#as well as the many many individual artists over the years whose art styles have influenced mine like jon gray or craig mccracken

[0046incognito]

Hi! So i have a somewhat similar series to yours, is it okay if I keep it? I don’t wanna seem like im copying, i do take a little inspo but I can credit you! :D ive been working on this project for about a year now.. Just asking if its all alright with you! Again, I don’t wanna copy, Youre a big inspo of mine!!

are you asking if it’s okay to take inspiration from my work? i’d be totally flattered! i’m pretty open about my inspirations so i don’t see the problem with being on the receiving end of that^_^ it honestly makes me extremely happy to hear on multiple occasions that people are inspired by my work and just makes me more and more motivated to make CMY2K real and tangible as soon as possible

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

📣ANNOUNCEMENT📣 THE BIG 2024 PROJECT

At long last, I'm announcing what I've been working on🥁

Starting February 6th and continuing every other Tuesday through at least mid-December, this blog will be highlighting the work of various illustrators of A Tale of Two Cities over the many decades since its initial publishing!💫

As it stands right now, the archive will span from the very beginning in 1859 all the way through about 1992 (with a heavy density at the turn of the century) and will contain just under 500 individual illustrations by 20 individual illustrators — in styles ranging all the way from pen to painting and abstraction to realism✍️

All of these numbers will continue to grow, however, because this is an ongoing project! In fact I expect the queue to continue through a good portion of 2025 as I keep finding and archiving more and more — there's just so much out there! For this reason I am not posting these in a sorted order — I looked at what I have right now and ordered them to feel random and balanced, with some themed for certain months😎

Also! A large percentage of these (about half of the artists and well over half of the total illustrations) are coming from sources difficult or impossible to find on the Internet and are instead coming from my own scanning work: When I would discover in my research editions that I knew to have work by new illustrators whose pages weren't available for online viewing, I would seek out and buy those editions for super cheap online and scan them on my own printer's scanner — so for a lot of the old illustration work that this blog will be posting, it will possibly be the first time some of these have ever been uploaded for public view on the Internet!🤩

As far as keeping the archive organized on this blog, the organizational tag for these posts will be " #illustrators ", and I will also tag each post with the highlighted artist's name and with the decade in which each set of illustrations was initially published (as far as my research tells me)🏷️

On the off-weeks, this blog will be posting its usual miscellany, with a sprinkling of behind-the-scenes and extras for this specific project. But starting next week and continuing every other Tuesday* through about the entire year, expect a new post highlighting the work of a given A Tale of Two Cities illustrator — and be prepared because sometimes the number of illustrations on a single post will be in the tens/dozens since Tumblr increased the max image count for a single post to 30! *with the exception of April, which is going to have a special schedule for reasons you'll see when the queue gets there👀

I'm just so excited to at long last get to share this incredible archive here! I sincerely hope you enjoy this fascinating and often breathtaking look at these tiny, beautiful pieces of art history!🌟

[americasummer]

FAS3001 - WHAT IS A TREND?

A trend, according to the Oxford Dictionary definition, refers to “a general direction in which something is developing or changing”. What I understand from this, is that any regular developments or shifts in patterns whose collated data can be mapped and predicted over a particular period, albeit in any industry such as science, social behaviour, or sales etc, for that matter, is known or perceived as a trend.

Trends can be found in many kinds of genre of industries, but fashion is one that is mostly influenced by it which is noticeable when new seasons of catwalk shows, and advertisement bring alight new creations as well as a revival of collections collaged with new ideas. 

With reference to the reading recommendation “Fashion Trend Forecasting book (2017)”, trend forecasters seem to start the inception of their research process 18-24 months before the realised products hit the stores and for more specialized sportswear, maybe longer due to the technological challenges which may have to be overcome to create high performance garments. Although the timeline above seems to be industry standard, the world we live in today with the fast access to information has caused the regular shopper to want something new as soon as yesterday and not the extended period of waiting 3-6 months for the catwalk fashion to trickle down and filtering into cheaper, digestible trends to the high street shop. Fast fashion companies seem to somehow attempt to fill this gap by churning out revised iterations of these fashion outfits in a matter of weeks.

Trends can be divided into three main categories:

Fad (3 - 6 months) – parachute pants, shiny party dress, jeggings.

Seasonal trends (6 months – 5 years) – slip on plimsols shoes. 

Classics (10 – 25 years) – denim jeans trouser, T shirt, little black dress, Doc Martens boots.

Trend influence and development categories:

Trickle down trends – These are expensive fashion trends that start their way down from wealthier consumer until eventually trickling down into cheaper versions for the regular shopper. For example - garments made from expensive taffeta and real leather fabric types will filter down into polyester and faux leather versions which will be more affordable.

Bubble up trends – These are trends which work in the opposite way to the “trickle down”, where trends are inspired by street style instead of fashion houses. Trend forecasters and designers take some guidance from this to inform future trends. Examples would include art printed T Shirts inspired by the Hip Hop music subculture and independent artists customising their own garments to stand out and express their individuality.

Trickle across trends – An example of this trend would be a type of fashion item such as the T Shirt or denim trouser. Different iterations of these classic pieces can trickle across in various forms and prices to suit either the wealthier or the poorer consumer. 

[transformers-fan-continuities]

Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf​ created by @artsy-hobbitses​!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards  Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place. 

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society. 

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times  to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to  Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation  and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and  expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower​‘s OC Missit!)  is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider​’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

[paranaturalpop]

I rate your pnat ships by how well they work as foils

I’m Professor Pops, welcome to Literature 405: comparing and contrasting in pnat ships. Love is in the air but all that really matters is narrative symmetry!

Mina and Agent Day (submitted by @anxanhh)

two women on missions who need a confidante. 

Mina is a calculating woman of science with a tender, vulnerable heart deep down that she guards. Day is a fun, giggly love goddess but beneath the surface she is just as calculating.  

They are both focused on their prospective goals to the point of subterfuge. 

They have similar missions, to solve the many mysteries of Mayview, but they’re at odds instead of working together. Will these lone wolves learn to let their walls down and work towards a common goal? 

Their spectral energies are complementary colors!!!!!!!!!!!! 

9/10 so different yet so alike. They should kiss and also develop as people.

Spendcia

Where's that post about paranatural having what my hero academia wants?

These two had interacted in cannon only once before we found out they were dating, power move on Zack’s part

The cousinhood and the consortium seem to have bad blood…. Enemies to lovers????

As teachers, Garcia is tired and phoning it in while spender is energetic and committed. But when it comes to mystery solving Spender is burning himself out while Garcia keeps him grounded.

Garcia does things like pack spender lunches with little hearts drawn on the bag but was surprised to be called his boyfriend. He acts chill but inside he is deeply invested in spender but also knows about spender’s isolating tendencies. 

8/10 there's a reason these two have been off and on again for 6ish years, they’re walking a tightrope of vulnerability.

Imaax (submitted by Rubyya)

The Destiel of Paranatural. No I will not elaborate.

Here’s a pnat history lesson, the original ship name was Maxaac, but Zack weighed in on twitter with a much better alternative: Imaax. Also sometimes called Team Lightning Rod. 

Black and blue colors, just like the emotional bruises they leave on the people around them. 

Isaac wants to be seen as heroic and Max wants to be seen as aloof. It presents in different ways but deep down they both really care what other people think.

They both fear sincerity. Isaac protects himself with theatrics and Max with sarcasm. 

Isaac puts on a big show of having strong ethics but he’s a little mean on instinct. Max puts on a big show of cutting people down with his snark and devil-may-care attitude, but when push comes to shove he’s kind and cares how other people feel. 

Max immediately insults every person he meets and they still want to be best friends with him, while Issac tries so hard to be cool and nice but people just can’t stand him. 

The meta tension between Isaac, who wants so badly to be the protagonist, and Max “magnetic personally” Puckett who is exhausted with being the protagonist, is delicious. 

There’s a reason official art tends to portray them together. They bring out the best in each other. Isaac brakes through Max’s performative pessimism and Max brings Isaac down to earth. 

10/10 these two were written as a pair and it shows.

Suzabel (submitted by Rubyya)

One of my fav tropes is ‘enemies to friends’ where the enemy part is completely one-sided. Isabel probably thinks she and Suzy get along great. 

Both the heads of their respective clubs, but with very different leadership styles. 

Isabel only studies her grandfather's spectral style to please him and is a near master of it, while Suzy is incredibly self-motivated even though her actual skills are lacking. 

Isabel is at a crucial time in her life where she’s learning to distance herself from adult authority figures in order to take on more personal responsibility. Suzy is already blazing with independence and could help her adjust. 

Inversely, Isabel could teach Suzy a thing or two about treating your club members with respect and doing the emotional labor necessary to prevent future conflict. 

Red and pink! Valentines colors! 

Isabel could kill you but would never, Suzy would actually try to kill you. 

Investigative reporter/person living mysterious double life is a great dynamic.

Back when Izzy had Eightfold they had the ship name ‘Paper Girls’ which is awesome

7/10 Don’t ask me how I know this but they would kill at karaoke together. And they’re ok foils.

Bullymagnet

Max ‘too cool for clubs’ vs a boy who defines himself by his tight knit group. 

Max is learning to be less passive aggressive and johnny is learning to be less aggressive aggressive. 

Max’s entry to spectral life was when he injured Johnny and saw a shade of a doctopi on him, and Johnny's first shade was Max's doctopi after the hit ball game. 

Johnny refuses to commit to not bullying max anymore even though he really likes him, and max is working on being nicer but he’s still gonna be snarky with people even though they’re his friends. Old habits die hard. 

If he hadn't seen that shade, Max might have joined Johnny's gang. He has the style, the stunts, the snark. 

8/10 Just two bros whose lives are changing forever.

Isaac and Dimitri (submitted by Rubyya)

Here’s my pitch for a ship name: Brainstorm

Orange and blue are complementary colors. 

Isaac hurt Dimitri accidentally somehow. Hurting others accidentally is the central theme of chapter 5. 

Idealist/pragmatist is a classic dynamic

They both have relationships with their spirit partners that are rooted in fear. 

Dimitri’s self concept is overly dependent on his sense of intellectual superiority, and Isaac’s on ethical superiority. 

7/10 have not directly interacted in the comic yet but the narrative symmetry is there

Johnny and Isabel (submitted by Rubyya)

Burnhound Vs Shockadile

These two are natural leaders who know how to treat their friends with respect.

These jocks are both lethal weapons, but while Isabel is a master martial artist, Johnny is a passionate but blunt instrument.

They’re both going through similar identity crises.

Isabel is struggling to reconcile her violent and disciplined upbringing with a good, gentle heart and Johnny is trying to reconcile his violent and self-centered lifestyle with a developing respect and empathy for other people.

Johnny dies his hair red, so he would think it’s cool how Izzy emits a fiery red aura when excited.

8/10 there's a reason these two were the team leaders in the hit ball arch.

Violet and Lisa (submitted by Rubyya)

People have been theorizing about what kind of cryptid Lisa is since day one meanwhile Violet gives off big normie energy.

Lisa is very plugged into all the Mayview weirdness as the queen of the school underground, while Violet was the only person who thought to go get a teacher during the hit ball arch. Lisa was also the only one who really spoke openly about how something was clearly very wrong with Jeff, everyone else talked around it and played by the so called ‘rules’. Lisa’s secret brokering Vs. Violet’s ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ attitude presents two different approaches to trying to survive in a school run by a mysterious shadow organization within a town that contains several other mysterious shadow organizations.

“If you were, I’d have to be jealous too.” just two middle schoolers pinning over their crushes.

7/10 two girls against the world.

Isaac and Johnny

ship name: Firestorm?

Just 2 fiery redheaded mediums with anger management issues that command primal forces and wanna be best friends with max

Johnny chooses to have red spiky hair, Issac has had red spiky hair thrust upon him.

Both met Maxwell Pucket and decided they needed to change for the better.

I’ve said this before but Johnny and Issac have equal and opposite philosophies. Johnny doesn't care about the greater good, he just cares about a small group of people who he loves. Issac cares about the greater good, but can’t connect with individuals and ends up hurting them. Together they form one GoodTM boy.

Both their spirit partners want revenge on Spender. This spells trouble.

If there’s anyone to teach Isaac about unconditional friendship, it’s Johnny

Isaac has sworn off violence and Johnny worships at the altar of it.

9/10 they’ve only interacted in canon once so far but I’ve think we’ve got a big storm coming.

Suzy and Collin (submitted by Rubyya)

The Bakudeku of pnat. I will continue to not elaborate.

Suzy once stole Collin's phone which prompted Collin to try to cut her hair which prompted Suzy to stab Collin and at no point did either of them think to move to a different bus seat. As different as they are they are also very much the same.

Collin is the definition of mouth service (constantly disapproving of suzy’s antics but going along with it anyway.) while suzy is all action.

Despite their different attitudes they both seem genuinely passionate about the journalism club.

Fashion icons. Suzy’s sunglasses and legwarmers, Collins sweater vests and wrist bands, this duo could walk for Paris fashion week: middle school edition.

We’ve gotten an indication that Collin cares a lot about what Suzy thinks of him (taking off his wrist bands when she made fun of Max's) but we haven't gotten any sign yet that the feelings are mutual.

5/10 I think their story is yet to be told and we’ll get to know more about how they compare/contrast to each other in the future. Maybe brought on by Dimitri's betrayal?????

Cody and Isabel (Submitted by @a-bitchtm)

Cody is gay by WOG but that doesn't matter here since we are evaluating thematic compatibility, not romantic compatibility.

Red Vs. Blue

Izzy’s arch about stepping into her role as leader through communication and honesty contrasts Cody’s role as the secret class president. Izzy finally told Isaac the truth about the consortium, while Cody blatantly lied to max about being president.

Both seem to have generally good motivations and the skills/talent to back those motivations up.

Isabel is in the process of unlearning the ‘firm hand’ philosophy that she learned from her grandpa and Cody’s dad straight up tried to mind control him into murdering a toddler.

They were both taught to fall back on their capacity for violence and intimidation but those teachings conflict with the people they really want to be.

6/10 just two kids who are being led astray by authority figures trying to learn to be themselves.

Cody and Collin (Submitted by @gatortavern)

They both like vests.

Both beholden to blood thirsty predators

Collin is a journalist, Cody is a vampire/leader of the shadow government. It’s a huge power move on Cody’s part to hang out with Collin.

Cody’s support of his friends is enthusiastic while Collin would have you believe Suzy has kidnapped him.

4/10 they hang out for a reason but those reasons have yet to be fully developed

Isabel and Max (submitted by @Paranatural-goofiness)

They’re both people who have learned to put up walls to keep people out. Isabel through violence and intimidation, max through sarcasm and mockery. T

he other side of this is their mutual journey to let their walls down and connect with other people more genuinely, starting with each other.

Their search for acceptance and identity has led them both to become incredible athletes. Spectral fist martial arts = shred eagle stunts

As we saw in the hit ball game, Izzy faces things head on while Max is all about evasion. However we’ve seen how Izzy has actually learned to be evasive and guarded about her feelings while Max is a little more forthcoming.

8/10  Never has there been faster friends.

Isaac and Cody (submitted by Rubyya)

Drama kings

Isaac wants the likability Cody has.

Parallels of power: Isaac with power he didn't choose and cant control vs. Cody who also didn’t choose to have his power (elected), but wields it like an instrument.

Involuntary anime hair and involuntary glowing monster eyes

These two definitely both fall under the category of “lawful”.

I can see these two ending up on opposite sides of a conflict because they both have such rigid personal codes and an intense sense of duty.

I know I’ve been approaching almost all of these platonically but Isaac probably really wants a cool vampire boyfriend deep down

 7/10 Unstoppable force, meet immovable object. You two should watch anime together.

Hijack and PJ (submitted by @gatortavern)

They both wanna join the activity club so bad

Both have immature ideas about heroism and villainy. 

Both aspire to heroism while at the same time understanding that they aren't that yet and maybe never will be. 

They both, like many people in this comic, wanna be friends with max.  

5/10 Two supernatural babies who should play wii sports together

Stephen and Isaac (@Gatortavern)

Two boys who are easily overwhelmed

Lawful vs. chaotic

Isaac has enough secrets to give Stephen his conspiracy fix for a long time. 

In their own ways they both just want everything out in the open. 

Isaac is Stephen's dream, someone actually living a secret double life, and Stephen is Issac's dream, someone with a cool scar who would think he’s actually very interesting. 

5/10 these two are both very intense in their own way.

Johnny and Ed (Submitted by @theevilbrainman)

Two souls lost in the wind

Two people for whom friendship and loyalty is central to their character, and they’re both struggling with personal growth because of it. Johnny is afraid to change because his friends have always liked the person he already is, and Ed is struggling to even define himself outside of Isabel, the person he cares about the most. 

Both impulsive and uninhibited. 

They both live lives free from expectation. Johnny’s wild bully persona means no one is surprised by his antics or cruelty, while Grandpa Guerra doesn't really care if Ed takes up phantom fist like Isabel. He actually calls him a freeloader. Not having much expected of you can feel free but it’s also lonely and can warp your self-perception. 

6/10 these two crossed paths at exactly the right time.

I didn't cover every submission because even though only 9 people submitted you sent in 34 ships between you. Pnat’s fanbase is small but very dedicated. 

Honorable mentions: 

Johnny and clear sinuses, submitted by @gaul-the-unmitigated

Isaac and therapy, submitted by both @squidgeons and @somethingfishysgoingon

PJ and Johnny, submitted by @gatortavern, who seems to be under the impression that Johnny Would protect PJ and not destroy him just by breathing near him.

Day and Scabs, submitted by @gatortavern, because funny.

Special thanks to everyone who sent in ship between people who have never interacted in cannon, which was a lot of you. My eyes are opened now, so many possibilities.

[watermelinoe]

This is kind of a weird route to terfdom but one of the things that really got me questioning the libfem blogs i followed was the strange insistence that because a thing was common in one group or they had first heard of it coming from that group, that it coming from anywhere else too was clearly copying or appropriation. Like braided bread was Jewish and Jewish only, hairsticks were asian and asain only, square peices of fabric tied at the waist for skirts were african and african only, dual dutch braids are black american and black american only. It's not that I don't think cultural appropriation is a thing but humans have been coming up with the same basic ideas for fucking ever, all over the globe, because they are simple and sensible approaches to problems. Once i started to question their weird insistance on being right about that stuff in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, i began to question trans politics too and look at evidence provided by radfems and spiraled from there. This ridiculous idea that humans of different cultures couldn't possibly have similar solutions to things is really similar to the idea that a western woman has nothing in common with an eastern woman and there is no universal female experiences. They seem to determined to seperate us.

sorry it took me so long to get to this, i wanted to be able to give a really well thought-out answer bc... there's a lot of nuance to this discussion imo!

my problem with the average "cultural appropriation" argument is that more often than not it's the laziest possible interpretation, usually online, usually by some white kid trying to look woke. just a little bit ago kids on tiktok were demanding these like, eastern europeans i think (don't quote me) apologize for appropriation for wearing their own traditional dress bc it "looked mexican." or however long ago when nicki minaj was in the hot seat for wearing a "native american" headdress.... that was actually caribbean.

because you're exactly right, a lot of humans were coming up with the same shit all over the world at different times.

but my other issue is this idea that all of these cultures evolved in an isolated vacuum and were never influenced by any other people groups. that's hilarious to me, personally, but also a little disturbing when i start to get major "Cultural Purity" vibes from otherwise well-meaning people who think we should all just keep to our Own Cultures :)

university is where i mainly observed this weird dissonance where i'm being bombarded with evidence of cultural amalgamation every day in my art history lectures, while in my small discussion sections i'm asked to apply cultural relativity to, say, the practice of fgm in west africa. i wrote an entirely neutral paper on its cultural significance, as if those girls (and boys as well in that case) aren't also people like me. that's just the way "they" do things. it forces you to dehumanize people from other cultures, honestly.

and this isn't to say that the dynamics of cultural interactions don't matter. there's a very good, historical reason why white americans do not and should not ever have ownership over black american culture. to me, for the most part, there's a visible difference in how braids are used in black hairstyles versus the traditional white european hairstyles. but not always. it's not really about the hair itself, but the double standard applied to black people whose hairstyles are called "unprofessional," "inappropriate," while on white people they're cool and subversive. the real harm of cultural appropriation isn't really the decontextualization of a specific culture, but that it obscures discrimination. yes, both white people and black people wear braids, but as white people we're not discriminated against when we do.

at the same time, i love to see evidence of human interaction. oppressive cultural dynamics happen on a very wide scale that can be summed up in your history textbook from a third-person perspective. on an individual level, of course discrimination still exists, but there's no real malicious significance to seeing someone do or make something and thinking "i like that, i want to join." one of my favorite things i encountered studying art history was seeing the way cultural artistic styles combined, yes, sometimes as a result of an overarching subjugating political takeover. and like, i hate to say it, but sometimes that didn't really change someone's daily life. people are very resistant to change on an individual level. look at how many people were converted to a new religion by just adding a new god to their own beliefs.

mudéjar architecture came about because of the islamic empire's conquest of spain over a thousand years ago. and check out this greco-roman influenced gandhara bodhisattva from almost 2000 years ago. cultural exchange!

"emperor qianlong watching the peacock in its pride" from 1760 qing dynasty china, influenced by the italian painter castiglione.

there's a lot more universality to our different cultures than a lot of people would like to acknowledge, i think. it dehumanizes someone to categorize them as Foreign, to label their culture as entirely separate and untouchable, and it feels to me very much like people think culture is something that can become contaminated by the wrong people interacting. and i do think heritage is incredibly important, i do think cultural appropriation hurts people from oppressed social groups. but i also think cultural exchange is very natural and important.

the refusal to see nuance (not to mention the blatant inaccuracies i mentioned at the start that happen all the time) is definitely a big part of what drove me away from liberal spaces, and i do think there are people who have a specific agenda of dividing western white women from other women around the world. specifically to keep us from empathizing with each other and finding common ground. i just think it discourages the genuine instinctive desire to explore something new and compare it to what's familiar to you.

