#every time I see tiktoks of wizards dancing I think of him

[solargeist]

shipping scarian no matter the circumstances is so funny bc you get situations where grian sees This and thinks I need him carnally

[d-criss-news]

20 Questions With Darren Criss: How Acting Has Helped Him Make New Music

While Darren Criss has graced our TV screens with a range of characters, from high schooler Blaine Anderson on Glee to serial killer Andrew Cunanan on The Assassination of Gianni Versace, he was last spotted just being himself, on our For You Page on TikTok. “I’m walking to rehearsal with a guitar on my back with a Trader Joe’s bag ... I did not bring an umbrella because I forgot that it was raining. I’m rocking that NYC musician life,” the Glee alum explained in the hilarious clip posted three days ago.

While Criss’ acting work has earned him acclaim and stardom, he leaned into making music during the pandemic. On Aug. 20, he dropped a new EP, Masquerade, featuring five new tracks that Criss says were inspired by the different characters Criss has embraced throughout his career. After Criss wrote songs for his musical comedy web series Royalties and Apple TV+’s animated sitcom Central Park before the pandemic struck the United States, he then used those experiences as a precursor to his new EP. As Criss continues to promote his new music, he answered 20 of Billboard's questions – giving us a peek into how his new EP came together, and how growing up in San Fransisco shaped him as an actor, singer and all-around artist.

1. What inspired your latest project, Masquerade?

Although I would have preferred that it come at a far less grim cost, I finally had the time. Before the pandemic, I had written 10 new songs for my show Royalties -- along with an original song for Disney and another for Apple’s Central Park. These were all assignments in which I was writing for a certain scenario and character. Go figure. It was the most music I had ever written in a calendar year. This really emboldened me to rethink how I made my own music— to start putting a focus on “character creation” in my songs, rather than personal reflection. The latter was not proving to be as productive. The alchemy of having this time and having set a new intention with my own songwriting and producing made me put on a few of my favorite masques and throw myself a Masquerade.

2. How do you think your background as an actor complements your music?

They are one and the same to me. I treat acting roles like musical pieces— dialogue is like scoring a melody; there’s pace, dynamics, cadence, tone. Physical characterization is like producing -- zeroing in on the bass line, deciding on the kick pattern. Vocal characterization is like choosing the right sonic experience, choosing the most effective snare sound, and mixing the high end or low end. It goes without saying that it works in the complete opposite direction. Making each song is taking on a different role literally and employing the use of different masques to maximize the effectiveness of the particular story being told.

3. On Instagram  you wrote that “Masquerade is a small collection of the variety of musical masques that have always inspired me.” Which track do you identify with most in your real life?

Everybody absorbs songs differently. Some key into the lyrics, some into the melody, some the production, some into vocal performance. When I listen to songs, I consider all of their value on totally different scales. So it’s hard to say if there’s any track I “identify” with more than any others, since I -- by nature -- identify with all of them. I think I just identify with certain aspects more than others. If it helps for a more interesting answer, I will say I enjoy the slightly more classical, playful -- dare I say -- more Broadway-leaning wordplay of “Walk of Shame,” but that’s just talking about lyricism. I enjoy the attitude of “F*kn Around,” the batsh--t musicality of “I Can’t Dance,” the relentless grooves of “Let’s” and “For A Night Like This.” All have different ingredients I really enjoy having an excuse to dive into.

4. What’s the first piece of music that you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

Beatles audio cassettes: “Help” and “Hard Day’s Night.” I just listened on repeat on a tape-playing Walkman until my brother and I got a stereo for our room with a CD player in it, which was  when I just bought the same two albums again, but this time as compact discs.

5. What was the first concert you saw?It’s hard to say, because my parents took us to a lot of classical concerts when we were small. But I guess this question usually refers to what was the first concert you went to on your own volition, and that my friend, was definitely Warped Tour ’01. My brother and I went on our own— two teenagers going to their first music festival, in the golden age of that particular genre and culture. It was f--king incredible.

6. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid?

My dad was in private banking and advised really, really wealthy people on how to handle their money. My mom was, by choice, a stay-at-home mom, but in reality, she was my dad’s consigliere. They discussed absolutely everything together. They were a real team, and I saw that every single day in the house. They both had a background in finance (That’s how they met in the first place.) and were incredibly skilled at all the hardcore adulting things that I absolutely suck at. They were total finance wizards together. So of course, instead of becoming an accountant, I picked up playing the guitar and ran as far I could with it. Luckily, they were all about it.

7. What was your favorite homecooked meal growing up?

My dad was an incredible chef. For special occasions, I’d request his crab cakes. They were unreal. I’ve never had a crab cake anywhere in the world that was good as my dad’s.

8. Who made you realize you could be an artist full-time?

I don’t know if I’ve actually realized that yet.

9. What’s at the top of your professional bucket list?

The specifics change every day, but the core idea at the top is to continue being consistently inconsistent with my choices, and to keep getting audiences to constantly reconsider their consideration of me. But I mean, sure, what performer doesn’t want to play Coachella? What songwriter doesn’t want to have Adele sing one of their songs? What actor doesn’t want to be in a Wes Anderson film?

10.  How did your hometown/city shape who you are?

San Francisco. I mean, come on. I was really lucky. The older I get, the more grateful I am for just being born and raised there. It’s an incredibly diverse, culturally rich, colorful, inclusive, vibrant city. By the time I was born, it had served as a beacon for millions of creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to gather and thrive. I grew up around that. The combination of that with having parents, who were unbelievably supportive of the arts themselves, laid an incredibly fortunate foundation to consider the life of an artist as a legitimately viable option. It’s a foundation that I am supremely aware is not the case for millions of young artists around the world. I was absurdly lucky.

11.  What’s the last song you listened to?

I mean probably one of mine, but not by choice. I know, lame. But I’m promoting a new EP, what’d you expect? But if you wanna know what I’ve been listening to, as far as new s--t is concerned: a lot of Lizzy McAlpine, Remi Wolf, and Charlie Burg.

12.  If you could see any artist in concert, dead or alive, who would it be?

The Beatles is an obvious "yeah, duh." Sammy Davis, Mel Tormé, or of course, Nat King Cole. I would’ve loved to see Howard Ashman give a lecture on his creative process and his body of work.

13. What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen happen in the crowd of one of your sets?

I feel like just having a crowd at all, at any one of my sets, is pretty wild enough.

14. What’s your karaoke go-to?

The real answer to this I’ll write into a book one day, because I have a lot to say about karaoke etiquette. I have two options here: I can either name a song that I like to sing for me, for fun, or I can name a song that really gets the group going. The answer depends on what kind of karaoke night we’re dealing with here. So I will say, after I’ve selected a ton of songs that services a decent enough party vibe for everyone else, then I would do one for me, and that would be the Beatles’ “Oh! Darling.”

15. What’s one thing your most devoted fans don’t know about you?

What I have up my sleeve.

16. What TV show did you binge-watch over the past year?

Dave is a stroke of genius. There are episodes that I believe are bona fide masterpieces. Also, My Brilliant Friend is a masterclass in cinematic television.

17. What movie, or song, always makes you cry?

It’s A Wonderful Life.

18. What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

Get used to sharing everything about yourself and your life now, or more astutely, to the idea that you don’t necessarily get to control how your life is shared. I know it’s not really your thing, but you’re gonna have to get used to it, so start building up those calluses now. And don’t worry, all the stuff you love now will be cool again in your mid-thirties, so keep some of those clothes because you’ll be a full-blown fashion icon if you just keep wearing exactly what you’re wearing. Oh nd also, put money into Apple and Facebook.

