.

JIUNG: I was filled with pride and satisfaction when we finished recording the entire album, and album and heard the final outcome for the first time.

SOUL: I was really satisfied when the actual album came out!

JONGSEOB: I think the process of us evolving as a group and feeling like we’ve achieved something together is when I felt the most satisfaction.  

Make sure to check out DISHARMONY: BREAK OUT now, along with the music video for their new single “Scared.”

[fyexo]

200529 K-Pop Superstar Baekhyun On His Sweet Solo Single "Candy" & Delightful Second Mini Album

A soft humming is heard on the other side of the line while the call stabilizes — of course one of South Korea’s most prominent vocalists would be singing. Baekhyun, who debuted in 2012 as a member of the chart-topping boy group EXO, has just released his second solo album, Delight, and his excitement is palpable through the phone.

Just minutes before this call, he was interacting with fans on a live stream through the app VLive. There, he answered a series of questions while waiting for the album to drop at 6 pm on May 25 (KST). Nicknamed “Genius Idol” for his array of talents, Baekhyun has tried a little bit of everything throughout his career: acting, fashion design (he’s the co-creative director of the brand Privé by BBH), gaming, vlogging, duets, the EXO subunit EXO-CBX, and leading the supergroup SuperM — who was the first Korean act to top the Billboard 200 albums chart with a debut release.

His solo career officially started last year with the release of City Lights. The album sold more than half a million copies and became the best-selling physical album of 2019 by a solo artist in Korea. Delight follows the same footsteps: it amassed 732,297 stock pre-orders, sold over six hundred thousand copies on the first day according to Hanteo (a company that shares real-time sales data in South Korea), and topped the iTunes Album Charts in 68 countries so far.  

Sonically, Delight is a breezy, RnB-infused experience that showcases Baekhyun’s prismatic artistry. “I worked really hard on this album, and I was really happy working on it as well,” he tells the Recording Academy. Like “Candy”, the title track, each song has a different flavor. Deep cut “R U Ridin’” has a honey-dripping bassline, for example, while the bright “Poppin’” feels like chewing on sour candies, and the intense “Ghost” lingers with a coffee caramel aftertaste.

To deepen the discussion around his new album, The Recording Academy caught up with Baekhyun and talked about his inspirations, the development of his multifaceted persona, and, of course, his favorite candy.

This interview was edited for clarity, and an interpreter translated all answers from Baekhyun.

How are you feeling lately?

I’ve been really happy. There’s been a lot of excitement and expectation personally around the Delight release, so I’ve been relishing in all of that these days.

What were your inspirations for this album?

I wanted to try the RnB genre more, so that’s what I focused on for this album. In terms of the title itself, within EXO my superpower is “light,” so I wanted to emphasize that as much as possible.

[Writer’s note: EXO debuted under a concept where each member has a superpower, and that appears throughout their branding.]

Just the way the word “delight” sounds is pleasurable. What are some of life's delights to you?

Right now, the top ones would be being on stage and performing. Another thing is that I’ve been taking vocal lessons on the side, and that has been a source of delight to me as well.

What's your favorite song in this album? Are there any lyrics you would like people to pay attention to?

I have to pick the title track, “Candy.” If you listen to the lyrics, there is a part where I list candy flavors and ask “what more do you want?” I think it truly expresses confidence and boldness, that I can become whatever you like, just tell me and I’ll do it. That’s the part I want everyone to pay special attention to.

This ability to become whatever is needed at the moment also shows up in the contrasting sweet and sensuous styles you explore in the album. Can you talk more about that?

As you mentioned, that’s exactly what I was trying to do with the concept of “Candy” and of Delight in general. I wanted to showcase a variety of different sides that I have to myself. In the past, fans would always say that they like both my sweet side and the more sensual, performative side, so I wanted to capture both and present them in a bigger package.

Comparing Delight to your first solo album, City Lights, what are the main differences between them?

With City Lights, because it was my first solo album, I wanted to focus more on the vocals and showcase what I felt like I could present the best. If you listen to it, it’s definitely more vocal-focused. In Delight, I wanted to take a step further and show a different side to fans. I wanted to incorporate more performance, which means a lot of choreography and thinking about the visuals on stage. I also tried to make this album a little brighter and fresher than City Lights, so visually and performance-wise it’s different.

When I think of Baekhyun, the word that comes to mind is "balance". You have an impressive talent to blend light and dark, highs and lows, laughter and tears in your performances. Are you aware of this fluency in yourself?

Since I was younger, I always heard that I’m pretty honest with my emotions. People see the bright and happy sides of me, but they see the other sides as well. Because my personality is one that is honest about how I feel, I want to showcase my true self to people. I think that’s why people say that about me as well, of showing the balance between many sides of things. That’s what I want to do because it’s who I am, and also what I want to showcase as an artist.

You have been an idol for almost a decade. What has been your biggest lesson so far?

Going back to my previous answer, I realized that if you’re honest with yourself and you’re truthful in the way you act, talk, and interact with everyone, then people will know. People will know that you’re being genuine, and over the years I learned to be honest with how I feel when I connect with my fans. As time passes, I think they have been able to recognize that and connect with me on a more genuine level too. That’s the biggest thing I learned.

And what is the achievement you're most proud of?

My debut with EXO. Even though my training period was short when compared to other members, just to be able to work together, come together as a group, and debut together, it’s definitely my proudest achievement to date. And that’s what launched me to be where I am right now.

You were always known for your powerful singing, but during all these years you have developed yourself and are currently recognized as a multi-talented artist and skillful dancer as well. Can you tell us more about that process?

My vocals have always been my main strength, so it’s something I continuously work on and want to improve on. In terms of dancing, I have a friend named Kasper who is a dancer/choreographer, and he teaches me all the trendy dances, gives me advice on how I should do this or that, so that’s a practical way that I have improved my skills. In general, because I have a lot of energy, I felt like just my vocals weren’t enough for the amount of energy that I can showcase, so I always wanted to channel that through dancing, which is a different outlet.

Did Kasper create the choreography for “Candy”? And did you have any input on it?

Yes. Because we’re friends, when he would show me the choreography, I would say “what about we do it this way?” and then we bounced ideas off each other, especially when it came to the formations of the dance overall.

In the current world situation, it's hard to expect things or make plans for this year, but what is one thing you are looking forward to in 2020?

It’s hard to make plans for the rest of the year, but I’m hoping that things get better so I can finally meet my fans in person. That’s the one thing I’m looking forward to the most. Because of the current situation, we had to shift things to digital, but I’m also excited to meet my fans via different platforms as well.

Have the members of EXO listened to your album? What was their reaction?

When they listened, they said that it matches the seasons right now, as we’re going into summer. All of them commented on how it was a new style for me as a solo artist, like showing another side of Baekhyun, another vibe. They also noticed that I put a lot of effort into it, they’re really supportive.

If you could describe yourself as a candy flavor, what would that be?

Strawberry. Because its flavor encapsulates both sweet and sour, and that’s precisely what I want to do — show different sides. With this concept in Delight, you can see a more relaxed, confident side, but you can also see a very sweet and doting side of my character.

To sum it all up, what is your favorite candy flavor?

Green grape! In Korea they sell bags of green grape hard candy, those are my favorites.

Source: Tássia Assis @ GRAMMYs

[popculturebuffet]

Darkwing Duck Reviews: Darkly Dawns the Duck Pts 1 and 2

It’s a Darkwing Double Feature! Just in time for his ducktales special, I take a look at the introduction of everyone’s favorite Daring Duck of Mystery. In his daring debut we meet Darkwing Duck, an egositical and attention hungry superhero who soon finds himself having to look after a feisty orphan to keep her from getting nabbed by local kingpin of crime Taurus Bulba with the help of his biggest fan. Darkwing owns the night under the cut with decades old spoilers. 

Let’s Get Dangerous.. is tommorow so with that in mind i’m doing a darkwing double feature to refresh myself before the big special. So i’ll be covering both the original series pilot “Darkly Dawns the Duck” and the ducktales reboot episode “The Duck Knight Returns”.  Let’s Get Dangerous Itself because I was so wiped yesterday I didn’t get the other review done and unexpectly got acess to the new episode way earlier than usual so i’d rather focus on that. Got it? Good. Let’s continue past me. 

