what are your go-to resources for phantom blood fashion historical accuracy...... ...

ok I'm glad you asked this because I've been writing up a whole other post on dio's fashion sense and i wasn't sure how much of the period's fashion trends to explain since I didn't want to make an assumption that nobody knows anything about late victorian fashion. this will be a good reference post for me...and you... and anyone else who wants to use it.

regardless; I hate to say it but the best way to start drawing period clothing is to do a little reading on the fundamentals of [late] victorian dress because it will seriously assist you in the long run, e.g., you won't have to scratch your head and spend time wondering why you keep coming across two different lapel types on tailcoat fashion plates if you're aware that both peak tips and shawl collars were in vogue in the late 1880s and the '90s.

I'll put some basic information that I've collected for myself here so you don't have to go looking for it; I'm going to write this assuming you're a newborn baby deer poking your nose into the victorian era for the first time in your life fully unaware of the customs.

reference links for the wayfarer so you don't have to scroll all the way to the bottom:

Etiquette books. Look for anything written in the 80s/90s; again, period trends change. There's usually always a section on how men should be dressing on different occasions (weddings, funerals, daily casual travel, etc.) in these. In an ideal world one would only have to reference books written/published in London, however I've found that there are many more from US. This is fine though IMO, there was a lot of cross-talk between countries due to the implementation of the telegraph and hence a lot of etiquette standards are "universal" (it's why fashion between EU/US/AU can look pretty similar at the same time--they were all talking to each other). If there's a difference between the "New York" way of doing things and the "London" way of doing things, the authors usually point this out. kind of funny. I love reading these, they're also very good for understanding the general quirks of late Victorian society and how the standards at the time characterize their behavior.

The National Portrait Gallery (link is an advanced search; you can change the dates. I set the results to be located in "london")

Victoria & Albert museum online gallery

The Met museum online gallery (in general for clothes on mannequins, but they also list an archive of fashion plates here, separated by year. A lot of them are misfiled though so be wary of that)

Alamy website. genuinely one of the most all-encompassing resources I've used, I use it for everything and especially when I'm into period pieces. "boy 188*" "man 1880s portrait" "man 188* suit" etc. you find a lot of illustrations from the time period this way too. it fucking rules. my computer is on the brink of crashing 24/7 because I keep too many alamy tabs open at all times. A lot of really good Vanity Fair illustrations are on here too, just plug it in with a year and see what pops up.

Sites like this (Gentleman's Gazette) with little articles giving a run-down of period clothing can be helpful...... to an extent. idk. I don't really trust them. GG is solid for the most part and so is The Black Tie Blog and Victorian Web, but I've spotted too many errors on other sites to trust anything they say wholesale. Fashion Institute of Technology is worth mentioning as well, though, despite their coverage on men's fashion being pretty brief. Goes by decade, though, with a lot of information on women/children's fashion, too (it's very interesting! I linked their 1880s fashion rundown, highly recommend going through it, especially the Aestheticism segment). TL;DR: My advice when it comes to website hopping is "stick with primary sources".

How to Read a Suit (A Guide to Changing Men’s Fashion from the 17th to the 20th Century) by Lydia Edwards. Look this up on libgen. It's broken down into chunks of decades; REAAALLLYY recommend reading the introduction to "Chapter 4: 1860-1899". Probably the most historically informative consolidation of relevant fashion information in one place. Very interesting writing, pretty short too. If you're gonna read one thing out of this whole list, make it this.

The Dictionary of Fashion History by Valerie Cumming. look this up on libgen. for when you don't understand what some article or book is talking about and google will not give you answers. as it is it wont to do. (could not wrap my head around top frocks until this point; the wikipedia article for it is quite frankly embarrassing.)

here's my google drive of fashion for this time period, I had just been keeping these on local folders but I think drive would be better so I started transferring them here... compiled myself. this is a "work in progress" and will be updated.

I am going to write a bit about men's fashion at the time period under the cut because I think it's important to understand, if you don't know much about the victorian period, that the dress decorum was heavily emphasized and if you wore the wrong ensemble in the wrong setting everyone WOULD think you were ill-bred and would not invite you back into their home again. because just seeing you exist like that was impolite and quite frankly very embarrassing to witness. these resources are great but not if you don't know where and when these guys would be wearing these things... for instance i know the fashion plate archive there are some drawings of men in livery and you may be tempted to put dio in something like this because WOW! they do look kind of cool. with the big brass buttons... but I think he would more readily batter another human being physically than dress up like a butler at a dinner party and get mistaken for a butler. it's the little things.

first thing: you were expected to dress differently for different times of day. This consists of: morning dress, afternoon dress (semi-formal; not really "mandatory" except at special events, like weddings, at least for men), and evening dress (anything past 6 o'clock or "by candle light" is the general rule).

here are overview excerpts from Modern Etiquette in Public and Private published by Frederick Warne and Co. in 1887:

and excerpts from The Complete Bachelor: Manners for Men by Walter Germain, written in 1896:

Cecil B. Hartley states in his Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (1860) that "by dress we show our respect for society at large, or the persons with whom we are to mingle".

He advised men that there were “shades of being ‘dressed;’ and a man is called ‘little dressed,’ ‘well dressed,’ and ‘much dressed,’ not according to the quantity but the quality of his coverings.”

Black was "the" color. As Lydia Edwards writes in How to Read a Suit (2020), "while it is unrealistic to imagine that all men everywhere only wore black, the acceptable color palette was certainly more limited at this point than it had been for the first half of the century. The rising professional middle classes seemed to embrace a centuries-old association with black for certain professions, which perhaps made this an inevitable choice for the evolving and expanding world of work in the nineteenth century."

I'm going to add illustrations now; humbly request you ignore how terrible the paint canvases i threw things in. Things to note moving forward:

there were three different types of shirt collars in vogue at the time: stiff, high stand collars that hugged your neck, wing-tip collars, and one that's closer to the "regular" collars you typically see nowadays (banker collar). don't really see the last one in any of the fashion plates but you do see it in portraits.

Do note that walking sticks were commonplace and in fact expected to be touted around, hence why they (in addition to umbrellas) keep reappearing in the illustrations;

(1890)

Frock coats were the most "formal" of the daywear. When going through the National Portrait Gallery website you'll notice that most men are wearing either a morning coat or frock coat; the lounge coat was still too informal to be considered for how much money you'd spend to get a photograph taken. Don't you want to look nice?

Lounge suits, again, were the ultimate "informal"; they were viewed with distain by the frock-coat. (here's a good thread on this, actually; i love this fucking guy lol). really, really don't think Dio would be wearing one that often. maybe a double-breasted one? i really think he's too much of a snob to wear what he sees as filthy poor people rags. appearance is everything, etc.

~~~

waistcoats you have a lot of freedom/liberty with, at least in regard to design (except for evening waistcoats). different lapel shapes, no lapels... unfortunately shifting into the later decades of the 19th century it was pretty much expected that the fabric of your waistcoat match the fabric of your suit (along with your trousers; called a "ditto suit"). jonathan would conform to this mode IMO, i don't think it stops dio. he has a vision & his waistcoats are likely very extensively detailed. actually I just remembered that we do see one as depicted by araki's tenuous grasp of historical fashion and it is. awesome. i, too, love to wear cravats directly underneath my shirt

(1891 / 1892)

~~~

Evening dress is (comparatively) much more simple & men had much less artistic freedom in their choice of dress: black tailcoat, white gloves, white tie, waistcoat in either black or white, black button boots. Regardless, it was its own beast in the fact that this was something that you really weren't supposed to dick around with. (Dio would've found a way, but that's a discussion for a post that isn't crashing every 3 minutes.) From A Gentleman by Maurice Francis Egan (1893):

If a young man is invited to a dinner or to a great assembly in any large city, he must wear a black coat. A gray or colored coat worn after six o’clock in the evening, at any assembly where there are ladies, would imply either disrespect or ignorance on the part of the wearer. In most cities he is expected to wear the regulation evening dress, the “swallow-tail” coat of our grandfathers, and, of course, black trousers and a white tie. In London or New York or Chicago a man must follow this last custom or stay at home. He has his choice. The “swallow-tail” coat is worn after six o’clock in the evening, never earlier, in all English-speaking countries.

(1885 (misfiled) / 1888 / 1888 / 1890)

MET evening suit ca. 1888; different aspects of the ensemble displayed solo at this link.

In the 80s the "dinner jacket" ("tuxedo" in US) was introduced. It was used for more informal occasions.

final evening dress "tips":

~~~

Outerwear was pretty varied… you can get a pretty wide dynamic of form depending on choice of coat, so keep that in mind. chesterfields tended to be pretty formless, top frocks a bit more fitted. Length/density would change depending on season, too.

~~~

Children's fashion:

end notes:

everyone would be wearing suspenders, not belts; belts were pretty much only worn with military uniform at this time (except in america)

sweater vests were really only considered sportswear until the first few decades of the 1900s. they would not be wearing these casually under jackets, they'd be wearing waistcoats

button boots were buttoned using a special button hook. video demonstration

NOTE: trousers being "creased" began to be more in vogue in the 90s; this is because they finally invented the trouser press. read article for more information--you sometimes see creases in the 80s, really not before then though. look at how they bunch at the knee (c.1880s)!

When it comes to gloves, different colors denoted different occasions to wear them. In the text screenshots provided in previous sections, it usually states which colors are appropriate for whichever situation. The paragraph I am about to end this on is relatively useless, but I thought I'd include it anyway:

anonymous: no. 27 screams Pierre 👀

— it really does. i actually got a few sent in for pierre so i'm gonna bunch this prompt and “good girl" together bc it just felt right and i got carried away writing for him 🙏 (and i had to re-upload this because i couldn't edit the ask after posting, sorry!)

pierre gasly x you (femreader) | 1.1k 18+ minors dni

Pierre was a menace to society; a playboy, someone you swore you would never give yourself to again – no matter how charming those steely blue eyes could be. They were agonisingly alluring at the best of times but you’d been celibate, by choice, for months now, so much as a brisk wind making your thighs clench together.

You were borderline cock-staved, embarrassingly so and when Pierre, your friend, invited you to a club night he was hosting, you should’ve said no.

A polite decline and a promise to catch up with him next time he was home in Milan would’ve sufficed but you couldn’t. Your fingertips had a mind of their own, swiftly texting back a simple ‘see you there’ before tearing your wardrobe apart to find something to wear, desperate to impress and to find someone, anyone to put you out of your own self-inflicted misery.

“But why would you do that?”

Pierre couldn’t comprehend your staunch declaration of abstinence, baffled by the decision to starve yourself from something so good, so enjoyable. It was something he hoped he would never have to do, god-willing.

“Um, because the last guy I was dating fucked his secretary…”

Pierre almost laughed at your response, not because what had happened to you was funny, hell, he almost put a hit out on the guy – he laughed because of how ludicrous that relationship was to begin with. You deserved more than some washed up tech dude, fumbling his way through Italy trying to scam a bunch of old people who didn’t know how to use the Internet. You deserved a man, a real man.

“Why exactly is that funny to you?”

“It’s not,” Pierre cleared his throat, “Darling, that guy was an asshole, a scumbag… I told you that a million times.”

You rolled your eyes at his reply, “Not really looking for an ‘I told you so’ from you of all people, P.”

Pierre was quick to hold his hands up in defence, realising that you were actually hurt by this asshole and he didn't need to add to that.

“Eh, I’m not telling you that. I’m saying that you should want for more and at least find someone who can satisfy you like you deserve...” He was testing you, watching for your reaction and he got one, quirked brow and pursed lips.

“When did I say anything about not being satisfied?” You were curious to know when you had ever aired that unfortunate tid-bit to the man beside you.

“You didn’t have to, ma belle. I’ve known you. I know what satisfied looks like in those eyes. I’ve seen it.”

His blue irises were unyielding, threatening almost, tempting you back into the arms of the man who had sworn himself to you. Sure, he fucked around and sampled most of Italy but you were the pinnacle of his fickle heart; you were his.

“Remind me again.”

Three simple words ignited the simmering desire deep within Pierre’s soul, eyes darting across your face as he caressed your warm, rosy cheek in his hand. He was soft with you, careful not to break you in the chaos of his want but when your lips crashed onto his, he knew you burned for him too; desperate to feel something again, with him. Your fingers grappled his short beard, stubble tickling your skin as he deepened the kiss, tongue battling against one another, starved for passion.

Pierre subtly inched back, lips hovering over yours as he whispered, “Where should I fuck you? Your choice.” His eyes flickered between yours, waiting for an answer while he savoured the way your pupils dilated in the darkness.

With a devilish grin you asked, “Did you drive here?”

A soft chuckle rumbled in Pierre’s tightening chest as he processed your words, fingers instantly entangled with yours as he dragged you out of the club and into the dimly lit street. He didn’t need to be asked twice to fuck you in his Mercedes, the idea making his already snug slacks a lot tighter. Even in the midst of his excitement, Pierre still rushed around to the passenger side and opened your door; endlessly chivalrous even if what he was about to do was anything but gentlemanly.

“Thank you,” You whispered, mimicking his smirk before sliding into the passenger seat with a nervous sigh.

You watched Pierre strut around the front of his car, chest puffed out and head darting in all directions to check the surroundings. A small smile tugged on the corners of you lips when he jumped in beside you with a boyish grin, hand immediately reaching down to push his seat back as far as it would go while the other roamed your bare thigh.

“I don’t think anyone can see,” Pierre muttered as he leaned back in his seat and started unbuckling his belt with his free hand.

“Don’t care if they can to be honest,” You sweetly replied and shuffled the hem of your tight skirt up your thighs, peeling it up around your waist and out of the way.

Pierre tutted as he palmed himself over his briefs, watching you carefully crawl over the console and settle your knees on each side of his thighs, “That’s very naughty,” He hummed, gripping your waist as you settled on his lap, his heart racing under your shaky hands.

“I thought you knew me, darling.” You taunted and tugged his stiff cock from the tight confines of his Calvin Kleins, craving to feel his soft tip teasing your hole.

“That is why I’m not surprised,” Pierre exhaled, fingers gripping your sides even harder as you slid down slowly and bottomed out. He was bigger than your ex, bigger than anyone you’d been with, full stop.

The grimace stitched between your furrowed brows always gave Pierre the ultimate satisfaction, dick twitching at your shallowed breath and tiny moans. You were beautifully unholy, panting and clutching at the necklace hanging loosely around his neck, whispering expletives and praising the lord for the best dick of your life.

It was nearly too much for him.

“Good girl – take all of me. My god.”