19.  What new hobby did you take on in the last year?

I’ve always been a linguaphile. My idea of leisure time is getting to study or review other languages. This past year, I took the time to finally dive into learning how to read, write, and speak Japanese. Other than making music, it was one of the biggest components of my 2020-2021.

20. What do you hope to accomplish or experience by the end of 2021?

I hope I get to play live shows again.

[imagines-for-the-fangirls-soul]

Lay All Your Love One Me - Fred Weasley

Prompt: @mrsholland2017 asked: Can you do a Fred Weasley X Reader to Lay All Your Love On Me from mamma mia

A/N: Okay so I never really do this, but this is a modern!AU, where Fred is a tiktoker, and asks the reader to help make some content, and the reader wants to do the Lay All Your Love On Me challenge thingy.

Pairing: Modern!Fred Weasley x Reader Word Count: 1,049

"Alright, lot, wands away," Fred said, "The camera is rolling."

You exchanged a glance with George and rolled your eyes, but you both tucked your wands into your pockets.

"Fred, why don't you just post on wizard Tik Tok? Then we wouldn't have to worry about showing our wands," George said.

"But Georgie, Muggle Tik Tok just eats up my content. They think it looks like real magic," he chuckled.

"You better hope you don't get banned," you said, "One day one of them are gonna realize it is real magic, and you'll be in loads of trouble."

"Let's hope that day never comes," Fred said, hand to his heart. "Until then, wands away."

"Sir yes sir," you and George muttered, used to this behavior.

Fred turned his phone to the ocean, getting footage of the crashing waves. When he took shots of the scenery, that's when you knew Fred didn't have a good idea for a Tik Tok. Those were the days when you would end up with Fred doing a somewhat sexual dance that got all of his followers going crazy in the comments.

"What's the plan, Freddie?" you asked.

"I don't know. We could have George doing some flips as we levitate him? Make it look like he's doing them on his own."

"We did that last week, mate," George said. "And I didn't like the way you two landed me."

"Sometimes we all have to crash," Fred said, clapping George's shoulder.

"Is there some new trend you want to try out?" you asked.

"Nothing we haven't done already," Fred said. He dropped down onto the sand, looking out sadly to the ocean. You sighed and met George's gaze. The other twin didn't seem to have any sympathy for his brother. In fact, his gaze was traveling to a group of girls at the docks, one of whom was giving him a smile.

"Go," you said, motioning that way. "I'll be on Fred watch."

"You're a peach, Y/N," George said, running off. "You'll figure it out, Freddie!"

You sat down next to Fred and gave him a few more minutes to think. He sat up again but still focused on the water.

"You've got nothing, right?" you asked.

"Zilch."

You sighed and stood up. "Fine. Then we're going with my idea."

"What's your idea?"

"Give me your phone, and I'll find the sound." He handed it to you, and you queued it up. "Here you go."

"What did you pick?" he asked, standing as well.

"You'll see."

You watched Fred's eyes widen as you took off your t-shirt, revealing the top of your swimsuit. And you laughed as he forced himself to look away, as you shrugged out of your shorts.

"Ready?" you asked.

"Sure."

You walked over to the warm water, sticking your toes into the sand as a few waves crashed over you. You dropped down to your knees and laughed at the way Fred looked at you.

"Okay, I'm ready," you said. Fred nodded his head and you started crawling towards him as the music started up. Lay All Your Love On Me blasted from his phone, and when a wave crashed onto the shore, you turned onto your back, Fred following your every movement as it washed over you, and you smiled into the camera.

"How was that?" you asked, sitting up, splashing some water onto Fred.

"Good, good," he said, clearing his throat.

"Relax, Freddie," you said with a teasing laugh. He chuckled nervously, running a hand through his red hair.

"Maybe we should do another take."

"Okay," you said, moving a few steps away from him. "Ready?"

"Yes."

When the music started again, you started your crawl towards Fred, the same as the time before. But when you went to turn around, you found Fred crouching into the water behind you. You smiled, and didn't stop him as he laid you down into the water.

You decided that then was a good time to actually sing the words, instead of mouthing along to them, and uttered, "Lay all your love one me."

You didn't have to say it twice. Fred's hands wrapped around your waist as he kissed you. Salty water washed over the two of you, and you didn't care as you gripped his cheeks, holding him close to you. He positioned himself between your legs, and continued to kiss you, the Tik Tok sound playing on loop somewhere on the dry sand.

"Oi!"

Fred pulled away, water dripping down his t-shirt and jeans, and you both looked to the shore to see George watching you, his arms raised in question. You laughed and pulled your body away from Fred's.

"We're filming!" Fred called back.

"I didn't know we were branching into that kind of content now!" George hollered. Fred flipped him off, reaching for the phone in the sand, and tossing you your t-shirt.

"Any luck with the girl at the docks?" you asked.

"Not as lucky as the two of you," George said. You picked up a clump of wet sand and threw it at him, sending the twin running back for the dock. Fred smiled at you, holding out his hand to you.

"Maybe you should delete that draft," you said. Fred laughed and nodded his head.

"I'm sure it's mostly just the sand, but yeah, I will. Besides, your first take was perfect anyway."

"So why did we take the second?" you asked.

"Cause I wanted to be apart of it, too," he said, leaning down to kiss you once more. You could taste the salt on his lips, and felt like belting out the Mamma Mia! lyrics again.

"Don't go wasting your emotion," you sang quietly, walking up the beach, "Lay all your love on me. Don't go sharing your devotion," you sang as Fred wrapped his arms around you, holding you against his chest, "Lay all your love on me."

"Let's go home," he whispered in your ear.

"What? You don't like the wet look?"

"Oh, believe me, I do. But seeing as this is a public beach . . ."

"Point taken," you said, grabbing his hand to lead him to your car, "Think George can find his own way home?"

"I'm sure he's having a grand old time at the docks."

“Then let’s go.”

[aty-altiria]

Drowning In Feather’s

Okay, I had a request for Aizawa/Holly, and while I'm definitely going to do that at one point - I have the idea for the fic sketched out already. (and isn’t that what I need? more fics) I happened upon a video on Tiktok that was absolutely PERFECT for Hawks, so… this.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26170948

Eleven, that was when it started for witches and wizards. You're eleventh birthday precisely on the second you were born. Which, Holly may like to emphasize the 'for witches' in that idea. Because until Holly was eleven, she hadn't actually known she was a witch, nor had she known witches were even a thing!

Before Holly turned eleven, she thought she knew two things. One, she was quirkless, which should have been more suspicious in retrospect. Namely, because Petunia, who'd never brought Holly to a single dentist, optometrist, doctor, or even a nurse, carted Holly to a quirk-specialist at five years old exactly. Petunia had been rather insistent that Holly visit this doctor. Quite unlike Dudley - who seemed to have a quirk that allowed him to lift just about anything and disregarded the weight of whatever he was lifting entirely.

Holly had spent far too much of her childhood trapped underneath things. On a completely ‘unrelated’ note, the Hero who worked near her- who had a strength quirk - knew Holly on a first-name basis.

Regardless, carted to the quirk-specialist, Holly learned that her parents were both quirkless as well. Her mother never inherited Petunia's long-neck quirk or Holly's grandmother's flower growing quirk. So Petunia seemed rather convinced, and concerned, that Holly was equally quirkless. Which, was Holly's second hint, because Petunia actually seemed like she wanted Holly to start spontaneously growing flowers all over the place. But no, the quirk-specialist told Petunia and Holly both that she had some toe joint, which made her quirkless.

The true abuse started the day after which Holly would eventually learn was because Petunia realized Holly inherited something quite different from her mother.

