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aspenforest732 · 6 months

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Mortem ad Wrens Chapter 16: We Are Determined to Live and to Die!

Summary:

tw: addiction, elevated gang involvement, suicide, mass murder, grooming, abuse, shortened life expectancy, multiplicity adjacent activities, kidnapping mention Logistics are logicked, plans are explained, and quirks trained

Notes:

Happy Halloween/Samhain! I'm gonna be dressing up as Present Mic for dnd tonight. Next week will include the first art I made of Akira :) Also, Chapter 2 of Memoirs Mori is up! It's an essay Akira will write in book 2 on Forced Quirk Manifestation. Check it out if you want to see how trauma maps to quirks and what the different types look like ‘text’ JSL Text thoughts

Slipping into their room at almost half past midnight, Akira flopped onto the bed and saw over a dozen chat notifications from the Mad Banquet. Koda and Shinso were thriving, although the latter was going through what they called the Eraser Hell Course. Shaking their head at his theatrics, Akira frowned as they scrolled down to Tokoyami being disheartened with his internship, having learned nothing except how self-centered and seemingly unwilling to teach Hawks was. Only Shinso was still online, but Akira sent a quick update that they just got in from patrol and were about to crash. Shinso immediately sent a facetime request, which Akira blearily accepted, barely sitting up enough to sign.

“Hey, how’d your first- woah, our eyes match!”

Akira cocked their head in confusion before remembering that they’d taken their contacts out a bit ago since Taishiro and Amajiki already knew their birth family. ‘Exhausting. I have to more than double my food budget with the plan he said I need, and I don’t know how that’s going to happen. Fat Gum also figured out more than I wanted him to – at least in this phase – and now Purple Moon knows, too.’

“He- I thought you were barely keeping up with Recovery Girl’s?” Shinso switched gears as Aizawa walked into frame.

‘Hi sensei, and I’ll figure it out eventually. I just haven’t had the time to sit down and hammer out more than an unsustainable work/school/sleep balance that’ll set me back too far on that deposit. I have a week to make it work, two if I need to delay continuing the plan.’

“What about those 1000-calorie drinks you sometimes use?”

‘Those are expensive, though. He gave me a bunch of recipes that are meant for a low budget, but they all require electricity to some degree.’

“Did he give you them before or after he… found out?” Shinso asked, drawing Aizawa’s attention. “Then maybe he’ll adjust it tomorrow? If nothing else, I can make you some of the stuff here and bring it to school.”

‘Blank, no. That’s too much. My base intake needs to double, and part of this week is figuring out how much I need to increase my variable snacks to be effective.’ Aizawa choked on his coffee in the background, and Akira stifled a laugh. ‘Besides, you two need to leave soon for patrol; I imagine that’s why Eraser is lurking?’

The next day, Akira found the morning shift in the cafeteria and was quickly spotted by the Diminutive Hero: Mouse. “Hey kid!” the petite hero bounded up. “I’m Mouse, fae/faer pronouns. You must be Umbra Mortis. Not many first years see me on their first day. Let me guess, Class A?”

They nodded, ‘I remember reading about those, but do you know the JSL? I was having trouble finding signs for a lot of neopronouns.’

“Sure thing, kiddo,” Mouse grinned and went through the signs. “They aren’t coded yet, so it varies between people. Kind of like call signs! Fat Gum and Suneater usually aren’t down here for another two hours, so how about you sit with us.”

Gust and Lizarro waved tiredly from the group’s table while nursing coffee mugs.

“What got you up so early this morning? Did Fat Gum forget to give you the schedule? From the shift overview, it sounded like you had an eventful first night.”

‘I’m just used to getting four hours of sleep. Figured I could go back over my new budget I started working on yesterday.’ Noticing Lizarro’s stare, Akira cocked their head, ‘Do you need something?’

“You’re the kid who danced instead of fighting in the quarter-finals at the sports festival, right?”

Akira quirked a small smile, ‘While not accurate, you’re not technically wrong. I didn’t want the media exposure, so approached Pink Queen with an offer of letting her show off an unusual fighting style. She’s been dancing for years and noticed that most people with vocal quirks along with a few outliers move to a beat that can be followed.’

“And since she wouldn’t face a quirk like that, you wanted to show her understanding,” Gust supplied. “Smart move if she was looking for an internship with someone with that type of quirk. Did you get many offers?”

‘I had ten in total, but Fat Gum was the one I was hoping to get the attention of, so it wasn’t much of a choice.’

“Because of your quirk drawback, right? That blonde kid with the copy quirk seemed pretty shaken up about it.”

Why does everyone think that? Akira huffed. ‘That was part of it, yes, to see if he had ideas for better management since his is similar. But the main reason was he’s one of the few heroes with core ideals similar to mine and a track record of consistently upholding them.’

Finishing their breakfast while listening to the group banter about various pros’ codes and – mostly questionable – morals, Akira logged their meal before flipping to their budget again. The thought briefly crossed their mind of convincing Boss to let them be a tester a couple times, but the risk of addiction or serious side effects were too high even for them, not to mention if the drug was picked up by a quirk or a trip to Recovery Girl. Wait. Akira sat up a little straighter as they mentally ran through who had been blacklisted after the USJ incident. We are low on security personnel… While not intimidating on their own, Akira could easily be a cloak in the shadows and eyes in the rafters. They quickly made another chart, grinning as the standard security schedule would get them enough for a security deposit before winter.

“You figure it out, kid?” Lizzaro asked, interrupting Mouse’s rant on the difference between mice and rats.

‘Yeah, I think I can make this work. Just need to pick up some extra responsibilities at work. We’re a little short-staffed, so it shouldn’t take much convincing.’

“That’s great! If you ever need help, though, Fat Gum’s helped all of us out of tight situations before,” Mouse pointed out before faer watch started chiming. “That’s our alarm to get ready for patrol, remember to leave some time for fun, kid.”

Akira blinked, wondering at the idea for a moment before turning their chair against the wall and continuing to encode their notebook. Half an hour into the process, Taishiro and Amajiki came in with the night shift, who mostly grabbed small meals, tea, or presumably decaf coffee. The pair made their way to Akira’s table.

Tucking away their notebook, Akira signed, ‘I figured out the budget. There are some openings that would pay enough to cover food while still putting a bit aside.’

Taishiro smiled gently even as an edge creeped into his voice. “What would you be doing and why are the positions open?”

‘Protection detail. Most likely from the shadows or rafters since Boss will still want me out of harm’s way when possible. Some people were blacklisted after USJ.’

“And if a pro arrives?”

Akira gave him a flat look. ‘I’m not giving you our exit strategies.’ After a moment of Taishiro’s smile turning mildly amused, Akira realized what he meant to ask. ‘Sorry. If it’s Eraser, talk. If it’s any other pro, lead them off.’

Once Taishiro and Amajiki finished breakfast, they headed to the large office. After closing the door, Taishiro guided Akira to a chair, the latter realizing they were shaking. The hero moved back to his desk, pulling out a small bin and offering its contents to Amajiki before heading back to Akira, who was just taking out their texture ball.

“Ah, good, you have one already. I always keep fidget toys in here for harder conversations or days,” Taishiro said gently. “Feel free to continue using that one or peruse the bin as we talk. Now, for today at least, I want to understand why we aren’t moving on the Wrens now and what plan you have.”

Akira unsuccessfully willed their hands to stop shaking as they signed, ‘They have decades old contracts with the Hero Commission and understandings with the Police that protect their status and reputation in both hero and civilian circles. As bad as corruption is among limelights, the Wrens account for most of the cover-ups and blacklisting victims with their teams of lawyers and full support from the Commission as a known producer of powerhouses.

As for my plan…I’ll give you the choice: plausible deniability or reality?’

“The more I know, the more likely I am to be able to help you.”

‘Purple Moon?’ At his firm nod, they continued. ‘Once I get my full license, I’ll be an independent underground hero. I’ll grab one of the young Wren heroes and determine if there’s a way to reverse the memory alteration. If not, I’ll be pretty limited in who I can save, but I’ll still grab as many pre-quirk and “weak” quirked kids as I can, using my associates to help with housing them. Once everyone I can get out is out, I’ll kill the Legacy Holder branch, which is in charge of breeding and breaking memory- and emotion-altering quirks to make the empire more sustainable. If fortune is on my side – which it rarely is – that will end the effects currently over most of the Wren heroes. At that point, it’s a matter of bringing the old guard to justice and preventing mass suicides.’

Akira looked up from their lap to check in before the darker alternative. Amajiki once again looked sick, but Taishiro’s prominent emotion was worry with nearly concealed fury. “And if fortune isn’t on your side?”

‘If the process is reversible, reverse those I can, but… When justice is an impossibility and the crime too great, revenge is the path to take. I would take my army of vigilantes and “villains” and gut the Wrens. The Commission should then be weakened enough for the kids to take them down in a legal battle.’

“The kids?” Amajiki whispered. “What about you?”

Akira blinked. ‘I doubt I’ll make it to 30 with everything that could go wrong. Given that the Wrens will underestimate the kids they practically or literally left for dead, they’ll have a better chance of surviving the war.’

Taishiro quietly observed them for a few minutes before continuing. “If you took out the leaders, would the group not fall?”

‘No, part of the alterations from the differences I’ve seen is convincing the victims that the abuse was justified and doing the right thing. They will just continue because they were programmed to not know better. They won’t face justice because they’re so ingrained in the justice system, and if I target the Hero Commission and police first, I’ll effectively be facing all of Japan. Anything I expose on their end will be refuted by the family, and they can easily bring in the Legacy Holder branch to turn witnesses and victims.’

“What if you target the Legacy Holders then the Commission?”

‘If I move on the Wrens, I have to keep them on the defensive because they have the quirks to find me once they realize I’m alive and taking revenge. Giving them the time it would take to go after the Commission would also give them the time to make an excuse to obliterate whatever building I’m in along with my followers.’

“Sounds like you need some people on your side, then. Many of the twilight and underground heroes are unhappy with the state of the Commission and have been for a long time. You’ll need people to help evaluate your first target, right? I know some, and we can help with stable environments for the kids you bring.”

Akira nodded, deciding not to bring up Plan B for now, at least. ‘Twilight and Underground only, though, and I want to watch them before they know any part of this. If word gets out, the Wrens will not hesitate to kill anyone they think might be associated with their secrets.’

The somber mood followed the trio to the training rooms after Akira finished encoding their notes and destroying the keys and plain text. ‘When I warped to the lamp post, I noticed a new shadow next to me in my mindscape.’

“Next to you?” Suneater asked.

‘Yeah? I was standing in my neutral space, and a figure made of shadow appeared next to me.’ Akira paused. ‘Do you not see in first person in your mindscape?’

“I… don’t see anything. I know what I have, but it’s just black.”

“Let’s start with you warping, then, and see if the shadow figure is back,” Taishiro suggested. “You can text me while invisible, so we have a line of communication.”

Akira nodded and warped a meter to the side and, closing their eyes to focus, once again saw the shadow figure. They texted “it’s back” to Taishiro before refocusing. Circling the figure, Akira noted that it looked like someone had taken a silhouette of them and made it 3D. They reached out to touch the figure, but their hand passed through with a sensation not unlike petting Dark Shadow.

“It twitched,” Fat Gum called out.

Interesting, I wonder…Akira stepped into the shadow figure and moved into a defensive position. A deep feeling of wrongness settled in their gut, and they quickly stepped out.

“Keep doing what you just did, it changed position.”

Akira opened their eyes to see the clone now in the pose they took. They texted Fat Gum, “Something felt very wrong when I tried to step into the figure to control it, but it moved as I did.”

“The first few times I transformed a body part, it felt unnatural and almost wrong,” Suneater said softly. “It might be the unfamiliarity.”

After a moment, Akira texted that they were going to warp again to see if anything changed when they had two clones active. With Fat Gum’s go-ahead, they noticed that the first figure split into two. Closing their eyes, Akira touched the connecting thread of shadow and startled at the distinct thrum of energy. Slowly reaching their hand back in, they grasped the tendril and felt what was almost like two additional pulses harmonizing with their own.

Even as they stepped back from the connection, they felt the pulses remain. Breath hitching, they quickly dispelled the clones. The pulses faded out slower than the clones, echoing in their chest.

“Are you alright?” Fat Gum approached, eyes searching their frame.

Akira shuddered before nodding, ‘Just… a bizarre feeling. It was like when Pink Queen and I synched up at the sports festival, but I could feel the two pulses.’

“Okay, do you want to slow down or keep going?”

For the rest of the session, Akira focused on getting used to the connection with clones and forming it with only one active. Mentally stepping into a clone still didn’t seem like a good primary control method, but they were at least moving in the right direction. Once it seemed Akira wasn’t being a danger to themself, Suneater started his own training routine, focusing primarily on his arms for the day at least.

Notes:

fun fact: I actually have hyperphantasia, which is like the opposite of aphantasia, which I gave Amajiki. I can see all the things in my head and my other senses often interact with them. Great for learning what injuries feel like, horrible when the same activates involuntarily I was double-checking the trigger warning edits for this chapter and registered the “multiplicity-adjacent activities.” Hadn’t really thought about how I picture Stranger quirks working that way, but makes sense. In order to differentiate control mechanisms from Masters and Changers, I set up how I picture each of them being represented in the user’s mindscape. For Masters, are usually strings leading to the people they control or their summons. Amajiki’s description is standard for Changers, although those without aphantasia can see their options, a switch, or some other on/off visualization. Additional note: yeah so I didn't know I'm host of a DID system at the time of writing this. Akira is a bit system-coded between that and her masks being somewhat based off Shallan in Stormlight Archives, who is also canonically a system (forgot about that when I was drawing inspiration)

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#addiction #elevated gang involvement #suicide #mass murder #grooming #abuse #shortened life expectancy #multiplicity adjacent activities #kidnapping mention #when good people go to war #mortem ad wrens #chapter 16 #sorry for the delay

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bpdkogane · 10 months

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hey y'all it's been a min so . more keith stuff because i can

yeah yeah laugh it up lesbian has clutches on keith kogane and will not let him go . it's a problem .

anyway !! my next post will likely be about allura but for the moment i'll talk a little abt how i've reworked my bpd keith hc .

in short : i got disgosed w adhd-c , did research and realized that it also fit keith's character .

in ... less short : i was looking at symptoms of adhd-c or adhd combined . it's a subtype of adhd and a combination of adhd hyperactive (adhd-h) and adhd inattentive (adhd-i) . you can guess i'm not a psychiatrist -- i just like projecting myself onto characters i like . but regardless , you'll probably like some background on the subtypes of adhd i just mentioned .

adhd-h or adhd hyperactive is probably the type you think of when you think of adhd in all honesty. i know that it's what i used to think of , simply because ... well , it's what everyone said it was , so who am i to argue ? it's a subtype that deals with hyperactivity and restlessness . some symptoms that are common in people with this subtype are

high impulsivity

inability to "switch off" , simply always moving

difficulty waiting turn / low patience

excessively talkative

fidgety / restless

of course there are more , but this is a tumblr post . go look it up if you're that interested in learning more .

anyway , this is the type that is most commonly diagnosed in preschoolers and grade school children . it shows signs early in life and is most commonly diagnosed in males (according to most sources i read)

moving on from that , i'll briefly go over adhd-i before i get into what you're probably looking for .

adhd-i or adhd inattentive ( formerly known as ADD) is a less common subtype of adhd simply because of its lower diagnosis rate . it's commonly seen as simply being lazy or lack of trying . some common symptoms of it include but are not limited to :

high distractability / easily distracted

forgetfulness (could be mild , could be extreme . it varies case to case)

auditory processing difficulties , highly associated with auditory processing disorders

tendency to make careless mistakes

high rate of losing or misplacing objects easily

this subtype is more commonly found and diagnosed in women and adults ! it is a bit harder to diagnose with its criteria considered "normal" things that people do .

now (drumroll please) we get into adhd-c or a combined version of the two subtypes i briefly went over . there isnt very much that i didn't already go over , but there is something ! those somethings are :

sleep issues or insomnia

sensory processing problems

impacted working memory

this subtype has a lower rate of diagnosis than the previous , and also (surprise surprise) has a high rate of co-occurring mood disorders and autism ( haha makes me wonder how i didn't know i had it sooner )

now , you're probably thinking "rayne you sound like a medical journal at this point just say why you think keith has adhd-c !!" and to that i say , congrats if you made it this far ! this is kind of a long post and i apologize but i also do not care . so whatev !

but like i said in short : it's a matter of projection . but it's also because when you look at some of the things i mentioned , you see how they could be applied to keith's character . the impulsivity , the memory issues , the impatience , the apathetic-seeming nature, cannot for the life of me remember if it is canon that keith has sleep issues but it is canon to me so i don't really care for this post it's canon . because my main hcs for keith include autism and bpd , you might be able to see why i find adhd-c fits snugly with the two of those . it just makes sense in my head in all honesty and i hope you can see it too , even if i didn't truly get too deep into it .

this is my single long tumblr post quota for the month before school starts up and i am eventually buried in google docs and online textbooks . i'll answer any questions if anyone has any though !!! again if you made it here i hope you liked this post i appreciate you <3

#voltron #vld #keith #keith kogane #keith voltron #i still don't know how to tag for shit #vld keith #vld headcanons

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groupdelwar · 10 months

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Taking Care of Your Furry Friends with the Herd Health Manager

Hey there, fellow animal lovers! Have you ever wondered how farmers and pet owners keep their animals happy and healthy? Well, let us introduce you to a magical tool called the Herd Health Manager! It might sound a bit fancy, but don't worry – we're here to break it down in simple terms.