You fell forward and pressed your forehead to his as you got reacquainted, the fullness really pushing you to the limit as you bounced. The sound of Pierre moaning against your parted lips was perfect encouragement and as hard as he tried to stay still and let you take control, his rutting hips had other ideas. He couldn’t stop himself from nudging you along, meeting you halfway as you circled your hips, ripping moan after moan from his perfectly pink lips.

“Don’t do this to me,” He practically whined with a stupid smile, hands clutching for power as you fucked him into a muttering mess. His flushed face was covered by his messy hair until you reached up and pushed it back, eyes locked and riddled with lust.

“Aw,” You cooed and pinched his chin between your thumb and pointer, angling his gorgeous face up to yours, “I know you can take it, handsome.”

Pierre’s raspy laugh echoed through the stifling car as he bucked his hips and sent your flying into his chest. You’d missed these brief moments of joy and the unadulterated pleasure he could give you. And it was moments like this where you wondered why you ever fought the desire to have him.

Because he could give it to you – every which way you wanted.

thoughts? feelings? let me know! askbox masterlist if you want to read more x

I don't know how terrible this quality will be on Tumblr, but the higher resolution/original can be found on AO3!

Title: swim for the music that saves you Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers Tags: ShrinkyClinks, Social Media AU, WIP/teaser Summary: It all started when he sent a video singing Happy Birthday to his sister, not knowing that she would post it on her social media.

Now, JBuckyBarnes has millions of followers all hearing his story, following his recovery, listening to him sing. Little does he know, he's going to change the life of one follower in particular.

Steve Rogers, chronically ill and spending most of his days inside, has to live vicariously through others. He longs for adventure, trying new things, feeling the sun on his face. A/N: This fic has been sitting in my drafts for some time now... Thanks to @buckybarnesevents: Alternate June-iverse giving me a little kick, I've decided to post an excerpt/the beginning and the rest of it will come in due course.

“Hiya folks… Well, it was, uh.” The brunette on screen pauses and then smiles sadly. “Alright, you know I can’t lie to you. I wanna say it was fine and dandy, but it was honestly rough. That’s why this video’s a bit late, sorry ‘bout that, by the way. It took longer than I thought it would to edit so I honestly kind of gave up.”

He lays his head in a propped up hand, resting against his piano. 

“So, I got home Sunday afternoon and crashed. I don’t even remember getting into bed. Didn’t sleep through the night, of course. I never do. But! That’s just me, my body’s not a fan of the meds. I was feeling crummy — you know when you’re so hungry you’re nauseous but you can’t eat ‘cause you’re nauseous? Anyway, so that for like, six hours. Finally got to sleep when the sun was risin’ but only managed about an hour or so. You lot haven’t heard Brooklyn traffic.”

Steve can’t help but smirk at that because he has, and he is in fact listening to the god-awful Brooklyn traffic outside his window. He could always move his desk away from the window, but he needs some sort of sunlight from time to time.

The YouTube video plays on his phone while he takes a break from work, stretching and wincing as his joints crack.

“So, it’s like, ten in the mornin’ and I decide I’m gonna get something to eat. Nausea won that round, unfortunately, so by three o'clock I am starving. I was cranky for the whole day, and I don’t wanna make cranky videos for you guys. So, that’s enough rambling from me. My brain’s been a little all over the place so I haven’t written anything in ages, but how about a cover of the best of the best? Thanks for sticking around! Hope you like this one.”

Steve watches as Bucky lifts the cover of his piano and stretches the fingers on his prosthetic. Today, it’s the metal titanium one, with its beautiful plate work and a small Hydra Industries logo on the forearm. 

You gotta swim… Swim for your life

Swim for the music that saves you

When you're not so sure you'll survive

You gotta swim… Swim when it hurts

The whole world is watching

You haven't come this far to fall off the earth

The currents will pull you, away from your love

Just keep your head above

I found a tidal wave begging to tear down the dawn

Memories like bullets, they fired at me from a gun

Cracking the armor, yeah

I swim for brighter days, despite of the absence of sun

Choking on salt water, I'm not giving in, I swim

You gotta swim… through nights that won't end

Swim for your families, your lovers, your sisters, and brothers and friends

Steve listens to the beautiful voice fill the empty space of his studio apartment, caught up in the soft yet powerful melody. What really hits him are the words, though. 

Bucky’s life is no secret — except maybe his real first name because there’s no parent on this planet that hates their kid that much. Steve doesn’t know exactly how Bucky had started off, but the channel was a newer discovery for Steve. 

Well, there it is. As always, thanks so much for tuning in! Hope you liked the song, and maybe I’ll see you guys next time with something original, huh? Bye!” 

headcanons #1

almost breakups - angst

warnings: fighting with your partner, break ups, alcohol mentions, swearing 

my first writing post, wooo! this is only slightly edited, and i haven’t written in a minute so im a bit rusty! feel free to send me an ask with prompts or even some constructive criticism :D

josh

breakups for josh are rough with him being as clingy as he is. the night before he had to leave again for tour, you sat him down for a serious conversation. the moment you brought up the thought of a break, he was instantly begging for an explanation and issuing apologies. tears welled up in his eyes as you explained that you missed having him around, missed spending time with him, missed his voice, missed cuddling with him and watching movies. missed him. the phone calls and occasional visits weren’t enough. you were struggling and running out of options. 

“josh, i’m just really struggling right now. its so hard for me to be away from you for months at a time. i’m just worried things will get worse and i think it would be best for us to stop now before we crash and burn.”

he grabbed your hand, placing a tender kiss on it. “crash and burn? never. i would never give upon you. baby, please, we can work something out. you can come with me for a few shows, i can call you multiple times a day. i don’t care what it takes, i can’t lose you.”

jake

fights with jake weren’t a common occurrence, but they were bad when they did happen. you both had tendencies to take things too far when you pressed at each others buttons too hard. simple disagreements could turn to something so much bigger. he said something that just set you off, and then things went downhill from there. annoyed voices turned to yells, yells turned into a screaming match. he let out a huff of anger and collected his things, heading towards the door. he was just leaving with out solving the issue as always.

“jacob, if you walk out that fucking door, i’m done. you will never see me again.” he was used to empty, meaningless threats.

his grip on the door tightened as he turned to you, “you wouldn’t.”

“you wanna bet?” he could tell you were serious this time from the way your voice cracked and the look in your eyes. realization struck him. he knew the two of you needed to work out your issues one way or another. running away fixes nothing in the long run.

“damn it,” he mumbled, stepping away from the door, “let’s figure this out then.”

sam

“sam, i can’t do this anymore,” you spoke to him as you stormed out of the bar with him following closely behind. you had clearly expressed to him that you didn’t want to go to a bar that night, but he ended up dragging you to one anyway.

“this?” he questioned.

“yeah, this,” you motioned a hand between the two of you. “i can’t do us anymore.”

“i thought things were going great between us?” sam’s voice was soft, “and now you’re breaking up with me out of no where?” his tone made you hesitate, but you didn’t want to back down.

“out of no where? sam, i’ve told you a million fucking times that i don’t like going to bars with you and your brothers. you always end up too drunk and i get stuck sitting with danny while i watch every girl in the room eye you and the twins.”

“so you’re jealous then?” he began raising his voice.

“i’m the farthest fucking thing from jealous. all i ever wanted was some quality alone time with you. i sacrificed so much to follow you on this tour and this is how you repay me?”

your words struck him deep. he didn’t realize how much it meant to you. his face softened, “okay, i understand. but please, lets try to work on it before we end things.”

danny

you never thought you would see yourself leaving danny. to you, he was the perfect boyfriend. emotionally intelligent, sweet, he was never afraid to let you know he loved you. lately, however, something had changed. he was distant. nightly phone calls turned to every other day, then once or twice a week. weekend sleepovers stopped happening. his constant love and praise simply ceased to exist. he was like an entirely different person.

an hour after he was supposed to get to your house, you decided to call him. the phone rang and rang and rang, eventually prompting you to leave a message.

“wooow, daniel. definitely didn't expect this,” your words came out like venom. “what the hell is wrong with you right now? you’re an entirely different person. don’t bother coming over. don’t even bother calling me back. all your shit will be in my yard tomorrow. pick it up before someone else does.” 

45 minutes after you sent your message, there was loud banging at your door. you looked through the peep hole to see danny, a bouquet of flowers and your favorite snacks in hand. “angel, i know you’re in there. please let me explain.”

you swung open the door. “you have 10 minutes.”

he quickly drug you over to the couch and sat you down. “your birthday is soon. i've been planning you a huge party for weeks. i know i’ve been distant and im so fucking sorry for it. i was just worried i would accidentally spoil the surprise but i absolutely went the wrong way about it. please understand.”

try guys hot take that didn’t make wapo

In 2014, the Try Guys were a band of friends making YouTube videos for Buzzfeed. In short order, the four attracted a following for being unapologetically themselves. There was Eugene Lee Yang, the queer Korean American guy known for his wit. There was Keith Habersberger, who was tallest and from Tennessee, and Zach Kornfeld, who was a Jewish New Yorker. And, of course, there was Ned Fulmer, a wholesome Florida man who graduated Yale. The foursome entertained viewers by testing out ladies’ underwear, doing drag and attempting UFC fighting.

As the Try Guys grew older, so did their brands. In 2018, they would go on to start their own YouTube channel that now has over seven million subscribers, leaving Buzzfeed behind. Keith launched his own hot sauce for chicken and Eugene came out as gay in a well-choreographed music video commanding 20 million views. Ned, in particular, built his brand around being the ultimate wife guy, going on sweet dates with his wife, Ariel. Videos from the past few years were titled names like “Couple Tries Home-Cooked vs. $120 Roast Chicken,” a series that Ned continued until earlier this year.

It was this perfectly distilled brand of “good husband and father" that Ned cultivated over eight years that came crashing down on Tuesday afternoon, after cheating allegations surfaced. Fulmer admitted on social media that he had “a consensual workplace relationship,” after fans theorized he had cheated with Alexandria Herring, a producer on the Try Guys channel.

On Tuesday, Try Guys announced via all social media channels that Ned was no longer working with them. “As a result of a thorough internal review, we do not see a path forward together,” the channel said in a statement.

The fallout did not go unnoticed by viewers — some of them who had been tuning into the channel since the Buzzfeed days — days before Try Guys made any announcement. Fans claimed online that it looked like Ned had been edited out of recent Try Guys videos, such as the camera cutting to footage of three of the guys, but there being a fourth chair visible in the background. Starting last week, Try Guys videos began with montage photos that were missing Ned. Their Instagram account hadn’t posted content with him since September 4.

The ongoing media fury and obsession would not have happened if Ned had not built his entire career on being the perfect wife guy. Wife guys are men who are known for being extremely into their wives, and just won’t stop talking about how they are so married.

Ned had this branding down to a science, with his wife Ariel Fulmer featured prominently across most of his videos. He spent years going on public dates with Ariel in YouTube videos, even turning pregnancy announcements for his two sons, Wesley and Finley, aged 1 and 4, into content. In a video from 2016 titled, “Couples Break Up For a Week,” Ned laments how sad it is to pretend to be single for a week, while showing us wedding photos of him and Ariel. Removing his wedding ring, Ned cringes at the camera.

Edit Info

Fans on YouTube have compiled the number of times Ned has said the words “my wife,” often in a Borat voice. In a video called “Couple Gets Trapped with No Internet for 90 Hours,” Ned proclaims, “There’s no one I would rather spend 90 years with,” while Ariel looks on at him sweetly.

Try Guys videos capture a certain era of the internet. It was the mid 2010′s, millennial YouTubers who had crafted very specific personas were taking off, especially with the financial backing of Buzzfeed. They were also pumping out videos at a fast and, some would say, unsustainable rate.

Ned and Ariel found the branding that worked for them, which monetized very well. It was the kind of wholesome content the internet craved more of, as fans declared them to be the perfect couple and a good example of a working marriage with two supportive parents. It’s the same premise that then captured viewers’ fascination when it all came crumbling down. What’s a wife guy without his wife?

Adultery alone wouldn’t sustain headlines and Reddit speculation for days. It’s the fact that being a husband and father is what we mainly know Ned Fulmer for. He was an unlikely person for people to suspect would be at the heart of a scandal like this.

Tuesday’s news had people on the internet asking which men they could trust. Increasingly, the internet finds examples of wife guys who just can’t be trusted. John Mulaney, a comedian who had been very public about his loving marriage, shocked onlookers when he filed for divorce from his wife last year and announced he was having a baby with actress Olivia Munn. Adam Levine, who had sang songs about his wife of eight years, admitted in September to sending flirtatious texts to another woman, where he asked if he could name his child after her.

If another Try Guy, say one that had built a brand around being edgy and rebellious (Eugene) had been caught up in a similar scandal, it wouldn’t have captured our collective attention the way that Ned’s quick fall from grace did. Ned’s own admission of guilt and subsequent departure from the Try Guys became the source of an internet meltdown because we want to have good role-models for fathers and husbands. They’re just hard to find.

In the parasocial relationships we form with celebrities, where we feel like we know them, it can be especially bizarre and captivating to see the mask fall away in real time. YouTubers Myka and James Stauffer drew outrage when they announced in 2020 that they had rehomed a child they had adopted and filmed life with for more than three years. When people’s public personas are so inextricably tied to their marriages, to being a faithful spouse and good parent, only for that to be revealed as a façade, it can start to feel like everyone’s business.

Try Guys really invited us into their homes, their lives and their relationships. And fans ate that up. Now that things have gone downhill, they’re still eating it up.

Chapter One

tags: skk, Osamu Dazai x Chuuya Nakahara, figure skating au, based on the movie The Cutting Edge (1992), Dazai is a bit of a brat, trans!Dazai, Chuuya is an ex hockey player, Chuuya is a bit of an asshole, Olympic figure skating, Ango as Dazai's legal guardian (trust me it had to be done. I had no other option. just trust me on this.)

note: because of characterisation purposes, I removed the original context of the very first scene. I've never seen Chuuya as a "player" kind of guy so the whole scene just felt unnatural. Expect similar edits due to characterisation later. If you enjoy, please leave a comment or reblog! Feel free to ask to be added to the tag list if you'd like to be notified for future updates!

thank you to my beta reader and wonderful boyfriend @ratty-rat-toot 🩷

masterlist | next

cross posted on ao3

Chuuya groaned as an unfamiliar beeping noise pierced through the veil of sleep and into his consciousness. He buried his face deeper into his pillow, trying to ignore the aggravating noise. It only took a couple more seconds before he was done with it and forced himself to sit up, blearily looking around the room for the source of his irritation.

An alarm clock placed inconveniently far from his bed screamed at him, the mechanism shaking from the volume of the alarm. He grumbled a few curses under his breath as he slipped out of bed, the cold winter air clinging to his bare chest maliciously. He briefly regretted not having slept in the sweater he had been wearing the night before.