As usual with a new show a breif bit about my history with it: I watched it years ago, as a friend of mine lent me the first two discs of the season 1 dvd and never found the third one nor asked for them back, nor cared I had them. I thoughtly enjoyed it, had a great time and then it took me a decade or so to actually watch the series again due to a combination of being too stubborn to just buy the season 1 dvd again, a very darkwing move of me in hindsight, and then when disney plus meant I had all episodes at my finger tips I.. sat on them till now.. though to be fair i’ve sat on a LOT of great shows on there including the mandalorian, gargoyles and boy meets world. I have a bad tendency to procastinate, the fact this is coming out so late in the day should be a giveaway. I did read about half of volume 1 of the comic and all of volume 2, so there’s that at least.  Point is this new episode finally made me decide to get off my ass and watch darkwing once again, starting with the pilot and the episodes related to the fearsome four to be ready for tomorrow to see what the differences are (Thoguh I did remember bushroot vividly, so I had that at least).  Something to note before I get started talking about the pilot itself though, is the episode order for Darkwing Duck is a Darkwing Clusterfuck. Now I do understand WHY they aired this way: While some episodes do logically take place after other episodes, you can reasonably pop on just about any darkwing and watch it and enjoy it with minimal need to know what happened in previous episodes, kinda like batman the animated series oddly enough. It was also aired between two networks so on some level I get disney’s confusion here.. but on the other hand it’d take ten minutes, they clearly can call up the creator easily as Tad Stones made a cameo in ducktales 2017 we’ll get to so they could easily get a better order from the creator himself, so they really don’t have an excuse for this, or for slapping the pilot in the middle of season 1. Then again both ducktales 2017 and x-men the animated series were sort of a mess order wise when first put up, so not giving a shit about where episodes are placed for re-watching clearly is a pastime of theirs. 

Now i’ve got that out of my system we can dive into the episode itself and a breif plot synopsis. Darkwing Duck is the superhero protector of St. Canard, a masked vigiliante who takes out crime but wishes he actually got fame and credit for his work. Kind of like Booster Gold but without taking endorsments or as far as we know coming from the future. He also has nothing else as shown by the fact he fights crime, does a training regimine to prepare his breakfast that’s a delight to watch then prepares to sleep. It’s an intresting concept, a hero who HAD a civlian identity once, as the rest of the series would play out, he just no longer needs it. And it’s also ahead of it’s time as batman would explore this idea both seriously with bruce wayne murderer and comedically and seriously with the lego batman movie LONG after this series aired, meaning the writers here figured out what many probably knew about batman and put it into their parody version: Batman is the real identity and Bruce is the mask. Batman only keeps his old self because the bruce id is useful to him: It keeps people away from his company, puts up a playboy facade that draws attention away from him being batman, and allows him to do various charities and what not and help honor his parents in a way that dosen’t involve swooping in and kicking people in the throat. And as seen with bruce wayne murderer when the option to throw bruce away for good came up Batman gladly took it.  This is the same idea: Drake Mallard ONLY cares about crime fighting, has no friends no family, we never do find out jack about his family hopefully if there’s a full reboot series Frank and Matt fix it for their version. He has nothing, and is fine with that. He hasn’t really had a reason to care about anything else than his own glory and works alone not because it’s less efficent but because his oversized ego means he dosen’t want to share credit. IT’s an intresting start and his ego would be a defining bit of who he is and used intrestingly int he reboot but we’ll get to that there. 

His life changes forever though when local crime boss Taurus Bulba unleashes his latest scheme: To steal the Ramrod, a gravity manipulating device created by the late Dr. Quackmeyer.. late because Bulba’s men killed him and were dumb enough not to get the arming code for the ramrod first a year ago. Bulba is also behind bars but in one of my faviorite gags of the episode despite the warden’s constnat gloating, Bulba has taken the “Supervillian makes jail into a base” Or “Jail is nothing to a supervillian who can easily get out trope” to ludcrious machines. He has whole meetings with his minions, keeps the ramrod once he gets his hands on it in the laundry and has a ship SHAPED LIKE HIS FACE built into his cellblock. I’ts just so over the top it’s glorious. But yeah since Bulba can’t go after it at first he sends his three goofy minons, one played by eddie “Mandark” deezen in.. love that guy. 

THey do end up stealing the ramrod thanks to the help of bulba’s cool, non-anthromporhic condor who he uses as his right hand man and as his link to his minons via a small tv aroudn it’s neck. That.. is awesome. Darkwing spots the condor but fails to stop the three stooges or the condor and gets unknowingly blamed for the robbery..and stopped to get glamor shots not realizing the guy thought he was a criminla which.. fair enough. It is a shadowy disguise after all. 

Darkwing ends up grabbing onto the vulture sonic 3 style, but ends up falling off him into a hangar where we meet the original version of Launchpad McQuack, whose apparently quit working for scrooge and has his own hangar now though it wouldn’t be a stretch that scrooge bought it for him.. he does , stingy as he is, appricate hard work and launchpad wanting to start his own buisness and while hte planes were probably all on launchpad, Scrooge would gladly buy a run down buliding for a loyal friend who wants to put in some hard honest work. Plus it’s a free place to store any vehicles he has in the st canard area.. I mean it’s still scrooge. And yes I know the whole “Tad stones said they aren’t the same universe” non sense. I do have the utmost respect for the guy and he seems really, nice but I don’ tlike that, no one likes that and both the comics and the current duckverse with the ducktales reboot entirely ignore that for good reason.While the two shows are diffrent in tone they stil lfit and it’s not a stretch for launchpad to want to spread his wings or failing that scrooge to help push him out of the nest and give him his own buisness or one of scrooge’s to run. 

But while Launchpad does help DW with a propeller plane they fail and while launchpad offers to be his sidekick, DW gives him the old I work alone bit.  However him being alone won’t last for long as Bulba still needs that arming code and since his only lead is Waddlemeyer’s grandaughter who grew up in his lab, he sends his buffonish minons to go get him. Why he never sends his lone female minon with them is because it’s funnier if she dosen’t I guess. Which it is so fair enough.  So thus we enter Goslyn, who the head of the orphanage is fed up with due to her antics. Goslyn is played as most of you knwo by christine cavanagh.. I honestly forgot and it still throws me off a bit she’s using what would later be her chucky finster voice for a character so completely diffrent. Granted it’s not unusual in voice acting, just weird here and only for me personally having grown up with rugrats but not darkwing. The orphanage head is a bit less jarring as she’s played by Marcia Wallace, aka Edna Krabable from the simpsons but A) that show was already running at this point and B), the character is basically a nicer version of edna versus chuckies voice coming out of a tiny if immensly fun to watch hellion. I do like goslyn, sh’es a fun character even in her shadier moments, it’s just something i’d forgotten about i’ll need to get used to is all. 

Bulba’s hired goons come in claming ot be friends of her grandpas and we actually get some really heartwrenching context for Gos’ behavior: While she does act out she actually LIKES THE orphanage.. ti’s just her friends keep getting adopted while no one wants someone “full of spirit”. It’s heartwrecnhing to hear.. and only gets worse when the goons try and kidnap her.  Thankfully Darkwing.. also kidnaps her, but he kindaps her from kidnappers and while Goslyn naturally takes a second to realize he’s the good guy them shooting at him clues her in. Darkwing, in a rare for the series as a whole moment of reason and not wanting to just power though something himself TRIES to do the responsible thing and leave gos with the police where she’ll be protected.. but given they think he’s a wanted criminal they shoot at him.. and the small child in his motorcycle. Yup that’s the police alright. 

