#since it’s been a while and these are traditional rather than the usual digital drawings I’ll give you guys two today! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

4dtk · 3 years

Note

hi i would love to if you could write a story with jaehyun where he gives y/n a massage and then fucks y/n

long. enjoy, 1.8k baby. dont think i'll give this one a name either LOL

warnings: fingering, doggy, reverse cowgirl, breeding kink

NSFW UNDER THE CUT, MINORS DNI!

“hey. how was work?” you were often the culprit of jaehyun’s questions when your foot first lands in your apartment, toeing off your shoes with ease as he welcomes you with a peck to your cheek. he holds your waist loosely while you massage your ankles and toes, glad for a breath of fresh air even if they were hidden behind socks.

jaehyun drags you into the living room before you can speak, manspreading like he’s done it a hundred time before and pats his thighs. it makes you smile and raise an eyebrow. settling in front of him felt good, although he yanks you back onto his chest a little enthusiastically than usual that you let out a squeal. you just pass it off that he’s happy to see you after a day of doing nothing.

in a way, he has done it a hundred times. it was routine at this point, where you’d just sit against his back and lay against him, sometimes tilting your head back to admire his side profile. you’d talk about co-workers, your lunch, your overbearing tasks, all while jaehyun gently massages your sides with alternating hands, always sure to apply a fair amount of pressure to ease out your nerves.

he laughs into your neck at your reaction, but other than that, he remains quiet as you start on your rant, gesturing widely to this one annoying colleague that’s been getting on your nerves for the past few weeks. always talking over you for the tasks assigned to you, dropping badly-timed statements that definitely could be defined as a backhanded compliment; you could go on and on about the co-worker that you don’t notice jaehyun’s hands retreating from your waist to push you away from his body, travelling up your back instead.

they slowly feel up your back like an experienced masseuse, testing the waters with his thumb in a particularly deep dig in between your shoulder blades. it makes you gasp, the rant about how the same co-worker had accidentally interrupted by your sound of surprise. it’s the exhale of breath, however, that resembled something dangerously close to a whimper and you hope to god that jaehyun doesn’t hear it.

“you gotta relax for me, baby,” jaehyun grunts, continuing to sort out the kinks and aches in your back, no doubt brought about by your bad posture. at least if you were working from home, jaehyun would be able to provide you with hourly reminders to stretch out your back. ah, well, this would have to suffice.

jaehyun was talented with his hands, portraying his efficiency in relaxing the tension in your back with how intimately they moved from one area to another. another crack resonates throughout the room, making you moan out at the released tightness.

jaehyun loses his grip on sanity each time his knuckle, thumbs, fingers meet every inch of your back, eliciting countless other sounds that went south with how lewd they sounded. when you whimper again, he sighs with a little praise of good girl, breath tickling your ear lightly that it causes you to giggle. you’re at ease now, leaning back before he seemingly massages out the last ache in your back.

“you’re a bothersome little minx, aren’t you?” the other smirks against your neck, another giggle escaping your lips when you feel his hand prying your thighs apart. “well, thank fucking god you wore a skirt today.”

jaehyun’s smirk stretches into a grin when he feels how there’s a wet patch on your underwear from the suggestive session where you could feel his hardening erection against your bum. it played out like a bad sex scene from a movie, but you couldn’t complain when you were the stars of the show, able to feeling jaehyun’s fingers on your hips, on your thighs. he drags a finger to your centre painfully slow that you thrash gently against his hold, but it only makes him reinforce the secure arm he has around you. “patience, angel.”

“sorry, hun, but your massages are always so good. i still wonder why we didn’t do this earlier.”

“then… let’s change up our tradition a little, huh?” he purrs, panties already to the side before jaehyun slips a sneaky finger in. your hole sucks him in so easily that a groan is heard, possibly from the both of you. you’re not even sure any more, body overtaken by pleasure as he adds a second finger. you’re so wet that it’s no trouble for the man, who marvels over your shoulder at how good you’re taking his digits.

“haah… j-jae…” he chuckles against your shoulder, eyes never leaving how he’s pumping his fingers into you. they stretch you out so good and you can barely manage words, reduced to nothing but breathy moans and whines while he fucks you open. you mewl on a sudden hard thrust where his fingers are so deep that it’s up to his knuckle. he laughs again.

“you’re doing so good, baby,” jaehyun murmurs, “but i don’t think i can hold it in any longer.” the emptiness you feel when he removes his fingers was criminal, but you can’t complain when you’d be getting his cock in a second or two, already eyeing the bulge that showed itself through his sweatpants. your mouth drops open when he pulls it down in one swift pull, not so much for his length but more of the fact that he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“of course you aren’t wearing boxers. you’ve been planning this, haven’t you?”

“caught red-handed. a smart one, aren’t you?” jaehyun speaks through pants while he lubes up his cock with his pre-cum, boring holes into your eyes with his with a lazy smirk. he doesn’t miss the way you’re rubbing circles onto your neglected cunt. “guess i’d just have to fuck the smart out of you.”

he uses his strength to turn you over, smushing your face into the cushions below you before he eases himself into you, groaning at how fast you clench around him. jaehyun can forgive you for that, since he’s left you on edge with a gaping hole that showed how good his fingers could stretch you out. he reaches a hand over to push your hand from your clit gently while he lets you get used to his thick length resting into you and he swears he feels you clench again when his fingers play with your bundle of nerves.

“let me take care of you tonight. leave it to me.” jaehyun snaps his hips against your ass, propelling you forward just a little from the force. it draws out a slurred moan, even more when he starts his assault on your pussy, sliding in and out of you deliciously.

“mmhm uh- uh- jaeee…!” the fabric below you is stained with your drool.

jaehyun’s already sure you’d get a noise complaint filed against you tomorrow morning, but he can’t care much when the sounds falling from your lips are his favourite song, while his name is like a prayer that you recite every night. tonight just so happened to be the first, with many more sessions involving your begging for him to fuck you harder, faster, deeper. you’re so fucking desperate for his cock when you push back onto him, meeting his thrusts with your own rhythm while the cushions soak up your moans.

eyeing the tv for a second, the male has never felt so glad that he’s set the screensaver to be a boring black screen. it mimics a mirror with the exception of a few blurred visuals due to the semi-matte protector you opted for. “w-wha? jae-“ in a second, jaehyun hauls you up to rest against his chest again, the friction of your shirts uncomfortable from the sweat that manages to seep through. none of you pay much attention, rather to the black screen in front of you that shows how pliant you are for jaehyun.

thighs wide open, while your greedy cunt takes in every inch of jaehyun. it makes him cum right then and there but he holds himself bask the best that he can. “look at you, pretty girl. split open by my fat cock, whining like a good little girl.” the words drives heat up your body like electricity and your body can’t deny itself any longer, grinding down on the length that’s buried deep in you; the sight in front of you only turns you on more. jaehyun is true to his word like a gentleman, driving his dick deep into you instead of making you do the work and soon, he settles into a comfortable pace.

“j-jaehyuuun… shit..” your head finds home on his shoulders, thrown back while his hips continue to piston into you endlessly, heeding your word when you ask him to pick up the pace. “yeah? feel good, darling?” your moans and his combine with the loud, pornographic sounds coming from in between your legs, cunt dripping with arousal with every pump of his pelvis. giddily, you nod at the question, hands tightly wrapped around his arms that were holding your legs open.

“look at the screen, pretty girl.” and you do, mewling in excitement when you witness a white ring of cum at the base of his cock. “should i cum in you? would you like that, hm?” you’re rendered speechless by he fills you up to the brim with his hard thrusts, pussy fluttering around him when you think of him filling you up in another way and you nod again like a dumb little bitch.

“yes- yes yes! fuck, cum in me.” with your confirmation, it unleashes something feral in jaehyun, delivering faster thrusts that you start crying out, reaching all the corners of the small apartment. it contributes to the heat growing in the pit of your stomach, “fill me up, p-please…!” jaehyun emits a deep groan when you say the words, snapping up into you until they get sloppier and messier, thighs tired from his constant movements.

“cumming, cumming, cumming!” you announce it, pussy clenching tight around his cock as you release your juices all over it. jaehyun follows quickly after, hips stuttering before pumping you full of his cum, spurting his seed deep into your womb. the feeling has you shaking, licking your lips in a thrill when the first drop of cum oozes out of you. littering small kisses down the length of your neck, he uses his finger to stuff it back into you. “shit… we can’t waste any of it, can we?” you roll your eyes, turning your head to the side to meet his lips with a smile, silently thanking him for the destress.

“fucking hell, seriously?” holding a piece of paper the next morning, you faintly make out the words through the morning vision. jaehyun looks over your shoulder and lets out a loud laugh, barely escaping your poorly aimed smacks as you figure out how to sort out the noise complaint. “your pussy was just too wet, waking up the whole building-“

“jaehyun!”

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sleepy-belphie · 3 years

Note

Hello! I don’t know if you’re doing headcannon requests but if you don’t mind could you do something along the lines of “the brothers find out mc likes to draw and drew the brothers”

Hi! I am doing hc requests so thank you for sending this in! It was actually really fun to write, I really hope you enjoy it <3 Got a little carried away with this one too lol