He slammed his fist down on the off button, then rubbed his eyes to get a better look at the time. As the red symbols faded into recognizable numbers, he felt his heart leap into his throat. No no nonononono. He had to be reading it wrong. It must have turned off in the middle of the night and reset itself. That was the only explanation he could think of for the numbers visible on the screen.

“SHIT!” He exclaimed. “I’m so fucking late!”

He panicked, shoving all his things in his duffel bag and pulling on his clothes, hands trembling as it hit him just how late he was. He had meant to set an alarm for nine a.m, but in his sleep-deprived and anxious state had somehow managed to instead set it for one. In the afternoon.

He stumbled to the door, practically pulling it off its hinges as he hurried outside and sprinted to the stadium.

Dazai felt the sting of the icy air against his palm. The hand of his partner did little to stave the creeping chill that threatened to ruin his flawless stance by forcing him to shiver (an unfortunate bodily function he had yet to find a way to circumvent).

While he managed to keep it together, his partner was another matter entirely. The lanky man had been growing increasingly clumsy the closer they drew to their performance. He made more and more mistakes and Dazai was starting to lose his patience.

As they twirled around the rink, Dazai noticed that his partner's grip on him begin to waver. Just when they were reaching the highlight of the routine, he felt the slip. The two tumbled around on the ice, barely catching themselves from crashing into a wall.

He couldn't help it when a frustrated cry bubbled up from his lips. If they couldn't get it perfect and quick, he could kiss his chance at the gold goodbye. And he needed that gold.

Mori groaned from the bleachers, his head in his hands. “This is the Olympics, Dazai. Thirty million people just called their families in from the kitchen to watch the replays. What do you think this is, Junior Pairs, ‘02?” He sighed exasperatedly.

Dazai wrinkled his nose at the man, not caring enough to hold his tongue. “It's not my fault he can't get a proper grip on me,” he sneered, shoving his thumb in the direction of his skating partner. “It's humiliating to work with someone so untalented.”

Before he could get another word in, his partner interjected. “She’s impossible to work with! If I'm not good enough for her, then no one is.” He complained, not even bothering to address Dazai. Instead, he spoke directly to Mori. Like that would fix anything.

Mori rubbed his temples. “Dazai, just give him a break. You two can't keep fighting like this if you want to look good for the judges. They'll be able to see the tension from miles away.”

“Well, until Hercules here learns how to lock his grip, I'm going to keep holding him accountable.” He shoved his partner away and skated off, not willing to put up with another moment of either of the men’s complaining. He was perfect. If something had to change, it needed to start with them.

He pulled himself off of the rink and removed his skates, already dreading the talk with Ango he knew was inevitable. He didn't need to hear that we was being difficult right now. That wouldn't help anything. All he wanted was to get back to his room and sleep like a rock until it was time for the performance.

Of course, fate had other plans. Before he could even finish packing his bag, Ango was already standing above him, looking exhausted.

“Dazai, you can't keep fighting every time you get on the ice,” he began. Dazai cut him off before the lecture could get going.

“I'm not going to apologize. If anyone needs to apologize, it would be him.” He spat, roughly shoving his arm into the sleeve of his coat.

“Dazai!” Ango attempted to reason with him, but Dazai was already out the door.

Chuuya didn't give himself a moment of rest after he made it past security. He sprinted at full speed towards the rink, berating himself in his head for being so late. The game had already started, and they needed him to win this. As he chided himself for being so stupid, he suddenly felt himself slam against something. It wasn't solid enough to be a wall, but definitely hurt like the devil.

He glanced in front of him, finding dark eyes glaring back up at him. Though the short, wavy haircut and boyish face gave him the impression that the person in front of him was one of the most delicate looking men he had ever seen, the sparkly skirt peeking out of their puffy coat suggested otherwise.

He ignored it, instead choosing to ask the real question. “Does this go up to the ice?” He huffed, clutching his bag close to his chest.

“What?” The person asked, glaring at him as they pulled their skates back into their arms.

“Does this go up to the ice!?” He repeated, his heart thundering in his chest.

“Is that all you have to say? What were you raised in, a barn!?” They responded, pushing themself up off the ground on their own.

“Doesn't fucking matter, is this the way to the ice or not?!” He cried, starting to get frustrated with this gender ambiguous brat.

“Yes! God…” They muttered in response. Chuuya didn't stick around to hear any other complaints. He scrambled to the rink, getting on his gear as fast as he could before finally getting called into the game.

The second he hit the ice, he felt everything click into place. The cheering of the crowd, the glide of his feet slipping effortlessly over the ice, and the shoving back and forth of the players as they fought for the puck was exactly what he loved about hockey. And with how many teams were practically begging for him to join them after the Olympics were over, it was clear that hockey loved him back.

He took a deep breath, the smell of sweat and the cold sinking in through his lungs to his very soul. He felt so perfectly focused, like he was right where he was meant to be. Then the whistle blew again and he was off.

He had a straight shot. Everything was perfectly lined up; all he needed was to make the move and they would catch up to the other team’s lead from before he had arrived. Just as he swung his stick, he felt another player slam into his side. It was too late. There was nothing left to stop the goal. But the force of the impact sent him flying sideways into the wall.

His head slammed into the glass. He hit it at just the wrong angle. His helmet flew off and everything went black.

Dazai could practically taste victory as he watched the couple before them skate off the rink. The lights focused on him and his partner as they made their way towards the center. They stood for a moment, the tension between the two of them as cold and solid as the ice they stood on. Then their cue went off and the music started.

He let his anger melt during their dance. There's no point in staying angry when the judges– and world –are watching.

He let his partner lead him in their dance, twirling and bending him to just uncomfortable enough lengths for it to be impressive.

They continued on, both feeling the pressure of the impending climax of their routine. The problem spot, as Mori so affectionately called it.

The hands on his waist tugged at his stomach in the usual dysphoric manner, but there was something else there. Something heavier. Something worse.

The pull of gravity on him seemed to increase as his feet left the ground. His palms interlocked with his partners failed to reassure him and he felt the jolt of panic hit him like a tidal wave. He was going to fall.

He tried to find something to stabilize himself with. His skates dug into the skin of his partner's back. Then he fell. The lights followed him to the ground, the cheers of the crowd going quiet. He felt that familiar sting of humiliation prick at his heart and his tear ducts. He had ruined everything.

Chuuya’s leg bounced up and down as he watched the doctor anxiously. He probably hadn't blinked for a good two minutes.

The doctor sighed and straightened the stack of papers on her desk. She set them down and folded her hands, resting her chin on her knuckles. “For the record, you've lost eighteen degrees of vision in your right eye. In most cases, it would be considered an inconvenience, but for a hockey player-”

“So how long until it comes back?” He asked, the bouncing of his leg picking up speed.

She grimaced, placing her hands on the table, trying to look comforting. “You had extreme trauma to your-”

“How. Long.” Chuuya growled, leaning closer. His grip tightened on his knee and he could feel his nails digging into the skin.

She didn't respond for a long moment, looking as if she was struggling to find the right words. Then, she sighed. “You've got a blindside, Chuuya. It's a permanent condition. I don't see professional hockey in your future.”

It was like time stopped. He could practically hear his hopes and dreams shattering into a million tiny pieces. He wanted to argue, insist there had to be some sort of operation they could do to get it back, but the look on her face told him everything he needed to know.

There wasn't an operation. There wasn't anything they could do. There wasn't hockey in his future. It was over.

by @feeblescholarmyass on tumblr

reblogs and comments are much appreciated!

tag list: open!

I posted 11,766 times in 2022

9,467 posts created (80%)

2,299 posts reblogged (20%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@wilbursoot-updates

@geoguessbur

@firesnap

@lovejoypilled

@girlfictions

I tagged 1,261 of my posts in 2022

#youtube - 143 posts

#wilbur soot - 92 posts

#shubble - 57 posts

#lovejoy - 29 posts

#discourse - 21 posts

#tapl - 19 posts

#ash kabosu - 17 posts

#joe goldsmith - 15 posts

#tommyinnit - 14 posts

#jack manifold - 13 posts

Longest Tag: 122 characters

#ycgma is such a comfort album for me and “’i’ll keep making little distractions for you. be comfy :)’ makes me want to cry

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Summary of Dream's livestream with Techno's father if people can't or are unable watch:

Most importantly, please support Techno's family and the Sarcoma Foundation by buying merch here: (You can also donate directly to the Sarcoma Foundation here)

Dream is streaming with Techno's father & staying with the family

Techno's father met Skeppy, for the Sarcoma Foundation Gala he asked for Skeppy's favorite video with Techno and Skeppy said it was the "skeppy tries to troll me but i troll him first" video

Techno's father has been intentionally pulling up memories and stories of Techno's whole life which was "a speedrun" and full of joy and happiness, rather than just focusing on the last week

When Techno and his younger sister were diaper age, she fell down the final 2 steps of the staircase (completely fine) and while their father was trying to explain to their mother what happened, Techno walked in and said "baby fall down CRASH"

The first message that Dream sent to Techno was trying to Trojan horse his way into Minecraft Monday by playing with Techno. Techno's reply was "maybe next time" and Techno kicked his ass in Dream's first MCM. Sapnap thought Techno was overhyped but then Sapnap watched the next Techno MCM and changed his mind

Techno's father didn't really watch or understand Minecraft, he watched Techno 1v1 tons of people without losing any hearts and asked him "Do the other players even know you're there?"

Techno vs. Dream $100k duel: Techno's father never saw him stress about anything in his career except for the duel. Techno's father was competitive on Techno's behalf like "who is this green smiling man gaining subscribers faster than my boy?!" Techno texted his dad as soon as he knew it was at least a tie and he couldn't lose.

Dream saw Techno release "death merch" and thought that was the coolest, most Technoblade thing he had ever seen

Techno's entire family loved the "no one took the news harder than my health provider. they're the real victim" joke

Dream did an elbow reveal in honor of Techno

Techno's father made a joke to Dream about getting ready to do his (Techno's father's) own face reveal

Techno's father made this joke: "This video today is sponsored by cancer, without which this video would not have happened" and Dream called him an idiot

Techno's father thinks Techno would have done a proper face reveal. There were a couple of months where doctors were saying the next step would be to amputate his entire arm and shoulder. Techno joked that it was going to be the most epic elbow reveal ever and that they'd "traumatize millions." Techno's father was as positive as he could be without being fake and he got Techno a present ahead of the surgery (which never ended up happening), a 1st edition printing of Hemingway's "A Farewell To Arms."

Dream and Techno teaming in MCC: This is when they really started becoming friends, before that they had been more rivals/frenemies. Techno also never said or joked about giving Dream his first MCC win.

Techno was whitelisted for way longer before he actually joined the server, back when it was just a few people (Tommy might have asked him to whitelist Techno).

Techno had a Minecraft account called "Whitelisted" when he didn't want to be recognized, just to make the joke "You can't do this if you're not whitelisted"

Techno's dad has GOTTA tell dad jokes

When Techno was young, he would always talk to his dad about being a gaming Youtuber and Techno's father would tell him "no one would want to watch someone else play a video game" lmao

When Techno was young and he'd be building for hours in Roblox and they'd have a power failure, Techno would complain to his dad about all of his work being wasted and Techno's dad would say "all of that PLAY wasted"

Techno talked to his dad about what circumstances would lead to him face revealing, he would have wanted it to be funny and memorable but he never had a clear plan for it

Techno had a front bedroom with a TERRIBLE desk. Techno's dad told Techno to come to the studio to pick out any chair he wanted, Techno went into his dad's office and picked his dad's chair LMAO. Techno's dad offered for him to work on a soundstage because their house had horrible acoustics but Techno said "eh." At 2am when the family was trying to sleep they'd hear him screaming and yelling, it was so annoying when it happened but so painful when it stopped

Techno's dad would text him a meme and Techno would call him a loser, he'd ask him to watch Hunter x Hunter together. Techno couldn't eat without watching TV at the same time

Techno's dad sometimes sees posts on Reddit and his instinct is to send them to Techno. Techno's dad has come close to making a reddit account, he said hello and thanks to Techno's subreddit and he reads their posts a lot when he can take it.

Techno's dad knew Techno had a big audience, but he didn't and still kind of doesn't understand how he meant a lot to people in ways that have nothing to do with PvP or funny jokes. He's proud of Techno and grateful to everyone. The executive director of the Sarcoma Foundation told Techno's family they haven't seen anything like this before with regards to fundraising, she told them that a little kid ran a lemonade stand and raised $150 for the Sarcoma Foundation in honor of Techno.

Techno's dad: "If we do the call-to-action (to donate to Sarcoma Foundation) 10 times, I should get 6 of them" (referencing Techno beating Dream in the duel 6-5). Dream: "I see where he got his humor from"

There has been a refresh today of the merch store so GO BUY THE MERCH!!!! Techno didn't like when there were delays in people receiving merch, so you can only order when it's in stock so GO BUY NOW

Dream will be signing some unreleased merch concepts to include as an extra in some orders

Techno's father thanked Dream and he appreciates everything Dream did for them, he also loves Skeppy

See the full post

4,257 notes - Posted October 18, 2022

#4

wilbur calling the crowd “chat” - “you can take a boy out of twitch but you can’t take the twitch out of the boy”

6,699 notes - Posted October 30, 2022

#3

See the full post

7,800 notes - Posted May 19, 2022

#2

NO SHOT MOTHER INNIT IS BROTHER TRUTHING ON MAIN LIKE THIS

8,710 notes - Posted October 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

how do the people walk around their house

barefoot

socks

sandals / chanclas / flip flops

shoes (wtf is wrong with you)

64,986 notes - Posted February 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

WHY AUDIO NEVER GOES VIRAL Is This Thing On? (One of the Best Pieces Ever)

Stan Alcorn

· Jan 15, 2014

With a community of creators uncomfortable with the value of virality, an audience content to watch grainy dashcam videos, and platforms that discourage sharing, is a hit-machine for audio possible? And is it something anyone even wants?

Skip Dolphin Hursh

136 diggs

Diggs: 136

Tweets: 2141

Facebook Shares: 2936

Digg

Save

Facebook

Twitter

Last October, several dozen audiophiles gathered in a basement auditorium for an all-day conference about “the future of radio in a digital age.” Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian finished a talk he’s been giving to college campuses about the Internet and the transformative power it can unleash when it mobilizes a mass of people around an idea, a video, a website, a tweet. When he took questions, I asked: Why does the Internet so rarely mobilize around audio? What would it take to put audio on the Reddit front page?