Getting back to the main point. Holly, thinking herself quirkless but otherwise normal, also believed she should have been finding her soulmates lost things from birth. A lost toy to start with, a lost pen, an article of clothing, the 'ordinary' things that people found. But as she grew, she found nothing. No lost homework - like Dudley found. Not the lost remote that Vernon misplaced, and Petunia dropped into his hands seconds later after it fell onto her head. No half pairs of shoes. No socks. No hair-ties. Nothing. Holly found nothing because she was not a Muggle.

But as a child, she didn't know how that worked, and as a child Holly convinced herself - with her aunt's vitriol assisting - that she was both quirkless and soulless.

Convinced as such, Holly didn't notice that when Hagrid cracked the door down to their cabin on her eleventh birthday that a red feather dropped onto her head before it zipped away. Nor did she notice hours later, while on a trolly in Gringotts, a similar feather landing in her pocket before flying off. Or the half a dozen other feathers that appeared on her person before vanishing immediately. In fact, Holly didn't even question the few she had seen because she'd been in a pet store, and surely Hedwig accidentally brought it home.

It was two months later that Holly realized the truth. Shortly after October, Hermione suddenly reached up and plucked a feather from her hair with a light-hearted 'oh, your soulmate lost a feather?' before the red feather in question ripped out of her hand and sped off.

Holly had been skeptical and had burst into tears when Ron gently explained that no, she wasn't soulless, that witches and wizards were just a bit… different, when it came to lost things. That they just started late because their magic was attached to their soulmates, and after that, Holly started to notice the feathers more often.

The feathers that dropped on her head. That appeared in her pockets. That blew past her head. That appeared again, and again, and again, and never stayed. Every time one dropped nearby, they'd zip away just as quickly. Holly found it a task in itself to catch the bloody things before they were out of sight, and… well, she supposed it made her a better seeker. Though no one wanted to accept that the feathers were faster than the snitch on a bad day like Holly claimed.

Holly did manage to eventually get fast enough to catch a few. She later learned summoning them back into place also worked, though it was boring, Holly rather preferred trying to catch them. Still, it was after the war that she actually did anything about the feathers.

It started with Ron.

"You know, I don't understand how we're supposed to use these lost things to find people. I don't even know what this is." Ron said, twisting something Muggle looking in his hands. He was sitting in the living room of Grimmauld place and was distracting himself from Hermione's nagging. Hermione personally was bothering them about returning to Hogwarts for the 'eighth year.' Something which Ron was rather disinterested with; he'd already been offered a position as an Auror-trainee after all.

"Ron…" Holly deadpanned at him, "that's a cellphone."

"Yeah?"

Holly exhaled tiredly, the stupidity of the magical world. Ron was her best friend, but seriously! "It's… it's basically a map to your soulmate-"

"What?"

"Oh honestly," Hermione reached over. She threw herself across the middle of the couch to snatch the phone from his hands. "Let me show you… oh," the girl rolled her eyes, "your soulmate is as bad as you, she locked it."

"Use the emergency call button," Holly mumbled as another feather dropped right in front of her. Immediately feeling a smile grow, Holly snapped her hand out and caught the feather between her fingertips. Idly Holly twirled the feather and kept a firm grip on it. She'd lost plenty by not holding them right and wasn't about to let this one go yet. It had been a few weeks since the last one. She'd honestly missed seeing the bright red shade, the same as Gryffindor ironically, perhaps that was why she'd subconsciously wanted to get into that house? "Or just wait for her to call it once she realizes it's lost."

"Call? Like the floo?"

"Similiar... you know what, yeah, that's the basic idea." Holly felt the feather in her fingers tug, it was trying to fly away again. She hated that; everyone else Holly knew had momento's from their soulmates, lost items of all kinds. Hermione had a necklace or two, purposely lost. While Hermione's soulmate had handwritten notes that Hermione had creatively lost. Luna had her cork-bottle earrings. Bill had the teeth that came from Fleur's avian form, and Fleur had a few precious stones from Bill's trips. Holly had feathers, countless feathers, that slipped away the moment they were in her line-of-sight.

The feather tugged at her as Hermione explained how a phone worked to Ron and what to expect when someone finally called, which prompted a memory of his attempt during fourth year. Holly, at the same time, fished a hand in her pocket.

One feather. She'd keep one feather.

Flicking her wand, Holly transfigured a small yet sturdy string. While still gripping the feather, Holly tied the string around the feather's harder part before putting the string through it. She then looped the entire thing, now a necklace, around her neck and let the feather settle on her chest. It struggled for a moment, then calmed seemingly comfortable with its new position. Holly hummed slightly just as a phone rang with a high pitched song and Ron freaked.

—

A month later, Holly had gotten used to the feather bouncing about on her neck. It danced about most days, pulled for a while, then settled again on a repeating pattern. Holly, admittedly, was finding herself watching it far too often. She was also finding more feathers, which made her realize the one around her neck was far from the only one.

"He's likely Muggle," Luna breathed in her wispy tone. She set her hand in her face and gazed happily at the dancing feather, "a pretty birdie Muggle."

"A wing quirk?" Holly jerked slightly as the feather gave a brutal yank before setting when it failed to move any further. "That's not common." Especially to have a wing quirk with such vibrantly colored feathers. Surely a shade this red on a set of wings would be easy to find? She'd just have to access the quirk registry for red wings… unless her soulmate had a pet bird… for the last seven years. No, that was unlikely. But, how would she even access the quirk-registry without using a bit of, somewhat illegal, magic.

"Maybe he's a phoenix, have you seen any of his feathers on fire?" Luna asked as the feather reached up and gave another firm yank then drifted downward slightly on the string. It didn't land on her chest though, it just floated loosely. Almost like it was testing its range. It made Holly wonder how much her soulmate could feel through that feather, if at all. "Or maybe a cardinal… a red-winged blackbird?" Luna put her fist on her palm with a happy noise, "or a parrot!"

"I'm sure if it was a parrot, I'd have gotten other colors of feather." Holly pointed out, which caused Luna to deflate. Holly felt a bit guilty for that, especially when a rather large rock landed on Luna's head a moment later. Luna's soulmate had poor timing. Or well…

"Oh! It's mooncalf feces! How fascinating!"

Eww. So not a rock then.

Recoiling slightly, Holly accidentally pulled on the still floating feather. She tugged it after her, and the feather suddenly jerked and darted toward her- Holly's eyes went wide, worried it was going to pull the string right off her head and escape. Instead, the feather hit her right in the face. Holly gasped, feeling it touch her forehead, then slowly slide down to stop at her lips and settle when she snapped her mouth closed. She'd rather not inhale a feather.

"Interesting."

Holly looked up to find Luna had lost interest in the… poo and was now watching Holly's feather. "What is?" she asked.

"Well, it seems sentient; perhaps your soulmate can sense his feathers while apart from his body." Luna reached up and ran a finger along the feather, and they both watched it shiver. It then bobbed in place searching out Luna's hand, or perhaps Holly's since Luna had already pulled back.

"Okay?" Holly lifted her fingers and ran her index finger along the feather to watch it shiver again. Then, quite abruptly, it jerked right into her palm, and honestly to Merlin, wiggled. Holly released a quiet noise of delight before the feather pulled from her hand again and firmly tugged at the string.

"That's the same direction," Luna commented.

"The what?" Holly asked, catching the feather once more to settle it.

"The same direction," Luna pointed off to the right, "it's pulled seventeen times during our conversation, every time had been toward the south-east. I suspect it's trying to lead you."

"Lead me?" The feather slipped from her palm again and pulled in the exact direction that Luna pointed to. Then it floated idly- and yanked again- in the same direction.

"Yes. To him, your soulmate… hadn't you realized?" Luna looked at Holly like she was a simpleton, like a Ravenclaw looking down on a Gryffindor for being particular… Gryfindorish.

"Eh?!"

—

Holly was perched sidelong on her broom and was miserable.

