#what kind of sepia tone filter did they use
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NATHANN??? They did him so dirty with this. He got his revenge by scoring tho 💅
#what kind of sepia tone filter did they use#very much giving 2013 insta#the hoodie + jersey combo 🤌🤌🤌#nhl#colorado avalanche#nathan mackinnon#nate dogg#avs#avsmin
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and he sees dawn before the rest of the world
or: a fucked up little au of 200. intended to be unsettling so just be warned
warnings for: unreality (i think that’s the appropriate term? please lmk if not), implied self harm, fucked up relationship dynamics; lmk if i should tag anything else
Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
“Ugh, five more minutes,” Martin hissed, throwing an arm across his face, as though he could stop the barrage of sound just by covering his eyes. His alarm was unsympathetic to his whinging, continuing to scream its daily mourning dirge, grieving the end of another period of blessed rest. “Fine, fine! I’m getting up, christ…”
He reached clumsily for the phone on his bedside table, only for his fingers to scrabble uselessly around the ghost of its presence. He was momentarily so stymied by the absence that it took him longer than it should’ve to remember that he’d moved it to his desk, to prevent him from giving into the temptation to hit the snooze button just one more time.
Letting out another slew of curses, Martin shuffled onto his other side and reached for
A jaw-cracking yawn near split Martin’s face in two as he hunched over the gleaming tea kettle, steam beginning to pour from the spout. He shuffled his feet, eyes meandering sightlessly over the cow-shaped mug drying on the counter, the cluster of crumbs that he must’ve missed when cleaning up after dinner last night.
He hated mornings. Maybe it was the preemptive dread he felt at the thought of going to work; maybe it was because he hated having to be upright this early in the morning. Either way, he felt strangely disconnected from his morning routine, each motion carried out with habitual, distant efficiency as his thoughts raced along like a hamster on a wheel just below the surface.
It...was a bit silly for him to be worried about work, though. The stuff he was doing was interesting, and he had the loveliest coworkers a guy could ask for. They’d even offered to teach him a thing or two about artifact restoration once they learned the truth about his CV.
He drew himself up to his full height and rolled his shoulders back, clouded sigh mingling with the fog from the boiling water. Things were going well. Hell, he was actually going to get top surgery sometime in the next year or so, which was amazing considering his teenage self would’ve laughed at the very idea of being out.
There was no reason to dread going to work.
Martin carefully poured the water into the mug, letting the tea steep before adding a splash of milk and sugar. When he picked the mug up, the heat from the tea had bled into the ceramic, so warm as to be uncomfortable against the delicate skin of his palms. He didn’t let go, just kept on gripping the mug, like trying to contain the last gasp of a dying star.
Martin stared around his kitchen. The waterstains on the inside of the cow mug slowly evaporating into the still air; the crumbs that had sat there for who knows how long. The empty, blank face of his fridge.
Martin lifted the mug, and steam collected on his glasses as his breath wafted over the surface of the tea. He drew away, waiting for the lenses to clear, before leaning in for another sip.
His reflection stared back at him, a monochrome facsimile of his face rimmed in white smoke, and he recoiled, the mug slipping from
Working nine to five, what a way to make a living…
Martin stared out the window, his hand pillowed in the palm of his hand as Dolly Parton crooned in his ears. Split second by split second, he let his eyes catch on a point in the darkened surroundings, only letting his vision blur into incoherence when that fixed point whipped out of sight. It was a game he sometimes played when he got bored of reading or playing cards on his phone.
The old woman across from him let out a quiet grunt and shuffled, drawing his attention back inside the train. She was a gnarled old thing, bowed by the gravity of grief and time and life, though Martin couldn’t say for certain whether it was one well-lived.
Barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving...
That was the thing about people watching: Martin was never quite sure if it was disrespectful to make assumptions about a person’s life based on a passing glimpse. He could never be sure if the person with the grumpy expression had a foul attitude, or if they were just a kind person on the tail-end of a truly awful day.
The old woman was knitting though, and Martin generally found it safe to assume that knitters were nice people.
For a moment he thought about taking out his headphones and striking up a conversation; the pattern looked devilishly complicated, and as a beginning knitter, he always appreciated tips. There was an unfinished set of fingerless green gloves in the back of his closet; it was easy for hands to get cold in the Archives, and the color suited
“Alright, Martin?”