What's the Herd Health Manager?

Imagine you have a bunch of animal pals – cows, sheep, horses, or even dogs and cats. Just like humans, these cute creatures can sometimes get sick or feel a bit under the weather. That's where the Herd Health Manager comes in. It's like a superhero for your pets and farm animals, helping to keep them fit as a fiddle!

How Does It Work?

Think of the Herd Health Manager as a watchful guardian. It keeps track of your animal buddies' health records, like their check-ups, vaccinations, and any medicines they might need. Just like how your parents might have a folder with all your important papers, the manager keeps everything organized and in one place.

Why Is It Important?

Good question! Animals can't really talk to us like humans can. They can't say, "Hey, I don't feel so good today." So, the Herd Health Manager acts as their voice. It helps farmers and pet owners know when their animals need some extra love and care. When an animal's health record is updated in the manager, it's like sending an alert that says, "Hey, something's up – let's take action!"

Keeping Track of Stuff

Imagine if you had to remember all the times your pets went to the doctor, got shots, or took medicine. That would be tough, right? The Herd Health Manager keeps an eye on all of that. It's like having a super organized diary that never forgets.

Preventing Problems

Remember the saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Well, the Herd Health Manager is like a master at prevention. It helps spot any little signs that your animals might not be feeling their best. By catching these signs early, farmers and pet owners can help prevent bigger problems down the road.

FAQs about the Herd Health Manager:

Is the Herd Health Manager only for farms?

Nope! It's for all animal lovers – whether you have one pet or a whole farm.

Can it tell me when my pet needs a check-up?

Absolutely! It keeps track of those important dates.

How does it let me know if something's wrong?

It sends alerts or messages to remind you to check on your animals.

Can I use it for my pet hamster too?

Of course! Any animal, big or small.

Is it easy to use? I'm not great with technology.

Don't worry! It's designed to be super user-friendly.

What if I forget to update the manager?

Life happens! But the more you update, the better it works.

Does it work offline?

Some versions might, but online is more efficient.

Can multiple people in my farm or family use it?

Yes, many versions allow sharing among authorized users.

Is my data safe?

The good ones have security measures, just like online banking.

Does it cost a lot?

It varies, but think of it as an investment in your animals' health.

Can it help with training schedules too?

Absolutely! It can store training plans and remind you when it's time.

Can I see all my animals' health info at once?

That's the beauty of it – yes!

Does it work with smartphones?

Most do! It's like having a pet health app.

Can it remind me when to buy pet food?

If you set it up, yes!

Does it work for exotic animals, like snakes?

In many cases, yes.

Can it remind me to clean my pets' living areas?

If you program it to, sure thing!

What if I have an emergency? Can it help?

It's not a replacement for a vet, but it can help you stay organized.

Is it only for physical health, or does it track behavior too?

Some versions track behavior changes too.

Can I print my animals' health records from it?

In many cases, yes.

Do I need Wi-Fi all the time for it to work?

It depends on the version, but not always.

Can I set up reminders for other pet-related tasks?

Definitely! It's like your personal pet assistant.

Is it like a social media for pets too?

While some versions have sharing features, it's mostly about health.

Can it remind me when to give my pets treats?

If you want it to, sure!

Does it only work for mammals, or does it cover birds and fish too?

Many versions cover all kinds of animals.

Can it tell me if my animals are getting along with each other?

It's not a mind reader, but if you track behaviors, you might get some hints.

Remember, the Herd Health Manager isn't just a tool – it's a friend that helps you take the best care of your animal buddies. So, whether you're a farmer with a field full of animals or a pet owner with a cozy home, this magical manager has your back – or should we say, your furry friend's back!

#Herd Health Manager

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soracities · 2 years

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hi, m.! how do you discover new books upon removing yourself from the algorithm of goodreads / storygraph? my sister and i are currently evading book socials in an attempt to be more mindful of what we read, minus the ‘feed’ recommending us books. we want to read books because we choose it :) would love to hear your thoughts!

Hi, lovely! This will be a bit late since I've had this question a few times, esp. in regards to quitting social media, so I'm very sorry to anyone else who asked that it's taken me so long to get around to it!

I will be honest, this blog does make up a good part of how I find things -- my mutuals and other lit blogs especially (I also find works through the authors I follow online now and then); most often, though, these will simply put something on my radar so that I always have an ever-shifting web of disparate works circling through my head; titles will crop up when I'm looking for something, but whether or not I get around to reading those books sooner rather than later really depends on a lot of other factors: if it's an author I know or have read and loved before, for example, then I’m more likely to explore it -- the same goes if I spot something on a shelf or in an article that a mutual has mentioned!

Otherwise, the factors that really influence the books I find most often are a lot more personal and down to proximity: things close friends mention or recommend (Dostoevsky was on my list for years, but I bought The Brothers Karamazov without a second thought because of someone I love), the books I find in my local library or favourite bookshops, books mentioned in other books (I pick up a lot of titles through nonfiction / essays, or just stuff the authors I like enjoy), archives like Project Gutenberg, online magazines, journals, book presses, etc. These are the places I go to far more often and are probably what determine the books I actually read most of the time. Admittedly, it’s quite random and there is no set system for me aside from just following my own intuition -- that said, I think the last ones are especially good for discovering new works and authors, so while I don’t know what kind of books or genres you prefer (which means this will all vary of course), if you want to stay away from socials entirely, then I cannot stress enough: mailing lists & newsletters are your friends!! You don’t have to sign up to everything (I’d honestly recommend against it because I think you’d end up with the same situation I found on Goodreads which is far more time spent accumulating titles than actually reading them), but keeping up with sites whose content you enjoy, or signing up to the newsletters of local or independent bookshops is, I think, a really good way of coming across new things without an AI hobbling them together for you.

For me, a lot of what I come across has been assembled from a variety of places, but I have a handful of publishers whose content I love or am always intrigued by (like Tramp Press, Fitzcarraldo, Pushkin Press, or the Dalkey Archive) so I try to keep up with their releases every now and then (I’m also more likely to read random books I stumble across if I know they published them), as well as my favourite online journals, magazines, lit archives etc., As I said, I don’t know what kind of books you like, but for me sites like Electric Lit (because of them, I found out about Norah Lange), The Marginalian (Brainpickings’ new name, and it is an absolute treasure trove), The Paris Review, LitHub, Words Without Borders, or other poem-a-day / poetry archives (Words for the Year and poetry queen @firstfullmoon ig page grieftolight especially!) are wonderful, because they expose you to so many different voices and works. I’m not a huge fan of literary prizes for various reasons, but I do pay attention to the longlist and shortlist of the Dublin Literary Prize and the Booker International because they’re not as narrow or insular as others usually are; I may not always read the titles listed immediately, but they’re filed away in my head, because the most important thing for me is to read, or be aware of in order to read, as wide a selection of books as possible.

All of this means I end up with a very chaotic mental map of the various things I want to read and explore, but the chief thing for me is that if I find something that piques my interest, I follow it -- if I’m reading an author of a particular nationality, for example, I often look up their contemporaries or others writing from the same or a similar tradition. Most of what I read is in translation also, so if a book has really caught me I look up not only the author’s other works, but the translator’s too. Because I read Adonis, I looked up Khaled Mattawa. Because I looked up Khaled Mattawa, I found Saadi Youssef and Maram al-Masri, both of whom I absolutely adored. Non-Fiction helps a lot in this too, at least for me -- as I said, I stumble across a lot of new titles when reading essays by authors I already enjoy, and it’s far more likely that I’ll pick something up if I’ve read about it beforehand. I read Geoff Dyer’s essays because I read Zadie Smith's review of them in her own essay collection; I read Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon and Enrique Vila Matas’ Dublinesque because I read Zambra; I discovered and fell in love with Stig Dagerman through a Siri Hustvedt essay and I don’t know if I have ever before felt the kind of stunned response I had when I read his writing in Burnt Child; it honestly floors me still. Again, all of this is a very random selection process but it works for me because I’m always looking to explore lots of various things at any given moment. That said, and while I don't know what facilities are like where you are or how easily you have access to them, I do genuinely believe, along with all this, that if you want to be more mindful then the most important thing I can say to you is to really, really, try to cultivate a relationship with your local library and bookstores, whenever and however you can. As I said, I accumulate a lot of titles through a lot of different places, but even through all of these, most of the books I've ended up discovering and loving have been through my local library because they're the ones who have put the book and me in the same room: I had Svetlana Alexievich on my list for a while because I came across excerpts on tumblr, but the only reason I finally got down to reading her is because the Fitzcarraldo edition of Second-hand Time was put on the display shelf. That display shelf is also the only reason I eventually discovered Zambra (also in Fitzcarraldo and so, by now, the only reason I'd discovered Fitzcarraldo). It’s where I found Camilla Gurdova, where I found Nabokov’s letters to his wife and therefore finally got around to reading him; it’s where I picked up Camus’ essays because -- again -- I know how much someone dear to me loves him; it’s how I managed to read Siri Hustvedt and therefore the only reason I found Dagerman to begin with at all. For me, that physical proximity is a vital part of the books I come across because they’re no longer something vague that I “might” read, but a real tangible thing that I can actually pick up and read right there and then; this is what makes the difference for me.

When I first started reading more seriously, I (very naively) collected so many of those ridiculous 100 Best Books of All Time Ever lists; I thought Tolstoy and various other bigwigs were something I needed to accomplish in order to be considered a Real Reader -- naturally, it was a disaster because books then became a massive and daunting chore; I couldn't finish Notes from Underground because, in reality, I wasn't ready for it -- I just wanted to tick it off a list. What I needed, and what my library allowed me to discover, were books that weren’t necessarily on those lists but that stayed with me and influenced the literature I did eventually discover: because of my library I found Helen Simpson, Ali Smith and Jenny Offill which is probably the only reason I gave up those lists and finally allowed myself to read what I wanted, when I wanted; it wasn’t the time for Notes from Underground, but it was the time to read the slim little Turgenev I found wedged on the Classics shelf and fell in love with. The first books that I ended up being challenged by were not the Big Books I always thought I had to tackle but rather things like Books Burn Badly or A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing which I never would have read otherwise. It’s because of my library that I found Mihail Sebastian, Andrés Neuman, and Tomas Tranströmer. It’s why I read Mrs Dalloway as early as I did -- because the book was there. The only reason I ended up finding Adonis (and subsequently, any of his other works as well as Mattawa’s) was because my library had him on their Poetry shelf. I very rarely actually bought books for the longest time because 90% of what I read was through my library, which I know is an insanely lucky position to be in; I lived in a well connected enough area to be able to find most of the books I was looking for (and even if they weren’t in my county, I could order them in from others easily enough).

And I think the exact same kind of unexpected but striking discoveries applies to bookstores (secondhand and independent ones especially, and I love them more for this very reason) -- again, I don’t know what you and your sister have available near you, but if you have the means to visit them then I genuinely can’t overstate how important they are, not only because of what you can find on their shelves but also because of what you can learn by forging a relationship and talking to the staff, or simply the comfort of having an emotional tie to some aspect of the community you live in. I’ve found books because the shops I love posted about a reading or book signing, or because looking up an author on their website led to suggestions I’d never even heard of but was endlessly thankful for. For me, even for all that my brain hops back and forth like a deranged little magpie hoarding new titles, the most important avenues for finding authors or works happens between titles given to me by those I’m closest to, and the places where the books are physically there. I can have a book in my head for months or even years but it’s seeing it in the bargain bin or in the middle of a precarious pile of faded spines in a secondhand bookshop that makes me bring it home, if that makes sense. This is not to detract from any of the other sources above because I understand that this is a somewhat privileged place to speak from and relies a lot, not just financially but also locally on where you are and what you have access to. But if there are local bookshops, or even just ones a short while away from you then I really think you will get so much from visiting them or placing your orders with them when you do discover new titles that have caught you, however that comes about.

In any case, this has gotten a lot lengthier than I intended, but I hope some if it has helped even just a little bit. Happy reading and (hopefully!) happy future discoveries to you and your sister xx

#ask #anonymous #book talks #beginner guides

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phoenixkratos · 2 years

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Hi there. I was wondering how I could create a website for my random creative musings, similar to your own. My attempts in the past have been unfruitful because web design is an utterly inhospitable place if you don't know where to start. Is there any advice you could give?

Hi!

This, uh, went on for a bit, so full suggestions under the cut:

how to do a website, kind of?

Web design can definitely be a bear if you're not familiar with it—although I do think it's fun and worthwhile to learn if you are interested! You don't necessarily need to engage with actual HTML and CSS if you don't want to, of course.

That would be the first thing to decide: are you interested in learning to create websites from scratch or having total control over their design and layout? Or do you just want to focus on your content and not worry too much about site maintenance or a custom design?

website builders/software

If you'd rather keep things as simple as possible, then you'll probably want to sign up for a service that lets you build a website using visual site-building tools. Most free hosts/site builders are going to display ads of some sort on your site, though, so you'll need to be comfortable with that. WordPress.com may work for you if you're okay with ads on a free site, although I feel like WordPress's page creation interface can be a bit hit or miss with new users. Worth a try to see if you like it, since it's reliable software if it does click with you. A while back I feel like I remembered a lot of people using Weebly for free sites but I can't really speak to how good it is myself.

In general I don't have a ton of great suggestions in this area, unfortunately, because it's just not something I have a ton of recent hobbyist experience with. But if you're okay with the limitations these come with and the ease-of-use (assuming you can find an option that clicks with you) is important, then they're a perfectly reasonable choice! There are a lot of options, so shop around a bit, sign up for free accounts and mess around to see how comfortable you are with each one.

do it yourself

If you are interested in doing things the old-fashioned way, then you'll want to learn at least a little bit of HTML and CSS. There are a million resources out there on the internet, of varying degrees of quality, accuracy, or actual beginner-friendliness. Here are some guides and resources that I'm familiar with and/or generally trust:

freecodecamp

These days, if you want to learn to code, you'll probably end up funneled toward online courses of one kind or another. Some of them are probably pretty good! Many of the good ones are probably also not free, and I assume you're not looking to spend money on a course like that if you aren't yet comfortable with HTML/certain you want to use it for your site.

FreeCodeCamp is one I've actually used a bit before, back when I was a bit rusty and wanted to brush up on some things before moving on to more advanced stuff. It's intended for people who want to get into web design and related fields as a career, but you don't need to go that far with it: the first group of HTML tutorials does a great job covering all the basics you'll need, and each step of the course builds comfortably on the previous steps. It comes with built-in HTML editors/previewers pre-filled with its examples so you can complete the exercises and check your work without needing other software. The intro course is geared toward the design of a "Cat Photo App" (not actually a functional app, just what the design of the page would look like; no need to worry about any weird software coding) rather than a personal website, but it'll give you a great grounding in HTML and CSS themselves.