So with no other options Darkwing takes gos home, hyjinks insue including her activintg the breakfast thing. But the two genuinely start to bond. While Darkwing dosen’t WANT to keep her around, the whole not wanting connections thing, it’s clear he’s growing fond of the little snot as she holds her own with his trianing course, they have a tickle fight and in the sweetest moment of the episode the two sing little girl blue, a song her grandfather used to sing her to sleep that she teaches darkwing. It’s an utterly heartmelting bit and Cummings and Cavanagh really sell the hell out of it. It also however turns out ot be plot relevant: Turns out just in case Dr. Waddlemeyer hid the code for the ramrod in the song, and when Darkwing sees a photo Goslyn got from bulba’s goons, he realizes this and realizes that depsite thinking she didn’t know it Goslyn had it all along.. and that as long as h’es around she won’t know.  Bulba is naturally livid at his minons failure and decides now’s the time to take this into his own hands and while he actually liked the prison hq setup, as it did make sense as it was the perfect cover and the warden was too full of himself to realize Bulba was still active and too convinced the bull was beaten down when he clearly wasn’t, but instead as mentioned above awesomely converts his cellblock into a flying ship in the shape of his own head.  Bulba.. is a great villian and I only think the show didn’t use him more because he’s a dead serious, deadly dangerous villian in an otherwise goofy but fun superhero parody show. The show later gained Negaduck, so they had a more dangerous threat for darkwing that fit the show’s tone better while still being utterly terrifying, and likely simply didn’t need him till the idea for the steerminator came up. But I love the guy: he reminds me a lot of the kingpin, a threatning villian who uses his sheer size to beat our hero down, is cool and suave and is an utter mastermind at planning. He also wears a nice suit.  And naturlaly he has a plan to take out darkwing since despite the two never having met, as Darkwing disparages when Goslyn assumes their lifelong mortal enmies like in the comics, they know of each other.. and thus bulba knows exactly what trap to spring to get him out of the way and goslyn into his ship: He flashes a message in morris code that he wants to surrender to Darkwing while stroking his ego a LOT. And it works... while i’ts an obvious trap Darkwing’s so full of himself he goes despite Goslyn telling him it’s very obviously a trap.  Naturally everything goes pear shaped as a result: Bulba shows up, revealing gos not only to be right but easily pummling Darkwing. Which makes sense: While Darkwing is a vetran crime fighter and secret agent, Bulba’s been at being a villian longer clearly as he’s built up enough of a rep both for Darkwing to know him out of hand and for the warden to be proud capturing him. Given what univese this is, it probably isn’t Bulba’s first round with a superhero and given at this stage St Canard only has one.. yeah Darkwing is outclasssed and the police grab him while Bulba scarpers. And while Gos puts up a good fight using the trianing course, Bulba’s vulture gets her. Bulba has everything he needs.  Darkwing meanwhile actually bemoans what a dick he’s been, that the first person he’s cared about besides himself in possibly ever is now in the hands of a murderous mastermind, and that he’s stuck in jail with no one to call on for help. Thankfully.. help arrives.. and by help I mean launchpad backing the ratcatcher, Darkwing’s bike, into the prisoin. He DID come just to bail DW out despite his earlier jerkishness, but backed in and Darkwing not beliving superheroes have time for paperwork, decides to just bust out. And to be ifair int his case he’s probably right as you know, a ten year old might die if they don’t get there in time. So off they go.. but with Bulba in the air they need something with wings to catch him. ANd luckily as Launchpad mentioned earlier he’s been working on something special for darkwing.  It’s with this we enter the thunderquack, which is DW”S awesome headshaped plane. It’s just cool it’s got a nice design, goofy enough tof it the universe but cool enoguh to still be fun to watch. Darkwing has really damn cool vehicles, as the ratcatcher is also awesomely iconic. But yeah the thunderquack impresses darkwing and rightfully so and he decides to make LP his sidekick afterall.  So now our heroes fly into the danger zone and attack bulba’s airship with Darkwing landing on the bow and a scuffle insues with darkwing and hte minons.. who use actual guns which for a 90′s kids show is  a suprise, especially one this intentioanlly goofy, but boy is it nice. However Bulba, being awesomely evil, isn’t dumb and instead of fighting darkwing, which he could win but would win him nothing and having gotten nothing out of goslyn, figures the hero might know the code.. and while Darkwing lies and says he dosen’t, Bulba points out .. he’s right.. but he’s always been a gambling man and has his condor drop goslyn to lure drake into telling him , with DW putting in the code and bulba testing it with a bank robbery.. before predictably having his condor drop the girl because he no longer needs her. Thankfully launchpad catches her in time and then they get revenge on the condor with the thunderquack BITING IT.. which is awesome. Hopefully the reboot version does that. 

Darkwing meanwhile saves the day, his new daughter and the city by simply sneaking over to the ramrod and mashign the keys till it overloads, silly, but undeniably awesome and effective. Bulba TRIES to finish off darkwing this time for foiling his plan.. btu the ramrod explodes and while bulba’s minons and goslyn and launchpad are safe... bulba and darkwing are apparently dead and it’s effective.  A few weeks later Goslyn’s back at the orphanage utterly distraught and broken at being basically orphaned again. Naturally though Darkwing’s alive, having taken his old identnity back since now he has something worth using it for and adopts her, hinting at who he is so she goes with him. And Drake has changed.. sure he’ll still be as egostical and impuslive as he was here.. but he’s no longer just darkwing.. he’s drake again as he has someone worth fighting for.. two someones in fact. He has a friend, a loyal partner to help him fight cime. And more importantly.. he has a loving daughter. And both needed each other: Goslyn needed someone who understood her despite her manic energy, and Drake needed someone who needed him and not darkwing, a reason to be a person outside the cape and cowl and outside the attention again. He needed a reason to live again... and he’s got it. And it’s going to be great. 

Final Thoughts: This pilot is excellent. Well paced, plenty of laughs, tense action and great introductions for everyone involved as well as a hell of a vilian> This is how you do a first episode: it introduces the main themes of the show, both comedically and dramatically, introduces the cast and gives us a one off , or rather two off it’d turn out, villian whose compelling and intresting. IT’s really damn good stuff and I can’t wait ot see what frank does with a simlar story tommorow. Until then, stay safe, and happy hallowen. We’ll be back shortly for The Duck Knight returns and then Let’s Get Dangerous tommorow. 

[meigh-day]

Breathing Lilies (Tendou x Reader) - Part 9

Well this is it, Part 9 - the end. This is the first story I’ve completed in a long time but it’s inspired me to tackle some of the other fanfics (BNHA and Haikyuu) I am in the middle of so if you enjoyed this even a little bit, keep an eye open for some more. 

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Title: Breathing Lilies

Characters: Tendou/Ushijima/OC Students/F!Reader

Includes: Hanahaki Disease, Angst, Fluff

Status: Complete

Word Count: 2.1k

Previous

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Tendou spent every spare moment he had with you. With each visit he'd bring you little gifts here and there, a drink he knew you liked or maybe your favorite snack, he even left you one of his hoodies to keep you company when he couldn't be there. It was kind of sweet how attentive he was being. He had always been an incredibly thoughtful friend, but something seemed different not, it seemed more intense. Not in a bad way or anything, it was like his one and only focus was you. The friendly touched you had grown used to over the years suddenly felt more intimate. He hadn't tried to tell you how he felt again. Tendou had gone home that night and really thought about what to do, eventually deciding it would take more than words to prove to you he meant it.

During your afternoon checkup, the doctor remarked how strange the illness was behaving. Not the most reassuring of phrases but the way he said it made it sound harmless.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's almost seems like it's on hold."

"I'm not following."

"Normally the disease progresses one way or the other, it doesn't just stop, but since you came too there haven't been any changes." The doctor looked thoughtful for a moment, there wasn't an explanation that he could base in facts but he did have a theory.

"You said he told you he loved you, right?"

"Well, he tried. I stopped him."

"Why?"

"..." Why did you stop him? Why had it been so unbelievable to you that he might actually feel the same despite what had happened? Why indeed.

"I didn't want him to say something he didn't mean just because I was hurting."

"Do you think this boy is that kind of person?"

You didn't even have to think about it. Not one, in all the time you'd known him, had Tendou lied to you. Not when it was important. As mischievous as he was, he wouldn't say something that held such a significant weight to it and not mean it.

"No."

"Hmm." The doctor paused, his finger tapping against his chin as he thought. "So, it sounds to me like you are the one holding onto your feelings now. I can only hypothesis but, maybe, because you are conflicted about the legitimacy of his feeling, you have put the disease into a sort of limbo. If that's the case then I would assume, once you've made up your mind, we will see some progress one way or the other."

Could it be true? If Tendou really did mean what he tried to say to you that day, well, then you were a complete jackass. He had tried to pour out his heart to you and instead of at least hearing him out, you wouldn't even hear him out. Yet he came here day after day to spend his free time with you, to show you how he felt when he knew words wouldn't be enough to reach you. You felt like such a fool. Tears began to drip down your chin as shame consumed you. After what you have been through, the heartache you had felt, how could you be so quick to reject what he had to say as false?

"Y/N?! What happened?? Are you in pain? I'll go get a doctor!!"

Tendou had entered your room, ready to share snacks and help you catch up on the piles of school work you were missing, but that was all forgotten when he saw the tears streaming down your cheeks. Going by your expression, you seemed to be in pain, and you were, but it wasn't physical.

"Wait, please don't go!" You lurch up and off the bed, one hand outstretched towards him. He turns back towards you in time to see you wobble and is at your side in an instant, helping support you and easing you back onto the bed.

"What's wrong?" He murmured gently as her perched himself on the edge of the bed, concern written all over his face.

"Oh Tori..I'm such an idiot." You press your face into the palms of your hands, trying to hide the tears that just wouldn't stop, ashamed of how thoughtless you had been with his feelings.

"Hey hey, no you aren't." Tendou shifts around, moving further onto the bed so he can face you. He wraps you in his arms, pulling you into his chest. "What's got you so upset beautiful?" His chin comes to rest gently against the top of your head, cradling the back of your head in one of this large hands while the other rubs gentle, comforting, circles up and down your spine.

"Satori..." Your voice comes out muffled, your face buried into the fabric of his sweatshirt.

"Hm?" He hummed and you could feel the vibration in his chest.

You don't answer immediately, fingers nervously toying with the string of his hoodie while you put your thoughts together. What you were going to say was important, so you wanted to make sure you were composed.

"I'm so ashamed of the way I treated you the other day. When you tried to tell me how you felt..I was so scared..."

"You don't have anything to apologize for Y/N. There's no reason to push yourself, I understand." You couldn't see his face right now, but you were sure if you looked up right now, he'd have the saddest smile on his face.