Martin startled, his pen clattering to the floor. He looked up to find Sasha perched on the edge of his desk, grinning like the cat who’d just eaten the canary. Or, he thought she was. His eyes kept skittering from one corner of her face to the other, like a smooth stone skipping across a lake.
“Uh…” Frowning slightly, he let his gaze travel over the shelves of books, the humming lights, his cluttered workstation. He removed his glasses so he could rub at his aching eyes, and let out a deep sigh. Probably just the stress. “Yeah—yeah! Sorry, I’ve been distracted all morning.”
Martin got the impression of Sasha’s grin being tempered with genuine concern. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is everything okay?”
“I think so. Just...work, and my mum…” he gave an expansive you know sort of gesture at life in general. “Thank god the weekend’s coming. Anyway, is there something I can help you with?”
“Well, I was going to ask if you wanted to come get drinks with Mel and Tim and I after work, but…” She cut him a meaningful glance, the bottomless holes where her eyes should be boring bright spotlights into the back of his skull. “We’d understand if you’re not feeling up to it.”
“Is Georgie coming?”
Sasha shrugged. “Probably. Mel didn’t say so, but they’ve been all over each other since they started dating.”
Martin laughed. “True.” Tried to gauge how he was feeling, whether or not he was up to a night of socializing. You should go, a strangely posh little voice murmured in the back of his head, and he found himself saying, “Actually yeah, I would like to come. I could use a night out.”
Sasha clapped him on the shoulder, and the impact rattled through him like a gong being struck. The echoes of it vibrated all the way down to his toes. “Excellent.”
Martin hesitated, and then, not entirely sure of what he was asking, “What about J
“Thanks for waiting with us,” Georgie said, smiling beatifically up at him. Passed out on her shoulder, Melanie let out a drunken snuffle and curled over, like she was thinking of climbing through the spaces of Georgie’s ribcage and sleeping in her chest cavity forever.
“Not a problem,” Martin replied, scratching the back of his neck.
To be honest, waiting with her was as much for his benefit as theirs. At first, he’d thought it was just stress; now, he was very sure that something was wrong. It wasn’t anything specific, or even bad; more like there was a sepia camera filter tinting the world dusty and nostalgic.
After his third drink, he’d looked into Tim’s laughing face and thought he might burst into tears. And he still didn’t know what Sasha was supposed to look like.
But he didn’t want to worry her, so he just bit his lip and rocked back and forth on his heels, even though the motion made his head spin that much worse.
(Maybe he needed to take a couple of days off. Have a lie-in. But that would—that would delay his work. The Institute’s work. Delays were bad; he felt strongly enough about that to carve it directly into his skin so that he’d never forget. He could roll down his sleeve and take a peek at it whenever his motivation slipped, like checking a watch for the time.)
For lack of anything else to say, he nodded toward Melanie. “She’s really out, huh?”
“She’s always been a lightweight.” Her tone was wry, but her eyes were soft and fond as she brushed Melanie’s bangs back from her face. “Never gets hungover though, the lucky bastard.”
“The nerve!” Martin said, affecting offense, which sent them right into another giggling fit.
Once he got his breath back, Martin mentioned offhand, “You know, considering how similar they are, I’m surprised that her and J̷̧̱̜͕͕̤͉̣̺̺̝͖̠̹̜͙̣͉̩̺̤̟͉͓̞̹̗́̆̂̋͆̊̎́͂̑͋̌͊͘̚͠ͅo̶̧̨͕̖͔̬̖̝̪͚̻̟̠̜̣̰̅n̶̥̉́̎͑̀͂͆̿̾͛̾̔̐͌́̅̂͂̒̆̐́͊̄̾̍̅̅͝
“Stop it!” Martin screamed, grabbing the mug from the counter and throwing it across the room. It shattered against the wall, scattering shards of ceramic across the floor. “I know
“What you’re doing,” Martin gripped the bathroom counter, ignoring the persistent ringing of his alarm, staring deeply into his reflection, “Stop it, stop it, nononon̴̡̡͚̮̠͙̻͔͎͈̜̓̈́̈́͜͜ͅǫ̸̯̠̱̖̲͙͍͎͒̇̑͒ṅ̶̨̩̳̩̝̹̳͎͈̬̦͆́̈́́͐̏̈́̕͝͝o̸̡̻̱̗̥̮̙̳̞͗̄͋̈́̀͝n̸̢̛̟͙̘̱̩͕̦̫̤̮͆͑̊͋́̂̽͜o̶̘̱̗̘̘͑̿͜ņ̶̥̞̠͕͓̠͔͚̮͈̬͕̀͗̄̓͑͑͛̕ͅő̸̮̫̓͌̾̌͋́̂̏̒̃̃̄̚n̵̗̫͕̺̻͔̭͖̉͒͗̀̈́̃̅o̴͓͉͉͗͋̎̕—”
“Shhh, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it’s okay—”
“No!” Martin shrieked, shoving Jon’s hands away, skittering backward across the broken and cracked stones of the Panopticon. Through the arched windows, the sky was a poisonous green and black, and multitudes of eyes orbited the room, watched his every movement with sickening fascination. “Just—stop.”