Specifically, you'll want the "Responsive Web Design" course, and to follow it up through the section "Applied Visual Design" (though you likely don't need all of the lessons in there, as many are features you probably won't use on a personal site). The basics of the section after that, "Applied Accessibility", are also important if you want to make your website accessible to the visually impaired and other disabled folks! Everything beyond that you can ignore, unless you decide you're interested in trying that stuff out on your own. :)

mozilla developer network/mdn

MDN is primarily a developer resource (hence the name), meant as a huge reference document for web development standards rather than helping with personal sites and such, but this is basically the place you go when you need to look up details on how a given HTML element or CSS selector works. If you're ever not sure how an element mentioned in a tutorial works, or if you think you need an selector that you haven't seen explained before, this is where you go to look it up. (You'll also commonly see a site called "W3Schools" recommended for this, and it's an okay reference as well, but most folks tend to prefer MDN since it's not commercially-motivated.)

MDN does offer a "Getting started with the web" tutorial that covers the basics of HTML, CSS, what to do with all the files, and things like that. I actually only just learned about this while working on this post so I'm not sure how good it is as a beginner's reference, but it looks decent, and I trust it'll all be accurate information. I do like that it suggests taking the time to make a sketch of what you imagine the site looking like first—it's a good reminder to have a goal to work toward rather than trying to decide what you want at the same time you're trying to learn how it works.

So, that's general HTML stuff. What about tools meant more for actually creating personal sites?

bogleech's website ingredients - a good simple starting point

Bogleech has a fantastic "website ingredients" post with all the basic files you need for a website along with helpful instructions:

The files in that download will let you produce a (very simple) HTML website, and explain how basic HTML works, how to add images, how to keep files together, and things like that. You'll want to find other resources to learn how to put together a more complex layout, but this is a great tool for just playing around and learning how all this stuff works.

the cave of dragonflies' webmaster guides - more in-depth html tutorials and content advice

Also consider checking out @antialiasis's webmaster guides, which are all geared toward creating your own personal website from scratch. (And, if you're not already familiar with it, her site The Cave of Dragonflies in general is itself a big personal/creative Pokémon fansite, and a great example of what you can put together if you really get going!)

There are also free layouts available as a more structured starting point than Bogleech's simple page, so if you want a template to customize after learning the basics, this is an option for that.

html editors

If you're going to write your own code, you'll want software to write it in (please do not use word processing software like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, it really isn't meant for this and will cause headaches down the line). Many basic tutorials (including Bogleech's) will recommend Notepad to view the page's code—if you're on a Mac, TextEdit would be the closest equivalent—and that will work for the bare basics and doesn't require you to install or download anything new or complicated. But if you think you're likely to want to work with HTML, I would strongly suggest getting a text editor with syntax highlighting capabilities; it makes telling the various bits of your code apart much, much, easier. For Windows Notepad++ is a good suggestion, while for Mac you'll probably want to look at TextMate; I haven't used it in a while but I used to use Brackets (cross-platform) a lot and found it generally good at getting out of my way when I needed it to. I personally use Visual Studio Code (also cross-platform) at the moment. There are tons of other options out there and I won't muddle things by listing them all here, but just know that if none of those options click with you, you'll be able to find another one that suits your needs.)

hosting

However you put your site together (with the exception of the site builders mentioned earlier, which generally also host your site for you), you'll need a place to put it online. Nowadays it's not common to find reputable HTML file hosts for free; you'll usually end up paying at least a small amount per month/year for hosting, it'll include other features you probably don't actually need for a simple personal site, and that's not counting the cost of the domain name (though those are usually just one low price once per year for a common extension like .com, .net, etc.). But there is at least one great free option: Neocities. Neocities is totally dedicated to bringing back the days of small, personal websites that you can design yourself, and while I haven't used it myself it's been really great to see the kinds of fun sites and projects people have been able to create with it. Would definitely recommend checking this out as a first stop for hosting! This looks like a good absolute-basics starting guide for Neocities (and includes a link to a "layout builder" if you want a more structured starting layout than Bogleech's ingredients, with a few more options to choose from than having to manually edit TCoD's): https://learn.sadgrl.online/absolute-beginners-guide-to-neocities/

(Neocities appears to have an online file editor with syntax highlighting, so in theory you don't need one of the editors mentioned above. However, I would still recommend writing your code as local files in your computer, and then just uploading the files to Neocities. That way you have a bit more protection from things like browser crashes if something happens to go wrong, and you'll have a local copy of all your stuff just in case.)

are there any other options?

There is the third option of purchasing hosting, and then installing software on that hosting to run your website (for example, you can also install WordPress on your own site rather than using WordPress.com; Altered Origin is currently running on a PHP CMS called Grav). Depending on the software you choose you can get an experience more or less like using a site builder, but with more control over your content, the design, etc.. The tradeoff is that you'll likely end up managing all the more technical aspects of software like that yourself, which can be more work than either having a company take care of it for you or using something that's a little harder to break outside of code typos, like a static HTML site.

The amount of coding you need to worry about can also vary with this; my current Grav site provides a simple way to manage adding new content, but the design/layout of the site around that content was still written entirely by hand with HTML and CSS. With self-hosted WordPress you can just use and customize themes without (necessarily) needing to touch the code, and can have more flexibility about which themes and other elements you can install than WordPress.com's free hosting allows.

But either way, I'd recommend trying one or both of the other options before bothering with this. Buying more advanced hosting and maintaining the software on your own website is something you probably don't want to worry about unless you already know you require it or will enjoy it!

okay i'll shut up now

I always love hearing that someone's looking into creating their own space on the internet; it's really a shame that so much of that creative spirit has disappeared over the years. I wish you the best of luck with your site; I'd love to see a link to it whenever you've got it up and running! (And if there was anything specific you were wondering about that I didn't cover here, or if this wasn't the sort of help you were asking for at all and I totally rambled on past your actual question, feel free to send another ask and let me know!)

If any of my other webmaster friends want to chime in with further advice or suggestions, feel free!

#personal website #it has been years since i last wrote a long post on tumblr and somehow the experience has gotten worse?#impressive

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katy-l-wood · 3 years

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Hi, I have a friend who is looking into the publishing process, and self publishing, do you have any advice or resources for them?

Hi! So there’s three basic paths to publishing available to people, and each have their pros and cons. I’ll cover each path separately.

1. Traditional publishing.

This is what most people think of in relation to publishing. Wide distribution, the support of a literary agent, the support of a publishing team, etc.. The process is essentially that you finish your book, query literary agents, get a literary agent, the agent possibly suggests some edits, then the literary agent sends the books out on submission to publishers. Those publishers include the big houses like Scholastic, but also smaller houses/subsets of the big houses. If a publisher picks up the book, congrats! You then go through more rounds of editing and other such things until the book ends up on shelves. Woo!

The upsides of traditional publishing: does not cost you any money (if you encounter agents or editors or whatever saying you have to pay them, it is a scam and you shouldn’t get involved), you can access wider distribution channels, you’ve got an agent to fight for you when it comes to contracts and such, you’ll (hopefully) have at least some marketing support, you can get your book published by houses that won’t publish people unless they have an agent, and you get money up front in the form of an advance.

The downsides of traditional publishing: you lose some control of your book and may have to make changes you didn’t intend to (you can always say no, of course, but if you do that you’re likely to lose your deal), there’s a lot of upheaval in the world of traditional publishing and things shift constantly, traditional publishing can take a LONG time (a year or two from signing a deal to having your book on the shelves is common), you might not get any marketing support (this depends on a lot of factors).

Some resources to look into: Manuscript Wishlist and Manuscript Academy are a great starting point for learning about the querying process specifically but also other aspects of the publishing process. Writerbeware is a good place to look up info on scammers and any issues people have had with various agents or publishing houses. QueryTracker is another popular resource that’s gained traction the last few years. (A little note here: paying for a query critique from somewhere like Manuscript Academy is fine because you’re paying for ADVICE, not publishing or representation. Avoid paying for publishing or representation when going the traditional route.)

2. Indie publishing.

Indie publishing is pretty common as well and varies widely, but it is essentially the same as traditional publishing without having an agent involved, so you’re doing all the negotiating yourself. You would approach a publishing house that is open to unagented manuscripts and query them the same way you would if you were querying an agent. The publishing house then takes care of all the formatting, cover art, and distribution, and possibly some marketing.

The upsides of indie publishing: you could have more control over your manuscript depending on the publishing house you go with, the process may go a bit faster due to the publishing house being smaller/more specialized/having less projects to work on, you have someone else taking care of the tricky stuff like formatting and cover art without having to pay for it (again, if a publishing house is asking you to pay them to publish your book, it is a scam).

The downsides of indie publishing: advances are small or non-existent, you’ll be working with professionals and signing contracts but without an agent to advocate for you, the distribution may not be as wide as if you’d been published traditionally.

Some resources to look into: Mostly this will be the same as the traditional publishing resources, since the process is still the same, you’re just going straight to publishers instead of getting an agent first. From there just google “independent publishing” or “publishing houses open to unagented manuscripts” and start looking for some to query.

3. Self Publishing.

Self publishing offers the most creative freedom, usually, but it comes with a lot of caveats. You will be doing, and paying for, everything 100% on your own. You will have to format your own book, or pay someone to do it. You will have to edit your own book, or pay someone to do it. You will have to do your own cover, or pay someone to do it. You will have to pay for your own ISBNs, pay any fees your chosen publishing platform may have. You will have to do all your own marketing. But, on the other hand, there’s no one around to tell you no about your weird ideas and say they aren’t “marketable” enough or whatever.

The upsides of self-publishing: full creative control, write whatever you want, can potentially happen a lot faster depending on how you work, you make your own deadlines.

The downsides of self-publishing: can get expensive, you won’t get any advance money (some people do kickstart their books, which is a fun option, but you need a good audience already for it to be worth it), you have to self-advocate on everything including things you may not fully understand, your distribution likely won’t be nearly as wide (or very wide at all outside the internet), and you likely won’t have access to things like film deals or translations or audiobooks without a lot more effort or money.

Some resources to look into: IngramSpark has some good guides on self-publishing when it comes to formatting and printing your books, which can give you good place to start.

-----

So yes! Those are the basics of each common option. You can also combine them! I send some projects to my literary agent for traditional publishing and keep others for self-publishing, based on what I want to do with them.

Do note, however, that once you self-publish a book you pretty much can’t get it published any other way, especially traditionally. This includes posting it online. Publishers just don’t want books that are already out there. Obviously there’s exceptions to this, but if you want to go traditional or even indie it’s safest to just keep your work off the internet.

Hope this helps! And if you have any more questions please feel free to ask.

#Writing #On Writing #Writing Advice #Publishing #Publishing advice #Anonymous

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ttlmt · 3 years

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do it bee

alright.

there’s a few things i kept seeing confusion about, so i’ll try to clear it up the best i can with my amateur enthusiast knowledge.

disclaimer: all of this could be completely wrong. this is just what i’ve learned from working as a bookseller in the past and taking a few classes on publishing and just generally doing a lot of personal research into it both as a reader and with interest in joining the industry. i do not know dan’s individual situation, nor am an expert by any means. i am also coming at this as a canadian, so the innerworkings of uk/us publishing are just from what ive learned here.

you will get through this book:

bee’s possibly incorrect far too long guide to the publishing industry and how international editions and signed copies might work for daniel howell’s new book ‘you will get through this night’ available for preorder now

follow @daysuntilthisnight for a countdown #shamelessselfpromo

1) the uk vs us edition

the uk cover is the one without dan’s face on it. the us cover is the one with dan’s face on it. its not uncommon to have multiple covers and putting someones face on the cover is a very american publisher thing to do, personally i really like both. the cover you get is dependent on where you/your country order the book from.

if you ordered from danandphilshop or shop.danielhowell, you will be getting the uk cover, as it is a uk business. if you ordered from the us store right when the book was announced and before the signed copies sold out, it will probably be the uk cover (more on that in the bit about signed books). after that, i’m not sure because i do not know how irlmerch’s distribution works.

one thing to note is all books have an ISBN number which is like a universal barcode for the book at all stores and it comes from the publisher. the beginning of the isbn dictates the publisher/language/product type/etc and the end identifies the particular book. the uk edition and the us edition have different isbn numbers, as will the ebook, audiobook, etc. this is a good way to figure out which edition you are buying from your local bookstore, and you can cross reference with the isbn in uk or us stores. its usually listed at the bottom of the product page online.

if you live in a country besides the us or the uk, it depends whether the book is being distributed or published in your country. distribution is often more cost effective, and is usually the way it works. as far as i know, dan’s book is being distributed (not published) to the countries on this list with the exception of the us where it is being published (not distributed). if a book is being published in a country, it will have a different isbn and sometimes a different cover. if a book is being distributed it will have the same isbn and cover as the country it is distributed from (usually the closest publishing hub, so london or new york in this case).

to know what edition is in your country, you can compare the isbn numbers and/or the covers. you can also take a look at your other books to see whats normal in your country to get sort of an idea. im assuming europe will get the uk edition but im not sure about other countries.

here in canada for example, our books are usually distributed from the US meaning you will be getting the us cover if you order the book from a canadian store. i ordered from irlmerch when dan’s book was announced though, so i think im getting the uk edition.

1.5) covers and book design

most of the time, especially with new authors, the author has very little say in the final decisions re: book cover and book design. they usually get input, and the publisher gets final say. book design is also a very different thing then general graphic design and professionals genuinely go to school for this. thats not to say there arent bad book designs or that regular people can’t do it too, it’s just something to keep in mind.

2) signed books vs signed editions

there are a few different ways that signed books can work. primarily, there are signed editions and signed books. both are physically signed by the author, the difference is when in the process these books are signed.

signed books is the ‘old-fashioned’ way, where the author will sit at a table and sign copies of their book. the author usually signs on the title page and for a long time, this was the only way to do it. they have already been printed by the publisher so they will have the same isbn as unsigned books. signed books are usually more limited, often they can be personalized, and if you have ever gone to a proper book signing where the author signed the book in front of you, you have a signed book. signed books are also sometimes made available at the authors local bookstore because they are able to sign them in person. as far as i know, the books that were ordered from danandphilshop or shop.danielhowell during the initial signed run will be signed books. i also believe there are/were limited signed books from uk retailers, i think those are/were signed books (not editions) where the isbn matches the normal first edition of the book.

signed editions are a fairly new thing, and have made signed books so much more accessible which is awesome! signed editions have a different isbn then their normal edition and signed book counterparts. they are technically two different books and are listed as a separate book in stores. that is because signed editions have one (1) extra page. this allows the author to be sent boxes of pages, not books, to sign BEFORE the books are bound. the pages are then sent back to the publisher to be included in the final printed copy of the book.

signed editions help authors to sign even more copies which allows for things like signing hundreds of thousands of copies of a book in some cases. if you are familiar with john green’s books (and hank’s too), he is a large part of the reason signed editions increased in popularity. for example, his book turtles all the way down had a signed edition and a normal edition, they were the same price but the signed edition included the one more page that john had signed. this also allows authors to do fully signed first edition runs, such as john’s new book the anthropocene reviewed (which comes out the same day as dan’s book lol), where every single copy of the first edition is signed (so there is no such thing as an unsigned american first edition, this is becoming more popular for some authors to do especially if the first edition print is not very a large quantity).

if you saw dan’s ig story from today (which was almost definitely a delayed post lmao), he was signing the signed edition papers that will be bound in the signed edition copies of the book in the us. as far as i know, it is only the us publisher that has this option. as you can see on the us store books-a-million, there is a signed edition and a normal edition. they are listed seperately and there are different isbns. the signed edition will be bound with the one extra page that dan has signed.

both types of signed books have been actually signed by dan and are so cool to have if that’s something you want and are able to get. if not, you’re not missing much.