Ohanian leaned back, contemplating the question, apparently for the first time. “That’s interesting,” he said. “I’m thinking of a lot of the viral content.” You could practically see the memes and GIFs pass across his brain. He started to point out that most viral videos are under three minutes, while the best audio storytelling was usually longer, but interrupted himself with a story about Upworthy.

When the founders pitched him on their plan — to make “socially good content” “go viral” — Ohanian invested “out of passion,” not because he thought it would work. Now Upworthy is one of the fastest growing media properties on the Internet. Sure, sound may not go viral today, but Ohanian is optimistic. “Probably someone here in the audience is going to show us all wrong,” he said, “and a year from now we’re going to look at the Upworthy for audio."

“So go make it.”

Easier said than done.

Cat Video Vs. The Cat’s Meow

Bianca Giaever has always been obsessed with radio. As a child, while she biked her newspaper delivery route, she listened to an iPod loaded exclusively with episodes of WBEZ’s “This American Life.” At Middlebury College, she stalked her classmates, dragging them to her dorm room to record interviews she edited into stories for the college station and smaller audiences online. “I was fully planning on working in radio,” she says. “My whole life.” That is until, the day after graduation, she became a viral video star.

When she painstakingly crafted moving audio narratives, her parents and brother listened. When she added video to her final college project, “The Scared is Scared” — a 6-year-old’s dream movie brought to life — “It just. Blew. Up.”

“At first I was like, ‘Wow. A lot of people are sharing this on Facebook,’” she recalls thinking, “‘I have such nice friends!’” Then it was friends of friends. Then strangers. By the time websites like Mashable and CBS News picked it up, she could only picture the audience as a number. Waiting on the tarmac for her post-grad vacation to begin, she watched on her phone as that number spiked into the thousands, then hundreds of thousands, seemingly crashing the site that hosted it. “These French people were yelling — because I had my phone on as we were taking off — that I was going to kill them,” she recalls. “They were like, ‘Is whatever you’re doing worth our possible death?’ And I was like, ‘Maybe? This is the biggest thing that’s happened in my life!’”

Of the 100 most-shared news articles on Facebook, three were from NPR, but none included audio. Two of these were reblogs of YouTube videos.

I’m a public radio reporter and this doesn’t happen in my milieu. There is no Google Sound, no BuzzFeed for audio, no obvious equivalent of Gangnam Style, Grumpy Cat or Doge. If you define “viral” as popularity achieved through social sharing, and audio as sound other than music, even radio stations’ most viral content isn’t audio — it’s video. A 17-minute video interview with Miley Cyrus at Hot 97 has nearly 2 million views. An off-the-rails BBC Radio 1 video interview with Mila Kunis: more than 12 million. In June 2013, the list of the 100 most-shared news articles on Facebook included three from NPR, but none included audio. Two of these stories were reblogs of YouTube videos (this one and this one), found on Gawker and Reddit.

“Audio never goes viral,” writes radio and podcast producer Nate DiMeo. “If you posted the most incredible story — literally, the most incredible story that has ever been told since people have had the ability to tell stories, it will never, ever get as many hits as a video of a cat with a moustache.”

It’s hardly a fair fight, audio vs. cat video, but it’s the one that’s fought on Facebook every day. DiMeo’s glum conclusion is an exaggeration of what Giaever reads as the moral of her own story: “People will watch a bad video more than [they will listen to] good audio,” she says.

Those in the Internet audio business tend to give two explanations for this disparity. “The greatest reason is structural,” says Jesse Thorn, who hosts a public radio show called “Bullseye” and runs a podcast network called Maximum Fun. “Audio usage takes place while you’re doing something else.” You can listen while you drive or do the dishes, an insuperable competitive advantage over text or video, which transforms into a disadvantage when it comes to sharing the listening experience with anyone out of earshot. “When you’re driving a car, you’re not going to share anything,” says Thorn.

The second explanation is that you can’t skim sound. An instant of video is a still, a window into the action that you can drag through time at will. An instant of audio, on the other hand, is nothing. “If I send someone an article, if they see the headline and read a few things, they know what I want them to know,” a sound artist and radio producer told me. “If I send someone audio, they have to, like… listen to it.” It’s a lot to ask of an Internet audience.

For some radio makers, social media incompatibility is a sign of countercultural vitality. Thorn has called his own work “anti-viral,” and believes that entertaining his niche audience is “still so much better than making things that convince aunts to forward them to each other.”

“That’s A-U-N-T-S,” he clarifies.

But when I suggest the situation doesn’t seem to concern him, he interrupts, “To say that it doesn’t concern me — it concerns me profoundly. I think about it all the time.” In his view, social media warps our consumption patterns, and not for the better. “It’s a serious problem in my life. And not just in my media-making life, in my day-to-day life.”

After Giaever’s video went viral, she turned down an internship at “This American Life” — “my dream since I was nine” — to become a “filmmaker in residence” for Adobe. She gets paid to make her own movies, which she still approaches as radio stories with added visuals. It’s the proven way to get people on the Internet to listen. “The entire concept of what I’m doing seems problematic to me,” she says. “What’s so beautiful about radio is you can’t compete with what people are imagining in their heads, right? And yet I still continue to do it.”

Because audio doesn’t go viral.

Except that sometimes, it does.

Kids Say The Darndest Things

Most viral audio wasn’t intended for the Internet. Recordings made for some other purpose are excerpted and uploaded: voicemails, speeches, and calls to 911 and customer service hotlines.

One category of viral audio is the document, bits of audio that serve as evidence in a news story. It’s easy to imagine text transcripts being distributed in audio’s absence: Bradley Manning’s testimony, the 911 calls of the Trayvon Martin case, Obama’s oft-quoted “clinging to guns and religion.” The primary advantage of audio over text is that it lets the listener confirm a quote with her own ears and determine if meaning is altered by nuances of emphasis or emotion.

Another category of viral audio is the rant or comic diatribe, where emphasis and emotion are the entire point. For instance, an irate San Francisco Chronicle reader chewing out the editor for referring to a “pilotless drone,” or a voicemail becomes an increasingly laugh-filled narration of the aftermath of a car crash. A transcript of these would be like lyrics without a melody.

Somewhere in between these two is a subcategory that could be called “celebrities gone wild”: Alec Baldwin cursing out his 11-year-old daughter, Christian Bale cursing out his director of photography, Mel Gibson cursing out his ex-girlfriend, etc.

These brief, emotional, sometimes-newsworthy clips of people speaking have cousins in viral video. In fact, the two are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Mitt Romney’s infamous “47% comment” was captured and distributed as a video featuring blurry donors’ backs. A recent viral “video” titled, “Potty Talk! [Original] 3 year old contemplates the effects of his diet on the toilet” is merely a shaky shot of a bathroom door. When documenting a primarily auditory event from the vantage point of a single recording device, adding a video camera to the microphone gives slightly more information, and the advantage of keeping the eyes occupied.

But these amateur, one-shot videos are a small and shrinking section of the viral video pool. “We’re seeing a lot more professional work in [the viral video] space, and I don’t just mean advertisers,” says YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca. The “top trending videos” of 2013 were all intentionally shot and edited for an Internet audience: music videos (“What Does The Fox Say?”) and ads (Volvo’s “epic split” with Jean-Claude Van Damme) but also low-budget productions like the Norwegian army’s “Harlem Shake.” They all have had over 90 million views.

Analogous audio — deliberately constructed and virally distributed — is a rarer and more recent phenomenon.

Ask a public radio journalist for an example of viral audio, and one piece comes up again and again: “Two Little Girls Explain The Worst Haircut Ever.” It’s two minutes and fifty seven seconds of cute, as five-year-old Sadie and three-year-old Eva tell the story of an ill-advised haircut to their patient interviewer and father, WNPR reporter Jeff Cohen. For public radio, Cohen has covered gangs, unemployment, and the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school. He won a magazine writing award for a story in the Hartford Courant about Connecticut’s first Iraq war widow.

“I’ve done a lot of work as a reporter that I’m pretty proud of,” he says. “I will never be recognized for anything for the rest of my life, except for this.”

It, too, resembles a viral video: it’s short, self-contained and driven by cute children. But not only does it lack any images of said children, it isn’t a straightforward record of what unfolded in front of the microphone. Cohen recorded two interviews, one with each daughter, and then carefully edited them into a fast-paced, seamless whole. Unlike Alec Baldwin’s voicemail, “Two Little Girls” is a showcase of audio’s power to create what appears to be an unedited version of reality, but is in fact a tightly constructed story, with a beginning, middle and end.

To explain why millions of people have listened to “Two Little Girls” — and why this is still so exceptional — you have to look at its convoluted path to fame.

What We Mean When We Talk About ‘Viral’

Taken literally, “viral” brings to mind an infectious agent bumping around inside its host, spreading accidentally by breath or touch. When “viral marketing” emerged in the 1990s, the medical referent was apt. The disease vector typically took the form of email and “virals” — as such ads were then called — that lived in the inbox. Invisible to the wider world, they spread from individual to individual, as when Hotmail stuck a sign-up ad beneath its users’ signatures. Or when the movie “American Psycho” sent compulsively forwardable emails from its psychotic main character, Patrick Bateman.

Today, those seeking to “go viral” have the same essential goal — to increase their audience by reaching the audience’s audience (and their audience, ad infinitum) — but the web has changed beyond the dynamics of disease transmission. Instead of invisible, one-to-one emails, today’s Internet infections spread by a cascade of publicly visible, one-to-many “likes,” “shares,” “tweets,” and “reblogs,” accelerated and amplified by an expanding web publishing industry. “Sharing” implies a deliberate effort, but social media sharing skews toward a mix of self-representation and what Tumblr creative technologist Max Sebela refers to as “speaking in content”: You might share Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” not because you want people to watch the video, but to make a joke about the fact that today is Friday.

“How does it happen,” YouTube’s Kevin Allocca asked in a 2011 speech called “Why Videos Go Viral.” “Three things: tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness.”

Tastemakers are like virus broadcasters, picking up outstanding, or “unexpected,” Internet phenomena that might otherwise never spread beyond their initial communities, and spraying their spores onto larger followings.

For Cohen’s “Two Little Girls,” the key tastemaker, without whom it may well have languished in Internet obscurity, was Gawker’s Neetzan Zimmerman. (Note: I spoke with Zimmerman before he announced his plans to leave Gawker to become editor-in-chief of a social network startup called Whisper.)

Zimmerman is the closest thing to a one-man embodiment of what he calls “the viral industry.” When Gawker hired him in early 2012, his boss A.J. Daulerio approvingly called him, “a total freak” for his ability to methodically scour the corners of the Internet for the video, memes, and Internet ephemera that would grow to popularity after being seeded with Gawker’s audience. “Before I used to do basically 20 hours a day,” Zimmerman says. “Now there’s a night shift, so I don’t have to worry as much.” In the last three months of 2013, his posts were responsible for more than half of Gawker’s pageviews and two thirds of the site’s unique visitors — nearly 40 million in total — according to Gawker’s public stats. For comparison, that’s more than 1/3 of the traffic of the entire the New York Times website.

Zimmerman’s work is a more extreme version of the new, upside-down dynamic of web publishing. Instead of the publisher’s megaphone guaranteeing its articles an audience, the publisher only has an audience insofar as the articles “go viral.” Tens of thousands of readers see most of the dozen items Zimmerman posts each day, but millions see his blockbusters.

For those hits, the content and the clickbait headline are as important as the timing. He describes “going viral” like surfing: boarding a wave at the earliest possible point. “You don’t want to wait too long because you’ll miss that initial cresting,” he says. “It’s a race against everyone else.”

Zimmerman chooses what to cover by scanning for signs of that wave rather than looking deeply at the constituent molecules of content. “The way the system works is I keep a mental note of instances of occurrence on a certain tier of sites,” he says. This lets him identify “viral momentum,” even when his personal judgment might suggest otherwise. “The purpose of the system is to override my biases and to override whatever personal feelings I have.”

Sometimes this lets Zimmerman not only beat the competition, but also popularize something that might otherwise never bubble into the mainstream from a less-trafficked corner of the Internet. But the system — Zimmerman’s and that of the “viral industry” more generally — has an obvious bias of its own toward content that is already being shared on the Internet.

For Bianca Giaever’s “Scared” video, first college and radio friends shared it on Facebook, then Vimeo made it a “staff pick,” then major media websites like CBS News, BuzzFeed, Jezebel and Mashable blogged about it. Within three days, hundreds of thousands were watching.

For Cohen, it took four months, and a lot of luck.

‘Invisible As the Radio Waves Themselves’

Jeff Cohen had interviewed his daughters many times, in the same way other fathers shoot home videos. “I’m sappy that way,” he says. But he thought enough of the haircut piece to play it for colleagues at the radio station. “It was about five minutes long, and my boss and friends said, ‘Cut it down to three minutes and put it on PRX.’”

PRX is the Public Radio Exchange, and as the name suggests, its website is a marketplace where station managers shop for stories. After Cohen uploaded his new, tighter version of “Two Little Girls” in February of 2012, it was discovered and licensed by a handful of local stations: KOSU in central Oklahoma, KUT in west Texas, KSJD in southwest Colorado.

But to the Internet, all this was invisible as the radio waves themselves. “PRX is designed as a business-to-business marketplace,” says PRX CEO Jake Shapiro. “We’re not designed for listeners… yet.”

The circuitous route that “Two Little Girls” took to Gawker didn’t start with PRX, but at a monthly event called “Ear Cave” hosted by one of Cohen’s colleagues at a coffee shop in Hartford, Connecticut. “I call it BYOB, BYOE,” says the event’s creator Catie Talarski. “Bring Your Own Beer, Bring Your Own Ear.” She dims the lights, sets up chairs, and projects a photograph of an old radio, so the audience has something to look at while a chosen curator presses play on a laptop. That April, “Two Little Girls” was the grand finale.

“It was just a huge hit,” recalls Adam Prizio, an insurance auditor who was in the audience that night. Two months later, Prizio, with the voices of Eva and Sadie bouncing around his head, decided to google it. Finding the audio on PRX, he posted a link to community blog MetaFilter, with no description other than a mysterious quote (“It happens three times in every life. Or twice. Or once.”) and the categorization “SLAudio,” a riff on “SLYT” (Single Link YouTube).

Overnight, the comments swelled. “Amazing.” “Adorable.” “Better than the Car Guys.” “OH MY GOD THIS IS FUCKING BALLER.” There were fewer comments than a link published ten minutes later — “Fundamentalist Christian schools in Louisiana will soon be citing the existence of the Loch Ness monster as proof that evolution is a myth” — but they were comments of single-minded delight. The next morning, Zimmerman saw the thread in his morning Internet regimen, and within an hour had put up his own post that would go on to gather some 1.3 million views entitled, “Public Radio Reporter Interviews His Two Little Girls After One Gives the Other the ‘Worst Haircut Ever.’”

