#i change my signature so much throughout these you guys. at least the art style was somewhat consistent

[summerroseart]

This one's more recent, 2021 I believe? I'm pretty sure it was one of the last Miraculous Ladybug drawings I did, back when I was an artist for the official LadyBlog team on Amino. :)

#i don't remember this girl's name I'm so sorry. it's the characters from the Shanghai special i know that much. #i change my signature so much throughout these you guys. at least the art style was somewhat consistent #repostober #old art october #day 2 #my art #miraculous ladybug #Miraculous World: Shanghai special (or whatever it was called.) #Fei Wu #Wu Shifu #i looked it up i really could not remember #your girl still can't draw backgrounds #how did i manage to get cast shadows in the hazy air but not on the ground? (again probably only spent like 2 days on this idk.)

[aion-rsa]

Rick and Morty Season 5 Episode 7 Review: Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion

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This RICK AND MORTY review contains spoilers.

Rick and Morty Season 5 Episode 7

If there’s one thing characterizes season five of Rick and Morty, it’s that everything happens so much, all the time. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly how this makes it different from prior seasons. After all, early in the series’ life, co-creator Justin Roiland said the goal with a Rick and Morty plot was to take a premise another show would’ve made a whole episode out of and instead just make that the first act, using the remaining acts to pile insanity atop insanity. This is a series with a setting of infinite universes and a protagonist who’s basically a god, so the scope of every episode should reflect that by going all out.

It’s therefore tough to say why “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion” and all the other breakneck-paced, amped up episodes of season five feel so overwhelming and different compared to what we got from Rick and Morty past. I might need to rewatch the whole series to definitively figure out what precisely is going on here, but I’ll take a general stab at it. The plots of older episodes probably worked for two core reasons: one, strong characterization kept everything grounded and, two, no matter how much crazy shit an episode piled on, it still felt like an extension of the initial, core premise.

Take, for example, season three’s premiere episode, “The Rickshank Redemption,” which is one of the first episodes I can remember stunning me with just how stuffed with… stuff it was. In this episode, we learn that, since Rick’s incarceration at the end of the previous season, the Galactic Federation has colonized Earth. We then see scenes from inside Rick’s mind, we get Rick doing a whole lot of body-swapping, and we witness the fallout of Rick singlehandedly destroying the Galactic Federation’s economy.

It’s a lot (this is also the infamous Szechuan Sauce episode), but it manages to stay coherent and focused because the drive of the episode throughout is Rick escaping and upending the Galactic Federation, thereby restoring order. Furthermore, there are good, grounding character moments between Rick, Summer, and Morty as well as a surprising change in the family dynamic at the end when Beth announces she’s leaving Jerry. The show’s setting, too, feels solidly characterized as the episode builds upon previous plot elements—the Citadel of Ricks, the Cronenberg universe, and Birdperson—in fun and inventive ways.

Now, take “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion,” which is ostensibly a Voltron homage episode, but which, in the end, actually has precious little in the way of giant robot vs. monster battles. Yes, to an extent, the episode is a deliberate bait and switch; it sets you up for a giant robot homage, but reveals itself instead to be a stealth gangster homage (Goodfellas, mostly, though there’s some Scarface in there, and also a reference to The Aviator, just for kicks). This is one of co-creator Dan Harmon’s signature moves, combining two drastically different genres together. He most notably first showcased it in the season two Community episode, “Critical Film Studies,” which managed to be both a dual homage to Pulp Fiction and My Dinner with Andre, and its own interesting Frankenstein’s monster besides that. The problem with “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion” is that, as more bizarre plot turns get thrown in, it doesn’t feel like a giant robot episode or a gangster episode; it’s just a bunch of crazy crap.

Read more

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Has Rick and Morty Lost the Zeitgeist?

By Joe Matar

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There are two big plot developments that make it feel like random junk is just happening. My least favorite is the sudden introduction of anime characters who make funny anime faces and noises. This series has never shown much respect to the fourth wall, but there’s something very lazy and lame about these goofy characters drawn in a different art style that rubs me the wrong way. It feels sort of Family Guy-esque in the way that series is so centered around inane asides and cutaways that the plot is just a formality. These anime characters, too, signal that this storyline is just a lot of silly fluff.

Then there’s the return of the giant incest baby from “Rickdependence Spray.” I know I just said “The Rickshank Redemption” was good because of how it brought back old plot elements, but that’s because it built upon them. The Citadel of Ricks, for example, returned in that episode as an antagonism that the characters had to deal with. Comparatively, in this episode, it feels like they just mention the giant incest baby a lot so that it can turn up as a giant incest baby ex machina at the end. When taken with everything else already going on in this episode, the giant incest baby is just another non-sequitur.

As far as characterization goes, this is another episode that, like “Mortyplicity,” flirts with the concept of family being the most important thing, but, also like that episode, it does so seemingly just to point and laugh at the idea. It’s hard to take the family stuff seriously (and I don’t think we’re expected to) when the characters abruptly reconcile immediately after plotting to murder one another (again, compare this with Jerry and Beth’s separation, which took a whole season to resolve).  There’s potentially interesting character stuff at the center here, with Morty and Summer vying for Rick’s affection, but not enough time is spent on it to lend it any emotional weight. Also, all emotion kind of goes out the window when the climax of your episode is a giant incest baby named Naruto slaughtering anime people.

“Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion” isn’t the worst episode of season five, but it’s just another episode of season five. I feel I should note that the overstuffed zaniness of these episodes is not entirely exclusive to this season. This brand of Rick and Morty has always been lurking in the series’ DNA and I’ve found portents of the problems I have with these episodes rearing their heads in my reviews as early as season two’s “Get Schwifty.” The core difference here is that those older episodes were at least still consistently funny, while season five episodes only get a few chuckles out of me per. “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion” unfortunately continues that trend.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Also, Dan Harmon already did a much better Goodfellas homage in the first season of Community.

The post Rick and Morty Season 5 Episode 7 Review: Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[yeoldontknow]

The Body Through Time

Author: @yeoldontknow​ Creative Content Contributor: @chillingkoo​ who made this utterly stunning banner for my birthday because she is an angel ;~; Pairing: Namjoon x Reader (oc; female) Summary: When you’re offered a job as the graduate assistant for the Art History department at Bangtan University, it is a requirement for the department to sign their approval on the paperwork. You have one signature left and, unfortunately, he doesn’t want to see you. At all. Rating: NC-17 Warning: explicit sex; explicit language; angst Word Count: 10,947 (end me)

Two hours. That’s how long you’ve been standing outside the building, staring at the glass doors as your warped reflection slides in and out of view.

Two hours spent in the warm sunshine, a slight sunburn starting to form on the tip of your nose.

Two hours reminding yourself that this is for your career. Reminding yourself that this choice is not about him, it was never about him. That even if he didn’t work here, you’d still pick this university because it’s the best and it’s the only place your career will thrive.

Two hours telling yourself you’re strong enough to see his face. That one look at his full lips and warm eyes won’t send your knees to the floor, collapsing beneath the weight of your desire, not like it used to.

Not anymore.

Pushing open the door to the lecture hall, immediately your senses are flooded with the sound of his voice. The room is dim, lights low making the amphitheatre look almost cinematic with pictures of sculptures on the large screen. Pressing yourself against the wall, you slide deeper into the room behind the back row of seats and under the cover of shadows from the balcony above. You hope he doesn’t get distracted by the disturbance. You hope he doesn’t see you. Not yet, at least.

From where you’re standing, the students look captivated - it’s impossible not to be when he’s teaching, talking wildly and quickly about the thing he’s most passionate about. Namjoon walks from side to side on the stage, right hand clutching the remote as he gesticulates his way through his lecture. For him, you know this feels almost like a sermon, feels that classical art and sculpture are something so pure and tangible and real he feels closest to holiness when looking at or discussing it. The students in the room feel it too. No one is laid back in their seats, no one’s attention meanders discretely through the internet on their open laptops. They all find him as riveting as you.

You thought you’d be immune to this, immune to him, after all this time, but with just one look at the gleam in his eyes and the way his dimples emerge every time he smiles, you’re back to being completely under his spell. When you look at him, you’re suddenly young again. You’re young and twitterpated, and no matter how many years you spend away from him your body will always recognize him as yours.

With one deep inhale, you close your eyes and try to focus. You want to hear him now, not think about him. You want to hear him because this was what he was always best at: giving art to the world.

‘….so for years we thought this was done by Pietro,’ he says excitedly, his voice filtering through speakers throughout the large room, ‘but only recently have we discovered that it was done by Bernini. It’s clear that this is a reference to yet another model from antiquity - which, really, says a lot about his patrons.’

A hand is raised somewhere in the room, though you can’t see it. He points to the person with a wide smile on his face, glad for the engagement.

‘Weren’t his patrons the Borghese?’ a male voice asks, though he sounds confident in his assumptions.

‘Right, yes, most famously they were!’ Namjoon exclaims, nodding and smiling in his encouragement. ‘At this time, the typical patrons would be Cardinals who collect from both ancient masters and contemporary artists, so contemporary Roman art had to stand up to the ancients. In a standard collection, the movement from one artist to the next had to appear seamless.’

On the screen, a picture of Cardinal Scipione Borghese appears. He allows the class to take the picture in, scanning the room with a placid, patient expression, before going back to the original sculpture.

‘Take a look at this again, knowing all that,’ he says, sitting on a table towards the side of the lecture stage. ‘And again, I’m doing all of us a disservice by showing you sculpture in a 2D medium. How fucking stupid, right?’

Laughter filters throughout the room, and he laughs with them, the casual energy making the lecture feel more like several hours with a friend than a class. It’s been years since you’ve seen him like this, all smiles and bright eyes behind the thick frame of his glasses. It’s been years since you’ve heard his voice like this, so full of kindness and energy and joy. You know it was you who made him into something less than this. You know it was you who turned him into a shadow, and now, seeing him look so whole and so happy you almost want to turn around and leave, never to look back.

But you know you can’t.

‘The anatomy is wrong,’ a female voice announces, pulling you from your thoughts.

‘Tell me about the anatomy.’

‘The proportions seem to be too,’ she continues, though she sounds hesitant as she puts her thoughts together. ‘….too contemporary.’

‘Well, what’s the math?’ Namjoon questions, jumping off the table. ‘Take 7.5 of your head and that should be the correct size of the model to scale down?’ He stands to his full height and begins to measure in the air. ‘Eight is more typical of antiquity, four is for an infant…I’m about 6, so that puts me somewhere between an infant and an adult.’ Again, laughter rings throughout the room and you cannot help the smile that spreads across your face. ‘So already we’re noticing there’s a shift in his mathematical context. Yeah, Dinah?’

‘I just don’t think a sculpture from antiquity would have this much movement,’ a girl, presumably Dinah, says with a somewhat authoritative tone. ‘Hellenistic sculpture doesn’t have this kind of dynamic action.’

‘Yes!’ Namjoon exclaims, clapping his hands together. ‘Exactly.’

‘Wasn’t there a moment during this time when sculpted motion became serpentine? Like…columns or pillars?’ another male voice questions from somewhere in the room.

Immediately, Namjoon springs to action, walking across the stage and pointing in the direction of the voice. ‘Thank you! I’m so glad you brought that up because the concept of serpentine was typically seen on works by a guy named Giambologna, a name we often forget when bringing up the great sculptors of Rome.’

The screen changes to a picture of another sculpture, one you recognize to be Samson Slaying a Philistine. Namjoon stands in front of it, arms spread wide like he’s about to embrace his lover and looking over his shoulder at the class. He’s an uncontainable force, one bursting with energy and light and love, and it pains you a little too much to see him this way.