3) book piracy and pricing

i’m not here to tell you what to do, so i won’t. i know being able to buy books is a privilege and dan is a millionaire. full stop. he doesn’t need the money and you probably do.

books are expensive. the difference between cost and price of a book can vary drastically. does your calc textbook actually cost the publisher $300? probably not, but it does cost more per copy to print less copies of something (like a textbook) then it does to print millions of copies of a nyt bestseller. does a $24 book cost that much to develop/print/distribute? maybe.

but most of that money goes to the publisher. the fact of the matter is authors get very little from the actual sale of the book (usually only a couple dollars), which okay, not exactly convincing you against piracy but hear me out. the actual number of sales a book has lets a publisher know how successful a book is, which helps to decide how many more prints/editions are made and often dictates future opportunities for authors.

a series of books that i love is very popular on tumblr, but there was a serious problem a few years ago where copies of the book were being pirated so much, sales were down so drastically, that the publisher almost didn't continue to publish the series. in the case of smaller authors or your favourite ongoing series, buying your copy of the book could be the difference between the existence of the next book or not. in dan’s case, i don’t know what his future plans are, idk if he plans to write more in the future, but i do know that publishers look at previous sales to decide if they are going to publish a book in the future.

ebooks are usually cheaper and more accessible if money is an issue. used books, while not helping with sales, are also a great option if you’re willing to wait and look around. you can often request your local library buy a book and read it that way, or they might even already have it. there probably even audiobooks and ebooks at your local library. stores like am*zon are usually cheaper as well. online stores of large chains like b&n and indigo will often have the books cheaper to match amazon. however if you can, support your local bookstore.

of course if the author is a horrible person do whatever tf you want. also fuck the textbook industry.

tldr: dan worked really hard on his book with professionals to make it the best it could possibly be. i think it looks beautiful, and it will help a lot of people. the publishing industry is a mess but really cool. check the isbn of the copy you ordered if you want clarification or you can just wait for the surprise.

#this is nearly 2k words #i was supposed to work today xsfhkdf #but this was fun!#also if anyone has any more info or anything id love to be (nicely) informed #and any other qs i can attempt to answer #ask #anon

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therianimal · 3 years

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My System’s Experiences: switching hosts and a disconnected past

It took years before we realized that the complete personality shifts we experienced at various points in our life was us switching between hosts. Before I was host (or even existed at all), there was Lucas; a few years before him, Eren. The earliest host we know of is 4 years old and was the host during our preschool years. It seems inconceivable that we wouldn’t know - but as a system that has no amnesia, experiences the world as “different people sharing a single consciousness”, experiences switching less like “stepping back” and more like changing perspectives, and exists in a place between median and multiple, these changes disguised themselves as life phases.

It made sense to us that being 16 would feel different than being 12, and we were aware that changing over time was a normal experience for children and teenagers. Sure, it seemed weird that as a child we were definitely a girl, during our early teen years we were likely nonbinary and during our late teen years we were a trans man - it was never really clear to us WHY we changed so much.

That is, until I realized that we were plural, and that we have always been different people who simply passed the mantle of Host along like some kind of hereditary monarchy. It seems somewhat obvious now - the fact that I used to say things like “back when I was Lucas”, that I didn’t have childhood memories of being a therian, and that each “life phase” involved a completely different personality, set of interests, and sense of self were all signs. Even my dad is prone to saying things like “You’re a completely different person now than you were when you were 16″ (I really get a kick out of the double meaning). But it wasn’t until I started to consider that I (we!) might be plural that the truth about our past hosts came out into the open.

Our obliviousness can be accounted for by another issue: the specifics of how we switched hosts. I like to compare the scenario to mitosis - one member gradually becoming two. It would take months before the two people were distinct, at which time the new member would usurp as the new host and the previous one would go into dormancy. Because it’s so gradual we can't pinpoint an exact moment when each switch happened, and it's sometimes hard to clarify whether a past event happened to one member or another.

I’ve started to refer to the mid-mitosis host as “proto”, thqe in between of Lucas and me being “proto-Blue”. Lucas was a trans man and emo, and I’m a mascfem nonbinary person who isn’t particularly alt - our mid-self was still trans but more gender nonconforming and no longer 100% male, and they still listened to emo and rock music but had moved away from the clothing style. This "self" doesn't exist in our system as an actual person - it was simply an in-between stage. This host change (and all the others as far as we can tell) was fluid and not at all a sudden switch.

When Lucas returned from dormancy, it was chaos. He had been functionally asleep for three years - in the meantime, I had broken up on bad terms with his best friend/girlfriend, socially detransitioned (he had worked hard to come out as a trans man), and thrown away most of his old clothing and possessions. Trump had even become president, which was honestly one of the most overwhelming things. And he suddenly had to confront the fact that we were plural, that he had not always been host, and most of all that he had lost several years of (what he thought was) his life. I had to confront similar issues, but for me it was gradual while for him it was all at once.

Since then, several of our past hosts have reawakened - but not all. There are large unaccounted for periods of time, presumably involving still-dormant system members. It’s difficult to talk about our/”my” past, because when referring to things that occurred between the ages of 15 and 17 I can usually say “Lucas did X”, but how do I refer to the incidences that happened to unknown hosts? On top of that, due to years of assuming we were one person and each of us claiming past events as “my past”, it’s not that easy to say that X event belongs to one person and Y belongs to another. Things that happened to Eren while she was host often feel just as relevant to me, personally, as things that happened while I was host.

This all creates a confusing communication barrier, and risks creating conflicts between members - for example if I say “I got a perfect score on the reading portion of the SAT when I was 12!” would that be unfairly taking credit for Eren’s accomplishments, or simply describing an element of our shared narrative that feels relevant to me? There has been at least one conflict with another member where I was accused of selectively taking credit for their good deeds and accomplishments while disowning failures and negative actions - I believe that was a misunderstanding, but clearly it’s complicated.

I, as an individual, have only existed for four years. It sounds strange to say that as a 22 year old, but it’s true. This sometimes makes it alienating to spend time in identity-based communities like the therian, otherkin, transgender, and other LGBTQ communities. I once attempted to join a trans Amino, only to find that I was required to explain my “trans self discovery story” in an introduction post - it wasn’t even optional! How do I explain “In our teenage years, Eren felt disconnected from gender but couldn’t put it into words. Then we learned about trans people, and Lucas discovered over the course of a few months that he was a trans man. I knew I was nonbinary from day one (four years ago), though figuring out the details has taken a few years.” To someone who knows nothing about plurality, it’s incomprehensible.

Of course I could have made something up or oversimplified things, but at the time I was on Amino to discover my truth, not hide my truth. Due to the “born this way” narrative, saying something like “I identified as a trans man in my teen years, but later on identified as nonbinary” would imply that our experiences as a trans man were fake or the result of a confused misnomer, when they were very real. Directly undermining our experiences and our reality for the sake of community really sucks; I quickly left that Amino.

I’ve had similar issues in the therian community. I first realized I was a therian/nonhuman before realizing I was a member of a plural system, which caused all sorts of confusion for me. I joined the Therian Guide forums and learned from their posts and resources that “If you didn’t have therianthropy related experiences as a child, that means you’re just a confused human who’s been influenced by the internet and is having a wishkin phase." I wanted to believe that wasn’t the case, but the argument made sense and I had no counterargument to make against it and no way to explain why that rule wouldn’t apply to me.

Even now it sometimes feels alienating to encounter online threads and posts centered around the question “What signs did you experience as a child?”. I know that other people’s experience don’t invalidate mine, and vice versa, but it still sometimes makes me feel out of place. Rationally I understand that nonhuman experiences are highly varied and that's okay! - but insecurity isn't rational. I’m still acclimating to the idea that as a pluran my nonhuman experiences will probably never be the same as a “stereotypical” otherkin or therian (if such a thing exists).

I went into this essay expecting to write a short post about how my lack of childhood/teen years has sometimes caused me to feel alienated in the therian community. But as I was writing I realized I had a lot to say about my system, and felt compelled to change angles and truly discuss our host history. It might be a bit random, but I hope that at least some people will find it interesting.

#plurality #SYSMEDS AND ANTI ENDO DNI #alterhuman #alterhumanity #therian #otherkind #blue speaks

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stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland · 4 years

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How the music world works

Hi guys!! I’m back again with another long ass post. I’m the Italian Anon, F Anon, and, for those who don’t know, the same one who wrote: “There is a light at the end of the tunnel” – “Hi Ciao Hola” - and the “Camren timeline”. So, yeah, hi, my lovely fellows CS. 🥰

I spent the last days writing this post, Mari/Stuck can confirm this to you guys, and it’s dedicated to all those who want to understand a little bit more how this shit works. Maybe understand even more what the girls went through. There would be many more things to say, but I’ve tried to summarize as much as possible and include the things I think are the most important.

Premise: I’m not an expert. These are simply things I know because I’ve loved music since I was a kid and because I’ve always been intrigued by the music business and how it all works.

Okay, that said, grab something to eat or drink, and let’s get started:

Bear in mind that the music industry uses what are called ‘royalties’, calculated in percentages, for any form of payment.

Copyrights:There are two types of copyrights in the music world regarding a song: 1) one for master recording, and 2) one for music/composition.

1) ‘Master’ is a term used to refer to the copyright of a song’s final and effective original audio recording. The copyright of a master’s recording can belong to an artist (artists) if they’ve recorded independently, [and if they’ve recorded with a producer then also to the producer who gets a small share of the master’s rights (up to 12%) in producer royalties], or to the record label, or to the recording studio if the artist is unable to pay for the recording services, or to any other X person who financed the recording.

2) The copyright for the music/composition belongs to the authors, that is, the songwriters (lyrics) and the composers of the song (melody). Owning music copyrights allows authors to control who can play their song, or distribute it, or publicly perform it by doing a cover, or sample a piece of the original composition to use for a new song, etc. Therefore, whenever a record label or a singer wants to record a song that is not their property, they must ALWAYS apply for a ‘mechanical license’ (which allows them to do everything I’ve just written) from the authors who are the legitimate owners. These copyrights can be fully transferred and assigned to others, usually publishers, who can authorize the use of that music through the transfer of a mechanical license, issued in exchange for a money contribution (mechanical royalties).

So, to recap to better understand. If someone records an artist/songwriter’s song, they own the copyright of the recording of the master/song. They DON’T own the lyrics of the song because there’s a difference between the authors of a track and the actual owners of the master recording. The musical composition made by the authors is generally represented by a publisher, while the sound recording, made by the artist and the music producer, is generally represented by a label.

In 5H’s case, Simco Limited still owns both copyrights. First of all because, especially for Reflection and 7/27, they didn’t have the chance to write and be legally recognized as songwriters except for ‘All in My Head (Flex)’ (and I believe they definitely did ghostwrite something). And secondly because, a recording agreement states that the label becomes the owner of all the master recordings recorded by the artist during the period of the agreement. Therefore, upon signing the contract, the artist is forced to cede the copyrights of the master recording [Cede/Assign: is the transfer of ownership for the entire duration of the copyright. In the case of sound recordings, it’s 50/70 years from their release. It doesn’t matter if artists manage to reimburse all recording expenses, those recordings/songs, including unreleased recordings, will still be labels property] to the label and to the publisher, which is often the label itself. In most cases, it is. In their case it’s a little different though. Although their contracts were with Syco and Epic, record labels, it’s Simco Ltd. (Limited), holding company, that still owns the copyrights for music and sound recordings. Simco Limited (Salmon Simon) is used to own copyrights and grant licenses, and indeed, Syco, which was in a collaborative partnership with Epic (both Sony), granted the exclusive license rights to Epic. When 5H signed the contracts, they ceded both copyrights to Simco, which granted the master recording copyrights to the publisher, in 5H’s case, the publishers. Of the many they had, four of the most important ones: Simco itself, Syco, Epic, and Sony.

Publishers: Publishers are responsible for the authors’ copyrights license and administration, and part of their job, is also that of pushing authors’ music by promoting it and actively trying to get it included in TV, movies, advertisements, etc. The authors grant publishers the copyright of their musical composition through a publishing contract, and publishers are responsible for ensuring that the authors receive a royalties’ payment when their compositions are commercially used and for monitoring where this happens.

This royalties payment takes place thanks to the registration of authors’ music that publishers make to collection agencies such as MRI (Music Reports, Inc.) and HFA (Harry Fox Agency), which take and distribute mechanical royalties, usually 50/50 between publishers and authors, and ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated), and SESAC (Society of European Stage Authors and Composers), which take and distribute performance royalties, usually 70% to authors and 30% to publishers.

Labels and publishers are not always the same thing, and indeed, there are four types of publishers: 1) administrator, a person or a small company, 2) independents, 3) major publishers, (labels) such as Sony, Warner, Universal, Epic, Columbia, etc., and 4) self-publishing, an author who holds the role of publisher themselves. They all do the same job but the differences between them are two: the first one is that among the first three, the difference is in the royalties’ commissions that start from the lowest (administrator) to the highest (major publishers), and the second one is that independents and majors can also provide advances. Majors especially, advance millions of dollars to the authors in exchange for a percentage that can reach up to 50% of royalties.

Distributors: A music distribution company signs deals with record labels or artists which then give them the right to sell their music. Distributors are simply concerned with providing music to consumers, not only by taking it to the stores to sell it, but also online for both sale and streaming. Their commission varies according to the agreements, but is usually 15%. Distributors can be real stores, record labels, and digital online like: SoundCloud, LANDR, Baby CD, TuneCore, DistroKid, etc. which pass it to Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Tidal, Amazon Music, Deezer, Napster, Google Music, Shazam, YouTube, etc.

Ghostwriters: Ghostwriters are authors who write on commission. The musical ones, can write an entire song or even a single sentence for an artist, without of course receiving credit for doing so. That’s exactly why the name ghostwriter/s. Ghostwriters sell their songs to record labels for their artists or can be contacted specifically to write a song. When ghostwriters sell their songs, they sign a contract with a confidentiality clause and receive a payment in advance. A big payment, by the way. Some ghostwriters remain copyright owners of their song, so they not only earn on the advance received for the sale of the song, but also receive some royalties when the song is used. Other ghostwriters, on the other hand, most of them actually, also sell copyrights, and for this reason, they earn absolutely no percentage in royalties because the song they sold is no longer theirs.

Labels: Record labels earn money when their music is purchased, downloaded, streamed, and licensed for use. When an album is released, the label derives a percentage of profits from the total sales in royalties. The percentage may vary according to the agreement that the artist initially signs in the contract, and of course, the more the artist is of a high level, such as Beyoncé or Rihanna, the lower the percentage obtained from the label. The percentage can be 97%, or 95%, or 90%, or 88%, or 85%, or 83%, and so on, but usually never below 75% unless the label is an independent label. The remaining percentage, whether it’s 3%, 5%, 10%, 12%, 15%, 17%, and so on, is given to the artist. But before the artist is paid, there’s the ‘recoupment’, that is, the label recovers all the expenses invested. And from their percentage, the artist has to subtract royalties that are to be distributed to the producers of the songs, to management managers, to the business managers, to the lawyer, etc. Producers’ royalties vary from 1 to 3% of the record’s selling price, managers’ ones vary from 15 to 20%, and business managers’ and lawyer’s ones are usually 5%. AFTER the costs have been reimbursed, the artist gets paid.

When an artist is signed by a label, the latter buys some songs for the album from authors and ghostwriters, and invests on the artist by giving them an advance to make that album. This advance is mainly reserved to pay for the recording of the album, and this means paying for the recording costs, which include the payment of the recording studio or more recording studios, the payment of instruments and equipment, the payment of producers, arrangers, assistants engineer, recording engineers, editing engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers, the payment of the artwork that includes covers for the album and singles, both printed and digital, album booklet, promotional pictures, merchandising, etc., etc., but a part of this (advance), is given to the artist as ‘living expenses’, that is, as personal use.

Example: Let’s say the label gives $100,000 in advance to the artist. $80,000 must be reserved for recording expenses and the remaining $20,000 are artist’s for personal use. If this $80,000 are enough to record the album, things remain unchanged, but it may happen that it takes more money to record, or even less. If it took less, that money is added to what the label gave the artist for personal use. Let’s say that it took 70,000 to record the album, the remaining 10,000 are added to the artist’s 20,000, thus becoming $30,000. If, on the other hand, it took more, the artist must pay the difference or the label has the right to terminate the contract. Let’s say it took 90,000 to record the album, it’s up to the artist to take $10,000 from the 20,000 of their living expenses and add it, in the hope that they haven’t already spent it all on jewelry, clothes, and cars as many artists have done in the past, thus finding themselves in debt to the label from the very beginning. Same thing if it took more than 100,000 to record the album; the artist starts getting into debt even before the album is released and the label could conclude the contract. But, if the label exercises their option for another album, cross-collateralization takes place. Cross-collateralization allows the label to sequentially recover the money advanced for past, present, and future albums, considering them as a single total advance. Example: the label advanced the artist $200,000 to record the first album and $300,000 for the second one. For the first one, they only managed to return half, and for the second one, 200,000. These two debts (100,000+100,000), accumulate together by becoming a single debt to be paid in the third album.