“It didn’t really matter that it was audio,” says Zimmerman. “It was more about how it was being received online.”

In one sense, it followed the same trajectory as all viral content, or what YouTube’s Kevin Allocca has defined as a combination of “community participation” and “tastemakers.” Something becomes popular in a niche community, whose public enthusiasm attracts the notice of a tastemaker, who then repackages it to suit a larger audience, where the entire process repeats on a larger scale.

But really “Two Little Girls” succeeded in spite of its immediate community. Cohen first had to be convinced to put it online at all, and even then it was on a website searched only by public radio station managers. While Cohen says it made the rounds of his Facebook friends, it only took off after audio enthusiasts heard it at a coffee shop.

Compared to other media, even young, tech-savvy audiophiles are less likely to share audio on a weekly basis, and when they do, they’re more likely to use email instead of social media.

The barriers that nearly blocked “Two Little Girls” from finding a larger audience are a mix of culture and technology. While home videos make the leap to YouTube all the time, audio makers tend to keep their scraps to themselves. When I took an unscientific poll (n=60), it backed up what I heard anecdotally: Compared to other media, even young, tech-savvy audiophiles are less likely to share audio on a weekly basis, and when they do, they’re more likely to use email instead of social media.

Several echoed the sentiment of occasional radio producer Laura Griffin, who said, “I tend to assume that most people don’t have the same patience and appreciation for audio that I do, so I am selective about what audio I share and with whom.”

Others pointed to technological limitations. The files themselves are large and often forbid downloading. Audio-hosting websites employ an inconsistent potpourri of players, many of which disallow the embedding that has helped make online video ubiquitous. (Some PRX audio can be embedded, but Gawker had enough trouble with its player that they uploaded the audio into their own.) “I often don’t share NPR audio because their player isn’t embeddable and requires going to another website to listen,” notes multimedia producer Will Coley.

There is one standard format for distributing digital audio, but rather than resolving these barriers to sharing, it may be their most perfect expression: the podcast.

The Podcast Problem

If you don’t know what a podcast is, you’re in the majority.

Technically, it’s an RSS feed containing links to files (“podcast” typically implies an audio file). Using podcast-listening (formerly “podcatching”) software, you can “subscribe,” setting your computer or smartphone to automatically download the new and get rid of the old.

It’s hard to appreciate in 2013 the enthusiasm with which this simple idea was met by the mid-2000s media.

“I haven’t seen this much buzz around a single word since the Internet,” computer programmer Carl Franklin told the New York Times in 2004.

By letting everyone become broadcasters (or really “podcasters”), it was supposed to disrupt radio in a way that was predicted to parallel that other online media format with a horrible portmanteau name: blogging. In fact, the name “podcast” was tossed off by the Guardian's Ben Hammersley between the alternatives “audioblogging” and “GuerillaMedia.”

It wasn’t all hype. Anyone can start a podcast, just as anyone can blog. The podcast did close the loop, in its clunky way, between where people download and where they typically listen. And aficionados can point to a long list of programs, especially covering technology and — more recently — comedy, which never would have existed otherwise.

12% of Americans listened to a podcast in the last month, the same percentage as three years ago.

But while much of online publishing now takes the form of the blog, interest in podcasting seems to have flatlined. According to Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron), 12% of Americans listened to a podcast in the last month, the same percentage as three years ago. It is a substantial niche, but smaller than the percentage of people who create online videos, and less than a sixth the number who watch them.

“There was a huge wave of initial excitement around podcasting changing and disrupting and turning upside-down radio seven years ago, or longer,” says PRX’s Jake Shapiro. “And then it kind of just petered out.”

While the number of podcasts has proliferated, the vast majority of episodes have audiences in the double or triple digits, judging from the experience of podcast hosting giant Libsyn. “If you want to do the average, our mean podcast? Now you’re looking at like 200, 250 downloads per episode,” Libsyn’s Rob Walch told NextMarket Insights's Michael Wolf. The majority of top podcasts, far from being grassroots disruptors, are major public radio shows: “This American Life,” “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” and “Radiolab.” It’s the dominant way of finding an on-demand audio audience on the Internet, but it’s more Hulu than YouTube.

The absence of disruption is, in part, baked into the technology. “It’s clearly the number one barrier to wider listenership,” says Jesse Thorn. Apple gave the format a big boost when it brought it into the iTunes store in 2005, but that walled garden of a market has come to delimit the podcast’s reach. To watch a YouTube video, you click play, wherever it exists on the web. With another click you can immediately share it by putting a player in the feed of your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even LinkedIn accounts.

To listen to a podcast, however, you have to search for it on an app or in the iTunes store, sign up for it, wait for it to download. (Of course there are other ways to download podcasts, but the majority of podcast downloads occur through Apple.) Click “share” on Apple’s podcasting app, and you’ll be prompted to post an RSS feed, which is a bit like trying to share a new Tom Junod article and instead passing on a password that readers can use to subscribe to Esquire.

These hurdles don’t hamper podcasts that are already well known. Thorn’s podcast audience has been growing steadily by approximately 50% each year. “Radiolab” and “This American Life” — public radio shows that are among the most popular podcasts and the aesthetic guiding lights for young public radio producers — are both approaching a million digital listens for each new episode. For these shows, the occasional episode will get shared more than others, but that “viral” bump is on the order of 10 to 20 percent, and even that seems driven less by social media than old-fashioned word of mouth. “Google is a much bigger referrer to any given episode [than Facebook],” says WNYC’s Jennifer Houlihan Roussel. In other words, podcasts don’t go viral. Nor are they designed to.

As the Guardian’s technology editor, Charles Arthur, points out in the Independent back in 2005, “Podcasts take content and put it into a form that can’t be indexed by search engines or be speed-read, and which you can’t hyperlink to (or from). A podcast sits proud of the flat expanse of the Internet like a poppy in a field. Until we get really good automatic speech-to-text converters, such content will remain outside the useful, indexable web.”

A Cloud Atlas?

If there is any company attempting to create a modern web alternative to the podcast, it’s SoundCloud.

“Podcasting: It’s a fairly old school method of distribution,” says its co-founder and CTO Eric Wahlforss. “We are certainly of the opinion that SoundCloud is the superior way of broadcasting your show across the web.”

If you’ve played audio from Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, you’ve likely seen it: the slow crawl of orange across a gray waveform. This omnipresent, embeddable player is what has most clearly attracted the moniker “YouTube for audio.” Hoping to make sound as sharable as video, SoundCloud delivers this content via a streaming player instead of a dressed-up file download.

In a Facebook message, data scientist Lada Adamic told me: “Soundcloud does seem to have a lot of sharing activity (everything is dwarfed by YouTube but soundcloud is holding its own) [sic].” SoundCloud was the 11th most commonly submitted domain on Reddit as of March 27, 2013, according to Reddit data scientist Chad Birch, above the Huffington Post, the Guardian and Vimeo. The number of YouTube domains submitted was almost 22 times as high.

But the SoundCloud content accumulating most on social media isn’t what the company calls “audio.” “In our world, in terms of viral content, the real viral content is actually music,” Wahlforss says.

For non-music “audio,” SoundCloud lets broadcasters and podcasters have it both ways, encouraging them to make their shows available on SoundCloud’s platform, while also creating a podcast-ready RSS feed. “We are trying to blur that distinction a little bit,” says Wahlforss.

“We’re on SoundCloud because they have a nice player for sharing on Facebook and Twitter,” says Seth Lind of “This American Life.” But the total plays of their hour-long episodes on SoundCloud peak at roughly 3% of its digital listenership, and are usually under 1%, hovering around 5,000. A look at SoundCloud’s “trending audio” page presents a similar picture: podcast episodes and radio shows, with listenership in the hundreds or low thousands.

Clearly, technology alone doesn’t ensure the virality of an hour-long show with a headline designed for consistency rather than clickability (e.g.: “#513: 129 Cars” from “This American Life”). “It’s probably not going to be as popular as a Gangnam Style,” Lind notes, dryly. The audio that has gone viral takes a different tact: short, tailored specifically for SoundCloud, and providing a near-immediate pay-off that fulfills the headline’s promise.

Much of it is some mix of rant and newsworthy document, like AOL’s Tim Armstrong firing Patch’s creative director, or Charles Ramsey’s 911 call after he helped rescue three kidnapped women in Cleveland.

But the most heard, and most truly social example of SoundCloud’s viral audio is a New Zealand radio host’s dramatic reading of a series of text messages from a one-night stand gone unhinged: “This Is What Crazy Looks Like Via Text Messaging.” “Fletch & Vaughan” host Vaughan Smith found the texts on BuzzFeed and performed them as part of a four hour-long drive-time show. He then uploaded it to SoundCloud and shared it on Facebook to appease callers who wanted to hear the skit — but only that one skit — again.

“At the end of the weekend it hit a million plays,” says Smith. “It was mental.” With more than six million plays to date, more people have heard the version from “Fletch & Vaughan” than have read the BuzzFeed article it was adapted from — a triumph of sound over text.

It couldn’t have gone viral without a player as sharable as SoundCloud, but perhaps more importantly, it couldn’t have gone viral without the active unearthing of comedic gold buried within a longer broadcast. “In public radio, only within the last few years has there been a big value seen in disaggregating content from shows,” says PRX managing director John Barth. “And there’s still a pretty big debate about that.” These concerns echo the now-largely-obsolete resistance of other media to the Internet. They want listeners to experience the whole enchilada, not take the ingredients and re-contextualize them.

As for creating a whole new audio cuisine — work cooked up specifically for a SoundCloud audience — the successful examples are elusive. “We mostly use it as a promotional tool really,” says Smith. “We use it to promote the podcast.”

The Message Is The Medium

Last October, Reddit's Alexis Ohanian told a basement full of audiophiles to go make "the Upworthy for audio," but in a sense, we already have the Upworthy for audio: Upworthy. With its scientifically-selected, clickbait headlines, it  is the reason nearly two million people have heard the future president of Ireland Michael Higgins dress down rightwing talk show host Michael Graham (“A Tea Partier Decided To Pick A Fight With A Foreign President. It Didn’t Go So Well.”) It’s the reason hundreds of thousands have heard Geoffrey Gevalt tell a small poignant story, set to music, about his daughter (“A Toddler Gets Totally Profound In a Way Most Adults Don’t”) and Summer Puente about her father (“Every Night This Dad Falls Asleep in Front of the TV. There’s a Beautiful Reason Why.”)

The Upworthy sector of the Internet economy isn’t just healthy, it’s insatiable and omnivorous in its appetite for content it can coax people into clicking and sharing. “Whether it’s audio, whether it’s video, whether it’s still images, whether it’s text: my system remains pretty much the same,” says Neetzan Zimmerman. “For me it doesn’t really matter.”

The viral industry can help solve audio’s skimming problem, but only if it can find the content in the first place. “Radio doesn’t do a very good job of marketing itself to the viral industry, for whatever reason,” says Zimmerman. “Maybe it thinks too highly of itself, or thinks of ‘viral’ as a cheapening of its content. I really disagree with that. I think there’s a lot there to be mined, and a lot that gets ignored.”

“Marketing” makes it sound like radio makers simply need to do a better job of drawing attention to their work. And it’s true: active, public sharing directed at non-audiophiles is how Zimmerman found “Two Little Girls.” If there were a website that showed what audio was “trending” in some smaller community, Zimmerman says it would become part of his system. “One hundred percent. No doubt about it.”

There are also plenty of short podcasts and single-serving radio stories that are poorly labeled on obscure web pages or presented in unembeddable players. “Nobody that I’ve seen, even the best of them, spends time thinking about how to create the metadata or the descriptions: the things that might actually catch your attention,” says PRX’s Jake Shapiro.

More fundamental than marketing is the question of where audio makers see a market. “So far nobody is producing audio, really, for an audience that might be scanning for things to enjoy,” says Shapiro.

“It’s somewhat of a chicken and egg thing,” he says, “Until producers have any kind of confidence that there’s an audience or some money to be made — or preferably both — they’re not really targeting it.”

“If it can’t be used for pornography it’s never going to be the most popular thing.”

Perhaps Facebook will tweak its algorithms to favor audio. Perhaps SoundCloud or PRX or Apple will make a social alternative to podcasting. “It’s possible that someone will make this app that’s all about sharing audio that will be the next Snapchat,” suggests Seth Lind. “That’s obviously not going to happen,” he quickly adds, to make sure I know he’s joking. “If it can’t be used for pornography it’s never going to be the most popular thing.”

But Jeff Cohen and “Fletch & Vaughan” demonstrate that audio makers don’t have to wait for a deep shift in technology to court a viral audience. They would, however, have to create audio not for already-dedicated radio and podcast listeners, but for the distracted, impatient crowd that is the web. Audio enthusiasts would have to evangelize on that work’s behalf, not just in coffee shops or emails to each other, but online, loudly, with the same manipulative, click-chasing techniques wielded by the rest of the web.

The day “Two Little Girls” went viral, Jeff Cohen tweeted: “I fear I may disappoint new Twitter followers once they realize that I mostly write on Hartford, government, and healthcare. Not my kids…” That is still more or less his beat, though he does also have a children’s book (“Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut EVER!”) due out this summer.

“I don’t know anything about the Internet, really,” Jeff Cohen says. But the way he sees it, although he got lucky, he also made his own luck.

“I didn’t cut anybody’s hair. But when you see an opportunity, you take advantage of it.”

Stan Alcorn is a print, radio and video journalist based in New York City. He regularly reports for WNYC, Marketplace and NPR and is a staff writer for Fast Company's Co.Exist.