It pains you to see him looking exactly the way you choose to remember him. It pains you to see him being himself, the Namjoon from before you brought everything to an end.

It hurts you, and so you turn to leave until the lecture is over.

‘But look at this. Look at these side by side. It’s clear that Bernini is looking at him, creating almost column-like…’

His voice fades away, the shutting of the door pulling you from him the way the night gradually pulls you from the sun.

You’re only brave enough to go back when the last person has left the room, the steady stream of students giving way to one final straggler with their pen between their teeth and their phone to their ear. For a few minutes, you wait to see if more students will follow and when they don’t, when even Namjoon doesn’t make his exit, you have to steel yourself some courage to push the door open again with a shaking inhale of breath.

When you enter this time, it takes all your willpower to walk down to the stage without tumbling or showing how terribly anxious you are, though you’re sure your shaking knees give you away. He’s shutting down his laptop and putting his notes back together with a small smile, filing them away in a brown messenger bag you recognize to be the one you got him for his birthday. You know the inside is monogrammed with his initials. You know there’s a coffee stain on the bottom side of the leather, but you don’t know why he’s still using it after all this time.

And when you reach him, when you find yourself standing on the lecture stage with only a wide, wooden table to separate you, you feel as though you are the tide being pulled towards its moon. At such close proximity, you see him clearly now, see how he hasn’t really changed. His thick hair is exactly as you remember it, styled the same way and even the same shade of honey brown he chose when he decided to leave the pink from undergrad behind. His skin is still soft, a warm glow radiating from underneath, and the wrinkles around his eyes are still as endearing as the day you met him.

At such close proximity, it’s easy to see him as your Namjoon. At such close proximity, it’s easy to pretend absolutely nothing has changed.

‘Hi.’

Your words are more breathless and awestruck than you’d have liked, but there’s no shake or tremble to your voice, and you think that’s good enough for such a rough, difficult start.

Looking up at the sound, his movements falter, all actions coming to an abrupt halt as the good, whole man you saw not thirty minutes previous crumbles away to leave you with the shell that’s burned in your memory.

Years ago, you could read him like a book. Years ago, every action and reaction of his mind, body, and soul was a scripture only you could translate but now, now he keeps his thoughts hidden away and you feel as though you’ve been left out in the cold.

He says nothing and returns to packing up his things.

Shifting awkwardly on your feet, you press your folder a little closer to your chest and clear your throat to speak up. ‘I always loved hearing you talk about Bernini. The man who made Rome…or the Rome that made the man.’

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks coolly, not bothering to look at you.

The emptiness and bitterness in his voice makes you feel scorned, even though you know you deserve it, and you can’t help but feel shafted out of a conversation you’ve spent years imagining.

‘Is that all you can say after three years?’ you ask, dejection lacing its way through your tone against your wishes.

Slapping his things against the table, he regards you now, cold and angry. ‘Considering we’re at my job, yeah, that’s all I have to say.’

His words are biting and they hurt you, hurt you in ways you didn’t think you could be hurt anymore, and you suddenly find it very hard to look at him.

‘Wow,’ you whisper, scanning the large room in an effort to keep your emotions from spilling onto your face. ‘Alright, well look I -’

‘Just tell me what you want.’

‘I need your signature,’ you announce in a rush, the words tumbling from your lips in a single breath.

‘My signature?’ he repeats, confused.

‘I’m going to be the new department assistant. I need all the signatures from the team…for approval.’

At this, he raises his eyebrows and you can see his mind racing with hundreds of thoughts. There’s a lot of information packed into that sentence, things about you that he never thought he’d be removed from. Things about your life and your education, things about you settling on a career and, most importantly, a statement that you are coming to work with him.

‘So you got your masters?’

It seems odd that he would latch onto this piece of information, and not the one you know is perhaps most upsetting both to him and to you. But he chooses this and, even though you try to stop it, a small pool of hope rises in your chest and makes you feel warm.

‘Finishing it, yeah,’ you explain, letting your voice relax into the conversation. ‘I’m trying to transfer over for the dissertation credit to work at the same time.’

‘Weren’t you in France, figuring out your creative sense?’

There it is, you think, the bitterness you were waiting for. You gave him a sentence filled with implication and he’s thrown one right back at you, except his is personal. He’s giving you the reason you left, giving you the distance, both physical and emotional, and he’s telling you how much it hurt.

He’s also, very clearly, though it takes you a second to realize it, telling you he knows you’re here for him and he doesn’t want you.

Releasing a small sigh, you fix him with what you hope is a comforting expression and attempt to explain yourself, even though the words come out weak. ‘This isn’t about you.’

‘Seems like it is,’ he says, putting one hand on his hip. Stern and cold, face and eyes empty of all the things that made him a comfort, you find him to be calculating in a way you didn’t know he could be.

He looks stern and cold, but he still looks beautiful and powerful, and you spend several seconds looking at the way his hand rests on his hip, remembering how it felt in yours. You remember holding that hand and kissing the fingers, and you remember the way that hand held you.

Shaking your head, you bring yourself back to reality and think that the best thing, for both you and him, is to end this particular conversation so you can both move on, this time in a different way.

This time, possibly together.

‘Look I just need you to sign the paper.’

Dropping his bag with a huff, he sticks out his hand and looks at his outstretched palm rather than your face. ‘Let me see it.’

For a moment, your eyes go wide, and you aren’t sure how long you stare at him like this. Eventually, he shakes his fingers to hurry you up and you scramble to pull the paper from your folder.

‘I thought you’d have more to say,’ you say, handing it to him quickly. ‘More of a fight or…something, I don’t know.’

Adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, he reads over the page, going down the list of signatures from his colleagues until he sees that he’s the last signature you need. He keeps his expression neutral, but you can see the way his eyes scan the page twice before going back to the blank line for his name, and you count all the minute changes in his expression as all of this settles over him.

He’s the last signature. You’ve been to this campus many times without him knowing. You’ve met his colleagues and talked to them, you’ve interviewed without his knowledge and you’ve walked through his faculty lounge, shaken hands with people he knows and considers part of his personal life. They’ve all met you, seen you, touched you in some way, and he’s the last to know.

A moment of hurt flashes behind his eyes before he tucks it away, neatly and quickly, and regards you with a smile that makes your heart stop. Just like it always does.

‘I’m not signing this.’

All at once, everything collapses.

‘What?’ you exclaim loudly, your voice echoing throughout the room. It startles you, and as you look around to make sure you haven’t alerted anyone passing by, you adjust your shoulders and lower your voice. ‘Why?’

‘Do you think you can commit to this?’ he asks, handing the paper back to you.

Scowling at him, you take the paper quickly from his grasp and shove it back in your folder. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

He narrows his eyes at you over his glasses before he speaks, and you hate that it makes your heart sink with attraction.

‘You realize this department is first in the world for art history, right?’ he asks, gesturing to the lecture hall and, presumably, the entire university.

‘Why do you think I’m standing here?’ you reply, slightly irritated.

‘I’m department head,’ he says simply, returning to packing up his things and zipping his bag closed. ‘I’m not just going to let you walk into this university, into my team, and then skip out when you think it isn’t right or you get scared.’

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he walks around the table and you almost think he’s going to pause in front of you, close the distance and the physical separation but instead, he passes by and heads to the stairs at the edge of the stage, making to leave without turning back.

Narrowing your eyes, you follow after him.

‘I told you this wasn’t about you. This is my job -’

‘Yes, and now it’s my job on the line too.’ He spins to face you, every line on his face making him look desperate to be far away from you, and it sends you stumbling back a few steps. ‘So no, I’m not signing this paper. Not until you make me believe you are qualified and that you want this.’

‘How the hell do you expect me to do that if you won’t even look at my resume? Or talk to me, for that matter?’

Tipping his head back, revealing the smooth, long line of his neck, he releases a small chuckle before fixing you with a calm, almost empty stare that doesn’t match the cruel tone of his voice.

‘That’s not my problem is it? Figure it out.’

With this, he turns and continues out of the lecture hall leaving you still and motionless while you process his words.

He means to push you away, but now that you’ve seen him you refuse to let him go again. So you follow, the way you should have years ago.

Rushing out onto the campus, you see him walking down a path towards the parking lot and you run to catch up with him.

When you reach his side, he rolls his eyes with a groan and attempts to walk faster but you were always good at this, keeping pace with him. You were always used to his long legs and his speed, and it’s a habit you haven’t ever been able to break.

‘Look, I think we need to be professional about this.’ Willing yourself to stay calm and collected, you adopt your interview voice, your phone voice, and though it feels wrong to use it with him, it makes saying the words a little bit easier. ‘We’re letting our emotions get in the way of everything.’

‘I am being professional about this,’ he says, tone clipped as he continues to walk without looking at you.

Turning a slight corner, you see his car immediately. It’s the same one he’s had for years, the one he saved most of his graduation money for because he wanted it, said it felt like his the minute he saw it, and liked it for the wide back seats and the deep, hunter green colour. You went with him to buy this car. You fucked him in the back seat and got chafe marks on your knees from the leather. You took a roadtrip to a mountain in this car, where he taught you how to snowboard.

He’s kept these things, all of these things, and that makes it harder to separate your Namjoon from the angry one practically willing himself away from you, walking at a speed you aren’t used to.

‘No, you’re not!’ you grind out. ‘You’re withholding a signature just because, I don’t know, our history. We’re adults! We should put this behind us.’

‘I am being professional,’ he repeats, coming to an abrupt halt.

It takes you a second to realize he’s stopped and, seeing he isn’t next to you, you turn and find him pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose as you walk back.

‘I am being professional,’ he finally says once you reach him, ‘because you are forcing me to weigh the option of having to see you everyday.’

His voice comes at you, sharp and bitter, and you find yourself wrapping your arms tightly around your body, guarding yourself from his verbal deluge.

‘I’ll have to come into work and look at you, and pretend everything is fine. I’ll have to come in and greet you like I’ve never met you. I’ll have to look at you and pretend you’re just my colleague, pretend that I never touched you or kissed you, or fucked you.’

Choking out the words like he’s releasing years of hurt, they spill out of him, overflowing like a well, and now that’s he’s started he simply will never be able to regain control. He’s choking out the words and you can only stand in silence as he works his way through the pain.

‘I’ll have to look at you,’ he continues, not breaking eye contact and looking deep into you, lowering his voice until it’s little more than the vibration of danger your remember so well, ‘and act like I don’t know how you sound when you moan my name or how beautiful you look when you come. I’ll have to look at you and remember everything you put me through. You working for this department means I have to rely on you, again, and the last time I did that you broke me. So excuse me for not jumping back into that position because this time it’s my job I’ll be risking, and not just my fucking heart.’

A darkness spreads itself over the campus and the parking lot, a cloud coming to cover the sun and bringing with it a grey shadow to this new, hollow world you find yourself in. A darkness spreads itself over your heart as you realize, now more than ever before, that you destroyed him.

You ruined the man you loved most in the world. You ruined him so badly, the only person he knows how to be is the one that belonged to you. You ruined him in a way that forces him to wear pieces of his old self to feel whole, even if it means he doesn’t feel right.

And so it hits you. It hits you and it hurts, and you find yourself shattering.

‘I thought you moved on…’ you whisper.

‘Do you really think I could?’ he bites out, surprise mixing with his accusatory glare. ‘You fucking left! You just walked away without any real explanation!’

‘I left for you!’ you hiss, leaning forward with the force of your words. ‘So you could get ahead without me holding you back.’

Namjoon scoffs, laughing in disbelief. He’s heard this before, heard it and hated it just as much. ‘I know you like to tell yourself that, but can we just be honest and acknowledge that you were scared?’