It’s therefore important that the artist doesn’t go over budget, especially because, in addition to the advance to make the album, the label advances the artist more money to pay for many other things, such as music videos, promotions, designers and costume designers, make-up artists, choreographers, travel, merchandise, tours, etc., along with paying the management to advertise such as, booking TV shows, paying radio stations to play their music, and SO on. So, basically, the investment that the label makes towards the artist concerns:

1) the purchase of some songs.

2) the advance, which includes 3) the recording costs, which in turn include the payment of the recording studio/s, the payment of instruments and equipment, the payment of producers, arrangers, engineers, artwork, etc., 4) and 50% of marketing and promotional and legal costs.

Then 5) the packaging costs that vary from 15 to 25%, which include: both the physical sale (CDs, vinyl, cassettes) and the digital download of the album despite the fact that there’s literally nothing to physically pack, - the breakage costs which vary from 10 to 20%, and which are a precaution for possible breakage (CDs, vinyl, cassettes) during shipping, - the digital breakage costs, which is completely ridiculous given that, especially in this case, there’s literally nothing to physically pack, - the free goods which vary from 10 to 20%, and which concern a certain number of album copies that the label gives to distributors, radios, and other entities for promotional purposes, and since these goods are NOT considered as sold, the artist doesn’t compensate for those free albums since they’re paid only for (physical and digital) sales and streaming of the album, - and the reserve costs which are a precaution that the label takes by temporarily withholding a small percentage of the artist, considered to be a reserve, against potential returns that happen only when the stores send back the unsold albums to distributors by receiving a refund.

6) 50% of the video production costs from which the label usually also derives 50% commission on the royalties’ share earned by the artist.

And lastly, 7) the tour support costs.

Royalties and licenses, and there are several:

The artist royalties, also known as recording royalties and master-generated royalties, are those earned by the label and the artist thanks to the sales of their music. Whether it’s the digital sale, or if it’s downloaded, or streamed, or whether it’s the physical sale, that is that of a CD, or of vinyl, or of a cassette. The royalties are collected by the distributors, who draw up a maximum of 15% commission, to then distributing them in division to the label and the artist on the basis of the agreements made. Let’s say, for example, 85% on the label and 15% on the artist.

The mechanical royalties, like artist royalties, are those generated by all old and new music formats such as: CDs, vinyl, cassettes, digital downloads, and streaming services. But unlike artist royalties, these are earned by authors (songwriters and composers) when the song is: played and sold as a ringtone, streamed through on-demand services (e.g.: Spotify and Apple Music), sold for digital download (e.g.: iTunes and Amazon), performed by someone else as a cover, sampled and used for a new song [in addition to the mechanical license (the rights in the form of permits granted by the authors to use their music), a master license (the rights in the form of permits granted by the owner of the master recording to use a pre-recorded version, therefore with the voice of the artist who sings the song, of a song in a video or audio project, but doesn’t allow to be recorded again with a voice other than that of the original singer) is required to do so], modified in other versions (like for e.g. a remix of the same song) and performed by someone else (besides the mechanical one, it requires a master license to do so), and bought from a store (usually it happens with albums and not with single tracks).

These royalties are collected by a mechanical licensing organization such as Music Reports, Inc. (MRI, which manages those of Apple, Pandora, Amazon, SiriusXM, Microsoft, etc.) or the Harry Fox Agency (HFA, which manages those of major record labels: Sony, Universal, and Warner), which usually draw 11/12% commission from them and then distribute them in division to publishers and authors for musical composition. A single streaming listen generates both mechanical and public performance royalties. But to make a single dollar, on Spotify for example, it’s necessary to obtain about 230 streams on that song. Artists DO NOT earn any mechanical royalty unless they’re writers or co-writers of the song.

The public performance royalties are earned when a song is broadcast or performed publicly. That is, when a song is broadcast on the radio, on TV, or at the movie theater, or at a game, or in a club, or in a restaurant, or in a hotel, or in a shop, or in a gym, or from a jukebox, or in a live concert, etc., etc. Organizations such as BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) and ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) also called PRO (Performance Rights Organization) where songs are registered with licenses and legal rights and which (these organizations) protect and act on behalf of those who hold the copyrights of authors and publishers, even granting public performance licenses (the rights in the form of permits granted by authors to use their music in public), are the ones that collect these royalties by usually drawing 16/18% commission, to then distributing them in division to publishers and authors for musical composition. Another PRO organization such as SoundExchange, on the other hand, is responsible for collecting royalties by usually drawing 14/15% commission, and then distributes them to: the featured artists of the song, usually at 45%, to the copyright owners for the master recording (usually the label) at 50%, and to the non-featured artists (artists not present in the song) such as for e.g. chorists, at 5%. As with mechanical royalties, artists DO NOT earn any royalty from public performances unless they’re writers or co-writers of the song.

*** Remember how I said earlier that management (through the label) pays radio stations to play their artist’s music? Well, that’s because radio stations have to pay a PRO organization in their turn to be able to play it, and in short, if they want to work. Basically, based on what the artists/management have paid to have their song played, the radio stations create a list of all the songs. About once a month, the radio stations deliver the list, which indicates which songs they’ve played and how many times they’ve played them, to BMI or ASCAP, on the basis of who they have agreements with, or to both. Radio stations have to pay a blanket license (the rights in the form of permits granted by authors and issued by PRO organizations to have access to a part or complete repertoire of authors’ songs for a fixed annual fee. Such as, for example, precisely a radio station, or a shopping mall that wants to play background music) fee to BMI or ASCAP, which then in their turn transfer the money/royalties to songwriters, composers, publishers, and record labels. Each track’s play that one of the biggest commercial radio stations does, generates about $12 in royalties. Those 12 dollars, multiplied by every single time the song has been played on the radio, are collected by BMI or ASCAP, then equally divided, and delivered. If an artist wants their single on the radio, they pay about $500 to $1,000 to $2,000. If they want it to be played often and advertised more, they pay between $100,000 and $125,000. And for the single to become the number one hit on the radio, the artist has to pay around $200,000, sometimes it can cost over $350,000/400,000. Costs vary depending on the radio station and the competition. Payola isn’t a practice that’s SO illegal after all, since EVERYBODY does it! Ask the song Despacito that. Oh, hey! Hey, girl, how ya doin? I saw that Baby Shark, a fucking children’s song, top you on YouTube. ***

The synchronization royalties are generated when copyrighted music is paired or ‘synchronized’ with visual media, such as: movies, trailers, tv shows, commercials, video games, music videos, etc. In the case of movies, royalties are also generated both for performance, derived from the performance of the song at the movie theater and on TV, and mechanicals, derived from the physical and digital sales of the soundtrack. If, for example, a person wants to use a copyrighted song for their YouTube video, along with the synchronization license (the rights in the form of permits granted by the authors and issued by PRO organizations to use the authors’ music coupled with visual media, and unlike the master license, this allows to re-record the song with a voice different from that of the original singer), they will need the master license by making an agreement with the owner of the master recording, such as a record label. Just as with performance royalties, these are collected by PRO organizations and distributed among publishers and authors. Artists earn from these royalties too.

The copyrights royalties belong to the authors of the song. Authors, who may be songwriters and composers, grant their rights as authors and copyright owners to publishers. Royalties are divided between publishers and authors. Very often, 50/50 for both synchronization royalties and mechanical royalties, but this depends a lot on the agreements made between them. As for mechanical royalties, if publishers have provided an advance, the percentage they’re entitled to can be up to a maximum of 50% royalties. Authors are guaranteed a minimum of 50%, and some agreements can give them up to 90% of the profits. If an author is self-published, in the sense that they act as their own publisher, they can receive 100% of the mechanical royalties. As for performance royalties, on the other hand, publishers receive 30% and authors 70%. Based on how many songwriters and composers there are, that 70% is divided into equal parts. For example, if it’s two of them, 35% and 35%. Unless, by mutual agreement, they decide to divide them differently, like: 50% and 20%, or 47% and 23%, or 60% and 10%, always to reach 70%. It usually happens when one of them has contributed more to the song.

Print license, the rights in the form of permits granted by authors to be able to make copies or reprint the lyrics of the scores of one of their songs. Theatrical license, the rights in the form of permits granted by authors to use their song on a theatre stage in front of an audience.

Basically, the artist earns very little or no earnings at all because they get into debt, especially if they’re not a songwriter and don’t co-write their music. The way in which the artist really earns is thanks to merchandising and the tour. The artist takes the percentage that varies from 75 to 90% of the ticket price. Labels, on the other hand, gain on all fronts. They earn mainly thanks to 360-degree contracts, also called multiple rights deals, which allows them to receive a percentage of artists’ ancillary rights, that is, artists’ earnings deriving from everything they do. So, not only do they earn when their artists’ music is physically and digitally purchased, streamed, and licensed for use, but they also earn from songwriting incomes, concert and live performance incomes, merchandise sales, licensing, endorsement and sponsorship deals, movie and TV appearances fees, ringtone sales, etc., etc.

Like, for example, once the artist signs the recording agreement and the labels become the owners of all the master recordings, they put the artist to work with songwriters chosen by them to write songs that the artist sings, and they earn from the public performance licenses (having the songs put on the radio, in movies, on TV, etc.) they have granted as publishers. And in this case, not only do they earn royalties that go half to publishers (themselves) and a half to the songwriters they hired (and IF, only IF the artist has written something in the song, then they get their share which is also made in half with the songwriters), but also by having the artist sign a mechanical license agreement that allows them to release CDs, vinyl, cassettes, sell digital downloads, and streaming services. The artist then gets into debt with the labels, usually with advances of millions, and tries to earn on tour with the proceeds from ticket sales and merchandising to pay back all the advances. They find themselves in deep shit, also because those debts will be carried on in the next albums thanks to cross-collateralization, and if they try to rebel, the labels stop promoting them and their songs, and as a result of that, sales decrease by cornering the artist even more since they would no longer earn their artist royalties. It can also happen that, when they’re under enough pressure, the artist can be dropped by the labels in exchange for the absolute renunciation of all rights of their own music. When this happens, the labels/publishers start to strongly promote the artist because by then, they and their writers are the ones to get all the money. None for the artist.

Practical examples about 5H to explain everything:

I would like to clarify that, except for the actual sales numbers of the albums I researched, these are examples of numbers I invented. I’m gonna base the real data on invented numbers to help you understand how it all works. In truth, there would be a lot more things to calculate than what I’m gonna show and, of course, the numbers are much higher in the real world as we’re talking about major labels that are known to be willing to advance millions. In my examples, 5H will not be indebted into the final earnings estimates. The reality is, however, that the girls were in debt. At 100%, at least definitely until 2016. Having said that, we can start with their EP: ‘Better Together’.

The Better Together era lasted for a year, to be more precise, from July 16, 2013, with the release of ‘Miss Movin’ On’, until July 7, 2014, when they released ‘BO$$’. As I’ve already said, I’m gonna only use the real sales data of the albums, in this case, the EP. I won’t use anything else, although I know they made money from other projects. Therefore, I won’t include the earnings from: ‘Juntos’, the covers they did on YouTube (‘Thinkin’ Bout You’ by Frank Ocean, ‘American’ by Lana Del Rey, ‘Lego House’ by Ed Sheeran, ‘Stay’ by Rihanna, ‘Red’ by Taylor Swift, and ‘Honeymoon Avenue’ by Ariana Grande), the two covers (‘Mirrors’ by Justin Timberlake and ‘When I Was Your Man’ by Bruno Mars) they did with Boyce Avenue in their EP ‘Cover Collaborations, Vol. 2’, the collaboration they made with Mattel who launched the Barbie doll collection inspired by them ($19,99 each), together with the promotional song (‘Anything Is Possible’, + the video) and the episode (‘Sisters’ Fun Day!’) in which they appeared as their dolls, the collaboration with AwesomenessTV for the takeovers (from 2013 to 2015), the appearance in the episode 2x06 of Faking It, the collaboration with Wet Seal for their clothing lines, etc., etc.

As for Better Together, Fifth Harmony sold a total of 120,000 copies worldwide, of which 51,000 album-equivalent units and 69,000 traditional sales. In America, the album-equivalent unit is calculated as follows: the sale of 1 album is equivalent to 10 songs downloaded, which in turn are equivalent to 1,500 streams of a song. 51,000x1,500= 76,500,000 streams. 382,500 in royalties from Apple Music, 306,000 from Spotify. I’m gonna use only and exclusively Apple’s royalties in my examples, so let’s pretend that all the royalties they earned from selling the album-equivalent units (51,000), come from there. Now, the original price of the album was $4,99, and having sold 69,000 copies of the physical album (CD), we get the sum of ($69,000x4,99=) $344,310. The sum of both sales brings us to a total of ($382,500+344,310=) 726,810 dollars/royalties earned.

We know that Simco Ltd. gave the exclusive license rights to Epic, which invested the money and then shared the profits with Syco. Therefore, we know that it was Epic that gave 5H the advances to record the albums. We also know that things were pretty bad until the end of December 2015, when thanks to the intervention of Dina LaPolt (the musical lawyer they hired at that time – she didn’t represent C), they managed to renegotiate and adjust their contracts. Dina said: “Every agreement they signed, were the worst I’ve ever seen in the music business”, and thanks to that, we can imagine how high the profits Epic and Syco made. Of those 726,810 royalties earned from EP sales, let’s imagine that Epic, according to Dina’s words, made 92% of profits from the girls’ artist royalties. 726,810-8%= 668,665.2, rounded 668,665, *I’m gonna round all numbers automatically*, from which Epic subtracts 15% commission to give to the distributors (like Sony Music Entertainment) of the album (668,665-15%= 568,365), before splitting the sum in half with Syco (568,365÷2= 284,183). All this would leave (726,810-92%=) 58,145 royalties to 5H. …right? No. Why?? Because before being paid, they have to subtract the royalties to give to producers (let’s imagine 3%), management managers (let’s imagine 20%), business managers (let’s imagine 5%), and the lawyer (let’s imagine 5%), [actually a lot of other people too, but I’m gonna just calculate these], and then, most importantly, the recoupment happens.

Epic recovers:

1) The advance, which let’s imagine to be $380,000. Of these $380,000, $250,000 was initially intended to cover the costs of creating an album (LP), but since they eventually opted for an EP, let’s imagine that the advance dropped to $300,000. Now, of these $300,000, 190,000 had to cover:

2) the recording costs, which included the payment of recording studios (there were six for the EP), the payment of instruments and equipment, the payment of arrangers, assistants engineer, recording engineers, editing engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers, the payment of the artwork that includes covers for EP and singles, both printed and digital, EP booklet, promotional pictures, merchandising, etc., etc.

3) 50% of the video production costs, that is, the costs for the music video of the first official single extracted from the EP, let’s imagine $50,000 for ‘Miss Movin’ On’, therefore $25,000.

and 4) 50% of the marketing and promotion costs for ‘Miss Movin’ On’ and the EP: radio stations, TV shows, interviews, billboards, magazines, advertising on websites and social media, merchandising, etc. Let’s imagine 150,000, therefore 75,000, thus leaving (300,000-190,000-25,000-75,000=) $10,000 as living expenses, (10,000÷5=) 2,000 each.

But that’s not all. Epic also advanced other money during the EP era, and also recovers these:

5) the packaging costs, let’s imagine that they are 20%, which include the breakage costs, let’s imagine 10%, and the free goods, let’s imagine 10%.

3²) 50% of the video production costs for the second music video extracted from the EP as a promotional single (‘Me & My Girls’), let’s imagine another $40,000, therefore $20,000. [So from here, the label not only recovers the anticipated costs for making the videos, but they usually even get 50% commission on the artist’s share of royalties earned on the views].

And lastly, 6) the tour support costs: book and promote tour dates, make sure of having approval and sponsorship agreements, hire a team for the tour, travel, hotels, restaurants, choreographies, costumes, makeups, tour merchandise, etc. Let’s imagine $300,000 for all seven tours [Four tours of their own (2013: Harmonize America Mall Tour. 2013: Fifth Harmony Theatre Tour. 2014: The Worst Kept Secret Tour. 2014: Fifth Times A Charm Tour), plus the three for which they were the opening acts (2013: Cher Lloyd, I Wish Tour. 2014: Demi Lovato, Neon Lights Tour. 2014: Austin Mahone, Live on Tour)].