"You've always been honest with me Tori so..." You pause, leaning back just enough so you can look at him. "If you're up for it.... I'd really like to hear what you were going to say."

His eyes widen at your request. "Are you sure? There's really no rush. I promise, I'm not going to change my mind." So sincere, so sweet. How could someone as good as him possibly be yours?

"I'm ready." You smile up at him, feeling yourself tearing up again but for a completely different reason now.

With a shaky breath and a racing heart, placing a hand on either side of your face as he collects himself.

"Y/N, " As your name fell from his lips, you couldn't help but think that it had never sounded sweeter.

"I'm in love with you." The words almost sounded like a vow coming from him, and in a way they were. Tears spilled down your cheeks once more, the biggest smile on your lips. Tendou felt a weigh lift from him as he gazes down at you with a look full of adoration.

For the first time in many weeks, you felt like you could breathe.

.

..

...

..

.

-Epilogue-

"Are we still on for movies tonight?" Wakatoshi glances up, his gaze pausing on Tendou's before settling on you.

"No. I have a prior engagement I must attend to. Sorry for the sudden notice." He gathers his things, offers you a small bow of apology and leaves.

"Huh...weird." You blink a few times, perplexed, but turn your attention to your boyfriend as he popped a chunk of egg into his mouth. Wait..egg?

"HEY! You lunch thief!" You push your bento off to the side and out of his reach.

"Sorry, it just tastes so good I can't help myself." He gives you a big cheesy grin.

"If I make you your own will you stop pilfering my lunch?"

"You...you'd do that for me?"

"Well..yea." The way he was acting, you'd think you'd just offered to make him a five course meal or something. "I could make you a whole bento if you want." His mouth rounds in surprise, his eyes lighting up with joy.

"You are so good to me! I don't deserve you." He presses a kiss into your temple and pulls you into his side.

"So what kind of things can I get in this bento?"

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Don't you think Wakatoshi was kinda weird earlier?" You muse aloud, fixing your gaze on Satori who stood several feet away with his back to you.

"No, not really." He shrugged and turned to you with a smile. It was a lie, he knew it was a lie. Ushijima was the worst liar but he'd given it his best shot. The two of you hadn't really had much time alone since you'd been released and he really wanted you all to himself. To accomplish this, he'd asked his friend to make something up and was surprised when he'd so readily agreed. Wakatoshi just wanted to see his two friends happy, especially after the things they had recently gone through, so when the opportunity presented itself to be of some assistance, he was happy to accept.

"If you say so..."

This was going to be your first movie since being released from the hospital and you had anticipated it being the three of you as always but that was not to be. You tossed a few blankets and pillows haphazardly on your bed so you could make a comfy little nest to watch movies in. You were about to start to arrange them when Tendou appeared at your side.

"Do you want to help me mov--" Your question was forgotten as he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into him for a hug. The two of you stood there quietly for a few moments, content to be in each others arms. Tendou was the first one to pull away but only enough so he could look down at you. He caressed your cheek with his thumb, sliding along your jaw and lingering near your lips.

The mood suddenly shifted.

You felt your face grow hot under his gaze and open your mouth to say something but find yourself speechless.

"Would it be ok..." He murmured as he gently brushed his thumb across your bottom lip. "..if I kissed you right now?"

How did he manage to look so sweet and so hot all at once?

You parted your lips to try and speak but only managed a nod before his lips were pressed against yours. Your arms wrap around his neck, fingers sliding up the nape of his neck and into his hair as you press up against him. He shudders at the feeling, a low moan in his throat. His tongue licked across your bottom lip begging for entrance, you lips eagerly part for him, your head tilting back to deepen the kiss. He fists a hand into your hair while his other one presses into your lower back, holding you firmly again him.

As the two of you part, you feel breathless in the most delicious way.

"I think you look even prettier like this." He smirks down at you, taking in the flush on your cheeks and the pink of your kiss-swollen lips. You feel yourself grow shy at his praise but you keep your gaze fixed on him.

"In fact," His smirk turns wicked as he bends, scooping you up into his arms. "I'd like to kiss you again."

"Right now?" You grip onto his shoulders, legs wrapped around his waist, his hands gripping onto the underside of your thighs.

"Right now. Maybe, even all night." Your arms wrap around his neck, lightly trailing the pads of your fingers along the nape.

"Don't threaten me with a good time Tori..."

He let out a low chuckle, turning and moving towards the bed. "It's not a threat, beautiful. It's a promise." Movie night would need to be postponed, it didn't look like there would be any movie-watching happening this evening.

"I'd also like to kiss you tomorrow and everyday after that. As long as you don't mind that is."

"I don't mind, but there is a catch."

Tendou eyed you suspiciously, his steps coming to a stop. "I'm listening."

"Well, you see, I only want you to kiss me when you are in love with me."

"Hm," He looked at you thoughtfully before dropping you down onto the mattress. "Well that kinda creates a bit of a problem babe." You look up at him, confused.

"Problem?"

"How am I going to break it to the team that I can't play anymore?"

"What? Why not?"

"Well, you see," He presses his knee into the mattress, leaning forward until he was hovering over you. "I'm in love with you every minute of the day. So, it looks like I'll be spending all my free time kissing you. "

You groan, and roll your eyes. "Not funny, I thought you were serious."

Tendou leaned down, his lips stopping just a breath away from yours.

"I am serious. I'm in love with you and I am very happy to spend each and every minute of my days being in love with you. AND if that happens to mean I get to spend my entire day with my lips on yours, then so be it." He smiles down at you before sealing your lips in a kiss.

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2020 (In No Real Order)

Oh, hey! Right! I have a website! I’m like a week late on writing this, but what’s a week on top of an entire year of not writing, right? 2020 was... well, we all know what 2020 was. For me personally, it was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life. The worst in both ways you can probably assume and ways you definitely can’t (neither of which I’ll be getting into), and the best in ways I absolutely never would have guessed. That uncertain job I mentioned last year got very suddenly much more certain, at a much bigger company, for a much larger amount of money. That allowed me to get my own place, making my weird living situation much less weird. Still haven’t gotten the majority of my belongings off of the east coast, but if the entire world wasn’t currently fucked up by a global pandemic I’d have sorted all that out too. What I’m saying is that, for the third year in a row, my life has been a complete whirlwind that has left me very little time to get comfortable with any aspect of it. But I did manage to play more video games than I did last year! Which is perfect, because it’s once again time for another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2020.

Astro’s Playroom (PlayStation 5, 2020)

My one word description of Astro's Playroom is "delightful". It's just an absolute goddamn delight. A total surprise too! Included with every PlayStation 5, Astro's Playroom is, in my opinion, one of the best pack-in games of all time.

First off, it's an incredible tech demo for the PS5's new DualSense controller. It was easy to brush off Sony's talk about the controller's haptic feedback and triggers as some Nintendo-style HD Rumble bullshit, but it really is incredibly cool once you get your hands on it. The game is obviously more than a tech demo though, or else it wouldn't be on here. It also just so happens to be an extremely solid and fun platformer on top of that. Astro controls exceptionally well and the levels are all well-designed and fun, even the gimmick vehicle ones designed to show off different features of the controller. It also has an oddly compelling speedrun mode, made all the more compelling by the PS5 notifying you when your friends beat your times and the ability to load into it within two seconds from anywhere on the console. But the biggest thing for me and, call me a mark, because I am, is that the game is an honestly incredible love letter to PlayStation history.

For the first time ever, Sony has pulled off a nostalgia piece without it ending up as embarrassing garbage in the vein of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. There's a Nintendo-like joyful reverence for all things PlayStation oozing out of every single corner of this game. There are so many nods and references and gags for literally every PlayStation thing of note throughout the the last 25 years, and then on top of that there's a whole heap more for the things that AREN'T of note that only hyperdorks like me would get! A sly reference to the ill-fated boomerang controller? Yep. A goof on the fat PS3's Spider-Man font? You betcha. A trophy you can earn by repeatedly punching a Sony Interactive Entertainment sign until it breaks and reveals the Sony Computer Entertainment sign it was slapped on top of? Yeah buddy. It's deep cuts all the way down, even up until the final boss which had me grinning like a total dipshit the entire time. The game is endlessly, effortlessly charming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game at the perfect time. That doesn't mean it's a perfect game, I actually have some issues with it, but it could not have released at a better time than when it did. It came out at the very very beginning of everyone going into lockdown due to the pandemic, and it was the biggest game in the world for a couple of months as a result. I played like 300 hours and that pales in comparison to the amount of time many others put into it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most different Animal Crossing game there's ever been, and I'm of two minds on it. Like, I loved the game, I played a ton of it, but it's lacking so much of the stuff that made me love Animal Crossing in the first place. The series has been slowly trending in this direction for a bit now, but it's not really a game that happens around you anymore. It's all about total player control. You select where everything goes, you customize every detail of everything to your liking, hell, you can even terraform the landmass to be exactly what you want. Your neighbors take a backseat in focus and end up as little more than decorations with limited dialogue and next to no quests associated with them. Series staples like Gyroids are missing in action. Facilities and services that have been around since Wild World aren't implemented. It's similar to past Animal Crossing games in a lot of ways, but on the whole it feels like a different thing.