[passionate-reply]

Are you tired of Great Albums being about music people have actually heard of? Do you want me to just go ape shit, and review obscure minimal wave cassettes from the 80s? Admittedly, Oppenheimer Analysis’s New Mexico is one of the most famous weird minimal wave cassettes, and for good reason: it actually holds up quite well as an album! Come check out what all the fuss is about. Transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about a very cultish cult classic, and an album that’s one of the definitive works in the very underground scene of so-called “minimal wave”: New Mexico, the only full album released by the duo “Oppenheimer Analysis.” The band’s namesake was actually lead vocalist Andy Oppenheimer, who became acquainted with instrumentalist Martin Lloyd at the 1979 World Science Fiction Convention, where the pair bonded over speculative fiction, Midcentury graphic design and propaganda, and the work of early British electronic pioneers like the Human League. 1982’s New Mexico was these two’s first recording as a group, but Lloyd did go into it with one credit--the year prior, he and David Rome of Drinking Electricity released a double A-side, featuring the jumpy, playful instrumentals “Surface Tension'' and “Connections.” They referred to their act as “Analysis,” making it feel very much a part of the Oppenheimer Analysis story.

Music: “Surface Tension”

Oppenheimer, meanwhile, was a true outsider artist, making a living as a nuclear science writer without any substantive musical background. While not all minimal wave is “outsider music,” and not all electronic outsider music is minimal wave, there’s certainly a correlation there. Oppenheimer’s reedy, somewhat strained voice lends New Mexico the punkish charm that only utterly untrained vocalists can offer: a vessel that cracks and buckles as it fails to contain the raw emotion within.

Music: “Martyr”

The addition of a singer is one major distinction between New Mexico and Lloyd’s earlier compositions, but they’re also very different in tone. As I said earlier, the “Analysis” instrumentals are sort of light-hearted and sprightly, a bit reminiscent of the jazzy synth experiments of artists like Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley. New Mexico is substantially darker and more gothic, as befitting an LP that’s at least partially a concept album about the nuclear age.

Music: “The Devil’s Dancers”

While nuclear anxiety is an indispensable theme of the album, it’s never a suffocating one that makes it feel horribly antiquated to modern ears. It’s a very aestheticized rumination on nuclear themes, that never jumps up and hollers, “bombs are bad!” Take, for example, the track “Radiance,” probably the best-known track on New Mexico...to the extent that any of them are that well-known. It’s one of the album’s most languorous, atmospheric moments, and paints a vividly desolate picture of ground zero after a detonation, with its fluttering, delicate, but ultimately frigid synth flourishes.

Music: “Radiance”

I think my favourite part of “Radiance” is actually its lyrical turn: an atomic blast isn’t like the radiance of a thousand suns, but rather, vice versa. The latter is the one that’s merely theoretical and dwells in the realm of poetic license, whereas the former is a historical fact that we all have to contend with. “Radiance” is quite solid, but in many ways it’s a pale imitation of the title track, a seven-minute sprawl that works exquisitely as a kind of musical landscape painting:

Music: “New Mexico”

Painfully evocative, with an eerie, almost yearning undercurrent, “New Mexico” is easily the track that feels the most grand and epic. I would really have loved for it to be given more of a place of honour in the tracklisting, possibly as the closing track, but it’s wedged somewhat awkwardly in the middle of the second side. I suppose we can’t expect quite as much from a gonzo underground mail-order cassette release, though. At any rate, while “Radiance” and “New Mexico” are absolutely about atom bombs, they remain very emotionally intimate--almost torturously so. A lot of the other tracks are less about the bomb itself, and more about the rise of “Big Science” in the Midcentury consciousness in the wake of the Second World War--chiefly, “Men In White Coats.”

Music: “Men In White Coats”

As in “The Devil’s Dancers,” Oppenheimer happily accepts the role of an evil or insidious narrator here, and sells us this megalomaniacal perspective with aplomb. A lot of early 80s synth, minimal wave and otherwise, is characterized by more deadpan vocalists, but I can’t stress enough how much Oppenheimer’s piercing lead vocals bring to this album. It’s perhaps the most critical on the tracks that delve into more traditionally emotional topics--chiefly, the standard romantic love numbers. Take, for instance, the harrowing, neurotic “Scorpions”:

Music: “Scorpions”

I’m certainly a fan of the title “New Mexico,” which just ties together all the right connotations. First and foremost, New Mexico is a place--a place you can visit. And this is one of those albums that really wants to ground you in a narrow and specific sense of place, a sonic landscape. New Mexico is mostly empty desert, large tracts of which have been government land even before it started being used more intensively for military research in the 20th Century...most famously, of course, on nuclear weapons. I like to think that the name also suggests novelty and recency of place. We are, after all, entering a “new” world, defined by the advances of science, and the upending of earlier ideas about the world.

The representation of the album art for New Mexico that I’ve been showing you is actually the imagery of the 2010 reissue of the album, which I’ve chosen because I think it’s a bit better known, and I simply prefer it, personally. The most striking thing about it is this colour--a ghostly green, that instantly evokes the common imagery of atomic phenomena. Radiation doesn’t really glow green, of course, but, like everything else about the album, it’s clear that this choice is meant to be a reflection upon the greater cultural imaginings and social impact of the Atomic Age, so I think it’s a perfect fit. At the center of the composition, we see a figure, head bowed and face shaded to provide some sense of anonymity, reaching a hand towards the side of his face in a gesture that’s almost reminiscent of using a cell phone at first glance. What exactly he’s up to is as unclear as his identity. Between the modernist styling of the architecture to his left, and his antiquated attire, the image is quite suggestive of a Midcentury setting. But the real narrative angle here comes from the right side--several figures are approaching that central character, possibly in hostile pursuit. Espionage gone wrong? A desperate attempt to silence a whistle-blower? Much like the music, there’s an ambiguous, mysterious, but also menacing ambiance to this cover.

For historicity’s sake, I’ll also discuss the original cover of the homemade cassettes of New Mexico. As we might expect from the nature of this release, it’s a fairly simple graphic, featuring a nude woman whose full-figured body type, popular on pin-up models, and short hairstyle convey that Midcentury aesthetic almost as well as her clothed counterpart on the reissue. Our eyes are naturally drawn to her exposed breasts, where they meet a pair of radiation warning signs censoring her nipples. A simple image, but a deeply perverse or twisted one. Is it a kind of union between the vulgar, crass profanity of pornography, and the depravity of atomic weapons? Is it a visual representation of the way Oppenheimer Analysis have beautified the nuclear landscape, conflating man’s inhumanity to man with something voluptuous or pleasurable? This cover is at least as complex a symbol for the album as the reissue one is. And while it’s easy to dismiss it as lowbrow, I think it’s worth noting how the salacious or saucy aspect of it would have helped it fit in with other underground cassettes of its era, many of which had lurid or provocative imagery.

Of course, this discussion of the differing incarnations of the album is a natural segue to addressing the release history of New Mexico. The story of Oppenheimer Analysis is deeply entwined with that of New York-based Minimal Wave Records, founded in 2005 by Veronica Vasicka, a radio DJ fascinated by underground electronic music. The label specializes in making obscure, self-published works like New Mexico widely available in digital form, so that more music enthusiasts can get a chance to hear them. Without her, I myself might never have heard this album, and certainly wouldn’t be in a position to make a review like this! Vasicka felt strongly about the artistry of Oppenheimer Analysis, and gave the honour of her label’s first-ever release, “MW001,” to a self-titled EP compiling several of the tracks from New Mexico. Later, in 2010, when she was able to rerelease New Mexico in its entirety, she gave it the honourary designation of “MW001D.”

Vasicka is the one responsible for coining the term “minimal wave” to describe the subgenre she was interested in, and, fifteen years later, I think it’s safe to say it’s had some staying power. While it may be a bit vague and subject to individual interpretation, that’s a problem all genre labels contend with, and I think fans of minimal wave ought to be proud that this term was at least coined by a passionate and dedicated fan, who made her favourite music more accessible to everyone, as a labour of love. It’s also not the only genre term to come about much, much later than the music it seeks to describe. At any rate, New Mexico will always have a place in the minimal wave hall of fame, and it’s a genre-defining work, if in hindsight. The stylistic hallmarks of New Mexico are, for better or for worse, now also those of a whole movement: harsh, tinny rhythm machines, strident synth lines, anxious, unmannered vocals, and technological themes.

But what actually happened to Andy Oppenheimer and Martin Lloyd? In light of the renewed interest in their work in the 00s, they actually got back together for a bit, releasing some archival material from the 1980s and laying down a handful of new tracks, very similar in style to those on New Mexico. Lloyd passed away suddenly in 2013, but Oppenheimer has remained interested in keeping their ideas alive. He’s been performing live as well as putting out new music, first as “Touching the Void,” alongside Mark Warner of Sudeten Creche, and more recently as “Oppenheimer Mk II,” with Mahk Rumbae of Konstruktivists.

Music: “You Won’t Disarm Me”

Something that I think really stands out about New Mexico, especially when compared to a lot of other small-time minimal wave releases, is that it’s a very consistent quality throughout. As you might expect with an underground genre, a lot of the music to choose from is varying degrees of amateurish and clunky, and it’s arguably better to listen to Minimal Wave compilations than the LPs that exist. New Mexico is an exception, though, and doesn’t have any particularly weak tracks. The favourite tracks cited by fans of the album tend to vary pretty widely. My top pick, though, is the album’s opener, “Don’t Be Seen With Me.” It’s a perfect marriage of dizzying, spiraling synth runs, and one of Oppenheimer’s most frenetic vocal performances, that creates a masterful portrayal of being swept up in infatuation with somebody you really shouldn’t be fooling with. That’s all I’ve got--thanks for listening!

Music: “Don’t Be Seen With Me”

[stdio2020]

NICOLAS BOURRIAUD POSTPRODUCTION CULTURE AS SCREENPLAY: HOW ART REPROGRAMS THE WORLD

This book fucking rocks and affirms many things about my practice. Good to know I am on a good path. Written in 2002, the text could not take into account the level of postproduction that would ensue in the following twenty years. This is the age of the consumer-producer. Everything is consumed and produced multiple times over. Bourriaud thought that artists processing their own consumption would take on liberatory pollitical effects. Unfortunately late capitalism has simply developed such that we no longer need ‘power’ to satiate us with entertainment, we are given the tools to satiate one another.... Below are really haphazard notes, not very well structured but all very important. 

p7“Pop Art was born of a conjunction between the phenomenon of mass production and the birth of visual marketing, under the aegis of a new era of consumption” (p2)

“the works of Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, or Rirkrit Tiravanija deeply reexamine notions of creation, authorship, and originality through a problematics of the use of cultural artifacts - which, by the way, is absolutely new.” (p4)

“When artists find material in objects that are already in circulation on the cultural market, the work of art takes on a script-like value: "when screenplays become form," in a sense.” (p4)

“Postproduction apprehends the forms of knowledge generated by the appearance of the Net (how to find one's bearings in the cultural chaos and how to extract new modes of production from it).Indeed, it is striking that the tools most often used by artists today in order to produce these relational models are preexisting works or formal structures, as if the world of cultural products and artworks constituted an autonomous strata that could provide tools of connection between individuals; as if the establishment of new forms of sociality and a true critique of contemporary forms of life involved a different attitude in relation to artistic patrimony, through the production of new relationships to culture in general and to the artwork in particular.” (p7) <<So important

It is no longer a matter of starting with a "blank slate" or creating meaning on the basis of virgin material but of finding a means of insertion into the innumerable flows of production. "Things and thoughts," Gilles Deleuze writes, "advance or grow out from the middle, and that's where you have to get to work, that's where everything unfolds."01 The artistic question is no longer: "what can we make that is new?" but "how can we make do with what we have?" In other words, how can we produce singularity and meaning from this chaotic mass of objects, names, and references that constitutes our daily life? (p8) BINGBINGBING 

The activities of DJs, Web surfers, and postproduction artists imply a similar configuration of knowledge, which is characterized by the invention of paths through culture.  Finding a way through, finding bearings, the endless trace through culture...

By using television, books, or records, the user of culture deploys a rhetoric of practices and "ruses" that has to do with enunciation and therefore with language whose figures and codes may be catalogued.

Commerce is above all a form of human relations, indeed, a pretext destined to produce a relationsship. Any transaction may be defined as "a successful encounter of histories,  affinities, wishes, constraints, habits, threats, skins, tensions."(p15) << Reminds me of the andy warhol quote, “ Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

Art tends to give shape and weight to the most invisible processes. When entire sections of our existence spiral into abstraction as a result of economic globalization, when the basic functions of our daily lives are slowly transformed into products of consumption (including human relations, which are becoming a full-fledged industrial concern), it seems highly logical that artists might seek to rematerialize these functions and processes, to give shape to what is disappearing before our eyes. Not as objects, which would be to fall into the trap of reification, but as mediums of experience: by striving to shatter the logic of the spectacle, art restores the world to us as an experience to be lived.

ARTISTIC DETOURNEMENT (DIVERSION) - DJing

A pollitcal application of duchampian readymade (using a rembrandt as an ironing board or erasing a De Kooning drawing) 

The DJ’s work consists both of proposing a personal orbit through a musical universe (a playlist) and in paying attention to their sequence as well as the construction of atmosphere.  One can recognize a DJ's style in the ability to inhabit an open network (the history of sound) and in the logic that organizes the links between the samples he or she plays. Deejaying implies a culture of the use of forms, which connects rap, techno, and all their subsequent by-products.

The curatorial process is an artistic one we know that already! But it can be tighter, more specific, weilded masterfully. 

"Sometimes," Godard writes, "the class struggle is the struggle of one image against another image and one sound against another sound."

We must stop interpreting the world, stop playing walk-on parts in a script written by power. We must become its actors or co-writers. The same goes for works of art except now, the ‘power’ has given us the tools of creation such that we socially govern one another. The best marketing is user generated. pollitical agendas are spread through memesis. This is not the liberating scenario Bourriaud thought it would be in the early 2000′s

we are not saturated with images, but subjected to the lack of certain images, which must be produced to fill in the blanks of the official image of the community.

We are then very close to the "equivalence of everything, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the insignificant and the distinctive"

to signify that everything was equal because everything could be consumed

Roland Barthes, asserts that culture is an infinite palimpsest. Considering each book to consist of "multiple writings, proceeding from several cultures and entering into dialogue, into parody, into protest," Barthes accords the writer the status of scriptor, an intertextual operator: the only place where this multiplicity of sources converges is in the brain of the reader-postproducer.

Boycotts, detournement, and piracy belong to this culture of activity. When Allen Ruppersberg recopied Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray on canvas (1974), he took a literary text and considered himself responsible for it: he rewrote it.

No public image should benefit from impunity, for whatever reason: a logo belongs to public space, since it exists in the streets and appears on the objects we use, A legal battle is underway that places artists at the forefront: no sign must remain inert, no image must remain untouchable. Art represents a counterpower. Not that the task of artists consists in denouncing, mobilizing, or protesting: all art is engaged, whatever its nature and its goals. Today there is a quarrel over representation that sets art and the official image of reality against each other; it is propagated by advertising discourse, relayed by the media, organized by an ultralight ideology of consumption and social competition. In our daily lives, we come across fictions, representations, and forms that sustain this collective imaginary whose contents are dictated by power. BOOM

[jeremystrele]

Connecting With The Past + Grappling With History, With Painter Mia Boe

Connecting With The Past + Grappling With History, With Painter Mia Boe

Studio Visit

by Sasha Gattermayr

Mia’s new Brunswick studio is filled with light, and is the perfect space to continue on her growing portfolio of work. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

A painting from her recent catalogue sits on the mantle. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Butchalla-Burmese artist Mia Boe in her light-filled studio. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Mia paints full time and volunteers for The Torch in her spare time. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

One of Mia’s works in progress.

Mia’s paintings are vibrant and narrative-driven, which means she does a lot of her own historical research. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Left: Mia is inspired by figures in art history like Albert Namatjira, Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale; and figures from history such as Eliza Fraser, Ned Kelly and the Queensland Native Police. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files. Right: ‘Stripes 3’ by Mia Boe.

A selection of work Mia recently sold in her latest catalogue and has prepared for prize entries. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Her elongated, distended figures are always in the landscape and often accompanied by food, animals or spirits. Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

You can see the Sidney Nolan influence in this composition! Photo  – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

The historical and contemporaneous imprisonment of First Nations people is a continuous theme in Mia’s work. Patterns and vibrant colour create tension between the political context and the composition.

Watching Mia Boe’s rise to cult status is almost giving me whiplash. The Brisbane-raised, Melbourne-based artist has grown a dedicated following in the 18 months since she’s really begun concentrating on her painting – and it’s only going up. To give you an indication of just how devoted her audience are, her recent catalogue of nine paintings sold out in under two minutes.

Mia studied art history before last year, when Melbourne’s sweeping lockdowns gave her the time (and a good excuse!) to focus on her art. But it’s not just Instagram fans who are hot on her tail. With a residency at the Museum of Brisbane, commissions for Craft Victoria and Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, two group shows and a solo exhibition (titled Black Devil) at Open Space Collective under her belt since the beginning of 2020, it’s evident that Mia has well and truly caught the attention of the nation’s arts community.

But the institutions aren’t everything. When she’s not painting, Mia volunteers at The Torch – an organisation that aids First Nations prisoners and ex-prisoners with their art practices.

Art is the past, present and future for Mia – storytelling is her mode of being. Hear it in her own words.

How did you arrive at your current painting style? Has it evolved slowly over time or always been somewhat similar?

One clear continuity in my style has been that I tend to populate my landscapes with strangely elongated figures, whose bodies are also sometimes bloated and distended. I guess also that female figures in my work are representations, approximately, of myself, so a lot of my works could also function as self-portraits. But when I start a painting, I’m not always conscious of who the figure is, though if I’m painting black figures, they’re probably members of my family.

Also, I sometimes add larger figures with little detail, or floating in the landscape — these figures are representations of spirits. They represent family members that have died, and are a marker of the family that I will never get to know because of the repercussions of colonisation. I also try and experiment with colour: inspired by the ubiquitous blues of Robert Owen’s recent exhibition at Heide, I’ve recently been trying to control and limit my palette.

Do you use your art to connect with history or grapple with it?

Probably a bit of both. I’m especially interested in the histories of my family’s cultural heritages. My mum is a descendent of the Butchulla people, but she was only told by my grandmother that she was Aboriginal when she was in her teens (my grandmother was worried she’d have her children taken away from her if she was open about it). My Dad moved to Australia as a refugee from Burma when he was a young child.

My art practice has allowed me to research these twin histories, and to track the consequences of British colonisation in both Australia and Burma. (Burmese historian Thant Myint-U’s recent The Hidden History of Burma is an amazing book for people interested in learning more about Burma.) I hope soon to be able to spend some time looking at concrete connections between the colonial occupations of Australia and Burma. Empire, after all, makes the world smaller — it’s big project, I think, is to remake the margins in the image of the centre — so I’m sure there are some connections to be found (white officers, for instance, might have trained in Burma before coming to Australia, or vice versa).

Anyway, I definitely use my art to think through history: sometimes head-on, sometimes obliquely.

How do you involve historical references in your pieces?

I make sure that I’ve done proper research into a subject before making work about historical events. At the start of the year I showed my first exhibition in Brisbane. It was called Black Devil, and the works responded, from multiple angles, to the history of the Queensland Native Police: an exterminationist outfit which consisted of Aboriginal troopers led by white officers, and which aimed to wipe out resistance to colonisation.

The Native Police was active from 1848 to c. 1905 and were estimated to have killed over 44,000 Murris in those 50+ years. The fact that many of the massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out by Aboriginal troopers, who were themselves often kidnapped as boys, and barracked hundreds of kilometres from their kin and ancestral lands, pointed up for me the ongoing violence and infernal strategies of division which colonialism employs.

During research for this exhibition I found out that my ancestor, my great-great-grand uncle Wonamutta, a Butchulla man from K’gari (Fraser Island), was a trooper in the police force. Apart from his postings around the state, he was also seconded to the Victorian Police, where he helped to track down Ned Kelly (that’s where the exhibition’s title comes from — Kelly called the black trackers on his trail ‘black devils’).

Out of this discovery I got interested in Sidney Nolan. Two of Nolan’s most famous preoccupations were [Fraser Island’s namesake] Eliza Fraser and Ned Kelly. Nolan didn’t see these figures as related, and yet in an eerie way I think they were: Wonamutta, whose country was re-named by Europeans after Eliza Fraser, was also the man who caught Ned Kelly. So through thinking about this personal history, and the random but weird connections it disclosed, I came to envision my exhibition as also responding to Nolan’s own practice. It was a art show about history, but also about the history of art.

Do you have any key references or inspirations?

Some abiding influences for me have been Albert Namatjira and Russell Drysdale. Namatjira looms especially large: because of his tragic life story, his amazing colours. The William Dargie portrait of him which hangs in the Queensland Art Gallery, and the Noel Counihan linocut, which shows Namatjira crucified, are some really important images for me.

Drysdale matters for me because of the colours of his burnt-out backgrounds and those extraordinary gaunt figures idling about in them. His representations of Aboriginal people are very respectful and moving.

Other artists who are key points of departure for me are the contemporary South African artist Marlene Dumas, and Bill Traylor who was a self-taught artist born into slavery.

What does art-making mean to you?

On an individual level, my art allows me to recover and remake the cultural heritages which were stolen from me. And I hope in this process that I remind people (even as I learn myself) about the forgotten pasts which shape everyday life in the present.

Mia is represented by Sunday Salon. Learn more about her practice here. Mia’s next exhibition will be at Milani Gallery from 4th – 25th September.

[fyexo]

200925 SuperM Dives Deeper with Super One

We meet the game-changing and boundary-breaking supergroup everybody needs to know.

There’s a rumble in the ground, a rupture, a star shining in the sky. Like a meteor landing on a quiet plain, SuperM – the Avengers of K-pop – landed in our lives, igniting the industry in unprecedented ways. With K-pop now considered a global phenomenon, how much more innovation is required to demand attention? The answer lies in the Capitol Records and SM Entertainment supergroup: the first K-pop act to debut in the US who immediately stole the show and made music fun again with their record-breaking 2019 introduction. SuperM consists of a diverse group of stars hailing from different groups: Taemin from SHINee, Kai and Baekhyun from EXO, Taeyong and Mark from NCT 127, and Ten and Lucas from WayV. They are the future, the charismatic force managing to both elevate and inspire. With Super One, the group’s first full-length album released on 25th September, they graduate from simply jumping and popping (Jopping!) to invoking the sincere emotions of listeners while simultaneously lighting up the room in the way that only they know how.