Her journey to follow her feather had been a mess the entire time she'd been on it. Firstly, because her soulmate apparently didn't live in the same country, let alone landmass as her. No, they seemed to live on practically the opposite side of the earth. Which, for Holly, meant a relatively large amount of customs, both Muggle and magical. And no, being the girl-who-conquered did not help her case any with border control. So, after being arrested once while trying to fly over Korea, Holly had stuck to Muggle planes and spent thousands of pounds to follow a feather's whims.

Nothing like explaining to a grumpy, coffee-deprived customs agent that she was travelling to the country because a feather wanted her too.

Not a fun conversation she would like to say. Though it could have been worse, at least Holly had translations charms to help her through the many language barriers.

After the fifth hop, Holly had finally ended up in Japan and elected to use her broom for a short while. Mostly because if she had to go much farther east, then she'd be over water. So, dawning her invisibility cloak, hopping on her broom, and venturing out, Holly continued her journey to find her soulmate via feather dowsing rod. Twenty minutes after that Holly was being called by Hermione, who was rather upset that Holly was following a feather instead of starting her eighth year at Hogwarts. The conversation to derail Hermione a bit lasted another twenty minutes of just sitting above a sky-scraper. Where Holly yanked off her invisibility cloak - she was boiling under the bloody thing.

And then it started to rain.

Waterlogged, feather still at her neck, Holly gave in for the afternoon. She landed on the nearest building, cast an umbrella charm to protect herself and set in the water the city from the tallest building she could. Japan, as Holly watched, was quite beautiful. She could see people wandering around and heroes who had on far more extravagant costumes than what Holly was used to.

Feeling daring, Holly climbed onto the edge of the building with her broom firmly in her grip. Holly didn't want to die, after all, she just wanted a better look, and she was a heights fan.

Nothing beat a dive toward the ground at full speeds only to pull up at the very last second. The speed, the thrill, the dare of it all… it was why she was a Gryffindor. To risk her life for a flash of gold and feel her heart positively beat out of her chest in exertion. Honestly, Holly didn't get Ron or Hermione. Why Ron would desire to be an Auror when they'd just been at war. Why Hermione couldn't so much attempt to get on a broom without going pale in fear. Flying was everything. It had the thrill Holly wanted, but the safety of not being shot at and traumatized.

Her feather shifted on her neck, and Holly leaned further forward.

Holly's hands flexed on the wood of her broom, she felt the familiar grooves and a rush of thrill enter her heart. She was rather high up. What would it feel like to… jump? To swing her broom under her feet, catch herself long before hitting the ground and soar through the skies.

She was slipping forward before she really acknowledged the choice to do it. Holly dropped like a rock from the skies, pulled her broom up and between her legs, gripped the handle tight and prepared to rip herself out of free fall and-

"Woah!" A hand snagged the back of her shirt and wrenched her to a brutal stop. Holly gasped as she nearly lost her grip on her broom, she choked along with whoever grabbed her because their combined almost caused her 'savior' to loose control. Thankfully her savior didn't drop out of the air either; his wings was able to keep himself and her aloft, even with the abrupt stop. "Hey kid! You don't need to be doing that."

Holly blinked at the ground far beneath her, then twisted her head up and back and caught a rather handsome face above her. Then her brows furrowed as she took in the extravagantly large wings beating above her. They were huge, likely three times the height of the man holding onto her. And they were also a vibrant bright red, the exact shade of her lost feathers.

The connection between the colors was within Holly's grasp. But another thought took precedent.

"I was trying to fly." is what she said, and the man made a rather interesting expression—confusion mixed with adorable perplexity.

"Well, you don't need to be jumping off buildings to do that, kid. Just gotta ask me, and I'll be happy to oblige."

What? No.

Holly lifted her hand to show her broom, "I can fly myself." What even was this conversation?

"You're a hero?" He pulled her up slightly so they were more eye-to-eye and Holly noted he was taller than her, not surprisingly, everyone was. As she looked him over, he was doing the same, looking for a quirk in fact though his gaze settled on the feather, which was fixed at her chest for the time being.

"No." Not a registered hero anyway, and 'savior of the wizarding world' didn't count either.

"Quirk-usage in public is illegal." He was staring at the feather.

"It's not a quirk-" Oh Merlin, how did she even begin to explain- the feather at her neck jerked up, and his eyes went a bit wide. "Okay, it's sort of quirk, but the broom is ma- it's technology. It's not a quirk. So I've done nothing illegal."

"Yeah… sure…" the feather jerked again, and his eyes finally returned to her face, "Hey kid, where'd you get that?" He nodded at her chest.

"I grew them." She deadpanned and watched him blush slightly.

"No! Not the- the feather- where'd you get one of my feathers?"

Oh.

There it was then.

"My soulmate lost it."

"Your soulmate-" he dropped her. Holly later would make endless fun at him for doing it, but the shock of her statement caused his hands to relax, and he dropped her. Holly managed a shocked shriek before instinct caught her. She shoved magic into her broom to prevent herself from becoming a pancake. Catching herself mere feet from the floor, Holly breathed a moment of relief- and then her soulmate's hands were on her as he frantically apologized.

"Oh shit- I'm sorry, kid- I didn't mean- are you alright?"

"Is that Hawks?!" Someone exclaimed, but Holly paid only minimal attention to it. She'd already figured from his outfit that her soulmate was likely a hero. However, Holly didn't really want too much attention on this particular meeting. Therefore, she nudged her broom upward and away from the slowly building crowd. 'Hawks' followed loosely behind her still a touch frantic that he'd almost gotten her killed.

"Yeah, I'm brilliant," Holly reassured as she flew upward and led her soulmate a bit more out of sight, "and… you're my soulmate."

"Yeah- I'm-" he was flustered, well, Holly was a little bit too, but she'd been chasing him down, and he'd been surprised. "It worked!" he suddenly exclaimed.

"What did?"

He pointed at the feather, "I can sense them. When you tied that one down, I felt it." Oh dear, he'd felt everything she'd done to the thing then-  oh no. "I kept trying to pull it back… I'd hoped you follow behind, and it worked!"

Nope, Holly wasn't going to point out that it had taken Luna pointing out the obvious for that blatant hint to do anything. She was not. "It worked." Holly agreed instead, "and I found you…" she trailed off in demand of a name beyond 'Hawks.'

"Takami! Takami Keigo!" He looked a moment away from enveloping her entirely in his wings, though considering they were mid-air again, that would have been a rather terrible idea.

"I'm Holly Potter-"

And then he tackled her. His wings snapped around her body, closed instead of keeping him airborne, and he tackled her. Holly's gasped as she lost control of her broom when he knocked it to the side with his hug and yelled. "I found you!" before they fell right out of the sky.

To make a point. Holly would like to technically say that Keigo almost killed her twice in one day. But he'd forever deny the second one.

[wineanddinosaur]

The Father-Son TikTok Duo Behind the Viral JohnnyDrinks Brand

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

On a chilly Friday in late February 2020, John Rondi and his son, John Rondi Jr., made Manhattans at a stone countertop in their kitchen, then headed to dinner in Manhattan proper, a 30-minute drive from their suburban home in northern New Jersey. Their destination: Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Midtown, a mid-tier favorite of bridge-and-tunnel theatergoers and corporate seafood-tower types alike, where the big reds are enormous and the bone-in ribeyes go for $77.

John Sr. went to Del Frisco’s often — or at least he did before the pandemic hit. But that night, with Junior by his side and the pre-Covid steakhouse’s dinner service abuzz, something happened. Something profound. Something that would send his relationship with his son, and indeed his whole life, in an unexpected new direction. Feb. 21, 2020, you see, was the night TikTok’s beloved booze-slinger JohnnyDrinks was born.