Tags: @kawaiiblack

~~~~~

Lucifer:

He’s doing room checks as usual

And you left your sketchpad/drawing tablet out on your desk

You catch sight of it a bit too late and can only watch as Lucifer moves from your dresser to your desk

He pauses as his eyes spot the sketchpad/tablet

He picks it up and looks at it before glancing at you

“May I?”

You nod and nervously watch him go through your work

His face is unreadable as he goes through drawing after drawing of him and his brothers

It feels like an eternity before he finishes

“Do you do commissions?”

It takes a moment for you to register what he’s said

“...what?”

“I’d like to commission you.”

If you do traditional art he asks for a 30x40 of him and his brothers

If you do digital art he asks for a colored, full-body piece of him and his brothers

He lets you decide how much you want to be paid

But he thinks it’s not enough so he pays you 55,000 Grimm

The 30x40 piece hangs in his study

The colored, full-body piece is printed, framed, and sitting on his desk

Mammon:

He bursts into your room one night when you’re finishing up a drawing of Satan and Asmo

You’re not fast enough to hide it from him

“Is that Satan and Asmo? Oi! Where’s my drawing!?”

Before you can show him anything else he’s speaking again

“N-not that I care! It’s hard to capture this perfection! I can see why you haven’t drawn me!”

He tries to act unbothered, but you can see past his tsundere ways

Once he’s done declaring how unbothered he is, you show him some pieces with him in it

He grabs the pad/tablet excitedly and snatches it from you to marvel over your work

“This is actually really good, ya know? I bet we could make some good Grimm off your little talent.”

You can practically see the dollar signs in his eyes

But you tell him that is not happening and take your pad/tablet back

He’s a bit mopey about it for a little but eventually lets it go when he sees you aren’t budging

When he does have a little bit of Grimm he does commission you for a small piece

The brothers’ eyes almost bulge out of their head when they hear that Mammon actually paid you for work

“What!? The Great Mammon can be nice sometimes! It doesn’t mean anything!”

It means a lot actually

But you’re a pro at reading between the lines with Mammon

Leviathan:

He’s on social media when he sees a drawing on his explore page that he’s absolutely in love with

The art style? Immaculate. He wanted to see so many of his favorite game and anime characters in this style

He imagines Ruri-chan in your art style and his brain just *internet dial-up noises* for about five minutes

He goes to the artist’s profile and starts scrolling through all their posted work

He pauses when he comes across a drawing that looked suspiciously like him in his demon form

The face was blacked out but the serpentine tail, the horns, the diamonds on the neck, the side zipped hoodie

It had to be him

In shock, he scrolls back to the top of the profile and checks out the bio and name of the artist

He is greeted by a very familiar face and name

He is in your room less than 2 minutes later

“You! Y-You did this!?”

You almost drop your pad/tablet thanks to his outburst and abrupt entrance

You look at the DDD that was shoved in your face and slowly nod

You thought he was gonna blow up at you for posting a drawing of him, even though his face wasn’t in it

You are very wrong

Levi becomes your #1 source of income

The moment you finish a piece, he is commissioning you again

You worry that he’s draining his bank account because he tips you very well

But he isn’t bothered at all by it

All of your pieces are on display in his room

He also posts all of your art on his social media and tags you

Your page explodes in popularity and the commissions are rolling in from his online friends

You had no idea otakus pay so well

Mammon is very jealous of the amount of Grimm you have piling up

Satan:

One day he asks you about your hobbies and you tell him you draw

“What do you draw?”

Cue internal conflict on if it’s weird to tell someone you’ve been drawing them and their brothers since you’re always around each other

He senses your hesitation and like the smart ass he is, he’s able to guess exactly why

“Would your hesitance be because of the subject of your art?”

He knows too much for his own good

You decide it’s best for him to see it instead of telling him

Being a fan of literary art, you were worried he may be overly critical of your fine art

He was not the type to sugarcoat anything

However, he simply smiles and hands your pad/tablet back

“You’re incredibly talented, MC.”

A few days later he asks you to tag along with him while he handles something

That ‘something’ is going to feed some stray cats he’s come across

“MC, I’d like to commission you. I’ve found homes for these cats but I want something to remember them by. Will you help me?”

How can you say no to a man holding four cats in his arms?

You take some photos for reference and make four different pieces for him

When you give them to Satan, you swear you’ve never seen a bigger smile on his face

He framed them all and keeps them on top of his bookshelves

Asmodeus:

He found out through Levi’s social media

He commissioned you for a piece of him and the protagonist of a game he recently started playing

This piques Asmo’s interest and he wonders if you’ve ever drawn him before

He approaches you when you’re in the kitchen grabbing a drink

“Hi, darling. I saw the piece you did for Levi and naturally if you’ve done one of him you’ve probably drawn my beauty as well, right?”

You decide to show him since he brought it up

He’s gushing over all of your art

No, seriously, he is praising you so much even the tip of your ears start burning from your blush

He commissions you to draw him in many different ways

Him in his bedroom, him in the bath, him as a mermaid, him as an exotic dancer

He comes to you with so many different ideas

He tests your limits but you actually like that

Beelzebub:

Beel is rather stoic, but he doesn’t mean to be

It was his resting face and smiling was usually reserved for eating yummy food

But you wanted to practice drawing him with different expressions

Beel’s welcoming manner gave you the courage to approach him and ask if you can take some pictures of him to use for a reference

He’s shocked you wanna draw him but agrees with the condition that he gets to see some of your other work

You show him different pieces of him and his brothers and he’s smiling the entire time

“These are all so good. I didn’t know you could draw.”

He commissions a piece of him and Belphegor and one of all seven brothers

But he also asks if he can watch you draw them

You both spend quite a few nights together

You drawing and him munching on snacks and feeding you some every once in a while

His presence is actually pretty calming so you ask him if he minds staying around while you work even after you finish his commission

Beel being Beel, agrees to keep you company

The night usually ends with him carrying you to bed

Sometimes, he takes you to his bed to cuddle

Belphegor:

Belphie was actually the first brother you drew

You came across him asleep in the attic once and he looked so perfect

Your fingers were itching to draw him, so you did

It became a routine for you to head to the attic and draw him while he slept

You always crept out before he woke up

You thought he had no idea of your little practice sessions

But one day you looked down to fix a mistake you made on his nose

When you looked back up you saw Belphie staring right at you

“You know, if you’re gonna draw me the least you can do is show me.”

You try to stammer out an apology as he sits up

“Oh, I don’t care. You don’t make noise or anything, I’m just very hyperaware of my surroundings. So I know when someone is in the same room as me when I sleep.”

He moves over to you and looks at your pad/tablet

“Hm, not bad MC. Show me your other work some time.”

Then he goes back to his sleeping spot, curls up, and falls back asleep

You sit there with your pencil/stylus in your hand, trying to wrap your head around what just happened

But he didn’t seem disturbed so you continue drawing

When he wakes up you show him more of your work featuring his brothers

He asks if he can have a quick sketch you did of him and Beel

You jokingly say he has to pay for it

He actually pays you for it

He puts it up in his room

It’s nice to see when you visit him and Beel

#obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me fluff #obey me reader insert #obey me lucifer x reader #obey me mammon x reader #obey me levi x reader #obey me satan x reader #obey me asmo x reader #obey me beel x reader #obey me belphie x reader #Anonymous

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et-dah · 4 years

Text

The Demon Brothers: Creative Outlets Headcanons

they are all immortals and when you've lived longer than you can remember, you're bound to find a creative outlet to destress, alleviate boredom, or you know, to just have fun!

Lucifer

He’s a busy demon. If he’s not working, he's sleeping, or cleaning up one of his brother’s messes, so he doesn't have that much time to just relax and explore his creative sides.

That said though, it doesn’t mean he has no hobbies at all.

He plays the piano. He used to play it every morning, back when he’s still in the Celestial Realm, when he’d taught Lilith how to play the piano every morning and she’d sat besides him as his fingers moved across the keys slower so she could copy him.

Nowadays, playing the piano feels very nostalgic and bittersweet, but you’ll hear soft, bittersweet melodies drift from the music room once in a while.

He also composes his own music, but that's an even rarer occurrence. The last time he created a new music piece was centuries ago.

(Ever since MC came to Devildom though, he's been itching to write music for them.)

Practices calligraphy for fun. He has a whole set of brushes and ink and lettering pens. His handwriting is already beautiful but his calligraphy is even more amazing.

Another thing he does is gardening. He's got a great eye for landscape architecture, he's the reason why the house's backyard is pretty.

He plants decorative plants and likes to cross breed flowers so the House of Lamentation's backyard is full of pretty shrubs and unfamiliar flowers.

He is usually joined by Beel as he is the other brother that finds gardening very relaxing.

Mammon

He definitely shows his creativity by coming up with the most absurdly brilliant, out-of-the-box, original schemes to make money.

Mammon can draw, like really good. His drawings are very realistic. He prefers to use traditional media: charcoal pencils, graphite sticks, blenders, erasers, drawing pens, brushes, and maybe some watercolors.

He usually does architecture sketches.

But if you check his drawers, you’ll find several sketchbooks of his brothers in different candid poses. MC alone has taken up three whole sketchbooks. Mammon makes sure MC doesn’t see those sketches though.

Crashes Asmo’s Art Day regularly, claiming that if Levi’s invited then the Great Mammon should be too. Asmo and Levi always complains but they let him stay anyway.

Mammon also has a natural talent on jewelry making and metalwork. He makes jewelry from buttons, beads, pearls, diamonds, and crystals. From small pendants to elaborate neckpieces, simple anklets to ornate hairpins.

Mammon has made metal bookmarks for Satan because the book lover always misplaces his bookmarks or destroys them in fits of rage when he doesn't like a book's ending.

He sculpts wood. It takes him months to finish one small piece because he only does it when he's really, really bored, he prefers to make his much more profitable jewelry.

He keeps all of his sculptures in his room, small and detailed pieces of wood engraving of Devildom native animals lining up on one of the shelves.

Leviathan

This is canon but he draws! He doesn't think he's very good at it, but he really enjoys it.

Unlike Mammon who likes to draw with his charcoal pencils and drawing pens, Levi prefers to draw digitally. He still switch to traditional media now and then though.

Has a monthly scheduled “Art Day” where he and Asmo hang out together, Levi draws with his sketchbook or his drawing tablet and Asmo paints. They basically just gossip and hype each other’s art.

Dabbles in making short animations but feels like it’s just not something for him. He makes short comics though.

He wants to be able to make his own video game someday though. Maybe after he learns programming.

He makes the most detailed cosplay outfits for his own cosplays. He sews really good and patches his brothers clothes when they ask. Where do you think Asmo learns how to sew his own clothes from?

Really good at dancing and he really likes it too. He's a natural at it. From the most intricate traditional Devildom dances to freestyle dancing. He can make new moves on the spot and can copy any moves from one look.

He’s a shy baby though, you’ll rarely see him dance when he’s sober.

Except when he’s playing DDR (Demons Dance Revolution). Then, it’s like he’s the most confident demon in Devildom.

Satan

Satan writes poetry when inspiration strikes him. He has also written short stories but he always comes back to creating beautiful poems. He’s got a way with words.

Photography is something he has only recently taken interest in but he has a great eye for taking breathtaking shots.

Has become the family’s go-to photographer.

“Satan, take a picture of me and Mammon!” “Satan, take our picture, quick!” “Satan, help me get a picture for my Devilgram!”

He’s the reason Asmo’s Devilgram pictures always look like they’re taken professionally in a photo studio or something.

Satan loves art, likes to stroll through museums and stare at paintings for hours, but has little talent in creating them. Even so, he still likes to paint even if he's not good at it.

Sometimes he just wants to slap paint on a canvas and make a colorful mess. It's fun.

He joins Art Day every other month.

Another thing he does is knitting! It relaxes him. It gives him something to focus at when he's angry (um, angrier than usual), just to give his hands something to do that doesn't involve breaking anything. The simple patterns he makes are easy enough that they don't frustrate him.

Rarely ever finishes his knitting though, you'll just find this 5 meters long knitted fabric in one corner of his room with the ends coming undone because he calms himself down enough to stop knitting.

Asmodeus

Regularly designs, cut, and sew his own clothes.

Has a lot of sketchbooks full of drawings of flowy dresses and stylish coats and many aesthetically pleasing shirts.

He has started his own clothing line and sometimes collaborate with Majolish.

But for the most part, he designs clothes for himself and himself only, he doesn't want anyone else to wear clothes as fabolous as his.

Nail art? Nail art.

Asmo paints all of the brothers nails and sometimes he'll persuade one of them to let him do a complete manicure, with glitter polish and shiny studs and all.

Yes, even Lucifer. You just never see the results because Lucifer wears his gloves almost all the time.

Asmo creates beautiful makeup art. He doesn't really like a lot of makeup on his own face though, so his brothers' faces are his canvases.

He also has a great eye for interior decorating and flower arranging. He restyles his room every month.

Not many people know it but he paints. And he's very good at it. He has done a painting of each brother, the paintings can be seen on the walls of the House of Lamentation's hallways.

Art Day with Levi (and sometimes Satan or Belphie) is spent with him in front of canvases, chatting with his brothers, paint splatters on his hands. It's the only day that he doesn't mind looking a little messy.

Beelzebub

He cooks, of course! And bakes too!

It's one of the times he’s willing to wait to eat because cooking the ingredients first rather than just straight up eating them will make the foods taste better.

Half of the food in the kitchen are his creations. Anything he can make on his own from scratch, he will; jams, ice cream, sauces, juices, bread, chips, etc.

Likes to experiment and always do something different than the original recipes.

He garnishes his cooking like it’s something you order from a five star restaurant.

Beel is another demon who has a green thumb. He likes taking care of plants and doesn't mind getting a bit dirty doing it so gardening is another hobby of his.

If Lucifer plants ornamental plants, Beel grows useful plants like herbs and vegetables and small fruits. He's also good at topiary.

Always has an idea for a DIY project.

His creations is scattered all over the House of Lamentation. Belphie's drawer divider is made out of yogurt cups. Broken drawer knobs recycled into Asmo's jewelry organizer. The coat rack. The bathroom towel holder.

Even Lucifer's hanging Demonus rack is handmade by Beel when he's bored one weekend, with Mammon's help for the engraving decorations along the sides of the rack. Beel's got a bit of Bob the Builder in him.

He is very good at singing. His voice is clear and he has a broad vocal range. Has been caught unconsciously humming in class many times.

Has definitely sang Belphie to sleep.

Belphegor

Does his pranks counts as a creative outlet though?😂 Between him and Satan, Belphie's ideas are the most creative and out of the box, resulting on some of the best pranks they did.

Belphie does origami. It's relaxing, easy enough to learn, and doesn't take much effort and energy to do it.

Has stacks of origami papers in his room: standard origami paper, foil paper, traditional Washi ones, the leather-like Momigami paper, all kinds of paper.

He especially loves to make little origami stars and keeps them in glass jars in his room.

Belphie also has adult coloring books.

And kids coloring books.

Coloring is relaxing to him. It's very calming to just lay down and fills a page with pretty colors for a while. It's not a tiring way to destress, he can color without moving from his bed, and it feels satisfying when he finishes a whole page.

He sometimes joins Art Day if he's not too lazy to move. Still prefers to color alone where it's quiet though.

He also journals. It's another thing he can do that is inexpensive and not energy consuming. He writes about anything that comes to his mind, his thoughts, his ideas, memories.

Definitely keeps a dream journal.

Also I headcanon that as the Avatar of Sloth, sleep and dreams are some of the things he can manipulate. He enjoys creating dreams; the worldbuilding, the story, the details. He can be really creative when it comes to making them, spinning the most vivid and imaginative dreams.

They’re not necessarily good dreams though. After all, he is still a demon, his dreams will most likely mess up your mind than make you smile in your sleep.

#obey me #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #rol writes

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poutyhannie · 4 years

Photo

word count: +4k

warnings: fluff, angst, smut, college!fem reader, college!felix, romantic fantasy

** **

You gaze down at the materializing letters stretching across your palm till your elbow. It was a mixture of Korean and English. The Korean characters were few and far in between but were delicate and even while the English letters were long, messy, and leaned to the right.

I’ll need to turn in Prof Behl’s assignment when I go to class and then explain why I can’t go to the museum research trip.

Did I use all my meal swipes? Chris said he wanted to workout at 3…

These notes would often appear on your right arm, sometimes remaining like a tattoo for weeks or fading before you could even read it fully. These were the thoughts of a person whose soul matched your own. He was a college student who is majoring in English with focus on things like creative writing and poetry and you’ve gathered that ‘Chris’ was his roommate.

For as flowery his major was, the boy’s thoughts were surprisingly plain and boring. However, you were thankful for it. Your friend often had dark circles under her eyes. Her connection with her soul partner was being awake at the same time and you were sure her soul’s partner lived on the other side of the world with the opposite time zone. To be honest, you gleaned almost nothing from the notes. The boy probably didn’t know that his thoughts were being recorded on your arm, which you always kept covered with a sleeve. Neither did you know what connection he had with you. Did he feel the emotions you did? Were his dreams your memories? You’ve laid to waste these meaningless thoughts to focus on your life more, not his. There was little reason to go searching him out; if you truly were tied together by souls, fate could do the heavy lifting for you two.

Leaning back at your desk, you shake out your cramping hands. The graphic design project requires that you draw out the story board by hand rather than digitally and you never wished more to curse for it. The reason was, according to your Professor, head of the project you and your classmates are fighting to be a part of use physical copies in the preliminary section. Because you had started in traditional art, relatively it was easy to get back in the swing of things. Didn’t mean that your hand didn’t hurt like a bitch, though. You had everything riding you getting to participate in this project, you’d planned everything out with your counselor and had little attractive options if you didn’t get it, so you return to your drawing.

Your roommate swings open the door, causing you to jump and tug your sleeve on quickly. She throws her bag on her bed with no regards to the loud thump it emits. Her blonde hair rests on your paper when she leans over to look at your drawing. As always, she gushes at your talents and as always, you remind her that her microbiology major is much more impressive.

The night is a lot hotter than comfortable, especially with the tight sleeve you always relegate yourself to, even while sleeping. Ever since you caught your dad reading the thoughts on your arm when you slept, you sometimes go so far as to sleep on your stomach, with your right arm tucked under you. It was uncomfortable reading his thoughts, much less having someone else read them. Yeah, they weren’t always too juicy or detailed, but it still felt wrong to share something like this with anyone else.

“Even family?” You remember your dad asking to your rage.

“Even family.” You hissed.

With a groan, you rise out of bed, your roommate looking up from her five inch thick textbook, illuminated by a soft, yellow dest lamp. Her watery eyes gaze up at you from behind her round glasses. “I’m going out. Can’t sleep.” You tell her.

The night breeze whispers through your hair as you sit on an empty bench in an empty courtyard near your dorms. It’s in time like these that you feel peace. When not a soul is around you and you can finally just sit with yourself. Slowly, you unwind the sleeve and are met with chaotic swirl of words. This happens when he dreams.

Worth, friends, others, internships, classes, empty, running, nothing, darkness.

Your heart pangs. He’s having nightmares again. Instinctively, you begin to wrap your arm up again, not wishing to invade him at his weakest point.

Though you don a mask of indifference towards the scrawl on your arm and effectively the boy around others, you can’t help but hurt for him. He seems swamped with so much to do and feels helpless. When you look down, the chilling sentence on your arm burns in your mind and heart.

I don’t think there’s anyone for me. All I see is black. Am I alone?

Two weeks later, they stay. No matter how many times you unwrap and rewrap your arm, those three sentences never leave. Others come and go, but from that night until now, they stay. And the guilt of not pursuing this boy is eating you alive.

You always assumed he had a connection that allowed him to know of your existence. When you realize that he doesn’t, your passivity almost seems like a sin. How lonely it must be to be alone in a world where everyone has someone. Since then, you’ve been paying close attention to the scrawl on your arm, careful to gather as much info on him as you can decipher. Right now though, in class, you can’t.