‘Yes!’ you exclaim, agreeing in earnest. ‘I was terrified. I was terrified that you were going to stop your career because I didn’t know what to do with mine. I was terrified of wrecking everything you worked for -’

Stepping closer, he closes the distance between your bodies and leers above you. His hot breath cascades over your face and it takes all your strength not to press yourself against him, to lean into him like you used to and whisper baby, let’s not fight tonight.

‘You know damn well that’s not what you were scared of,’ he says, voice dangerously low.

‘Excuse me?’

Warm brown eyes search you, moving over your face to read and find what they’re looking for, but eventually settle back on yours looking hopeless and lost. It’s easy to drown in him, when he’s so close to you and you can feel him all over your skin. He’s close and yet still so far, but you’re falling into him, and it’s impossible not to look at his full, thick lips when they’re only inches from yours. It’s impossible not to fall, but he stops himself before he lets you in.

‘Jesus, you just won’t admit it to yourself. You will never admit it,’ he whispers, and then pulls himself from you to walk in a different direction.

Without him so near, the world snaps back into focus, and you find yourself struggling to catch your breath.

‘Now who’s the one leaving, huh?’ you call after him once you find your voice. ‘You’re just going to walk away before we finish this?’

He keeps walking without looking back.

With a huff, you roll your eyes at his childlike petulance, and shout after him again. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the goddamn bar,’ he yells, still walking.

‘So you’re just going to drink this away?’

‘Yes’ he hisses, finally coming to a halt to look at you, though he doesn’t look as angry as he did a second ago. Now, he simply looks tired and frustrated. ‘Are you coming?’

At this he continues onward, not bothering to see if you are following him. You suppose he assumes you are, because he knows you. He knows you well enough to know that you always drink after an argument, not enough to get drunk but enough to soothe the edge to your nerves. He knows you well enough to know that, if he offers you something, anything, you will always say yes.

The walk to the bar is short, though it feels like it lasts for hours. A silence has grown between you, one that feels both tense and, paradoxically, relaxed in its defeat. There’s nothing to say, really, not in public and not while you’re both huffing through the effort of being near one another. Part of you feels winded, like you’ve run for miles just to be next to him and another part of you feels empty, too scared to breathe because, again, you are next to him, and your uneven breath might disturb the air, sending you away from him once more.

When you arrive, you stifle a chuckle at the scenery. It’s clear why he picked this bar, clear why he seems to relax the moment he steps inside. It looks almost exactly like the dive you frequented throughout undergrad, looks familiar and comforting, and you have the passing sensation of slipping through time with him.

Pointing to a booth towards the back, he gestures for you to wait as he heads to the bar. Taking your seat, you watch him and feel a small wave of privilege wash over you. You get to see him now, just like in the lecture hall, moving through his life without knowing that you’re watching. You get to see him be Namjoon, not your Joon, but a new and different one. One that looks like yours, but had to build his life back up without you.

He’s made friends without you, likely went to weddings and baptisms without you. He’s moved house and gone through multiple jobs without you there to encourage him and now, now you get to see the Namjoon who learned to survive without knowing you’d be there to catch him.

He leans against the bar and almost instantly, a female bartender approaches him and reaches over to hug him. They exchange a few friendly pleasantries, a smile spreading across his features, though this particular shade looks to be a bit knowing or comforting as she works through whatever she tells him. You see him hold up one finger and then wink at her, and she laughs easily before turning to make the drinks.

It was always like this with him, women flocking to him and flirting openly, because he was handsome in the human sort of way, and brilliant, and charming. It was always like this but in the aftermath of every interaction his eyes would find yours, lock on you and fill you with warmth, lure you to him with just a smirk on his lips and dimples on his cheeks. It was always like this, but today he doesn’t look at you while he waits. Today, he looks everywhere but your booth, gnawing on his bottom lip in a tell tale sign of anxiety, a nervous habit that never failed to turn you on.

Today, it only makes you feel somber.

He returns moments later, drinks in hand, and slides you a negroni across the table. Hands clutching at it like a cross and letting the glass cool your hot skin, you can’t help but smile at the warm, orange shade.

‘You still know my order,’ you murmur.

‘I better,’ he chuckles, sipping his beer, and you’re surprised he heard you. ‘I ordered for you often enough.’

A moment of quiet passes between you, though it isn’t born of discomfort or forced neutrality, it is merely a silence in which there is too much to say and neither of you are brave enough to start.

‘Look,’ you begin eventually, heaving a heavy sigh. ‘I really did leave because I didn’t want to hold you back.’

Groaning, he places his drink on the table with a satisfying thud as he speaks to you in earnest. ‘Can you please stop saying that?’

‘It’s true,’ you affirm, voice strong and finally confident with your words. ‘When we graduated you had all these acceptance letters to masters programs, and they were waiting for you. You took a year off because I was with you and unsure of my own future, but you were talking everyday about summer lectures. You were buying books, and we were going to museums every weekend, and every time you looked at anything made of marble you looked at it with longing. And then, god, do you remember when we were in Chicago and we went to the Art Institute?’

‘Yeah,’ he chuckles, lowering his gaze to the table. He takes on an almost wistful tone as he speaks, getting lost in the memory. ‘That was a fun day, but I don’t know what it has to do with anything.’

‘I think we’d been there an hour,’ you explain, same wistful tone as he, ‘and, when we stood in front of False Start, a tour group came in.’

Namjoon snorts, and ripples of glee course through your chest. There he is, your body screams, this is your Joon! But you refuse to let yourself get distracted because now if you don’t say the words, you almost certainly never will.

‘The guide was talking about, I don’t even remember,’ you continue, chuckling at the thought. ‘Honestly, I don’t because you and I both knew everything she was saying was wrong.’

You don’t remember much of how it started, his hand in yours the only tangible piece at the beginning, but you remember the rest - you remember how it ended. And it’s the end that makes your voice become serious and infinitely less playful than before.

‘We started listening,’ you press on, brow furrowing as you work through the heartbreak, ‘mainly so we could laugh about it, but as we kept listening she just was more and more wrong, and you couldn’t even take it. You interrupted her and started asking questions you knew she wouldn’t be able to answer. I mean you went deep, and I was trying not to laugh the whole time, but you kept going. You kept going and suddenly the group’s attention was yours, and you led them around the entire room like you were taking them through time and culture, and showing them the goddamn world, and that was the day I knew.’

It’s hard to keep going when he looks at you with such concern in his eyes, a worry that’s both pensive and accusational, and it makes your skin burn with the need to be near him, to clutch at him and find comfort.

‘That you were going to leave me?’ he asks, the question managing to sound both cruel and confused.

You shake your head slowly. ‘No,’ you state, firmly. ‘That you were going to leave me.’

Namjoon stills. ‘What -’

‘Let me finish,’ you say, chest suddenly too tight to hold back your words. ‘Every day that I spent not entirely knowing what to do with my life was a day keeping you from your dream. You didn’t see you, maybe you felt it - but you always felt it, you know? You always felt that way about art, but you didn’t see how you looked when you took eleven strangers around a room in a random city and showed them everything there was to know about the world. I knew I couldn’t keep you from it, and I knew that I wouldn’t, but I also knew that eventually I wouldn’t be enough for you. Even if I stayed with you, even if I did odd jobs and helped you with papers and cooked you dinner when you were too tired to even move, I knew eventually you’d find someone better. You took eleven strangers through a room, and it was the first time you didn’t take me with you.’

It takes him a minute to process all this, his fingers gliding up and down on his glass as he works through your version of the story, comparing it against his own. It takes him a minute but, eventually, he looks at you and you’re surprised to find warmth, a lost sort of warmth, that makes you feel like you’re slowly being pulled out of the dark.

‘You’re forgetting the most important part of that story,’ he says, softly.

His voice is gentle and kind, and it’s not what you expect. It isn’t what you expect and you think you deserve worse, and so you lash out if only at yourself.

‘What?’ you ask, sarcasm betraying your sincerity. ‘That we were so wound up we fucked in an alley by the Navy Pier?’

‘No, although that was important and incredible,’ he says with a slightly sad chuckle before becoming quite serious once more. ‘You’re forgetting that it wasn’t me who interrupted the guide. It was you.’

‘Oh come on, I didn’t -’

‘You did.’ In this, he is firm, unwavering in his truth. ‘I don’t know why you erase yourself from everything like this, but it was you who interrupted her speech about Map. You said “tell me why a map would be considered art.”’

‘Yeah, but then you took over.’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he asserts, pressing his finger into the table. ‘She started talking about the thickness of the paint and you started talking about the references to cartography of antiquity and how map making used to be both an art and a political institution. You traced every inch of history in that single sentence.’

‘Okay,’ you admit, slightly exasperated, ‘but that set you up.’

‘Yes, it set me up,’ he agrees, vigorously nodding his head. ‘Don’t you see? How can you not remember?’

‘I don’t know what you’re asking me to remember, is the problem,’ you state plainly with a defeated shrug of your shoulders.

‘You started the whole thing. You started everything!’ he exclaims, voice steadily rising. ‘You interrupted her first and you were already waiting by every painting I took that group to. You lead me on the journey, I was just the one who did the talking.’

‘I was just walking!’

‘You’re missing the fucking point!’ he hisses. ‘You lead me on that journey. Everywhere I went with that group, you were already there. I could only have done all that because you were with me, my partner. You said that was the day you realized you were going to leave, but, for me, that was the day I realized I wanted to make you my wife.’

‘What?’

‘You were waiting for me to leave and I was…I was waiting to ask you to stay.’

Speaking in the wake of his words, too soon and too quickly, feels like a betrayal, so you don’t. Speaking at all feels like it will kill you, so you remain silent and work yourself through everything he’s said.

You think back to the day at the museum, think about the tour group and the guide’s wide, shocked, and slightly offended eyes as you both took her patrons away from her. You think about her weak protests and the way a woman at the front shushed her while Namjoon was talking. You think about the way you walked around the room and Namjoon followed, and how you didn’t really think much of it, just watched him with an ache in your chest and a throb at your core as he passionately taught his new charges. You think about the future you could have had, were meant to have, had you just stayed.

You think about him proposing and how you wouldn’t even have had to think before saying yes.

You think about a ring on his finger and how it would easily have made you want him more, a possessive sense of desire telling you and the world that he is yours, legally and for all time.

You think about how you belonged to him the moment you met him, sitting next to him in your intro to art class and how you had to share a textbook because the bookstore sold out before he could buy his.

You think about your first date and your last date. You think about your wedding, the one that never existed and the one you planned mentally, without telling him, after your one year anniversary when you were young and hopeful about your future.

You think about how you had him.

You think about how you lost him

You think about how you ruined everything because you were scared, and you were selfish.

And now you see why he wanted you to admit, so badly, that you were wrong.

‘I’m so stupid,’ you whisper, voice impossibly small.

‘In a way, we’re both to blame.’ There’s a sadness to his words, one full of mutual regret, one that tells you he’s lived in this memory just as often as you.

You’re not sure what to say for a long time after, merely taking slow, shallow sips of your drink and humming absentmindedly as you process his words. You’re not even sure how to feel, if you’re honest, and so you latch on to what you know, the only truth you have left.

The only thing you know to be real.

Coughing slightly to raise your voice back to its former strength, you keep your eyes trained on the table as you speak.

‘It hurt me too, you know.’

‘What did?’ he asks gently.

‘Leaving you,’ you state, though for some reason you sound cold and distant. You aren’t sure why, but you think it’s because you’re still roaming around the Chicago Art Institute, looking for a husband that should have been yours and stroking desperately at the phrase what if. ‘It nearly killed me.’

‘And you think it was a cakewalk for me?’

His hard voice brings you back to reality, and your gaze snaps back to him, causing you to feel slightly winded from catching up to the present.  