“That was also the last time we went to Del Frisco’s in the city,” Senior told me in a recent interview. “I guess [that date] is even more profound now.”

‘Make me a drink’

A common misconception about TikTok is that it’s strictly for nimble teens to share choreographed dances, goofy inside-joke reaction videos, and other various cultural ephemera deemed interesting by the world’s always-online youngest generation. But one of the vibrant non-teen niches on the popular app — which dominates app stores’ rankings with over 2 billion downloads and 850 million monthly users — is the one about drinks appreciation, loosely organized around hashtags like #WineTok (23.9 million aggregate views as of writing), #brewing (10.2 million), and #cocktail (1.3 billion).

[Check out VinePair’s report on TikTok’s age-gating challenges and potential for future alcohol advertising, right here.]

Plenty of those videos are the standard college-kid fare — wizard staffs, pouring challenges, and so forth. But there’s educational drinks content on the platform, too. “I’ve seen a master [distiller] go and talk about … the stories behind the alcohol, behind how it’s made,” says Molly McGlew, an independent social media strategist who personally spends about five hours a day on TikTok and advises consulting clients on their approach to the platform. Some of that informational drinks content — a few hundred videos’ worth, at least — is coming from the well-appointed house in North Jersey that the Rondis call home. Last February, before heading out to what would soon be their final Del Frisco’s visit before the coronavirus pandemic hit, John Jr. (I’ll call them Junior and Senior throughout the rest of this piece for clarity’s sake) walked into the kitchen to find his father fixing himself a cocktail. He took out his phone.

“My son says to me, ‘make me a drink,’ so I said ‘OK, I’m gonna make you a Manhattan,’” recalls Senior, 55, who has worked as a mortgage professional for 30 years. “As he’s videoing me, I’m not thinking anything of it.” Using a handheld butane torch, he fired up a smoking plank, eyeballed some Bulleit bourbon, bitters, and sweet vermouth into a mixing glass, then poured the concoction over a hand-chiseled ice cube into a stemless wine glass. Junior, 25, videoed this straightforward exercise in home bartending, added some basic captions on TikTok (“1. Smoke da glass”), and set the whole thing to Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

Content created, he posted the video to a new social media platform his 18 year-old sister had told him about: TikTok. “That was the first video I posted. I never really expected to want to post TikToks,” Junior recalls. Drinks drank, and video live on Junior’s @JohnRondi account, the Johns Rondi struck out for a big group dinner at their Manhattan steakhouse of choice.

@johnrondi

How to: Make a Manhattan #fyp #fypchallenge #manhattan #manhattanbridge #drinks #bartender #xyzbca #xyz

♬ You Make Me Feel So Young – Frank Sinatra

At some point during the Del Frisco’s repast, Junior checked his phone. “We’re sitting at dinner, and my son goes, ‘You know the video of you making the drink? It’s got over a million views,’” recalls Senior. Later that night, it was at 2 million. By the following morning, it was at 3 million, then 5. The father-son pair’s first outing on the video platform had gone bona fide viral on the hottest social media platform in the world. “That was my introduction to TikTok,” says Senior, laughing. “My son, with his very entrepreneurial mind, says ‘we got to do this again.’”

The Alcohol Everymen of North Jersey

As the pandemic took hold, the Rondis found themselves locked down at home like the rest of the world. So they began to spend more time filming content for their new TikTok handle. Scrolling through these early videos, you can watch the father-son pair shape the JohnnyDrinks routine in real time. The dialogue, drinks, and music change, but the plot is a set piece that remains more or less standard, and it goes like this:

Junior, holding the camera, wanders up to Senior, who’s either already making a drink at the family’s home bar counter, or is quickly convinced to take up a mixing tin;

Senior names the drink he’ll be making, then makes it, while Junior films the process and provides captions to identify the ingredients;

Drink mixed, Senior toasts the camera, sometimes clinking glasses with his son.

You get the idea. The videos are straightforward and slightly corny, straddling lo-fi and high-cringe in the style of so much successful TikTok content. The lack of depth makes the videos ideal for the platform, but that’s not to say JohnnyDrinks’ content (which has, at press time, racked up over 11 million likes across a couple hundred videos) is without substance. The pair plow through the modern mixology canon with a clunky, endearing earnestness, conduct Q/A segments with their fans, and do education sessions where Senior schools Junior on, say, what makes a stout a stout. There’s also the occasional non-alcoholic smoothie recipe video in there, for anyone following a drinks account who doesn’t drink. “Our audience is pretty broad,” says Senior.

Like all successful creators, the two have developed little gags and callbacks that function like Easter eggs for their 685,000 followers. Senior clinks his ring against pretty much every liquor bottle he picks up on camera (this is “tap the bottle,” in JohnnyDrinks parlance.) Sinatra’s light baritone scores many of the clips, giving them a patina of anachronistic Italianate lounge swank.

And then, of course, there’s “smoke da glass.” The ur-caption in the JohnnyDrinks oeuvre is maybe the purest distillation of the brand the Rondis are building, a performance that straddles the line between amateurism and expertise, between superficial consumption and actual craft. “You do things like that first, to catch someone’s attention,” says Senior, who is a longtime admirer of the technique and the spectacle it creates. After seeing a mixologist smoke a stemmed cocktail glass many years ago, he decided he would do likewise. “I said then, ‘I’m making that mine.’”

To state the obvious: Smoking cocktails is in no way proprietary to JohnnyDrinks. But while glass-smoking might be old news to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of modern mixology, it’s a novel visual for a TikTok audience that’s new to cocktails — that is, the exact sorts of viewers that the Rondis’ accessible, undaunting drinks content resonates with so well.

Plus, the theatrical flourish can also help paper over imperfections in a drink, which makes it an even better crucible by which to understand JohnnyDrinks’ everyman appeal. “We’re not experts,” says Junior. Watch even a couple of the Rondis’ videos, and that quickly becomes apparent. While Senior is clearly a knowledgeable, experienced, and curious drinking enthusiast — “I’m a savvy guy, in that there are not many liquors I haven’t tried,” he says — he is no trained professional. Ice cubes may splash, cocktails may wind up in stemless wine glasses. “You’d be able to catch on pretty quickly that we’re not as experienced” as actual bartenders, says Junior.

Senior, from whom most of the on-camera booze info flows, is quick to agree. But what the scrappy, self-taught amateur lacks in professional flourish, he makes up for with the unmistakable delight of a genuine home entertainer. He’s accessible, engrossing — even a bit adorable.

“There’s a side of me that’s creative, and I do things like smoking the glass, rimming the glass, and putting some other things [in a drink] to give it some sort of appealing, artistic look,” Senior says. “I think that comes natural to me because I like hosting.”

Building a Brand, and a Business

If Senior is the talent of JohnnyDrinks, Junior is the talent manager, looking for angles behind the scenes. The son, like his father, is obviously possessed of a considerable business acumen. But their paths diverge from there. Senior’s career traces a corporate trajectory; Junior’s professional perspective, by contrast, has been forged in the fires of online entrepreneurship.

At 25, Junior has grown up in a media ecosystem criss-crossed with blurry lines between influencer and agency, amateur and professional, personal and public. Much has been made about the “influencer economy” and the “creator class,” and Junior is clearly well versed in both. To wit, JohnnyDrinks isn’t his only hustle, he also operates an online marketplace app, STUNITED, where students at schools across the country can engage in what he calls “academically bartering.” (A disapproving professor might call it “students paying other students to do their homework”; tomato, tomato.) The app is rated well by 100-plus reviewers on the Apple App Store and recently hit Google Play.

“He’s a true entrepreneur, from high school through college,” says Senior proudly.