Your Professor is announcing the chosen students of the project and you can’t really think about him now.

“And the last student is Y/n.”

You heave out a sign of relief, making a note to thank you Professor. You’re sure she had a few good words to put in for you. “The students I just called will be working with other student in screenwriting. You guys need to pick five scripts you want to animate and the screenwriting students will choose their preferred artist.”

Walking into the classroom with another female peer by your side, you absentmindedly fidget with your sleeve. She walks boldly up to a male student, who’s dark blonde falls onto his freckled cheeks, sticking her hand out. “I’m Madeline,” you hear her say. His eyes snap up towards yours but he immediately looks back to Madeline as they exchange pleasantries.

Madeline is paired up with the freckled boy and you with a quiet, thoughtful boy named Seungmin. He tells you that he is friends with Felix, the freckled boy, so you combine tables and group up. Because this is a project done in your own time, you all choose to work together to bounce ideas off with each other though with how bubbly Madeline is, you wonder how much you guys will get done.

When the topic of soul partners comes up, you and Felix shift uncomfortably. Seungmin gets visions through the eyes of his partner and has seen her face, he tells you guys casually.

How wonderful it must be to know who your soul is tied to, you think bitterly, a twinge of jealousy coursing through you.

Madeline’s green eyes shine as she starts, “I don’t know who they are, but I see colors that has to be tied to them.” She’s a romantic, giddy with excitement at the prospect. It’s so easy to live with just seeing colors; it’s pretty and inconsequential, much a contrast to the invasive cryptics on your arm.

When all your eyes turn to Felix, he purses his lips softly, only able to look down at the table. “I actually don’t know what my connection is. Maybe its unconsciousness because I can never fall asleep at nights,” he jokes, attempting to push the attention off of that topic.

A glossy nail taps Madeline’s pink lips as her dark lashes flutter, “I don’t think so. Insomnia isn’t usually paired with unconsciousness connection.”

Feigning disinterest, Felix shrugs, focusing back to the sketches, “Maybe it has something to do with my color blindness, I’m not sure. Doesn’t really matter,” he mutters, his voice deep and throaty. Madeline gasps, lightly slapping Felix’s arm. He raises an eyebrow at her.

“Of course that has to be it!” She exclaims, “It’ll be a subcategory color connection, just like me! Maybe you’ll see colors when you see your partner or when some other unveiling instance occurs.”

She goes into depth about connections, her shoulders bouncing in excitement. Thankfully, this distracts them from asking you about your connection. As her movements and words quicken, the stale bitterness in your mouth consumes you. It’s immature, your distaste for anything about these connections. Just because you have a subjectively unfortunate connection definitely doesn’t mean you should shit on Madeline’s obvious interest in the subject. In fact, Felix and Seungmin seem to enjoy talking with her about it as she has extended knowledge about connections.

However, while Seungmin’s tone that he asks his with questions are amused, his interest piqued, Felix is leaned forward in his chair, his eyes barely concealing desperation. Your heart pangs for him; he’s probably so lost.

Seungmin and Madeline walk in front of you and Felix on the sidewalk, returning to the dorms. They’re in deep conversation about Seungmin’s connection and with Madeline’s knowledge and Seungmin’s intellect, they quickly and thankfully exclude you and Felix.

“I don’t wanna talk about connections,” you declare to him. A small smile spreads across Felix’s face and he nods knowingly. “What made you want to get into animation?” He asks, a pleasant and refreshing topic.

“I haven’t always been the best at art,” you admit with a shrug. “No way!” Felix exclaims, his eyebrows raised, “Your work is so cool, though.”

You laugh at the compliment, “Yeah, well it took me a while to get here and I didn’t want to throw away that work, so here I am. What about you? Why did you want to get into script writing?”

Felix’s eyes soften and he stares off past the line of buildings, into the horizon. “I feel like I can see different things with words. Does that make sense?” He pauses, gathering his thoughts, “They open up worlds and ideas that I can’t experience and it makes me feel closer to normal. It makes me feel alive.”

“Like, you can imagine how colors feel or look through words?”

He nods, looking back at you with a playful look, “That’s another reason why I like your work so much. The values are clear and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything by not seeing color.”

The genuine, heartfelt comment makes your heart warm and a smile spread across your face, “Yeah, I focus a lot on just greyscale because composition is the most important aspect to my art. Stuff like color theory, while important, it basically inconsequential if you can’t even tell what’s going on in the picture.”

Felix’s voice quiets as he shoots a look up at Madeline’s back, “Yeah, I didn’t want to choose Madeline’s for that reason, but she really thought that the color use in my script would work in perfect tandem with her style and I really couldn’t tell whether she’s right or not,” he shrugs, his lips pulling into a line.

“Oh, totally,” you say quickly, not wishing to have Felix question his choice, “It makes total sense and in some instances color can tell more of a story than composition and values can. It was wise to team with her.” Maybe your intentions of reassuring Felix was too obvious because his eyes crinkle deeply when he gives you a big, knowing smile.

A week into your work and the very basic shapes for the animation is finished. Working with Seungmin is wonderful as he has a clear direction and even pictures he’s taken to show you what he envisions. Concentration pinches Felix’s eyebrows together and he and Madeline converse as you watch them from the other end of the table.

An hour or two pass and you stand up to stretch, announcing that you’re gonna take a bathroom break to which they agree is a wonderful idea. Coming out of the bathroom, you wrap up your sleeve, peeking to see what the ink says this time. The three words that you’re familiar with; that have been etched into your sink for weeks don’t make your heart stop, but the ones under it.

Am I alone? She needs to add more clear composition so I can actually tell what’s going on.

Your eyes snap up to the blond haired boy. That’s exactly what Felix told you a day ago. Its him?

To your confusion, he now stares, awestruck at Madeline. There’s a sinking in your stomach but you can’t tell why. Gasping, his eyes widen as he takes her hands. “Madeline…I think,” he stumbles over his words, clearly flabbergasted. “I-I’m seeing color now, I think.”

She squeals, squeezing his hands tightly, “When? Just now? What happened?” His dark eyes look dazes and he steps back. His eyes wander from the ground her hers and he whispers, “When I saw you.” Turning your back on them, you leave quickly, not wishing to intrude on Felix’s revelation.

You resume your seat next to Seungmin, heaving a sigh. “What’s wrong?” His lips form a slight pout and his head tilts to the side. You shake your head, waving a hand, “Felix and Madeline are soul partners. He just found out.” From your peripheral, you see Seungmin smile widely. You laugh to yourself, an embarrassed blush rising on your cheeks at your previous hasty conclusion. You really are desperate for the person who matches your soul.

“That’s great,” he taps your arm with his hand, hidden by his sweater’s sleeve, “Why do you look so bummed, though?”

You purse your lips, “It just sucks to be a late bloomer. I don’t know who my partner is,” you tell him as the bitterness fills your mouth again. Seungmin nods firmly, his fingers tapping your arm again, “At least you know that you have one, though. Felix didn’t even know whether he was alone or not.”

“Yeah,” you shrug, trying to ignore the gnawing guilt of your selfishness, “it just sucks.”

“Of course but just give it time,” Seungmin advises, patting your shoulder softly.

You and Seungmin gaze blankly at Felix and Madeline as they both gush over each other. You can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy in your chest when Felix gingerly strokes her cheek.

Clapping, Seungmin returns to the story board, pointing at a slide, “I like the idea with this one, but if you’ll look here,” he pulls out a picture he took of a deep, dark green forest that just seems to dissolve into black, “I want the composition to be more dangerous. Like, the characters are being drawn into darkness and they won’t have any way to escape.” Nodding quickly, you add rough shading and lines to your preexisting work to cater to Seungmin’s request.

“Perfect,” he beams his toothy smile at you.

By the time the project is all but done, Felix and Madeline are attached at the hip or the hand or the face. You try not to watch them, jealousy foaming in your throat. Felix’s eyelashes flutter against his freckles and his lips are glossy as Madeline gently strokes his cheek, smiling softly. Such a romantic—it would make sense that her seeing colors would be paired with his past complete colorblindness. He gushes over her work and her use of color, his voice giddy with excitement at finally seeing color, finally being normal.

While your initial bitterness at their fortune has washed away into passivity, you can’t bring yourself to look at your arm like you used to. In a way, you’re foolishly upset at you partner for not giving you anymore clues that would lead you to him. It’s foolish because he doesn’t know you can read what’s on his mind.

You pick up your artist’s hand brace from your dorm bed and begin unwrapping your arm to put it on, barely sparing the black scrawl a glance.

Its not all black anymore. I can see it. I can see her.

Dread clenches your gut as your eyes travel down to the next single word.

Madeline.

There’s a buzzing white in your head as you fumble to get your shoes on, tripping out into the hallway, breaking into a sprint towards Madeline’s dorm, on the other side of the campus. Whirling confusing overcomes your mimd and you feel like you’re suffocating, the only goal is to find an answer. You don’t know when hints of this conclusion plagued your mind. Maybe it was that day, months ago at the bathroom. Maybe it was a deeper jealousy at seeing Felix kissing Madeline. It didn’t matter anymore, you frantically knocked at her door, out of breath and gasping.

Her green eyes are wide and her pink lips are swollen, she’s almost as out of breath as you are. She makes no move to hide Felix, who’s pulling on a shirt behind her shoulder. Nervousness pangs in your throat but you shove past her and shed your arm to Felix.

“Wh-what’s this, Y/n?” He asks, eyes bouncing off your arm to your face, uncomfortable with looking at something you’ve explained to him is so precious and private to you.

“Read it,” you beg, eyes flicking from his face to Madeline’s. She furrows her shapely eyebrows, gingerly taking your cold arm into her soft hands. At Madeline’s brazenness, Felix finds it in himself to look down at your arm.

Her grip is firm but you could rip away from it at any moment.

Madeline’s eyes are wild and horror fills them as she looks up at Felix. You try desperately to explain, “I-I don’t know what this means either, but that day that you first saw color, Felix, there were your exact words to me about your project on my arm.”

He laughs to deflect how uncomfortable he feels, it comes out too harsh and grates against your neck, raising heat into your face. “Y/n I know you really wanna find your partner, but this is crazy. Don’t try to suggest stuff like this. Madeline and I are partners, everything has been perfect since that day for us.”

He looks over to Madeline for reassurance, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. A soft, vulnerable look plagues her eyes as she looks up at you. Felix stutters, confused why she wouldn’t immediately agree with him. “Lix,” she inhales deeply, “for my connection, you know how I see colors? Those are actually s-supposed to go away when I meet my partner.” You realize the vulnerable look in her eyes was actually guilt.

“What?” His voice is a breath, like he’s been struck in the chest and is left gasping for air. “I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to meet them because I don’t want to loose my color—it’d be like dying for me and I’m really happy with you. Aren’t you happy with me too?” Felix’s lips hang open and his face is frowning in confusion, “So you’ve been using me when you knew I wasn’t yours?” Madeline’s eyes fill with guilty tears and she nods. As much as you can understand why she did what she did, anger and bitterness towards her, towards loosing so much time with Felix consumes you.

“Then you never deserved him,” you hiss, possessively retracting your arm into your body, hiding the words against your bosom.

You and Felix sit wordless on a bench in a park in a part of town you were unfamiliar with.

“So it was you this entire time?”

“I’m so sorry, Felix,” your voice cracks and you bite your lip to prevent it from trembling, “I really didn’t know for sure and I doubted what I knew because you just seemed so happy with her.”

He scoffs loudly, running a hand through his silver hair, “Yeah and look what that amounted to.”

Quietly, you respond, “It amounted to us realizing. That means something.”

Felix exhales slowly, turning to face you, his eyes tired and sad, “Yeah, at least we realized now—” he stops abruptly, pausing to collect himself, “God, I was so stupid, just because I started seeing color one random day because she was in front of me?” He scoffs again, slouching into the bench.

“It made sense though, you were both eager to get your partners and—”

“But to leave you alone?” His voice is raw and soft, “I left you alone when you were right there.” Slowly, as if he were a hologram or mirage you couldn’t quite reach, you extend your hand to rest your hand on his warm cheek, almost shocked that he’s there. Unintentionally, he leans into your hand, closing his eyes gently. “We can begin now. Rather a late start than never. We have the rest of our lives to get it right.”

Felix buries his face into the crook of your shoulder, pressing firm, confident kisses and hot, stinging hickies into your neck. You run your hands up the bare expanse of his back and up to his hair. Flush spreads across your cheeks as he lifts himself up to gaze down at your bare chest but you don’t cover yourself up. You have nothing to hide. “Have you ever done this before?” You whisper to him. He shakes his head softly, leaning down to trail kisses from the base of your neck through the valley between your breasts. Lower, his kisses get wetter as he gets closer to your aching hotness. As if you’re made of paper, Felix gingerly spreads your legs. The cold air hitting your core causes you to flinch, but Felix’s warm palm presses slowly against you, calming the sensation into pleasure.

“May I?”

You whine out a ‘yes’, groaning when his sinks a finger into your core. It sucks his finger in and Felix barely contains a moan at the sensation, imagining how you’d feel around him. Slowly, he begins to pump his single finger into you before adding another and scissoring deep. Curling his fingers, he brushes your sweet spot, causing you to gasp and arch your back.

Smiling to himself, he continues to work at that spot until you’re gasping and moaning incessantly. He pulls out and you whine immediately but he positions himself above you, gazing down at you with adoration even while his impossibly hard dick pokes against you. “Hurry, Lixie, please do it,” you whine and he hushes you with a kiss, slowly sliding in and caressing his tongue against yours when you gasp. Your face is scrunched up at the unfamiliar stretch but Felix can’t help but smile down at you, endeared. His eyes are dark at the sensation of him dragging against your walls. When you begin to relax around him, you start whining again and he giggles, slowly beginning to thrust up into you. There’s nothing desperate or wanton about his movements against you. He’s being gentle, letting you feel him as his drags along your walls though it takes all his self control to not increase the pace. It’s deep and rhythmic, his hips against yours. He fills you up and groans as you seem to suck him up, your juices mixing with his precum.

“Baby, you’re so warm and so—mhg—tight,” he gasps against you, “Can I go faster?”

“Yeah,” you’re breathless and rake your fingers across his back when he starts to do just that. He positions his hip in a way that has himself dragging across your sweet spot and you screaming with every thrust. He reaches down to rub your clit, stars and lights sparking across your vision as a burning coil begins wind in your gut. The groans and moans he lets out when you unintentionally clench around him paired with the way his movements quicken as he becomes desperate push you closer. “Y/n, I’m g-gonna cum,” he whispers, his eyelashes fluttering against your skin. “Me too, Lixie,” you gasp, running your hands over his body.

“I love you.” Your high crashes over you, white pleasure electrifying you through your body as you feel Felix shoot into you. The burning pleasure overcomes your senses as he collapses next to you, his hair sticking to his forehead as he pants into your neck, smiling deeply in pure bliss. Euphoric, you tug him closer, pressing a kiss to the freckle on the tip of his nose, onto both his cheeks, and finally onto his warm, glossy lips.

“I love you too, Lixie.” He is yours and you are his. That’s how it was predestined and you both have fulfilled destiny.

218 notes · View notes

sooave · 4 years

Text

The Problem With Wanting: 1

It’s 2026, and an old celebrity crush comes to haunt your old and cynical heart. You’re doing great at pretending you were never obsessed with him, and finding things about him that you don’t like. Until you’re repeatedly forced to work with him. Until he decides that he’s in love with you.

Genre: I really don’t know what to call this, but it’s not an AU, Kyungsoo’s older and still a celebrity, and it’s friends-to-lovers.

Characters: Kyungsoo x Reader

Length: 2,314 words

Tags: Angst, Slow Burn

Part 1 | Part 2

The problem with wanting, was that the human brain’s pathways are more easily activated for desire, rather than liking. In other words, humans naturally want things more than they actually like them. Obviously, you didn’t fault anyone for that. You knew that humans are all victims of the mechanisms of their biological systems.

Just like how you never blamed your own body for being frustratingly uncooperative when it was exactly a week before your period.

Just like how you didn’t fault Do Kyungsoo at all for confessing to you, and asking you to be his girlfriend. You knew that he just wanted you. Now if he actually had you, he’d certainly be disappointed. No, his brain would be disappointed.

Being single at age 30 was surprisingly easy for you, considering the fact that it practically made you a spinster in Asian society. Your parents’ one saving grace was that they immigrating to North America, and brought you in tow. When you returned to Korea as a full-fledged adult with a string of ex-boyfriends and old jobs behind you, it was increasingly apparent to you that Korean society was at times lovely, but hugely flawed.

Back home, the Korean aunties that your mother would bring home no longer gave a shit about the fact that you were, God forbid, an artist. And an unmarried and childless one to boot. Their own children had put them through a fair share of self-perceived grievances already, and while most of them were still conservative at heart, they knew that they lived in a society where their values weren’t necessarily correct. You knew that they didn’t all understand that their values were straight up incorrect. But at least you didn’t get harassed about your life choices.

Coming back to build a career in your birth country had you encountering situations that made you laugh and feel uncomfortable at the same time.

“You’re self-employed? How are you ever going to find yourself a husband?” You’d tell them that being your own boss in fact made your schedule much more flexible. And that you fill up the time with pursuits that actually improved your life, like cooking and yoga. Not shitty dates with people you couldn’t connect with.

Of course, the nosy aunties would continue heavily implying that your life’s purpose was to find a good husband, carry your bloodline, and take care of the home.

“Thirty?? You should have had two kids by now?” You would politely inform them that you weren’t interested in having children, and if you did, you’d adopt an orphan in need instead.

“There won’t be any good men left at this point! You’re in trouble now.” This one, you couldn’t really argue with. You were a firm believer that if someone was single for an extended period of time, there was a reason.

Most of the time, they were a shitty person. Other reasons? Nursing a heartbreak. Pining after someone unattainable. Obsessed with their career. Etcetera.

And you?

You didn’t have your priorities straight. But after a countless number of bad dates, bad relationship, mediocre relationships, and some okay ones, you kind of had an idea of what you didn’t want in a boyfriend. You were doing just peachy by yourself, for now at least.

Sure, maybe you’d want to find a life partner eventually. That would come naturally. You were also a firm believer in the fact that the best matches are found organically.

But surprisingly to you, one of the blind dates that you’d begrudgingly gone on 3 years ago was actually bearing some fruitful benefits. Your date was an assistant PD at one of the largest entertainment companies in Seoul. He was a decent guy, but was insistent about being the sole provider for his future wife. That obviously didn’t check out with you.

Luckily, he didn’t hold a grudge against you for cutting your third dinner date short once you learned of that particular value, and even suggested you as an artist for several show segments. Today, your expertise was blackboard art. Other days, it was digital painting, or watercolours. But they all focused on food illustrations.

Seung-woo, your ex-date, had a particularly annoying habit of talking your ear off while you were working. For some reason, he assumed that the several hours you spent slaving away with your arm raised over the chalk board was the perfect time to catch up with you and ramble on about his love life.

“And then, she started ordering the spicy chicken even though I had explicitly mentioned that I had an upset stomach! Really. The nerve of her.”

“Oh…” you hummed disinterestedly as you filled in the grey base colour of the fish that you were drawing for the background of this board. Apparently, some professional chef along with a celebrity guest were going to be in the kitchen today filming an episode on ways to cooking methods for fish in Korean cuisine. This particular series was something you’d seen before while you were living in the U.S., and while you felt that Korea was a bit slow on the uptake, at least they were doing something interesting with it. You didn’t get to see a lot of Korean traditional cooking methods on American-owned YouTube channels.

“So… we’re going on a second date tonight. What should I say?”

If you were in America, you would have already told Seung-Woo off for disrupting your work and being a total wuss. But this was Korea, and you couldn’t really afford to offend the very person who got you this job contract. Plus, gossip travelled like wildfire, and soon you’d be labelled as difficult to work with and saying bye-bye to your steady income.

You had to take a deep breath and set down your chalk, in fear of snapping it in annoyance.

“Did that tell you something?”

Seung-woo set down the kitchen prop that he was playing around with onto the counter.

“Tell me what?” He echoed.