‘No, but at least you got to see me as the bad guy.’ You hold your drink just a little bit tighter as you keep speaking, grounding yourself and keeping your mind present. ‘I walked away from the only perfect thing I ever had. I thought about you everyday. I ached for you everyday.’

‘I never washed the pillowcase,’ he blurts out in a rush, eyes wide and cheeks tinted with a shy blush.

‘What?’

‘The night before you left…remember?’ he asks, shifting awkwardly in his seat as he works through his own confession. ‘I fucked you after dinner, and you buried your face in the pillow. I thought you were fucked out, but after you left I realized you had been crying. It had your lipstick stains and smelled like you for months; all of your sweat. I woke up next to it like that, in an empty bed, for weeks. I never washed it. It doesn’t smell like you anymore…obviously I don’t use it but…it still has your lipstick.’

And then something in you breaks.

Grabbing your things, you rush quickly out of the bar feeling like the air inside the building had become too thick, too heavy with all your pining and yearning and remembering, and it hurt. It made your chest feel heavy and constricted, made your lungs burn and your hands shake and so you had to run, had to push yourself out into the night where there would be space and distance and room to move throughout the world you broke with your bare hands.

You knew you never stopped loving him, knew with every fibre of your being you could never love another person because you needed him on an almost cosmic level. Your heart was nothing but a cauldron that made a love for him. It spilled out and over from your skin daily, constantly, and you were okay knowing this was your fate, accepted it because you had to be strong for him. But now, now you knew he never stopped loving you either.

He kept the bag, kept the car, kept the damn pillowcase because they were all he had left of you. At the end of the day, after the bed stopped smelling of you and the kitchen no longer held the scent of your overuse of garlic, and your cushion on the couch reverted back to its original shape, all he had left were the objects you left behind because property considered them his. But his heart, his beautiful, kind heart claimed them as ours.

It’s easier to breathe outside, easier to accept all of this in public where you feel small and alone and not like your tether to reality is snapping. It’s easier to breathe, but harder to see. And only now, after several minutes of trying to catch your breath do you realize it’s raining.

‘What happened?’ Namjoon asks, rushing out to stand beside you. Taking a gentle, reassuring hold of your elbow he flashes you a look of worry, concern painting his features the way you remember it - without all the disdain he’s carried with him.

‘I -’ you begin, but aren’t sure what you mean to say. ‘I - it’s raining,’ you finish, weakly although you can’t help but smile as you squint through the rain.

‘I know,’ he laughs, and this time it’s genuine. This time, it’s Joon, and your heart sings.

‘My car is back on campus.’ You don’t know why, but it’s the happiest thing you’ve said all day.

‘My apartment isn’t far from here,’ he says, pointing down the street in some ambiguous direction.

You nod as he takes your folder and places it in his bag, zipping it up and looking at you with a suddenly mischievous smile.

‘Race you?’

And then he’s gone, running away from you with a childish howl of glee as he sprints, footsteps splashing on the wet concrete.

And you chase after him, laughing and shouting, ‘I don’t know where I’m going!’

But it doesn’t matter, because he’s not far from you, not really. You were always good at this, keeping up with him, and you keep pace just fine until you’re in the lobby of his building and he’s laughing.

He’s laughing the way you remember him laughing. He’s looking at you the way he always looked at you, with that special, warm, heated gaze he only ever reserved for you, and you don’t know when he let his guard down. You don’t know when your problems were solved enough for it to be this way, not really because there’s so much left to say. But he pushes you into his elevator with a delight you remember seeing on a much younger version of him, and simply no longer have it in you to question it or complain.

After the elevator passes the fourth floor, you realize you’re shivering. You think it’s partly because your body hasn’t adjusted to the cool air of the building as it dries the water on your hot skin, and, if he asked, you would say it’s this, but you know it’s mostly because you’re trembling with relief. Trembling with relief and joy and desire, because he’s standing next to you and smiling down at you, and you’re close enough to see the water as it glides down his nose and drips onto your dress.

You’re close enough to see the way he bites his lip now, in the slow way, the charming way, when he’s too full of desire to speak so he bites his lip to keep himself in check. Close enough to realize his eyes are lowering down, gliding along your neck and finding your chest, widening as he releases a soft, almost silent gasp. And so you look down and you see too.

Your dress is see through from the rain.

There’s not much you can do, really. You have no change of clothes and, before you can laugh about this or reach out and press your body against his, the elevator dings signaling your destination. You’re about to walk out when you feel him drape his coat over you, and you glance up to see his face.

He’s stoic but calm, that kind of possessive look you remember him getting when your skirt was too short and he caught someone staring. Or, most famously, the time buttons of your blouse came undone and a man asked you for your number when he was sitting right next to you. He seethed and you laughed, but the sex that night kept you from laughing for weeks and instead had you moaning in delight every time you saw the palm of his right hand.

When you push through his apartment door, it takes you a moment to register how very him the space is. The kitchen is large and clean, pots and pans hanging on a ceiling rack, giving way to a large and comfortable living room. The couch, you notice quickly, is different, wider than the one you shared with him and this time, it’s made of tan fabric rather than the black leather you adamantly championed. There’s blankets and books strewn about the room, the coffee table is littered with papers filled with highlighter streaks, and a mug half-full with coffee rests forgotten and abandoned on the corner.

But all of these, all of these very personal things, pale in comparison to the view. The back wall of the living room is one large floor to ceiling window with a view overlooking the city. Beneath his apartment, the lights glow and the streets bustle with life, but inside, the house is silent and Namjoon has left you, gone to some other room as he talks to you but you aren’t listening. You’re pulled to it like a moth to the flame and you think this, this large piece of glass is the single most important thing you’ve ever encountered.

You’re not sure how long you stand there, admiring the view or the glass, or even your reflection as your focus moves in and out from the world to your chest as it struggles to contain your beating heart. It’s mesmerizing, the way the rain drops on the window seem to glow from the city street lights and how your breath, hot and warm, makes the glass fog with every shaking exhale you release.

You aren’t sure how long you stand there, but eventually you see his reflection come into view behind you and, this time, you let yourself sound breathless and awestruck.

‘You always wanted a window like this.’

Lingering behind you, he’s close enough to feel the heat from his chest radiate into your back but enough to feel him, to really feel him and the hard muscle of his broad shoulders you always loved.

‘To see the world -’ he begins, but you cut him off before he can go any further.

‘And not be envious of the clouds.’

His smile, offered to both you and the fond memory, is soft and pensive. ‘Still my favourite thing you ever wrote.’

‘That was seven years ago,’ you tease, turning to face him.

‘And it only got more meaningful with time, baby.’ Tapping the red tip of your nose gently, he offers you a white towel. ‘I brought you this.’

Draping it over your head, he rustles your hair and laughs at the way you happily hum at the feeling. The cloth is warm, luxurious in its softness, but his hands are finally on you, finally caressing you the way you remember. Thousands of memories flood your mind, memories of how he would dry your hair after showering together, memories of how he would watch you brush your hair in the morning only to run his fingers through the strands hours later staying it felt like silk. Mostly, you remember how one, light touch of his hand on your skin could tilt you on your axis, shift your perspective of the world, and fill spaces within you that you didn’t know were empty.

It felt like this before, and it feels like this again.

The warmth in his eyes that emerged outside the bar remains, only now it’s growing dark, blowing out his pupils and turning his expression into one of desire. Languidly, he moves the towel through your hair but slowly, slowly, he releases it from his grip and lets it drop unceremoniously to the floor. It was never enough for him, you know, to feel you with any sort of barrier in the way, and you find it beautiful the way he releases the firm binds of his control.

After years of separation, you’re surprised to find the pull towards his body to be so natural. You know he feels it too. The small, tentative steps towards you, the minute movements of his body that push you against the window come from someplace primal, someplace he’s kept locked away. It’s natural that your body calls to him, and natural that he responds, because always and forever, you have belonged to each other, cut from the same fabric of the universe.

With your back pressed against the window and your breath becoming something hot, something that burns as you take it in, you reach your hands up to stroke his face, grazing the tips of your fingers against his cheeks in the hopes of finding relief. Starting at his cheeks, they’re delicate and gentle, and relishing the way the softness of his skin feels like home. Increasing their force to continue their exploration, this recharting of territory, your fingers meander towards his ears, making a gentle path of affection along his cheekbones and jaw. As you stroke the shell of his ears, he releases a low hiss that makes you feel a selfish kind of pride, a pride born from knowing this sound exists because of you and belongs only to you.

Hunger travels through your fingertips and your skin, ravenous in its need to be close to him, to bind yourself to him so completely not even air can separate you. You’re hungry to be close to him so you fist your hands in his hair, head tipping back with a sigh as you revel in the feeling of his the strands between your fingers. His hands, dragging gradually up your waist, deliberately press along your skin and bunch of the fabric of your dress together, causing the skirt to lift and lift before his hands come to splay across your back.

Pressing a knee between your thighs, he hums happily as he traces the side of your face with his nose, lips parted in awe. The contact of his hands, the sheer nearness of him, and the ache in your center creates a moan that bubbles out of your chest, keening around him in a high pitched gasp comprised entirely of need.

Namjoon’s forehead drops against yours at the sound, his eyes fluttering for a moment as he attempts to catch his breath. Sliding your hands down his neck, you grip his shoulders and squeeze the muscle that lies beneath his shirt. There’s a weightlessness in your heart and stomach that makes your core start to throb with want, and suddenly you are very aware of the wetness that pools in the cotton of your underwear.

With one hand grasping at the fabric of your dress, he slides the other between your shoulder blades to the base of your neck, tilting your head up so to look at him and bringing his lips to hover tantalizingly against yours.

‘Tell me to stop,’ he whispers, strained and low, against your mouth. He rocks his knee against your mound, movement almost imperceptible, in a torturous massage.

‘Don’t,’ you breathe, savoring the way your lips graze as you speak, raising goosebumps along your flesh at the contact.

He holds you so close and so tight, you almost feel as though you’re being lifted from the ground and the earth, sliding up the wall by the sheer force of your desire.

‘Tell me what you want.’

‘You.’ The words sound almost pained as they fall from your mouth, and you know it’s because you’re too distracted. You’re relishing the way you’re sharing his air, taking what he releases into the atmosphere in greedy mouthfuls.

‘You never lost me, baby,’ he coos, and you can’t help but moan as the wet tip of of his tongue teases your bottom lip. ‘Tell me what you really want.’ The words slide down your skin as he moves his lips to your jaw, hovering there only for a moment before moving to your neck.

‘You,’ you gasp, involuntarily thrusting against him. ‘Inside me. So deep I think I might choke.’

‘Tell me that you mean it,’ he says, voice vibrating through you as he plants a wet kiss on the tendon of your throat, making you shiver. ‘Once I start, I won’t stop.’ He accentuates this point with another kiss that sucks the skin around your pulse. ‘ I won’t stop until you’re mine.’ At this, he bites down on the spot he just sucked, squeezing the skin between his teeth to bruise.

Surprised and unable to contain yourself, you wrap one of your legs around his waist, and drag his face to yours. For a moment, you remain quiet, just looking at him with only the sound of the rain outside to filter through the tension. But he brings his tongue out to stroke over your thumb and it’s this simple thing that breaks you.

‘I belong to you,’ you say, boldly and clearly, as you look him fiercely in the eyes. You know exactly what to say to make him crumble, exactly what to say to make his blood burn.

‘Damn right you do.’

And he finally kisses you, relief flooding your system and making you cry out in joy at the taste of his tongue against yours. His mouth is hard, all teeth and tongue, but purposeful in the way he massages the caverns of your mouth. You feel him grow hard against you, his cock pressing into you as your hips rhythmically collide.