Baekhyun – the soulful vocalist, humble leader, and oldest member of SuperM – opens up about their growth: “When we first met, I could tell that the younger members were feeling a little nervous. But aside from working and performing together, we also naturally spent a lot of time together off stage, too.” In fact, their chemistry is palpable: “From sharing the same rooms when we were on tour in the US to shooting a reality show together recently, we made a lot of memories. Now, we’re like close brothers. We feel very comfortable with each other.”

Since joining the supergroup, Baekhyun’s Delight, released in May, became the first album in 19 years by a Korean soloist to sell over 1 million copies. Baekhyun says, “Shortly after completing my solo activities with ‘Candy’ [the lead single], I regrouped with SuperM, and I definitely feel more at ease in a group.” As evidenced by their discography, which fuses elements of hip-hop, pop, and various other genres, “We are always experimenting with different styles and trying to create something new so the synergy that we bring to the stage is very distinct and unique.”

Taemin has found similar success with his solo endeavours, recently releasing his best-selling project to date just this month. His 3rd Korean studio album, Never Gonna Dance Again: Act 1, hit number 1 on several iTunes Top Albums charts including the US and Canada. The graceful performer ponders the importance of embarking on this journey with the rest of SuperM. “Through our individual teasers, we wanted to tell a personal story about our beginnings—from how we developed our dreams to how we got to where we are now. They are reflections of our past that allowed us to become the artists that we are today.” For Taemin personally, who first debuted in SHINee in 2008, “This experience helped broaden my boundaries as an artist and I’m very thankful for that.”

Taemin’s wisdom is apparent in how he interprets his growth, “Although I’ve performed abroad many times before, SuperM was formed with the global market in mind so I took this as a new challenge and a great opportunity for me to learn and grow even more. Through SuperM, I was able to get closer to my international fans and learn more about their cultures. Because of the opportunities I’ve had more recently to perform on a global stage, my stage performances and mannerisms have improved and this has made me a stronger artist.”

Branded as fast-moving and dynamic, there were certain expectations for them to continue on this path. The motifs are intentional, but fitting, and as the endearing Hong Kong rapper Lucas puts it, “‘Movement’ and ‘speed’ for us carries a deep meaning and represents our strength and energy. It also describes how SuperM is always moving forward no matter how difficult the situation may be. There is no better tomorrow if you’re not moving forward.”

Taemin further reflects on this. “I think fans will be surprised to hear mellow, medium-tempo tracks that are not performance-based. Incorporating the performance element is of course one of the most important parts of what SuperM does in our music, but this time, we also wanted to emphasise a message of hope.”

Kai, lead dancer of EXO and Gucci ambassador, who will also be embarking on his solo career soon, shares that “I really want to perform ‘Infinity’ and ‘Monster’. Together, they form our title track, ‘One’. I’m excited to perform ‘One’ as well, but also would love to showcase the two tracks separately, as I think that would bring a different charm on stage.”

The love for this track is echoed by Taemin, an expert when it comes to this fusion of songs as SHINee also had a combination of tracks with 2012’s ‘Sherlock’, a mix of ‘Clue’ and ‘Note’. “With K-pop, you often have a gradual change of genres in one song, but ‘One’ brings together two completely different songs, so it’s fresh—but it still sounds very natural and seamlessly put together.” He adds, “The members’ vocals really stand out through these tracks so I hope fans enjoy!”

B-sides like ‘Together At Home’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ are like a comfort blanket for fans, suitable for the current world climate. Kai recognises that impact and describes it as intentional, “Music can really lift your spirits when you’re feeling down so I hope people find healing and happiness while listening to our music. That would make us very happy.”

“FROM SHARING THE SAME ROOMS WHEN WE WERE ON TOUR IN THE US TO SHOOTING A REALITY SHOW TOGETHER RECENTLY, WE MADE A LOT OF MEMORIES. NOW, WE’RE LIKE CLOSE BROTHERS. WE FEEL VERY COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER.”

Prior to the official album drop with title track ‘One’, several songs were released, each accompanied by their own electric music videos. The single, ‘100’, has lyrics written by youngest member Mark, who explains, “For ‘100,’ I wanted to really bring the energy of SuperM, because my verse opens up the track, and I wanted to really complement the song while emphasising our strength as a group and that we have the capability to be at the top.” The Canadian rapper, whose positive energy is contagious, says, “Taeyong and I also wrote our verses for ‘Together At Home,’ and I think we tried to keep the lyrics closely tied to the overarching message of the album. So for that song, we tried to envision what it’s like to be “together at home”, so staying connected to the fans and our loved ones while we are physically apart.”

Ferocious single ‘Tiger Inside’ was released on 1st September, and NCT leader Taeyong describes it best, “as a hip-hop song with an Asian-themed vibe. One part of the lyrics says, “Wake up the tiger inside” which I think describes SuperM’s energy really well. He eloquently personifies the group through a more artistic lens. “SuperM coming together is almost like a painting created using these different colours, to create a new work of art.”

Though promotions are hectic, Taeyong opens up about life outside of the spotlight, sharing, “I personally spent a lot of quality time with my family and also creating new music.” Mark has also been in tune with his rhythmic side, adding, “I’ve been listening to a lot of the new music that’s been coming out… Recently, Big Sean’s new album and Dominic Fike.”

The fashion of the group ranges from traditional Korean wear to modern hip-hop stylings, reflecting the merging of cultures, sounds, and themes apparent in their music. Lucas took a special liking to the outfits they wore for this comeback. “I wore a black outfit in the ‘One’ music video and it made me feel like a fictional character from a film or a book. I really liked the concept of that look. For ‘Tiger Inside’, I wore this beautiful emerald colour outfit with gold embroidery and intricate Asian-themed details—that was another one of my favourites!”

With everything going on in the world right now, Ten, the multilingual Thai singer and dancing king, says, “Right now, our biggest goal is to interact closely with our fans in the best way possible given the current situation. Even though we can’t meet each other in person, we want our fans to know that we are always thinking of them and that we are always trying to create opportunities to make us feel close.” He mentions ‘Beyond Live’, the platform SuperM spearheaded earlier this year to provide a virtual concert experience for fans.

“We are always thinking of fun and innovative ways to interact with our fans so we are definitely planning on doing many more online promotions that bring us closer together.” He elaborates, also sharing that he’s excited to finally perform songs off of Super One.

This album is a new era for SuperM, whose journey as a group has been far from ordinary but delightfully rewarding. As Baekhyun concludes, “When SuperM was first announced to the public, it may have been odd to see members from different groups come together like this to form a new group. But in spite of that, our fans have always cheered us on from the get-go and we’re incredibly grateful for their support.” SuperM’s awareness of the times they’re in and ability to adapt allow them to be a tantalizing force in the industry.

Though awards and accolades are nice, what makes this group special beyond their obvious talent and charm is the passion, grit, and hard work they put into what they do, and Super One is the ultimate care package and culmination of their gifts. Through music, they remind us that we all have the power to unite together as one no matter where we come from.

Ashlee Mitchell @ TMRW

[sciencespies]

The Surprisingly Radical History of Quilting

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-surprisingly-radical-history-of-quilting/

The Surprisingly Radical History of Quilting

Handmade quilts fulfill an array of purposes. They can be practical necessities for cold winter nights; family heirlooms that bring back memories; or, as an exhibition at Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art reveals, a form of creative, sometimes biting, political art.

Titled “Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Change,” the show features about 30 works that range from traditional to contemporary textile art, as well as some mixed-media and virtual takes on the quilt form, per Sarah Rose Sharp of Hyperallergic.

Exhibition highlights include a panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt and a piece crafted out of suit fabric by liberated survivors of the Dachau concentration camp. Also of note is The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake, a life-size quilted portrait of abolitionist Frederick Douglass by artist Bisa Butler.

As Butler told Liz Logan of Smithsonian magazine earlier this year, her vibrant depictions of black figures aim to “give … subjects back an identity that’s been lost.” Independent curator Glenn Adamson added, “Butler is elevating the status of her subjects by making portraits, and also elevating quilting—which is an African American craft tradition—by adding portraiture to it.”­­

Bisa Butler’s The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake depicts Frederick Douglass.

(Courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery, New York)

Unknown maker, Dachau 1945, 1945

(Courtesy of Michigan State University Museum / Photographed by Pearl Yee Wong)

Aaron McIntosh, Invasive Queer Kudzu, 2015–2020

(Courtesy of the Artist, Aaron McIntosh)

Another work in the Toledo show is attributed to a member of the Freedom Quilting Bee, a black rural cooperative in Alabama that supported participants in the 1960s civil rights movement. The piece helps tell the story of how quilting became recognized as a serious art form. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, the group’s creations earned accolades from Vogue, drew the attention of such artists as Lee Krasner and sparked a nationwide quilting revival.

Many of the quilts featured in “Radical Tradition” explicitly address the ways in which products of domestic labor, which is often performed by women and people whose work is undercompensated, are rendered invisible. One 1987 piece by Jean Ray Laury satirizes a famous 1963 anti-feminist speech by Arkansas Senator Paul Van Dalsem. Other quilts showcase a variety of styles and themes embraced by 19th-century craftspeople, including the abolition of slavery and Temperance Movement. One late 19th-century “crazy quilt”—a chaotic style without repeating features—uses media including silk ribbons and portraits of political leaders cut from campaign banners.

“A lot of the more historical 19th-century quilts in the exhibition are created by networks of quiltmakers,” curator Lauren Applebaum tells the Observer’s Karen Chernick. “That’s something that has stretched through history.”

Other works go beyond the traditional quilt form. In a section of Aaron McIntosh’s Invasive Queer Kudzu installation, vines created out of fabric, wire and other materials wrap themselves around a room’s furniture. Ben by Faith Ringgold, meanwhile, is a soft mixed media sculpture of an unhoused man.

Judy Chicago, International Honor Quilt (IHQ), initiated in 1980

(© 2020 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Abolition Quilt, ca. 1850

( Courtesy of Historic New England / Loan from Mrs. Benjamin F. Pitman)

Mrs. S.K. Daniels, Liberty Tree (Temperance Quilt), 1876- 1900

(Courtesy of Michigan State University Museum / Photographed by Pearl Yee Wong)

“In the context of the coronavirus pandemic and our country’s current reckoning with racial injustice, ‘Radical Tradition’ takes on a particular urgency and relevance,” says Applebaum in a statement. “Quilts have always engaged the pressing social and political issues of their time. They have been deployed throughout history by marginalized people to confront instances of violence, oppression and exclusion.”

Prior to the exhibition’s opening, the museum organized a “COVID-19 Virtual Quilting Bee.” Participants from across the United States submitted almost 100 quilt squares ranging from abstract to representative pieces. Organizers “stitched” the squares together digitally so they could be viewed on the museum’s website. One participant, Nettie Badgley of Yorkville, Illinois, wrote that she created her square using strips left over from a cooperative project that made masks for a local hospital.

“To me it represents the chaos of emotions many of us are experiencing,” she explained. “Up close, I see each individual fabric, different from one another like people. But then from afar I see a beautiful color collaboration that represents all of us coming together to make a difference.”

“Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Change” is on view at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio through February 14, 2021.

#History

[smuttymess]

bts astro soulmate reading | for seidj

sign: gemini sun | gemini moon | leo rising

lovers + soulmates Park Jimin | Jung Hoseok

This reading is for Seidj, a lovely fellow hard-stan moot & Hopekook bias. Please note that this is the first reading I’ve done wherein both options were too close to call (I spent hours agonizing) so I decided to incorporate a triad/throuple situation - lucky you ;) Please enjoy, love!

The powerful, fiery of your Leo rising is only fueled by the dreamy, airy nature of your Gemini sun and moon, making you all but impossible to pin down here on earth. This combination is the most enthusiastic in the zodiac, making you a natural born leader in all areas of your life. The Gemini is the brilliant ideator at the helm of initiatives who steers teams towards success at work and is the cheerleader in their various social circles. You are undoubtedly the life of the party - the fun, burst of energy cherished by close friends and admired by strangers alike. People are inherently fascinated by you as they are not always sure what they are going to get when you walk into the room. Gemini is the true sign of duality, after all, and with this in both your sun and moon placements you truly exist in complex multitudes that many people can never quite anticipate or understand but are more than happy to go along on the ride for. Generally aloof and always on the move, it is likely that people want to tame you, proving that your mysterious can be subdued and controlled to some degree. A person of your star placements, however, knows deeply the profound need for individuality and will likely avoid the trappings of normalcy at all costs - your fantasy world is undoubtedly superior than any real-world happenings on the ground.

The inability by others to pin you down applies directly to your romantic life as well, likely leading to a long path plenty of broken hearts in your wake. You do not mean to hurt anyone, its just that you love love but not necessarily commitment to just one person. Easily bored and occasionally self-obsessed, you may develop crushes on people easily, falling hard and fast in true romantic Leo fashion for a beautiful stranger that passes you by (this may be the one!) You likely realize just as quickly that this person does not satisfy you either intellectually, physically or both before quickly moving on to the next shiny new thing. Ultimately, you are looking someone who keeps you on your toes (and makes your toes curl), is mentally stimulating, and stabilizing without inhibiting your innate need to be free. In the meantime, you're all about enjoying the ride on your way to true love.

Luckily, the equally charming Park Jimin is on your wavelength when you meet in a chance encounter at a lounge on a random night out on the town. Jimin's Libra is a true match for your airy Gemini, and within moments of approaching each other you instantly click. Sharing a Gemini moon means that there is a magical alignment here: the charm, intelligence and wit essentially that pours from both of your energies is natural, giving off the appearance that perhaps you've known each other for years. Your synchronicity bleeds into an undeniable sexual chemistry - it's apparent from the moment his fingers graze yours as you dance, sliding across the room before coming together for a soft, warm kiss as the lights flicker above you. You two become inseparable, though of course there is a bit of game playing over flirtatious texts and the usual hard-to-get behavior of two attractive air signs. Ultimately, you're both happy to let your respective guards down and let each other into your internal worlds. Though generally soft and sweet, Jimin's powerful placesments of Neptune in Capricorn and Venus in Scorpio providing just enough edge for your Gemini soul, while his romantic nature speaks directly to your bold, expressive Leo rising. You need someone who can talk as well as they can listen, and Jimin is that for you - hanging on every word you say, but also equally able to engage with you no matter what the topic. This is a duo that loves to play, so you are likely to fall in love over intimate dance lessons, drinks at local watering holes, and long walks through the city. You could easily spend hours together, holding hands and sneaking in little kisses in alleyways, which you do. Friends would certainly appreciate if you could keep your hands off of each other when you're all out together.

Jimin's Venus is in Scorpio, meaning that he is prone to loving with the intensity, jealousy and passion trademarked by the scorpion when he falls for someone and opens up to them fully. While you are both incredibly flirtatious and sociable, Jimin can become unnerved when he sees you getting too close a potential new love interest. You can both openly admit that while unwarranted, his jealous does lend itself to excellent foreplay. You may not love when Jimin is controlling, but you love how his eyes darken and his hands firmly grip your waist as the elevator doors close on your way back to your apartment. My girl likes to play, hmm? Let's play. His love style is not so much dominating as it is all-consuming: his lips devouring yours before tracing your jawline, your neck, and the top of your breasts as his hands follow along to trail your hips. Fortunately, a private elevator allows for privacy with a bit of exhibitionism, which ignites a naughtiness within the both of you and leads Jimin to act a bit out of character as he kneels down in front of you, lifting your leg over his shoulder before his tongue moves in between your thighs. In this duo, Gemini is the wilder of the two but pleasure-seeking Gemini is more than happy to oblige, enjoying the way your legs tremble as he alternates between flicking his tongue over your clit while his fingers craze your core. He lives for praise, which you are happy to give while his hands grip his hair as he brings you to your edge. Yes, just like that. Do you know how fucking perfect you are?

Typically, an overly emotional Libra may not bode well for the very independent double Gemini. This is a pairing that is able to be both friends and lovers because of the other placements in your charts.  Jimin's moody and emotional Gemini moon and Scorpio Venus is tempered nicely by his Libra sun, which ultimately seeks balance above all else and to please those in his orbit. As much as you adore each other, he knows that you are someone who is curious about the world and is not easily settled, so he does not try to lock you into a romantic, monogamous commitment. Libra lives to love, and wants to satisfy you by any means necessary. As a result, is able to respect your need for freedom while giving you the emotional connection you need. In return, you can easily promise to love and respect him for life in a way that you've always wanted to.

It is in your nature to explore and seek out new experiences, which brings you to an open-air music and art festival just outside the city on a warm late-summer evening. You are in your element, thriving in the buzzing of the music floating through the air and the energy of the people around you. Your Libra rising paired with Gemini means that you do not have a signature "style", opting instead for whatever you're feeling on a given evening and knowing how to rock it with your innate confidence. It is not unusual for you to have all eyes on you, but you are taken aback when you spot particularly handsome man who is taking you in from head to toe. The piercing nature of his stare from beneath his bucket hat is electrifying, and the sly smile that follows immediately ignites your fire. This only intensifies when he turns and continues to make his way through the grounds, instead of predictably approaching you as anyone else would. Your Venus in Aries lends you to loving the thrill of the chase, so you are happy to play, playfully shadowing him until he stops in front of an interactive exhibit and beckons you to join him. Interesting isn't it? I love this artist - he does some of my favorite street art. I'm Jung Hoseok, by the way.

The Aquarius Hoseok has an energy that is irresistible to your Gemini spirit, and is characteristically charming, strange and intriguing to you. You are kindred spirits in terms of your quirkiness and individuality, which connects you on a friendship level first. Neither Aquarius or Gemini want anything that is easy, conventional or predictable, so the relationship begins by simply getting to know each other, playfully and intentionally, over dinners and little adventures around the city. As highly intellectual beings, you and Hoseok are able to know each other mentally, sparring and enjoying the quick-witted, intelligent candor of your conversations. He is unlike anyone you've ever met, regularly surprising you with his signature uniqueness that spans from his worldview to his fashion sense - a trademark of his Aquarius moon and mars placements. HIs Moon in Taurus makes him hard-headed at times when it comes to what he desires in life, while his Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn make him extremely strong, creative and instictual - all key components of his success (and his ability to afford to live of an adventurous Aquarius). It is likely you want him to loosen up a bit at first, and you are able to lighten up with your Leo fire. Beneath the devastatingly cool, professional demeanor, Hoseok possesses an emotional depth that you may not have expected as a result of his Venus in Pisces. Intimidating on the surface, Hoseok is a romantic soul whose dreaminess translates into his work and the way he loves - passionately and with unmatched dedication. Hoseok is drawn to the quickness of your mind and how it works a mile a minute, bouncing from one idea to the next with such dexterity he can't help but admire. He also deeply appreciates your independent, free-flowing spirit, which cannot be bogged down in the status quo or societal expectations of black and white thinking. Despite your differences or perhaps because of then, this is a relationship that deepens to an extent - despite your highly individual natures - wherein you cannot fathom being without the other, creating a fundamental friendship bond that is impenetrable.

This pairing recognizes a shared attraction that sends shockwaves through their veins from the start, and when these two finally get each other alone and naked, the connection is nothing short of intense. This is a moody pair, and that translates very well to sex, which can be soft and tender or more aggressive and intense depending on the time of day. Distract this Aquarius from his work with a bratty text and you're guaranteed to be met with Jung Hoseok, his brow furrowed and sweat dripping down his neck as he thrusts into you from behind against his desk, moans filling the studio as you take every inch of him with pleasure. You just couldn't wait, could you? He gets harder watching you let go under his touch, your lips forming into a smile as your eyes meet each other's in the mirror, causing him to ramp up the energy as only he can with his lean dancer's physique and stamina. When Gemini gets horny on the way to dinner, its only a matter of moments before you're pulled off into a discreet area of the parking lot, your hips grinding onto the hardness in his jeans before pulling your skirt to the side to slide onto his cock without thinking twice. You're both exceptionally curious about each other, wanting to become experts at getting the other off, and sex can often feel like a game as your eyes lock into each other and feed off of the shared fire and desperation. This is likely one of the kinkiest couples in the zodiac, the nature of your airiness activating each other's deepest, wildest energies when the mood strikes. Hoseok's Pisces Venus makes him especially passionate, his deep voice whispering into your ear as he's he knows you're about to finish. Let me hear you beautiful, I want to hear my pretty baby say my name while she comes for me. While this duo connects on numerous levels, the physicality of this particular coupling is off the charts - so much so that you're likely to bring in a lucky special guest or two into the bedroom from time to time to share the experience.

When an Aquarius and Gemini come together, it is best to expect the unexpected. You both understand that life is to be meant to its fullest, and that as long as everything is handled financially and in your respective careers that there is no need to be tied down or stagnant for too long when there is so much to savor. A Gemini and Aquarius pairing is not meant for a traditional life, opting instead to march to the beat of their own drum, which works out well considering your boyfriend Park Jimin isn't going anywhere anytime soon - and you don't want him to. This is a special relationship which provides both financial and emotional stability with the business-minded Aquarius Hoseok at the helm, alongside the spontaneity and adventure that your energetic Gemini heart requires (think taking the jet to the Shanghai or Tokyo on a Thursday afternoon with your boyfriends for the hell of it). The Aquarius/Gemini are likely the primary couple in this dynamic, with our Libra Jimin being there for you when you need an escape, or a day-long cuddle underneath the covers, or a partner to socialize with when Hoseok is in producer/director mode. This is only possible with a profound level of respect, trust and appreciation for their other as a partner and an autonomous person which is something very achievable with this duo. Ultimately, you are able to create a life that may not be understood by all - and you wouldn't have it any other way.

[juliabohemian]

backhanded compliments & the art of commenting on other people’s creative content without being a complete twat waffle

WARNING: This is a long post.

I'm a word person. That's probably why, when I do find myself becoming irritated by someone else's unsolicited critique, it is almost always due to their choice of words. Words are important and very powerful. Words have different meaning to different people. Which is why we need to take care when choosing them.