But like I said, two minds. New Horizons strays from what I truly want from an Animal Crossing game, but I can't deny that the game as it is is a hell of a lot of fun. There's SO much you can do and SO many options, it's super addictive. Plus it implemented my long-requested feature of letting you effortlessly send mail to friends online! Too bad the actual online play is as cumbersome as ever.

In conclusion, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a land of contrasts. I'm kidding. It's good, but definitely missing something in a way where I can understand some people being disappointed in it. I had a ton of fun though, and I'm probably going to get back into it later in 2021.

Trials of Mana (Nintendo Switch, 2019)

Late in 2019, with the physical release of Collection of Mana for the Switch, I decided I was going to play through each game on it for the first time and finally find out what this whole Mana thing was about. I went into Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Mana series, because every RPG had to be Final Fantasy back then) with zero expectations and found a totally serviceable little Zelda-like with light RPG elements. I enjoyed my time with it. I went into Secret of Mana with the expectation of it being a beloved classic and found the worst game I beat that year, hands down. That game fucking sucks. I get why it made an impression on people at the time, but it's just so so SO awful to play. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Honestly, I would have been disappointed even if I hadn't heard it was one of "the best games" for so long. It would have been a disappointing follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that in and of itself isn't anything incredible. Secret of Mana is just that rotten.

I braced myself for more disappointment when (after a much needed vacation from the series) I started up Trials of Mana. This game had a reputation too, as a long-lost classic that never made it stateside. One of the best games on the Super Nintendo, criminally never released for western audiences! Like Secret of Mana before it, I'd heard nothing but effusive praise. Unlike Secret of Mana, however, I was very pleased to find out that Trials of Mana mostly lives up to the hype. From a gameplay standpoint, Trials is an improvement on Secret in almost every single way. It's not perfect. The menus are still kinda clunky, animations for things like magic and items are still frequently disruptive. But the main thing is it actually plays like a sensible video game designed by humans with brains. Attacking is responsive! Hitboxes aren't complete nonsense! You don't constantly get stunlocked to death! There are more answers to combat than casting the same spell for five straight minutes to kill your enemies before they get a chance to move! It's great!

On top of being an enjoyable video game to actually play, the presentation is top notch. Secret of Mana could be a pretty game with decent music in some spots, but Trials is consistently gorgeous and the soundtrack is across the board great instead of randomly having songs that sound like clown vomit. And while Trials of Mana doesn't have the deepest story in the world, it manages to avoid being completely paper-thin like Secret. The story actually kind of has a reason for being a bit straightforward, and the reason is that it has a really cool system where you pick your three playable characters from a pool of six. Each character has their own goals and storyline, some of which line up with other potential party members, some of which don't, and you'll even run into the characters you didn't choose as NPCs along the way. This and the relatively brisk pace of the game make it highly replayable.

I'm really glad that Trials of Mana made it over here in an official capacity, even if it was like 25 years late. It's as good as I expected Secret of Mana to be and singlehandedly saved my interest in seeing any more of the series. I'm aware the quality of what came after is very spotty, but I'll get to the rest eventually!

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4, 2020)

They (almost) did it. They (basically) pulled it off. They remade (a chunk of) Final Fantasy VII and (for the most part) didn't fuck it up. Ok, funny parentheticals aside, Final Fantasy VII Remake is astoundingly good coming off of over two decades of just absolutely dreadful post-FF7 sequels, side games, and movies.

Final Fantasy VII has been historically misremembered as this kind of miserable, angsty, brooding thing, both by fans and by the company that made it. FF7-branded media after FF7 itself is a minefield of changed personalities, embarrassing original characters, and monumentally lame stories. Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first post-FF7 anything that actually remembers the characters, setting, and plot of Final Fantasy VII and what made them memorable and special to people in the first place. Which isn't to say it's a slavish recreation! There's a ton of changes and additions, and I actually like almost all of them! Except for some really big stuff I'll touch on in a bit!

The combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake is great. I was super skeptical about it when the game was first announced, but they actually managed to make the blend of real-time action and turn-based RPG menuing fun and engaging. The characters all play super differently from each other too, which is a huge and welcome difference from the original game. The Materia system fits like a glove in this revamped combat system as well. The remixed music is good as hell, and the visuals are beautiful (outside of a couple of very specific spots that I'm kinda of surprised they haven't fixed in a patch yet). It's a well-executed package all around.

But alas, as always, there are negatives. For starters, this is only part one of the overall Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It goes up to the party leaving Midgar which, as you may or may not recall, is the first six hours of the original game. They compensated for this by fleshing the hell out of the Midgar section the game, ballooning the overall playtime to total of about 30-ish hours. The game feeling padded is a common complaint but for what it's worth, I didn't really feel it until the unnecessarily long final dungeon, There's also the previously mentioned and funny parenthetical'd changes and additions I don't like.

This is big time spoilers for this game so if you don't want that jump ahead to the next game on the list. The Whispers suck ass. Final Fantasy VII Remake should have been brave enough to be different without having to constantly derail everything in the most ham-fisted and intrusive way possible. You can have Jessie twist her ankle without making a spooky plot ghost trip her. I don't want to fight the physical manifestation of the game everyone thought they were getting as an end boss. If you're not doing a straight remake, that's fine, but have the fucking guts to stand by your artistic decisions without feeling the need to invent the lamest deus ex machina I've ever fucking seen. The last couple of hours of this game are 100% about the Whispers and are awful for it. It's a true testament to the strength of the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake that this aspect didn't completely sour me on it. I can only hope that they stay dead and gone for good in the games yet to come and the remake can be different while standing on its own two feet.

I truly cannot wait for the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. I'm excited for Final Fantasy VII in a way I haven't been since the late 90s. I have a bit of trepidation that they could royally screw it up. I mean, they already got kinda close, as I said in my last paragraph. But they got so much right in this entry that, for the first time in decades, I'm willing to believe in Square Enix when it comes to Final Fantasy VII.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PlayStation 4, 2020)

My one word description of 13 Sentinels is "fucking crazy". I realize that's two words, but shut up. A bizarre hybrid of visual novel, adventure game, and strategy RPG, 13 Sentinels not only makes that work, but makes it work incredibly well. 

The story is fucking bonkers. It's told entirely non-linearly and is purposefully dense and confusing, but it does an amazing job of hooking you with a cast of likable characters and some impressively well-paced twists, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can tackle the story in basically whatever order you want. I'll say it again for those in the back, the story is Fucking Bonkers. Wherever you think it's going, it's not going. Where it is going is PLACES. Seriously, if you want a wild goddamn ride, this is the game for you. The presentation is also stunning. It's a drop dead gorgeous game with a really nice soundtrack. Easily Vanillaware's best looking game, which is saying something seeing as looking good is Vanillaware's whole deal.

If I had to levy one criticism against the game, it's that the strategy RPG portion is just kind of ok. It's enjoyable enough, it doesn't get in the way and there's not too much of it, but once it starts introducing armored versions of previous enemy types it's kind of done doing anything different. It is really good at getting people to out themselves as having no idea what tower defense is as a genre though!

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch, 2018)

I haven't really historically been a "Musou Guy". Not to say I've actively disliked them, they're just not something I've seeked out very often or played very much of. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition kinda turned me into a "Musou Guy" a little bit? It's good, surprisingly-less-mindless-than-you'd-think fun.

I actually super don't care about the Zelda branding. I think all the fanservice stuff is meh at best. What I do care about is that there's a ton of character variety and a metric shitload of content. There's so many different characters and weapons for those characters that all play differently from one another and SOOOOOO many levels to play. Like the story mode is, again, kinda meh, the real meat of the game is the Adventure mode and there's a ton of it. It's 8 different world maps, each based off a different Zelda game, with each square of the map containing a little mini-scenario with unique objectives and rewards. There has to be at least 1000 scenarios between all the maps. There's so much. And that's not even getting into some of the other side stuff like the challenge modes and the fairy raising. It's a crazy amount of game in this game.

And again, it's not as mindless as it'd seem. It's not really a game ABOUT destroying 5000 guys, it's an area control and resource management game where the 5000 guys are one of those resources. Knowing who to send where and when to fight who is way more important than pressing the XXX YYY XXX YYY on the more than one million troops.

I'd say that if you're even cursorily potentially maybe interested in a musou game, this is the one to try. And if you like it, it could literally be your forever game. A sequel came out recently too, and I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (Xbox One, 2020)

Phantasy Star Online 2 finally came stateside in the year 2020, eight years after its initial Japanese release and initial American cancellation. It's no Phantasy Star Online 1, but it is a really fun game in its own right provided you can find the willpower to break through its clunkiness and eight years of confusing poorly tutorialized free-to-play MMO cruft.