© 2016 News.me Inc · Terms · Privacy

✨beta call✨

so, as you know, i have a beta for my flfverse fics. as of the past few months, they’ve been very busy with irl stuff and haven’t been able to read for me, and as you might have noticed [glances at Cross the Line] some works are stuck in limbo bc of it.

in order to let me feel less guilty about nudging them and take some stuff off their plate, i’m tossing a line out to the masses! hi!

details under the cut <3

SO i am admittedly a bit picky in this department, hence why it took like three months to work up to a call.

i’m looking for betas for Cross the Line (bakudeku) and Free Falling (dabihawks), as well as other assorted oneshots that i have scattered around (so far, mostly following class a). you can beta for all of them, any combination, or just one. doesn’t matter to me, just please be realistic with what you think you can handle.

potentially unnecessary amount of detail incoming. it’s very early and i Need to be Clear i get so worried. pls don’t be intimidated.

as far as handling goes, what are Beta Duties??

for me, beta-ing is 40% brainstorming help, 40% hype squad, and 20% actual editing help.

brainstorming i think is pretty self-explanatory, it’s mostly me crashing into your dms with random thoughts bc i am a chaos agent of disorganization, and you telling me if it’s cool or not and possibly riffing off it. but if you want to be the chaos agent with random thoughts, absolutely, go wild. also a lot of the time it will be me going “ugh i need to name this thing help” or “what are some activities that don’t involve eating bc i’ve already written four meals this chapter.” fun!

hype squad mostly means, uh, exactly what it sounds like. nice comments, reacting to things, yada yada. it’s not that hard i’m very easy to please i just thrive on validation and am frequently afraid that i magically lost my touch and accidentally wrote the worst thing ever.

editing entails mostly spelling, grammar, and punctuation, plus things like consistency and logic. i do not really edit my fics; there’s enough work in writing them, especially for these projects. instead, i do a lot of frontwork in outlining and drafting—i’ll probably have betas give feedback on those outlines as well for that purpose. that doesn’t mean you can’t point out a larger issue if you see it, butttt i might just decide it’s cool as-is. soz.

consider also the length of the projects. Cross the Line is probably about 2/3 of the way done, and oneshots will be ongoing but sporadic at best, while i try to keep Free Falling to 2 updates a month and it will probably go on for a million years.

alright, so if that sounds cool to you, shoot me a dm! i have parts of a shintodo oneshot and bakudeku oneshot in this ‘verse written that i will send to any potential betas as a trial run but don’t let that scare you off! they’re each about 2.5k and it’s all very lowkey and chill.

i almost exclusively have only close friends beta my stuff so i’m out here like a skittish animal about it lmao and i need to test the Vibes. objectively i don’t really edit so it’s barely different from posting to ao3 but. forgive me i am tenderhearted.

okay, that concludes our beta call! <3 see y’all uh soon.

so, that’s that! if you are interested shoot me a dm

What You Missed at New York Fashion Week (According to Linux) This is What You Missed Last Month (According To Linux), in which nightlife it-girl Linux takes us behind the velvet rope and into the VIP section of Scene-City. Through her extreme (sometimes exaggerated) lens, Linux gives us the tea on what really happened at every party-of-the-century that floods our Instagram feeds. (A note from the author: don’t take what she says too seriously — she’s just a club kid after all).They say, “all’s fair in love and war,” which must be why each February all New Yorkers’ rules of candor are tossed into the trash. What are the odds that the two most brutal yearly happenings, Fashion Week and Valentine’s Day, happen in the same month? How on Earth does one balance the two? Not so fast investing all your energy into securing a mans for that candle-lit dinner at The Nines — you’ve got a Vogue party to go to! Good luck dedicating your paycheck to buying your new lover some diamonds — you’ve also got to go to Loewe and buy your own look for their party you’re crashing. (We all know the PR girl who sent you the flyer at the afters last week is never texting you back, in fact she’s probably fired by now!) The only foolproof way for an it-kid to garner triumph in February’s affairs of love and war is simple: Throw those morals right out the window! Have to text your besties nemesis who handles reservations at Indochine? She won’t forgive you, but at least you’ll have an entree to IG-Story on the 14th! Do you so badly want to go to the [Redacted Cancelled Fashion Designer] show but you’re worried about your reputation? Diet Prada posts ten times a day, this too shall pass!And don’t worry, my curious readers. While the despicable Socialites and Fashionistas of 10001 spent 28 days backstabbing and trampling over one another towards victory in love & war... your favorite journalist (me!) tagged along. All month I lurked in the shadows, disguised as the scenesters we love to hate, and quietly attended each and every New York happening. As a servant of truth, I’ve brewed all the tea that went down at these scandalous hotspots... and honey: it’s scalding! Rest assured that I, Linux, the New York Downtown It-Girl, am nothing like them… I’m one of you! I didn’t even want to be at these mega-fabulous celebrity-filled parties. This was all for… uh… research purposes! February 9: Christian Siriano See on Instagram Every New York Fashion Month starts with a visit from Christian Siriano. We know it, we expect it, we love it. Project Runway star Christian Siriano invited the who’s who of who’s left to Gotham Hall to show off his Fall 2023 collection. I could tell you all about the floral fashions that stomped down his runway but I know you’re really here for the front row! I was plopped next to the usual Nightlife/Fashion Crew, seated next to queens like Gottmik and CT and nightlife cool kids Leigh Lezark, Austin Smith and Ty Sunderland. After the NY-C-List got settled in, a swam of flashing photographers around a redhead at the entrance alerted all of us that the real stars had arrived. Taking a closer look, we realized it was none other than Lindsay Lohan. Yes... Lindsay Lohan! What a gag. After millions of photographs, Lindsay was quickly escorted to her seat next to us where we all one by one whispered to one another “omg…I can’t believe... Lindsay Lohan!” After the Hollywood legend sat down and her show ended, the fashion show began. New York legend Dianne Brill, however, did not make it to her seat in time, but all of Gotham Hall got to admire her head-to-toe ensemble and self-emblazoned “BRILL” clutch from our seats.After the final look came down the runway and the crowd applauded for Christian, we piled into a Siriano Sprinter van and headed to the afterparty at the Edition Times Square. There, Gottmik performed something Y2K (this was a month ago, how should I remember?) and Ty Sunderland DJ’d something even more Y2K. Somehow hours went by and by 8 PM I was on the Edition terrace in Times Square drunk out of my mind chain-smoking with Lindsay Lohan and a bunch of talent managers. No matter how many jokes I told... I did not get a gig! (But Lindsay did laugh.)February 10: Dion Lee AfterpartyIf anyone in the scene is an enigma wrapped in a riddle and cash, it’s Dion Lee. The Australian designer was first introduced to me in my Bushwick home at one of my many COVID-era raves. Since meeting, I’ve seemed to run into him anywhere the BPM passes 140; at too-cool hotspots such as Unter, the green rooms at Basement or the 10 AM yurt afters at Nowadays. It’s easy to find him around — that is, besides during Fashion Week. I reached out, as I do every season, to attend his show and afterparty to no avail. After weeks of radio silence, I finally took the hint that it was a big N-O. Most with a speck of pride would give up... but honey, I am more than a chimp with a typewriter. I am Linux and this is The Nightlife Bible. The only thing that will without fail get my party-crashing ass to attend an event is telling me I can’t go! I’m sure my invite just got lost in the mail. On Fashion Week Friday, Dion Lee invited everyone (besides me!) to Boom Boom Room to celebrate his Fall 2023 show. Everyone in NYC with a functioning ketamine habit pooled into the Standard Hotel elevators and up to the top floor to party with the designer. If you’re a routine reader of mine (as I’m sure you are) then you’ve come along with me to countless events at this venue. If you’re new here: it’s where Solange and Jay-Z got in that fight! But what made this night different from most at Boom Boom Room was that, instead of being filled with LA celebrities or the entire Vogue office, the congregation mainly consisted of Bushwick ravers and transgender Parisian supermodels. Simply put: the crowd was cunt. The room was packed, but thankfully there was no wait at the open bar, as most attendees were likely dosing GHB. Around midnight, the bartenders began clearing the unused bar, which hinted that whoever was about to perform would be converting it to something with more value: a stage. Finally, as the music cut off and we heard her iconic voice, the secret show was revealed to be Azealia Banks. In seconds, the most talented person to come out of New York City hopped onto the bar in a two-piece army green number and began performing for us. One thing about Dion Lee is he will always align himself with talent, and Banks rapping at his afterparty was no exception. By the end of “New Bottega,” the tranquilizer crowd did their best to applaud, and the K-gods spoke to me in my thoughts, letting me know it was time to go. In fact, by 2 AM I don’t know if anyone there even knew where they were! Kudos to Dion for throwing a fashion week party that only I will probably remember. All I could keep thinking to myself that night was, All these people got invited and not me? But as I write this now, I am immediately reminded that it’s because I write party reviews like this!February 11: Honey Dijon Teksupport See on Instagram There’s nothing I love more than going to a non-Fashion Week party smack-dab in the middle of Fashion Week. Long-running production team Teksupport is no stranger to throwing killer parties. For as long as I can remember, Teksupport has been one of the few bumpin’ bashes for breeders this city has to offer. For a full week in February, Teksupport put together a lineup of iconic DJ’s including Diplo, Bedouin and Honey Dijon. Out of those three, the standout evening was easily that which belonged to Honey Dijon. The event took place at The Glasshouse, an innovative venue boasting floor-to-ceiling windows and unobstructed 360-degree views of the Manhattan skyline. The city was especially excited to see Dijon as this was the fashion-icon and DJ’s first New York appearance since being awarded a Grammy for her part in Beyoncé’s Renaissance. I had hundreds of Fashion Week things going on that day, but that didn’t stop me from arriving promptly at 11 PM. I was quickly reminded just how straight Teksupport parties are. Thankfully, however, Honey Dijon was in the building to save us all. For two hours, Mother played her best heavy-hitting house for the thousands of attendees on the top floor of The Glasshouse. Dijon’s talent combined with Teksupport’s otherworldly skill in lighting and sound made for the ultimate New York night to remember. Needless to say, it was the best homecoming a girl could ask for... Honey Dijon said so herself!February 15: Paul's Dolls' One-Year See on Instagram After 52 weeks straight of throwing a party meant for the girls, gays and theys, the night had finally come to celebrate a whole goddamn year of my weekly party: Paul’s Dolls. I remember when I first spoke to you, my fabulous readers, about Paul’s Dolls last spring. At that point, I had only the slightest idea of what this party could become. Wednesday after Wednesday I joined forces with the most notable New York kids to help bring this night to life... and girl did it work! At Paul Sevigny’s nightclub Paul’s Casablanca in the heart of Hudson Square, everyone who’s anyone got together to celebrate my baby turning one. I think what this city loves so much about Dolls is it isn’t too stuffy or uptight. To so many, this night could only be described as a Weekly Downtown House Party. When a Drag Race girl is in town? They go to Paul’s Dolls. When Fashion House is in town? (Mugler, I’m looking at you!) They go to Paul’s Dolls. Bitch, even fucking Snooki goes to Paul’s Dolls! Somehow the vibe is so correct that you totally forget you’re at a bitchy nightlife menace’s ego-stroke! So with that, I’d like to end this month with something different: a thank-you. Every week you’ve managed to show up and show out at my very first solo weekly, and I’ve been moved. Seeing your glittering faces each week at Paul’s Dolls and experiencing such a magical night with you all so often is a total honor. When it comes to Paul’s Dolls I know one thing’s for certain... you definitely didn’t miss it! Photography and styling: Airik Prince Art direction: Chris Correa Dress and gloves: Christian CowanShoes: Pissy PussyScarf: Adrienne LanduaGlasses: Smiley GoodsJewelry: Heart of Bone https://www.papermag.com/linux-what-you-missed-nyfw-2659607821.html

OK. It's been a while since I listened to it, and never actually read the lyrics but .........I just now realized that The Verve Pipe's song The Freshman was about unaliving yourself and abortion, and how the dudes in their lives were able to just walk around without a care in the world..........and the graduating class that year were using that as their Class Song. Daaamn, I must not have been the only one to not really understand the words at all until I read them just now.

🤯

This part....I didn't know what valium was, at the time. And I misheard the lyrics and thought it said "and slapped him" so she was taking action against him being mean to her somehow lol....wow. this whole time I thought it was about DV.

In sixth grade I had two options of songs I'd have to read aloud to the English class. This one made it to the final three list. I went with the song that was about fucking, of course because I was a romantic at heart.(it was Savage Garden's Truly Madly Deeply....I only realized what the song was about when I locked eyes with a guy in the front of the class and he was appalled and so I got worse with my anxiety...imagine having that epiphany in the middle of class....the song was about fucking, and I didn't realize until I uttered the words aloud) (the other song I might have read aloud if the radio had played it when I was trying to get the homework done was Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band....at heart I really wanted to be a grunger. I kept borrowing my sister's flannels and for a time we wore the same shoe size so I got her combat boots too....kicked someone upside the head with them on the swings accidentally....par for the course and all that, I suppose. The dude didn't deserve it. )

I was Tina Belcher. This week's episode only proved it that much more. This thought was why I went down memory lane and remembered about these songs that I had to edit the post a million times to remember the actual names of lmao. I wish I could tell my freshman self to cool my jets, relax, breathe deep, and be myself, be my truest self.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Rough skies ahead (NBC News) It came off as a rare moment of candor for the airline industry on Wednesday, when United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told analysts and reporters that after a year of constant disruptions, including canceled and delayed flights, lost luggage and worse, passengers could expect more of that in 2023. “The system simply can’t handle the volume today, much less the anticipated growth,” Kirby said. “There are a number of airlines who cannot fly their schedules. The customers are paying the price.” The year 2022 was one of the most stress-inducing for consumer air travelers in recent memory. A surge in travel demand after airlines slashed resources during the pandemic caught carriers flat footed. Unable to adequately staff flights, they nevertheless continued to sell record-breaking numbers of tickets, resulting in more than one in five flights being delayed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. “The days of flying being fun are long over,” said William McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, anti-monopoly group. “People will settle for noneventful.”

Fear the deer: Crash data illuminates America’s deadliest animal (Washington Post) Behold the deer, the deadliest beast in North America. Deer are responsible for the deaths of about 440 of the estimated 458 Americans killed in physical confrontations with wildlife in an average year, according to Utah State University biologist Mike Conover, employing some educated guesswork in the latest edition of “Human-Wildlife Interactions.” Those deer-inflicted fatalities are not, so far as we know, caused by deer-on-human predation. They’re the unfortunate result of more than 2 million people a year plowing into deer with their sedans and SUVs, usually on a two-lane road, often at high speed. Deer are responsible for at least 69 percent of animal-related accident claims, according to State Farm. Another 12 percent of claims involve unidentified animals, many of which could be deer that bounded off before the driver got a good look at them or were mangled beyond recognition in the crash. The third-most-dangerous animals on the road are undifferentiated rodents, which are cited in 5 percent of all animal-related accident claims. However, State Farm spokesperson Dave Phillips noted that many of the drivers never make contact with said rodent: The vast majority of those accidents occur when motorists swerve to avoid a suicidal squirrel or moseying marmot.

Biden’s Document Dilemma (1440) Six items reportedly containing classified information were recovered by federal agents during a search of President Joe Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware, officials said over the weekend. Items were said to be from both Biden’s four-decade Senate tenure and his time as vice president. It was the fourth such discovery in recent weeks, a string sparked in November when Biden staff notified the National Archives after finding 10 documents marked as classified while cleaning out a Washington, DC, office previously used by Biden from 2017 to 2019. The searches also come amid an ongoing probe of mishandling of classified documents by former President Donald Trump, which began after federal agents retrieved roughly 100 classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August. Two separate special counsels have been assigned to review the handling of documents by both Biden and Trump.