Now, whenever possible, I will click on the profile of the person who left the unsolicited critique and try to get a feel for what type of person they are. Just so I can better understand why they might have left the comment in question. If it is clear they are not a native English speaker, I stop right there. Learning a foreign language is hard. English is one of the most ridiculous languages on the planet. So, mastering its nuances is a challenge for someone who may not have grown up using it. I’m sure I have offended at least one person with my Spanish, at some point. I’m working on it.

BACKHANDED COMPLIMENTS

When I say choice of words, I am implying almost exclusively to something known as a backhanded compliment. A backhanded compliment is a statement that seems, on the surface, to be positive, but is actually an insult. If you are not familiar with the backhanded compliment, I direct you to the mom from American Beauty who says to her teenage daughter "Honey, I'm so proud of you. I watched you very closely, and you didn't screw up once!"

There are a lot of reasons why people make such comments. It would be reductive to suggest they are all suffering from some form of insecurity, although many of them probably are. Some may genuinely believe that they are being helpful. Others may be jealous of the attention another person is receiving and want to either sabotage them or find a way to get in on the action. 

However, it is most likely that the type of person to give a backhanded compliment is either very young, very sheltered or very privileged. And thus, they may not realize that their opinion about something may not carry the same weight on the internet as it does in other venues. Or they may not realize that the world is filled with people who are more informed and more experienced than they are. They mistake their opinion for objective analysis and therefore, offer it freely and without hesitation.

Now, I would like to state that if you see something and you REALLY think it is problematic, you should absolutely offer your critique. Note: if you dislike or disagree with something, that does not make it problematic. Anything that promotes the maltreatment or marginalization of any living thing is problematic. Even so, you should stop and ask yourself whether your critique will accomplish anything or if it would be more worthwhile to simply report the post in question and move on.

That being said, here is MY analysis of some of the backhanded compliments I have received over the years (amalgamated for brevity), and a guide to leaving more constructive/supportive comments for the content creators in your life.

ARTWORK (including photography)

“Definitely not my style, but beautiful.” Do we need to know that it's not your style? If you think it's beautiful, just say that.

“This is so great, but it would have been better if you had used yellow instead of red!” Color choice is a creative choice and its value cannot be objectively measured. Just say it’s great and move on.

“Wow, this is way better than your old stuff.” Do I need to explain why this is bad? I hope not.

“Wow, you're really improving.” Slightly better than the previous one, but still bad. This is a really good example of something that might even feel like a compliment, but actually isn't. Saying that someone is improving is basically saying that it needed to improve. 

Unless you are speaking to your own student or a child, or a really close friend or family member who has openly shared with you their desire to improve as an artist, this is completely unnecessary.

It's important to remember that not everyone is doing things with the same objectives as you. Not every artist or photographer is aiming for technical mastery. If an artist creates something that is very personal and feels pleased with it, the last thing they want is for someone else to come along and tell them what’s “wrong” with it.

Really ANY comment that suggests that the piece of artwork in question would be improved if it were altered in some way is a no no. Unless you are an art teacher or someone has specifically asked for you to give them this information, or you are paying someone to make something especially for you.

FANFICTION (or really writing in general)

“Oh man...I was so excited when I saw your story summary, until I saw the pairing.” Do not comment on a story just to tell the author that you don't like their pairing. Ever. If you accidentally click on a story without seeing the pairing and you are disappointed, your feelings are valid. But there’s no need to let the author know.

"This was good but I don't think (character) would say (quoted dialogue)." Then, you should go and write a story with that character, but where they say different things.

"I noticed you used a semi-colon in the third paragraph. Semicolons are actually supposed to...." Critique grammar, punctuation, spelling and writing mechanics ONLY if you are the author's editor, the author's teacher, or if the author requested it. Period.

If you are commenting to point out what you believe to be a factual error, stop and ask yourself...is this really an error? Is the error intentional? Does the error represent the views of the author or the views of a specific character in a fictional work? Does this story have a reliable narrator? If not, might that narrator be misinformed or biased? And the most important question to ask yourself before correcting an author...do I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about?

Once, in a story, I referenced Copernicus and mentioned that he was imprisoned by the Catholic church. Which we know that he was. Someone commented to leave a long, bullet pointed explanation for how this is a common misconception and that the Catholic Church never mistreated Copernicus, along with many links to articles and videos as evidence. Guess who made all the articles and videos? The Catholic Church. SKIP!

When commenting on a fictional work, consider letting the author know how the story is making you feel. Speculate about what you think might happen next. Express excitement and anticipation. Ask a question for clarification about what you just read. And you can never go wrong by simply thanking the author for taking the time to provide you with free entertainment.

MEMES & JOKES

I love to make people laugh. I have been making people laugh since I learned to talk. This was actually bourne out of an inability to interpret facial expressions. I couldn't tell when people were angry or annoyed. But when they were laughing, I knew exactly how they felt.

That being said, people on the internet LOVE to tell me when something isn't funny. The only problem with this is that humor is very subjective and often very esoteric. I have made memes that I knew were esoteric and knew that not everyone would understand them. I have memes just for birdwatchers. Hell, I have made memes just for a dozen people who participated in a specific academic discussion. But it amazes me how people who don't get a joke are often most compelled to comment and let me know that it isn't funny. How can you know if you don't understand it? Is it so hard to imagine that things exist for which you are not the intended audience?

It's perfectly okay to comment and say you don't understand, and ask for an explanation. But if you look at something and think "I don't understand this, therefore it lacks value" you may have some growing up to do.

Before reblogging someone else's joke to add to the joke, stop and ask yourself whether your intention is to correct or improve upon the joke, or if you are attempting to laugh along WITH the OP.

We've all done this, I'm sure. I know I have. But it really inconsiderate to hijack someone's meme, meta or artwork with a completely unrelated discussion. I can't tell you how annoying it is to post something and check my inbox days later, only to find pages of notifications of people reblogging my shit over and over as part of some completely unrelated discussion.

Once again, if you're commenting to point out a factual error, ask yourself whether the error was intentional. I recently made a meme about the Star Trek films in which Data uses contractions. All of his dialogue is ridiculously out of character, in fact. Which is kind of part of the joke. But someone felt the need to reblog AND comment to let me know that Data wouldn't say that because he doesn't use contractions. Which I already know. Because, well, I’ve been a ST:TNG fan since the day it first aired on TV. I don't even know what to do with a comment that, to be honest. I kind of feel sorry for the other person for not grasping the joke.

So, how DO you compliment someone whose work you enjoy? Imagine yourself speaking to them in person. Imagine that they are emotionally invested in whatever they have created. Consider your objective. Are you expressing appreciation? Or is there something else going on.

And avoid qualifiers. 

When a compliment includes words like "if" or "but" then it's probably not a compliment. You would be so pretty IF you lost some weight is not a compliment.

Choose words that are unlikely to be misinterpreted. 

If someone's art or writing IS improving and you really want them to know, a good way to do that is to use the word evolving. Wow, I really like the way your art is evolving. This works because it implies that the art is changing over time, as the individual grows as a person.

I know what some of you might be thinking...ugh...it's like you can't say ANYTHING anymore! Aww...boo hoo, fam. As a person on the spectrum, I’ve spent my entire life dancing around other people’s feelings, navigating neurotypical subtext and struggling to say things without offending anyone. This is a cake walk compared to that. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if actually thinking about how other people feel BEFORE you share your opinion would require a great deal of effort on your part, it's possible that you're just an asshole.

TL;DR

Creators of original content are actual human beings with feelings. Don’t offer them unsolicited advice or criticism. Think before you comment.

[themosleyreview]

The Mosley Review: Best Films of 2019

Wohoo! 2019 has come and gone and man did it fly by. This year we had sooooo many fantastic films and this year was probably the hardest list to put together. I really wanted to include alot more, but I had to make a few cuts. Now I tend to keep my list to the traditional 10 films, but on some occasions I've extended it to 11. This is one of those occasions. I have one runner up that is worth mentioning and I think it should not be missed.

Missing Link: Many animated films are computer generated now and the art of hand drawn animation is rarely shown. The one type of animation that is all but extinct is stop motion animation. It takes time, patience and passion to bring to life characters with such sophistication and care in an almost forgotten art form. The masterminds at Laika are truly imaginative artist and this film shows that in every frame. Not many films take the story of the myth behind Sasquatch to fun places without being hokey and I was relieved that this film took it seriously and pumped so much fun and heart into the story and I think this was a hidden gem of 2019. Click the title for my full review.

Now, on to my list of 2019's best films of the year. If you want my full review of each film then go ahead and click the title of each film. First one up is definitely a fantastic sequel to a film that the author hated, but loved the film adaptation of his second book.

Doctor Sleep: The Shining is a classic that can never really be touched. Stephen King is famously known for disliking the film adaptation of his novel, but with his blessing placed upon Mike Flanagan's vision for the sequel novel, we got this magnificent film. Not only does this film pay tribute to Stanley Kubrick's film, but it also follows the same rules and visual structure while keeping the film fresh. The tone was consistent and the performances were across the board amazing. Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson and the talented Kyliegh Curran deliver absolute greatness. This film features stunning and intriguing dark moments, but definitely has one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen and its all because of Jacob Tremblay's performance in THAT scene.

Ready or Not: How many times have we seen the family initiation story in a romantic comedy? A dozen times I tell you! Well how about you take the same concept, throw in a fun horror version of hide and seek with a hint of the supernatural and great dark comedic writing. You get this fantastic film that is all of that and more. Luckily I stayed away from any major trailers for this film because in retrospect, the R rated trailer gave away too many of the fun gags. The performance of each family member was awesome and this was a standout performance for Samara Weaving. Every year from now on, this film will be on my Halloween watchlist. I loved this film and I can't recommend it enough.

Shazam!: Batman (1989), Superman (1978), The Dark Knight Trilogy and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse are just to name a few of perfect adaptations of a comic book character to screen. This film was beyond perfection in many ways and the best DC film to date. This film had the right amount of fun, darkness and heart that embodies the life of the titular character. I could see the amount of genuine fun the cast was having on screen and the heartfelt performances of Asher Angel and Zachary Levi were outstanding. Jack Dylan Grazer stole the film with his amazing comedic speed and wit. This was truly a film I had high hopes for and it didn't disappoint.

Avengers: Endgame: How do you start a story in 2008 and bring it to an amazing and satisfying conclusion that wraps up 11 years of storytelling? You have a plan, a clear vision from the very beginning and with that it'll special success. Producer Kevin Feige set out on a journey to bring to life some of the best superheroes and keep them together in a cohesive and long formed narrative to complete a saga that's never been done before. He did it with the best talent behind each film's camera and The Russo Brothers have delivered the most epic film the superhero film genre has ever seen. I have waited my entire life to hear Captain America say "Avengers Assemble!" and I'm so happy I've lived long enough for my dream to come true. This was an emotional journey and end to The Infinity Saga. I really can say so much more about this crowning achievement in storytelling, but I'll keep this summary short.

Rocketman: It was only a mater of time before we got a biopic about the incomparable music legend Elton John. I was hoping that it would not shy away from his sexuality, addictions and his bright and explosive since of style. Well this film jumped right in and held nothing back and I loved every bit. It was truly a fantastical film that had enough gravity and style. The musical locations illustrate his most important moments in his life and are visually stunning and accurate recreations of his most iconic performances. Taron Egerton was Elton John and I loved that he sang all the music. This was truly a masterpiece.

1917: World War II films are a dime a dozen, but the World War I films are rare. Sam Mendes is one of the best directors and all of his films take you on a journey through the eyes, mind and soul of a character and he did exactly that in this film. The fact that this film is almost shot completely in one continuous take, gives every moment gravitas and tension as you watch our main character go along and across enemy lines to prevent an ambush. The score was truly haunting by Thomas Newman and my favorite piece from this film was from the flare scene. Such an stunning achievement in filmmaking should not be missed.

Joker: The clown prince of crime has had many iterations over the past 80 years. The most influential and canonical version of the character came from Frank Miller's The Killing Joke. Heath Ledger's take was iconic and made you scared because of his unpredictability. Joaquin Phoenix has taken the character and given a truly disturbing and authentic performance. As Arthur Fleck, we see through a constantly unraveling psyche, a man become a new and real kind of monster. Not only is this version the most unsettling, but it was beautiful. The cinematography was great and I loved how we got into the mind and heart of the character when he wasn't even speaking. This is a definition of how a person being pushed through horrible conditions can truly become a monster and yet be free. I loved this film and I think it will be studied in many acting classes from here on out.

Ford v Ferrari: There needs to be more racing films of this caliber! I love racing films that are not just about the cars, but also the drivers and their stories. This film was based on the true friendship between Carol Shelby and Ken Miles and I can't say enough how much attention to detail and heart that was put into every frame. The sound design in this film was crisp and powerful. The performances by both Matt Damon and Christian Bale was truly amazing and they had the best chemistry. Their fight scene was the funniest and most realistic fight I've ever seen between 2 friends. James Mangold is one of my favorite directors because of his focus on characters and story first before the action. This was a love letter to the world of racing and a respectful look at the lives of these pioneers of ingenuity and racing.

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: How do you make a perfect trilogy? How do you wrap it up with a satisfying and emotional ending? You focus on the story and stay true to the message and heart you started with in the beginning. You let the character bonds naturally grow and make each adventure a learning experience. This film was a perfect ending to the franchise and I can't stress how much I felt like I was with Hiccup and Toothless on their journey to this conclusion. The performances from the cast were stellar as always and although the villain may not have been as great, he still was a good addition. The visuals were the best and the textures in the scales and sand were out of this world. The score by John Powell truly brought me to tears as I got to say goodbye to my favorite companions. If you ever owned a pet, you known the emotional bond that is forged. This was the ultimate pay off and as a pet owner I saw my dog in Toothless' eyes. I will miss this franchise. If you're not crying by the end of this film then something is wrong with you.

The Peanut Butter Falcon: There are some independent films that take a risk in going outside of the norm and telling a story that nobody would have ever dreamed. This film was truly something special and I can't tell you how happy I was throughout. This film focuses on an individual with down syndrome whose dream is to become a wrestler and it is something truly inspirational and heartwarming. Zack Gottsagen was truly brilliant and awesome in this film. I loved his journey and his will to keep going. Shia Lebouf delivers an equally powerful performance and his chemistry with Zack was very sweet. This is one of the best films of 2019 and the most important films of the decade.

And here we are ladies and gentlemen! This is the moment you've all been reading toward. This film was an automatic choice for me the moment the end credits rolled. The crowing jewel of 2019 is none other than.....

Booksmart: I have seen so many high school teen comedies about partying or loosing your virginity before graduation, but never have I seen a film so engaging and focused on the bond of two bestfriends. Their bond was the heart and soul of the film and you couldn't have asked for a better pair of actresses. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever were beyond perfection in every moment of this film and they had me cracking up left and right. Their adventure over the course of one night was truly fun and you are along for the hilarious ride. Billie Lourd nearly stole the whole film out from under them with her surprising and hilarious appearances. The music choices in the film were awesome as well. The comedy in this film was so fresh and from the first 6 minutes of the film you’re locked into these two ladies chemistry. I can't stress enough how much joy this film brought me and for a film to be on my mind for the entire year and to have me constantly recommending it to everyone I know is an achievement of itself. Olivia Wilde has directed a true masterpiece and new definition of a coming of age story. I can't stop gushing about this film so I'll finish off by saying WATCH THIS FILM!

And that is my list of the best films of 2019 and man has it been a great year in film. Lets hope 2020 starts off the decade with a bang! Thanks for reading everyone.

[dropsofletters]

thinking of your gaze

title: thinking of your gaze pairing: park chanyeol/reader genre: long distance relationship!au/makeup artist!au/runway model!au summary: to see him and not to have him was her biggest sin. to love him and never tell him was her biggest regret. to feel him by her side was a dream to have late at night and to think of him was as normal as the wind passing by on its early rendezvous. she should have known that life goes along with love and love is obsessed with pain, and somehow park chanyeol is all three of those. type: angst/fluff word count: 20,602 words a/n: this is part of a two-part series that includes chanyeol and yixing as the main characters. both of these stories include snippets of what the other story is about. the yixing version shall be posted next week. none of these worlds or oc’s have anything to do with one another, much less do the main characters share a common love interest.

The world teaches its population that there are time-limits for everything. It starts with due dates for homework, then it moves over to friendships that just need to blossom at certain times, first loves that people just need to happen at certain age before it becomes too late to even try. One day, marriage becomes of importance, like a golden necklace hanging from your neck, and the other kids are necessary to fill the void of silence in someone’s house. There is rarely the time to enjoy life as it is, to give the clock time to turn into its numbers. It is always about moving forward, pushing your own type of love story to be written and catch whoever is in your sight to be the main lead beside you.

Some stories are just written with hard work; to some hard work is tears and sweat, paired with working over-hours and hanging out with the right people. To her, it was served in the form of makeup palettes, from eyeshadows combinations to practicing cut-creases in as many friends as she could get ready, to looking out for the newest trends and doing something out there, that remained classy enough to capture the attention of people. What she adored the most is that art, in whatever form it was even when hers was in makeup, never had a time-limit. The worst part, however, was the huge competition and the easiness of doing makeup. Some people simply thought it was useless to have someone else doing their makeup and with the amount of self-proclaimed artists, there were less spots to fill in important charges, like the makeup artist of a performer or someone with a makeup line.

Some dreams do come true, with all the hope in the world put into it, and now she could say she finally had a chance to shine for her talent.

When she was told Paris Fashion Week as the setting that she had been hired to work in, she had practically left a squeal in the depth of her throat with the excitement that bundled up inside her. What she did not notice, however, was that there were going to be other twenty makeup artists stuck in one room with a corresponding model for each of them, and that there were a lot of preparations that came with presenting the outfits in the runway, always ready for last minute changes, as well as paying attention to the most miniscule details so none of the colors from the makeup fell on the fabric of clothing or the accessories.

If she was honest, after spending a day in Paris preparing for the first night of the big event, she had only gotten to see studio lights and a lot of models, as well as getting hissed at by designers that were not too keen of her technique. Her confidence faltered the slightest at times, when she would pull away to look at the final product and thought to herself that there was nothing memorable about it, that she would be a disgrace for those who called themselves makeup artists, but a few thanking sentences from the less well-known models had her feeling better about herself.

After all, she was there for a job opportunity and she was getting the best out of it. Perhaps, at the end of this week she would finally get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. Not now, because there was one more model that she needed to prepare for the runway.

The world of rich people was incredibly hard to keep up with. There were celebrities that were at the top of every list with each passing year, that would never fall from their number one spot, just like there were names that people knew for a few months before they were forgotten. It was the rush that surrounded her that made her so anxious, knowing that for makeup artists it was the same, even for stylists. One word that passed as disliked to a celebrity and their careers were over and done with.

She heard the sound of the door of the makeup room opening, the chatting around her barely making the sound stand out as she organized her palettes. Concealers in one place, organized by shade; bronzers and highlighters organized by tone and her brushes were displayed in front of her, cleaned after she had finished the previous model’s makeup. A good look at herself showed that she was a mess, her black turtleneck showing a few foundation stamps at the edge of it, all thanks to rubbing her fingers against the fabric when the designer that accompanied the model cursed at her for using too much product. She moved her ponytail to the side slightly, bunching the fabric of her shirt inside her high-waisted jeans before someone snickered beside her.

“That’s what we call fashion.” Her very pregnant, and still very sarcastic, friend said from the side. Doah was also a makeup artist, her roommate for a few months at her very start four years ago. She remembered the times clearly, when she had left her nine-to-five job simply to approach something bigger that she loved even more. People around her were clearly not happy, but Doah was in the same situation as her and served as support as they launched their careers. Now, after living apart for two years and having crafted their careers to reach the point of doing makeup at PFW was a big deal.

She huffed. “Hey, I am not here to get a brand deal, you know? It doesn’t matter.” She convinced herself, watching the bloated woman rub her hand over her belly before chuckling.

“You’re annoyed.”

“Well, duh.” She stated, taking one look at Doah and smiling to herself. The woman had a healing aura around her, perhaps it was the floral scent that always radiated from her or her extra rounded cheeks with a perfectly gummy smile, but even when the nights were their darkest and she felt like she was going nowhere, Doah had done her best to make her feel like there were more chapters to her story. “I don’t know what I hate more. Doing a bride’s makeup or having a designer behind me screaming at me to put less foundation on.” Doah leaned over the vanity, letting her fingers touch her fake eyelashes to see if they were still glued on properly before sighing.

“It’s what we have to go through. Come on, we can do this.” With her excitement stocked somewhere within her that never seemed to dull, Doah shined like a star in a world that was full of sorrow for her. The doubt she felt, as well as the fear, was just a tiny monster eating at the back of her head. It kept her grounded, showing her that it was definitely never going to be easy.

The person that took a seat in front of the vanity consisted of the entire model set. Long legs and particularly outstanding features, good bone structure and a well-styled hair, but what differentiated the person whose makeup she was going to do at the moment was the smile on his face. It was soft, barely even there after he put his phone down on the vanity table, the lights on the mirror casting shadows under his eyes in the shape of his eyelashes and on the curve of his lips. The man had been in the cover of Vogue around the world a thousand times, more often than not with his right-hand model co-worker—and best friend—Oh Sehun. The pair had started out as simple models in a runway with much payment at all, even working for free when needed, until they were discovered by the right manager and they blew up instantly. Everyone wanted a picture of the two, wanted to be like how they were, simply desired to wear what they had over their bodies. Men all over the world took them as inspiration; people crowded around them with paparazzi not being left behind as they wondered what those two men could be doing with their lives. Pushing dating rumors aside, both in between them and with other people, they lived their lives giving a new aspect of fashion to the world.

To them, it was about the fun part of it—individuality, art, mixing and matching old and future trends to create something special. Experts said they had brought back the early 2000’s waves of models, the ‘good, old times’ some called it, while their faces were freshly new and definitely pleasing to look at. Two years down the road of their success and Park Chanyeol and Oh Sehun were one of the highest paid duos of the entire world. Furthermore, they worked together most of the time when in runways, more often than not having solo photoshoots whenever the time came around.

As someone that had to read about the fashion world, she was awestruck the moment she looked at Chanyeol, holding her beauty blender in between her fingers and bowing at him soon after as a greeting. His hair was blond, styled up to show his perfectly put-together undercut, makeup-less and shining in an all-white outfit, one that got a little bit lost with the color of his hair. Nonetheless, she could not even utter a word about it when she heard a designer approaching her quickly.