The main thing going for PSO2, and this is a major improvement from PSO1, is that the act of engaging in its combat is fun. The combat is just feels really really good. There's a bunch of different weapon types and classes, and once you find the ones that really click with you you're in for a good time, whether you're izuna dropping dudes with wire claws or literally doing air juggles and rainstorm from Devil May Cry with the dual machine guns.

The other stuff around that combat is weird. I generally like it, but it's weird. The story mode is one of the most bizarrely presented things I've ever seen. It apparently used to be something you'd seek out in the levels themselves, but presently it's just a list of scenes you pick from a menu and watch with next to no context until it makes you fight a boss sometimes. There's some weird moments in there that MIGHT have been cool if it were presented in literally any other way?

The systems and presentation are also way more... I dunno, pinball? Pachislot? In very stark contrast to how chill original Phantasy Star Online was, everything in PSO2 is designed in a way to maximize that flashy light bing bing wahoo you got ~*~RARE DROP CHANCE UP~*~  feeling. Which isn't to say I don't like flashy light bing bing wahoo, but it's a weird different thing.

Was it worth the wait? Yeah, sure! For me! This is another one that I played like 300 hours of! I haven't even seen half of it, I fell off right before Episode 4 released because it coincided with my move! I'm gonna go back and see all that shit! PSO2's fun! A different flavor of fun than the original, sure, but fun all the same. Another one that I'm glad finally made it over here.

Riichi Mahjong (A Table, 1924)

Holy shit I fucking did it I finally learned how to play Mahjong and it rules.

It started when I picked up Clubhouse Games for the Switch. I saw that it had Riichi Mahjong and something in my brain snapped. For whatever reason, I decided that this was the time I was going to rip the band-aid off and figure this shit out. It wasn't too dissimilar to the first time I decided to try eggs, but that's a different and much stupider story for a different time. I did the tutorial in Clubhouse Games, looked up some more basics and advice because the tutorial wasn't super amazing, and I kept playing while being aided by the game's nice helper features like the button that pulls up recommended hands. I kept playing and... sorta got it. I learned the basic rules, but none of the strategy. And then I stopped playing for a few months.

In that few months, for whatever reason, a decent amount of people I know had their brains snap the same way? Like a more-than-two amount of people I'm either friends with or following online also decided to learn Mahjong. I decided to get back on the horse and downloaded Mahjong Soul and I don't know whether it was perseverance or the power of anime babes, but this time I got it. I still refer to a sheet with all the hands and whether they work open or closed, and I'm by no means a master player, but I actually honest to god understand what I'm doing and it's an incredible feeling.

Mahjong has such a huge amount of what I like to call "Get That Ass" energy. It is the energy you feel when you get someone's ass. In Mahjong you are either constantly getting someone's ass or getting your ass gotten. Someone puts down the wrong tile and you fucking GET THEIR ASS DUDE! They're got!! They're a fucking idiot that put down the wrong thing and now you have their points!!! Or you draw what you need yourself and you're a brain genius all according to plan and everyone gives you points because you're so wise!!!! It's great!!!!!

Mahjong has long been one of those games where I'd say "I'll learn this someday" and never reeeeally actually try to learn, and I'm so glad I finally took the effort to because it's good as hell. And, truth be told, it wasn't THAT hard to learn? Like you can get to the point where I was where I didn't know the strategy fairly easily in my opinion, and once you do that It's just a matter of continuing to play to understand the rest. I highly recommended that you also go out and learn it if you similarly revel in getting that ass, it's so satisfying once you do.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PlayStation 4, 2020)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio took a big gamble with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After seven games (more if you take spinoffs and remakes into consideration) they decided to focus on a new main character and, even more unexpectedly, they decided to change things up by turning the series into a turn-based JRPG. Their gamble paid off in spades. This is easily in my top 3 favorite Yakuza games.

The JRPG gameplay is surprisingly solid. There's definite room for improvement, but they nailed a bunch of it right out of the gate. Some mechanics are a little janky and I wish the job system was more fleshed out or just worked more like Final Fantasy V's, but they nailed one of the most important things and made the battles brisk and fun. It's a great foundation, especially for a team that's never attempted anything like this, and it's way more fun than the combat's been in any of the previous Dragon Engine games. I can't wait to see them iterate on it.

Everything else is top fuckin' notch. The music is great, the side content is fully fleshed out in a way it hasn't been since before they switched to the Dragon Engine, and I love the characters and story so much. Yakuza has a new main character in Ichiban Kasuga, and he's my son and I love him. Kiryu was great, and I love him too, but he was a bit of a passive protagonist. Stuff happened around him and he mostly just stoically reacted to it. Ichi is a much more active lead and it's great. He's a big lovable dope, and his tendency to keep an upbeat attitude and eagerness to leap into action is such a breath of fresh air. And it's not only Ichiban, since this is an RPG you have a whole party of characters and they're all great! Having them with you at all times bantering with each other and reacting to things is another great change of narrative pace, too. 

Yakuza: Like a Dragon just straight up rules. As someone who has historically not been too much of a fan of the Dragon Engine games, it's simultaneously a refreshing new take on the series and a fantastic return to form. I can't wait for what comes next. Wherever Ichiban goes, I go.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

After 23 years of Japanese PS1 exclusivity, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure finally got an English release this year for Nintendo Switch. I'm glad it did, because Moon isn't just the very definition of A Sebmal Game. It's the Sebmal Game missing link. In addition to being just a great video game, it helped me make a mental throughline for a bunch of games I love and a large part of my taste in video games.

To keep a long story short (seriously, I have a much much longer version of this saved in my drafts that I'll maybe finish someday), Moon turned out to be not the JRPG I assumed it was, given the title and basic story pitch, but a secret prequel to a game I love named Chulip. Moon's developer, Love-de-Lic, was formed by a handful of ex-Squaresoft employees, many of which worked on an extremely formative game I love named Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Love-de-Lic broke up in the year 2000 and its staff went on to form a bunch of different studios that ended up making a BUNCH of different games I love like Chibi-Robo, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dandy Dungeon, and the aforementioned Chulip. These games, when you make the connection and line them up, all have a very distinct weirdness in common that makes perfect sense once you've realized many of the same people worked on them. Figuring this all out felt like snapping a piece of my brain back in place, and it was really crazy to come to understand exactly how much this studio that formed and disbanded decades before I'd even heard of them had impacted my tastes and, hell, my life.

So what is Moon, for those who don't innately understand what I mean by "a secret prequel to Chulip"? Moon is an adventure game where you explore a world with a day/night cycle, learn about that world's inhabitants, and eventually solve their problems. Think of it kind of like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, but if the sidequests were the entirety of the focus with no Groundhog Day time reset mechanic and none of the Zelda stuff like combat and dungeons. You play as a young boy who, after a late night JRPG binge session, is sucked into the world of the game he was just playing. Everything is off from the way it was portrayed while the boy was playing the game, though. The hero he had previously controlled is actually a silent menace, raiding peoples' houses for treasure and slaughtering every innocent animal that crosses his path in an endless quest for EXP. The townspeople seem more concerned with problems in their day-to-day lives than the supposed world threatening crisis outlined in the game's intro. It's up to you as the boy to investigate this world's mysteries, help the townsfolk, mend the damage the hero has done, and eventually restore love to a loveless world.

Speaking of love, I fucking loved Moon. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the way it looks (even though the Switch port is a little crusty in that basic emulator-y kinda way), I loved how constantly bizarre and surprising and funny it was. Like I said earlier, it's the very definition of a game made for me. It was essentially the progenitor of a long line of games made for me, and of games potentially made for me but I don't know yet because I haven't played them due to not understanding Japanese (UFO: A Day in the Life translation next please? Anyone from Onion Games reading this??). For as similar as Moon and Chulip are in their systems and pacing, I think I might actually like Moon better despite it coming earlier? It's not as full force maximum impact absurd as Chulip is, but it is a lot more playable and less obtuse once you get a grip on the time limit mechanic. You don't need a full strategy guide included in the instruction manual for Moon, and you don't need to exchange business cards with every single character to get information vital to finishing the game either.