As we talk, a comparison to another very online, very Jersey hustler who used booze-based social media as a springboard to broader entrepreneurial aspirations comes to mind. I ask Junior: Is JohnnyDrinks a new-age version of the YouTube channel that Gary Vaynerchuk used to catapult himself from North Jersey wine salesman into A-list hustler?

“He was the person that really started personal branding and branching out from what you’re doing” into other enterprises, says the younger Rondi. “I don’t take everything he says as ‘word,’ the way I think a lot of entrepreneurs do. That being said, if I met him, I would be like, ‘You’re the absolute man.’”

No surprise, then, that when the conversation turns to JohnnyDrinks’ business opportunities, Junior slips easily into the Gary Vee vernacular that so many Fiverr strivers have made their own. He speaks about the “tailwind” the Rondis’ account enjoyed in its early days, when TikTok seemed to be “optimizing” cocktail and cigar content in what Junior hypothesizes was a bid to boost credibility among non-teen users. He muses about the value of “eyeballs” on TikTok compared to older platforms like Snapchat and YouTube (for now, “TikTok is probably the least valuable … but it’s not going to stay that way.”) As early adopters on TikTok, says Junior, “we have a unique opportunity to scale and be different.”

What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means selling merch. “Smoking da glass” makes for compelling visuals on TikTok, but it also doubles as a catchy, marketable slogan. On their website, Junior sells T-shirts emblazoned with the motto, plus smoking boards for fans who want to emulate Senior’s charring routine at home. They also sell the “Johnny Drinks Drinks Guide,” a $15 PDF (currently on sale for $9.75) that promises to “walk you through the process” of making cocktails seen on the pair’s TikTok channel.

How many have they sold? “I would say between 750 and 1,000,” says Junior. For those of you keeping score, that would be at least $7,300 in pre-tax revenue — most of which is pure profit, because as countless LinkedIn entrepreneurs and mindset bloggers will tell you, e-books are an extremely low-overhead, high-return way to generate passive income.

Another way to earn cash is sponsored content with alcohol brands, which are currently banned from advertising on the platform. JohnnyDrinks has partnered with Savage & Cooke, a boutique distillery in California’s Bay Area owned by winemaker/entrepreneur Dave Pinney (of The Prisoner/Orin Swift Cellars fame) on an exclusive blend of Burning Chair bourbon. The first barrel sold out, marking the beginning of what Junior hopes will be “a long-lasting, synergistic relationship.”

That quote comes from the bourbon’s description on Country Wine & Spirits, a San Diego liquor store that shares an investor with the tequila brand SWOL. “They asked us to try it out, and it’s definitely really good tequila,” said Junior. “So what we do is we’ll push it.” A recent video shows Senior touting SWOL as his “favorite sipping tequila” alongside offerings from Don Julio, Dos Artes, and Clase Azul.

In a follow-up to my hour-long interview with the Rondis, Junior clarifies that JohnnyDrinks takes a cut of sales on both the bourbon and tequila as part of deals that are brokered by a marketing firm he declines to name. There’s also Gothic Gin, a ubiquitous-on-TikTok clear liquor that has racked up millions of views on the platform thanks to popular drinks creators like JohnnyDrinks. “They reached out to us, we loved their gin, so we formed an agreement,” he says. “That is a promotion.” He declines to ballpark the revenue the Rondis earn through these deals, telling me he’s worried other brands might try to lowball them on future deals.

@johnrondi

Stuck inside on a snow day? MAKE A JOHNNY HOT COCOA! ☕️ 🍫 #johnnydrinks #cocktails #bailey #hotcocoa #snowday #fyp #xyz #drinks

♬ Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Dean Martin

TikTok’s community guidelines don’t explicitly bar creators from promoting alcoholic beverages (only selling and trading them), but the Federal Trade Commission’s rules about influencer endorsements require clear disclosures if material relationships — i.e., business deals — exist between the promoter and the promoted. Creators often do this using hashtags like #sponsored or #ad. I wasn’t able to find such disclosures on a spot-check review of nine recent JohnnyDrinks videos that feature the brands mentioned above.

I ask Junior if he knows about the FTC guidelines, or if he’s looked into whether the account’s videos might be in violation of them. He tells me he’s never heard of the guidelines. Then he says yes, sometimes he uses the #ad tag, but usually makes those videos private after they’ve been published for awhile because they don’t perform as well as the duo’s organic content. (One such video that remains visible on the account, a partnership with Empress Gin, appears to have done pretty well, racking up strong metrics compared to other JohnnyDrinks posts despite the #ad and #sponsored tags in its caption.) “You don’t need to know about the money I’m making,” says Junior. “I don’t want anybody else getting in trouble.”

Neither Country Wine & Spirits, Gothic Gin, nor SWOL Tequila responded to VinePair’s requests to comment for this story. Lauren Blanchard, the general manager of Savage & Cooke, told me that the distillery has an informal relationship with JohnnyDrinks and has compensated the Rondis with a “small marketing fee” for their efforts to sell their branded barrels. “We are looking forward to expanding the way that we work together [with the Rondis] this year and in the years to come,” she said.

To be clear, JohnnyDrinks is hardly the only TikTok creator doing promotions that appear to skirt the FTC’s regulatory requirements. This sort of breakage, viewed charitably, is simply the inevitable byproduct of what McGlew, the social strategist, calls the young platform’s relatively “wild West” nature. Entrepreneurial creators rapidly become popular and begin cashing in before getting educated. (This is a familiar story on every emerging platform, TikTok very much included.) But they do get educated, because there’s money to be made. And not just from small spirits brands, either. One recent post from JohnnyDrinks, uploaded to TikTok after my interviews with the Rondis, is a video in partnership with a primetime show on the Food Network.

Father and Son, Having Fun

Whatever the revenue the Rondis are earning off JohnnyDrinks, it’s probably not transformative. (Also, for what it’s worth, if their videos are any indication, they appear to be a family of considerable means anyway.) But it’s not nothing, either. In our first interview, I ask the Rondis how they divvy up the spoils of JohnnyDrinks’ budding celebrity, and Senior quickly jumps in.

“That’s interesting you ask,” he says, with that pitch-perfect kayfabe irritation that, among the North Jersey baby boomers I grew up around, at least, tends to be thin cover for deep fondness. Junior is quick to counter: “He said, ‘Look, you take all the money, and I’ll take all the liquor.’ So he takes all the bottles and I take the dollar revenue. I didn’t set that standard, he did!” In the background, I can hear Senior laughing.

This, I think, is the nexus of the JohnnyDrinks magic. The top-shelf liquor bottles, colorful cocktails, and democratized demonstrations make for compelling content, that’s certain. But after watching dozens of the Rondis’ videos, I realize that it’s the chemistry of father and son, the dynamic of a 20-something striver shadowing his successful father living the good life, that actually makes the account such a fun, aspirational follow for over half a million fans.

And why not? JohnnyDrinks is a window into a halcyon world where the drinks are always strong, Sinatra is forever on the stereo, and family pride is always on display. In Del Frisco’s Double Eagle terms: Cocktail recipes are the steak, but it’s the Rondis themselves who provide the sizzle.

The article The Father-Son TikTok Duo Behind the Viral JohnnyDrinks Brand appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/johnnydrinks-profile-tiktok/

[johnboothus]

The Father-Son TikTok Duo Behind the Viral JohnnyDrinks Brand

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

On a chilly Friday in late February 2020, John Rondi and his son, John Rondi Jr., made Manhattans at a stone countertop in their kitchen, then headed to dinner in Manhattan proper, a 30-minute drive from their suburban home in northern New Jersey. Their destination: Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Midtown, a mid-tier favorite of bridge-and-tunnel theatergoers and corporate seafood-tower types alike, where the big reds are enormous and the bone-in ribeyes go for $77.