Much younger and less scary than the last designer she had talked to, the stylish woman—whose name she thought went along the lines of Seulgi— talked to her quickly about the basics of what she wanted in Chanyeol’s makeup. “Okay,” Seulgi caught her breath, putting a hand against her chest as if that would stop her heart from racing so fast. “I want white eyeliner and a good set of brows. Please, contour his face but leave his lips fairly natural.” Before she could even question Seulgi about anything, she was met with the woman’s back before she moved to another side of the makeup room.

In between her fingers, she played with the edges of her washed beauty blender before she decided to be the bigger person and talk to Chanyeol. “I, uh, I’ll start, then?” But it was not as easy as she thought it would be. Her fingers hovered over his face after placing Chanyeol’s perfect foundation match on the back of her hand as she breathed through her nose to keep herself calm. Hesitation was defined in dictionaries by the sight of her face as that moment and with blinking, oddly calming eyes, Chanyeol smiled before nodding his head.

“Go ahead. You can touch my face. It’s nothing.”

“Alright, thank you.” Thank you?! If that was the best she could do to look casual and totally professional, then she would get an award for the worst actress that had ever stepped a foot in this graceful earth. However, she concentrated on patting the product on his skin, the nicely prepped pores absorbing the density of the foundation before she turned around once again, looking between her tubes of concealer to pick one that matched. From the reflection in the vanity, she could catch a glimpse of the outfit itself—tall white pants with a belt that looked extremely expensive, paired with a see-through flowery shirt underneath an equally as white blazer. He kept looking ahead in his reflection, or perhaps at her, and when the applier to the concealer touched his under-eye area, he spoke up.

“I don’t think I have seen you in any past fashion week…are you new to the makeup team working with m company?” The man asked, surprising her with his observational skills. His eyes still look at her while she applies his foundation, putting a little bit to hide the faint bags under his eyes. What she knows is that he has not been getting enough hours of sleep. She nods her head as an answer, however, because it is easier to show than to tell, and she can’t find it in herself to talk to him. In that place, she has met a variety of nice looking models—but never quite so much of her preferred type of man. “I knew it. I know everyone around here, but I didn’t know you.”

Maybe, it is the fact that she has had enough regrets in her life that pushes her to say her name, introduce herself as if celebrities even care in most cases, but if he is asking, she supposes he wants to know. The introduction does not last long, only ending after she patted the last bit of concealer under his eyes were reaching over for an eyebrow brush. “And yeah. I had never actually worked with your company before, but I am on trial for now. If I do great, they might hire me full time or something—they said that, but I am not lifting my hopes up or anything.”

Chanyeol blinks softly, looking at her motions as if he is relaxed by getting his makeup done. She would understand that point of view, if that was the case, having gotten her makeup done by her friends a few times. “If they hired you, you must be really good. Besides, they are short on staff.” The man adds, a smirk appearing over his face as he teases her and for a moment, she finds herself smiling, too.

“This room does not specifically scream short on staff.”

“You think this is too packed?” He points with his index finger around the room before shaking his head. The soft brushing of her eyebrow pencil against his eyebrows lets her create the shape, sharp and straight, probably going to be perfected by more concealer. “It is even worse when you’re waiting to go up stage. Everyone is screaming at you and stylists start putting hairspray on you and it smells a bit like too much perfume, but also sweat and you can only hear—” The way his lips make out the sound that is supposed to be the spraying had her laughing, her nerves becoming less and less prominent the more he talks to her. By her side, she can see that her ex-roommate is working on Sehun’s makeup, much more quiet and concentrated on taking mirror selfies, rather than anything else.

She laughs, taking a flat brush and coating it slightly in concealer to perfect his eyebrow shape. “Did you get used to it?”

“Oh no. The smell is terrible.” Chanyeol announces and she bites down on her bottom lip to fight back a smile, but it is almost impossible. There are people that truly remain humble, even when she knows his bank account is probably surrounded by zeroes and zeroes one after another, and Chanyeol seems to be one of them. “But I do love runways, it feels so good to walk up there and just…just, like, I don’t know how to explain it? It’s like wearing someone’s art?” That is the part where it seemed like she could connect to him, to the models around her and the designers that do their best to share their absolute love for art. Some do it for the money, of course, but she thought fashion was the most hated and yet the most used piece of art. While problematic in its own way, sometimes filled with unnecessary remarks and drama, it truly was a form of art.

“I get it.” She adds, picking up the white eyeliner she had bought with the most recent trends in makeup. Neon and white were passed from clothes to liquid eyeliners, and it was something she had not tried on herself, yet, but by the looks of it, it would have worked excellently on someone like Chanyeol. Perhaps, that is why the thought of being a model even crossed his head, because he knew that he was that good-looking. The type of beautiful that left anyone in awe, that deserved to be dressed only in the most precisely made clothing, with the shiniest jewelry hanging from his neck. Still concentrated on the task at hand, Chanyeol seems relaxed under the weight of her hand, resting upon his cheek to hold his face and help her get a better grip of the eyeliner.

“You’re really good at makeup, too.”

“Ah, really? You haven’t seen that much…I only have one eye finished.” She comments, moving around his chair before taking his face in between her hand and the brush once again. The concentration on her eyes has Chanyeol staring back, trying his hardest not to blink even though his eyes are starting to water a bit. “No, no, no, no. Don’t cry.” The repetition brings a smile to his face, much more when she uses her extended palm as a fan to stop his tears from falling. “You’re going to ruin your eyeliner and I still have to put some in your waterline.”

Chanyeol looks up, to the harsh lights on the ceiling as if he is encountering his first visit to heaven, a smile appearing over his face when he dumbly says. “The least I expected was to end up crying when I sat down on this chair.”

With a white pencil eyeliner, she moves forward and makes sure to fan some more with her hands over Chanyeol’s eyes to stop him from crying. “Not my fault…” Her tongue peaks out to rest at the corner of her lips before she nears the pencil to his eye. “I am going to try to do this quickly, okay?”

“Quickly?” Chanyeol asks when he feels the first swipe of the pencil against his waterline, his eyelashes fluttering with the need to blinking, but he pushes the desire away. “Take as long as you want. I’m totally comfortable over here.”

“So, you like getting your makeup done.” She confirms, but Chanyeol merely clears his throat.

“Yeah, usually. Depends on the person, though, some I enjoy more than others…”

The flirty tone should be expected; it’s the city of love—he is a celebrity, and the amount of confidence that must have bundled up inside that big body of his is probably a compilation of all the love scores that he has had in his life. Chanyeol definitely does not look like the type that got rejected once or twice in his life; she thinks that the only chance of him being rejected would be if, perhaps, he had tried to innocently ask a girl to his girlfriend when they were in kindergarten and the girl was going through the phase of ‘boys have cooties!’, leading to a heartbroken child that felt better four days after.

The heat that radiates from her, like the sun in the middle of summer, has her smiling briefly before she shakes her head. It is obviously not about her, she tries to reason with herself, that Chanyeol was probably talking about something else, but soon after he speaks again:

“Like I said, you’re very good—”

A man with his phone pressed to his ear walks closer to Sehun and Chanyeol, standing in between the two seats. He had black hair that remained sleeked back, a dark suit to match the color and a professional look on his face. She had noticed that Chanyeol had a dimple, but this man’s were even deeper. His attire did not particularly scream runway model, but he could be if he wanted to. “Hello.” He greets the two makeup artists, making her look up from her set of bronzers to bow at him as a way of replying to his greeting. She still had to contour Chanyeol’s face, put some highlighter on and add lipstick to the mix before finishing everything up. “I would like for you to hurry up a bit, please.” He speaks way more politely than anyone else has done in that team, thankfully. “Sehun and Chanyeol have an interview with Cosmopolitan in seven minutes and I need them ready for pictures.”

Chanyeol lifts his gaze while keeping his face still, his makeup artist’s brush contouring his face professionally to make his cheekbones stand out with the sharpness of his face. “Wasn’t it with Vogue?”

“We also have a Vogue interview.” Yixing announces and Chanyeol chuckles at that, apologizing once he realizes that laughing is not exactly what he should be doing when he gets his face contoured. She doesn’t mind, however, for his smile is completely natural and away from the eccentric world that is modelling.

“These new members of the PR Team are going strong.”

“Much more the girl that is scared shitless of Yixing.” Sehun argues from his spot and a smack on his shoulder from his manager has him chuckling the slightest.

What follows next is the end of their conversation. Yixing is reading over what they have to say, what they have to do, how they should act—but also, telling them to keep it casual to the most of their abilities. She tries her best to deliver a good face of makeup but also, take her time to remember his nice looking features. She feels like this is the last time that she will see Chanyeol; the man that stands up and looks at her with a smile before bowing, the same one that repeats her name when he says his goodbyes paired up with a small ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and the same one that leaves her with the hope that, indeed, they will meet the day after that.

✈️

This job proves to be annoying only four days into the fashion week, and it is even worse when Doah decides to take a flight back home because she is having contractions. She had tried to make her best friend stay, only to keep her company even if she had to have her child in Paris, but Doah was hard-headed and definitely had made a decision already. It leaves her alone and with twice the models to prepare, meaning that she has half the time that she used to have to prepare everything, and if designers had screamed at her in the past few days, they were even worse when Doah had left.

Most of the time, she spends sighing, looking at her watch or trying to apply makeup as quickly as possible. No longer does she embarks in conversation with the models to see how they were doing, she simply does her job and prays that it looks well on cameras.

There are two models that she leaves for last, always, and those are the ones that everyone talked about after every performance. Whenever she got to her hotel room, shared with now one makeup artist instead of two—Jenn, who snores louder than she should and she has to try to get used to it before she goes crazy from the lack of sleep, she would spend the little free time she has reading the reviews about the models that she had done their makeup for, sometimes seeing her name credited at the very bottom with the words ‘MUA’ before it. Oh Sehun is way easier to work with; he talks less, he looks at his phone most of the time and his eyebrows are already to die for, as if he had been blessed with the best genes in the world—and he probably was, really—.

But Park Chanyeol is the one that makes her feel at ease; the only one that kept her sane for the last few days, the reason why she feels like her job is as pleasing as it is. It is always a pleasure looking at him; the first day was white themed, but the second day he was modelling nothing less than Tommy Hilfiger, a brand that he has been sponsored by for a little over a year—he claims, and she listens—. The third day, another brand calls for his name to wear an advancement of their newest winter collection, and Chanyeol looks the coziest with a sweater on. On the fourth day, Chanyeol talks to her as she is doing Sehun’s makeup, going as far as asking her about the steps. He wants to know what primer works for, why Sehun uses mascara and he doesn’t, why she contours Sehun’s face differently from his.

Chanyeol is either a nice onlooker, or he has had his eye on her for the entirety of the four days that they have been here.

All moments are cut short by the man whose name she now knows. Zhang Yixing is the duo’s manager, well-educated and polite, an all-rounded person that excels in everything. If she is being honest, his honesty and niceness shines through him when Sehun teases him about some PR Member that apparently hates him, only to have Yixing whining about how he doesn’t understand why this person dislikes him. Quite the sight, if she is honest, a pretty funny one at that, too.

But on the fourth day, with only three more days left until she is back home and away from Paris, she does get to see the Eiffel Tower. It shines brightly at night, equally as beautiful as she had thought it would be, but she only sees it for a moment—just like how it happens whenever she sees Chanyeol. They barely see each other for fifteen minutes until he is off to another interview, or maybe some last minute preparations, or a photoshoot of sorts. He disappears the moment she blinks; smiling to the street, in hopes that another handful of people feel what she feels for him: endless attraction.

This time, she is inside a taxi on the way to some Spanish restaurant in the downtown part of Paris—because bringing Spain’s culture to Paris seemed like a good idea with the upcoming Madrid Fashion Week a few months from now—, with Jenn holding onto the palm of her hand as she talks and talks about this one new technique that she uses on false eyelashes, one that she doesn’t really pay much attention to. Not as much as she should, really, Jenn already has a spot on the company she is trying to work with, and that could only mean she knows better. But her mind is filled with a lot of things:

One, she is extremely tired, for Fashion Weeks are not as easy as she deemed them to be.

Two, Park Chanyeol is constantly running through her head in his tall, model-like glory as he speaks in that deep voice of his. When in reality, if she is counting, if she spends fifteen minutes on a daily with him and it has only been four days of knowing him, she has barely gotten to see him for an hour.

An hour is quite not enough.

Jenn tugs at her hand, the wavy and dark strands of the woman’s hair flowing with the wind softly as they get out of the taxi. The older makeup artist insists on paying, tossing some money to the French taxi-driver before she turned to look at the entrance of the restaurant. “You know, I have a younger sister and she would get so fucking embarrassed when I held her hand in public. But you don’t. So you’re now my new younger sister.” Jenn jokes around, random and energetic as always, as they go up to the security guard at the entrance, showing the cards that are given to them when going backstage in the fashion shows and sooner than later, they are let inside.

“…I am not sure how I feel about that.” She chuckles, shaking her head as she stares around the place. Open and with the stars twinkling above it; it was nothing less or nothing more than a dream come true. The sound of a Spanish guitar filled the air, and the crowd gathered in different spots, some eating by the tables, others by the bar’s counter and some danced to the sound of a very romantic song. Flamenco seemed to be the subject of the night, along with reds and golds that shined through with elegance. But, there she is, wearing a pair of black pants and some white crop-top that she brought with her, off the shoulder and with wide long sleeves. Now she is worried, because her heels are starting to make her feet ache and she has to eat with precision in order to keep her clothes clean.

“You’re so uptight.” Jenn says. “Let go for a moment. Just, look at this place, okay?” And she does, engulfed by the beauty and the sound of Spanish words sang in such an enticing way that it almost touched the subject of romance. “You just have to have fun in a party like this. Besides, I asked the other makeup artists to save us some seats and food, so we better get there before they start eating what they saved for us.”

“Right…I think I’ll just go grab food for myself.”

“Come on, I know we are all scary when we are in the makeup room, but they are nice people. The stress just gets to them sometimes—” Jenn cuts herself off before clicking her tongue. “And it’s kind of part of the business. Some of them are just up their asses, but you need to talk to some of them to get more well-known. You see?”

She rolls her eyes, opting to think that she just has to get this spot in that company. Madrid Fashion Week is waiting for her. She has to do it. “Okay. I will. It’s alright. I can do it.”

Or so she thought.

When she was a kid, she had played musical chairs once or twice, but the group in front of her take musical chairs to a whole different level. Whoever stands up from their seat to go look for something, they talk about. Perhaps, it would be better to talk about their experiences in the industry, talking about their hardships with makeup in the recurring fashion week, but it goes past from that. Clothing, style, makeup and overall appearance is something that everyone around the table talks about, leaving her to lean back on her seat while plopping snacks past her lips and looking around the room to see if she finds someone that takes her out of that situation.

No one does, until she sees a hand waving at her.

The blonde hair probably gave it away, or the tallness, or the fact that the lights in the room cast upon the only man that had her attention going towards him. Chanyeol waves at her to come closer, moving his arm with him as he holds onto the reason why he is being so bold and frantic—a glass of wine rests on left hand, almost finished, the red liquid tinting his lips exquisitely. She stands up from her seat, whispering to Jenn that she would be back any minute, before the woman nodded her head, too lost in gossip to even spare her a second glance. With wobbling steps in those fucking heels, she goes over to where Chanyeol is standing, obviously near the bar, and obviously smelling like wine mixed with his favorite Calvin Klein cologne.

Dressed in an all-black suit, with polka dots in the tie he wears, Chanyeol’s most outstanding feature is his smile the moment he greets her with a small exclamation of her name. “What are you doing over there, huh? Looking all bored? I was hoping you would come and—” He swallows thickly, probably salivating a bit more now that he is slightly tipsy. “Sehun told me you were over there with the MUA’s.”

She scrunches up her nose in distaste. Some were clearly enjoyable to be around, like Jenn—a good example of a person that is truly enchanting in every way, and maybe one or two that actually asked if she was doing okay, but the fashion industry was, is and will always be messy. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was doing. I’m thankful you called me over.”

Chanyeol looks at her face, up and down, inspecting her features before a quirked smile appears over his face. “Want some wine?”

“No, thank you.” She comments, shaking her hand in distaste. “I don’t like that type of wine and Jenn has already taken a few drinks, so I have to make sure we get to the hotel safe.”

“Responsible.” Chanyeol comments and then, he takes a seat in front of the bar’s counter, patting the seat beside him that she takes gleefully. Chanyeol pushes the strands of his blonde hair behind with his hand, probably used to having it sleeked back thanks to the stylist’s doings, but this was him—casual yet elegant, probably did not take that long to do something to his hair. “Have you ever gone to Madrid?”

She thinks for a moment before she answers, nodding her head as she is reminded of the very hectic, extremely stressful, definitely not pleasant memory she had of that one university trip she had to take for her thesis. Madrid was one of the destinations people were sent to and she thought she would get to see the boisterous side of the city, but she spent most of her nights typing the results of the thesis while her classmates spent their nights drinking and partying. “I did. I don’t think I truly got to see the beauty of it because I didn’t have a lot of time to do so.”

“You’re always on the run, huh?”

“Quite like yourself.” She replies, watching as Chanyeol nods as he takes another glass of wine from the bartender. She tries to stop him, placing her hand over his very expensive Rolex watch as she mumbles: “Hey, take it slow, the wine is not going anywhere.”

The tall man giggles at that, patting his cheeks to stop himself before he continues the conversation. “I haven’t even had the time to go to Seoul in a long while. So you’re right, I’m very busy.”

“But I don’t think you regret being a model at all.”

Chanyeol takes a sip of his wine before shaking his head. “Not at all.” Thankfully. She knew the feeling of wanting to get out of a place as soon as possible, but you can’t—because it is your job, and it pays the bills, and it potentially will be your future. The moment she abandoned her previous job, she spent months wondering if she had done the correct thing and only now, she got to see the flowers of the garden she had watered for years. “I did it as a joke at first,” He indicates, the dimple on his cheek prominent as he smiles. “But then it actually grew on me. My mom has all the magazines that I have been featured in saved in a drawer or something.”

Her heart beats softly at the idea of his mother being proud of the man he has become. An icon, quite clearly, much more for fashion. “So you’re a momma’s boy, then.”

“Very much so. I can only sleep well if I call my mom beforehand.”

“…You’re lying.”

“Why would I?” Chanyeol asks, his cheeks turning pink because of the drinks he has had. “But, we have talked enough about me. Tell me about yourself.”

That question can end up with two answers. The awkward answer that comes with bland connotations and a wall that separates two people from getting to know each other. And then, there is the type of answer that she gives him. She basks on conversation with him; talking about what shows she watches, the scar on her knee that is a memory of her days playing outside of the house, how she learned how to do proper eyeliner—because Chanyeol says his hands are too shaky whenever he has tried to do so—and the man replies with drunken memories of his own. His tongue is slurring by the time he finishes his glass of wine, saying how he once put glue on his sister’s hair, and how he really wishes his dog would see him as his actual owner instead of just some random dude that pets him. Briefly, he talks about how he used to listen to rock music a lot, but nowadays he listens to hip hop a lot more.

Park Chanyeol is not a paradox; he is not exactly complicated, either. People that are like open books are not ones that could be found in a world like this nowadays. Everyone is trying to put on the façade of stone cold hearts, going through life with the mindset that no one is worthy enough of trust. She is guilty of that, as well, but there are people—just like him—that just can’t be disliked. Some people are just like that.

Some people have set roles, too. Her role for the night is of the woman that smiles at the sight of Chanyeol getting closer, tapping his ear so she could talk closer to him and he would listen well. His role is of a man trying to enamor someone, not that is difficult for him at all, and of a new friend, as well…

Yixing’s role is of interruption.

All.

The.

Time.

“Ch—Are you drunk?!” The man asks the moment he comments face to face with Chanyeol, the surprise on the manager’s expression quite a funny sight. She raises an eyebrow, trying to blend into the crowd in hopes that Yixing does not blame her for his client’s drowsiness.

“Nope.” Chanyeol pops the word before he lifts his index finger and thumb in the air, indicating the smallest bit he could with a tiny gap in between his fingers. “Only this bit.”

“I—Hi.” Yixing greets the woman before him, bowing slightly before waving his hand with a smile on his face. Soon after, he turns towards Chanyeol with a pouty look and worry written all over his face. “Chanyeol, we have a meeting with a Puma sponsor and I really, really, really need you to talk well. Okay?”

The man in question is taken off by the rapidness of everything that happens around him, tumbling on his step when he stands up before straightening his back. “Okay. I can do it.” He confirms, breath lingering with the smell of wine. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” He tells her, a little too loudly before nodding his head at Yixing, almost as if indicating that he is ready. She answers with a goodbye, much softer in tone.

Tomorrow sounds like a better promise than tonight would ever be.

✈️

The last day of Paris Fashion Week, in the golden makeup room, starts with two models practically ripping their heads off as they fight for hairspray. Now, her mind was divided in three parts at that point: one, that was stressed; the other part was practically mortified about the situation those models got themselves in, and, of course, the last one could only remember one of the very first few things that Chanyeol told her the first time they met. Backstage smells strangely like hairspray, and perhaps models are kind of crazy.

“Coffee?” Jenn offers almost immediately, appearing beside her in perfect attire. The concept of the night was colorful, back to the eighties, some said would be a perfect name, but she thought it was basically a night for art—or to show her art, really. She takes it, because there is no way in hell she looks as awake as Jenn does, with her hair perfectly put in a high ponytail and with the most gorgeous, designer blazer she has seen. “You look well rested.” Well, that part was indeed very true. The bags under her eyes today are because she wants more sleep, not because she needs it. Jenn had decided to have a little escapade with one of the models later on the night—and that model, although gorgeous and tall and definitely one of the most beautiful women in the top ten lists around the world, was the one that had to deal with Jenn’s snoring.

“I didn’t have to listen to your snoring.”

Jenn almost, almost seems offended. “I don’t snore!” The woman says, taking a sip from her own cup of coffee before staring at her vanity. “Speaking of…I am going to do her makeup now. Is your model here?”