Having co-written three out of seven songs on the EP, the girls earned: let’s imagine 70% public performance royalties (minus let’s imagine 14% to give to PRO organizations), 50% synchronization royalties (minus let’s imagine 14% to give to PRO organizations), and 50% mechanical royalties (minus let’s imagine 11% to give to mechanical licensing organizations such as MRI and HFA) as songwriters. Therefore, we’re gonna do: 100% of performance royalties, minus 14% to give to organizations, is equal to 86% (100-14=86). 86% is to be divided between 30% that goes to publishers, and 70% that goes to the girls. 30% of 86 is 25.8/26, while 70% is 60.2/60 (60.2+25.8=86 / 60+26=86). Same thing with synchronization royalties (100-14=86. 50% of 86 is 43), and mechanical royalties (100-11=89. 50% of 98 is 44.5/45). The sum of 5H royalties is (60+43+45=) 148.

These 148 are now to be divide with the other songwriters of the three songs. For ‘Don’t Wanna Dance Alone’, they are to be divide with two songwriters (Julian Bunetta, Andre Merrit), for ‘Who Are You’ with three (Julian Bunetta, PJ Bianco, Nasri Atweh), and for ‘Me & My Girls’ with four (Julian Bunetta, PJ Bianco, Beau Dozier, John Ryan). Six songwriters to divide them with. I say six because Julian Bunetta is in all three songs, while PJ Bianco is in two. Therefore, let’s divide the royalties between 5H and the six other songwriters: 148÷7= 21. This would be 5H’s gain for performance, synchronization, and mechanical royalties. [It’s obviously not a complete calculation because to that number, the numbers of plays and sales of the three songs taken individually must be added. I remind you that this is just a generic example to help you understand how it works]

By doing all the calculations:

[300,000 (initial advance) – 10,000 (living expenses)] = 290,000 (recording costs, ‘Miss Movin’ On’ video, marketing and promotion) + 20,000 (‘Me & My Girls’ video) + 300,000 (tour support) = 610,000.

58,145 (artist royalties earned) – 73% [3% (to be given to the EP producers which were three) + 20% (to be given to the management managers) + 5% (to be given to the business managers), + 5% (to be given to the lawyer), + 20% (packaging costs) + 10% (breakage costs) + 10% (free goods)] = 15,699.

15,699-610,000= -594,301.

This, would be 5H’s proceeds. $594,301, (594,301÷5=) $118,860 each, of debt with labels. Now, let’s imagine a $1 million profit from the seven tours, from which let’s imagine that 5H took 80% on the sale of a ticket price. Not owning their trademark (5H Partnership) yet, and as crappy as their contracts were, let’s imagine they didn’t get any percentage from the tour’s merchandise.

1,000,000-20%= 800,000. By subtracting the debt from this new figure, we get: 800,000-594,301= 205,699.

205,699 + 21 (performance, synchronization, and mechanical royalties earned) + 10,000 (living expenses) = 215,720.

And lastly, by dividing the share equally among the girls, we get: 215,720÷5= 43,144. ß This, would be the final figure of the total dollar earnings per head of 5H’s Better Together era, which I remind you lasted for a year. A spit, basically… But, if the tours hadn’t compensated enough to overcome the label debt, cross-collateralization would’ve occurred. That debt, let’s imagine the same debt that I mentioned earlier, -594,301, would’ve been carried on for the next album if the label had exercised the option of recording another one (-594,301+-594,301= -1,188,602), and the next one (-594,301+-1,188,602= -1,782,903), and so on, more and more accumulating with variations of increases or decreases in the debt figure based on how much the girls would’ve been able to pay off whenever it was possible for them.

Oh and, I forgot. From that figure, that one of the total earnings (215,720), they also had to pay taxes…

Even in this case, I’m gonna only use the real total sales data of the album: ‘Reflection’. And even in this case, I won’t use anything else, although I know they made money from other projects. Therefore, I won’t include the gain on: the two songs they did for the Christmas EP ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ (‘Noche De Paz’ and ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ ß + the video) along with other singers, the collaboration with Clean & Clear for which they recorded a series of commercials to promote their products, the collaboration with Candie’s for which they became the face of the ‘5 Girls, 5 Styles’ campaign by also releasing the promotional song (‘Rock Your Candie's’ + the video), the cover of ‘Uptown Funk’ (+ the video) by Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars which they did together with Jasmine V., Jacob Whitesides, and Mahogany Lox to promote the tour, the soundtrack for the movie ‘Hotel Transylvania 2’ (‘I’m In Love With A Monster’ + the video), the song ‘Sin Contrato’ with Maluma, etc., etc. The Reflection era lasted for about a year and seven months, to be more precise, from July 7, 2014, with the release of ‘BO$$’, until February 26, 2016, when they released ‘Work from Home’.

As for Reflection, in America alone, Fifth Harmony sold a total of 142,000 copies at the debut, of which 80,000 were album-equivalent units and 62,000 traditional sales. By February 2016, the album sold 155,000 copies (in America alone), so let’s imagine 93,000 album-equivalent units and 62,000 traditional sales. 93,000x1,500 (the album-equivalent unit) = 139,500,000 streams. 697,500 in royalties from Apple Music. The original price of the album was $9,99, and having sold 62,000 copies of the physical album (CD), we get the sum of (62,000x9,99=) $619,380. The sum of both sales brings us to a total of (697,500+619,380=) 1,316,880 dollars/royalties earned. Since we know that they didn’t hire Dina before the end of December 2015, of those 1,316,880 royalties earned from the album’s sales, let’s imagine that Epic still made 92% of the profits from the girls’ artist royalties. 1,316,880–92%= 105,350. 105,350 royalties that we know didn’t go directly to them without first having subtracting those to be given to the producers (let’s still imagine 3%), to the management managers (let’s imagine 15% because they decrease every year), to the business managers (let’s still imagine 5%), to the lawyer (let’s still imagine 5%), and the recoupment.

Epic recovers: 1) the advance, which let’s imagine to be $400,000. Of these $400,000, $270,000 had to cover: 2) the recording costs, which included the payment for the recording studies (there were three for Reflection), etc.; 3) 50% of the video production costs of the first official single extracted from the album, let’s imagine $80,000 for ‘BO$$’, therefore $40,000; and 4) 50% of the marketing and promotion costs for ‘BO$$’ and the album: radio stations, interviews, etc. Let’s imagine 170,000, therefore 85,000, thus leaving (400,000-270,000-40,000-85,000=) $5,000 as living expenses, (5,000÷5=) 1,000 each.

Then Epic recovers the rest of the money advanced during the Reflection era: 5) the packaging costs, let’s imagine that they’re still 20%, which include the breakage costs, let’s still imagine 10%, and the free goods, let’s still imagine 10%. 3²) 50% of the video production costs for the music videos of the other two single extracts from the album, let’s imagine 65,000 for ‘Sledgehammer’ and 95,000 for ‘Worth It’, (65,000+95,000=) $160,000, therefore $80,000. And lastly, 6) the tour support costs, let’s imagine $500,000 for all three tours (The Reflection Tour, Reflection: The Summer Tour, European Reflection Tour).

Since they couldn’t didn’t co-write anything for this album, the only royalties they earned were artist and synchronization ones (minus let’s still imagine 14% to be given to PRO organizations). 100-14=86. 70% of 86 is 60,2/60. On this album, they have three featuring (‘Worth It’ ft. Kid Ink, ‘Like Mariah’ ft. Tyga, ‘Brave Honest Beautiful’ ft. Meghan Trainor), and for this, we have to subtract let’s imagine 14% of commission royalties collected by SoundExchange, which then deals with distributing them to the featured artists of the songs.

By doing all the calculations:

[400,000 (initial advance) – 5,000 (living expenses)] = 395,000 (recording costs, ‘BO$$’ video, marketing and promotion) + 160,000 (‘Sledgehammer’ & ‘Worth It’ videos) + 500,000 (tour support) = 895,000.

105,350 (artist royalties earned) – 82% [3% (to be given to producers) + 15% (to be given to the management managers) + 5% (to be given to the business managers), + 5% (to be given to the lawyer), + 20% (packaging costs) + 10% (breakage costs) + 10% (free goods) + 14% (collected by SoundExchange)] = 18,963.

18,963-895,000= -876,037.

$876,037, (876.037÷5=) $175,207 each, of debt with labels. Now, let’s imagine a gain of $3 million from the three tours, from which let’s imagine that 5H still took 80% on the sale of a ticket price. Not owning their trademark (5H Partnership) yet, let’s still imagine that they didn’t get anything from the tour merchandise. 3,000,000-20%= 2,400,000. By subtracting the debt to this new figure, we get: 2,400,000-876,037= 1,523,963.

1,523,963 + 60 (synchronization royalties earned) + 5,000 (living expenses) = 1,529,023. And lastly, by dividing the share equally among the girls, we get: 1,529,023÷5= 305,805. This, is the total gain of 5H’s Reflection era, which I remind you lasted for about a year and seven months. Still a spit considering how hard they worked, and considering I didn’t include taxes payment.

Let’s conclude with the real data of the total sales of the album: 7/27. By the end of November 2016, Fifth Harmony sold a total of 1,600,000 copies worldwide, of which 1,075,000 album-equivalent units and 525,000 traditional sales. 1,075,000x1,500 (the album-equivalent unit) = 1,612,500,000 streams. 8,062,500 in royalties from Apple Music. The original price of the deluxe album was $13,99, and having sold 525,000 copies of the physical album (CD), we get the sum of (525,000x13,99=) $7,344,750. The sum of both sales brings us to a total of (7,344,750+8,062,500=) 15,407,250 dollars/royalties earned.

Now, what happened here? Thanks to Dina’s entry, there have been a lot of changes. The first one was the fact that they no longer had Eric Greenspan as their lawyer, but Dina herself and Jessie Winkler (who works for Dina at her law firm, LaPolt Law, P.C.). The second one, the change of management. They used to have Jared Paul and Janelle Lopez from Faculty Management. After: Larry Rudolph, Dan Dymtrow, and Tara Beikae from Maverick Management. The third one, their contracts were renegotiated for the better and LAND became the owner of the trademark (5H Partnership) from April 27th, exactly one month before the album’s release, finally being able to earn from their name.

Of those 15,407,250 royalties earned from the album’s sales, let’s imagine that Epic, according to the new agreements made, made 85% of the profits from the girls’ artist royalties. 15,407,250-85%= 2,311,088 royalties which, as we’ve seen, don’t go directly to them without first having subtracted those to be given to producers (let’s still imagine 3%), to management managers (since they were new, let’s still imagine 20%), to business managers (let’s still imagine 5%), to lawyers/Dina&Jessie (let’s still imagine 5%), and the recoupment.

Epic recovers: 1) the advance, which let’s imagine to be $1,000,000. Of this million dollars, 570,000 had to cover: 2) the recording costs, which included the payment of the recording studios (there were two for 7/27), etc.; 3) 50% of the video production costs of the first official single extracted from the album, let’s imagine $250,000 for ‘Work from Home’, therefore $125,000; and 4) 50% of the marketing and promotion costs for ‘Work from Home’ and the album: radio stations, interviews, etc. Let’s imagine 370,000, therefore $185,000, thus leaving (1,000,000-570,000-120,000-185,000=) $120,000 as living expenses, (120,000÷5=) 24,000 each.

Then Epic recovers the rest of the money advanced during the 7/27 era: 5) the packaging costs, let’s imagine that they still are 20%, which include breakage costs, let’s still imagine 10%, and free goods, let’s still imagine 10%. 3²) 50% of the video production costs for the music videos of the other two singles from the album and for the promotional one, let’s imagine 180,000 for ‘All in My Head (Flex)’, 350,000 for ‘That’s My Girl’, and 70,000 for ‘Write on Me’ (180,000+350,000+70,000=) $600,000, therefore $300,000. And lastly, 6) the tour support costs, let’s imagine $800,000.

Even in this case, they couldn’t didn’t co-write anything for this album except for ‘All in My Head (Flex)’, but let’s pretend they didn’t have credit for that song. Therefore, let’s imagine that the only royalties they earned were artists and synchronizations ones (minus let’s still imagine the 14% to give to PRO organizations). 100-14=86. 70% of 86 is 60.2/60. Also on this album they have three featuring (‘Work from Home’ ft. Ty Dolla $ign, ‘All in My Head (Flex)’ ft. Fetty Wap, ‘Not That Kinda Girl’ ft. Missy Elliott), and for this, we have to subtract let’s still imagine 14% commission royalties collected by SoundExchange. By owning their trademark (5H Partnership), they not only earned on merchandising, but they also earned on brand licenses (which vary from 25 to 30% according to the agreements), which they granted to Simco, Epic, Syco, and Sony so that they could use their name associated with the music for the album, the tour, etc. Let’s imagine 27%, to stay on topic.

Since Camila wasn’t part of the partnership, I’m gonna do all calculations in division between her and LAND:

[1,000,000 (initial advance) - 120,000 (living expenses)] = 880,000 (recording costs, ‘Work from Home’ video, marketing and promotion) + 300,000 (‘All in My Head (Flex)’, ‘That’s My Girl’, and ‘Write on Me’ videos) + 800,000 (tour support) = 1,980,000. 1,980,000÷5= 396,000 ©, 396,000x4= 1,584,000 (LAND).

2,311,088 (artist royalties earned) - 87% [3% (to give to producers) + 20% (to give to management managers) + 5% (to give to business managers) + 5% (to give to lawyers) + 20% (packaging costs) + 10% (breakage costs) + 10% (free goods) + 14% (collected by SoundExchange)] = 300,441. 300,441÷5= 60,088 ©, 60,088x4= 240,352 (LAND).

From LAND’s debt figure, let’s subtract 27% of the earnings occurred thanks to the commissions received from the brand licenses. 1,343,648-27%= 980,863.

Thanks to these calculations, we were able to see that Camila had a debt of $335,912 with the labels, and LAND of 980,863, (980,863÷4=) $245,216 each.

Now, the real box-offices earnings data for the tour are $5,100,000 for 31 concerts. The concerts of that tour, and therefore of 2016 with still Camila, were 58. Including those 27 non-calculated concerts, let’s imagine that the total profit was $5,110,000. Let’s also imagine the merchandising gain was $890,000. $5,110,000, minus, let’s still imagine the 80% profit on the sale of a ticket price, is equal to (5,110,000-20%=) $4,088,000. 4,088,000÷5= 817,600 ©, 817,600x4= 3,270,400 (LAND).

By subtracting the debts to this new figure, we get: 817,600-335,912= 481,688 ©, 3,270,400-980,863= 2,289,537 (LAND).

2,385,585+890,000 (merchandising earnings) = 3,275,585 (LAND).

These, are the total earnings of the 7/27 era divided among the girls, taxes to be paid not included. Camila: $505,700. LAND: 3,275,585 (3,275,585÷4=) $818,896 each.

Think about ‘FIFTH HARMONY Rehearses before Winning at RADIO DISNEY MUSIC AWARDS!’ takeover recorded in April 2014: Kevin Maher: “Last one on the floor pays $5!”, Lauren the living meme Jauregui: “NOT MEEEE!!!!”

Think about the ‘Fifth Harmony “We’re not rich!"’ interview with Live! Starring … You! posted on April 14, 2014: Camila: “We’re literally more broke than we were before the competition”, Lauren: “EXCUSE ME!!! I can only afford the bus, taxis are expensive!!”, Normani: “We have like Ritz crackers for dinner”, Camila and Normani: “We’re bankrupt”.

Think about the two leaked audios: Lauren: “They’re making decisions on a regular basis, to fuck us over, to make us literal slaves, like literally slaves, Ally” Ally: “I know, I know, I know” Lauren: “We’re doing fucking labor every day and we see nothing”. – Camila: “Sorry I couldn’t come down today. They were actually working us to the fucking bone. We did like, literally five songs”.

Does it all make a little more sense now?

Aaand here we are. I hope you enjoyed it and that this too was worth the long ass reading. I’d like to thank Mari as usual for giving me the opportunity to post on her blog. Thanks, buddy, I really appreciate that 🤗😊

I ❤️ u, guys. Please stay safe. Stay patient. Stay strong. And stay woke, especially for what’s coming in these months. Always with love, F.