California shooting suspect kills himself after Lunar New Year massacre (Reuters) A 72-year-old gunman killed himself when approached by police on Sunday, about 12 hours after he had carried out a Lunar New Year massacre at a dance club that left 10 people dead and another 10 wounded. The gunman tried to carry out another shooting at a separate club just minutes after the first one on Saturday night, but authorities said two bystanders wrestled the man’s weapon away from him before any shots could be fired. He fled that scene. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the suspect as Huu Can Tran, a septuagenarian he said used a high-capacity magazine pistol to shoot up a ballroom dance venue popular with older patrons in Monterey Park, about 7 miles (11 km) east of downtown Los Angeles. Investigators did not yet know a motive, although gun violence is frequent in the United States. The attack in Monterey Park was the deadliest since May 2022, when a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas.

As Haitian gangs expand control, cop’s family is left shaken (AP) Every day when Marie Carmel Daniel’s husband put on his flak vest and walked out the door for another day of fighting Haiti’s gangs, she wondered if he would come home that night. Friday was the day her smiling spouse of 18 years, Ricken Staniclasse, didn’t. One of the country’s nearly 200 gangs ambushed his police unit that morning. Officers desperately called for backup. But help never came, the country’s police union said. The fighting killed three officers, hospitalized a fourth with bullet wounds and left the 44-year-old Staniclasse missing. Daniel, meanwhile, was terrified for herself and their three children. “My husband was fighting a lot with the gangs, and we don’t know what could happen to us,” Daniel, 43, said while curled up on her red couch surrounded by neighbors. “I can’t sleep at the house anymore because I don’t know what could happen to us.” While the United Nations estimates that 60% of Port-Au-Prince is controlled by the gangs, nowadays most Haitians on the street reckon that number is closer to 100%.

Is Brazil’s Defender of Democracy Actually Good for Democracy? (NYT) When right-wing voices spread the baseless claim that Brazil’s election was stolen, he ordered them banned from social media. And when thousands of right-wing protesters stormed Brazil’s halls of power this month, he ordered the officials who had been responsible for securing the buildings arrested. Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, has taken up the mantle of Brazil’s lead defender of democracy. Using a broad interpretation of the court’s powers, he has pushed to investigate and prosecute, as well as to silence on social media, anyone he deems a menace to Brazil’s institutions. To many on Brazil’s left, that made him the man who saved Brazil’s young democracy. Yet to many others in Brazil, he is threatening it. Mr. de Moraes’s aggressive approach and expanding authority have made him one of the nation’s most powerful people, and also put him at the center of a complicated debate in Brazil over how far is too far to fight the far right. He has jailed people without trial for posting threats on social media; helped sentence a sitting congressman to nearly nine years in prison for threatening the court; ordered raids on businessmen with little evidence of wrongdoing; suspended an elected governor from his job; and unilaterally blocked dozens of accounts and thousands of posts on social media, with virtually no transparency or room for appeal. His moves fit into a broader trend of Brazil’s Supreme Court increasing its power—and taking what critics have called a more repressive turn in the process.

Poland signals intent to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine (Reuters) Poland’s prime minister said on Monday his government would ask Germany for permission to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, and planned to send them whether or not Berlin agreed. Germany’s foreign minister had said on Sunday that Berlin would not stand in the way if Poland wanted to do so. The issue of supplying the German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine has dominated recent discussions among Western allies about how much and what sort of material aid they should give Ukraine as the first anniversary of the Russian invasion nears. The development comes as both sides are believed to be planning spring offensives to break deadlock in what has become a war of attrition in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Kishida prioritizes arms buildup, reversing low birthrate (AP) Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Monday that Japan faces the severest security environment in the region since the end of World War II and pledged to push a military buildup under a newly adopted security strategy, as well as tackle rapidly declining births so the country can sustain national strength. Kishida’s government in December adopted key security and defense reforms, including a counterstrike capability that breaks from the country’s exclusively self-defense-only postwar principle. In his policy speech opening this year’s parliamentary session, Kishida said active diplomacy should be prioritized, but it requires “defense power to back it up.” He said Japan’s new security strategy is based on a realistic simulation “as we face the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II and a question if we can protect the people’s lives in an emergency.” The strategy seeks to keep in check China’s increasingly assertive territorial ambitions, but it’s also a sensitive issue for many countries in Asia that were victims of Japanese wartime aggression.

India blocks Modi doc (Foreign Policy) India’s government blocked the airing of a BBC documentary that examined Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership during the Gujarat riots of 2002, when Modi was chief minister of that state. Sharing video clips of the documentary or links to the documentary on social media is banned, too. The documentary, titled India: The Modi Question, essentially makes the case that Modi had police ignore the violence that left 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead. The Indian government denounced the documentary as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage.” The BBC defended the documentary, saying it was “committed to highlighting important issues from around the world.”

Lights out in Pakistan as energy-saving move backfires (AP) Much of Pakistan was left without power for several hours on Monday morning as an energy-saving measure by the government backfired. The outage spread panic and raised questions about the cash-strapped government’s handling of the country’s economic crisis. Electricity was turned off across Pakistan during low usage hours overnight to conserve fuel across the country, officials said, leaving technicians unable to boot up the system all at once after daybreak. The outage was reminiscent of a massive blackout in January 2021, attributed at the time to a technical fault in the country’s power generation and distribution system. Monday’s nationwide breakdown left many people without drinking water as pumps are powered by electricity. Schools, hospitals, factories and shops were without power amid the harsh winter weather.

Netanyahu Fires a Top Minister to Comply With a Supreme Court Ruling (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday dismissed a senior minister recently convicted of tax fraud to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that disqualified the minister from serving, shaking the right-wing government just weeks after it came to power. By complying with the court’s ruling to remove the minister, Aryeh Deri, Mr. Netanyahu avoided an instant, head-on clash with the judiciary at a time when the country is already locked in a fierce debate over government plans for a judicial overhaul. Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest the plans to limit the judiciary’s powers, seen by many as a challenge to Israel’s democratic system. About 130,000 protesters came out on Saturday night in Tel Aviv and other cities, according to the Israeli news media. But Mr. Netanyahu, himself on trial for corruption, faces the predicament of how to compensate Mr. Deri, the leader of Shas, an ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party, and a close political ally whose support is key to the stability and survival of the coalition government. The 11 seats that Shas won in the November elections are crucial to the government’s majority in the 120-member Parliament; the coalition parties together control 64 seats.

Why would anyone lobby on behalf of dangerous dogs?

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/pet-industry-news/pet-charities/why-would-anyone-lobby-on-behalf-of-dangerous-dogs/

Why would anyone lobby on behalf of dangerous dogs?

Photo by Sandra Schmid/Getty Images

As I boarded the train to the New Statesman office this morning I made sure to reserve a seat for Spitty, my Mozambique spitting cobra. He’s a beloved member of the family and I take him everywhere because it is my right to do so. Sadly my fellow passengers reacted to the presence of a three-foot long venomous snake with ignorance and, it has to be said, prejudice, backing away from Spitty in horror. “Don’t judge him on appearances!” I pleaded, as Spitty reared up, seeking a pair of human eyes to hose with his burning venom. “He’s just being friendly!”

Many readers will have experienced a similar situation, although perhaps with a different – and much more dangerous – animal: the dog. While there hasn’t been a fatal snake bite in the UK for 50 years, 2022 is now the worst year on record for fatal dog attacks. Nine people have been killed this year by dogs, while the number of people, mostly small children, who have been injured and disfigured is also at a record level. A week ago a surgeon at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital told ITV News he sees new victims of dog attacks on a daily basis.

Last month a five-year-old girl was playing outside her home in Croydon, south London, when a bull terrier pinned her to the ground, inflicting “life-changing” injuries to her face. Of the nine fatal dog attacks in the UK this year, six were by bull terriers and four were by one breed, the Bully XL. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Veterinary Medical Association found that bull terriers and rottweilers accounted for more than two thirds of fatal dog attacks in the US in one year.

This is a controversial thing to point out, however. A well-funded charity lobby, led by the RSPCA, Dogs Trust and Blue Cross is calling for the repeal of the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991), which bans certain breeds. They say this “breed-specific legislation” is discriminatory and unjust. While the charities themselves are careful to avoid making an offensive connection between the law as it applies to dog breeds and the racism experienced by millions of human beings, it seems to be a widespread view among activists, expressed in blogs, news interviews and petitions to parliament, that it amounts to “breedism”, “dog racism” and “basically racism”.

It’s important to weigh up the two sets of rights being debated here. On the one hand you have the right of five-year-olds not to be disfigured and traumatised for life; on the other, the right of adults to own certain breeds of dog.

Select and enter your email address

Morning Call

Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman’s politics team.

The Crash

A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown.

World Review

The New Statesman’s global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday.

The New Statesman Daily

The best of the New Statesman, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.

Green Times

The New Statesman’s weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises – in your inbox every Thursday.

The Culture Edit

Our weekly culture newsletter – from books and art to pop culture and memes – sent every Friday.

Weekly Highlights

A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday.

Ideas and Letters

A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section and the NS archive, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history – sent every Wednesday.

Events and Offers

Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates.

Your email address

Job title

Job title

Administration / Office

Arts and Culture

Board Member

Business / Corporate Services

Client / Customer Services

Communications

Construction, Works, Engineering

Education, Curriculum and Teaching

Environment, Conservation and NRM

Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance

Finance Management

Health – Medical and Nursing Management

HR, Training and Organisational Development

Information and Communications Technology

Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives

Infrastructure Management – Transport, Utilities

Legal Officers and Practitioners

Librarians and Library Management

Management

Marketing

OH&S, Risk Management

Operations Management

Planning, Policy, Strategy

Printing, Design, Publishing, Web

Projects, Programs and Advisors

Property, Assets and Fleet Management

Public Relations and Media

Purchasing and Procurement

Quality Management

Science and Technical Research and Development

Security and Law Enforcement

Service Delivery

Sport and Recreation

Travel, Accommodation, Tourism

Wellbeing, Community / Social Services

Job titleAdministration / OfficeArts and CultureBoard MemberBusiness / Corporate ServicesClient / Customer ServicesCommunicationsConstruction, Works, EngineeringEducation, Curriculum and TeachingEnvironment, Conservation and NRMFacility / Grounds Management and MaintenanceFinance ManagementHealth – Medical and Nursing ManagementHR, Training and Organisational DevelopmentInformation and Communications TechnologyInformation Services, Statistics, Records, ArchivesInfrastructure Management – Transport, UtilitiesLegal Officers and PractitionersLibrarians and Library ManagementManagementMarketingOH&S, Risk ManagementOperations ManagementPlanning, Policy, StrategyPrinting, Design, Publishing, WebProjects, Programs and AdvisorsProperty, Assets and Fleet ManagementPublic Relations and MediaPurchasing and ProcurementQuality ManagementScience and Technical Research and DevelopmentSecurity and Law EnforcementService DeliverySport and RecreationTravel, Accommodation, TourismWellbeing, Community / Social Services

Sign up

The RSPCA claims that the Dangerous Dogs Act hasn’t prevented dog bites from more than doubling in the last decade. A similar argument could be made about tax evasion, or speeding, or burglary – laws that so many people get away with breaking – but all this means is that the law is unenforced. It does not mean the law is wrong.

Content from our partners

The charities opposing the act encourage a focus on “deed not breed”, which presumes that dogs are full citizens with the right to commit a “deed” – mauling a child with their teeth and claws – and then rehabilitate. The price of extending those rights to a dog is the safety of vulnerable humans.

Oddly enough, while the RSPCA campaigns against law that discriminates between dog breeds, it isn’t bothered about discriminating between species. Each year, thousands upon thousands of pigs (which are widely thought to be more intelligent than dogs) are electrocuted, minced and made into tasty, RSPCA-approved sausages. But then, the RSPCA is also very much the Royal Society for Getting People to Bequeathe it Money, and if you’re going to persuade the nation’s elderly to include you in their wills, a big-eyed pooch is just the job. Under capitalism, charity is as much a market as anything else.

This is the grim truth of the pet industry: in a country in which 3.9 million people live in poverty, the UK spends £10bn a year on dogs and £8bn a year on cats. The cats don’t care and the dogs, given half a chance, would eat us. The government should expand and enforce the laws that protect us from them.

[See also: Sylvia Plath’s 90th birthday party]

The Morning After: Apple Closes Education Discount Loophole

Apple has finally closed a loophole in the US that allowed most buyers to claim education pricing, even if they weren't actually a student or a teacher. First noted on Reddit, the US Apple Store now requires buyers to verify their status via UNiDAYS to be able to purchase MacBooks, iPads and other devices from its education portal. The change appears to have happened over the past few days.

I’m based in the UK, where Apple has long required proof through the UNiDAYS platform to nab that often substantial discount on some of the company’s priciest devices. For legitimate students and teachers, you’ll have to click through to the UNiDAYS' partner page for Apple first and sign in before you get to those discounts. Not that anyone can go too crazy: shoppers are limited to one desktop, one Mac mini, one laptop, two iPads and two accessories per year. Still, that’s a lot of Macs.

- Mat Smith

Anemia could make space travel to Mars a challenge

In space, your body destroys more blood cells than it makes. A new study has found that "space anemia" caused by weightlessness in space is not a temporary issue as once thought, the CBC has reported. "As long as you are in space, you are destroying more blood cells than you are making," said the University of Ottawa's Guy Trudel, who led a 14-astronaut study carried out by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

The researchers said anemia could even be an issue for space tourism. The study also noted that "current exercise and nutritional countermeasures of modern space travel did not prevent hemolysis and post-flight anemia" in the astronauts tested.

Tesla driver in fatal California crash first to face felony charges involving Autopilot

Autopilot was apparently engaged at the time of the crash.

A Tesla owner is facing the first felony charges filed against someone using a partially automated driving system in the US. The defendant, Kevin George Aziz Riad, was driving a Model S when he crashed into a Honda Civic at a California intersection in 2019. Blog about games ended up killing the Civic's two passengers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently confirmed the vehicle’s Autopilot mode was switched on at the time of the crash. The NHTSA formally opened a probe into Tesla's driver assistance system in August last year following a string of 17 people killed in 11 crashes involving parked first responder vehicles.

AT&T and Verizon finally switch on their C-Band 5G networks

Verizon expects to hit over 1,700 cities this month, but AT&T's rollout is more limited.