Normally, he would take his time. Normally, he’d be dominating and commanding, riling you up until you were absolutely begging to be fucked and claimed by his dick. Tonight, though, he’s just as desperate as you. Tonight, his resolve disappeared the moment he felt your skin, and neither of you have any interest in taking your time.

Peeling your hands from his body, releasing the material of his shirt you didn’t know you were clasping, you drag them down his body to tease along the waistline of his trousers. He releases a growl into your mouth, and you swallow it with glee, hands fumbling as they try to undo his belt with such little space between your bodies.

And he is just as eager.

His right hand drops between your arms and reaches to the apex of your thighs. Pushing your underwear to the side, he slides a finger between your folds and groans deeply at the feel of your slick wetness. Your breath halts for a moment at the intrusion, but only because you remember the way his fingers could work you, worked you well and knew you, learned all the ways to unmake you with the sweetest of touches.

‘You’re so wet baby, and I’ve barely touched you.’

To prove his point, he quickly adds a second finger and spreads them as he thrusts, scissoring his fingers to prepare you for something larger and better. He drags his thumb over your clit, rubbing it in circles and hums with pride as he feels your walls clench around him in pleasure.

‘Stop teasing, Joon, I need you inside me,’ you keen, biting your lip as you finally bury your hands beneath his briefs to grasp his member.

It’s hard velvet in your hands, hot and aching with need, and you stroke him quickly a few times before running your thumb along his tip to collect the precome that’s gathered there. Namjoon jerks forward at the sensation, head dropping to the crook of your neck and moans, deep and into your skin, at the way your hand squeezes him just how he likes.

It should be impossible to love a person this much, impossible and illogical but here you are, the love you have for him incinerating your soul and becoming the fuel in your blood that keeps you alive.

‘Now who’s the fucking tease,’ he groans, rocking into your hand before regaining his focus. He pulls his fingers from your pussy, and you whine at the loss, only to giggle in surprise as he tears your underwear away. Shoving your hands from his pants, he hoists your other leg around his waist and lifts you, standing between your spread legs with his hands on your hips.

Positioning himself at your entrance, teasing his tip against your clit and rocking back towards your slit, he cradles you to him, pressing himself against you and looking at you as though he worships you. You spend several seconds like this, just looking into one another, panting and breathing in unison, until he buries himself inside you to the hilt in one fluid motion.

‘Holy fuck,’ he moans, biting his lip as he feels your searing heat take him in.

He stills for a moment, giving you time to adjust to his size. It’s been years since you’ve felt this whole, this full, and you find yourself trembling just from the shock of feeling so complete.

‘Joon, please -’ you cry, squeezing around him, smiling as he slaps the window behind you. ‘I need you to move.’

Needing no encouragement, he pulls out and thrusts back in with force. He sets a steady, piercing rhythm, one that’s not entirely precise due to the angle but one that’s hard and deep enough to hit you, making you quake around him in pleasure.

‘God, you’re so fucking tight.’

Hands clutching at his back in a desperate attempt to pull him closer, you don’t have it in you to speak, instead you simply nod and close your eyes, feeling the pressure build in your belly as he moves.

Bruises will form on your hips from his grip, and you imagine his fingers to be burying into your skin like those of the famous Bernini statue, turning the way he fucks you into art. Your eyes roll back in your head at the image, at the same time he executes a deep thrust that as you crying out in unison.

‘I’m not gonna last,’ he cries into your shoulder. ‘Fuck, you take me so well.’

There will be time for savoring and adoring each other later. Now, you just want to feel one another, want to reunite like a solar flare and burn out just as quickly in each other’s arms.

Namjoon catches onto the way you clench around him, feeling your walls tighten with every thrust and the way your breathing has increased to little more than a whine. Lowering a hand between you, his fingers brush over your clit in time with his thrusts, and you cry out, the coil inside you wound tight enough to break.

‘Are you gonna come for me, baby?’ he murmurs, voice dry, as he pulls his head up to watch you with a proud smirk on his face.

‘Joon, I -’ you breathe, but can’t finish. Your body is too desperate for release, standing on the edge the precipice of euphoria and anxious to surrender.

‘Let go, baby,’ he says, sweetly. ‘Come for me. I want to hear you scream my name, just like you used to.’

And you do. His name careens off your tongue as you shudder through your orgasm, every muscle in your body tensing and tightening, forcing you to arch into him, before unwinding and leaving you feeling weightless.

Namjoon follows you immediately after, and you’re glad you didn’t come together. This was always your favourite part of sex with him, the way he wholly, completely, delivers himself to pleasure within your body. You feel warmth bloom inside you, and you ride the last waves of your orgasm with him, coming down together with fluttering muscles and soft breaths.

‘Shit, I -’ he says frantically, but it’s in vain. His legs give out beneath you, exhausted from the force of his orgasm and from holding you against him, both of you collapsing to the floor in a heap of limbs.

After the initial shock, you feel him start to laugh against you, the movement small but jovial, and the sound makes you laugh too. There’s happiness here, in a room that holds no trace of you except smears of your sweat against the window. There’s happiness here, with him.

And so you laugh.

You really, truly, laugh.

Two hours. That’s how long it took you to get out of bed, to peel yourself away from his arms.

Two hours spent in the light of the morning, in bliss, stroking skin and clasping hands; remembering that this is what love feels like when it’s yours and enthralled just from being held by you.

Two hours reminding yourself that he was there, not a dream, not a wish, not a memory, but tangible and warm and breathing into your hair. Reminding yourself that you had a morning routine with him, that he learned to wake up without you, and understanding that now you get to relearn life with him. You get to feel everything all over again as if for the first time.

It took you two hours to remove yourself from the comfortable bubble you’d made together of bedsheets, affectionate whispers, and the smell of sex. It took you two hours and, now, you are running late.  

Speed walking along the path to the administration office, you fight the urge to stop and admire the world around you. Colours seem brighter today, the sky a bolder shade of blue, your dress a deeper shade of purple, and, perhaps, your soul a better, cleaner version of itself. You want to admire and ponder these things, but you have a meeting with the man who will be confirming your employment and you’ve never been one for tardiness.

Picking up the pace of your steps, you run the name of the university dean over in your mind, preparing the words of gratitude you want to offer him for the opportunity. Your paperwork has all been signed, Namjoon’s signature coming over a cup of morning coffee and with a wink, saying I was always going to sign this, baby, I just needed to make you beg.

As if on cue, your phone dings with a text message.

Joonie [1:33 PM]: What are you wearing?

Y/N [1:35 PM]: aren’t you teaching a class?

Joonie [1:37 PM]: They’re taking a test. What are you wearing baby?

Y/N [1:39 PM]: you will see me in two hours, can you not wait?

Joonie [1:42 PM]: I waited three years to send you dirty texts. I’m tired of waiting.

Y/N [1:44 PM]: jesus christ, write a book or something while you wait

Joonie [1: 47 PM]: Just tell me what you’re wearing. Please.

Y/N [2: 20 PM]: it doesn’t matter what i’m wearing because you’re going to take it off anyway

Joonie [2:25 PM]: You made me wait. Whatever you’re wearing better look as good as my dick in your pussy

Y/N [2:28 PM]: i had a meeting with the Dean, can you at least feign a sense of professionalism??

Joonie [2:30 PM]: Not when I keep picturing my tie binding your wrists to my headboard, no.

Y/N [2:34 PM]: i just knocked into some poor girl because of you. i hope you’re happy

Joonie [2:36 PM]: I won’t be happy until my dick is buried in your cunt and my hand print bruises your ass

Y/N [2:36 PM]: can your TAs take over?

Joonie [2:37 PM]: Thank fuck. See you in 5.

#namjoon x reader #namjoon smut #kwriterskollection #kpoptrashtag #bts smut #bangtan university #bts fanfiction #bts fic #bta au #namjoon au #bangtan au #bangtan fanfiction #rap monster smut #rap monster #rap monster au #rap monster x reader

[notpreparedblog]

Introduction

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King had been on my radar for a little while. It had the appearance of a sort of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past clone, which was quite fine by me, but also a nice looking art style that differentiated itself from the Zelda series. Originally released back in March 2017 by developers Castle Pixel, LLC and published by FDG Entertainment, I ended up getting my shot last month when the game was on one of the Nintendo Switches now seemingly signature indie sales.

Blossom Tales is a story being told to two children by their grandfather.

Story

Blossom Tales begins with two young girls and their grandfather. It’s bedtime, and they want to hear a story before heading off to sleep. The ensuing game is created by and narrated by the grandfather throughout the duration.

This gets comical and interesting during the game and becomes a game mechanic in of itself. At times, you would enter a room with a chest that has no opposition, just for one of the young girls to chime in and complain. The result is that the grandfather changes the ‘story’ on the spot and gives us as the player a different situation to work through. It worked for this type of game, you just need to roll with it and not take it seriously.

One of a handful of references to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Once you get into the game, you’ll notice some distinct similarities to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The house that you begin the game in is almost exactly like the beginning house of A Link to the Past. The first task you’re asked to complete is to head to the castle at the center of the kingdom (familiar again). There, you must prove yourself by going into the basement and killing a bunch of rats (get it yet?) and once you succeed, you find that the courts wizard has gone rogue and wants to destroy the kingdom (now we are just hitting things over the head). I’m being overly ridiculous, but this must have been intentional.

The king is put to sleep and you are tasked with fetching the three sacred ingredients to awaken said king and save the day.

Gameplay

The gameplay is very similar again to the Legend of Zelda series. One button is mapped to your basic sword attack, while the other two are open to two sub-weapons of your choice. The main difference that I felt from the Zelda series, is that you are a bit more mobile and sporadic with attacking.

By hitting the sword attack button three times, you go into this combo of slash – slash – spin attack. With that, you can keep pressing forward to have forward momentum. At times, this felt great and intuitive. Other times I felt that restrain was needed which broke the flow of battle. For example, if I walked forward towards an enemy to hit them with this combo, I would land the first attack, miss the second because I was now too close, get hit which bounces you backward, then entirely miss the swing attack. You have to sort of attack, pause, attack again, move forward and land the spin attack. It’s fine, but like I said, the flow never really felt satisfying here.

Hmm, to break the entire room of pots, or not to break the entire room of pots?

Another stand out mechanic with Blossom Tales is that your sub-weapons are attached to your energy bar. Every time you use a bomb for example, it reduces the energy bar instead of traditionally needing a bomb to use one. Same with your bow and arrow, and everything else. The energy bar recharges after time so you’re never out of ammo of any of your sub-weapons for a long period of time. You just may need to again, restrain yourself and use them strategically.

Staying on sub-weapons, they got a bit wonky for me. The bow and arrow requires you to hold down the button for a split second before being able to fire. Makes sense given what the weapon is, but I felt that registering inputs here was hit or miss. You’re in the frantic heat of battle and it felt like more a burden to use at times.

Bombs and picking up and throwing items in general was a big one for me here. If you aren’t moving, you can drop a bomb where you’re standing. If you’re holding a directional button while trying to drop a bomb, you throw it. The problem ties into what I was saying about the bow and arrow and inputs maybe not registering.

There were dozens of times where I felt like I was holding a directional button to throw a bomb, and I just didn’t. Instead, you drop it, and if you hit the bomb button again, you pick it up again, but you must reset the directional button to then throw it. So you get into this comical loop of fighting this big bad guy and you’re just sitting in the corner picking bombs up and putting them back down repeatedly.