__ 💖

#submission #f anon #long ass post #how the music world works

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hoe-doroki · 4 years

Text

hollow victory ch2

A part of the ‘A Spare Heart’ series.

pairing: none–eventual Shouto x Reader later in the series.

wc: 3.9k

genre: gen

summary: You transferred to U.A. from America two weeks ago. You’ve trained, studied, and observed alongside your classmates, but no one has found out your quirk yet. Today, they’re going be meeting it head on. You don’t have as much combat experience as any of them, but you have the advantage: surprise. Because none of them are prepared for what you have coming for them.

a/n: 2nd of 2 chapters! Make sure to read chapter 1 first! American!fem!Reader.

As you watched Todoroki retreat slowly to the stands, rejoining Midoriya, Iida, and Uraraka, you remembered all the things people used to say about your quirk back in America. You looked at everyone back together on one set of cement bleachers while you remained on the ground, and saw in their faces that they now knew.

You fell to the ground, groaning, “God” in English, only partially because of the fresh pain. You’d been hit just about everywhere and, despite all the work you’d been doing to build muscle for the past few months, you’d definitely pushed past your limit. You were drenched in sweat and probably in need of a lot more water, despite all you’d gulped down from Aizawa. Still, that wasn’t what hurt the most.

What was coming next would be.

“Alright,” Aizawa said as he handed you another water and Cementoss formed a chair for you to sit in, facing the rest of your peers. “Does everyone have a good idea of what Y/N’s quirk is?”

There were nods and murmurs among the group and more than a few faces were looking at you warily. Your heart sank at the familiarity of it. Yaoyorozu’s hand shot up and Aizawa called on her.

“She has the ability to manipulate emotions in others. She doesn’t appear to need any eye or physical contact, although it’s unknown if any other information is needed. She has fine-honed the kinds of emotions she can use and has some mastery over nuance. Endurance seems to be a moderate factor.”

Aizawa nodded, looking at you for approval that Yaoyorozu had gotten it right, although you knew she had. “Anything to add?” he asked.

You sighed heavily, but began the old spiel anyway, talking slowly as you tried to fit everything into Japanese. “There is some range factored into it, so it only works if I’m close by a person, and the connection gets faint before severing the farther away someone is. I have some control over how long the emotions last, but they’ll naturally fade without my intervention. Um, I can’t read minds or anything like that, so I just have to intuit how people are feeling. The emotion sticks better if it’s something that someone is already feeling in some way, like if someone is feeling a little lazy, it’s easy for me to strengthen that, but it won’t really work if I try to put an emotion on someone that they’re already strongly feeling. Like making someone who’s already angry more angry. If that all makes sense. Yaoyorozu is right that the first emotion I hit someone with is the strongest and subsequent ones don’t hit as well, because then they start to blur a little.”

You were surprised you’d managed to get all of that out. Your Japanese must have gotten a lot better in your last two weeks here. You almost smiled, but then you remembered what you were talking about and you stopped. Truthfully, you weren’t even sure you’d described the extent of it, since there were still things you didn’t know. This was the most varied use of your quirk that you’d ever pulled off, which should have felt momentous. And it did, a little, but that feeling was shadowed by the way some of your peers had looked at you. Todoroki, Bakugou, Kaminari. You couldn’t enjoy what you’d done to them.

“What’s your quirk called?” Midoriya asked as he frantically scribbled in his notebook.

For a moment, you didn’t answer. But there was no point in hiding it, so you said, “Legally, it’s called gaslighting. I think that gives the wrong idea, though.” You mumbled the last part under your breath, but it seemed your peers heard you anyway. Sound really did travel well with all the cement.

“Why’s that?” Tsu asked.

“Because gaslighting is a way people abuse others by telling lies in order to distort their sense of reality,” you spat out. “And, yeah, okay, my quirk distorts someone’s sense of reality so they’re feeling an emotion that they wouldn’t otherwise, but it’s not the same. It’s more like projecting or, I don’t know, just creating emotion, but the quirk was already on the books, so that’s the name I was stuck with.”

“But you were able to totally freeze some people like Bakugou and Todoroki,” Hagakure said. “How was your quirk able to do that?”

Todoroki hadn’t had the chance to share his experience with your quirk with the group yet and you were willing to bet that Bakugou hadn’t been in the mood to tell anyone his. So it was no wonder she was confused about how you’d taken down two of the strongest fighters in your class so easily.

“I came up with strategies for everyone, based on what I’ve observed of you for the past couple weeks and what was available online,” you explained. “Then I discussed the strategies with Aizawa-sensei to see if they made sense and alter them a bit. I’m sure you know by now that most of you got a different emotion based on what I thought would slow you down or make you give up. Since I can’t defeat most of you physically, especially with quirks at play, that’s what I have to do.”

“So…what did you use on everyone?” Ashido asked, looking almost giddy as she eyed her fellow classmates.

You’d known that there would be a lot of questions for you after your quirk was revealed, as had Aizawa. But still, he took a step forward and put his hand up. “Y/N is exhausted. She just fought twenty of you with only very short breaks in between. And yet she only lost four times and Midoriya is the only one who managed to guess her quirk before the battle. She’s going to Recovery Girl and you can all go see her at lunch. For now, Todoroki, Bakugou, melt the ice and everyone else can spar, quirks included.”

Everyone looked excited at the prospect of being able to spar freely with quirks, something they hadn’t been able to do in class since your arrival. Of course, it wasn’t lost on you that you were going to miss it, but at least you’d be able to take part next time.

If anyone would be willing to partner with you.

Cementoss walked you to the nurse’s office and stayed as you endured your first kiss from Recovery Girl. She didn’t give you a hard time as you knew she did for students sometimes, since all you had were minor injuries. A lot of them—your body was covered with bruises not to mention a few small scratches and muscles that would soon be wound as a rubber band ball regardless of what she did. It all added up and, despite the fact that she put you just short of ‘good as new’ you were exhausted at the end. Although, you’d been exhausted to begin with.

“Why don’t you take a nap on the cot until the end of your class and I’ll wake you when it’s time to head to lunch?”

You’d resigned yourself to missing the rest of class as soon as you’d left Gym Gamma, and you were hardly in a position to argue. You were out as soon as you closed your eyes.

It seemed hardly a minute had passed when Recovery Girl was in your ear, Cementoss having left the room sometime during your nap. Which, apparently, had been about a half an hour.

You pushed yourself up and found that a lot of the aches and pains you’d walked into the room with were nothing but phantoms now, although the stiffness you’d expected tomorrow morning was already beginning to hit. Your quads and hamstrings were so tight you couldn’t walk without limping.

“Take these with lunch,” Recovery Girl said as she handed you a couple muscle-relaxing pain relievers.

Usually you didn’t like to take those and preferred to know where you were feeling more tender, but you grabbed them gratefully this time. You’d have to take a truck full of painkillers for your pain to go away that easily.

You walked by yourself to the Lunch Rush cafeteria, keeping an eye on landmarks as you did so. After two weeks, you generally knew how to get from place to place—especially somewhere as vital as the cafeteria—but the reminders reassured you since you couldn’t read any of the classroom signs pointing the way.

When you made it to the cafeteria, the rest of your class was already there, and some of them were waving you over. For the past two weeks, only the likes of Iida, Midoriya, Kirishima, Kaminari, and Ashido had done so, quickly representing themselves as the most welcoming members of class 2-A, even if Iida was doing it mostly out of duty.

Everyone, save Aoyama, was sitting together taking up two whole tables, minus one seat between Ashido and Yaoyorazu. There was a simple noodle dish in that spot and you pointed to it and asked, “Is that for me?”

“Sure is!” Ashido said, patting the seat. “Hope it’s okay. We didn’t weren’t sure what you like, with your American tastes and everything.”

“Honestly, anything looks good right now,” you said as you sat down. All of the food smells were making you ravenous.

“How are you feeling?” Yaoyorazu asked as you took your first bit of noodles. Someone had set you up with a fork instead of chopsticks, and you were grateful for that. You could manage with chopsticks, but there was nothing quite like a fork for shoveling food down your gullet.

You nodded as you chewed, swallowing the big bite as you said, “Much better, thanks. Pretty sore, but no bad injuries.”

“That’s a relief,” Midoriya said. He’d hit you the hardest out of everyone except for maybe Shouji, so it made sense that he’d be the most concerned about you. You smiled at him through another bite of food.

“So…” Ashido drawled, looking at you expectantly. You just raised your eyebrows up at her, bowl up to your chin as you kept eating. “Are you gonna tell us what you did to everyone?”

You looked around at the group to see if everyone had the same enthusiasm that Ashido did. There were a few looks of casual curiosity and more than a few who seemed to be purposefully looking away. But only Tsu, Yaoyorozu, and Sero looked equally intrigued about the emotions you had used against them and their friends.

“Well,” you started, taking gulp of water, “Ashido, I tried all kinds of things against you. But it seems you roll with the punches pretty well, because even though I could see you taking on all the emotions, none of them actually slowed you down. Happy, sad, angry, whatever. Your intention was strong regardless. That’s really good.”

“Oh, that explains the emotional roller coaster!” Ashido said. “I thought I was just having funky endorphins or something.”

You shrugged. “Maybe that’s part of how my quirk works. I don’t really know.”

“Wait, you said intention,” Midoriya said, looking up from where he was scribbling in his notebook. “Is that how you fight back against it? Intention?”

“Is that what you felt?” you asked back.

You’d never seen someone overpower your quirk before, although you hadn’t used it offensively very much in your life thus far either. The most you’d used it had been on people who were accepting your quirk voluntarily, so naturally they wouldn’t be fighting back.

“Hmm,” Midoriya paused, looking up at the ceiling. “I…well, the feeling that I think you used on me was something like total disinterest. I was coming at you and suddenly I was asking myself, ‘why bother?’ ‘Why even do this?’ And that made me give up a little bit. But I was still in control of my thoughts and was able to tell myself that we were fighting and was able to come back to myself, only to start feeling indifferent again.”

“Yeah, so I was thinking ‘boredom’ for you,” you explained, finally beginning to slow down on the noodles. “You clearly have so much passion and ambition, that going in the opposite direction of that seemed like something that would inhibit you. But since that’s probably something that you never feel, especially in combat, your mind was able to fight against it easier than emotion that’s more normal for you.”

“Okay,” Midoriya said, writing frantically. “That still doesn’t explain how someone would fight back. Especially if it is a feeling that would stick better.”

You shrugged. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, to be honest. I’ve never had this quirk used on me before, so there’s no way for me to know.”

“That makes sense…” Midoriya mumbled to himself as he continued scribbling.

“What did you use on me?” Jirou asked. She was barely making eye contact with you and you saw a bit of the distrust you’d seen on her, amongst others, after you’d revealed your quirk. She probably felt like her psyche had been invaded. Which, after all, it had.

“Embarrassment,” you admitted. “A bit of shame and anxiety and stress and you started to lose confidence in yourself. But you’re good at using your quirk, so you should have better confidence then that.”

Your cheeks felt hot as you said the words, already knowing that they probably wouldn’t be received well. There you were, having only been with these people for a couple weeks and the first way you were making yourself known was by diagnosing their emotional issues. Jirou gave a little huff and a nod, saying “Okay,” before turning back to her food.

“Ah, I see, so this is also an opportunity for us to learn how someone who knows us a little bit perceives us,” Iida said, putting a hand forward. “Not to mention a bit of insight as to what Aizawa-sensei thinks our shortcomings still are. This is an excellent lesson.”

“Well, your shortcoming is obviously that you’re too polite,” Tsu said.

Iida turned to Tsu, full of offense. “I don’t see how that’s a shortcoming,” he defended.

“Well, Tsu’s kind of right,” you said. “I did take advantage of your chivalry. But I’m not sure that kind of thing would have worked on you against a real villain, and without the heightened emotion.”

Iida shook his head. “I don’t want the technicalities of a training exercise in my favor. This is something I must work on to be a pro hero. So, tell me, what emotion did you use on me?”

“Shame,” you answered. “Different from Jirou, though. For you, obviously you pride honor so much that I was able to give you that emotion whilst acting as though you’d injured me so that the emotion would stick better. I did similar things to Ojiro and Satou and used regret just to slow them down a bit.”

“Ah, so acting out the scenario helps…” Midoriya muttered.

“Those are strong emotions,” Yaoyorozu commented. “Stronger than boredom, like you used on Midoriya. Does that have something to do with the power of your quirk as well?”

“Definitely,” you said. “I forgot to mention that before. It’s a bit of a person to person thing but, generally, yeah. An emotion like anger is always going to be stronger than, say, calmness or peacefulness.”

“A tragedy of the human condition,” Tokoyami said to himself.

You ended up going through everyone else one by one as they asked, sometimes struggling for the exact nuance of the word you were intending, occasionally reverting to English. You told them how you’d used anger against Tsu’s even-keeled nature, something she’d been able to guess, doubt against Yaoyorozu, which seemed to hit hard, and fear against Kouda.

“Okay, I don’t understand what she might have used against me,” Kaminari bemoaned. “All I could think once the match started was that she was really pretty and I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“Dude, you were horny,” Kirishima exclaimed, patting his friend on the back. “Y/N, tell me I’m wrong. You made him horny, right?”

“Um…” you started awkwardly and both Kirishima and Mineta gave hoots of laughter. “Well, lust, really. But hey, the good news is that means you’re not a sadist?”

There were more laughs from some of the boys and you might have joined in for the good humor, but it was still embarrassing. You could see a slight blush on Kaminari’s face and your cheeks were warm as well. And when Mineta’s leering eyes turned to you, you couldn’t help but tug up your uniform’s zipper a bit.

“Wow, she could be just like a Viagra,” Mineta murmured.

“I don’t need that,” Kaminari insisted. “I don’t need any of that.”

He looked at you as he said it, and you couldn’t help but hear, “I don’t need any of you,” instead. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. It always did.

Soon, your bowl was empty of noodles and Bakugou and Todoroki were the only ones who hadn’t asked how you’d manipulated them. And it didn’t seem as though either of them were going to. Of course, Bakugou’s friends couldn’t let that lie, so Kirishima came forward and asked. “So what did you do to poor Bakugou to make him fall to his knees?”

“I have an idea,” Mineta said, but everyone ignored him.

You looked at Bakugou, not wanting to say unless he was okay with it. He was glaring powerfully at you, but he didn’t tell you or Kirishima to shut up, as you’d so often heard him growl in your time at U.A. already. That must have meant that he was at least a little curious too.

“His was a bit harder to form in my mind,” you admitted, “but one of the simpler ones to plan. I was going for a sense of defeat. Some sadness, some hopelessness, despair, shame. He seems to run so much on anger—anger and a need to win, really—that if those aren’t at the forefront, he’s toast.”

That brought a growl out of Bakugou, but you continued.

“I’m sure that he could have broken through it like Midoriya did, since those emotions probably aren’t common for you,” you said, turning your gaze to Bakugou’s despite how it made you feel like he was going to pounce and tear you limb from limb at any moment. “But I think that that also made them really surprising for you to feel, especially since you were first, and that gave me just enough time to end the match quickly. But if something more time consuming than capture tape had been involved…I don’t know.”

Some people might have heard a compliment somewhere in your words, but as soon as you’d said Midoriya’s name, he’d snarled, closing him off from hearing anything good in your words. From what you’d observed so far, you weren’t surprised.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the newest member of class 2-A,” a blond boy said from behind you. He was looking down his nose at you, a wicked grin on his lips. “I hear you’ve got a freaky quirk that messes with people’s minds. Just what 2-A needed to round them out, since we have a new one too.”

You were frozen, unable to respond. How had word already gotten out? Only the class, Cementoss, and Aizawa had been in Gym Gamma and you’d assumed that they hadn’t blabbed to anyone else on the way to the cafeteria. Although, there wasn’t anything stopping them if that’s what they wanted to do. But maybe other students had just overheard the nature of the discussion you all had been having and had been able to put the pieces together based on the questions and answers you’d given.

“So, tell me? Can you force people to like you? Force everyone in this pathetic, little class to enjoy spending time around you until you turn around and convince them to give up in battles so you can rise to the top of the famous 2-A class? Pretty smart strategy if you ask—”

“Nobody did ask you, Monoma,” a girl with orange hair said as her fist ballooned and closed around the boy. “Sorry he’s your introduction to us. He’s barely house trained.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” you assured her. It wasn’t the worst you’d ever heard.