“No. Ah, I think I am starting with Versace today…so that would be Kim—”

“Not Kim, you know who your model is.”

“…I don’t.”

“It’s definitely not a Kim.” Jenn prompts before winking with her two eyes. Quite clearly, the woman does not even have the exact precision to do so, but it is good that she tried, at least. “It’s a Park, and he’s friends with an Oh.”

She opens her mouth to say something, perhaps retort her comment only to be met with Jenn’s giggle and her back, going over to where her vanity was to start working. The coffee burns the roof of her mouth slightly when she tries to down something to simplify the ticklish feeling she has inside her stomach, but it does nothing more that make her hiss and remind her that she really does need to work.

Some days, people don’t feel fine—it is something everyone learns early on in their lives, but the person that she least expected to be silent throughout her makeup routine was Chanyeol himself. His arms are folded over his chest, looking ahead after saying his greetings to her. Even when she takes a little bit longer to do his makeup, all thanks to the amount of colors the designer wants on his eyelids—cut crease included—, he does not utter many words although she tries to initiate a conversation various times. As it seems like, the frown on Chanyeol’s face is permanent and she should be worried that the action is creasing the foundation that she had applied so effortlessly, but she is far more worried that Chanyeol is feeling wronged. Or maybe, she did something wrong.

But she doesn’t recall doing anything remotely close to a bad thing. All she has done is be wrapped in conversations with him endlessly, and he seemed to enjoy it each time.

Normally, after she ends up Sehun and Chanyeol’s makeup, she waits and sees if anyone wants some adjustments and does them, if necessary. This time around, however, she is in the lounging room behind the big wall that separated them from the runway and she could only think about Chanyeol. It’s because he is there, standing in all his tall glory with that frown over his face that only showed his distress. The outfit he is wearing is big, with some weird architectural thing that is supposedly a sleeve, in the colors of the sunset ready to step out on his own type of stage. The only thing is that, in most occasions if not all, Chanyeol is clearly more excited about things. And most importantly, he never really ignores Sehun—who now stands by his side repeating the same question over and over again until he actually gets tired of it, cussing at Chanyeol under his breath when he asks his third ‘huh?’.

Something is wrong. Something is definitely wrong and it should not even be her problem if Chanyeol is going through a hard time, or if something has happened to him to make him feel that way. She should be concentrating on the book under her gaze—a romance novel that Doah left behind in their room, definitely all the clichés written in the form of bad boys and naïve girls. Anything would be more interesting than that book, if she is honest.

So she pushes herself up her feet, sighing at the action before moving forward. She stands behind Chanyeol for three seconds and soon after, she regrets even getting close to him. Who does she think she is to ask Chanyeol how he is? Maybe, he was just being nice all along, for that would not be a sin. There are people that are bookmarks in life, and maybe she was just a stopper in the chapter of his life that was this year’s Paris Fashion Week, but that did not mean he would not move forward. Chapters end. Stories are re-written. Bookmarks are lost. That is just how the world works.

“Hi.” But still, she is a person that is afraid of regret. When she left her job, her best friend at the time—also a very close coworker—almost had her head for leaving such a great spot. But she tried it, and part of her thinks that it is staring to work. In the back of her head, she ponders if she will think about this moment in a few years and wonder: What would have happened if I asked Chanyeol what was wrong?—of course, the least she wants is to have a question mark as an answer. “Is everything okay?”

Chanyeol breathes softly, through his mouth, then his nose, then back again before he replies: “No.” For a moment, she feels like his voice broke, and maybe he wants to tear up a bit but he fights back the urge to be sensible when he has makeup on and he will also go on stage as soon as possible. “I, uh, I’m about to shit my pants and these are not…very cheap pants, so that is not a good idea.” He randomly adds before muttering a curse under his breath. “Fucking shit. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’m finally going nuts.”

She shakes her head, watching as he turns to look at her. “What are you scared of? I-Is…Is there anything bother you? Anyone, really? I would beat up anyone that is harassing you.” She says it half-seriously and half-jokingly, but it brings a soft smile that doesn’t show his teeth to Chanyeol’s lips.

“I got into a scandal yesterday.”

“Really? I haven’t heard anything about it.” It is not uncommon for big models to get into scandals. After all, they are celebrities and once you reach that title, everyone is looking to see what you do wrong.

He shrugs his shoulders, as if it is nothing, as if whatever is eating at the back of his head that is making him so anxious is even remotely valid. “It’s because it’s not true. Someone tried to say I had basically started this Tommy Hilfiger campaign so I would back out from my duo with Sehun…and then people were commenting stupid shit,” He almost grits his teeth out of anger, but his expression only shows disappointment. “About how I was always expected to be a rat, and then I had to speak up about it but, here I am, wearing the clothes of the brand everyone says I am using to stop working with Sehun.”

“…I am sure Sehun doesn’t believe the rumors.”

“But it makes me feel so bad.” Chanyeol whines, long and big fingers interlocking with one another as  a way of keeping himself sane. “Do people really believe I am a rat?”

Her eyes soften at that, placing one hand over his shoulder to reassure him that everything would be okay. “Those who do, don’t know you.” She says, and it is quite stupid—because she has only known him for a week, but if there is an antonym to what greatness really is, Chanyeol would not be the concept of it. “Besides, you can’t give them the benefit of seeing you give up because of them. You have to go up that runway and kill it with that pet-cone sleeve of yours.”

She tries to be funny, and it seems to work because Chanyeol’s expression changes from sadness to confusion and suddenly, surprise, a smile beaming on his face as he claps his hands together, something she has learned he does when he laughs—if he can do it, he potentially slaps someone’s shoulder. “Call it fashion.” Chanyeol says in between laughter before pressing his lips together in the sweetest smile he has mustered that afternoon. “Thank you for being so nice to me.”

“Anytime.”

The complexity of talking with Chanyeol is not caused by the man himself, it is part of the situation that they are in. She’s a makeup artist, he is a model, and while they share some time together, there are far more important things that he has to concentrate on. She watches from the screens backstage as he walks, powerful and with a straight face, his legs toned with every movement and the thought of Chanyeol making up his mind thanks to her warms her heart. It brings her a sense of purpose, to know that the fashion industry was difficult for everyone was simple knowledge—but if she could do so much as making someone feel better with her words and makeup skills, then it is more than enough.

By the time Chanyeol comes backstage, she is ready to congratulate him for a great show, but whenever she gets close to him, he is interrupted by someone else. An interviewer, for example; a stylist fixing his hair, or wrapping golden chains around his neck. Then come the pictures, models approaching him to show their friends that they were in the same fashion week as Park Chanyeol, the famous model, and that is her cue to know that she should probably give up on trying to establish conversation with him.

A feeling that twists and turns on her stomach, rising up to her heart and clinging to it for dear life, is what she calls jealousy. What she is jealous of, she doesn’t know.

✈️

“Whoa, Doah’s boyfriend must have been very pretty if their son looks like that. He’s adorable!”

In the order of women in Doah’s blood, she got cheated on time and time again, ending up as a single mother just like everyone else in her family had done. Doah believed she was going to be the exception, she remembers, much more when she is packing up to go stay with her for the first few months of her son’s childhood. Paris begs her to stay, with its beautiful sceneries and the delicious pastries she had for breakfast this morning, but there are duties that need to be fulfilled—and she also doesn’t think she would ever be able to pay a room in that hotel, if it wasn’t for the company she is trying to get a spot on booking and paying for her stay.

She is not packing anything last minute, only the essentials that would go inside her backpack, and the last pair of pajamas she wore the previous night. Jenn has taken the time to look through her phone, laughing at certain pictures that she had stupidly taken of herself when she is bored, commenting on beautiful pictures that she has of sceneries and, of course, apart from downloading one—or two—pictures of Park Chanyeol in all his model glory, she takes the time to look at the high quality photograph of Doah’s baby. In awe, she is, not that she would have ever expected Jenn, out of all people, to be touched by the sight of a baby.

“Yeah, a beautiful cheating bastard.” She says, putting on her shoes and making sure that her red lipstick was still intact after having one too many croissants. “She told him she was pregnant when she was two months in and the only thing this asshole could say was,” She clears her throat to imitate his idiotic deep voice. “Not my woman to take care of, not my problem.”

Jenn gasps, locking her phone and putting it down on the woman’s lap as she rested on the big, queen sized bed of her bedroom. The hotel room consisted of two bedrooms and a bathroom, in this case. “That’s fucking it. That’s why I don’t even consider dating men. Fuck him.” Those words make her smile, standing up to place her phone inside her backpack securely before yawning deeply. There is something about staying in a hotel room with the softest mattress in the world, and that is that she has had her best night of sleep in a while. Snoring Jenn on the other room or not. A minute of silence passes by—and that is like a year in Jenn’s calendar—so she speaks up. “And you’re staying with Doah for a few months, correct?”

“She has managed to buy a pretty house by the countryside, so yes. While I am jobless, I will stay with her—you know, drive to the city if I get some gig to complete and then, go back.”

“You’re not going to be jobless for long. Madrid is coming, baby, and not only that…but there is always some lazy celebrity that doesn’t know how to contour and needs us. Needs talented people like you.” Jenn always looks at the brighter side of things, and she demonstrates it with the way she lives her life. The perfectly put-together woman stands up from her spot on the bed to stretch before pointing towards the bathroom. “I am going to pee. Don’t leave without me.”

She hums, smiling a bit to the older woman. Although, if anyone ever were to ask who is older, anyone would say that it was her, not Jenn. “As if I would leave you.”

Jenn clicks her tongue, opening the door to the bathroom before looking over her shoulder. “I was left in Bali by a few friends because ‘they couldn’t see me’ and if that doesn’t speak about my choices in friends, then I don’t know what does.”

With a chuckle, she takes the little time she has left to warm up her hands and look for her coat, the coldness in Paris making it all so much more inviting to stay in bed and simply rest all the tiredness away. However, the sound of someone knocking on her door has her frowning, thinking that maybe one of the other MUA’s had left something in their makeup bags. She trots over to the door, opening it without thinking twice but the moment she looks up, she is not met by the sight of one of the other makeup artists that worked with her in Paris Fashion Week. Chanyeol is there, in all his glory, but instead of wearing those exotic piece of clothing that they clad him in whenever he is on the runway, he is adorned in an oversized hoodie and ripped jeans, a cap covering his blonde hair with his big ears poking out from the sides.

“Chanyeol?” She speaks his name softly, a smile appearing over her features because she can, and she did. The man shares a grin of his own as well, biting down on his bottom lip as he stares at her. It is brief, nothing too long to make things awkward, but she does notice how his eyes go from her eyes to her lips, then over her eyes again after lingering on the red lipstick.

“That’s my name.” He indicates before he points to the backpack that hangs from her shoulders. “I was right about you leaving at this time, then.”

“You’re not leaving right now, too?”

“I have an interview this afternoon and I leave at night.” Chanyeol says and she hums. The man is always busy, alike Sehun, and she wonders how his skin is still as intact as it is with the amount of stress he probably goes through. The man pushes something towards her hands and she looks down to see what seems to be a bag filled with clothing, but a white paper rested upon the folded pieces of clothing. “I talked to my favorite brands and I got some clothing that I feel would fit you really well, and that I really like, and as a goodbye…gift. Well, a ‘see you later’ gift.”

“You shouldn’t have. Oh my God, Chanyeol!” The way he looks at her is enchanted, like he is in a trance as she gets out the folded piece of paper that was inside the bag. “And this is—”

Before she could continue her sentence, Chanyeol’s phone cuts through the atmosphere terribly, making him sigh before he reaches for his jeans’ back-pocket, taking his phone out and picking up the call immediately. “Yes, Yixing, I am on my way. I told you I had to make a stop first.” The sound of Yixing talking on the other end has Chanyeol nodding and she wants to feel honored, much more when Chanyeol stopped by when he has a day filled with activities to complete. By the time Chanyeol speaks to her once again, their time together has shortened for a few minutes—and she hears the sound of Jenn walking around the hotel room, probably trying to listen to what they were saying. “Uh, so yeah. Read the thing on the piece of paper and—” Chanyeol stops himself from speaking so quickly, opening his arms slightly as if to welcome her with a hug. “And could I have a hug? To say goodbye.”

“Y-Yeah.” She whispers, pushing her body forward to wrap her arms around his waist. Chanyeol’s hugs are sweet, with his cheek pressed to the top of her head and his arms wrapping around her tightly, but they do not last for long—of course, he is busy, and Yixing has probably already given him an earful of what he has to do throughout the day. “Thank you for the gifts.”

“It’s nothing.” Chanyeol says before nodding his head, waving his hand to say his goodbyes. He does say the word verbally, but she is far too concentrated on the smell of his cologne that now falls upon her.

God, she is starting to believe that Chanyeol has the effect of making her giggle like a fourteen years old girl that has just gotten her crush to hug her.

By the time the door is closed, she rushes to look at what the paper says—and Jenn is obviously by her side, making too many questions that she answers in a half-assed manner as she reads what the paper says:

Text me! And then, his number.

✈️

The benefits of being an adult is that texting first is not a problem anymore. The turmoil that comes with knowing what to write to someone you like is not as tedious anymore, it is bearable and it comes with a big batch of ‘I just need to try to see how it goes’, leading to her finally texting Chanyeol. She does it two days after he gave her his number, when she is finally well rested and when Doah’s baby is not crying loudly from the other room.

Doah’s sense of style was impeccable, and it shows through his new house—although small, the tones of dark green, beige and white create such an earth-filled atmosphere. The trees around them and the sound of the lake nearby would have been very relaxing if only there wasn’t a newborn in the household. She reminds herself that she is there for Doah, a woman that is new to the entire industry of being a mother, and instead of helping out with the baby—she keeps the house clean, cooks a few meals before leaving for the city. Two weeks after the fashion week, she has found some jobs to fulfill and an empty inbox in her e-mail account that indicated that neither Doah nor her had been picked, yet, for the new MUA position in the company.

And Chanyeol still has to respond.

The week has been busy, to the point she doesn’t even want to wash the dishes that come with the big amount of dinner she just had with Doah, but seeing the woman breastfeeding by the counter let her know that there was little to no time in the mother’s agenda for her to do any important chore. She looks out the window, seeing the night sky and the lights of the houses nearby. Thankfully for Doah, her hard work for the past few years in another company—one that she had never wanted to join for their strict rules—had led her to buy a house where her son could grow up comfortably. Humble and candid, the place was, although she missed her apartment in the city life a lot more. Nowadays, she could only stop by there to do so much before she had to return to the road to have an hour long ride back to Doah’s house, just in time to be met by dinner.

Her phone rings but her hands are full with dish soap, playing around with the sponge in between her hands while getting those bits of fried egg away from the pan. Doah still did not learn the importance of oil, as it seems. “Someone’s texting you.” Doah says, widening her eyes when her phone rings again. And again. Three times until it comes to a stop. “Geez. Is that your crazy aunt that always comments on your pictures on Instagram? I have never seen your phone blow up like that.”

“Probably.” She chuckles before pointing towards her phone with her drenched hands. “It must be Jenn. She texts like a mad man. You know my password, right?”

“What kind of best friend do you take me for?”

She scrubs on the pan once again, shrugging her shoulders. “I guess my type of best friend, because I, for sure, don’t know your password.”

Doah seems to ignore her remark, instead gasping and smiling at the person that had texted her. She thinks that maybe Jenn attached some pictures of the beautiful Tokyo—apparently, she had a gig there for a new fashion line’s photoshoot—but she is met with nothing less than the name of someone she should have expected. “Chanyeol has texted you.”

She stops washing the dishes almost immediately, wiping her hands in the back of her sweatpants to take her phone in between them. Quite like Jenn, and maybe it was an ‘energetic people’ stereotype or something that she didn’t quite get the memo of, but he had written with a bunch of exclamation marks at first. “Sorry, I couldn’t respond any earlier! I have been so busy. I didn’t mean to make you wait.” He adds in the primordial part of the text, but then another bubble appears to indicate that he wants to say more. “Hello, beautiful. How are you?!” And that, she realizes, that he uses a lot of exclamation points and emoticons. As if it is necessary to include that he is very happy to be talking to her. “Have you gotten the job? I keep asking Yixing but he doesn’t know…”

She sits down on one of the chairs, opening her legs comfortably at the position. “No worries, Chanyeol. Haha.” She starts with that, then deciding to comply more to her message. “And I haven’t heard anything back, yet. I am starting to believe that I won’t get the job.”

Maybe, he is in a country with a similar time-zone, or he is free at that moment, but he sees it immediately and replies equally as fast. “Don’t think that! You’re a super, super, super talented makeup artist, and models loved you!” She smiles down at her phone, hearing Doah chuckle to herself as if the sight of her friend being excited about a man texting her was a sight that she enjoyed. It probably was, for the last time she talked to someone with such a smile on her face, she ended up getting friend-zoned. “Sehun says you’re dumb if you say you aren’t getting the job.”

“Sehun is with you? Where are you, to start with?”

“Dubai!” Chanyeol exclaims through text excitedly and she can’t help but imagine the man taking pictures of everything. The more she hopes is that he is enjoying his visit there. “He is actually watching TV beside me. We share rooms when he is feeling sappy, and whatnot.”

She fights the urge to say ‘cute’ about the remark, because she could imagine them watching some movie that they could not quite understand, both with their faces stuck to their phone-screen as a way of distracting themselves. “Okay, I’ll take his word. What have you done the past few weeks?”

Talking to Chanyeol that night becomes easy, because he simply spills his heart out like a poet does in their poems. The beauty of his words is not particularly difficult, he speaks casually and she does as well, saying her good nights to Doah that decides to put her son to sleep while she lays on the couch, smiling at whatever Chanyeol is talking about. He sends her pictures of the meals he wants to have when he goes back home, as well as taking a picture of Sehun sleeping by his side, eyebrows furrowed and lips parted funnily, a little bit of drool falling to the side of his face. She loses track of time, even going as far as sending him a picture of one of the shirts he had given her.

He’s happy about that.

But he talks about his dreams, too, and they are as simple as saying that he just wants to be happy. He says that he wanted to launch his career in music, but that models aren’t well-welcomed in such a place. He talks about how Sehun is actually taking a nap and that they have an appearance in some ‘icon’ party that apparently includes the most iconic celebrities of the year. She tells him not to drink. He says that he is not a lightweight and then, he comments:

“I can imagine you nagging at me in the back of my head with that pretty voice of yours.”

Maybe, it is too quick to think of what his words mean—they have no meaning, really, just harmless flirting, but she can only hope that the smile he gave her that night in the Spanish themed party will only be for her. It’s selfish, and perhaps the distance between the two makes her feel that way, but it is a growing feeling that burns at the back of her chest, from her sternum to her spine.

✈️

At the end, she does get that e-mail. Four weeks and six days after Paris Fashion Week happened, and the moment she tells Chanyeol, she receives a congratulatory message…hours after she sent it. It’s fine, she tries to reason with herself, that he is busy and he texts her as much as he can, but she can’t help but feel like she has started to crush in the example of what impossibility would be like.

That was two months ago.

She tries to distract herself with her work; thankfully for her air-sickness, she hasn’t gotten to travel much, instead going to closer places to work with smaller boutiques and brands that need to get their models’ makeup done, but what she didn’t expect was for a big brand to go to her city, simply to take a photoshoot in front of bustling streets, gray buildings and in between the mess of traffic that happens in her part of town. Her fingers tuck strands of hair behind her ears as she organizes her makeup, making sure that everything is organized by color as she hears the doors opening. The makeup room is small, so she supposes she will be the only makeup artist working—and apparently, she only has to do makeup for four models, nothing too crazy.

She swipes her powder brush against the back of her hand, already starting with her greeting before turning around. “Good morning, I am—Sehun?” When she turns around, she catches a glimpse of the man that she has already seen various times. His hair is a bit longer than the last time she saw him, over two months ago, styled with gel and tied in a ponytail to show his undercut. He is carrying a coffee cup, probably filled with as much caffeine as possible, wearing beige pants and a pink turtleneck, paired with a denim jacket. Something that she envies, the makeup room isn’t exactly warm.

The man greets her, sitting down on the seat in front of the vanity, definitely a repetition of previous events, before crossing one leg over the other. “You’re definitely not Sehun. I am Sehun.”

“I know.” She chuckles, already knowing what kind of shade she has to use with him and what kind of skin he has. Taking her beauty blender in between her hands, moistening it up a bit, she continues. “I just didn’t expect to see you here, and without Chanyeol. Really. You two are like the Olsen’s but Korean.”

Sehun smiles, putting his Styrofoam cup down on the vanity before leaning back on his seat, taking his phone in between his hands and responding to whatever texts he has. “He is not part of this campaign, but he’s in town. I thought you knew that.” Sehun says and perhaps, he really thought that she had a single clue that Chanyeol was in her town at that moment, but she didn’t. She tries to cover her surprised expression, settling for a muffed ‘oh’ that is followed by silence. The stoic faced man looks up from his phone before widening his eyes. “Y-You didn’t?”

“I obviously wasn’t informed about the situation…” And she wonders if maybe, and only maybe, Chanyeol is actually not as into her as he makes himself to be. That the flirting and the constant nights where Chanyeol tries to get her to speak to him through voice messages or calls mean nothing. Chanyeol is constantly throwing flowers at her, whenever he can, of course, but lately…it is as if he has forgotten about her existence.

“Fuck.” Sehun cusses, deciding to ignore the situation at hand by scrolling through his Instagram. From the corner of her eye, she can see that he has over a million likes in his latest post. “But he’s very busy, too, so maybe that’s that. He’s shooting a commercial for a skincare brand, but it is taking him longer because he grew a few pimples the day of the shoot.”

“I see…” She comments, torn in between believing the man or not, after all…Chanyeol could have just told her so. “But tell me about your campaign.” Not wanting to talk about the subject anymore, she changes the topic towards Sehun.

She really tries to be strong, to not text him and ask him why exactly he hadn’t talked about the miniscule—rather big, really—fact that was his stay at the exact same city that she is at. She talks about it with Doah, hearing the woman already coming up with some kind of deep storyline that indicates that Chanyeol is actually in “a relationship” and “using her to boost his ego”, but she thinks it is almost impossible. Instead, she concentrates on her work, on being better and doing better, on watching those tutorials that she kept on a playlist for new looks to try on the models.