Slight spoilers on items you receive, but the second dungeon’s main item is the boomerang. It acts as you would expect; it goes out and comes back. There are sections in the second dungeon where you need to throw the boomerang to hit switches, pretty standard. The problem is when you hit a switch that triggers a door to be unlocked, the camera stops and pans to that door to show you what you’ve done. The boomerang however, doesn’t stop. While your little cut-scene is playing, the boomerang is heading back towards the switch you just hit, which then locks the door again. It’s really frustrating, and I couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t just program switches in that case to just stay activated.

Other Points

Puzzle Variety: Variety of puzzles always seems like a sore point for me when it comes to indie games lately. I recently reviewed a turn based RPG called Shadows of Adam which was fantastic as a whole, but the puzzles turned me off every time I encountered them. There were a handful of mechanics that were repeated over, and over and over again which led to boring gameplay. I feel the same here with Blossom Tales.

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Most of the game heavily features three puzzle types; memorizing ‘sound stone’ patterns where you hit the stones in the correct order, your standard moving blocks onto specific tiles and then walking puzzles where you can only walk on specific tiles once, but need to walk on them all.

World Map: The world map in Blossom Tales is very compartmentalized. The map is broken down to that same sort of grid system that you are used to from top-down view Zelda games. Unlike many of those games, you are really barred from progressing to other areas of the map besides those involving the next objective. This really limited exploration and it became more boring than fun. The joy of exploring the map in a game like A Link to the Past was finding something that you couldn’t get to, then trying later to piece together a strategy with new items that you’ve received. There’s a little bit of that in Blossom Tales, but strangely, the game felt very linear despite having this open world map.

One other point regarding the world map is that there are some really oddly placed enemies when transitioning from screen to screen. There were at least four or five times where I transitioned to the next screen and immediately was hit by an enemy, bouncing me back to the previous screen. I felt that there could have been a little more strategy involved in how these enemies were placed on each screen.

Enemy Composition: This brings me to the next point I want to talk about, enemy composition. Around the first temple, I started notice a bit of tedium setting in. One thing I really appreciate about The Legend of Zelda series, is that enemy placement always felt intentional and thought out. There were some situations in the original game where you have 10 Iron Knuckles, but situations like that felt few and far between and acted as sort of skill checks in dungeons five and eight. In Blossom Tales, you just get hammered by 10+ enemies room, after room, after room.

One example of a cluster of enemies being thrown at you.

There’s one room in particular that you need to shoot your arrows to light torches. In the same room, there are around ten quick enemies floating around that bounce off walls like that DVD logo on the school TV carts. They stop arrows dead in their paths, so while it should only take a few seconds and a few arrows to complete the puzzle, you smack enemies instead which prolongs the situation. Situations like this aren’t fun or challenging, they just feel like they are there to inflate the game time.

This continues throughout the entire game.

My favorite area ended up being the last quadrant that you’re allowed to traverse. The combination of setting and music honestly gave me these weird Shadow of the Colossus vibes as you approach the final colossus. But even as I write this, I sort of want to talk myself out of calling it my favorite because outside of that tone and feeling, it’s yet another area that just throws every enemy the game can handle at you. Each of the six main screens in this zone have dozens of enemies.

Waypoints: A welcome addition for me were the waypoints. There are various locations throughout the world that have teleportation tiles that you can use to traverse from place to place as you discover them. Cool. The extra bit that I enjoyed was that each of the dungeons also include teleportation tiles. One after the mid-boss, and another right before the main boss. This makes things easier to take down in bite sized pieces instead of needing to invest an hour to tackle one dungeon.

One of the waypoints that you’ll find in Blossom Tales.

Temple Linearity: I spoke a bit earlier about how the world map even feels linear. The temple’s don’t fair much better. Even though you may weave around temple’s room to room, there is typically just one path for you to go down. At times, there may be one large room with four sub rooms, but you are still just moving in a straight line and progressing forward. There’s never a sense of trying to figure out the space you’re occupying. You don’t receive keys to find the locked door. You get a key in a room to unlock the next room, and that’s that.

An example of the linearity you should expect in Blossom Tales.

Ledge Wars: Blossom Tales is really obsessed with knocking you off ledges in every imaginable way, to the point to where it got comical. There are around a dozen rooms that are set up in the same way; player walks through a room or along a pathway, avoid objects and enemies, avoid floor falling behind you and if you’re knocked off you start over. I’m going to leave a gallery of some that I captured during my playthrough once I noticed what was happening.

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Final Thoughts

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King was really hit or miss for me. There’s really a barrage of game mechanics that didn’t sit well with me. Things like bombs and arrows felt wonky, there were repeated puzzles, there’s world map and temple linearity, enemy density can be ridiculous and misplaced as well as the ‘ledge rooms.’

However, I did enjoy the integration if the grandfather and children into the story. Having rooms change in front of you based on the narrative of one of the children was fun, and I would like to see more games with that sort of mechanic. I also felt that the sprite work is great and while I wish the world map was handled differently, it does look colorful and varied.

I don’t know if I can say I really enjoyed the experience. It’s around a ten hour game, maybe a bit more if you want to collect 100% of the collectibles. The thing is that it does hit some nostalgia notes of A Link to the Past, but when I think about it, I would rather just go play A Link to the Past instead.

New review for Review: Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King! #nintendo #nintendoswitch #zelda #alttp #actionrpg Introduction Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King had been on my radar for a little while. It had the appearance of a sort of…

#16-bit #action #adventure #blossom tales #legend of zelda #nintendo #nintendo switch #rpg #snes

[larryland]

by Lisa Jarisch

Since its arrival on Broadway in 1972, Grease has been the Word in more than 3300 Broadway performances, had 27 productions worldwide, made its way to the big screen as a feature film, been revived on Broadway twice, and has greased and graced the boards of high school stages around the country more times than Betty Rizzo has dated and broken up with Kenickie.

  Now the Class of 1959 from Rydell High has arrived at the Mac-Haydn Theater, with all the rock & roll sound, romance , and teen-age angst one could want on a hot summer night at the theatre.  Director/Choreographer Sebastiani Romagnolo has put his mark on a production that does fair justice to both the original stage production and the wildly-popular 1978 feature film with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in the lead roles. What the production may lack in depth, it more than makes up for in enthusiasm and performance value. There is little if any of the raw, edgy language and tone that characterized original versions; while teenage pregnancy, gang violence, and pressure to conform lurk subtly on the edges of this production, they are to some degree “glossed over” in favour of bringing the flavor of 50s adolescence and music to the stage. And frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that, because what they do with this production of Grease, they do with all the expertise, quality, and theatre-goers have come to expect—and receive—from a Mac- Haydn production. As it centers around the romantic inclinations of greaser Burger Palace leader Danny Zuko and new-girl-at-school Sandy Dumbrowski, this Grease is 2 ½ hours of foot-tapping, sing-along, sit- back- and -enjoy musical theatre.

       Anthony DaSilva is spending his first season at Mac-Haydn, and in the lead role of Danny Zuko, he takes to the round stage as if born to it. With just the slightest channeling of John Travolta (which may be totally unintended, as the film was released well before DaSilva came into the world),  he struts into the cafeteria and leads the Burger Palace Boys through their paces, while alternately wooing and ignoring the new girl in school. He has the voice for the role–and then some !– and while disappointed that the song “Sandy” was substituted for “ Alone at a drive-in movie” there’s no denying DaSilva carries off Danny with power, panache, and presence. His voice rises above ensemble numbers, as it should as the leader of the pack. Let’s hope to see and hear more of this up and coming star as the season continues.

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    Emma Flynn in her second season with the Mac-Haydn company is an ideal  choice for the innocent, naive Sandy, taken in hand and under the collective wing of the Pink Ladies at Rydell High on her first day of school, where she quickly discovers the love of her just past “Summer Nights”  is Rydell student Danny Zuko. Flynn has a beautiful pure voice, with stage presence to match. Watching her journey from the wide-eyed ingenue who ultimately allows herself, admittedly at her own request, to be transformed to the bad-girl of Danny’s wildest hopes and dreams is a delight.  “Hopelessly Devoted to you” adroitly channels Olivia Newton-John, which is almost inevitable, as this too is a number “slotted in” to the stage version from its original appearance in the film. Her final solo reprising “Look at me I’m Sandra Dee” is filled with regret, resignation, and ultimately acceptance of her new role as a pure Pink Lady, and her final duet with DaSilva of “You’re the one that I want” literally shakes the rafters of this barn-cum-theatre in the round. A side note on that particular number.In general I am not a fan of music and songs from movie versions being, sometimes, summarily inserted into stage productions, but in this production I must confess it works to great effect, and was probably the better choice than “All Choked Up” was in the original production.

  Grease is an ideal production for an ensemble cast, which undoubtedly is why it is so often performed in schools, summer stock, and community theatres. Offering a variety of supporting roles for Pink Ladies and Burger Palace Boys makes it a perfect vehicle for the Mac.  Much of the pleasure in this thoroughly-enjoyable production comes from the quality of performance springing from the supporting cast.numbers. Loaded with all the energy of the assembled youthful cast , the stage almost literally shakes, rattles and rolls every time a member of the ensemble gets their turn in the spotlight. Virtually every character is given a featured turn and they make the most of it, with spot-on vocals and solid, committed performances. While none of the numbers are show-stoppers, they perform them as if they are. And so several all deserve their own moments of praise….

  As Doody,  Kylan Ross’s  rendition of “ Those Magic Changes”  earns him an A+ for his spot-on vocals regaling the gang with his mastery of 4 guitar chords learned over the summer. Perhaps my favorite song in the show, I confess to adding my own A, C, F, and G chords to the melody line , no doubt to the misfortune of those sitting within earshot.

Elizabeth D’Aiuto makes the most of her turn as Marty, as she lets her slumber-party Pink Lady guests learn all about “Freddy, My love”, who showers her with gifts sent from his overseas military service. A rogue Twinkie suffers a crushing fate as the Pink Ladies dancingly celebrate the benefits of young love, but D’Aiuto carries off her number with aplomb and vocal accuracy.

       Now, “Greased Lightning”, perhaps the song most associated with Grease…. While Jonah Hale’s lyrics in his portrayal of Kenickie are at times indistinct, or perhaps simply overwhelmed by a band clearly eager to rock and roll the theatre, there is no denying Hale’s enthusiasm as he presents this signature number. He leaps with abandon, sings with gusto, and overall makes us hope for a ride in his cherished automatic, systematic, fuel-injected, chrome-plated rod baby.  Especially impressive is the lighting that accompanies the number—black light, strobe effect, and splashes of vibrant color punctuate this paean to every teen age boy’s dream in the 50s…THE perfect car.

       As Roger and Jan, Joe Hornberger and Zoey Bright inject a lovely dose of almost over the top camp with their rendition of “Mooning”, as Roger musically and physically demonstrates the reason “the guys” have nicknamed him “Rump”  Fortunately for this family-friendly show, he stops short of a “full” explanation, but not before the audience enjoys their rollicking rocking tribute to the fine art of mooning.

  Maya Cuevas shines as Frenchy, the “Beauty School Dropout” nonchalantly attempting to pierce Sandy’s ears while the Pink Ladies smoke and drink at Marty’s slumber party. Her wide-eyed looks of astonishment, and subsequent reactions when her called-upon Teen Angel appears in silver lame, accompanied by a plastic cosmetic cape-draped, sun-glass -wearing Angel Chorus quartet, are worth the price of admission. 

    Last but by no means least of the supporting cast deserving of more than honorable mention is Angie Colonna as the hard as nails self-appointed Head of the Pink Ladies Betty Rizzo.  Sashaying onto the teen scene with a hip-swiveling swagger, Colonna creates the brittle Rizzo personna necessary to play against the sweetness and light of the soon-to-be converted, or subverted, Sandy. Her mocking “Look at me I’m Sandra Dee” in Act 1 is played with nuance and a curled lip; her voice is big, bold, and in perfect keeping with the character. In Act 2, as she reluctantly, angrily, and ultimately tearfully confronts Sandy’s attempts to sympathize with her possibly pregnancy, she declares “There are worse things I could do” with a combination of pathos and defiance that brings perhaps the loudest applause of the evening for a featured performance.