“Did her action of ordering the spicy chicken tell you that she had an undesirable trait that you cannot accept from a partner?” Your tone was bordering on one that a disapproving teacher would take when reprimanding a student, but luckily Seung-woo didn’t catch that.

He wasn’t as taken aback by your mannerisms as he used to be, but ever since you explained that you spent all of your formative years abroad, he was able to rationalize all of your non-conservative behaviours.

Instead, he actually thought of your advice and comments as thoughtful and interesting. You always refrained from mentioning that your perspective came from years of counselling and therapy, in fear that he’d label you as psychotic. Seung-woo had no idea what mental health was.

After a round of hums and haws, he finally responds.

“You’re right, it did. Are you trying to say I shouldn’t go on the date tonight?”

“Hey, I just asked a question. You came to that conclusion your self!” You turn around and throw a dirty rag that you’ve been using into his chest.

That finally got him to leave you alone, after whining about your aggressiveness and how unladylike you were. Luckily, you still had plenty of time to finish the piece, and once the annoyance hindering your progress was gone, the flow started to come naturally to you.

Time began to fly by as it usually did when you were absorbed with your artwork. Before you knew it, it was already time for the segment filming to start. It wasn’t everyday that you timed your work perfectly, but today you hit the deadline exactly.

You knew that the filming was about to begin because of the camera lights had began to turn on, and a buzz of conversation had started to grow in the centre of the room. Sometimes it irked you that you were working right in front of a dozen cameras and microphones, but it was comforting to know that they had absolutely zero interest in filming you.

Seung-woo had unfortunately appeared again, appearing behind you like a golden retriever wagging it’s tail. You were packing up boxes chalk into your carrying case, attempting to ignore him as much as possible, but something he said caught your attention.

“Wait. What? Who?” You had absolutely no idea what he had said, except for the fact that a horribly familiar name fell from his lips.

“Do Kyungsoo. You don’t know of him?”

“No, I do…” Too well, in fact.

“Well, he’s here right now. I could get you an autograph if you wanted too. Just ask your oppa nicely!” He shot you a shit-eating grin and you almost want to strangle him amidst the absolute panic you were experiencing.

You weren’t experiencing a real panic attack, thankfully. But the way your hands were shaking as you placed each piece of chalk back into it’s designated slotted groove gave away that you were one-hundred-percent losing your mind. As your heart raced in your chest, you did a mental checklist of the facts that faced you right now.

You were, or you used to be, absolutely obsessed with Do Kyungsoo as a celebrity. This was back in your late teens, when you were a freshman at college.

You had not thought about him, or even looked up his name, in almost 5 years. Real life got in the way. And your cynicism.

And he was right here.

In this very room.

Suddenly, your brain was kicked into hyper-awareness mode, and it was almost impossible to resist the urge to finger comb your hair and smooth out your clothes. Fuck. You weren’t even wearing a cute outfit. Today had been a boyfriend jeans and black t-shirt day for you.

Seung-woo was still standing in front of you, looking at you expectantly, and you reminded yourself that you had to actually respond.

“Er… no. I’m good, Seung-woo,” you rolled your eyes at him, “What makes you think that I’d want an autograph? You do remember that I’m an old hag right?”

He noticed that you were having difficulty stuffing your chalk boxes back into your bag, and leans down to help you.

“Who said that you can’t have celebrity crushes at age 30? I wouldn’t shame you for that. Plus, you’re still single…” Seung-woo waggled his eyebrows.

“Oh my lord,” You mutter in English to yourself, before switching to Korean.

“Idols are for the young or the delusional. Plus, they’re just regular ol’ people just like me. You take anyone with a bit of talent and a decent face and I’m sure they could pass as an idol.” This is a mantra you’ve repeated to yourself almost a million times, and it rolls off your tongue.

“God, you’re always so cynical…ah!” Seung-woo stands up to greet someone and leaves you struggling with your bag on the floor.

“No, I’m just old,” you said to yourself as you right yourself.

And then you come face to face with a profile that you’ve started at on your phone screen, your computer monitor, and even billboards, umpteenth times. It’s closer now, way closer. You saw the slight smile lines on his cheeks, and the unevenness of his skin that hasn’t been photoshopped out. But his strong eyebrows and heart-shaped smile were the same. And his eyes.

Kyungsoo was shaking hands with Seung-woo and another PD, but his eyes flickered to you briefly as you got to your feet. And then they’re gone. Like they didn’t see you at all.

You took a deep breath and reminded yourself that he’s just another person. He probably leaves his phone ringer on. That’s something that annoys you. Annoyance. It’s your weapon against anything you’re scared of. But it’s also grounding you in this insane moment.

Reminder, you’re staff. He’s the star of the show.

“Ah! This is our chalk artist, she made the board behind us,” Seung-woo declared proudly and grabbed your arm to pull you back, just as you were preparing to sneak away from the awkward circle of personnel. You’ve never cursed so strongly in your own mind before, and a string of fuckshitfuckshitfuck was still going through your mind as you gave a tight smile and bowed. All while avoiding eye contact.

You saw Kyungsoo and a few others glance at your work and you couldn’t help but cringe. God help you, you had confidence in your work, but were you completely unprepared for your teenage/young adult celebrity crush to judge you. They politely express amazement at the board, and you robotically thank them.

Seung-woo continued to discuss some detail about the segment and you took the opportunity to duck away and escape with your bag, not even taking a second look back. You were tempted of course, as you left through the studio doors. You could even stay to watch the entire filming, and no one would object. They knew who you were.

But there was no way you would be able to not fall back into your stupid crush that you still had, if you were able to just stand and watch him cook for an hour and a half. You were too old for this.

You gritted your teeth as you got in your car, placed your duffel on the passenger seat, and buckled your seatbelt.

Today, you would be an adult and do the right thing.

Tomorrow, you’d give dating apps another go.

But right now, you imagined another universe, where he was a regular person, and so were you. Then, you could allow yourself to fall in love. You closed your eyes and leaned your head onto the cold glass of the window and allowed yourself to fantasize.

A/N: I’m totally throwing this into the void and doing this for myself but part two is coming.

#exo #exo fic #kyungsoo fic #kyungsoo #exo fanfiction #kyungsoo x reader #kyungsoo angst #kyungsoo fanfiction #do kyungsoo #exo scenario #exo scenarios

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radiofreeyurick · 3 years

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Thus The Man Continues to Fall

By Nick Yurick

20 years after the tragedy that shaped a generation now haunted by final days of the War that was spurred by it, and newly bereft of so many previously held sentiments, causes, or beliefs that felt so vital and true on that day, for many, all that remains is The Falling Man

Any adolescent on the verge of social awareness has to feel it coming. Though some may only be students of history out of obligation at that age, rather than genuine interest or concern, the patterns and shifts begin to take on palpable rhythms of causes and effects, ebbs and flows, and calms preceding storms. The moment when the News becomes a Documentary, replete with imagined underscoring, slow motion, and a dramatic voiceover. The moment when Life becomes History.

At 14 years of age I was already an aspiring multihyphenate. actor, artist, musician, perhaps educator, and on that day, and at this moment it seems, a journalist. Thus it remains a fitting coincidence that for me, Life became History when I was in second period school newspaper class. Much as my grandparents and parents had told me over the years of their “where were you” moments in experiencing the Bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mine took place as I struggled to upload photos of the first day of school from an already outdated late ‘90s digital camera. It is perhaps for this reason that, though my life and work since have spanned multiple fields and environments, from stage to screen to the classroom, it is still through the mind of a journalist that I revisit this day every year. Be it with my continued work as a student journalist in the years immediately following or later as one of millions of social media pundits in the years to come, I have felt compelled to revisit the facts of why and how every year. But as the History we’ve lived the past 20 years continues to make those answers more and more evasive, my fascination, and that of many others, has shifted to the actions of a different, and more functional, camera a thousand miles away. The camera held by a Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press photographer named Richard Drew as he captured The Falling Man.

It is here that I must humble myself a bit, being well aware that the undying fascination with the image of this lone inverted figure has only increased in recent years. In a sardonic act of self-awareness I could just as well title this essay, “This 9/11, if You Read One Unqualified Take on ‘The Falling Man,’ Make it THIS one.” Day to day I am but one of millions who fight for stage and screen time, clicks, words, and any vague measure of digital real estate before taking a break to get back to my woodworking hobby. Thus I only ask that you read on with the knowledge that the History being lived by a 34 year old armchair philosopher as he chain smokes at his Chromebook is as real as the History being lived by the septuagenarian widower in the Oval Office. As it relates to The Falling Man though, for myself and many like me, today The Falling Man is all that remains of that day.

-Trajectories and Arrival Points

In analyzing any historical event, we are drawn to examine it in terms of the trajectory it puts us on and arrival point it leads us to. These consequences often take the forms of calls to action, causes to be taken up, or revelations about American society of the day. In any case, they tell us why the world we fell asleep in that evening, or that many didn’t live to, was different from the world in which we had awakened that morning. Pearl Harbor placed us on the trajectory of entering World War II, drawing the United States and its Allies into a global conflict of unprecedented scale and accelerating the end of the Great Depression, with the arrival point of the Nation’s emergence as a global leader and the establishment of “The American Dream” in the form of a higher standard of living than was previously accessible to many. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy placed us on the trajectory of increased escalation in Vietnam, leading to a new era of social unrest and mistrust in our institutions. Simultaneously the inspiration to carry forth what was considered the late President’s unfinished work, gave birth to heightened social activism and significant leaps forward in Civil Rights and Women’s Rights. This was largely seen through to the arrival points of our withdrawal from Vietnam, the Resignation of Nixon, and the dawn of “Morning in America” with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Although every single historical event echoes eternally, in American Society we are accustomed to some feeling of victory or at least reprieve, as if the demons that emerged from these national tragedies have been temporarily vanquished in our day to day lives while we lick our collective finger to gingerly turn the page on the next chapter.

-The Curtain

It is, at this very moment, 12:26 PM on September the 7, 2021. It occurs to me that to write with such perceived urgency about another September Tuesday a score of years prior will hopefully become as passe and bland as any of the seemingly newfound conspiracies on Kennedy’s Assassination have now become. Yet I continue to do so, because as of now, the aforementioned page has yet to turn. In the previously mentioned epochs, though there were plenty who still saw through the folly of the “American Dream” and the falsehood of “Morning in America,” even an equitable specter to those has yet to emerge. The Election of Barack Obama seemed a fitting placeholder in 2008, but the quick return to the frustrations of petty political gridlock coupled with the now pyrrhic victory we found in the final defeat of Osama bin Laden, made immediately clear that this generation would be visited by no such specter. This absence may on the surface seem a failure on the part of the current proverbial page turners to do so, but is also a result of our increasingly short attention spans having already written so many of the remaining pages that there is no consensus on Which page we may now turn to, but only the widespread certainty that we can’t. Because one thing we have so much more of than those preceding generations, be it the Boomers post Pearl Harbor or the X-ers post Kennedy, is an inescapable curiosity about what may be written on them and more importantly a will to read it. Or in stronger terms, this generation now carries the burden of knowing that which may be on those pages could prove our only salvation, as none other has made itself apparent. Thus if historical events can be seen in terms of a curtain being pulled back and then drawn again while the stage is reset, now the curtain has gone up in flames.

This so-called Curtain can come in the form of where we as a society now place our faith, or more specifically, what entity we trust to lead us to the aforementioned arrival point. With most national tragedies our instinct is to place our trust in our leaders, imploring them to step up when our faith in our own security has crumbled. Alhough with 9/11 we became quickly aware that we lacked an FDR to guide us through the darkness through Fireside Chats, we still entertained the notion that we were to have some faith in the very idea of Leadership itself, however personally distasteful or incompetent we found that Leader to be. By 2004 however, the leadership of George W. Bush had not only failed to bring us a perceptible victory in our immediate cause in Afghanistan, but had begun an entirely new sideshow in Iraq the previous year. This was the beginning of what has fittingly been referred to as “The Forever War,” where battles are not simply initiated by belligerents and ended by victors, but fought on eternally, perverting the traditional goal of final victory as we previously knew it. And if there is an end, it will likely be celebrated by none, if any, who were present when it began. This Forever War began to be seen as such during the Presidency of Barack Obama. While a controversial election in 2000 had already lead many of my generation to view the failed leadership of his predecessor Bush as a clerical error of sorts, we also blamed the misfortune of Our Generation’s Moment having taken place before we had come of age to elect Our Generation’s President. And yet the Page remained unturned. The aforementioned killing of Osama bin Laden did little to quell the Forever War, and domestically we were afforded mere scraps in the form of slightly more accessible healthcare for the few capable of navigating a bureaucratic system now more inconsistent and Byzantine than ever. Meanwhile societal issues such as racial equity and LGBT+ rights only achieved progress as a result of the larger culture elevating them to the status of the baseline right thing to do, but only when it saw fit. All of that being the case, 2016 arrived with an all too ideal stage set for the rise of Donald Trump, or more fittingly the fall of Leadership and the sheer laughibility that it ever represented a concept worthy of a generation’s trust. Even with Trump’s replacement by Joe Biden after the bitterly contested 2020 election, the ensuing Insurrection of January 6, 2021 cemented the new reality: there is now no such thing as Leadership, but only who You choose to believe.

Thus the Man continues to Fall…

-The Meaning of We

Two months prior to this writing, our nation celebrated the 245th year of its independence with the usual bombast we’ve become accustomed to. However each year for many the “bombs bursting in air” referred to in song seem to ring more and more hollow, as does the song itself. The hollowness of these verses seems a far cry from the days of ubiquitous flag waving and the shared sense of national pride we experienced twenty years ago. An outside force having done our country such grievous harm, we were called upon to show that world that We, the victims, truly represented the way of right and justice, while They, the aggressors, were but barbarous heathens, lashing out against the world’s brightest beacon of Freedom. We sought to show that our National identity embodied the supreme ideal of the civilized and just world we should aspire to, and that our way of life, the American Way, was anathema to the ways of those who employed violence and terror as a means to achieve their interests. This has long been what we’ve been taught to believe of our Nation, especially when such destruction has been brought to our shores, as if to say, “We are not like them, We would never do this. We are America, and to be American is to be on the side of Good.” Alas, as the Curtain’s smoldering remnants now hang in tatters, through the lazily wafting smoke we have seen America’s failings writ large in the ashes. Not only those we would previously chalk up to “a different time,” or “another generation,” but those being carried out as we speak. Thus Patriotism, as a concept defined by a faith in the unfailing virtue of one’s country, has experienced a superficial rebirth in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, only to be followed by a slow death in the years since.

It is here that we must revisit those previously mentioned pages in our History which we failed to turn, those unread or forgotten chapters that may not have fit into the collective identity that we wished to cultivate. For the History we once read was often presented to us as in a sanitized narrative, compiled as a companion piece to the definition of Patriotism we were compelled to accept. The heroic vision we once held of America during World War II, as saviors from unprecedented evils on either side of the globe, has now been graffitied over in these pages with stories of her persecution and internment of Japanese-Americans, an injustice not even acknowledged for nearly fifty years after. On other pages, the names of millions of European Jews who were turned away from our shores early in the war, many to their deaths, are now scrawled hastily in desperation, as though hoping that someone, in some distant year, may someday bear witness and validate their humanity as our country, and even one of our most venerated Leaders personally, failed to in their lifetimes. Even still, the pages following the war, heralding the establishment of the American Dream, now contain detailed revelations of redlining, “white flight,” and the practices that excluded People of Color from being included in the idyllic America we were thought to have achieved during this period.

Indeed this alternate chapter continues through the 1960s and to this day, where the America that was thought to have humbly shown remorse and emerged as a global leader in Civil Rights, redressing the atrocities of Slavery and Jim Crow, is seen to have done so with the upmost reluctance. This America instead sought to bolster its image by now phasing out more blatant forms of discrimination in favor of practices more pervasive and insidious. Wage discrimation served to keep People of Color impoverished and desperate, effectively prohibiting them from moving to areas with better access to education and opportunities. With limited access to education, cycles of generational poverty continued this trend. In the face of poverty, those suffering were often forced to turn to the drug trade or other forms of criminal enterprise as a means of achieving even a glimmer of the prosperity that was supposed to define this chapter in American History or even to sustain the very lives of themselves and their families. And when “Morning in America” dawned in the 1980s, also did the rise of the “War on Drugs,” which further criminalized and demonized the only means of income that many already living in poverty had at their disposal. Meanwhile the introduction of crack cocaine to the inner cities provided a more abundant and addictive product to target, leading to harsher prison sentences for those peddling the substance and more debilitated addicts left in its wake.

But America watched as First Lady Nancy Reagan appeared on television's most popular sitcom of the day, Diff’rent Strokes. In the Very Special episode, Mrs. Reagan’s obliviously grandmotherly voice comforted the precocious and diminutive young protagonist Arnold, an African-American child of the same poverty the American Dream shunned, now in the care of a wealthy white benefactor (and played by Gary Coleman who himself later symbolized an exploitative and predatory entertainment industry), along along with millions of other wayward youths at risk of falling victim to the ongoing drug epidemic, ironically fueled and enabled by the same America that created it. Arnold, and any of those watching could always, “Just Say No.” As though it were a choice. As though any of it were ever a choice. As though choice wouldn’t soon prove to be as illusory as the American Dream was to so many others who experienced naught but cold dark nights during “Morning in America.” As though the concept of choice wouldn’t also be blamed for the plight of LGBTQ+ Americans whose lives were destroyed by the AIDS epidemic that was stigmatized and swept under the rug by this same administration during this period.

In the past twenty years, these undercurrents that eroded the notion of Patriotism in the fifty years prior now flow freely on the surface. Though these preceding chapters, ones that told of these racial, economic, and cultural struggles, were written on scraps of hotel paper or the backs of envelopes by those who lived them, now these stories grab headlines. Headlines that reveal now more than ever the long held role of the police in maintaining these systems of oppression, as well as the consistent biases ingrained in them against the communities they were sworn to protect. Though the Patriotism that flared so brightly after 9/11 was accompanied by an increased reverence toward law enforcement officers, many having lost their lives in those towers, the ensuing decades revealed their institution’s role in excluding so many from the justice and civility our Patriotic ideal was supposed to stand for, instead embroiling them in lives lived in terror from the violence the country was supposed to stand against. So now the iconic waving flag of stars and stripes turns on its side, as the stars fade and the stripes turn to the vertical walls of the doomed Twin Towers, split by one helpless, inverted figure.

Thus the Man continues to Fall…

-Truth, War, and the War on Truth