Two days after her encounter with Sehun, when she is getting ready to drive back to the countryside to meet up with her friend, she feels her phone buzzing inside her purse. She sighs, placing her purse on top of the hood of her car before picking up the call, the name of Chanyeol shining bright on the screen—for a moment, she completely forgets that she is supposed to be mad at him, or that she wanted him to reach out for her first.

“What?” She asks, not meaning to sound as rude as she did as she looked for the keys to her car inside her purse. Chanyeol seems to notice her change of demeanor, speaking soon after.

“I know Sehun told you about me being here, but I was too busy to text you.” Like always, but should she be mad? She is obviously travelling less than him, but it feels like she is the one in the chase whenever she responds to him as quickly as possible and he leaves her on read for days. Maybe, she is just a hobby for him, something that he wants to do for a night or two, but doesn’t want to deal with for a long period of time. “But hey! If you’re in the city, I want to invite you to dinner—and I have already sent you the address through text, so we could catch up and I can finally give you a big hug.”

The hug sounds inviting, but she is still slightly mad at Chanyeol. “Why should I accept?” She plays around, pressing her stomach against the side of her car and looking at the flickering lights of one of the buildings in the street that she was in.

“…Because they have the best pizza I have ever tried in my life?”

“I could have it by my own.”

“Listen, I am so sorry.” Chanyeol whines on the phone, bringing a smile to her face as she finally opens the door to her car, grabbing her purse and putting it inside as she pulls her phone away from her ear, putting it on speaker to look through her texts. A fancy restaurant, he had picked. “I am such an idiot and I would hit myself if I were you, but I am not you and I am willing to buy you the entire menu if you just come here right now.”

She sighs, putting her phone down on the passenger seat as she starts the car. “Only because you owe me an apology…and because that pizza sounds inviting tonight.”

Luckily for her, Chanyeol is not dressed as fancily as she would have imagined, simply wearing an oversized tank top tucked inside his black jeans, topped over with a coat that reaches his knees. His hair is still blonde, pushed to the side as he waits for her outside. He doesn’t seem to mind that some people look at him, or that they see her with him at all, because he pushes his body off the wall to smile at her mere presence.

With a breathy tone, he places his hands on top of her shoulders and pushes her forward to go past the security at the entrance. “I’ll give you that hug once we get inside. People are looking.” The promise Chanyeol gives her sounds inviting, much more when she enters the heavily decorated place. Still, it seems inviting, the smell of cheese and sauce, as well as lasagna and pizza, immediately reaching her nostrils and making her hum. Chanyeol wraps an arm around her shoulder, smiling gleefully as he walks themselves to the table at the very end, near the biggest window in the place. “I really missed, you know?”

She wants to bite back, to show how troubled she felt when Sehun confessed that Chanyeol was in town, but instead she caved in: “I missed you, too.”

“Two months without seeing you. You need to tell me how this new contract is going on.”

“Well, I do makeup. That’s the whole ordeal.” She comments, sitting down in front of him at the table, only to have him smiling as he pushes a menu towards her way. Chanyeol studies her face, like he always does, even going as far as looking at the small amount of cleavage her shirt shows. “Have you gotten to go to Seoul?”

Chanyeol chuckles softly, shaking his head as he looks down at the menu to search for something to eat. “I haven’t. I’ve been living in hotels for the past three months.” Even before he met her, that’s for sure. “That’s why I wanted to have dinner with you. You’re the closest I feel to home.” Those words shouldn’t have warmed her up like they did, to the point she had to play with the collar of her shirt to stop the heat that radiated from her skin. Chanyeol’s eyes are wide, filled with emotion when he smiles once again. A charmer, as always. “There is something about you. You calm me down…and that is what I need in a world like the one I live in. For one moment, I just want to say fuck it to the world. That’s why I like you so much.”

Like, a word that he uses so easily, as if it doesn’t bring a heavy weight to her chest. She looks down at the menu, hiding her face behind it to stop herself from saying anything stupid. “Stop…”

“Hey, I mean it.” Chanyeol says, pushing the menu down to lean over the table and look at her. His fingers reach to pinch her cheek, making her smile softly at the man. “I know it doesn’t seem like it…but I really like you. I think you’re amazing. Beautiful smile, incredible talent. Intelligent, caring, kind, humble—”

“Keep going and I may just forgive you.” She jokes around, placing her hand on top of the one that rests upon her face before caressing the skin softly, bringing it down to rest upon the tablecloth. “But I am glad we are on the same page.”

The night is eventful, in between bites of food and sips of soda. The world seems to waltz around them, much more when he says his goodbyes with a lingering hug and a kiss on the cheek. It feels right, slow but perfectly paced. Just how she likes it.

But wait.

Chanyeol said he liked her, right?!

Liked her as a person, or as something else, she doesn’t know. What she knows is that being liked is better than nothing.

✈️

“This feels like my husband is leaving me and our son behind after our divorce. It’s sad.”

The fake sniffling comes from Doah, now with a four-month old baby seated on her lap—with the cutest few strands of brown hair and the most rounded dark eyes. There is not much to pack after Doah agreed to let her go back to the city, for the payment of the fuel was falling heavy on her pocket and also, because Doah already knew how to take care of a baby on her own. Either way, it had been a nice experience; a reminder of what it used to feel like when they were roommates, but with bigger dreams and less giggly moments.

That is part of growing up, and while Doah remains as youthful as ever personality-wise, she has grown up with the birth of her child. Much more poised, definitely as loving as ever but more protective than she ever was to anyone in this world. “We are not getting a divorce, first off. I’ll still come visit anytime I can, mostly on weekends.” She replies, pushing her backpack over her shoulder after finishing up packing up the few things she had in Doah’s house. A second toothbrush, some of her shirts and a few shoes. Everything could enter in her wide and useful backpack. “And why am I the husband?”

“You’re the one that leaves.” The comment is part of Doah’s dark humor, standing up and securing her son around her arms as they walk towards the entrance. When she opens the door, the air is cold against the fabric of her fluffy white sweater, making her pull her boyfriend jeans up her hips a little bit more to cover extra skin. “Say bye to your daddy, David. Come on.”

She scoffs, letting David’s tiny hand grab her finger and waving it with a smile on her face. “Don’t say I’m his daddy. You know he’s at that point of his life where he is learning everything, and the least I want is to hear him call me ‘dada’ anytime soon. Or ever.” She kisses the baby’s hand before putting it down, hearing Doah retort with a fake sniffle.

“You just were an angel. I’d marry you if you were a man…but the lack of a pee-pee changes it all.”

“Doah, for the love of God—” She mumbles to herself, giving a few steps forward before walking backwards. “Thank god you didn’t say the D word in front of your son. I’d personally take him away from you to the city to raise him myself.”

Doah smiles at the sound of her friend’s voice, leaning on the railing of her door with David playing with the necklace that hangs from her neck. “You know why I didn’t use the D word?”

“Why?” She asks innocently, but she should have expected Doah to say something remotely inappropriate.

“Because Chanyeol is already giving it to you.”

“Okay, I’m leaving. That’s it.”

The weight of her keys feels foreign on her hand, much more when she opens the door to her apartment to realize that she won’t have to listen to the cries of a baby anymore. The old couple next door that still hit it up as if they were on their twenties would probably be more like it, but she has already grown accustomed to that noise, rolling over her bed to cover her ears with her pillow. The first thing she thinks about after an hour long trip is that she feels dizzy, with an empty stomach and a weighted mind. She walks over to her kitchen, opening the refrigerator to be met with something to make, but there is nothing. In the drawers, there is also nothing and then, she is reminded of the very important—still, ignored—fact that she had taken all the food she had in her apartment to Doah’s house.

Out the apartment as quickly as she had arrived, she was. The snow is finally starting to make place around the streets and she greets the old day—half of the old couple that she was thinking about earlier—with a wave as she rushes down the stairs to get to the closest convenience store. One block away, she remembers, and she thinks she can do it without actually passing out from hunger.

What she regrets first is not putting on a coat as the small speckles of snow fall upon her equally as white sweater. She walks through the streets as she tries not to pump into people, ignoring the vibration of her phone in the front pocket of her jeans because the least she wants is to get her phone stolen from taking it out in one of the busiest days of the year. Delinquency was growing in this side of town, the news had said a few weeks ago, and she had kept that thought in mind, even talking about it with Chanyeol, who had told her time and time again to be careful.

She pushes the doors of the convenience store open, rubbing her hands together and placing them inside her pockets for a brief second while her eyes look for a cart. Once found, she takes it in between her fingers and basks in the niceness of the heater in the store. It’s fairly quiet, too, apart from some pop song that plays in the background as she starts to go over her mental grocery list. However, as she starts to pick up what is important for her to have in her apartment, she feels her phone vibrating once again.

She takes the device out, thinking that it was probably Doah not knowing what to do now that she was alone, but she was warmed up by the sight of Chanyeol’s name. She pushes the green button, resting her phone in between her shoulder and her ear as she pushes the cart. Is ramen necessary in her apartment? Quite possibly. “Sorry I didn’t answer before, I had to drive from Doah’s and I realized I was out of groceries so I had to walk to the nearest convenience store.”

Chanyeol sighs, almost a sigh of relief. It reminds her of the plenty of video-calls that they have shared; specially, one where she decided to hide from the screen until Chanyeol started to call out of her name confusedly. When she popped up on the screen, the man screamed so loudly that the only reaction he had when she started laughing was a sigh. “You had me worried for a second.” He replies before he continues. “Was Doah okay with you moving?”

“She used some kind of metaph0r about it. Me being her husband leaving her behind or something.” Chanyeol chuckles softly, but she can tell that he is not totally into it. His voice is tired, as if he has been straining himself, and he has yet to go back to Seoul to meet up with his family. He told him this a week prior to that moment, when he was speaking about how he had mentioned her name to his mother and she had immediately thought he was dating someone. They were…flirting buddies, she would like to call it, rather than anything special in a long distance manner. “What about you? Weren’t you in Bangkok?”

“I am, still. I’m leaving in…in three days…” His voice is interrupted by his yawn and she immediately frowns at the sound of his voice, continuing with her multitasking.

“You should really sleep.”

“It’s not that late here. Four in the morning.”

“That’s extremely late. Go to sleep.”

“I slept, but I think it was the afternoon and I just woke up and I am lost.”

She smiles at that, imagining Chanyeol’s hair bundled into a mess of straight strands, falling over his eyes slightly, puffy and reddened from tiredness. “Good. Are you going to Seoul after Bangkok?”

Chanyeol groans at that and she hears the sound of ruffling against covers on the other hand. “Nope. Mr. Workaholic decided to tell me that I have a snack commercial in Italy. Venice, I think.” A snack commercial. Quite ironic, because she has had a handful of conversations with Doah where they call him a “snack”. But, what can she say? Maybe the saying of ‘you are what you eat’ as finally gotten to him.

“Is Mr. Workaholic Yixing?”

“Indeed. He’s such a workaholic that his crush is someone from the PR office, and if that isn’t…a workaholic, I don’t know what is.” Chanyeol comments and soon after, she takes a moment to stop on her tracks and see what else she needs. Perhaps, a few sanitary products in case she needs them. “By the way, what are you doing next week?”

“Nothing planned. I am doing a gig outside the company on Sunday, to earn some more money. But they haven’t called me to do anything yet.”

“What if I hire you and you go to Venice with me, and apart from doing my makeup we also get to hang out for a bit?” Chanyeol comments, quite quickly, as if it is the simplest thing in the world—and for him, it is. Sometimes, she realizes that they live completely different lives. Chanyeol lives off being on stages, he talks to big groups of people, he has to take pictures on a daily with photographers in order to post something on his social media and keep his fans updated. He has people following after his every trend. Meanwhile, she talks to him through a phone and travels thanks to a company, not because she actually has to. How could he understand her so perfectly, when in reality they are nothing alike?

“I would tell you you’re crazy.” She comments, accommodating her neck when she feels a sudden pang of ache hitting her muscles. “But…are you serious?”

“Of course I am! I would like for you to do my makeup, and I’d pay your ticket for you to be here.”

“I…No. It doesn’t feel right to have you pay for my ticket.” She comments, shaking her head profusely at the thought. “Tell the company and I will do it, but I won’t do anything sneakily.”

“Okay, I’ll have Yixing on it.” Chanyeol replies and soon after, his comment paralyzes her in her spot, making her drop a package of baby wipes she had in between her hands. “Maybe, next time we see each other I won’t only give you a hug, but also a kiss.”

Venice sounds promising to her, now, as she tries to look for words that can only be replaced with a chuckle.

✈️

But just like always, the promise of a romantic Venice dies as she only gets to see Chanyeol for an hour at a time. His commercial takes longer than usual, or perhaps he has other things to attend to, and he ends up leaving her with the hanging promise of a kiss that never happens.

She should be happy that she gets to talk and joke around with Chanyeol when she does his makeup, that sometimes she feels the warmth of his palm sneaking up her waist when she gets close too close to his face and he looks at her as if he is going to kiss her, but an ode to separated lovers keeps them apart when they realize they are surrounded by other people of his team. Chanyeol’s eyes glimmer when he says his goodbyes, promising that he will try to finish everything early to go and pick her up in her hotel room and take her out for dinner, to study Venice, to be tourists for once and enjoy the world, but she is always met by the sight of her phone displaying Chanyeol’s name, only to hear apology after apology after apology.

The man she likes starts to become a broken record. A client that always asks for something else. A lawyer that never meets up with you. All analogies to how Chanyeol made her feel, how disappointed she was that he did not even have the slightest time for her.

The crunching sound of cookies matches her chewing as she stares off at the television show in front of her. Some romance movie plays in the background, and she is sulking because most movies include a couple that go through hardships, but at the end they are the happiest when together—they find a way to make it work. But there she is—she is not even dating Chanyeol to start with, and whenever they are together in the same place, they can’t find the time to be with one another. She almost wants to pick up the remote and change it, but she is being a bit of a masochist that night. Be it by watching a couple laugh whilst in a date in a movie, or thinking about Chanyeol; she just feels like thinking about what she shouldn’t be.

She covers herself up with her blanket, pulling it over her head like a hood and wrapping it around her chin to cover her from the coldness, but she has other things to think about—like how she should just take a plane back home and pretend that she is not being an idiot while being there for Chanyeol. Nonetheless, the sound of someone knocking on her door makes her straighten her back, standing up from the hotel bed to walk towards the door.

Of course, life is a déjà-vu and the person by her door is Chanyeol. He’s a nighttime visitor, standing there with a smile on his face and what seems to be boxes of takeout.

“Chanyeol.” She enunciates. Her arms are crossed over her chest, leaning against the door as she realizes that the man has a faint smile on his face, the type he gives when he knows he is in trouble. “I wonder what you tell the receptionist of each hotel I go to just to appear right in front of me.”

Chanyeol’s tongue pokes at the inside of his cheek, trying to look for an excuse but he simply sighs deeply. “I am sorry. I’ve been so busy and I’ve ignored you so bad, so I wanted to make it up to you.”

“As always.”

“But this time, this time it’s better!” The man points out and she nods her head, biting her bottom lip when she pushes her weight off the door and points for him to get inside. Chanyeol smiles brightly, like the sun has taken place on his face, and the next thing he does is enter the hotel room. He sits down by the edge of the bed, on the floor, and she thinks it’s just his way of being respectful, threatening to grin at the thought. “You know how in our first date we had pizza—and it was good, but we’re in Italy out of all places, so I brought us the real deal.”

She chuckles, taking a seat beside him on the floor to help him get the boxes out of bag he had brought with himself. “What is this real deal you’re talking about?”

“Lasagna and pizza, but real.”

“I am sure the pizza we had at the restaurant was very real.”

Chanyeol groans, opening one of the lids of the boxes to fill the room in the smell of sauce, cheese and deliciously baked goodness. “Stop being a dick to me.” The man comments and she smiles, watching as he takes one of the plastic forks the boxes brought with themselves in between his fingers to slice a bit of the lasagna before feeding it to her. “Come on, open up. Use that mouth for something that is not questioning everything I do.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, trying to suppress the chuckle that left her lips soon after. Chanyeol’s cheeks glimmer in pink when he says those words, feeding the bit of lasagna to her and the next thing he hears is a hum. She covers her mouth to speak. “Oh my God—”

“Is it the best thing you’ve tasted in your life?”

“Kind of.”

“Yeah, made it myself.” Chanyeol lies, taking a bite of it with the same fork before placing the box over her legs, reaching for a squarer shaped box that included the pizza. He opens it by the time she takes another bite of the lasagna.

“You’re such a liar.” But then again, she always goes back to him. Chanyeol is a magnet, and she’s always pulled by him. He takes a slice of pizza, the cheese parting away deliciously as he folds it over the pizza for the strand to end. It is nice to see him eat something that he enjoys, away from the thought of having to keep his figure—only enjoying a night with her.

“Then this liar won’t let you play with my PS1.”

She decides to take a slice of pizza as well, settling the lasagna in between their bodies as she speaks. “You brought a PS1?” She asks, excitement lingering on her voice when she watches the backpack Chanyeol had worn by his side, making her wonder if he had actually thought about this date beforehand. “Depends on what game we’re playing.” Chanyeol slices a bit of the lasagna, resting it on top of his pizza and making her groan in disgust as he takes a bite. “Yeol, don’t mix foods like that—”

With his mouth half open, he speaks. “Crash Team Racing, babe.” The nickname has her stomach fluttering, thinking that maybe she should be more understanding of the situation. Chanyeol is trying, she could tell, and her impatience was getting the best of her. “And let me get creative. Both the lasagna and the pizza go to the same place, they’ll end up being digested food at the same time…it’s not that big of a deal.”

Chanyeol brings comfort with him, she notices, and it comes in the shape of their legs intertwined as they lay on the floor, playing match after match of an old videogame as they laughed about everything and anything.

Not to be mistaken, the man is quite clearly and palpably competitive, to the point he had to tickle her in a race just to win—but he learns how to lose with her, quite thankfully. The night is not heavy, it doesn’t linger with tension and much less does it feel like it is forced; they have been seated there for hours, not saying empty promises but getting to know each other simply through spending time together. In one of those moments, in between one of the many racing matches they had, he hears his phone ringing. Pausing the videogame for a second, he puts it down on the floor and puts it on speaker.

“Yes, Publicist Nam?” Chanyeol speaks, his fingers still moving against the controller as he finds himself in fourth place—she’s in seventh after one of his attacks, but she thinks she can surpass him easily. However, her ears are making out the figure of what this publicist of his is saying on the other end of the phone.

“Chanyeol…Where are you?” The man asks, sounding older in tone and in ways of speaking.

“I’m with my friend in her hotel room. The makeup artist. Why?” He asks, moving his legs when he gets to the first place. It is quite the sight to see him happy, being youthful and filled with life instead of having this perfect façade put up for everyone to see.

The publicist seems displeased by his answer, however. “Get over here now. We have told you that you can’t hang out with people like that. What would you do if you ended up having a scandal, huh?” He starts to nag and Chanyeol immediately widens his eyes, letting go of the controller to grab his phone and talk to his publicists in anything that isn’t on speaker.

Now she realizes that Chanyeol is trying, for her or for them, that he is going against his own team to be with her. It scares her, to never see him again as he speaks through the phone—he seems to be apologizing, coming up with any excuse before he actually turns to her. His apologies are usual, she thinks she is starting to become immune to them as she helps him clean up and opens the door for him. What he does last, of course, is give her a hug as tight as the ones he has given her before and the promise of a kiss is out the door, to the point she doesn’t even care about it. It just scares her that every time they say their goodbyes, it will be the last time she will be able to talk to him.

The concept of love is evolution, growth—but people cover it as neediness, affection. You can feel so much for someone, but if you don’t grow with them, it feels pointless. It is not love, not anything remotely close to it, and maybe she should have thought of them as a book and a movie. Chanyeol lives quickly; he resumes everything that can be composed in three hours of a film. She is a book; she likes to rant and think about the smallest details. How Chanyeol covers his mouth when he thinks he has said something wrong, how he is given to anything that he does, he has a routine and lives by it. The man loves travelling, but he loves his family so much more and his best friend is another model, as well.

It makes her saddened that she studies the twinkles in his eyes, that the weight of his hand on hers when he says his goodbyes after every makeup session is just what she needs, especially if it’s paired with one of those soft kisses he gives to her cheek. No longer does she study Chanyeol as a person for the rest of the five days she has left in Venice, but she sees the most tedious of things around him. She notices that she wishes she had a space in Chanyeol’s life; like the ring he wears every day, carved with the initials of his mother; like the guitar that he says he keeps in his childhood room and that whenever he goes back to Seoul, he can’t seem to let go of. She is jealous of time, for not giving him to her, of the world for having him and not her.

It’s the thought of lacking him in her life that makes her really wonder what she feels for him. Is it just a crush or is it love? Does it have a name, does it not?

On her last day in Venice, and like a tradition in Chanyeol’s blood, he takes the time to be around her. He looks like an absolute tourist, dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans, wearing a bucket hat and sunglasses as he takes pictures of everything and anything. He is good with being in front of the camera, but she absolutely hates that she is the subject of his every picture—even more so, the man doesn’t take the best pictures for an up-and-rising model—. The sunset welcomes them as they try street food, they check out stores and spend time together. Chanyeol talks about whatever crosses his mind and he’s free, for just a second, because he has a contract and plenty of things to take care of. If he was so proud of her, then why would he basically cover half of his face?

The one at fault is not Chanyeol, but by the time they are standing in front of the sunset, looking ahead at the beauty of the colors, she decides to fix the cap over her head and speak her mind out.

“I think that what we’re doing is wrong.”

Chanyeol perks up at that, turning to look at her while resting his elbow on the railing of the balcony of his hotel room. It could basically be a house, with how fancy and big it is. Expensive, quite clearly, just like him.  “…What does that mean?” He doesn’t sound threatening, meanwhile curiousness is more of a description for that moment. His eyebrows furrow and the bucket hat is finally gone, the shadows of the sunset falling upon his skin. A little bit after golden hour, so the hues are softer.