“Still,” she continued. “On behalf of class 2-B, I wish you luck. Enjoy your lunch.”

The girl carried the blond away, seemingly unbothered by the weight of an entire human person that she was now carrying. Once they were gone, you turned to your empty tray and picked it up.

“I’m still pretty tired from Recovery Girl,” you said, forcing a bit of cheer into your voice as you stared at the thin sauce coating the bottom of your bowl. “I’m going to rest a bit and see you all back in class.”

You only made it a few steps toward the dish station when you felt someone coming up behind you. You glanced back to see Todoroki, following you with his own empty tray.

“Can I ask you what emotion you used on me?” he asked quietly, coming up to your side.

You take a breath, seeing the defeated look he’d had on his face, even after you’d pulled the influence of your quirk back from him again. “Sadness. Maybe a bit of regret. No anger.”

“I see,” Todoroki said.

With that, he brushed past you and placed his dishes on the rack, then returned to his friends. You did the same with your dishes, and then went to the exit. When you pushed open the doors, there was someone standing with his arms crossed, looking at you as though he’d been waiting. You didn’t think you’d ever had so many people who wanted to speak to you before.

This boy had indigo hair and looked as tired as you felt. Actually, probably as tired as you looked too. He surprised you when he gave a small, uncertain smile. “Hi, I’m Shinsou. What’s your name?”

“I’m Y/N. It’s my given name, but I’m more comfortable if you call me that.” It was what you said every time you introduced yourself here in Japan. Another thing keeping you just a little bit othered.

“Okay, Y/N,” Shinsou said. “It’s nice to meet you. I…I heard that you have a quirk that lets you influence people’s emotions?”

You sighed. You could already hear it. This guy was going to ask you to make him feel happier or, judging by his face, more energetic or something like that. Sometimes you hated these guys even more than people like that Monoma fellow.

“No, I—” Shinsou started, seeming to catch onto the way your face fell, “I just wanted to say that my quirk lets me control other people in a way too, and sometimes—often, actually—people make assumptions about me that hurt. So I don’t know if you feel like that, but if so,” he shrugged, “I understand.”

You didn’t smile. You couldn’t say you felt happy, but as a breath whooshed out of you and your whole body sagged, despite the stiffness fisting every muscle, you could only think of one emotion.

Relief.

#bnha x reader #bnha fanfiction #mha x reader #mha fanfiction #bnha insert #mha insert #todoroki x reader #shouto x reader #shoto x reader #shouto todoroki x reader #shoto todoroki x reader #a spare heart

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mult1tude · 4 years

Text

TWO STARS ✰ AN ETHAN NESTOR STORY — CHAPTER 1

story synopsis: adele belanger, an upcoming star begins to fall in love with a man named ethan nestor after doing a press junket to promote her upcoming series that’s going to push her fame further than she expected. will problems arise?

word count: 3k triggers: none

adele belanger - the name spoke few and far on the dazzling and glamorous world of hollywood. celebrated for her roles in roles in indie films produced and created in canada, where she was born and raised, she is soon due a big break as she was in the process of getting ready for the rest of the world to know she was starring in netflix’s latest series.

saying the heat resonating from beneath her laptop was hot was an understatement, she didn’t dare to budge or move it in the slightest as she restlessly refreshed the youtube page waiting for the trailer to pop up, almost wearing out the button on her keyboard. the sable black strands at the nape of her neck that had evaded her grasp as she hurriedly tied a ponytail began to itch at her skin but she didn’t have time to fix it, not until the trailer was posted.

after what felt like a lifetime, her eyes were quick to notice a new thumbnail appear on the page and she reactively clicked it, pressing the mousepad button-down slightly too hard out of excitement. the entire video played, a beaming smile was plastered across her face, her dimples displayed prominently as she approached the end of the video. the young actress felt like a firework in a glass jar, so much excitement contained inside of her as she brushed the laptop from her lap, jolted from her rumpled bed and clenched her fists as she excitedly hopped around her tiny apartment and squealed. adele rushed to the dust speckled mirror that was hung near her front door that had a few dozen, in a hyperbolic sense, of her unused coats after moving from canada. she deeply exhaled as she examined her face, noticing her own excitement couldn’t even contain itself as a smile sidled upon her lips as she delicately let out a few words. “i’m going to be famous.”

her emotions shot off again like fireworks, her chest fluttering and her palms tingling and red from the nails she didn’t realise she had dug so deep into her own skin. but it didn’t matter, adele was finally making the biggest leap possible into her career - it was everything she ever wanted.

“ok, i need some water.” she softly spoke to herself, taking another deep breath as she headed towards her apartment’s small open-planned kitchen. her shaky hands picked up a bottle of water from the fridge; she vowed that she would never drink l.a’s tap water after hearing an endless conglomeration of negative things from acquaintances and friends after moving only 6 months ago.

swigging it back and almost completing most of the bottle, she slapped it onto the counter whilst letting out a satisfied gasp for air. a few drops making wet patches on her eggshell coloured sweatshirt that may or may not have a few foundation marks around the neckline. a sudden change of thought, she remembered she needed to send the link to all of her friends and family if they already hadn’t seen it. adele slid the phone from her sweatpants noticing she was already getting congratulatory messages from some of her friends and even people that she hadn’t spoken to in a while. moreso, a lot of the messages from her friends were them completely fangirling over the fact that she had in fact worked with henry cavill.

adele replied to and messaged everyone she needed to before opening twitter and the rest of her social media to find that they were starting to blow up, multiple people talking about how cool the show looked and how excited they were. a lot of them were generic but few mentioned how intricate and interesting adele’s sidekick companion character seemed which made her stomach twirl once more and she felt like she had her ego stroked enough it would last the rest of the week. she put aside her phone and began to practice her bedtime routine before throwing herself back onto her bed where she only was an hour ago. her head smacking her pillow must have activated a switch because adele immediately felt her eyes involuntarily shutter closed and before she knew it, she was fast asleep.

✰

today was the first day of recording stuff for the press. needless to say, adele was super excited. from what the actress was able to gather from her manager jenna, since henry cavill was known to be such a huge gamer online, buzzfeed had organised the cast to play the game version of the new netflix series with a few special guests. it was undeniably going to be a great day and a great way to start the press junket as it progressively and eventually got more tiring and mind-numbing. plus, she had gamed a bit before so it would be funny if she were able to show up a few of her cast members, especially henry.

at 8am sharp, the assigned makeup and hairstylist, and wardrobe stylist arrived at her apartment. she was so giddy with excitement that she wanted to run around and shout and tell everyone but she had to sit silently for the meantime as the makeup artist worked on her face. edging elation bubbled through her every vein as they talked about varying outfits to wear, expensive designer brands she was allowed to borrow. she felt like a proper celebrity.

finally, the crew decided on a casual look for today. her slate black, silken hair was bundled in a half-up loose french plait whilst the rest of it waved down just below her shoulders, the front strands falling in front of her face. light and delicate makeup that made her eyes shine and sparkle like a glossy nephrite stone; the minimal makeup also allowed her ubiquitous, chocolate freckles to proudly be displayed on her face. polished, golden dangle geometric earrings to frame her heart-shaped face and overall elevate the look from simple to elegant. an ivory laced-back milkmaid top with puffed long sleeves, high-waisted, sun-bleached skinny jeans with a few sparse rips and shreds, tattered white thread entwined between the tears and loosely hanging like vines. to finish off the look was some pearly white stilettos and few rings as well as a similarly styled necklace to match the earrings.

“i feel, amazing.” adele faltered in disbelief as she longingly stared at herself in the mirror, turning to the crew exhibiting an approving smile. “thank you.” she softly spoke before squeaking with excitement as she danced on the spot causing her team to giggle in response. “time to get going!” she excitedly commanded herself as she made a poor attempt at trying to control her out of rhythm breathing. the exhilaration and eagerness began to convolute into a ball of anxiousness and fret. it was something new and different which was scary but she didn’t want it to hold her back. another deep breath and she made her way to the contemporary, modern lobby of her apartment block where she spotted the black suv through the towering glass front doors in which her chauffeur was waiting for her.

“per jenna’s request,” the chauffeur nodded towards the coffee in the cupholder. adele wrapped her hand around the starbucks cup — still hot. “vanilla oat milk latte?” she asked as she brought the almost searing coffee to her lips, the steam floating upwards and brushing past her skin. the chauffeur nodded as he put the vehicle into gear and started to head towards the destination. effortlessly, the sweet drink passed her lips as she took a few sips before she threw her head back in a satisfied manor. surely the coffee would help with the nerves and just overall elevate her mood. she scoured her social media for a short while, taking breaks to finish the rest of her drink before they arrived. it’s l.a, so it was always bound to take a while even if it just was a few blocks over.

discreetly, the car pulled into the back entrance where she was able to enter without getting noticed and was directed to a very bright and lively reception where the young actress signed in. her heels clicking against the laminated wooden flooring as she followed the operations manager who was indistinctively talking through the black earpiece attached to her ear and was clutching a clipboard to her stomach. a few corridors later they had arrived, the manager twisted the handle to the door and entered, allowing adele to trail behind her.

almost blinding, the room was filled with numerous studio lights. littering the floor almost completely, cables and all different sorts of leads and plugs lay disorganised on the floor. a huge monitor was placed in front of the white screen which was the focus of all the beaming lights. “hey adele!” vocalised the director as he approached her, also bearing a black earpiece. “so the premise of today’s shoot is quite simple. you’re going to be playing the game with our two guests over here,” he briefly motioned towards two gentlemen sat in the corner of the room chatting and chuckling between themselves clearly in a world of their own, “and we’ve paired you with henry because we only have two controllers and we want to get everyone to be involved so the others are being shot later. does that sound good?” he queried, concluded his speech.

“of course.” she eagerly spoke with a grin. “great,” the director spoke as he adjusted his wire-frame glasses, “let me introduce you to the guests. they’re going to be guiding you along with the game,” he spoke, leading adele over towards the boisterous men who were still conversing right up until adele and the director were stood only a few metres away.

“mark?” adele apprehensively suspected as she reached her hand out to his, inviting the suave gentleman to shake hands. “yes!” he answered in a shocked yet pleased tone as he stood to be polite and accepted the handshake with a beaming grin. “i think i watched a bit of your stuff a while back,” adele admitted before briefly catching eyes with the other guy who was staring up at her with gleaming eyes and a dopey yet adorable smile. “i’m honoured,” mark softly spoke before looking down at the other guy who was now standing to follow suit. “this is my friend ethan,” mark continued, placing a firm grip on his pal's shoulder.

“hi, nice to meet you.” ethan spoke in a much more gentle manner than mark did as he reached his hand out to replicate the greeting. “nice to meet you too,” she replied, reciprocating the greeting. “have you watched my stuff too?” ethan asked with a bashful smile as he ruffled his hair with his painted black fingernails. adele hesitantly shook her head not wanting to hurt his feelings, “no, but if it’s anything like mark’s stuff i’m certain it’s great.” she stated looking back at mark who had an affirming smirk on his face as he looked down at his younger friend who’s face had started to flush pink.

“henry is meant to be here right now, but he isn’t,” the director addressed somewhat annoyingly, “i’ll go and have a word to see where he is you can just stay here and talk to each other.” the director stated before hurriedly making his way to the door which adele entered through. she sat down in one of the spare seats that sat opposite the boys as they sat down once more.

“can i just say i watched the trailer this morning and i can’t wait to watch it.” he admitted as he began to pull at the strings of his coal-black hoodie. “thank you, it really means a lot,” adele’s cheeks blushed as she began to fiddle with the rings on her fingers yet still keeping her eyes on the boys. “seriously. we’re not just saying this it looks fantastic,” mark chirped in enthusiastically as he leaned forward in the seat, “i’m never usually this excited about a new series. so congrats!” he admitted with a deep chuckle, looking towards ethan who was nodding in agreement.

the conversation was silenced when a huge figure walked through the door followed by the director and operations manager. the director hastily wagged his fingers at adele and the boys who obediently made their way over. “adele!” henry happily bellowed in his charming english accent as he pulled her into a gentle hug, remembering he probably was over two times her size. “long time no see,” she affirmed as she hugged him back before breaking their embrace. her eyes involuntarily wandered over to ethan as the director began briefing henry. ethan quickly darted his eyes to the director as if he just hadn’t been gazing at her causing adele to grin to herself as she put her concentration back to the director.

“great, so follow me and i’ll seat you.” the director asserted as he walked towards the chairs in front of the white screen, two at the front and two at the back yet not parallel to each other. the front seats were more centred whilst the back two were offset so nobody would be getting in the way of each other when seated.

“adele if you sit in the front left seat, henry in the right.” he requested as he took a step behind the camera and watched the monitor to see if it was what he had envisioned. adele and henry sat which the director reacted with a thumbs up. “okay, ethan if you sit on the left and mark on the right please.” the director concluded as he continued to watch the monitor. the boys did as they were told before mark immediately remarked. “gosh it’s bright behind here,” he joked shielding his eyes as he laughed, eliciting a few giggles from everyone as the director adjusted some of the studio light placement with a few apprentices.

after everything was adjusted to the directors liking, they were ready to roll. the director placed his 3 fingers up as he counted down whilst mouthing the numbers. the thumb was up, which meant everyone introduced themselves and surprisingly it didn’t need multiple takes. “today, adele and i are going to be playing the symbols of shadows game which is very similar to the new series on netflix september 4th.” henry beamed, clutching the xbox controller in his hand as he looked over towards adele. “and i’m going to win. i’m going to beat henry.”

henry scoffed, dismissing adele’s statement as mark and ethan giggled behind them. “we’re also going to try to help, but it looks like they’re gaming experts,” mark spoke, wavering his tone with the last two words as he jokingly mocked adele and henry. “well, there’s only one way to find out.” ethan spoke energetically in a slightly goofier voice than what he was speaking in before. ethan looked at mark before they both turned towards the camera with a raised eyebrow. “okay great. we’ll cut there. let’s load the game up.” the director approved, leaning back in his chair, fixing his corduroy jacket as one of the apprentices loaded the game up and set up the first level. “we just want you to complete the first level so don’t try and rush.” the apprentice handed back the controller to adele as he quickly rushed out of view.

the camera began to roll again and the pair began to get a grasp of the controls and the setting of the game as they intentionally tried to set each other up in the game: pushing one another of the map, friendly fire, stealing points and collectables, and deliberately annoying each other which resulted in many laughs around the room. matter-of-factly, ethan and mark didn’t really do anything to help, however, they did make for a great commentary and supplied multiple belly-aching jokes.

the screen faded to black as they’d finished the first level; mark and ethan clapped and congratulated the pair in between giggles as adele and henry carried on the bit and refused to display any means of sportsmanship. “guys, i don’t know about you but i definitely won.” henry retaliated as adele shook her head and rolled her eyes. mark and ethan were laughing so hard it was almost silent. “this was a team game,” mark giggled as the pitch in his voice heightened. “let us know in the comments who you think won. because it was moi.” adele stated confidently, trying to hide the smile that wanted to appear on her lips so badly. the pair promoted their netflix series as they wrapped up filming. “okay, great. that’s everything. thanks, guys.” the director spoke as he picked up his macbook from the desk and began typing away. “if you just wait here until someone comes and collects you,” the director struggled to speak as he was too busy multitasking. he pressed the side of his earpiece and spoke to himself as he called for the cast to be escorted.

“you’re really good, i was impressed.” ethan spoke to adele softly, as everyone got out of their seats. “you really like to flatter me don’t you.” she joked which caused ethan to halter in his thoughts for a moment. “it’s not a bad thing,” she reassured him, “it’s really nice to hear. especially coming from you.” delicately spoke, eyes quickly moving over to see if anyone was listening but mark and henry were engulfed in their own conversation. ethan’s cheeks flushed pink again as he displayed a meek grin.

he was about to respond when the door re-opened and the manager stepped through, immediately grabbing everyone else’s attention. ethan bit at his lip as anguish washed over his face as he realised the conversation was over. adele was disinclined for a moment, lingering for a few more seconds as the butterflies in her stomach began to fade. “it was nice talking to you. talk soon?” she asked which brightened up ethan’s face as he nodded, “of course. see you soon.” he timorously spoke with a contemptuous smile as he waved goodbye, for now.

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