Last night as I readied myself for bed, I opened the News app on my iPhone one last time before turning in. Though my at times masochistic addiction to the news cycle had been in a remission of sorts after the emotional burnout of a pandemic filled year, it has experienced a brief relapse of late. I sometimes view it as a quest for positivity, a search for hope, and some indication, any indication, that things are getting better, but more often it’s simply to make sure I haven’t missed the last bad thing to have happened. Indeed such an addiction is far more possible now as the news is more accessible than ever. I’ve often thought that my generation’s predilection for ‘90s nostalgia wasn’t a mere longing for our childhood or for a pre-9/11 America, but a wish to return to a time when escaping the often horrific barrage of news stories was as simple as tossing a newspaper into the recycling bin or switching off the TV. But with more and more of our very existence taking place online, the news has become inextricably intertwined with it to the point that to disconnect would risk severing our ties with our work, our activities and our socialization. Perhaps too this nostalgia is linked to a time when the news by and large represented the truth, or at least the basic facts of the day. Though valid criticisms of media biases have long existed, widespread disdain for factual storytelling is at an all time high and consensus on any voice, even one voice, we can trust is nonexistent. My generation will likely be the last to even remember a reliably comforting presence like Peter Jennings reporting the events of 9/11, or our parents’ memories or Walter Cronkite tearfully informed us of the killing of Kennedy, or the multitude of trusted local radio announcers tasked with delivering the tragic news that broke on December 7, 1941. Much like the idea of Leadership, loss of faith in The Truth is another backdrop against which the Man continues to Fall…

What struck me though about the news story that appeared on the smudged touch screen of my iPhone yesterday evening was its similarity to one that may have appeared next to a coffee stained newspaper on our kitchen table any morning before I departed for 4th grade in 1996. Further, I tell you this was never where and when anyone who had lived through the past twenty-five years would still expect to see the headline: “Taliban Whip Women Protesting Interim Government.” This is what losing a War looks like.

It is for good reason that the Second World War has been referred to as “America’s Last Good War,” and that the War in Vietnam led to an all around loss of faith in war itself as an instrument of foreign policy and a means of progressing our causes. And with America’s participation in War taking on the form of quick and focused operations, isolated police actions, and distantly coordinated air strikes since then, the large scale mobilization against Afghanistan in the Fall of 2001 (rumored at the time to be leading to Congress’s first formal Declaration of War since 1941) cheered by vengeance seeking Patriots, perhaps now to be the Last Patriots, was equally as necessary and noble in beginning what was sure to become known as “America’s First Good War of the 21st Century?” For when, albeit not for ten years, American forces finally decimated Al Qaeda and killed Osama bin Laden, did America not cheer and celebrate throughout her streets, no doubt inspiring many a tear to trickle down the withered cheeks of those who recalled witnessing such on VJ Day in their much younger years, now assured safety in their homeland? For surely a further ten years mired in the unforgiving deserts and treacherous hillsides of the region, as thousands more of our soldiers shed their blood upon the land and return dismembered, traumatized, or not at all, surely that gained our country some unheralded boon to our interests, any strategic advantage, or the meanest notion of progress in the lives of our citizens or more importantly the people whose country we occupied for two decades? Why then, does America’s last plane departing from Kabul Airport nearly a score of years after the first of hers rained bombs not so far from it, instead truly feel like the final Fall of our long dying faith in War itself?

Because when I read a headline from Afghanistan last night, in high definition through the tired eyes of a young man feeling far older than he had earned any right to, and it remained (even after 20 years of frantically advancing and retreating soldiers, deafening blasts from bombs and improvised explosives, and so much more sanguine blood streaming from wounded flesh of all the colors of the world) so dissimilar from one that would have flashed onto a comparatively fuzzy television screen to meet the cheery eyes of an enthusiastically Patriotic Cub Scout, proud of the Leader his parents would take part in reelecting later that year (though, ironically, this Leader would himself have his own part to play in our collective loss of faith in Leadership), well...I simply could feel no other way. This is what losing a war looks like…

...and thus the Man continues to Fall.

And while our country losing its faith in War should be welcomed as a sign of progress and our collective evolution toward the civilization that was to serve as a cornerstone of our now-fallen Patriotism, it can only be truly welcomed when it is replaced instead by a renewed and sincere faith in Peace! And perhaps in global affairs, in a nominal and superficial sense, Peace is gaining some believers, though I can’t confidently believe all hold this faith sincerely as much as out of a cynically held tool of self-preservation until the war profiteers who pull their strings find new markets for their wares. But America’s faith in Violence is now stronger than ever. Carried out now by citizens on our streets rather than soldiers across the world, by police in squad cars rather than infantry in tanks, and now, perhaps imperceptibly, by viruses in our lungs spreading freely through uncovered orifi, violence is embraced by America as a whole in ways that make any notion that anyone this violent nation killed halfway across the world made us safer these last twenty years. In that same period, a new record for the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history has been set, first by a disturbed and alienated college student in Virginia, then by a would-be terrorist with a history of hate crimes at an LGBT+ nightclub in Orlando, and finally by his immediate usurper of this horrific distinction who just the following year rained bullets down from a modified assault rifle upon concertgoers in Las Vegas while perched far above them in his hotel room. Expanding our scope to the top five shootings, the other two on the list took place during just this past decade, the first carried out upon children by a mentally ill youth at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and the other at a church in Texas, by a resentful and misogynistic former spouse of one of the parishioners, a uniquely American demon consumed with wanting. In each instance the tired argument, dating back to the pre-9/11 massacre at Columbine and beyond, was made, that our government’s comparatively lax laws on gun ownership were to blame, but after the killings at Sandy Hook in 2012 changed nothing in that regard, that argument has felt increasingly futile. After all, when a country does fails to restrict such instruments of death after they’re used to murder 27 children, it doesn’t really want to. And to blame the mere presence of guns sidesteps the truth at the root of these shootings: modern America breeds killers, and more effective ones than ever.

But while Americans react to the violence perpetrated by mass shootings with condemnation and abhorrence, the violence carried out by an increasingly militarized police force breeds division and itself, violent rhetoric as the calls to find more peaceful solutions to making our streets safer are met with calls for more violence and diversions of blame to the victims themselves. This rash of violence was once countered with the statement that, “police brutality in America isn’t getting worse, it’s just getting filmed,” once again ignoring the forgotten chapters in our History in which we have now read that policing in America has played a part in targeting and criminalizing People of Color since its near inception. And as indeed everything is being filmed now, it permeates our culture to the point that it now builds upon itself influencing our every interaction, becoming a key talking point in the hate speech that now passes for political discourse. The result being the undeniable fact that the Fall of our Faith in War has not given way to the Rise of our Faith in Peace. Not in any meaningful way across the globe, and within our own borders it has shifted to a Rise in Faith in War upon Ourselves. And meanwhile…

...the Man continues to Fall…

-Tilling the Earth to Grow Softer Ground

...but where will he land?

In embarking on all of my writings, in contrast to the manner in which our country begins so many of its wars, I never do so without some intention of finding some source of hope or comfort, some path forward to progress, or, when setting out with the most optimistic of outlooks, perhaps a solution to the issues explored. While there was little to be had as I drafted the first few segments, it also became all the more necessary in the face of revisiting so much of the despair, confusion, and upheaval my fellow Americans and I have experienced these last twenty years as well as much of what those who came before did the decades examined prior. Thus it is fitting that while the preceding passages of this article were written in multiple sessions on my porch this week while the searing summer sun begins to give way to the first chilly autumn winds, I conclude this piece sitting on my bed as the first minutes of September the 11th, 2021 tick by. While many of the recent writings about Richard Drew’s iconic photograph have sought to confirm, or at investigate clues as to, the identity of its subject. In writing this piece I was reminded of so much of the American lives currently being lived now takes place in a culture where many are emboldened by the absence of names or faces. Thus to the notion that one would seek to identify this blurry, tragic figure, I retort: in a society where to be nameless and faceless can mean to be validated or even in some way seem enviable, what meaning could this man’s name and face possibly hold were it revealed to the masses? Instead it is perhaps better he continue his descent in anonymity and transubstantiate in our collective consciousness, and perhaps enjoy the comparative bliss felt only when one’s form shifts to that of a generational metaphor.

But as a now belabored metaphor, surely worn and windburned by his descent through my accountings of over a half-century’s worth of America’s broken promises, cheapened values, and hidden hatreds that were really in plain sight, he certainly deserves a softer place to land than the mattress that now serves as my roost, upon which I try to write one up for him. And from it I am reminded as well of the faiths that fell from our very homes, many of which we held our most steadfast trust. Our generation having now experienced the twin economic upheavals of the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, faith in our dreams has fallen. And when the fall of this faith was begun by the shortsightedness and bad advice of those who first told us to believe in our dreams, we have to believe our dreams were always meant to decline. Thus many of us have embraced decline, with rates of depression, addiction, and other mental illness climbing in recent years. This is but one factor in the fall of our faith in the preceding generations, but this is in no way a textbook shifting of blame to our parents and grandparents, for they too have never lived in a world like this either. Instead, having spent so many of their younger years in a state of Not Knowing (while we ironically know nothing but this feeling) the brief length of time they spent in a state of Knowing, having been taught so well History’s patterns, shifts, palpable rhythms of causes and effects, ebbs and flows, and calms preceding storms that they weathered in the America they thought they knew, became their addiction as well, their perceived wisdom now the opiate of their uncertainty. For me personally, my late father was the one who taught me the most about the components, currents, and forces that moved History and how they had been maintained. Thus after his passing in early 2016, the loss was made all the more crushing upon the election of Donald Trump later that year, now that he, who for so much of my life could always point back to an equivalent trajectory America had placed upon and determine some possible arrival point, was no longer with us. But even having asked him so many times in my youth, “so what does this mean now, dad?” I recall now how many more times in the final decade of his life, he could answer with little more than, “I don’t know Nick.”

So perhaps I am also one of many for whom their faith in Wisdom has fallen as well. And since with the passing on of Wisdom our society traditionally passes on its culture, so with it has our Culture fallen as well. By now means in such a way that I would dare complain there has been a decline in the quality of our art, music, and films, but the notion of a shared culture of unassailable timeless classes has fallen. This may be for the best however, as the very subjective nature of art itself implies that any attempt to establish the undeniable supremacy of any work of art in such a way that spans generations, cultures, or life experiences serves to deny the validity of so many diverse tastes, sensibilities, and traditions as well as that of a work’s relevance when its purpose was only to encapsulate the cultural moment it was created in. So perhaps we should embrace the fact that our cultural landmarks are now determined more by individuals for themselves, and consist of niche classics, flavor of the day pop hits, and even tuneful inside jokes distributed across the vastness of the internet by among the varied enclaves of those who appreciate them. And even as part of a generation of young people who feel old, though many who had the luxury of experienced their brief stint in the state of Knowing will argue I haven’t earned that feeling, I remain a dedicated fan of the legendary musician Bruce Springsteen, it is perhaps fitting that his hopeful 2002 album “The Rising” would resonate far less in defining the musical outlook of the post-9/11 era than a 2003 release by his fellow New Jerseyans in the lesser-known punk band Thursday, titled “War All The Time.” Still with cultural moments all the more fleeting and tastes increasingly specific, one might say that each is now as obscure as the other, in contrast to the attention paid upon their initial release. The truth of course may be determined by which generation one comes from.

However this softer landing surface upon which our Man is to Land can only be created through generational cooperation, so let us finally unite in the experience of Not Knowing as we reluctantly celebrate the death of Wisdom, and perhaps even briefly entertain some illusion that the ground may yield when he reaches it, but bear each other through the realization we can instead only soften it by creating new institutions and redefining old ideas.

For the failing of Leadership need not truly be failure if we instead build our Leaders from the ground up. Rather than following those who present themselves on a bully pulpit as such, follow those who present themselves in the places we already needed them to be and allowed us to find them there. That is to say, on our own streets in the neighborhoods we live in, serving the communities in which they have built their lives while helping others to build theirs. Find them in our own offices and factories, working side by side while gaining an understanding of the labor and dedication that truly builds a nation, a dedication they wouldn’t dare exploit. And task these leaders with creating ideologies of which they themselves will someday no longer be irrelevant symbols, as ideologies must now be based not upon whom among these privileged few we choose to vote into power, but upon which of the many more helpless we choose to heal of their suffering.

Further I implore you not to mourn the death of our faith in Patriotism if our New Patriots can now redefine their love for their country as no longer being a love for the vague and faceless notions of Freedom or exclusionary definitions of “We” that were allowed to make that Freedom a luxury so few were truly afforded. And when harsh economic forces and the predatory and cynical motivations of those who were allowed to write the chapters upon which the Old Patriotism was written seek to restrict that Freedom even further, let us redistribute it to the no longer huddled masses so they may no longer thirst for it. For the New Patriotism will be based in understanding that to love one’s country means to love every human being who resides within it, no matter their origin or status. This Patriotism understands that America need not merely be the name of a long dead sailor, given by white men to stolen land that once bore so many varied, beautiful, and sacred names for the vast and diverse locales that comprise it, but that America by definition is collection of the hopes, dreams, fears, and needs of three-hundred thirty or more million souls upon whose very existence building a fair and equitable society depends.

And if our faith in War is to truly fail and give way to sincere dedication to faith in Peace. Let the only faith in War that remains be faith in the War upon War, and the destruction of our faith in violence of all kinds. And let the War upon War be a war upon ignorance and selfishness, and allow a generation whose defining tragedy’s only arrival point was a larger and more prolonged tragedy breathe easier, with hope that the virus that destroyed their dreams, and took vast numbers of the preceding generations who once comforted them with their experience in the state of Knowing, will no longer dominate their futures. And if this love that defines the New Patriotism can be the motivating factor in facing our challenges with genuine concern and care for the well being and prosperity of all three-hundred thirty or more million souls for whom the freedom to lives of health and safety, joy and fulfillment, will now be by this new definition their birthright.

At last, when this War upon War has ended, not with a dubious arrival point, but on a glorious and eternal new trajectory, let us harken back to the ways the ends of Wars were written of in scripture, for to bend the sword into plowshares now takes on a greater and renewed urgency, as the need to till the Earth is essential in the necessary task of growing softer ground upon which someday, somehow...

...this Man will Land.

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kim-chann · 3 years

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- - - Order Instructions ;; hi there id like to do a matchup for oso-san! im a taurus and genderfluid who uses she/her & he/him pronouns. im 5'10 and have a larger body type (the pear body type i think) with very thick and long black hair that has a tendency to get curly under certain circumstances! i describe myself as someone who is very LOUD and extroverted. i love being around people and making them laugh. im also very loyal and kind to those i know and see myself as the sort of parent-therapist friend -

not only that but im also someone whos very dedicated to art and writing. i consider myself a poet and i love putting complicated literary devices and meaning into my work. i also enjoy finding meaning in others' writing which can make me turn into a cheesy mess in mere seconds lol. i also draw and consider myself a digital artist rather than a traditional artist. im also an activist of sorts! other than that i also like playin video games and i have a doggo who i love very much :P

- - Anon

༺ Chef Note: Thank you for being my second customer! It’s been a while since I wrote Osomatsu san, it’s quite refreshing if I do say so myself! Thank you for ordering the Funky-rainbow crepe cake! I hope you enjoy it!

I match you up with . . .

　　　　　　Jyushimatsu Matsuno |　松野十松 !! ~

☉You got the sunshine flower boy!

☉Jyushimatsu is full of smiles, but whenever he’s with you, he can’t help but feel all jittery and even more happy (if that’s even possible)

☉Every time he sees you, he feels like all his worries and problems had vanished and sometimes even thought you had some sort of charm in your possession to make him feel so welcome and happier than usual.

☉Despite you being taller than Jyushimatsu, that doesn’t stop him from trying to give you head pats. He really like initiating head pats because he got used to giving praise to his brother, Ichimatsu, head pats as a way of comfort. So it’s just instinct for him to give you some head pats

☉Oh! Oh! Since you’re taller than him, give him piggy back rides! He’ll love them so much, that he becomes a child and loves the embrace of him holding onto you while you carry him.

☉Jyushimatsu loves that you’re loud because he is too. He feels more like himself cause he doesn’t have anyone else besides his brothers to socialise with. So for you to be loud and extroverted, it makes him feel more at home

☉Both you and him will be everyone’s source of laughter and smiles, the two of you are like the cutest duo because you two are honestly the same person. That’s what makes him feel so comfortable because he feel like he can be more like himself with others, and it encourages him to try to become friends with other people with you by his side.

☉However, with you also being the “parent” of the group who helps others, you’re the one that’s going to be Jyushimatsu’s rock

☉ You already know the sunflower baby boy, he can be very reckless and make a lot of irrational decisions because he’s more about feel and emotion than logic. So make sure that he’s in check before he accidentally and unintentionally commit war crimes.

☉He also adores your creativity for both art and literature! He too, is a fond of drawing and painting, and he finds your hobbies as an inspiration to him.

☉Expect to find doodles of you and him with hearts around it. How sweet!

☉Jyushimatsu doesn’t mind if you’re cheesy or not, it’ll remind him of his brother, Karamatsu, and nothing will compare to how painful he is, so he’s not affected by the cheesiness and would rather think it’s adorable!

☉Since you draw more on digital than traditional, Jyushimatsu would ask if he could try to draw something on the device

☉Be careful because he might accidentally scratch the screen by pressing too hard on the tablet, so make sure that he doesn’t physically damage your device!

☉Also, he LOVES that you have a dog!

☉He might even just go on all-fours on the ground and pretend to be a dog too.

☉So good luck having two dogs instead of one haha!

༺ Chef Note: Thank you for ordering! Please come back again soon!

#osomatsu san #osomatsu-san #osomatsu san matchup #osomatsu san imagines #osomatsu san headcanons #matchup #anon

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maiji · 4 years

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I Heard A Cicada Cry (part 1 of ?) A YYH North Bound story

UPDATE: I made a change to page 6, revising “Tonbo” to “Akitsu” (archaic reading).

End result: Hokushin ends up as a babysitter no matter what.

Insert my usual disclaimers around historical inaccuracies and creative licence! Cicada Cry takes place during the ending of Mirror Most Dark, where Hokushin is wandering the countryside looking for a place to safely dump the Mirror of Darkness. At this time, he’s no more than 40-50 years old, though he of course looks much younger. He doesn’t go by the name Hokushin yet, as it’ll be another century or so before he finally meets Raizen.

I had him on an actual horse in early drafts of this story, but I killed the idea since it would make him more conspicuous than he probably wants to be, plus he can run faster than a horse anyways. First draft thumbnails were originally sketched out in 2018, but I kept having other pieces I wanted to draw first until I started running out of time. This story will introduce another existing Yu Yu Hakusho character who’s going to play a significant role in the main North Bound timeline when Hokushin and Raizen are together, so I need that to happen sooner rather than later.