She wants to simplify, but then again, that is not like herself. “—This—This I never thought I would have to go through. Sometimes, I just think you’re in my imagination, like you are not there. And I am not blaming you, but we both know that…that being around one another is almost impossible. You’re there, I’m here. There’s nothing we can do about it.” Now that she has spoken her mind, she realizes just how much of a dream everything has been. Not because of its sense, for she feels like what they are is nonsensical at this point, but because it rushed. There are gaps in between them, plots that have yet to be written and they do not have the time to do anything about it. Their romance is a writer’s hatred plotline, where they sit down and write certain scenes before abandoning them once again.

The man straightens his back, taking off her cap and putting it to the side before sighing. “I think I can do something about it.”

“No, Chanyeol, you can’t!” She adds with a smile, although her heart and head were hurting at that exact moment. “We both know that we only see each other for a period of time before we spend months away. It’s—And your publicists don’t even like me, so I am supposing you’re even going against your team.”

“Not all of them.”

“Huh?”

“Yixing thinks you’re pretty dope.” She scoffs at the sound of his words. “Quoting him. He just thinks you’re great.”

“Your team, minus one person, hates me.”

Chanyeol moves forward, his big hands reaching for her face to cup it in between his fingers. His thumb comes to caress her bottom lip, his eyes studying her every expression like he always does. She wants to continue talking, ramble about how she thinks they should quit it—the least she wants is to fall harder for him, only to end up heartbroken, but Chanyeol doesn’t listen. The man moves forward, wetting his lips before pressing them against hers. Maybe, his kisses show everything that he has managed to understand about her in the little time they have spent together, or perhaps he is just made for her body. He kisses her like how an artist would do to their muse, with one of his hands trailing down to the small of her back to push her forward towards his strong chest. His cupid’s bow grazes her lips before diving in once again, with certainty and all the fervor that is needed in a kiss. An expert, he is.

“Don’t shut me up when I’m talking to you.” She tells him in between kisses, feeling him walk her backwards, past the glassed doors that lead to the balcony (making sure to close them behind him), before letting her rest against the mattress. She lifts herself up on her elbows, and maybe she thinks this position was actually led by herself. Damn her for even putting her hands under Chanyeol’s shirt.

Chanyeol, however, takes her by her calves and drags her towards the edge of the bed, placing himself in between her legs to grab her by the neck and kiss her again. He doesn’t last long before he replies: “I didn’t intend to shut you up. I just really wanted to kiss you and I am not letting you regret anything that we have gone through.” Those words make her smile, because Chanyeol has tried his best to keep them together and although uncertainty is what she would call what they have, it feels like the best love affair that she has ever had. “Sorry if I came off as rude.”

“You know what was rude?” Her voice is hoarse, now that she realizes. “Making me wait almost five months just to kiss me.”

Chanyeol laughs at her words, pressing his forehead against hers and watching as her hands trail up from his abdomen to his biceps, grabbing onto them softly. “Hey, in my defense, I didn’t want to make you wait that long…but I also didn’t wanna rush it.”

“Well, you got that right. I don’t like rushing through things.”

“I am not as dumb as you think I am.” The man adds before pressing his lips softly against hers. She continues to touch him, as if she is scared that she will ever forget the curve of his shoulders or the way his waist feels when she wraps his arms around it. The weight of his body leans her back against the bed, making her pull away to look into his eyes. “Too fast?”

“Too fast.” She continues, letting her fingers go through his hair before chuckling. “I don’t want to go all the way to town tonight, boy.” She jokes around, only to hear the sweet sound of his laughter.

“That’s good with me.” Ever so sweetly he adds before she takes her hand in between hers, touching his fingers and kissing his knuckles, only to show him affection. “We go at your pace. I don’t mind.”

“But we can do other things.” She answers, watching as he tilts his head to the side before Chanyeol chuckles at her words, shaking his head as he reaches for her face, pushing her cheeks together sweetly.

“You’re the boss.” The sound of his voice is comfortable, just how she feels around him, and he leans down to press a sweet kiss to her lips that soon after turns heated. This is what she always wanted, in the shape of a forbidden love, from a person that the next day will be miles away from her. But what are a few numbers when he treats her like so?

✈️

“Last time I knew, Cupid was long dead, honey.”

The feisty old lady that lives next door speaks to her as she carries a bag of groceries in one hand, looking down at her phone with the other as she looks at one of the many pictures that Chanyeol sends her when he can. After all, it has been a bit over a month since their Venice getaway and he has spent over a week without talking to her, so seeing a recording of him running his fingers through his newly dyed black hair makes her smile gleefully. He thought of her, even when she feels like she is forgotten at times. She jumps at the sound of the old woman’s voice, watching as she smokes a cigar in the hallway—like the uncaring woman that she is—.

“Hi, Mrs. Jackson…Ah, nice to see you.” A long time ago, she has learned how to look at Mrs. Jackson in the eye after the many times that she has heard her through the walls. Absentmindedly, very accidentally, and regretfully. She greets her with the hand that holds her phone, receiving a quirked smile from the woman. “W-Why…? Why are you mentioning Cupid’s death?”

With another hit of the cigar, Mrs. Jackson gives a piece of her mind. “You’re smiling, but not the fake smile you give to the landlord.” Afraid of being caught, she feels heat radiating from her ears at the mere mention of her hypocrisy whenever she sees the landlord. Some people are just not of her liking, quite clearly, but she is not bad enough to say it straight to their faces. “What’s with the smile at your phone?”

She wants to talk about it as much as how she doesn’t want to. Chanyeol has been very secretive with this possible relationship that they have, and while they don’t necessarily give it a name, they have been very clear with what they feel. Chanyeol says he feels like he is falling for her, in one of the many calls they shared, and she talks about how she has never felt the way she feels for him with anyone else. Sehun, obviously, has made some comments while they are video-calling each other that they are basically a couple by now, but they don’t comment anything on it. “Just talking to…a guy, that’s all.”

“You? A guy?” Mrs. Jackson seems genuinely surprised. “I thought you weren’t into dating.”

“I…I am very picky, indeed.” She replies, putting her phone inside her pocket to look for her keys in her bag with only one hand. What a fucking curse.

“And does this guy live in the neighborhood?” Always asking the good questions, the nosy woman continues with her prying.

“No.”

“So he’s a foreigner.”

“Yes.” She chuckles awkwardly, finally catching her keys in between her hands before pushing them inside the doorknob, twisting them lightly to watch her door open.

Mrs. Jackson has finished her cigarette by that point, throwing it on the floor and stepping on it before opening her apartment’s door, as well. “I’m happy for you, honey.” The woman says, probably because she doesn’t remember her name. “That is the type of love a person wants. Sweet enough to induce diabetes. I hope he continues to make you smile.”

Although intentionally there to pry on her neighbor’s business, Mrs. Jackson ends it in a good note, making her smile in thankfulness. She thinks that, if given the chance, her relationship with Chanyeol would blossom beautifully, but she tries not to think of the inevitable ending in between the two. Is love really strong enough to keep two people together, even when they barely see each other? “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

She also hopes he continues to make herself smile, because if he ever so dares to break her heart, she doesn’t think she will be able to get out of it.

✈️

Madrid Fashion Week comes by, and she is not invited. Quite disappointing, really, but she has other works to attend to.

The world seems to fall into rhythm, finally, but the only part of her life that is either too fast or too slow comes from the man she has fallen for, Park Chanyeol. As expected, the man has his moment of bursting love and affection, practically telling her how much he wishes he could kiss her through a quick text or simply rambling to her about how much he misses her through video-call. Slowly but surely, she makes him a part of her daily routine; waking up to see where he is, making sure that she texts him at a proper time where she doesn’t interrupt his night of sleep—soon after, however, she is met with the reality that Chanyeol will never fall into the rhythm of her life. He won’t be in one place only, he definitely won’t be around for her to cuddle and kiss to her entire will. Chanyeol is a romance from far away, kissing her and coaxing her in love for a few days before they part once again, and she doesn’t know if that is the concept of love she had grown to dream of.

On the first day of Madrid’s fashion week, he says that he will send her a picture, but she is met with three days of complete silence. He updates his social media, he appears in interviews and the bitter taste in her mouth tells her that, for him, she will always be third or fourth place—not even second, because she would settle for someone that put their work first, and that is enough to make her feel hurt.

What happens to loving when the other person falls quiet?

A poem of Neruda is the first thing Jenn replies with. I like for you to be still or something else, that’s what she captures from what her friend tells her when she asks for advice, and it irks her terribly. Love shouldn’t be about silence; it should be about communicating even if it’s through a stare. It should feel like they were always in the same wave of feelings, not like she is constantly drowning while swimming towards the expensive ship where Chanyeol stands. She has gone weeks without hearing about him, but it hurts more whenever she gets closer to Chanyeol.

She taps her nails against her counter, watching the movement as she hears her phone ringing. Perhaps, she needs to hear her voice, or she finally needs to speak on the subject. Of course, she doesn’t want him to pick between his job and her, but she wants a little bit of commitment. For him to care, for him to try, for him to give her a space that isn’t worth a few hours every few months. She doesn’t deserve it, or at least she feels like she doesn’t. At first, he doesn’t pick up and five calls later, does she really get to hear his voice.

“Sorry. I am at a party, what’s up?” Chanyeol asks and she hears the sound of music in the background, somewhat muffled because he must have moved to somewhere quiet. Her anger boils; perhaps because she drank a glass of soda that was too sweet, or because she hates hiding the only person that she would dare to call a boyfriend. She despises that Chanyeol doesn’t give her a spot in his life, or that it is miniscule in comparison to everyone else.

“Didn’t you forget something?”

“Ah…I don’t think so.”

That’s it. If she could, she would throw the nearest slice of food to his face, if only she was in that party and not as far away as she is. “Well, you didn’t answer my text…that I sent you four days ago, don’t you remember?” The tone of her voice is the pettiest she can get, almost to the point she spits venom to the man. Chanyeol sighs deeply, and she imagines him in the bathroom crossing his arms over his chest while leaning against a wall.

“I am really trying.” And she knows, but sometimes she wishes that he would have his priorities straight. She doesn’t ask for much, perhaps a small message that tells her that ‘he is busy, and will answer her later’, but that never comes. For all she knows, he could have gotten his phone stolen, or he could be dead. There are a hundred possibilities, and none sound better than the last one. “But be a little bit more patient.”

She scoffs at that. “More patient? Chanyeol, I literally respond the second you send me a text and you take days to even consider telling me that you were busy. Don’t you think that’s unfair for me?” Now she is angered, trying to cover it up as much as she can, but her hands start to shake at the fire that she feels radiating from within.

“You need t0 understand. I am at a party right now and it’s really important for a makeup campaign I will be working in the next year—”

“I get it. I really do.” She interrupts him, wanting to be heard once in her life from the time that they have known each other. “All I am asking is just a heads up. That’s all. I have been worrying shitless about you—”

“Okay, yes, sorry. There you go.” He responds quickly, like he doesn’t mean it, and lately she feels like that is the way she would describe what they had. The more she spent thinking to herself what Chanyeol must think of her, she always convinces herself that he doesn’t mean anything that he has told her. The kisses are there to scratch an itch, he tells her that he likes her and that he loves all those things about her because he wants to sugarcoat her and the moment their relationship became serious was wonderful, but still…they hadn’t even seen each other since.

“Don’t give me that half-assed apology.”

“God! What kind of apology do you want, then?! I am being genuine!”

“I want you to feel what I feel. You don’t know how it’s like—”

“Yes, of course I know! I am also part of this relationship, if you don’t remember!” The man seems to have lost his poise, raising his voice in tone before he groans softly, lowering the sound of his voice. She’s baffled, thinking of what had made them break—but she can’t live with that uncertainty, the insecurity that comes with not knowing if he is fully in this relationship or not. “I have my dream to take care of! I haven’t even seen my family in months. Do you think I have the time to text you every time?! I try, I really do!”

Of course he does, she knows it, but all she wants is for him to take her more seriously. She doesn’t think it’s too much that she is asking for right there. “It shouldn’t be me always looking for you like a puppy! You’re not better than me because you’re rich and important and famous—” Deep within her, those facts had bothered her for long enough. Maybe, that was the reason behind their first fight. Chanyeol is famous, she is not. Chanyeol travels the world, while she mostly stays in her hometown. Chanyeol is surrounded by people who could take him away from her at any given minute, and she feels like they could.

“Who’s even talking about that? Of course I don’t think of you as some puppy!”

“I’m talking about you, because it’s never about us when it comes to our conversations.” She spits out, standing up from her seat to walk around the room to stop her freakishly racing heart. “How do you think it makes me feel that I am always the one that goes to you, and it’s never the other way around—”

“Listen, let’s talk about this—”

“And I understand your situation with your family. I am not even mentioning your family here.” Now, she is tired, like she has been drained of all the energy and instead, she has been hit by a big set of news. She feels like she can’t do it anymore, like Chanyeol will always be a thousand miles away and she will always be waiting for him. “…You know what, Chanyeol? I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can live with this fear that you’ll leave me at any given second. I don’t want to feel like I am the last option on your list.”

Chanyeol sighs deeply. “You’re never the last option, but this year has been so difficult for me. I only ask for more time.” The man complains, only to have her rubbing her face out of distress. She feels a headache coming up already, if it wasn’t there to stay. “And the least I want is for you to feel like I will leave you. I promise that all I think about is you. And us. It’s not always about me.”

“It damn right feels like it.”

“I’ll take a flight to your hometown if that’s what it takes then. After this fashion week—”

“I just don’t want you to come up with those ideas because you have to, because I am mad. I want you to think of it seriously.” She replies, voice softer now that she has calmed down, although she feels like she might have a heart attack right there. “And let’s be honest…your life can only get busier from now on, and as much as it hurts me, I think something needs to change.”

Once again, he seems to be stuck in whatever is his limbo. “I am trying.”

“Well, you don’t need to try anymore.” The sound of her voice breaks her heart, aching to be loved and respected, aching for the affection that she feels like is neglected from her. Is it being too damn needy to want him by her side? Is it a problem? Is she the problem in this relationship? “I feel like we should break up.”

“What?! No.” Chanyeol replies quickly. “You’re just angry-thinking. I am sure we can get through—”

“Through what? Long distance that will always be there because you live in hotels and I don’t?” Her voice is hoarse, closing her eyes tightly as she remembers that night they shared together in Venice. “It hurts me as much as it hurts you.”

“It doesn’t seem like it.” For a moment, she thinks she hears his voice becoming unclear, much more nasal than it has ever been. Was he crying, perhaps? Why does she feel like there is a dagger going through her heart? “It’s sad, really. I am actually trying for you—”

“I know.”

“Then what is the problem? I’ll get better.”

“That I don’t want to try anymore.”

The worst part was that even months after their break up, she thinks of his gaze, like a dagger that has cut right through her chest.

[passionate-reply]

Great Albums is back! This week, we’ll take a look at one of the greatest electronic albums of all time, Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine, and try to avoid getting sued by Ralf Huetter! Full transcript for the video can be found below the break. Enjoy!

Growing up, my main genre of choice was 80s synth-pop, and while the deep influence of Kraftwerk is as significant there as it is everywhere else in electronic music, I was one of those people who initially saw them as somewhat "intimidating." Today, moreso than ever, Kraftwerk are held up as one of those more high-brow or cerebral groups with a philosophy that transcends mere pop or dance music, which makes them seem respectable, a kind of “model minority” in the world of music outside rock. While I don’t buy into the judgmental quality of that sort of praise, which damns so many of Kraftwerk’s greatest fans and imitators, I did get the sense, as a child, that these hoity-toity Germans, working with primitive equipment way back in the 1970s, might not be what I was looking for in a new favourite band. That was before I heard The Man-Machine.

While it’s certainly true that Kraftwerk were a highly experimental band in their own time, they’re one of those acts whose ideas have deeply permeated contemporary music, to the point where their actual work is extremely approachable and listenable to today’s ears. Of all the fairly early electronic acts, who started making this kind of music before it began to become mainstream in the late 70s, Kraftwerk are almost certainly the ones people nowadays listen to for pleasure the most, and that’s no accident. While their earlier albums like Trans-Europe Express took more overt inspiration from classical music, The Man-Machine was their first great foray into the arena of pop, which I think is key to why it resonates with people. For evidence of that, look no further than the biggest mainstream hit of Kraftwerk’s career, “The Model.”

I think it’s easy to see why “The Model'' became a hit single. Sure, it may not have the most traditional pop song structure, let alone instrumentation, but unlike a lot of what Kraftwerk had done before, it’s got a lot of lyrics and a real sense of narrative. Plus, that narrative we get is about a person and not a machine--a good-looking person, in whom the narrator is sexually interested. It’s the perfect pop material. Of course, I would be remiss to mention that “The Model” didn’t achieve all of its success until the single was re-released in many markets in 1981, and in those few years, the idea of “synth-pop” advanced significantly in the charts and popular consciousness. By the time “The Model” was a hit, Kraftwerk admirers were already taking over: look no further than Gary Numan’s "Cars” or OMD’s "Enola Gay,” two synth-pop classics that, it must be said, are still about vehicles!

That aside, though, not everything on The Man-Machine sounds like “The Model”--in fact, it’s surrounded by tracks that have much more in common with Kraftwerk’s earlier LPs. Literally surrounded, in the track listing. I think that adds to this album’s appeal as an ideal entry point into their catalogue: it has some things that sound familiar, while also preparing you for what else you’ll encounter if you choose to probe deeper into the band. The Man-Machine has the least homogeneous profile of any Kraftwerk album. While most of their other classic albums are highly cohesive “song cycles” that almost blend into one long song when you listen to them in full, The Man-Machine doesn’t really have those repeated melodies and motifs that tie its tracks together. While many people, especially fans of psychedelic and progressive rock, really like those cohesive albums, I think this change is a welcome one. It gives the individual tracks a bit more room to breathe and express distinctive identities, and makes the album feel a bit more pop, even if the material itself isn’t always all that poppy. *The Man-Machine* actually only has six individual tracks; they range in length from the three-minute pop stylings of “The Model” to the urban sprawl of “Neon Lights,” which luxuriates in an almost nine-minute runtime.

Given that the average track length is around six minutes, I’m almost tempted to think of The Man-Machine as six tiny Kraftwerk albums, or at least, musical ideas that could have been expanded into full LPs in another universe. “Neon Lights” and “Spacelab” feel dreamy and easy-going, with floating melodies that draw from the “cosmic music” scene, one of the many emergent styles that began as something uniquely German and spread throughout the world--in this case, becoming an important forerunner to ambient electronic music through acts like Tangerine Dream. Meanwhile, the hard, tick-tocking rhythms of “Metropolis” and the title track point to the newfound focus on rhythm and the so-called motorik beat that made the music of Neu! so compelling.

The Man-Machine can serve not only as an introduction to Kraftwerk, but also as a sort of crash course in this entire period of electronic music, showcasing some of the most distinctive and influential features of the German scene, as well as the shape of synth-pop to come. It’s a complex and busy historical moment with huge ramifications for almost all of subsequent electronic music, and The Man-Machine really creates a microcosm of that whole environment. There’s also the fact that each side of the record has one track from each of my three broad groups, like an expertly-designed sushi platter or charcuterie board for us to sample from, and they both follow the same formula: a pop appetizer, a cosmic *entree,* and motorik for dessert.

*The Man-Machine* also has what is almost certainly the most iconic cover of any of Kraftwerk’s LPs. This is how lots of us still picture them in our minds, and it’s inspired tons of parodies and riffs over the years. I think all of that acclaim is deserved! Emil Schult’s graphic design for the album was heavily inspired by avant-garde Soviet artists of the 10s and 20s, chiefly El Lissitzky. These visual artists used their art to express their hope for a new world, defined by the promise of technology, and their literally revolutionary philosophy--so what could be a better match for Kraftwerk’s electronic revolution in music? Lissitzky used bright, primary colours, straight lines, and geometric shapes to convey the “built environment” of modern cities and man-made architecture, and you’ve got all the same sentiment on display here. The use of strong diagonals really draws the eye and lends this image a lot of continued visual interest. It’s also worth noting the extent to which Kraftwerk’s aesthetics inspired later electronic acts almost as powerfully as their sound. When you picture an electronic band, and get a mental image of stiff and stone-faced musicians behind synthesisers wearing shirts and ties, you can certainly thank Kraftwerk for that, as well.

I also love the title of The Man-Machine! The relationship between people and technology is one of, if not the, most central themes in Kraftwerk’s entire discography, which is full of references to anthropomorphic machines as well as mechanically-mediated humans. The particular choice of the phrase “man-machine,” as opposed to words like “android,” has a fun vintage flair to it, which matches the use of early 20th Century visual art quite nicely.

As might be expected from the album’s stylistic diversity, *The Man-Machine* would prove to be something of a transition point in Kraftwerk’s career. Their 1981 follow-up, Computer World, would return to the song cycle format, but with increasing emphasis on ideas from the pop sphere, championed by percussionist Karl Bartos. By the time of the last classic-lineup Kraftwerk LP, 1986’s Electric Cafe, they had not only amped up the pop, but also incorporated influence from the electronic dance music of the time. Ultimately, Bartos would leave the group, chiefly due to discontent with his treatment by founding members Ralf Huetter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, and their persistent lack of musical productivity.

On a somewhat lighter note, my personal favourite track on this album is its opener, “The Robots.” Per my typology from earlier, I classified this as a pop-oriented song, and it certainly is an approachable one that’s proven to be quite popular. But it’s got just enough more experimental touches to keep things quite interesting. From an ominous, dissonant intro, a slightly more pop form, hinting at a verse/chorus structure, soon emerges and contrasts. I love the groove of the rhythm and percussion here, as well as the very heavy vocoder, rich in texture and certainly a Kraftwerk staple.

While the lyrics can be read as sort of light and silly, I like to think that the robots in question might also be dangerous. The track “Metropolis” seems to reference the seminal 1927 silent film of the same name, which is famous for its portrayal of an evil, mechanical doppelganger. Likewise, the choice to translate the lyrics of the song’s interlude into Russian is likely inspired by another great work of art from this era: the stage play R.U.R.--Rossum’s Universal Robots. Written by Karel Čapek in 1922, it’s the progenitor of the “robot revolution” trope in science fiction, the source of the word “robot” for autonomous machines in almost every human language, and one of the first entries in the illustrious career of an author who helped make Czech a true literary language. While the titular robots take time to assure us that they’re programmed to do what we humans want, should we really trust them...?