John Sr. went to Del Frisco’s often — or at least he did before the pandemic hit. But that night, with Junior by his side and the pre-Covid steakhouse’s dinner service abuzz, something happened. Something profound. Something that would send his relationship with his son, and indeed his whole life, in an unexpected new direction. Feb. 21, 2020, you see, was the night TikTok’s beloved booze-slinger JohnnyDrinks was born.

“That was also the last time we went to Del Frisco’s in the city,” Senior told me in a recent interview. “I guess [that date] is even more profound now.”

‘Make me a drink’

A common misconception about TikTok is that it’s strictly for nimble teens to share choreographed dances, goofy inside-joke reaction videos, and other various cultural ephemera deemed interesting by the world’s always-online youngest generation. But one of the vibrant non-teen niches on the popular app — which dominates app stores’ rankings with over 2 billion downloads and 850 million monthly users — is the one about drinks appreciation, loosely organized around hashtags like #WineTok (23.9 million aggregate views as of writing), #brewing (10.2 million), and #cocktail (1.3 billion).

[Check out VinePair’s report on TikTok’s age-gating challenges and potential for future alcohol advertising, right here.]

Plenty of those videos are the standard college-kid fare — wizard staffs, pouring challenges, and so forth. But there’s educational drinks content on the platform, too. “I’ve seen a master [distiller] go and talk about … the stories behind the alcohol, behind how it’s made,” says Molly McGlew, an independent social media strategist who personally spends about five hours a day on TikTok and advises consulting clients on their approach to the platform. Some of that informational drinks content — a few hundred videos’ worth, at least — is coming from the well-appointed house in North Jersey that the Rondis call home. Last February, before heading out to what would soon be their final Del Frisco’s visit before the coronavirus pandemic hit, John Jr. (I’ll call them Junior and Senior throughout the rest of this piece for clarity’s sake) walked into the kitchen to find his father fixing himself a cocktail. He took out his phone.

“My son says to me, ‘make me a drink,’ so I said ‘OK, I’m gonna make you a Manhattan,’” recalls Senior, 55, who has worked as a mortgage professional for 30 years. “As he’s videoing me, I’m not thinking anything of it.” Using a handheld butane torch, he fired up a smoking plank, eyeballed some Bulleit bourbon, bitters, and sweet vermouth into a mixing glass, then poured the concoction over a hand-chiseled ice cube into a stemless wine glass. Junior, 25, videoed this straightforward exercise in home bartending, added some basic captions on TikTok (“1. Smoke da glass”), and set the whole thing to Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

Content created, he posted the video to a new social media platform his 18 year-old sister had told him about: TikTok. “That was the first video I posted. I never really expected to want to post TikToks,” Junior recalls. Drinks drank, and video live on Junior’s @JohnRondi account, the Johns Rondi struck out for a big group dinner at their Manhattan steakhouse of choice.

@johnrondi

How to: Make a Manhattan #fyp #fypchallenge #manhattan #manhattanbridge #drinks #bartender #xyzbca #xyz

♬ You Make Me Feel So Young – Frank Sinatra

At some point during the Del Frisco’s repast, Junior checked his phone. “We’re sitting at dinner, and my son goes, ‘You know the video of you making the drink? It’s got over a million views,’” recalls Senior. Later that night, it was at 2 million. By the following morning, it was at 3 million, then 5. The father-son pair’s first outing on the video platform had gone bona fide viral on the hottest social media platform in the world. “That was my introduction to TikTok,” says Senior, laughing. “My son, with his very entrepreneurial mind, says ‘we got to do this again.’”

The Alcohol Everymen of North Jersey

As the pandemic took hold, the Rondis found themselves locked down at home like the rest of the world. So they began to spend more time filming content for their new TikTok handle. Scrolling through these early videos, you can watch the father-son pair shape the JohnnyDrinks routine in real time. The dialogue, drinks, and music change, but the plot is a set piece that remains more or less standard, and it goes like this:

Junior, holding the camera, wanders up to Senior, who’s either already making a drink at the family’s home bar counter, or is quickly convinced to take up a mixing tin;

Senior names the drink he’ll be making, then makes it, while Junior films the process and provides captions to identify the ingredients;

Drink mixed, Senior toasts the camera, sometimes clinking glasses with his son.

You get the idea. The videos are straightforward and slightly corny, straddling lo-fi and high-cringe in the style of so much successful TikTok content. The lack of depth makes the videos ideal for the platform, but that’s not to say JohnnyDrinks’ content (which has, at press time, racked up over 11 million likes across a couple hundred videos) is without substance. The pair plow through the modern mixology canon with a clunky, endearing earnestness, conduct Q/A segments with their fans, and do education sessions where Senior schools Junior on, say, what makes a stout a stout. There’s also the occasional non-alcoholic smoothie recipe video in there, for anyone following a drinks account who doesn’t drink. “Our audience is pretty broad,” says Senior.

Like all successful creators, the two have developed little gags and callbacks that function like Easter eggs for their 685,000 followers. Senior clinks his ring against pretty much every liquor bottle he picks up on camera (this is “tap the bottle,” in JohnnyDrinks parlance.) Sinatra’s light baritone scores many of the clips, giving them a patina of anachronistic Italianate lounge swank.

And then, of course, there’s “smoke da glass.” The ur-caption in the JohnnyDrinks oeuvre is maybe the purest distillation of the brand the Rondis are building, a performance that straddles the line between amateurism and expertise, between superficial consumption and actual craft. “You do things like that first, to catch someone’s attention,” says Senior, who is a longtime admirer of the technique and the spectacle it creates. After seeing a mixologist smoke a stemmed cocktail glass many years ago, he decided he would do likewise. “I said then, ‘I’m making that mine.’”

To state the obvious: Smoking cocktails is in no way proprietary to JohnnyDrinks. But while glass-smoking might be old news to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of modern mixology, it’s a novel visual for a TikTok audience that’s new to cocktails — that is, the exact sorts of viewers that the Rondis’ accessible, undaunting drinks content resonates with so well.

Plus, the theatrical flourish can also help paper over imperfections in a drink, which makes it an even better crucible by which to understand JohnnyDrinks’ everyman appeal. “We’re not experts,” says Junior. Watch even a couple of the Rondis’ videos, and that quickly becomes apparent. While Senior is clearly a knowledgeable, experienced, and curious drinking enthusiast — “I’m a savvy guy, in that there are not many liquors I haven’t tried,” he says — he is no trained professional. Ice cubes may splash, cocktails may wind up in stemless wine glasses. “You’d be able to catch on pretty quickly that we’re not as experienced” as actual bartenders, says Junior.

Senior, from whom most of the on-camera booze info flows, is quick to agree. But what the scrappy, self-taught amateur lacks in professional flourish, he makes up for with the unmistakable delight of a genuine home entertainer. He’s accessible, engrossing — even a bit adorable.

“There’s a side of me that’s creative, and I do things like smoking the glass, rimming the glass, and putting some other things [in a drink] to give it some sort of appealing, artistic look,” Senior says. “I think that comes natural to me because I like hosting.”

Building a Brand, and a Business

If Senior is the talent of JohnnyDrinks, Junior is the talent manager, looking for angles behind the scenes. The son, like his father, is obviously possessed of a considerable business acumen. But their paths diverge from there. Senior’s career traces a corporate trajectory; Junior’s professional perspective, by contrast, has been forged in the fires of online entrepreneurship.