I truly cannot recommend Moon enough if your taste in games ventures anywhere off the beaten path. Maybe this is a little conceited of me, but I assume if you're reading this article, let alone this far down into it, you relate to my video game opinions at least a little bit? You should play Moon. Everyone reading this sentence should play Moon. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is my game of the year for the year 2020.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Death Stranding (PlayStation 4, 2019): Death Stranding, much like Metal Gear Solid V, was a game I enjoyed for the gameplay and not much else. The story, characters, and writing were a huge disappointment for me, but man if I didn't enjoy lugging those boxes around and setting up my hellish cross-continental goon summer camp lookin' zipline network. Mr. Driller Drill Land (Nintendo Switch, 2020): I am a known Mr. Driller Enjoyer, and I enjoyed this Mr. Driller. Originally released for the Gamecube, Mr. Driller Drill Land is another long-time Japanese exclusive that finally came stateside this year and it's packed with new and novel twists on the Mr. Driller format. It looks super sharp, the music's great (also the credits music is the most impossibly out of place and extra as hell shit in the world and it's hilarious), and it's just a good ass time. The main campaign is pretty damn short, but if you're a post-game content kinda guy it has that and it's all super hard. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PlayStation 4, 2020): They finally made another good new Tony Hawk game, and all it took was perfectly remaking two of the best old Tony Hawk games! Plays exactly like you remember it with the added benefit of the best mechanics from up to THUG1, looks great, packed full of content, even has most of the music alongside some mostly crappy new stuff. It's the full package as is, but I do hope they end up adding THPS3 to it eventually. Mad Rat Dead (Nintendo Switch, 2020): Mad Rat Dead was a pleasant surprise that I only picked up because I saw a couple of people on my Twitter timeline constantly talking about it. A fun and inventive platformer where all your actions need to be on beat with the music. The gameplay feels great (aside from some not so great performance issues on Switch), the soundtrack is fun, and it's got a real good style to it. Demon's Souls (PlayStation 5, 2020): I love Demon's Souls and this is Demon's Souls. It plays exactly the same with some minor quality of life changes. I don't agree with many of the artistic changes, but there's no denying it looks incredible on a technical level. If you want to play Demon's Souls again or for the first time, this is a perfectly valid and fun way to do so. Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!! (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Groove Coaster is one of my favorite rhythm games, and they finally made an acceptable at-home version with Wai Wai Party. It's not a perfect replication of the arcade game control-wise, I have some issues with the song choices, and the pricing is frankly fucking ridiculous if you're not a Groove Coaster maniac like I am, but the same ultra satisfying gameplay is all there. You can even play it vertically in handheld mode! Flip Griiiiiiiip!

And we're done! Phew! Honestly didn't realize I played that many good games until I typed all this out. Thanks as always for reading this far. I'm gonna try and get back to regularly posting Breviews this year at the very least. Honestly don't know if I'll get anything else up on here, but we'll see. Here's to hoping 2021 is a little bit less of a nightmare!

[dailyexo]

[NEWS] Baekhyun - 200530 Grammy: “K-Pop Superstar Baekhyun On His Sweet Solo Single "Candy" & Delightful Second Mini Album”

"The multi-talented artist from EXO and SuperM talks about the inspirations and goals behind 'Delight': "I wanted to showcase a variety of different sides that I have to myself"

A soft humming is heard on the other side of the line while the call stabilizes — of course one of South Korea’s most prominent vocalists would be singing. Baekhyun, who debuted in 2012 as a member of the chart-topping boy group EXO, has just released his second solo album, Delight, and his excitement is palpable through the phone.

Just minutes before this call, he was interacting with fans on a live stream through the app VLive. There, he answered a series of questions while waiting for the album to drop at 6 pm on May 25 (KST). Nicknamed “Genius Idol” for his array of talents, Baekhyun has tried a little bit of everything throughout his career: acting, fashion design (he’s the co-creative director of the brand Privé by BBH), gaming, vlogging, duets, the EXO subunit EXO-CBX, and leading the supergroup SuperM — who was the first Korean act to top the Billboard 200 albums chart with a debut release.

His solo career officially started last year with the release of City Lights. The album sold more than half a million copies and became the best-selling physical album of 2019 by a solo artist in Korea. Delight follows the same footsteps: it amassed 732,297 stock pre-orders, sold over six hundred thousand copies on the first day according to Hanteo (a company that shares real-time sales data in South Korea), and topped the iTunes Album Charts in 68 countries so far.

Sonically, Delight is a breezy, RnB-infused experience that showcases Baekhyun’s prismatic artistry. “I worked really hard on this album, and I was really happy working on it as well,” he tells the Recording Academy. Like “Candy”, the title track, each song has a different flavor. Deep cut “R U Ridin’” has a honey-dripping bassline, for example, while the bright “Poppin’” feels like chewing on sour candies, and the intense “Ghost” lingers with a coffee caramel aftertaste.

To deepen the discussion around his new album, The Recording Academy caught up with Baekhyun and talked about his inspirations, the development of his multifaceted persona, and, of course, his favorite candy.

This interview was edited for clarity, and an interpreter translated all answers from Baekhyun.

How are you feeling lately?

I’ve been really happy. There’s been a lot of excitement and expectation personally around the Delight release, so I’ve been relishing in all of that these days.

What were your inspirations for this album?

I wanted to try the RnB genre more, so that’s what I focused on for this album. In terms of the title itself, within EXO my superpower is “light,” so I wanted to emphasize that as much as possible.

[Writer’s note: EXO debuted under a concept where each member has a superpower, and that appears throughout their branding.]

Just the way the word “delight” sounds is pleasurable. What are some of life's delights to you?

Right now, the top ones would be being on stage and performing. Another thing is that I’ve been taking vocal lessons on the side, and that has been a source of delight to me as well.

What's your favorite song in this album? Are there any lyrics you would like people to pay attention to?

I have to pick the title track, “Candy.” If you listen to the lyrics, there is a part where I list candy flavors and ask “what more do you want?” I think it truly expresses confidence and boldness, that I can become whatever you like, just tell me and I’ll do it. That’s the part I want everyone to pay special attention to.

This ability to become whatever is needed at the moment also shows up in the contrasting sweet and sensuous styles you explore in the album. Can you talk more about that?

As you mentioned, that’s exactly what I was trying to do with the concept of “Candy” and of Delight in general. I wanted to showcase a variety of different sides that I have to myself. In the past, fans would always say that they like both my sweet side and the more sensual, performative side, so I wanted to capture both and present them in a bigger package.

Comparing Delight to your first solo album, City Lights, what are the main differences between them?

With City Lights, because it was my first solo album, I wanted to focus more on the vocals and showcase what I felt like I could present the best. If you listen to it, it’s definitely more vocal-focused. In Delight, I wanted to take a step further and show a different side to fans. I wanted to incorporate more performance, which means a lot of choreography and thinking about the visuals on stage. I also tried to make this album a little brighter and fresher than City Lights, so visually and performance-wise it’s different.

When I think of Baekhyun, the word that comes to mind is "balance". You have an impressive talent to blend light and dark, highs and lows, laughter and tears in your performances. Are you aware of this fluency in yourself?

Since I was younger, I always heard that I’m pretty honest with my emotions. People see the bright and happy sides of me, but they see the other sides as well. Because my personality is one that is honest about how I feel, I want to showcase my true self to people. I think that’s why people say that about me as well, of showing the balance between many sides of things. That’s what I want to do because it’s who I am, and also what I want to showcase as an artist.

You have been an idol for almost a decade. What has been your biggest lesson so far?

Going back to my previous answer, I realized that if you’re honest with yourself and you’re truthful in the way you act, talk, and interact with everyone, then people will know. People will know that you’re being genuine, and over the years I learned to be honest with how I feel when I connect with my fans. As time passes, I think they have been able to recognize that and connect with me on a more genuine level too. That’s the biggest thing I learned.

And what is the achievement you're most proud of?

My debut with EXO. Even though my training period was short when compared to other members, just to be able to work together, come together as a group, and debut together, it’s definitely my proudest achievement to date. And that’s what launched me to be where I am right now.

You were always known for your powerful singing, but during all these years you have developed yourself and are currently recognized as a multi-talented artist and skillful dancer as well. Can you tell us more about that process?

My vocals have always been my main strength, so it’s something I continuously work on and want to improve on. In terms of dancing, I have a friend named Kasper who is a dancer/choreographer, and he teaches me all the trendy dances, gives me advice on how I should do this or that, so that’s a practical way that I have improved my skills. In general, because I have a lot of energy, I felt like just my vocals weren’t enough for the amount of energy that I can showcase, so I always wanted to channel that through dancing, which is a different outlet.

Did Kasper create the choreography for “Candy”? And did you have any input on it?

Yes. Because we’re friends, when he would show me the choreography, I would say “what about we do it this way?” and then we bounced ideas off each other, especially when it came to the formations of the dance overall.

In the current world situation, it's hard to expect things or make plans for this year, but what is one thing you are looking forward to in 2020?

It’s hard to make plans for the rest of the year, but I’m hoping that things get better so I can finally meet my fans in person. That’s the one thing I’m looking forward to the most. Because of the current situation, we had to shift things to digital, but I’m also excited to meet my fans via different platforms as well.

Have the members of EXO listened to your album? What was their reaction?

When they listened, they said that it matches the seasons right now, as we’re going into summer. All of them commented on how it was a new style for me as a solo artist, like showing another side of Baekhyun, another vibe. They also noticed that I put a lot of effort into it, they’re really supportive.