            Wearing his choreographer’s hat, director Romagnolo brings to Grease the signature style that brought him a Berkie Award in 2017. Lithe, sinewy, sometimes almost writhing dance movements infuse much of the dance work throughout the show, and capture in motion the burgeoning craze for rock and roll that was sweeping the nation in the 50s.  Romagnolo stages the assorted ensemble numbers throughout the show with verve and punch. The close of Act 1 brings the energy-charged cast into “We go Together” with rousing hand-slapping, clapping abandon performed in perfect synchronization , and as the cast comes together in “Born to Hand Jive”, the relatively small round stage pounds and  pulses with the gyrations of the dance. Could another Berkie be waiting in the wings…..?

       Scenic designer Kevin Gleason  brings home a Grade A report card for his set work and design.   The black and white checkerboard floor, punctuated with squares of turquoise and pink is the perfect setting for the classic formica tables and chairs that do triple duty as cafeteria, classroom and Burger Palace diner; draped with black leather jackets and hot pink Pink Lady jackets, the set immediately transports the audience back to the 50s before the first musical note. The collection of 50’s memorabilia and ephemera adorning the walls and the stage. Vintage vinyl 45 records, pink flamingos, guitars . From the wall-mounted rotary dial corded phone to the portable transistor radios and metal coolers, every item evokes the now-classic style of the 50s. It’s just a FUN set to look at throughout the show.

     Lighting by Andrew Gmoser complements and enhances the 50s “vibe”  of diners, high school classrooms and cafeteria, teen age girls’ bedrooms, and the occasional outdoor setting in the park or backstreets of Chicago. There is a generous use of color throughout, and happily, the use of a strobe light is forewarned with notices at each entrance to the house , as well as used judiciously and sparingly. 

  Costumes by Alison Zador capture the era of poodle skirts, greaser “bad boys” with their leather jackets, tight jeans and white-shirts, and bouffant hair and prom dresses. 

  While perhaps not the premiere offering of the season, Grease is more than worth a look, perhaps even 2, as one of my companions noted on a full-house opening night    “ I’d see this one again.” Hopefully Producing Artistic Director John Saunders would be quick to declare that “you’re the one that I want “ to make a Summer Night’s journey to Chatham for this production. 

  Grease with book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey is this season’s 3 week run at the Mac-Haydn Theater in Chatham, NY,  with performances from July 4 through 21. Direction and choreography by Sebastiani Romagnolo, Associate choreographer Madi Cupp-Enyard. Music direction by David Maglione, scenic design by Kevin Gleason, lighting design by Andrew Gmoser,  costume design Alison Zador, hair and makeup design by Matthew Oliver, props master Joshua Gallagher. CAST: Anthony DaSilva as Danny Zuko, Emma Flynn as Sandy Dumbrowski, Kylan Ross as Doody, Elizabeth D’Aiuto as Marty, Jonah Hale as Kenickie, Joe Hornberger as Roger, Zoey Bright as Jan, Maya Cuevas as Frenchy, Angie Colonna as Betty Rizzo.

REVIEW: “Grease” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre by Lisa Jarisch Since its arrival on Broadway in 1972, Grease has been the Word in more than 3300 Broadway performances, had 27 productions worldwide, made its way to the big screen as a feature film, been revived on Broadway twice, and has greased and graced the boards of high school stages around the country more times than Betty Rizzo has dated and broken up with Kenickie.

#Alison Zador #Andrew Gmoser #Angie Colonna #Anthony DaSilva #Chatham NY #David Maglione #Elizabeth D’Aiuto #Emma Flynn #Grease #Jim Jacobs #Joe Hornberger #John Saunders #Jonah Hale #Joshua Gallagher #Kevin Gleason #Kylan Ross #Lisa Jarisch #Mac-Haydn #Mac-Haydn Theatre #Madi Cupp-Enyard #Matthew Oliver #Maya Cuevas #Sebastiani Romagnolo #The Mac #The Mac-Haydn #The Mac-Haydn Theatre #Warren Casey #Zoey Bright

[s0022034a2film]

R. Creative Investigation - Collated Quotes

After going through 12 source review sheets, I had collected around 100 quotes. Here, I will gather some of the more useful ones. Thus eliminating those that are not of great value or repeat other quotes making them useless. Below, I have selected a handful of quote that have been annotated revealing the helpfulness and how they relate to my question. 

Style:

Sleepy Hollow:

Considering Burton was considering to experiment with black and white footage, his mention of colour is very interesting. His films are known for their gothic dark colour scheme and it isn’t a surprise to him this is beautiful. This point highlights how the stylistic elements feed into his themes within the film. 

The layout and the colour and the design were so beautiful... it had a very good mixture of humour and scariness -  a sort of fun, energetic, visceral kind of scariness.” - Tim Burton p.g. 167 (Burton, 2006)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:

A director should have full control of all aspects of the film. And this point proves how Burton’s reworking of the songs is new territory. It is his vision complied with stylistic techniques we have grown to know from Burton. 

“It’s not just his DNA deep love for the grisly and gothic, but the sophisticated, intelligent way in which he has re-imagined this hollowed sung-through musical for the cinema, paring it back stylishly yet opening it up to new readings, and reworking ‘song’ as intimate musical dialogue.” (Stables, 2008)

Shows how he adapted his own styles to accommodate the fact this is a musical. 

“He’s very musical. And you can see it in the rhythm of– Not just the cutting, but the was the camera glides. The way it moves. The choice of angles. He’s responding to the music” (Young, 2007)

Dark Shadows:

Likewise with my previous observation with Sweeney Todd, this shows how he has responded to a change in the material his film is based on. Here, it is an adaptation of a soap which he has considered and impacted the shots used.

“The director’s affection is evident, and his homage sometimes acute: as in afternoon soaps, many shots are medium closeups of the actors staring pensively off-camera (presumably at the Teleprompter).” (Corliss, 2012)

General:

Emphasises the lexical field Burton is associated to: halloween.

“That was Christmas of 1998. it’s now two days before Halloween 1999, in Manhattan, where midtown shops are decorated with holiday cutouts of ghosts and black cats. Outside delis, stacked pumpkins wait patiently for the sharp knife that will be taken to their throats. It’s the time of year when a guy like Tim Burton should be a pretty happy fella.” (Nashawaty, 1999)

Burton may not have created his screenplays but he, according to Sarris, can still be the auteur due to the fact he has a consistency between his films. Defiantly my three focal films. 

“Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurring characteristics of style, which serves as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a directors are generally superior to foreign directors. Because so much of the American cinema is commissioned, a director is forced to express his personality through the visual treatment of material rather than the literary content of the material.” (Sarris, 1962)

Themes:

Sleepy Hollow:

Only because Burton has a past representation as a ‘eccentric visionary’, it doesn’t mean that is true of my focal films as two of them are past 2007 which is a 7 year gap between this quote. I would agree with this as, my focal films at least, don’t show a director who is extremely eccentric and experimental. I would say that when he first started out, with films such as Beetlejuice and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, his experimental use of stop-motion was ‘eccentric’. The technology has changed and so has Burton stepping away from consistency between his earlier films and the ones audiences experience now. 

“Even with an almost mythic story as its foundation, Sleepy Hollow doesn’t seem like the work of an eccentric visionary, as Burton has long been labelled.” (O’Hehir, 2000)

Shows how he has built onto his gothic themes and style with the horror element. It isn’t new but rather a progressive sweep in context to earlier films. 

“With this film [Sleepy Hollow], Burton returned to the gothic and the macabre, and to Johnny Depp, and tackled a new theme: the horror of dismembered bodies and severed heads.” p.g. 134 (Baecque, 2010)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:

Shows how beauty is such an impactful part of the society we live in. A possible reflection of his life as he wasn’t perceived to be beautiful. 

“Rather than a balanced pairing, then, Burton places beauty and the sub- lime in tension, then shows the historical process by which, in the Sweeney narrative, beauty is tainted by, falls to, and is ultimately consumed by the urban sublime over the course of the film.” p.g. 175 (McMahon, 2014)

Dark Shadows:

Death is a theme that links all my focal film together. He explores this theme to the same extent throughout all the focal films.

“And death in infiltrates all aspects of Barnabas’s character. Death is not only what leads him to be a vampire; it is what he is. He is a dead man walking. And death is what he doles out, albeit apologetically.” p.g. 228 (McMahon, 2014)

General:

Fairy tale elements of his films are evident (more so in Sleepy Hollow with it being based on a fairy tale) within my focal films. It shows how it has always been apart of his filmography even when he began his work at Disney. 

“The visionary and “slightly twisted” (Tiffin 2008, 148) auteur began using fairy tales quite early, when he was still slaving during the 1980s as an under appreciated cartoonist in the dungeons of Disney Studios.” p.g. 198 (Ray, 2010)

Flashbacks are a motif of a Burton film (evident in all my focal films). Therefore, this theme of childhood experience, is well represented. Plus, the way he links this with the horror genre.  

“What is it about the horror genre—especially in the way that Burton channels its dark magic—that appeals to children and seems to express something fundamental about the experience of childhood?” p.g. 48 (McMahon, 2014)

This quote explains itself. Blessed to have a quote mentioning all my focal films and their linking themes. 

“Sleepy Hollow (1999) combines the historical romance and the police procedural with the horror film. There is also an element of the fantasy film genre, given the supernatural figure of the Headless Horseman... Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) draws on the horror film, the musical, the revenge tragedy, and family melodrama... Dark Shadows interweaves familiar features from the horror film and family melodrama within the narrative structure of a romantic comedy.  ” p.g. 196 (McMahon, 2014)

Collaborations:

Sleepy Hollow:

Shows how Burton has made changes from the original source just so the he could have Johnny Depp as the main character. A bold move that is interesting due to such a redirection of the focus point of the film.

“For while Burton’s Ichabod retains some of his comic qualities—he is still vain and jittery—he also solves the mystery, defeats the Horseman, and gets the girl. Burton’s Brom, meanwhile, is demoted in status to a minor, one-dimensional character who is quickly dispatched. Burton’s decision to cast handsome Johnny Depp as Ichabod affirms the director’s intention to redirect viewer sympathies toward Brom’s rival.” p.g. 114 (McHanon,2014)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:

Shows the collaboration extends to the producer who is willing to step into this unknown realm. To do this is risky for both of their careers and so such faith in Burton shows the bond between them.

“Tim is an auteur, he’s a visionary. And he takes chances that most directors are fearful of. And this is a musical, which he’s never done before. Either have I, as a producer, been involved with a musical. So it’s very challenging.“ - Richard D. Zanuck (Producer) (Young, 2007)

Burton has his reasoning to have Depp but for Depp, he doesn’t think about the content but the fact it is Burton creating it. Meaning, if it is good enough for Burton, it is good enough for him. Interestingly, nobody had ever listened to Depp sing and so this was such a risky move by Burton.

“As always, with anything that I end up doing with Tim... the initial attraction is really Tim, more than anything else.” - Johnny Depp (Young, 2007)

Emphasises the work of the art team in creating the vision. 

“While such a style might seem anachronistic in the Victorian milieu of Sweeney Todd, Burton’s art team, led by scenic designer Dante Ferretti and costumer Colleen Atwood, constructed a hybrid imaginary that blends Victorian streetscapes and costumes with Weimar interiors and makeup.” p.g. 176 (McMahon, 2014)

Dark Shadows:

For the first time in their partnership, Depp offered the job to Burton. This could be why it sucked. Once again, he is working with the same actors. 