At 25, Junior has grown up in a media ecosystem criss-crossed with blurry lines between influencer and agency, amateur and professional, personal and public. Much has been made about the “influencer economy” and the “creator class,” and Junior is clearly well versed in both. To wit, JohnnyDrinks isn’t his only hustle, he also operates an online marketplace app, STUNITED, where students at schools across the country can engage in what he calls “academically bartering.” (A disapproving professor might call it “students paying other students to do their homework”; tomato, tomato.) The app is rated well by 100-plus reviewers on the Apple App Store and recently hit Google Play.

“He’s a true entrepreneur, from high school through college,” says Senior proudly.

As we talk, a comparison to another very online, very Jersey hustler who used booze-based social media as a springboard to broader entrepreneurial aspirations comes to mind. I ask Junior: Is JohnnyDrinks a new-age version of the YouTube channel that Gary Vaynerchuk used to catapult himself from North Jersey wine salesman into A-list hustler?

“He was the person that really started personal branding and branching out from what you’re doing” into other enterprises, says the younger Rondi. “I don’t take everything he says as ‘word,’ the way I think a lot of entrepreneurs do. That being said, if I met him, I would be like, ‘You’re the absolute man.’”

No surprise, then, that when the conversation turns to JohnnyDrinks’ business opportunities, Junior slips easily into the Gary Vee vernacular that so many Fiverr strivers have made their own. He speaks about the “tailwind” the Rondis’ account enjoyed in its early days, when TikTok seemed to be “optimizing” cocktail and cigar content in what Junior hypothesizes was a bid to boost credibility among non-teen users. He muses about the value of “eyeballs” on TikTok compared to older platforms like Snapchat and YouTube (for now, “TikTok is probably the least valuable … but it’s not going to stay that way.”) As early adopters on TikTok, says Junior, “we have a unique opportunity to scale and be different.”

What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means selling merch. “Smoking da glass” makes for compelling visuals on TikTok, but it also doubles as a catchy, marketable slogan. On their website, Junior sells T-shirts emblazoned with the motto, plus smoking boards for fans who want to emulate Senior’s charring routine at home. They also sell the “Johnny Drinks Drinks Guide,” a $15 PDF (currently on sale for $9.75) that promises to “walk you through the process” of making cocktails seen on the pair’s TikTok channel.

How many have they sold? “I would say between 750 and 1,000,” says Junior. For those of you keeping score, that would be at least $7,300 in pre-tax revenue — most of which is pure profit, because as countless LinkedIn entrepreneurs and mindset bloggers will tell you, e-books are an extremely low-overhead, high-return way to generate passive income.

Another way to earn cash is sponsored content with alcohol brands, which are currently banned from advertising on the platform. JohnnyDrinks has partnered with Savage & Cooke, a boutique distillery in California’s Bay Area owned by winemaker/entrepreneur Dave Pinney (of The Prisoner/Orin Swift Cellars fame) on an exclusive blend of Burning Chair bourbon. The first barrel sold out, marking the beginning of what Junior hopes will be “a long-lasting, synergistic relationship.”

That quote comes from the bourbon’s description on Country Wine & Spirits, a San Diego liquor store that shares an investor with the tequila brand SWOL. “They asked us to try it out, and it’s definitely really good tequila,” said Junior. “So what we do is we’ll push it.” A recent video shows Senior touting SWOL as his “favorite sipping tequila” alongside offerings from Don Julio, Dos Artes, and Clase Azul.

In a follow-up to my hour-long interview with the Rondis, Junior clarifies that JohnnyDrinks takes a cut of sales on both the bourbon and tequila as part of deals that are brokered by a marketing firm he declines to name. There’s also Gothic Gin, a ubiquitous-on-TikTok clear liquor that has racked up millions of views on the platform thanks to popular drinks creators like JohnnyDrinks. “They reached out to us, we loved their gin, so we formed an agreement,” he says. “That is a promotion.” He declines to ballpark the revenue the Rondis earn through these deals, telling me he’s worried other brands might try to lowball them on future deals.

@johnrondi

Stuck inside on a snow day? MAKE A JOHNNY HOT COCOA! ☕️ ? #johnnydrinks #cocktails #bailey #hotcocoa #snowday #fyp #xyz #drinks

♬ Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Dean Martin

TikTok’s community guidelines don’t explicitly bar creators from promoting alcoholic beverages (only selling and trading them), but the Federal Trade Commission’s rules about influencer endorsements require clear disclosures if material relationships — i.e., business deals — exist between the promoter and the promoted. Creators often do this using hashtags like #sponsored or #ad. I wasn’t able to find such disclosures on a spot-check review of nine recent JohnnyDrinks videos that feature the brands mentioned above.

I ask Junior if he knows about the FTC guidelines, or if he’s looked into whether the account’s videos might be in violation of them. He tells me he’s never heard of the guidelines. Then he says yes, sometimes he uses the #ad tag, but usually makes those videos private after they’ve been published for awhile because they don’t perform as well as the duo’s organic content. (One such video that remains visible on the account, a partnership with Empress Gin, appears to have done pretty well, racking up strong metrics compared to other JohnnyDrinks posts despite the #ad and #sponsored tags in its caption.) “You don’t need to know about the money I’m making,” says Junior. “I don’t want anybody else getting in trouble.”

Neither Country Wine & Spirits, Gothic Gin, nor SWOL Tequila responded to VinePair’s requests to comment for this story. Lauren Blanchard, the general manager of Savage & Cooke, told me that the distillery has an informal relationship with JohnnyDrinks and has compensated the Rondis with a “small marketing fee” for their efforts to sell their branded barrels. “We are looking forward to expanding the way that we work together [with the Rondis] this year and in the years to come,” she said.

To be clear, JohnnyDrinks is hardly the only TikTok creator doing promotions that appear to skirt the FTC’s regulatory requirements. This sort of breakage, viewed charitably, is simply the inevitable byproduct of what McGlew, the social strategist, calls the young platform’s relatively “wild West” nature. Entrepreneurial creators rapidly become popular and begin cashing in before getting educated. (This is a familiar story on every emerging platform, TikTok very much included.) But they do get educated, because there’s money to be made. And not just from small spirits brands, either. One recent post from JohnnyDrinks, uploaded to TikTok after my interviews with the Rondis, is a video in partnership with a primetime show on the Food Network.

Father and Son, Having Fun

Whatever the revenue the Rondis are earning off JohnnyDrinks, it’s probably not transformative. (Also, for what it’s worth, if their videos are any indication, they appear to be a family of considerable means anyway.) But it’s not nothing, either. In our first interview, I ask the Rondis how they divvy up the spoils of JohnnyDrinks’ budding celebrity, and Senior quickly jumps in.

“That’s interesting you ask,” he says, with that pitch-perfect kayfabe irritation that, among the North Jersey baby boomers I grew up around, at least, tends to be thin cover for deep fondness. Junior is quick to counter: “He said, ‘Look, you take all the money, and I’ll take all the liquor.’ So he takes all the bottles and I take the dollar revenue. I didn’t set that standard, he did!” In the background, I can hear Senior laughing.

This, I think, is the nexus of the JohnnyDrinks magic. The top-shelf liquor bottles, colorful cocktails, and democratized demonstrations make for compelling content, that’s certain. But after watching dozens of the Rondis’ videos, I realize that it’s the chemistry of father and son, the dynamic of a 20-something striver shadowing his successful father living the good life, that actually makes the account such a fun, aspirational follow for over half a million fans.

And why not? JohnnyDrinks is a window into a halcyon world where the drinks are always strong, Sinatra is forever on the stereo, and family pride is always on display. In Del Frisco’s Double Eagle terms: Cocktail recipes are the steak, but it’s the Rondis themselves who provide the sizzle.

The article The Father-Son TikTok Duo Behind the Viral JohnnyDrinks Brand appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/johnnydrinks-profile-tiktok/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-father-son-tiktok-duo-behind-the-viral-johnnydrinks-brand