After a six-week delay - and no availability near many airports for the time being - people in some areas of the US will have access to C-Band services starting today.

AT&T is taking a relatively cautious approach to its rollout, with its C-Band 5G services going live in "limited parts" of eight metro areas, including Detroit and Chicago. Folks in three regions in Florida also use AT&T's C-Band network. Verizon (Engadget's former parent company) says 100 million more people will gain access to its 5G Ultra Wideband network this month.

Google is discontinuing its old free G Suite tier on July 1st

Affected users will need to move to a paid Workspace plan.

First, it was Google Apps, then G Suite and now it’s Workspace. During all those name changes, Google offered new subscription plans while doing away with older ones. It now plans to sunset a tier that had survived the suite’s most recent rebranding.

In an email spotted by 9to5Google, the company told Workspace administrators it won’t offer G Suite legacy free edition as of July 1st, 2022. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to start paying for GDocs. If you're using Gmail, Docs, Sheets and the rest through a free Google account, you won't be affected by the move. Google will continue to offer free Workspace plans to nonprofits and schools that qualify for its Fundamentals tier.

Airstream's concept electric camping trailer propels itself

The eStream helps tow itself. According to Autoblog, Airstream’s Thor brand has revealed an eStream concept self-propelling camper. The dual-motor trailer not only reduces the burden on the towing vehicle but can be remote-controlled from your phone to help you hitch up, reverse or simply move camp site. You can even use the motors to shift the weight distribution, so you might not need a special hitch.

Limited beta brings Google Play Games to Windows

Play some big-name Android titles on your PC.

You can now play Google Play Games on Windows - if you live in the right country. Google has launched registration-based beta access to "popular" Play Games titles on Windows PCs in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. Google said it would offer details of later betas and expansions "soon." It previously committed to a generic 2022 rollout.

The Backbone One made cloud gaming on the iPhone feel natural

It's an expensive controller, though. Whether it’s Xbox Cloud gaming, Stadia, PlayStation Remote Play or just a very severe addiction to Apple Arcade, gamepads are a better way to play many games on your smartphone. Normally that means using some kind of smartphone clip, but there are several options now that snap directly to your phone. The $100 Backbone One is a single-piece controller that extends to fit your iPhone and plugs directly into it.

Continue reading.

The biggest news stories you might have missed Amazon gives its 'Lord of the Rings' series a redundant name

Microsoft's Xbox Elite Wireless Series 2 controller is $40 off again

I tried Silk's dairy-inspired Nextmilk and wasn't fooled

Apple's WeWork drama 'WeCrashed' premieres March 18th

President Biden signs memo to help improve military cybersecurity

iRobot's Roomba 694 is back down to a record low of $179

GM aims to use hydrogen fuel cells for mobile power generators

How do you deal with the looming reality of expectations? I started writing because I had an idea and it was fun to do. Now I’m 150k deep with readers making suggestions or saying they “can’t wait to see when *thing* occurs”, and it’s terrifying! What if I don’t live up to the hype? What if I crash and burn at the ending? I know how I want it to end, but the closer I get the more anxious it makes me.

Endings are hard. No matter whether you're the only person reading it or whether you have a million people following along as you post each chapter, endings are hard.

But they're also an achievement. They're something to be proud of. They're something you've strived for and something worth savouring when you can reach that point.

Endings also aren't final. The great thing about posting your work online is that you can edit it at any time. You can rewrite entire chapters. You can post a whole new version of the same story with a different ending. You can post three separate ending chapters at the same time and let your readers choose which one is the ending that they want.

When readers say things like they can't wait to see something or when they ask if something will happen in the story or when they suggest a thing that you could do - that's just a way of showing excitement and interest. While some readers might have expectations attached to those comments, most readers don't. They're enjoying the story that you're writing, and they're looking forward to seeing how it goes.

If you like an idea or you think a suggestion fits in with how you see things going, then of course add it in if you want to. But don't feel like you have to do those things just to make other people happy. Make yourself happy with it first. ❤

Please Him

Park Jisung x reader

Masterlist

Genre: toxic jisung! toxic relationship au!

Warnings: explicit language, mature themes, drinking, drugs, suggestive content, toxic relationship, suggest multiple sexual partners, (lmk if i missed anything)

Word Count: 2K+

Author’s note: LMAOOO okay so I posted this without paying attention because I just wanted to see how it would do. But when I reread it there was so many mistakes so I deleted it to edit it and now it's going back up. Also I have yet to decided if there's gonna be more to this. However this is not gonna be a series, that's for sure. hugs and kisses to anyone reading <333

-----------------

You met Jisung in high school, he was everything you weren’t. He was confident, bold, charming. The most popular guy in the grade, every girl swooning over him. He was competitive, a flirt, and just a downright trouble maker. He was always up to no good.

Although you would never admit it, he had you wrapped around his finger like every other girl in the grade. But you would only allow your imagination to travel, imaging him in every aspect of a romantic relationship. You never dared to act on such fantasies. You reasoned that your imagination would always be better than reality.

That was until she decided to get a boyfriend. Your best friend just had to get a boyfriend, and you just had to be dragged along everywhere they went, as ‘emotional support’. Truly, you believed your best friend just dragged you along because the boyfriend was into some shady stuff and she never fully trusted him. So you allowed yourself to get dragged along to any party, or any function. That is what friends are for right? Protecting each other, always.

-

That night was no different, you were being dragged along to a car meet. Your mom thought you were spending the night at your friend's house, while her mom never really paid attention to where you guys were. Your friend clung to her boyfriend, while you followed them like the unwanted third wheel. You would never say it, but you preferred being here than at home waiting for her text. At least being here, you knew she was okay, she was safe.

Her boyfriend was talking to some friends while she stuck to his side. She turned to look at you, and gave you the nod. The signal to say that she was okay for right now, that you could leave her and it’ll be okay. You nodded back, and walked away to give them some space for now. You walked the parking lot, looking at the different cars.

It was a very relaxed evening, there wasn’t much going on. Most people were just chatting in small groups. Every few rows, there would be a car playing music loud enough for everyone to hear. Then all of a sudden a group of cars rolled in, blue lights flashing sirens blaring. It was like rats under a light. Everyone suddenly scattered, hopping into their cars and driving off. You looked back to where your friend and her boyfriend were, nowhere in sight.

You felt your breath quicken, you had lost your ride and were sure to be arrested. You began to run, to god knows where. You felt the tears from the nerves brim your eyes, a million questions running through your mind. The most prominent, what were you gonna tell your mom?

A car suddenly pulled up beside you, the driver shouting at you to get in. There was no one else in the car, and against your better judgment, you got in. You barely had enough time to close the door, before they were speeding off. They had a lead foot when driving, and you should really be grateful, considering they got away from the cops, but now instead you thought you were going to crash. You could feel the force of the speed, on your chest pushing you against the seat.

You looked over to the driver, they wore a mask, only their eyes being visible to you. There was something all too familiar about them. After a moment they pulled their mask down, and of course it was none other than Park Jisung. You let out a breath relaxing further into your seat, not as worried as earlier. Jisung is a troublemaker; but he’s not a murderer. At least not to your knowledge.

Your phone began to buzz, it was your best friend checking where you were at. You sent a quick text telling her your fine and that you were with Jisung. That night was over two years ago now. It was the night that changed your life.

Since then you and Jisung have spent more time together. He seemed to be at every party that you were dragged to. Jisung was always there, and he always made sure to at least say hi to you.

-

Jisung liked you, but not in the way that most guys like someone. He liked how you appeared to people. He liked that everyone thought you were nice, kind, an angel. He liked the lengths you would go to, to maintain public image. He liked that you were just perfect to anyone on the outside. He liked that at these he saw you at, you refused everyone’s offer to drink, to dance, to smoke, but his. You never did tell him no.

He knew that you only truly ever cared about how you looked. He knew that what everyone thought of you was more important than you, yourself. He knew that you would do absolutely anything, everything, to please him. He liked the power trip he had with you. He liked that he was the only thing you cared about. It’s why he accepted your confession when the time came, because he knew you could never be without him.

What Jisung wasn’t prepared for, is just how dependent he would be on you. When you guys started dating it was cute, cliche even. The bad boy street racer, dating the innocent honor roll angel. And to anyone on the outside, it would still appear to be that way. You made sure of it.

-

The first time Jisung realized he was dependent on you was when you guys were at a friend’s party, Chenle’s party. Earlier that night Jisung had pissed you off, saying that giving one girl a ride home doesn’t mean he’s cheating. Normally you would agree, but people saw him, people were talking. The rumors were spinning, and you couldn’t have people saying you were the one that let Jisung get away.

So after maybe just one too many drinks, or maybe it was after playing with the powder, you gained the confidence to put Jisung in his place. Make him feel what you felt. You took a seat on Chenle’s lap. You knew Chenle wouldn’t push you off, that would risk you getting hurt, and Chenle would never hurt you. Jisung wouldn’t allow Chenle to hurt you.

You inched your face close to Chenle’s, almost like you were gonna kiss him. Instead you grabbed the beer he was holding, you took a large sip, pulled Chenle in for a kiss, making him drink the liquor from your mouth.

Before you could pull away, Jisung was already pulling you off of Chenle. He dragged you through the house, out onto the front porch. He wrapped his hand around your throat, pulling you closer to him

“What the fuck was that?” he spat at you

In your peripheral vision you could see people staring, “kiss me.”

“What?”

“People are looking, kiss me,” a smirk played its way onto Jisung’s lips, there was his angel. There they were, always making sure they looked perfect to everyone. Jisung pressed his lips against yours, the heated kiss being seen by all the onlookers.

After Jisung pulled away, he took your hand in his and walked you nicely to the car. Jisung didn’t really understand it, but he enjoyed watching you go to extreme lengths to ensure you were perfect.

-

Jisung was the one that introduced you to powder, to snow, to the white stuff. Jisung and his friends were competitive, against each other, against others. They liked to compete, because they loved to win. And when they won, the best way to celebrate was to play in the snow.

“Wanna play?” Jaemin asked. Jaemin always liked this lifestyle, he liked the women, he liked the drinks, he liked the drugs, and he loved the money. Jaemin was a person that enjoyed this type of life.

“Go easy on her Jaems, she’s new,” Jeno said, sitting next to Jaemin. Jeno was worse than you, you may have been an angel, but Jeno was a saint. There was no wrong he could do. Jeno enjoyed the privilege of fooling everyone. Jeno did whatever he wanted, because even if people knew it was wrong, they would make excuses for him.

“Just a little sniff, that’s all you have to do,” Haechan held out the back of his hand, a little white powder on it for you to try. Haechan was the worst, a dealer taking his own supply. He made friends with bad people, but Haechan enjoyed reaping the rewards of his friendships. The snow was just one of those many rewards.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to, angel,” Renjun cooed from the other side of the table. Renjun was always a charmer, he made everyone feel like they had an option. He made people safe, because he was considered reasonable. He was considered to be caring. But he was just as bad as the rest of them. He enjoyed this life as much as the rest of them.

You looked to Jisung, who was standing next to Chenle, he didn’t sit at the table with the rest of the boys and you. You looked at him, because if he wanted you to do it, you would. Jisung just smirked a little and nodded his head. You bent a little, sniffing the drug off of Haechan’s hand.

From then on, you always did celebrated with the boys when they won, and you always played in the snow, with Jisung’s permission.

-

Jisung wasn’t the sharing type. Ever since he was a young boy, he didn’t like to share. Whether that be sharing his toys, or sharing his food, or even sharing his emotions. Jisung wasn’t the sharing type. He didn’t like to share, and he wouldn’t share anything with anyone.

But his friends were different. They were the exception. He shared everything with them. Especially because they shared with him too. And there were no limits to what those boys shared. You didn’t realize that you were something to be shared.

“Say ah angel,” Jisung caressed your cheek, as you opened your mouth, taking his fingers in your mouth, “Jeno is nice, don’t worry baby.” Jisung reassured you, as he took a seat against the wall. While you remained still, seated on the bed, your knees tucked under you.

You didn’t have to wait long for Jeno to arrive, you didn’t expect Jaemin to be with him too though. You looked over to Jisung, waiting for him to say something, to say anything, but he did no such thing. He just smirked and nodded his head. He knew you would do anything to please him.

“We’re celebrating tonight baby,” Jaemin said, taking your face in his hand. He pushed on your cheeks to open your mouth. He poured the liquor down your throat, forcing you to drink. Jeno and Jisung just laughed.

“Here baby,” Jeno stuck out his hand, the white stuff already poured out for you. You took a sniff feeling it hit the back of your nose. “Good baby,” Jeno cooed on.

Jisung wasn’t the sharing type, but there were expectations. Jeno and Jaemin were the expectation for tonight.

-

“How much fucking snow?” Jisung yelled at you. There was product missing apparently, product that hadn’t been paid for. “Baby, angel, look at me,” Jisung came up grabbing you face to look at him, “this isn’t about the money, but I need to know how much snow you took.”

Jisung couldn’t remember what fear felt like. He was never really afraid of anything. He didn’t fear getting caught, he didn’t fear losing his life, he didn’t fear anything. He couldn’t recall what fear felt like. Until this moment, when he felt like he was gonna lose you. When he felt like you were too far gone.

“You said, I could play in the snow,” you wanted to cry, you wanted to please Jisung, you never wanted to make him angry. “I was just playing,” you whispered out. The truth, you couldn’t remember taking any white stuff today. You couldn’t remember anything that happened today at all. You just wanted Jisung to stop being angry.

“Fuck,” Jisung yelled out, slamming his fist against the wall.

“Let’s go on a drive,” you suggested, “you love to drive.” You gave a sweet smile.

Jisung let out a breath, finally taking a seat, staring at you. You would do anything to please him, he knew this, he loved this about you. You were playing in the snow, because you wanted to please him, that’s all. That’s all it was, you trying to please him.

“Come here angel, sit” Jisung patted his thigh, his voice sounded kind. He didn’t sound angry anymore, you took a seat on his thigh. You looked at him, batting your eyelashes, “would you do anything to make me happy?”

You nodded your head, “anything.”

“Even dying?” Jisung grabbed a knife from his pocket, holding it against your throat, the blade ever so slightly digging into your skin.

“If it makes you happy,” that's the part Jisung loved, loves.

Jisung dropped the knife, “god, I love you,” Jisung’s hand went into your hair, at the back of your head pulling you into a heated kiss. When Jisung finally pulled away from you, he leaned his forehead against yours “no more snow, understand?”

“Okay,” it was so simple for you. It was so easy for you to give up the white stuff, because that’s what Jisung wanted. You would do anything for Jisung, because you love him. And Jisung loves that you would do anything for him. It almost makes him want to do everything for you. Almost.