Semimaru is one of several historical/literary figures I've long planned to work into Hokushin's backstory. Very little is actually known about him. Whoever he was - whether or not he actually existed, or if he was even a single person as opposed to a composite of folklore - he is consistently described as a blind master of the biwa from the Heian period. The famous Noh play Semimaru, considered by some to be the saddest of all Noh plays, presents him as the fourth son of Emperor Daigo, abandoned in the mountains to prevent bad karma from polluting the kingdom. The mask for this character, also called Semimaru, is used exclusively for this single role. (It’s sometimes confused with another unique blind young man mask, Yoroboshi, which I’ve talked about before. The difference is that Semimaru is the face of a nobleman - which is distinguished by how the hair is depicted - and has a serene expression while Yoroboshi is usually anguished.)

Naturally, in the Yu Yu Hakusho fan universe of North Bound, Semimaru is a human psychic. In terms of his design, I toyed with a number of options, but ended up basing it on an ukiyo-e print by Yoshitoshi, from the famous series “100 Aspects of the Moon”. Here’s another, much younger interpretation of Semimaru by Tatehiko Suga (whose clothes I stole conveniently referenced for Hokushin lol). The Legend of Semimaru gives a good overview of this figure, his poetry, and a number of his classic depictions.

I’ve been making comics in traditional media for so long it took a while to get used to doing this digitally. Everything felt super awkward and like it was taking me five times as long - but the cleanup/prep of final pages on the computer was like nothing since it was all already on the computer!

#yu yu hakusho #hokushin #comics #fanart #fancomic #semimaru #japanese history #japanese literature #art by Maiji/Mary Huang #yyh north bound

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houseofvans · 5 years

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ART SCHOOL | IN SESSION WITH ROB SATO

From vibrant rainbows to familiar yet alien landscapes occupied by strange beings, LA based artist Rob Sato’s works are filled with creative energy in a loose minimalistic style. From watercolor, digital medium to acrylics and oil, Rob’s artworks and illustrations have been shown in various galleries from Giant Robot 2 to the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, where recently his original paintings for a comic called 442 were exhibited. We’re excited to chat with Rob about his work, his various collaborations and what he’s got coming up for the rest of the year. Take the Leap!

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself Hello, my name is Rob Sato. I’m an artist, illustrator, and writer. Something people might not know about me is that I was a kid I was so fanatical about the Oakland A’s that when they lost in the World Series I threw a tantrum so big that I destroyed my bedroom and after that I felt so stupid I quit following baseball. Also, I’m told I have maybe one of the great poop stories of the world. It can only be related in person, so ask me about it sometime if we ever meet.

How would you describe your work and style? Eclectic? Kaleidoscopic? I’ve never had a concise answer to this question. I tend not to pin myself down because I think if I did, I’d stop making things.

Art is my outlet for the cryptic and obscure as well as the gushing spillover of foolish idealism and wild fantasy. It’s the only place I’ve ever found where you can healthily play with unhealthy thoughts, where you can explore undefined emotions, things that lurk out in the corners of consciousness that may be embarrassing or uncontrollable.

I love to make entertainment and decorative work, things that tend to be obvious, that communicate very clearly and reveal all their cards, but I also love to make work that hides things, that actively resists easy understanding or recognition and risks being super personal or unrelatable and strange. This can make things difficult, especially in the ongoing deterioration of attention spans, but I can’t help but pursue things outside of a pop sensibility and logical thought. I have to be, much of the time, in mental wildernesses. It’s hard to get there, hard to be there, and hard to come back, but it keeps me going.

Tell us about how you really started getting into art, and how that turned into what you do now? Was it something you always intended to pursue? I’ve drawn every single day for as long as I can remember. I never really thought about it. It just seems to be what I do. It’s how I have fun, how I solve problems, how I think. I’ve wanted to pursue other things like make movies or write books, but I always find myself drawing. Before I know it, it’s time for bed again.

When you are working on a new piece or upcoming exhibition or show? What’s your process like? What themes do you find yourself taking on? I explode. I used to plan things in a very directed way, but lately I’ve just let my brains spill out everywhere. I make a ton of drawings and paintings, and try my best to be fearless and open. Most of it produces failure after failure, but it shows me what might be worth building on, plus many exciting surprises reveal themselves in the process. As a show nears I start seeing what things fit together, what needs to be edited out, and how it all might form a cohesive exhibition. Sometimes the subject matter is the glue that makes everything stick, other times it’s the aesthetics. Alongside the explosion I usually have 2 or 3 pieces going at any given time that I’ve had long term plans for. These pieces can take take months or even years.

Thematically I’m all over the place. War and peace, realism and surrealism, grim realities and escapism, sober observations and dumb jokes.

What are some of your go-to art making materials? Are there mediums you want to explore that you’ve yet to get your hands on? I feel pretty comfortable with anything you can use to make a mark on a piece of paper. I’ve mainly used watercolor and various drawing tools for the past several years. I’m been having fun with acrylics and oils again, and I’ve started to play around with photography a little. I’ve had ideas for sculpture and film for years that I’d really like to finally get to. What I really want to get my hands on is more time.

Where do you find inspiration? What kind of things or people inspire what you make? Watching someone pick their nose listening to headphones and singing softly to themselves in line at the grocery store. Just watching my cat live her weird life. Even though the final artwork may not really show it, these places are usually where my ideas originate. Art has also been a place where I can put memories that have some abstract need to be recorded.

I made this series of drawings called “Bad Hands”, which started out with me laughing at these dumb hands I was drawing with academically incorrect anatomy. Abandoning correctness felt so good. In the process it triggered a memory from High School. I had been forbidden from drawing in one of my classes, so I was contorting my hands into different shapes at my desk to amuse myself. There was a hysteria over gang activity in the school at the time and the teacher freaked out thinking I was throwing gang signs and I ended up getting sent to detention.

At detention I was talking with a friend and made fun of the teacher for her mistake. A kid who was in a gang overheard and then HE misunderstood and thought I was making fun of gangs or something. On my way home from school he and a couple dudes punched and kicked me for a bit while I tried and failed to explain. I think it’s funny.

So embedded in that piece is this tumbling series of misunderstandings, these multiple layers of hands being perceived as bad, speaking in an absurd language that communicates different things to different people. I know people aren’t going to see all those layers in the final piece, but that’s where it comes from and I hope it at least sparks some thoughts about talking with our hands, and where else can you follow this kind of train of thought except in art?

I get inspired by artists who seem to approach art as an intuitive discovery process rather than a pursuit of mastery, that play is one of the more important aspects of making things. My wife, Ako, has been a huge influence on me in this respect. She’s continuously playing with various materials around her at any given time and finding out what she can do with them. Everywhere she goes she abandons a nest made of fresh creations she’s manifested out of mud, string, packaging, plants, uneaten rice, her used drinking straw, lint and whatever else was within her reach

You’ve done a lot of collaborations with companies, museums and art galleries. Do you have a favorite collaboration, and what about the collaboration do you enjoy the most? I’ve recently been collaborating with Tiny Splendor, an indie publisher and printer who have studios in LA and Oakland. It’s been really great working with them, Cynthia Navarro in LA on risographs, and with Max Stadnik, who runs the print shop in Oakland.

Max has been returning to lithography, my favorite traditional printing medium, and he printed a piece of mine inspired by mushrooms called “Growerings". It’s a full 5 color print, which means it took five separate plates and each print had to go through the press 5 times. It turned out more beautifully than I could have hoped for. Litho is a super difficult but also very fun process and the results are so rich.

I think I particularly love this collaboration because the image fits the medium so well, and the combination of the two elevates the final piece of work, When it works, the artwork and the print become more than just an image on a piece of paper. It’s more alive in some undefinable way.

Since we’re called Art School, we always ask the artists to give us their favorite art tip? Never force the thing you think you want, you’ll probably miss out on the really interesting thing that’s happening. Also, don’t drink too much coffee. I have trouble taking both of these pieces of my own advice every day.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making stuff? How do you chill out? I read and run. I love coffee and I love gossip and talking nonsense with friends. Also, I cannot stop watching Terrace House.

What is the last art show that you went to? What artists should folks keep an eye out for? I recently went to the Velveteria in LA’s Chinatown, which is one man’s collection of paintings on velvet. A very entertaining and very fucked up experience. I went to a life drawing session at Subliminal Projects and got to draw surrounded by Chad Kouri’s fun abstracts. I’m actually typing this interview inside an art show right now.

I’m here at my wife, Ako Castuera’s, show “Soil” at the Weingart Gallery at Occidental College. We’re here feeding worms. She sculpted this beautiful ceramic vermiculture composter for the show. It’s a grand temple for worms. The show is an act of gratitude for the exchange we have with the soil which provides the clay for ceramics, and for the worms who turn decay into healthy earth to grow new life in.

She sculpted a menagerie of creatures out of the worm poop that also populate the show. Super fun. Speaking of Ako and Subliminal, her show there with Hellen Jo and Kris Chau this past December was one of those once-in-a-lifetime powerhouse gathering of forces. That may have been the best show I’ve ever seen.

What advice would you give someone thinking about following in your footsteps? What’s something you learned that you want to pass along to art making newbies. Don’t listen to advice if it is extremely quotable. Pay no attention to it especially if it accompanies a photo of a famous artist and fits perfectly into an instagram post. If it’s easy to remember then it’s probably empty, crap inspiration. Those things are entertainments and not words to live by.

If you’re interested in making art you’ll keep making it. It takes day in, day out patience and exploration and mutation to discover how you really work, not some idea of how an artist works.

Sometimes it will be very hard, sometimes it will be so breathtakingly easy you think that your problems have been solved forever. Neither situation ever lasts, but cultivate and nurture your curiosity and what you love, and you’ll find ways to make it through the rough times and keep on making things one way or another.

Who are some of your favorite artists to follow and/or see in a show? Lately I’ve been really enjoying the work of Nathaniel Russell whose work makes this great space where funny, grounded matter-of-factness and sweet nothingness sit comfortably together. His drawing also reminds me of Ben Shahn, my all-time favorite drawer.

I really like Amy Bennet’s oils, these intimate studies of isolation in suburbia where mundanity overlaps with quiet drama and melancholy. Her work obliquely reminds me of Edwin Ushiro’s work, though his stuff is the opposite of melancholic. He captures almost incidental but haunted moments from growing up in Hawaii and infuses them with warmth, and it’s in a style influenced in a super personal way by animation. It reminds me of Satoshi Kon’s movies in its well observed, slice-of-life elements. Edwin’s sketchbooks are a treasure too. Esther Pearl Watson’s recent autobiographical paintings, Hellen Jo’s latest badass watercolors, Amber Wellman’s funny, playful oil paintings, and Matthew Palladino’s watercolors are also favorites.

Megan Whitmarsh’s work is some of my favorite to see in person. Her installation with Jade Gordon at the Hammer’s “Made In LA “ show was maybe the funnest work I’ve ever seen and interacted with. I went to see the Ai Wei Wei show at the Marciano Foundation, which I thought was impressive in scale and execution but still somehow lame, but I stumbled on a Mike Kelley installation/ video piece I’d never seen before in the upstairs collection and loved it so much, but I can’t remember the name of it at the moment.

It’s 2 videos shown side by side of the same guy wearing a cape singing almost the same song simultaneously, but each version has different words at different points. It’s a love song but one version is more bitter and mean and one is sickly sweet. Anyway, highly recommended!

What do you have coming up the rest of the year that you can share with us? For just a few more days there’s a show up at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center with a bunch of my original paintings for a comic I illustrated about the 442, the Japanese American Army unit of World War II. Plus it has some personal work about Japanese American Incarceration and images from my family’s experience in the concentration camps. My grandfather was incarcerated in the Arkansas camps, and he was a soldier in the 442.

Next up, I’m in a slew of group shows all happening within a few weeks of each other this month. Poor scheduling on my part as usual, but it’s nice to be invited to so many. I just sent off my piece to the “Seeing Red” show curated by Jeff Hamada of the BOOOOOOOM art and culture blog. That show will be at Thinkspace in LA. Giant Robot has been kind enough to host another solo show for me in September.

I’ve been busy experimenting with some more 3d stuff that pushes the more narrative side of my work which I hope to show there. We’ll see how the experiments turn out. I’ve also been working on a ton of prints and ideas for books. This year I want to focus on working in print, making zines and comics, and writing a lot more.

FOLLOW ROB | INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE | SHOP

#Art #Vans #Vans Art #Rob Sato #Art School #painting #interview

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comicteaparty · 4 years

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May 9th-May 15th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from May 9th, 2020 to May 15th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

What experiences do you have related to contests for comics, and do you find them worthwhile?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

:0 what a relevant question(edited)

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Funnily enough, I was going to enter this year’s WEBTOON competition, but I decided to focus on my webcomic instead. I still have concept art of my original idea (based off of Russian folklore) that I might draw one day, but it was fun drawing it.

I decided instead to just support the friends and fellow artists I know who entered the contest. It’s nice to see their hard work pay off.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I usually had either no time or no interest in a particular contest, so I have no clue. The only time I had both you needed to give up your copyright to enter, and thus I found it more worthwhile to put the effort into my own art and the dayjob.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I’ve never submitted to a contest I’ve considered submitting my existing work for various contests/awards, but in the end I always decide my story just isn’t far enough along yet to justify it. And my brain isn’t buzzy enough to create an original short story for something like the Webtoon one, so I’m out on that. I did get nominated for an award that turned into a voting contest anyway, but the winners were going to be practically guaranteed based on existing popularity, so... it was a nice gesture without any real chance of success. But it was cool to be up there with some heavy hitters. I dunno. Maybe one day I’ll feel more comfortable with the idea, once I feel like I’ve earned the chance

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not webcomic related, but back in 5th grade, there was this shounen jump-like Korean magazine that I was reading. One day, they announced a contest with the first and second place winners being offered a chance to serialize their own thing. While I had been doodling my own comics before that point, that was the first time it occurred to me: hey, I could be doing this like a pro. I could be a pro. So I tried to make my own entry for that contest. I never finished it, nor did I, in retrospect, stand a chance. But it was an eye-opener: my work could be taken seriously, could be seen by others. It was a possibility! I was going through a less than ideal time in my life at the time, too. Nothing super bad or abusive, just unstable/unpredictable, left me no headspace for a 5th grade kid to dream of the future. So it was pretty meaningful to have that kind of eye-opening excitement about possibilities/ future/ change.

I no longer want to go pro. I don't think I can deal with the emotional burden of relying on audience reception for income. But it was a good phase to go through.

DanitheCarutor

For comics it's never crossed my mind to submit anything for a contest, the prizes never catch my interest since I'd rather just buy something if I want it. I'm not much of a competitive person in general, if I do get like that it's usually for something fun that doesn't require as much stress, time and resources as art. (like sports or video games) A while back I saw two contests to win a digital drawing tablet, it was getting a lot of hype in the webcomic Twitter community, but I already have a tablet and almost never use it so the contests were kind of pointless for me. Even if the tablets were those fancy screen tablets you draw directly on. Not comic related, but when I was a teen I hung out on Gaia Online almost all day and partook in the art contests there to win items and gold. Drawing was just some fun thing back then since I didn't have to worry about cost of materials or the value of my time, so I indulged in those contests often. My mom used to get really mad at me wasting my "talent" and resources pretty much for free. Lol I still have all the avie drawings saved on my computer.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, Gaia contests were fun that way

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Speaking of contest, I did participate in an illustration fan contest for ADV (when it was still around), I found it while I was still a small Deviantart artist. I don't have strong hope of winning but when I did, my school kid self was excited. My work was appreciated and I made art for a series I loved. I felt a little victory. :) It's easier to draw for a fan series than make up an original that has obstacles stacked against me. But I might try to participate in a comic contest one day(edited)

DanitheCarutor

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) Fff Gaia was such a low stress site, I loved hanging out there. Getting those monthly special items was a while event.

carcarchu

I agree dani, i have never understood the point of art contests where the prize is tablet. what do you think they're drawing on to enter it??

DanitheCarutor

I think a lot of the people who do have contests for art supplies like that have sponsorships, but they're pretty pointless if you're good with what you got... and you just don't like competing in general.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It probably makes more sense with traditional media supplies since you run out of them all the time. But tablets... yeah

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I had kind of a similar early experience with contests as keii'ii. Went I was a kiddo, Tokyo Pop still existed and had their rising stars of manga contest. Seeing other Americans being published like that really took me from "I love these comics and drawing fan art and ocs for them" to "I could write my own stories with my own characters and other kids could buy them at the store and be inspired." My adult experience with contest had mostly been that they're a one way a good way to feel heart broken for a while X') I've got a lot of perfectionist tendencies, so loosing always feels really bad. Maybe also because I take a lot of pride in my work and I want to be recognized for it. And I think maybe winning a contest is kind of an easier way of feeling accomplished than a followed count or monthly site statistics? I'm not sure XD also it would just be cool to be able to tell people I'm an award winning comic artist XDXD Dealing with rejection/not winning is definitely something I've gotten better at. I'm hoping to make a small submission for that shonen jump contest that got posted here a few days ago. Not cuz I think I'll probably win anything, but it feel like a neat thing to do for myself. But also... Always got that secret hope of what if I did haha! XD

DanitheCarutor

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) In a way it's kind of redundant though? If you think about it you're using up your resources to get more, which would probably just be enough to refill the stock you used for the contest with a little extra. (depending on how much work you put into the illustration/comic) Unless the contest was for a year supply of 'X' you don't get much out of it. xP I can also see the tablet contest being good for people who can't afford to get one, or can't afford to upgrade if theirs is broken down and old, but yeah. It's not super useful if you already have a good functioning one. I know for some contests it's also the bragging rights, or some credibility when you're trying to get art/comic jobs, but it's just not my thing.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Aww I understand how you feel @mariah (rainy day dreams) you describe the same emotion I felt trying to enter comic submissions, wanting that chance to get it noticed and picked up. Yeah as long as you give it a try, at least a story is made!

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble

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lukas-dreemurr37 · 4 years

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1, 2, 5, 15, 25, 30 for artist asks!

✨ Do you prefer traditional drawing or digital? ✨

I personally prefer digital though I do love both. I’ll admit, I don’t draw traditionally as much as I did in school. Mostly because I find it more convenient to just be able to pull out my phone and have everything I need to be able to draw. Not to mention if I mess up I can easily get rid of said mistake. Also the convience of layers and the ability to be able to test things and if I don’t like it I can get rid of it. But yaaa

✨ How long have you been drawing? ✨