“Depp bought the rights to the show, produced the new movie version and stars as the courtly vampire Barnabas Collins. Burton, in his eighth collaboration with Depp, signed on as director; and Pfeiffer, who was the majestic-pathetic Catwoman in Burton’s 1992 Batman Returns, plays Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, doyenne of the cursed Collinwood estate.” (Corliss, 2012)

General:

Burton uses Depp to reflect his own characteristics onto. I feel this also a reflection on the character Depp is as well proving how strong the bond is.

“The Burton-Depp films often deal with characters who are artistic or skilled yet reclusive, idiosyncratic, or doubted by others. Contrasted to them are characters whose lives embody cultural norms and norms of social behaviour, as well as characters in positions of authority or influence who reveal to us something of the dark underside of human psychology and self-interest.” p.g. 193 (McMahon, 2014)

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DA Future

How You Can Become Hip Rap Artists

Need some tracks to play at a celebration, or simply exit dancing to? Here is my checklist of the very best hip hop dance music out there right now...

Gold Digger by Kanye West

Flip It Up by Chamillionaire

Bubber Band Man by T.I.

Hynotize by Younger Jeezy

30 One thing by Jay-Z

Ms. Jackson DA Future Social Network by Outkast

Get Low by Ying Yang twins

Lean Back by Fats Joe

Yeah by Usher

Get it on the floor by DMX

Pump it by Black Eyed Peas

Blunt Ashes by Nas

Jesus Walks by Kanye West

Go Getta by Younger Jeezy

Over Here Hustlin' by Lil' Wayne

Salt Shaker by Ying Yang Twins

So what makes these songs stand out as the best hip hop dance music? The video? One thing that bumps at a membership? Admittedly, the record is biased upon my personal preferences: I like the extra heady lyrical stuff with a robust driving beat behind it, which leans in the direction of Outkast, Nas, Eminem and early Kanye West tracks extra so than tracks by Ying Yang Twins or Younger Jeezy. However, I've included a few of their songs as well to spherical out the checklist.

I additionally tried to go away out most underground rap/hip hop songs to maintain it as accessible as possible. Most, if not all of these songs could possibly be performed in golf equipment or show up on MTV as a rap video. Positive, I may play Useless Prez or Ras Kass, however most individuals at a party- at the very least those I'm going to- wouldn't have a clue who they're. It is unusual, irrespective of how hot a a DA Future music is, you may normally get a greater reaction if folks know the music and may sing along with it. Guess that's why there's so many cover bands in bars... Lastly, I included several songs from the previous few years, reasonably than just itemizing off a "what's sizzling now" playlist of current music. Anyone who thinks GoldDigger won't get a good response at a celebration is lacking the point (until it's a wedding.

Hip hop dance songs are the preferred type of dance music in clubs proper now. Nonetheless, what precisely makes a very DA Future good dance tune? Is it a catchy hook? Dope lyrics? Here's the deciding components for making successful dance track...

First, the music itself needs to be unique, even if it is based on samples from other bands (many rap artists have successfully sampled George Clinton, Led Zeppelin and Queen just to call just a few). The key to sounding distinctive is to add your personal private stamp on the track. Take Run DMC's cowl of Aerosmith's "Stroll This Means." Whereas the lyrics and guitar riff didn't change, Run DMC's private fashion got here through on the monitor.

For hip hop dance songs, tempo is also a deciding factor. Hip hop tracks are inclined to run between 90- 115 BPM, with dance hits tending in the direction of the higher finish of the spectrum. Along with velocity, a quality dance music must be properly combined. All this means is that the listener ought to be capable of hear every instrument individually, without any one piece standing out an excessive amount of. Consider a highschool band: you already know the kid who at all times played too loud and drowned out the string section? A effectively blended music can keep away from this.

Once the music is properly mixed, it's time to master the observe. This, along with mixing, is what separates a tune your buddy put collectively, navigate to these guys and a hot club mix. Mastering basically smooths the music out and provides it that polished finish (suppose Dr. Dre beats).

I've included a listing of scorching hip hop dance songs that work in a membership or at a party. Before I share it with you, a few points: First, I left out most underground rap with a view to hold this checklist familiar to a bigger audience. These are songs most definitely to hear in a membership. I've additionally listed a number of songs from a couple of years in the past, as a consequence of the fact that they haven't been (too) played out.

If you wish to study extra about good hip hop dance music, take a look at Pandora, a free radio service that plays music according to your chosen style. you possibly can at all times delete the songs you don't like, and save the music you think would work effectively at your social gathering.

So here's my checklist:

? Kiss Me Thru The Phone by Soulja Boy

? Right Spherical by Flo Rida

? Final Night by Puff Daddy

? Love Intercourse Magic by Ciara

? California Love by Tupac

? In Da Membership go now by 50 Cent

? Low by Flo hip hop dance moves list Rida

? Independent by Webbie

? Shawty get Free by Lil Mama

? Lose Control by Missy Elliot

? Crank That by Soulja boy

? Get Silly by Soulja boy

So there you will have it. What's your favourite hip hop dance songs?

Hip Hop Dance has a dynamic history. From Breakdancing to the moonwalk from michael Jackson to Krump dancing to Bboy dancing to plain outdated head nodding. Everybody had their very own means of expressing love

for hip hop dancing.

Hip Hop Dance Historical past has individuals buzzing. Why you ask ? As a result of they're watching all these crazy Hip Hop dancing music movies on tv they usually need to know the historical past of it. The place did these things come from.

The historical past of hip hop dance began with Breakdancing. It began across the late Seventies to early 80s. Breaking began within the south bronx ny. It was a type of Hip Hop dance that was utilized by road gangs to settle variations with out using violence. This was a optimistic for black and peurtorican youths at the time. Folks were not losing there lives over bs ya know. One of many first Hip Hop Dance crews in Historical past are the rocksteady crew.

They help usher in a new type of breakdancing that included acrobatic styles corresponding to headspinning, windmills, DA Future underground hip hop artists backspins, waves and all that great things. The Rock Regular Crew dropped on the scene around 1979 to 1980.

They have been encouraged by a legendary DJ by the name of Afrika Bambatta to use break dancing as a instrument to attain greatness. Afrikaa Bambatta was instrumental in pushing break dancing ahead by motivating youth to pursue their love of the artwork form.

Hip Hop Dance as we know it at present, for instance the dancing we see in music movies is a fusion of a wide range of standard and unconventional dance kinds and techniques. This consists of Jazz dance, indigenous folklore dance and even martial art.

Attributable to its sturdy nature, City Dance could possibly be maybe a more acceptable title for what we commonly classify as Hip Hop Dance. Regardless of the array of types and techniques added to its present repertoire, the roots of Hip Hop Dance might be attributed to avenue dancers in America. For many of those dancers, the artwork types they created are probably the most accurate classification of Hip Hop Dance.

Breaking & Funk Sytles

During the Nineteen Seventies, DJs in America would set a wholly new trend, mixing what known as drum breaks which are drum solos in funk and soul music again to back between two flip tables. The result would produce an entirely new sound containing a repetitive drum break monitor. In essence, the dancing that emerged from this new form of music was known as Breaking or B-boying (not break dancing). These forms of breaking would come with but aren't exclsive to:

? Footwork - A series of steps executed with the toes both standing and on the ground previous to creating energy moves.

? Power Strikes - A collection of thoughts boggling actions often carried out on the floor that would include moves reminiscent of backspins, headspins, windmills and extra. Often, when individuals hear about Breaking or b-boying or the wrong term, "break dancing" they consider these strikes.

? Up Rock/Prime Rock - A series of movements following a specific rhythmic and systematic pattern.

Although breaking was predominant among avenue dancers within the east coast, the west coast would more information on wikipedia nonetheless take pleasure in their own artform utilizing Funk and Soul music known as Funk Kinds.

The birth of Funk Styles on the west coast, occurred within the identical period as breaking and umbrellas an array of genres. The suite of types would come with:

? Popping - Robotic and/or jerky movements. Strobbing and Ticking are additionally underground korean hip hop artists similar sorts of movements throughout the Popping family.

? Waving - Fluid and smooth movements.

? Gliding/Floating - Gravity defying moves that create the illusion as if an individual is moving seemlessly and effortlessly across the floor.

? Locking - A series of animated actions that entails sharp and distinctive stances.

? Tutting - A series of movements emulating dafuture Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

You most likely go through YouTube to seek out hip hop dance tutorials - like many others, together with me as nicely. Do not get me fallacious, it's undoubtedly a great way to learn what your body can do in hip hop dances. Nevertheless, it will waste too much of your time trying to imitate those moves.

Moreover, you'll be lacking your personal model. Good hip hop dancers have their very own unique signature strikes. By the time you finish studying this, it is best to be able to really differentiate hip hop dance from different types of dancing.

It's worthwhile to know the fundamentals of hip hop dance. And after figuring out it, you'll be able to give you your own fashion of dancing. Knowing the basics of hip hop dancing also boosts your potential to learn moves from the experts. That is undoubtedly among the finest shortcuts to be taught hip hop dancing.

Probably the most fundamental idea of hip hop dancing is doing actually easy strikes that define Hip Hop.

Firstly, it is advisable to know that hip hop dances separates / isolates the actions of the higher and lower physique. That simply signifies that each of those predominant parts of your body best hip hop songs 2017 must have its own life, it's own rhythm. When you get this into your head, you'll eventually have it constructed into your body rhythm and have the ability to build on this dance habit.

With that in mind, bear in mind to not just focus in your footwork like what most beginners would do. You might have skillful footwork and in male hip hop artists list a position to dance at incredible speeds. However, you'll lack the showmanship issue and that doesn't take your dancing to the next level.

Categorical your self in your dance. Put your character into it. Don't be a robot (no pun supposed!).

My second recommendation is - take up house. Hip hop dancing is a avenue dance. I do know many people who are in some way afraid of taking on large quantities of space when dancing. Really put your www.youtube.com/channel/UC76BA22_6J2c52ao3M7xi6g dance strikes out there and let it shine. I am unable to stress enough that this is likely one of the very essence of hip hop dancing. Get folks to notice you, and notice your awesome actions.

There are literally 5 fundamentals to hip hop dancing and for the sake not cramming too much into your head, let me record one other one.

Know your music.

Only dance to hip hop beats that you simply love. Some hip hop songs annoy the hell out of me - or just merely not my fashion, so i just avoid them. Do not dance to a tune just because your mates like it or simply because it is famous! Love your music. You show your love for the music by means of your dance moves!

Hip hop dance music is already thirty years old. That will sound hard to believe, nevertheless it's true. The first actually large hip hop song, at the least in line with most music writers, was "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang. When that track debuted in September of 1979, it quickly rose to the top of the charts, and a big a part of why it did so was as a result of it gave the impression of nothing else on the radio. Again then, America was nonetheless caught up in the throes of disco, which wouldn't start disappearing off the radio for another year.

However after Rapper's Delight, hip hop dance music was nonetheless fairly rare on the radio. It was widespread for its novelty, and for its infectious tune and humorous lyrics. However it did not actually start any trends in and of itself, even though it was considered fairly groundbreaking on the time.

It would not be till the early Eighties that this style of music started to get any severe play on mainstream radio station. There were just a few stations in big cities equivalent to New York and Chicago that made it a part of their playlists, however they were stations with tiny audiences.

However lastly, in the middle years of the 1980s, hip hop dance music started to realize traction. Part of the explanation was that mainstream rock was dropping its momentum, and youngsters have been looking for the next huge factor in music. America's altering demographics performed a big half within the increased popularity of rap, too.