If you could describe yourself as a candy flavor, what would that be?

Strawberry. Because its flavor encapsulates both sweet and sour, and that’s precisely what I want to do — show different sides. With this concept in Delight, you can see a more relaxed, confident side, but you can also see a very sweet and doting side of my character.

To sum it all up, what is your favorite candy flavor?

Green grape! In Korea they sell bags of green grape hard candy, those are my favorites."

Credit: Grammy.

[sciencespies]

A Coronavirus Spread Through U.S. Pigs in 2013. Here’s How It Was Stopped

https://sciencespies.com/nature/a-coronavirus-spread-through-u-s-pigs-in-2013-heres-how-it-was-stopped/

A Coronavirus Spread Through U.S. Pigs in 2013. Here’s How It Was Stopped

In the spring of 2013, a deadly coronavirus began to spread across the United States. Within a year it had reached 32 states, sweeping through dense populations that lacked immunity to the new pathogen. Though researchers scrambled to curb the disease, by the following spring, the epidemic claimed some 8 million lives—all of them pigs.

The pathogen responsible, Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDv), poses no danger to humans. But among its hosts, pigs, the virus ravages their bodies with severe gastrointestinal disease. The 2013 outbreak killed an estimated 10 percent of the nation’s pigs in a matter of months. Struggling to make ends meet with limited supplies, pork producers pushed their prices to record highs as farmers nursed the dying and sick—most of which were newborn piglets—by the thousands.

“It was extremely devastating,” says Don Davidson, a veterinarian with the Ohio-based food company Cooper Farms. “The losses were huge. Months later … you could just see there weren’t as many pigs in market.”

By summer of 2014, the diarrheal disease had mostly petered out, partly because of a combination of increased diagnostic efforts and the growing immunity of the nation’s pig population. But perhaps the biggest factor in ending the epidemic was behavioral: a near-universal ramp-up in farms’ attention to cleaning, disinfection and isolation, says Michaela Trudeau, an animal coronavirus researcher at the University of Minnesota. These enhanced biosecurity measures “are one set of things we turn to over and over again to keep our pigs safe,” she says.

As the world battles another dangerous coronavirus, the human pathogen SARS-CoV-2, similar lessons could prove valuable once again. People aren’t pigs, and SARS-CoV-2—a respiratory virus—does not cause the same illness as PEDv. But this new coronavirus is vulnerable to many of the tactics that brought its predecessors to heel. In both cases, ��it comes down to cooperation,” Trudeau says. “The more people [working to] contain it, the better off we’ll be.”

A cosmopolitan disease

The human population first discovered PEDv in the early 1970s, when veterinarians in Britain noticed pigs falling ill with bouts of watery diarrhea that couldn’t be traced back to any known pathogens. Because many cases were mild and the disease mostly spared piglets, farmers largely shrugged off the outbreaks.

Then, as the decades passed, the virus snuck across international borders and mutated. By 2010, strains emerging in China were sparking massive outbreaks that felled newborn pigs in droves.

In April of 2013, PEDv made landfall in the United States, flaring up first in Ohio and then Indiana and Iowa. Alarmed farmers and researchers ran tests for the typical spate of diarrheal microbes, yielding negative after negative. By the time PEDv was identified as the likely culprit, the pathogen had started to spread east and west. Although American veterinarians knew of the virus’ existence abroad, few had given serious thought to a PEDv cross-continental jump. American pigs had no immunity to fight off the new pathogen, and no vaccines or treatments were available.

The virus “had never made it to the U.S., and we thought it would stay that way,” says Montserrat Torremorell, an animal health expert at the University of Minnesota. “We weren’t ready.”

(United States Department of Agriculture-National Agriculture Statistics Service)

Likely stemming from the same ancestor that had yielded China’s deadly strains, the American variant of the virus proved a formidable foe. “It’s extremely infectious” in low doses, says Davidson, who explains he once heard that “the eraser on top of a No. 2 pencil could hold enough PED virus to infect every pig in the United States.”

Once swallowed by an unsuspecting piglet, the pathogen would travel to the gut and infect and destroy the finger-like nutrient-absorbing projections called villi on the walls of the small intestine. Newborn piglets were plagued with intense bouts of diarrhea, driving extreme dehydration that proved lethal within a few days of infection: On many farms, the death rates in the youngest swine “were just about 100 percent,” Davidson says.

Though older pigs remained mostly resilient to the disease’s most severe effects, they weren’t immune to infection. Even in the absence of symptoms, they shed and spread the virus through their feces, seeding new outbreaks as unsuspecting farmers shipped their swine stocks nationwide.

“This industry is structured in such a way that pigs move, and not just by a few miles,” Torremorell says. Domesticated pigs are, not unlike humans, a fairly cosmopolitan group. In a single lifetime, a pig may make several trips of a thousand miles or more, such as when it’s ready for sale or slaughter.

Humans, too, played a major role in transmission. While PEDv can’t infect people, the pathogen used them as its oblivious chauffeurs, hitching rides to new swine hosts as farmers, feed suppliers and veterinarians traveled from place to place. Hardy enough to persist for several days outside the pig body, the virus clung to clothes and glommed onto the soles of shoes. It planted itself onto equipment and coated the insides of trailers and trucks.

Worst of all may have been the virus’ ability to fester for weeks in feed, giving the pathogen a straight shot into the guts of its hosts. “Feed ingredients have unique access to our pigs,” says Megan Niederwerder, a veterinary virologist at Kansas State University. “That definitely was not at the forefront of our minds.”

A wake-up call

The outbreak moved at “eye opening” speed, Davidson says. “Just about everybody got it. I don’t know any large farm systems that didn’t.”

In the absence of reliable, widely available medical interventions, farmers and veterinarians turned most of their focus to diagnosis and containment. “We already had pretty solid biosecurity protocols on farms,” Trudeau says. “But this really made us take a step back and think, because it was traveling so easily which we hadn’t necessarily seen with other viruses before.”

Suddenly, Trudeau says, everything moving to and from a farm was subject to intense scrutiny. No surface was too small or too hidden to escape the reach of a microscopic virus. All pigs and people had to be treated as potential vectors for disease.

“Farmers effectively shut down their farms,” says Scott Kenney, an animal coronavirus researcher at Ohio State University. “Friends from other farms weren’t able to come in, sales reps weren’t allowed to come in. And the people who did had to change their clothes before going into farms.”

Trudeau says that most places that dealt with pigs already had a “shower in, shower out” policy in place that required visitors to remove their clothing, wash off with soap and water, and don a clean outfit before making any contact with animals. Exiting the building then required the same procedure in reverse. “It’s very extensive,” she says. “Nothing is coming onto the farm that hasn’t been washed.”

In the pre-PEDv era, not everyone was vigilant about following showering guidelines, Trudeau says. By necessity, the outbreak changed that, says Marie Culhane, a veterinarian at the University of Minnesota. “It’s not business as usual during an outbreak.”

Farmers, feed distributors and transport personnel became ardent disinfectors, regularly sterilizing frequently contacted surfaces, including equipment. Because the insides of trucks were especially difficult to clean, drivers ferrying supplies no longer left their vehicles, asking farm personnel to do the unloading themselves. And any individuals who had recently spent time in a heavily pig-populated place, like a county fair, would wait at least 72 hours before stepping onto a swine establishment—a form of self-isolation.

Importantly, farmers put these measures in place without waiting for their pigs to show symptoms, Torremorell says. “When that virus infects older animals, they can be shedding continuously and have no clinical signs. You just don’t know.”

The payoff wasn’t instantaneous. But slowly the epidemic began to wane, and by the fall of 2014, PEDv had finally loosened its grip. The virus has reappeared in the years since, flickering briefly in pig populations before being stamped out. Many of the pigs that survived the first epidemic became immune to further infection. But farmers are also much more savvy nowadays. Whenever the pathogen appears, “they basically shut down things right away, like going into lockdown,” Torremorell says. “When that happens, there’s not as much spread.”

The other coronavirus

In the absence of an effective, long-lasting PEDv vaccine—something that still eludes veterinarians—control of epidemics “depends critically on high biosecurity,” says Qiuhong Wang, an animal coronavirus expert at Ohio State University.

While SARS-CoV-2 and PEDv belong to the same family, the two viruses target different hosts and different parts of the body, and shouldn’t be considered interchangeable in any respects. But in broad strokes, containing an infectious disease hinges on a common set of principles that promotes awareness about transmission, minimizes contamination of surfaces and materials, and champions the effectiveness of practicing good hygiene, Torremorell says.

For humans, following that strategy includes adhering to physical distancing measures, frequent cleaning and disinfecting and taking precautions in the absence of symptoms, Trudeau says. What’s more, adopting these tactics now could help prepare the population for its next outbreak.

“We learned lots on the pig side about being better prepared,” Davidson says. “Behavioral change is hard. But it works.”

#Nature