Um, well. I’ve kinda always loved to draw since elementary school. Like, whenever we had indoor recess for whatever reason, I always preferred to just sit and draw/doodle. I’ve been digitally drawing since mid 2017, though.

✨ What’s your favorite thing to draw? ✨

Well! I’d say mostly fandom stuff (like my favorite characters from the various fandoms I’m in) and ocs! Whether they’re my ocs or friends’ ocs. I also like drawing things for AUs I’ve created but I guess for the most part that can go under the fandom and oc umbrella haha. I don’t rlly tend to draw real people much, but the single exception to this right now is Jake Shears. I’ve drawn him quite a few times the last 6 or 7 years mostly because he’s such a talented and amazing person and he’s so nice and sweet and I love him so much and I’m getting off track oh shit oh fuck oh damn.

✨ How much does an average piece take you to complete? ✨

Uhhh, usually about 3-4ish hours. That includes minimal distractions, though. Longer if I’m constantly getting distracted, haha. But yeah, usually 3-4ish hours.

✨ Do you like to draw in silence or with music? ✨

Music! I almost always have music playing while I draw. Like I have music playing rn as I answer this lol. Usually tho just play Scissor Sisters, Jake’s solo songs, Chrono Trigger soundtrack (or from the musical), Undertale soundtrack (or from the musical), or Perfect Dark soundtrack. (Other music/songs too but those are my favorites to have playing while I draw.) And just. Draw whatever. Maybe some doodles or sketches.

✨ What inspires you to not just make art, but to be a better artist? ✨

My friends and favorite artists mostly. I see y’all’s art and I just. Feel so inspired. All my friends have such amazing art. I’m inspired that someday I may reach y’all’s level. At the moment my style is incredibly cartoony and for the moment I can assume it’s going to stay that way for awhile since it’s what I’m most comfortable with. (Don’t like the idea of changin’ it up haha) And yeah sometimes I go through periods where I’m not very happy where my art is but! It is what it is! Bottom line I aspire to be as amazing as y’all! Even with my cartoony-ass art style!

Also Jake Shears is a big inspiration to me, but he could go under “favorite artist” umbrella, even if he’s more so a musical artist rather than a visual artist (he has created little doodles tho before so I guess he could count). I’ve rambled about him before and how amazing and talented he is so I won’t go into too much detail hh

But he’s so unique and creative and sorely underrated, I just. Hh he’s so passionate about everything he makes and I aspire to reach that level of whatever I create, just. The amount of passion I put into it just radiates off said thing. That’s how it is with Jake and what he makes and I aspire to reach that level. But anyway, I’m sorry I talk about him a lot I just love him so much, it hurts ghsgsbdkdalq

Thank you for asking tho! Hopefully you don’t regret because I rambled about Jake bsgavdndakndpq

#asks #adellama 99 #thaNK YOU ILY #BTW YEA IT WENT THRU BUT MY BAD CUZ I WAS OUT ALL DAY

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mysticsparklewings · 4 years

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Draw This In Your Style!

Draw/Recreate This In Your Style, post the original art alongside it (on platforms that support it, elsewhere you can just link back to the original instead), and either tag it with #dtiySparkle or tag me, MysticSparkleWings (xxMysticWingsxx on Twitter) directly and I'll retweet/share/etc. it! No deadline, just create at your own pace!

____

You know, I constantly go back and forth on "celebrate milestones!" vs. "don't be that person that won't shut up about how many followers they have and the numbers and etc." Mostly because I usually find it annoying from other artists, even if I don't find the artist themselves annoying. It's complicated. I know it's important and in many cases helps grow a following further, but it also just gets exhausting, you know? Both to see it and to try to do it.

Still, I've been wanting to make a "Draw This In Your Style" (DTIYS) for a while now, but it didn't seem like the kind of thing to just do on a whim. It felt like there should be a reason for at least the first one, provided it went well enough to make me want to do more. I noticed a few weeks ago that I was approaching 1,000 followers on Twitter* and I saw an opportunity, knowing that 1. It would take me a while to finish the artwork (go big or go home, yes?) and 2. It would take a few days for the numbers to stabilize so that I would actually hold steady at 1,000+ and not be 1,000 one minute and 998 the next. (Followers go up and down like a see-saw over there)

*Thanks exclusively to Art Shares. I'm very sure I'd still have less than 100 if it weren't for those--and please don't be fooled by that number. 1,000 isn't teeny tiny, but in-depth interaction from a handful of people will always mean more to me than zero or minimal-at-best interaction from thousands/millions/etc, and frankly, my interaction over on Twitter is basically non-existent compared to the interaction I get here on dA, which precisely is why I prioritize dA over all other social media. It means more to me; it feels infinitely less passive.

But...I kinda didn't want that to be the only reason for the DTIYS. It just seemed...I don't know, cliche? Not right, somehow. Fortunately, the Twitter milestone happens to coincidence with I think I've finally stabilized around 300 followers on Instagram (after being stuck between 250 and 290 for months, consistently going up and down 2-3 people at a time), and I've also garnered over 400 watchers right here on dA.

The Twitter milestone is technically the biggest, but honestly, the dA one means a lot more to me. I thank each and everyone one of you, my fellow deviants, for thinking my art is worth the watch.

And I especially thank those of you--I'm sure you know who you are, I won't name names just in case anyone's not comfortable with that--that consistently fav and/or comment on my work. Your support and encouragement are why I keep doing this, despite the frustrations I may have along the way and aside from an innate need to create.

Speaking of which, if you're a loyal Sparkler I think now I'll get to the part you might know me best for; the long description of the artistic process!

Like I mentioned before, I noticed the milestone stuff a few weeks ago and thought now would be as good a time as any to get started on a DTIYS, so I started trying to brainstorm something that would be both fun for me to make and fun for others to recreate. I was having a little trouble on this front, so I took a trip to Pinterest and re-visited some boards I use to save potential draw ideas/inspiration on.

I was thinking I wanted to include a fairy since I've been wanting to get back into drawing them more regularly and fairies-via-Winx-Club is where I got my start here on dA and indirectly into getting more serious about my art in general. I was also thinking something with galaxies since those are usually fun to make and are a good way to make an otherwise plain or simple piece more interesting. I didn't want this to be too terribly complicated if I expected other people to draw it, but I also didn't want it to be too boring. And, of course, I was hoping for something I could lean into my mixed-media prowess with.

All that turned out to be quite the balancing act, but after some scrolling, I had some ideas and ended up with a sketch of a fairy in a teacup, with place-holder wings and a place-holder rose on the cup. The wings I knew would be easier to do the lines digitally (even if the final art was traditional, which I was planning on), and the rose I wanted to be slightly more sophisticated than my typical stencil-made roses, which I thought would also be easier to experiment with digitally. I was right on that front, thanks to some of the public domain images on PixaBay.

Beyond that, my original idea was fairly different from what you see here; I was thinking black hair, a fairly vampiric look, for the fairy, more typical butterfly wings, a red rose on the cup, and then an abstract galaxy wash, more watercolor-y and less saturated, for the background. And to be fair, that's still an interesting idea that I might return to at some point, but even as I worked on and finished the digital linework (fully planning to print them and then do what I wished with them traditionally, as has become a norm for me) something in the back of my mind told me that vision wasn't the right one; Not for this project, anyway.

Fortunately, I was a busy enough bee in between working on the lines for this that I partially had to step away from it to meet other time constraints and I could afford to step away from it and have some time to ponder what I wanted to do.

In my pondering, I kept coming back to the galaxy/constellation thing I've been experimenting with lately (Exhibits A, B, and C ). I hesitated at first since I knew for sure I didn't want to do the whole drawing that way and I wasn't entirely sure how to decided what to do with what.

Of course, after thinking about it a bit more, I decided I'd take a risk in doing the background and wings in the constellation style, and then somehow do the rest in a more traditional way. I'd have some more time to think about that while I was re-tooling the wings digitally for said constellation style, after having discovered that made life so much easier during my previous experiments with it.

I'd know from the beginning that I wanted to do metallic accents (most likely silver) on the cup and saucer, which in this case meant I'd need to use either watercolor or heavy-duty mixed media paper for them, and I definitely had to use watercolor paper for the wings/background. The mixed media will work for the galaxy technique, but the colors don't blend quite as nicely and I was concerned about how that might affect the overall look here.

Still, I didn't want to watercolor the fairy herself at least, which left me with a choice of alcohol markers or colored pencils. I was thinking pencils for the hair for texture, markers for the skin for the lack thereof. But I typically don't like using alcohol markers on watercolor paper. The additional texture feels too rough on the nib and it's almost like I can feel the paper soaking up extra ink.

I also thought that doing the background and the fairy on the same piece of paper was asking for a very big watercolor-y mess, so between that and the paper concerns, that led me eventually to deciding to split them up.

And somehow in there, the idea occurred to me that I could get a bit adventurous (read: crafty) and actually separate the various parts of the fairy and cup out a bit and not only solve my paper problem, but also makes things a little more interesting.

After yet more pondering (if you can say nothing else about my art, you cannot say it isn't well-pondered by the time it's finished!) I settled on having the layers as follows:

background/wings (watercolor paper)

back part of the saucer (mixed media paper)

the fairy (with her arm and bit of hair carefully plopped over the next layer; mixed media)

the cup (mixed media)

the front of the saucer (mixed media)

Or at least that was the plan, and if I discovered problems in this plan then I could adjust as necessary.

So I got to work on the background, which was fairly straight-forward. I layered on paint and blended to essentially my heart's content, and then let it dry overnight since it was getting late by the time I finished it, or rather the first layer. I came back to it the next day and layered on some more paint to fix some blending issues and darken the whole thing up some more.

While that second layer dried, I got to making the lines for the additional layers and cutting them out--uncolored for the time being, as I figured the layering would need to factor into that a bit--and setting how exactly they'd fit together. The only modifications to my plans I had to make, which I, fortunately, had the foresight to do while I was cutting, was to leave two little bumps at the "bottom" of the fairy (where her body meets the cup) so that she could sit probably as both in the cup but also with her hair and arm hanging over it. The little bumps were a sort of "grounding" behind the cup to hold the rest of her in place while the other pieces were wedged on top.

I hope that makes sense, it's a little hard to explain without seeing it for yourself.

Anyway. I'd also had the foresight to transfer an outline of the fairy and cup lines onto the background before I started painting, which helped with making sure everything was placed...semi-correctly...on the final piece.

I say semi correctly because despite my best efforts when I went to glue everything together it looked right in-person, but the digital scan would later reveal to me that in fact, the layered bits had all shifted slightly to the left and curved inward a bit more, like a right parathesis: ) But I'll come back to that in a minute.

Once I was convinced my layering gambit was going to work out, then I started toying with colors and ideas for the layers themselves. The clearest idea I had out of the gate was to do the rose in a galaxy style too, rather than just plain watercolor like I'd originally planned (teal for the leaf though because green wouldn't have fit with the rest of the palette and blue would've blended too well); either way, I figured it wouldn't pose much of a problem on the mixed media paper since it's such a small area. The biggest challenge would be the stars, but even then you could say the same thing: It's such a small area that star dispersion with a pen really wasn't that big of a challenge to make look convincingly like random star placement.

I went back and forth a bit on the other colors, but I ultimately decided that I liked the idea of soft purple skin and dark(ish) blue hair, maybe soft pink lips and a little blush, for the fairy herself. And I also decided to do a little warm-gray shading on the cup with markers, as opposed to just leaving it white.

The lips turned out so nicely I was tempted to try doing the blush with the same markers, but I have very mixed luck with marker blush (sometimes it blends nicely, other times I get a nice line despite my efforts), and so I decided to play it safe and do it later with pencils instead. Fortunately, the rest of the skin and the cup (both done with Copics specifically as that's where I most easily found the colors I needed) went nice and smoothly, as is the nature of markers on this mixed media paper. (Seriously; Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media works wonders with alcohol markers for layering and blending!!)

The hair was a little more complicated because of the color I was hoping for, but that didn't matter too much because half-way through I decided to change things up a bit and I added little bits of pink and purple into the mix, intentionally following the rest of the galaxy-ness of what I was doing. It's not much, but I think it was the right choice.

While I waited to make sure the cup was good and dry, I went to splatter town on the now-dry background, as was necessary for the galaxy look, and then used my phone to shine some extra light on the paper so I could see my lines and dots for the wings. And after giving the white gel pen a moment to dry, I then went back in with my PanPastel, as is custom, to make the wings glow. I have also now learned that a blending stump/tortillon is good for blending out the pastel in a tight space, while a dry paper towel or tissue works to semi-remove it if it goes on a bit too thick.

Everything, after drying, was then assembled and attached to the background with some handy-dandy tacky glue which was fortunately fairly quick-drying for liquid glue, stuck fairly well without me having to add a whole lot of it, and also not a sloppy glue mess everywhere.

I did have to carefully go back over some of my lines for the cup and hair after everything was assembled because I forgot to do so over the metallic paint and pencil wax before assembly, but it also worked out okay since a couple of corners for the hair got snipped a little short, so I could sort-of fix it by extended the corner on the paper underneath. (In hindsight this works a lot better in-person; on the undoctored scan the placement looks pretty off or incomplete)

And of course, with everything assembled, that brings me back to what I was saying about the scan earlier.

Like mentioned, everything had shifted a bit during placement and gluing, and I could more clearly see the lines I had missed in that process on the scan. Unfortunately for me, while in-person everything looks relativity fine, on the (undoctored) scan this shifting made the balance feel way off, at least to me. The fairy and cup were too far to the left, meanwhile, the ring wing stuck out too far on the bottom.

I fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with the scan, using the content-aware move tool half a dozen different ways before I conceded it just wasn't going to do what I wanted, and then my next-best idea was the extend the background to the left a bit. In doing that, I discovered the warp tool worked to my advantage for that, and so I decided I'd trying fiddling with it and see where it got me.

It's still not perfect, but it's better than it was. In the end, I used the warp tool to tweak the angle of each part of the wings and that made up for some of the balance problems without also compromising any of the lines (which was the biggest reason why the content-aware tool wasn't working; it kept messing up the lines or other parts of the drawing in the process). At the very least, I was able to do enough that it only really bothers me now when I start looking for the off-balance-ness.

I also ended up doing some minor touches, mostly just smoothing out certain lines and small tweaks, but once the balance problem was finally somewhat solved it was pretty much done. (Aside from, of course, me then also adding the words on top so people know what this is at only a moment's glance.)

The end result, both scan and traditional. I'm really happy with. The piece is plenty interesting to look at, but it's also not too complicated, especially when you break down the individual parts that make it up. (Literally and more figuratively.)

Thus, I can only hope others find it interesting-but-not-too-complicated enough to try their hand at recreating it. Even if no one takes me up on my "Draw This In Your Sparkle Style Challenge though, I enjoyed making this all the same and I'm really proud to share the art itself with you guys.

Hopefully though at least a few people will take a stab at it and I can focus on that and not explode from impatience in regards to various not-really-art-related things I'm currently waiting on.

____

#drawthisinyourstyle #dtiysparkle

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jeritaylorswade · 4 years

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DSA: Direct Selling and the Virtual Push because of COVID

“ Like most people, direct selling executives are crossing out travel and large in-person gatherings from their calendars. For an industry known for its relational appeal, eliminating the face-to-face factor should be crushing. But instead, many executives are reporting that they feel more connected to their teams than ever before and are experiencing record engagement.”

“I’ve been involved in more field events in the last two months than I have been since I started the company in 2014,” says MONAT President Stuart MacMillan. Connecting virtually has become part of the daily workflow for MacMillan and many direct selling executives like him, as their teams and distributors take part in trainings while experiencing the benefits of connecting from home for both small- and large-scale events. “I still don’t believe there’s any replacement for face-to-face, and our people are itching to get back together—both employees and the field,” MacMillan says. “But I think what we’ve learned is that between those opportunities to get together, there are better ways to do this.”

Increasing Engagement with Function and Fun

This shift to virtual has opened the event doors wider, allowing people who would normally be limited by family obligations or financial flexibility to participate. For SeneGence Founder and CEO Joni Rogers-Kante, virtual events have drastically impacted the company’s attendance numbers. “Only a percentage of distributors go to our events, and ours was never a huge percentage,” Rogers-Kante says. “But we have five times more distributors than we have ever had at a single seminar because it was online, and they just got to sit down and login.”

The SeneGence virtual event sought to emulate a lot of the function—as well as fun—of a live event by passing out virtual awards that instantly appeared across social media channels as names were announced, conducting drawings and shipping prizes to distributors’ houses. While their next company-wide in-person event has been postponed, the SeneGence team is already implementing plans for a conference that will take place in Tulsa. “We think it will be the largest event we’ve ever had because people are so excited to get back together, and we have so many new distributors who can’t wait to actually physically show up at a SeneGence event. We just know it’s going to blow everything we’ve done out of the water.”

“We have five times more distributors than we have ever had at a single seminar because it was online, and they just got to sit down and login.”—Joni Rogers-Kante, SeneGence Founder & CEO

10 Cents on the Dollar, 10 Times the Reach

Twenty-four hours after a recent Mannatech virtual live event, the entire 12-hour event was available for replay. The 6,500 unique visitors, representing a ballpark of 8,000 to 12,000 viewers who watched the virtual event live, quickly multiplied as people shared the content and participated after the event had ended. A traditional Mannatech event hosts 1,200 to 1,500 people.

“For one-tenth of the expense, we were able to connect with six to ten times the number of people we would have connected with,” says Mannatech CEO and President Al Bala. And although event product sales were one-third of the normal amount, Bala says it was offset by the savings in product transport to the event and the convenience of shipping it directly to consumers’ homes. “It was more efficient and definitely more profitable sales than we would have had normally.”

“Even though we aren’t all together, we see you!”

“Going virtual” has a simple ring to it, but executives in the driver’s seat know the challenging behind-the-scenes experience of sifting through broadcasting options and platforms. Arbonne, who planned to launch 13 new products at their live convention this year, suddenly had only a fraction of their usual preparation time to devise communication strategies that would build excitement while playing well through the screen. Social media, which has always assumed a role at Arbonne events, was now critical, and the company leaned hard into these social integrations. To allow the executive team space to focus on engaging with attendees through the chat function, much of the content was prerecorded.

“Virtual GTC 2020 was created in about four weeks, and because of the incredibly pressing deadline, we absolutely learned as we went,” says Arbonne Senior Director of Communications Kristen Gruber. Gruber’s social media team developed teasers, quizzes and other interactive content that posted throughout the event. “This provided a level of engagement to our audience to really say, ‘Even though we aren’t all together, we see you!’”

Despite the fog of uncertainty during the first few weeks of the stay at home orders, LegalShield dove headfirst into creating virtual experiences and may have been the first direct sales company in North America to pivot to an entirely live-streamed international convention on April 4. When it became clear that their planned live event would not take place, the company transformed the auditorium in their Oklahoma headquarters into a full studio with only three weeks’ lead time. From there, they offered 16 hours of training content and recognition from over 40 field leaders and live hosts to more than 10,000 viewers. In addition, more than 5,000 associates joined their two-day Zoom Breakout Trainings before the larger event.

“For one-tenth of the expense, we were able to connect with six to ten times the number of people we would have connected with.”— Mannatech CEO & President Al Bala.

“Our field leaders are extremely creative in using Zoom as a recruiting and training platform,” says LegalShield Network Division President Don Thompson. “They use breakout rooms to host associates and their guests after a presentation for a Q&A session and for associate interaction.”

To not only survive, but thrive in this unprecedented environment, LegalShield’s CEO Jeff Bell has cast a vision for the company as a “digital disruptor” who uses technology to fulfill their company’s mission. The focus for the company is not on their limitations, but rather on how they can innovate and improve and use the tools available to spread their message and keep the field engaged and excited. “We are not at the level of Netflix or CBS,” Bell says, “but we are getting smarter and more successful in producing engaging content.”

As companies expand their live-streams to their international markets, the existing cultural and language barriers will have to be considered. Elepreneurs Chief Impact Officer Garrett McGrath, who also serves as President of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals, is watching as these virtual events begin to take shape on a global, multi-lingual scale. Although these broader events are more complex, McGrath is encouraged by the existing platforms that can do the heavy lifting for the direct sales industry.

Vimeo, a tool the ANMP relies on for its broadcasts, is paired with remote translators who use the Interactio app—which McGrath describes as a flawless application—to tap into the livestream and recreate the content in their listeners’ language.

“All you have to have is a good originating broadcast quality, and that becomes the place from where everybody views the actual convention, even though we’re bringing people in from all over the world,” McGrath says.

Caution: Challenges Ahead

Everyone is more than eager to get back to normal and industry leaders are at the front of the line, hurriedly trying to recreate their office environment from thousands of satellite home offices scattered across the globe where their leaders live and now work. But as the world has quickly discovered, working separately but together has come with its own set of unique challenges, and large virtual events are not immune to these foibles.

Security has been a hot topic for Zoom users (LegalShield reported instances of “Zoom Bombers” during their first few training sessions before password protections halted any further disruptions), but for other, more complex broadcasting platforms, hacking isn’t as much of a concern. The security concern, according to Katapult Events President Erik Johnson, should be privacy. “I wouldn’t put anything out on a stream that you wouldn’t want the world to see,” Johnson says. “Someone at home is likely recording it whether you want them to or not, and it’ll be on YouTube by the end of the day.” For companies who live and die by FTC compliance, it’s a stern warning for leaders. Even if a distributor thinks they’re in a private virtual room with only top-tier leaders, there is great potential that their words will become public.

“Our field leaders are extremely creative in using Zoom as a recruiting and training platform. They use breakout rooms to host associates and their guests after a presentation for a Q&A session and for associate interaction.”— LegalShield Network Division President Don Thompson.

There will also be a fluency issue for older distributors who aren’t used to virtual interactions and for whom these new changes will require a steep learning curve. “I feel sorry for companies that are older and already have their culture set in stone because they’re going to have to switch at some point to this,” RevitalU CEO Andrew McWilliams says.

Even though virtual events are notoriously less expensive than their in-person counterparts, going too cheap can be very obvious. “A lot of people think they can just hop on Zoom and be fine,” says Johnson, who now produces SeneGence’s virtual events. The result of a frugal presentation, however, is fuzzy resolution, glitchy streaming and a visible mouse pointer on shared screens—not the high-quality presentation multimillion- and multibillion-dollar brands should attach their names to.

For the April SeneGence virtual event, Johnson utilized Vimeo for live streaming at the Enterprise level and set up studios at the Oklahoma and California SeneGence offices. With his crew and all of their gear at both locations, they connected the two offices live on camera for a high def broadcast that looked like prime time tv.

As physical events reemerge in the months to come, Johnson warns that virtual events should never be just a recorded version of the live event. Instead, he encourages leaders to plan for physical and virtual hybrids. For example, his crew is building a side stage that is reminiscent of the ESPN Sports Desk for the host of the virtual watch party at one of his client’s upcoming in-person events. Even though one large event will be happening, two different audiences with different attention spans will be watching. By having a dedicated host, he’ll be able to accommodate both.

Facebook Live Fright

As leaders who are used to delivering speeches from stages in loud rooms begin broadcasting from their kitchen table or home office to an audience they can’t see, they’re discovering that stage fright and Facebook Live fright are two different fears and require two different skill sets.

McGrath described his feelings about hosting an eight-hour live event as somewhere between nerve-wracking and exciting. He and wife Sylvia, Elepreneurs Chief Experience Officer, introduced live speakers and announced prerecorded segments and then watched comments and emojis unfold in real-time over an eight-hour stretch.

The stamina required to create these engaging content segments back-to-back for that length of time is similar to expecting sprints in the middle of a marathon. “The biggest concern you always have is: can you keep people’s attention for 12 and a half hours?” Bala says.

But it’s not just the audience’s attention that leaders are concerned about. “I don’t think you can underestimate what it does to the speaker’s energy to talk to a crowd,” Bala says. “When you’re a speaker, it engages you at a different level. You can’t replicate that virtually.”

An Attention Shift

Change can be a dirty word in an industry rooted in tradition, and that’s why McWilliams is choosing to embrace this time of disruption. As people readily accept digital platforms out of necessity, McWilliams says this temporary shift to virtual will now be permanent for his young organization. “I’m never going back,” he says. “It has been the most cost-effective thing we’ve ever done.” In April, RevitalU experienced double-digit percentage growth over March. After their first major virtual event on May 2, the company was up almost 55 percent over April by May 7. “It does not feel like a blip on a radar screen,” he says. “What it feels like is a shift of attention.”

These live virtual events with openly visible comment boxes bring with them a lack of control, but the effect, McGrath says, is unparalleled. “We were very aware that people don’t want a presentation; they want a conversation,” he says. “There’s a risk with a conversation because you don’t know what the other person is going to say, but that’s why people show up: because it hasn’t gone through the corporate whitewash and hasn’t been overly sanitized. It’s spontaneous and real.”

“We were very aware that people don’t want a presentation; they want a conversation.”– Garrett McGrath, Elepreneurs Chief Experience Officer

In the short term, physical events aren’t possible, but even when the restrictions from the global pandemic are lifted, some executives are expecting a slow return as people remain gun-shy about close social interaction and even handshakes. McGrath says the question of when things will go back to normal is the wrong question. “The real question is, between now and then, can we document a plan that people can rely on as proven to work today?”

Is Virtual Really a Success?

There is no industry-wide metric for success when it comes to this new switch to virtual. Still, as many leaders face pent up demand and anxiety swirling around the new normal that has been thrust upon them, the measurement for success will depend upon each company’s specific goals and missions.

For affiliate-focused companies, comment engagement on a Facebook Live event could provide a gauge for distributor reach. Many executives are now reporting a sharp increase in sales during and after virtual events—when distributors would usually be socializing or traveling home—and are using that as their new benchmark for success.

Virtual can’t mimic the adrenaline rush of a packed arena, but industry leaders are approaching this new playing field with cautious optimism. For now, there is convincing emerging data that pivoting to virtual is doing little to harm the health of direct selling companies, and might actually be making a once-in-a-lifetime paradigm shift that offers a glimpse into where the future of the industry might be headed.

“This is here to stay,” Bala says. “It’s just going to become another tool in our toolbox to create that engagement with our associates and for associates to create engagement among themselves.” DSN

VirBELA: The New Virtual Headquarters

Virtual events may be booming, but it will be finding ways to digitally recreate the ordinary daily interactions that will be key for direct selling to weather this storm of isolation and uncertainty. RevitalU has found its solution through VirBELA, a technology platform that allows companies to create a virtual headquarters. With VirBELA, people can come together formally for events, like a conference room where they’ll hear keynote speakers, as well as informally, like in virtual hallways between sessions where they can start up casual conversations.

Through avatars and multi-dimensional rooms, users can interact digitally in a personal way that doesn’t create the Zoom fatigue that comes with endless video chats. “It gives you autonomy to interact with whom you want to interact with and go where you want to go,” says VirBELA Founder and President Alex Howland, Ph.D. “When you read a book, you’re not paying attention to the black and white words or pages; you’re getting immersed into the book. The same thing happens with VirBELA. Your brain starts to feel like you’re physically in the room with colleagues.

Glenn Sanford, eXp Realty Founder and CEO, has been using VirBELA as his company’s virtual campus since 2016. During that time, he grew his number of agents from 900 to 29,000 from the virtual headquarters that he mans from the casita over his garage. In April of this year, his success with the virtual platform led him to join the VirBELA team as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer so that he could extend his knowledge and experience with simulated campuses to other business leaders navigating these unprecedented waters.

Sanford offered advice to McWilliams, one of the newest CEOs to become an adopter of the VirBELA technology, by explaining that the simulated campus will only work if McWilliams insists that people meet him in his virtual Planet RevitalU office, rather than picking up the phone. “We have an office, and I don’t care if it opens back up,” McWilliams says. “We’re going to make the physical office voluntary. For our business practices and working together, it’s going to be done online.”

Virtual Event Tips

Take your virtual event to the next level with these tips from production expert and consultant to the direct selling industry, Erik Johnson of Katapult Events.

“How good your first event is will determine if they buy your next.” — Erik Johnson, Katapult Events President

Forget Zoom. Use Vimeo to live stream.

Prerecording some content eliminates the potential for user error, streamlines transitions and trims the boring out of stories.

Use permissions to put events and event extras behind paywalls or passwords. Erik uses Phinkific.com to preserve special VIP treatments, like a Q&A with the keynote speaker, for specific distributor ranks and above.

Hire a professional. Picture-in-picture, title animation and HD screen shares matter.

Show others what they’re missing. Even if you’re charging for a virtual event, share a short segment onto Facebook Live for things like new product announcements. At the end of the segment, offer viewers the opportunity to buy access to the rest of the event. It’s a double bang for your production buck and a quick upsell.

Everything has to be faster. What might have taken you four minutes to say on a live stage, should take you 90 seconds when speaking to a virtual audience.

Shoot with two cameras. A simple wide shot and a close up will give your broadcast movement and will be more likely to hold attention.

A high-quality mic is just as important as good video. If they can’t hear you well, they will leave.

Don’t be afraid to hire an outside emcee. Professional talent can take your event from stagnant to funny, drive the energy of the show, and be in charge of throwing it to different hosts—chief executives, distributors—to keep the show moving.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Get rid of the extra stuttering and “um” sounds and give your team the chance to feel the flow of the event.

Double-dip your filming days. When broadcasting virtual events, you’ll likely have the members of your executive teams and an elaborate, staffed studio all in one place. Use this opportunity to film upcoming product launches, expand your expert interviews and update your opportunity presentation.

Five Ways to Simplify Your Pivot to Virtual

Don’t confuse virtual with automated. Even though there are no smoke machines and spotlights, this is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of environment. Building an interactive experience is key to getting virtual events right.

Prepare your team. Expect worst-case scenarios and plan how they’ll be addressed on the spot to protect your brand.

Choose your comment comfort level. Instantly visible, unfiltered feedback may complement the tone of a keynote address, or it might exacerbate the awkwardness of lackluster attendance. Pick an audience participation level that matches the event vibe.

Tap into existing partner platforms. Seamlessly charge registration for large events and automatically capture potential customer contact information. (Eventbrite, PayPal, Pardot and HubSpot are good leads for these functions)

Deliver an in-person experience. Pick two or three elements of your usual in-person events that can be creatively replicated while apart. If distributors have come to expect a lavish lunch break at events, send restaurant or food delivery gift cards to registrants ahead of time. These small gestures will build community while making a memorable impact.

#SeneGence goes Virtual #DSA #direct sales #direct selling #directsales #direct marketing #senegence distributor #joni rogers-kante #Zoom #virtual meetings #Jeri Taylor-Swade #cuppa with the queen

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nemirutami · 6 years

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[Royalty/Retainer AU] Noble Haru, and her retainer Ryuji!

I’ve had these two in concept stages for maybe... 2 months. They were much harder to design than the rest of the characters for the AU (Haru was practically the worst, since most her sketches were traditional. These are just a handful of what I can show digitally), but taking inspo from their personas definitely helped in picking colors and keeping certain elements to help give them fitting designs within their AU region.

Backstories and vitals under the cut, outlined by @straylize, and any additional information will be shared on the RRAU blog.

Ryuji vitals:

DOB: Justizion 3, 745

Age: 24

Height: 175cm (5’9”)

Birthplace: Astarte

Current Residence: Astarte

Weapon: Clubs

Haru vitals:

DOB: Mori 5, 744

Age: 25

Height: 158cm (5’2”)

Birthplace: Astarte

Current Residence: Astarte

Weapon: Axes

Haru and Ryuji’s stories have been incredibly intertwined from the outset. Originally, Ryuji wasn’t meant to be Haru’s retainer. That role was initially intended for a young man named Sugimura; at least, that was how her father, Governor Kunikazu Okumura envisioned it. She was raised obedient and demure, the way she was taught a lady and future Governness “should” be, though beneath all of that sweet, saccharine politeness was a girl who really wished to live her life a bit more freely.

She felt like something of a caged bird, and Sugimura did nothing to encourage what she truly wanted. He was more of a loyal lapdog to Kunikazu than a true protector of Haru, but her upbringing left her unable to truly fight against it.

Haru was trained in very basic self-defense, but she found catharsis in swinging the axe used to chop up wood for the bonfires created on the beach during festivals and other celebrations. To this day, she’s not trained in wielding it properly, though she knows through someone dear to her that there is an axe-wielding retainer in Bufula whom she’d like to be trained by one day.

In any case, it was at the age of 12 that she first met Ryuji, Ann, and Shiho; the three of them were childhood friends, and commoners with no obvious ties to the nobles of Astarte. They were free and funloving, though she often only observed from a distance, not knowing too much about them or their lives as commoners, only wishing that she could partake in their fun. Still, she went about her business, speaking to them in passing at times and masking her longing; though Ryuji especially always seemed to ignore her noble status and offered to include her, she never took them up on their offers.

Until that fateful day, when she was 15; Ryuji 14.

A noble of Astarte ten years her senior, Suguru Kamoshida, was propositioning for her hand in marriage. Kunikazu wasn’t opposed to it, though not sold on it, either. There were rumors of him that circulated through the adult population of nobles. Some said he was lecherous, though most believed he sought higher power. He was known to be selfish and egotistical, but handsome enough that many of the fair nobles wished that he would ask for their hand in marriage. Most could not corroborate any of the claims, and his outwardly charming nature made it easy for Kamoshida to swing people’s opinions of him—including Kunikazu Okumura himself.

He planned to use that charm to seek power, as quiet rumors stated. His intent from the outset had been to win the favor of the Okumuras, so he could have Haru’s hand in marriage. Once she came into the role of Governness, he could use his own strength and skill to overpower her and take the role over Governor for himself, and with a beautiful, caged bird of a bride at his side to cater to his every desire.

It wasn’t his wish for power that was his downfall, though. It was his lecherous nature—he was the sort to force himself on girls; usually commoners, where he could lord his power and influence over them in order to keep them quiet from his advances.

Ann and Shiho were two such victims; the only other who knew of those sexual advances was Ryuji, who gained a severe amount of contempt for Kamoshida and the noble lifestyle that defended assholes like him.

But that fateful day arrived for him too.

Haru went on an outing, a tentative “date” with Kamoshida, despite her discomfort with a man she had little interest in, one who was much older and more experienced, and had none of the charms that appealed to her. There was little in the way of suspicion about his nature so much as she wasn’t interested in him for any other reason than agreeing to do this at her father’s request. It started with dinner and followed with a walk.

That walk that led to a quiet alley. A walk that led to Kamoshida pinning Haru against the wall, whispering lewd words into her ear, and trying to guide her hands to lewder places.

His advances were stopped only by the fact that Ryuji wanted to use that alley to cut through and get home. And when he saw Kamoshida there with Haru, he was furious. He knew who Haru was, naturally. They’d met plenty, and she was the daughter of the Governor. A hot-blooded teenage boy like him couldn’t help but admire her at least a little, even if he treated her just as he did anyone else their age.

He couldn’t stand idly by, seeing Kamoshida trying to defile the future Governess for his own twisted needs, and having not forgiven him for what he’d done to Ann and Shiho, as well. This distracted Kamoshida enough to allow Ryuji to pull him away from Haru. Ryuji became his target, and he knew more about Ryuji than Ryuji was willing to admit.

Ryuji lived his life as a commoner, but that wasn’t all there was to him. He was the son of a peasant woman and a noble. Kamoshida knew this, threatening to reveal that relationship that Ryuji chose to keep hidden in order to protect his mother from further trouble, while also protecting his father’s reputation and staying out trouble… Kamoshida’s threats sent him off the deep end, though, the fact that he was trying to leverage that information to try and get Ryuji to leave so he could continue to assault Haru was just too much. Ryuji swung, but Kamoshida was stronger, shoving him to the ground and digging a heel into his leg until the bone snapped.

After that, things changed. Haru desperately wanted Ryuji as her protector in place of Sugimura, having seen that Ryuji protected her out kindness rather than obligation; though Kunikazu refused, citing that someone who couldn’t protect her once already would never be suited for the role.

Ryuji was determined, though. Something sparked in him that day; seeing the terror in Haru’s eyes gave him a purpose. He always believed in protecting those who needed it, but he learned that he never wanted to see someone like Haru in that kind of pain. There was a strange, mutual understanding that came to exist between them that had little to do with status or nobility; even then, Ryuji swore up and down he would protect her as a commoner, not using his noble blood or status to win Kunikazu’s favor. Eventually, he did. It took him nearly two years of recovery, learning how to operate around the weaknesses his leg had, and learning how to manage his temper a bit better.

Not much better, but a bit. Over the time that Ryuji recovered, Haru fell pretty hard for him, harboring a seemingly unrequited crush on him, which she has held onto for all of these years. They began to develop on the night he saved her, and his loyalty, determination, and devotion have only caused those feelings to grow. Ryuji is not only her protector, but her best friend and confidant; she tells him just about everything, and he’s the only person who indulges her in her need for freedom.

Even if he worries for his own safety when she wields the axe. He knows of her wild side, which is something only he has ever seen, and even if he’s a bit scared of it, it’s something he finds charming. Though he hasn’t acknowledged his own feelings up until the present, it’s not because he wouldn’t date or marry her. He doesn’t really care about those social conventions, and he would protect her no matter what anyway.

To this point, he hasn’t figured out yet the whole of his feelings, even though he’s been at her side for the better part of ten years. He’s dated other people in that time, but always ended those relationships because he felt it took time away from Haru. And maybe because on his dates with those people, he could always feel fiery eyes burning into the back of his skull.

There is one exception to that rule—one person that eventually caught Ryuji’s interest, that didn’t draw Haru’s ire—

A person who would eventually change their lives and how they view love and even how they address their feelings for each other. But that’s a story for another day, another background all its own.

#Ryuji Sakamoto #haru okumura #ryuharu #persona 5 #rrau

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