Luminous gaze weary and resigned, Jon did as he was bid, dropping back onto his heels.
Rubbing sweat and grime and tears from his face, breathing harshly through his mouth, Martin took a moment to remember where he was, why he was here. It always took a moment for everything to come back.
As though unable to keep silent any longer, Jon asked, “So what was it this time?”
“Don’t,” Martin hissed, dragging his hands through his greasy hair.
Though his expression went mulishly annoyed, Jon raised his hands placatingly, a silent, alright, you win. It was a familiar gesture, one that he’d done so many times while they were living in Scotland, while they were traveling the devastated landscape of the apocalypse. It made Martin ache for when things were simpler, when his heart didn’t just feel like one big bruise.
He gently set the thought aside, and turned a more assessing eye on the Panopticon. Normally the changes were insignificant, but something thick and red and black had started to coil around the windows, weaving in and out of the floor, cracking the stonework. Martin traced the strange things with his eyes, frowning—
“Christ, Jon,” he whispered in horrified realization. “Are...are those corpse roots?”
Jon bobbed his head. “They’ve long since overtaken the rest of London. It’s just us, now.”
Martin sucked in a long, frustrated breath through his teeth. There was no point trying to talk any sense into Jon, not after so long, and force would only result in immediately getting kicked back into that horrible dream world.
“And the others?”
Jon shrugged, tracing the cracks in the earth with his fingers. “Still alive, and living happily in the dream I made for them.” He didn’t say, unlike you, but the implication was so loud he might as well have screamed it.
“Shut up,” Martin muttered, pushing to his feet and limping to one of the windows.
Corpse roots, as far as the eye could see. They covered the city of London in a blanket of tangled black, so thick that it was impossible to see the buildings beneath.
“Was it worth it?” he asked, sagging against the side of the window, too tired to be angry.
When the silence persisted a second too long, Martin turned around to find Jon with his head tilted back, examining the corpse roots consuming what had once been the Beholding’s seat of power, expression distant and thoughtful. The eyes, ever-watching, never understanding, drifted closer, greedily drinking in the sight.
When Martin realized that Jon wasn’t planning on answering, he let out another sigh, ruffled his bangs away from his face, and said, “You’re never there.”
Jon’s gaze snapped to him with a laser-edged focus. “Sorry?”
“If you’re going to trap me in a dream,” Martin said, each syllable clipped and precise, “You could at least be there.”
Like it always did, Jon’s face crumpled, and he looked away. “...I don’t deserve it.”
“Oh, we’re well past that and you know it!” Martin shrieked, striking his fist against the stone. “You made your fucking decision to damn the world, to hell with whatever we thought, the least you could do is stop hiding behind your pointless guilt and act like this is what you actually want!”
It would’ve been better, if Jon had simply become drunk with power and was no longer listening to reason. The fact that he’d made this same decision every single day with clear, unclouded eyes and sound judgement—as Jon the human, rather than Jon the lynchpin of the apocalypse, pupil of the Eye—made Martin want to scream.
“I do want it!” Jon snapped back, then quieter, “I do.” He looked up at the corpse roots again, eyes going misty. “I just—I should witness every second of misery and pain that I’m causing. I don’t deserve to just...forget.”
Wind snapped and howled around them like a creature mad with rage, and Martin idly wondered what would happen to this world once Jon died. If it would all go back to the way it had been before, or if the shell of the apocalypse would remain until the end of time, a corpse husk of a reality warped beyond repair.
“You shouldn’t have to experience this alongside me though,” Jon continued, rallying. “So I would really appreciate it if you’d stop breaking your dreams.”
“Tough,” Martin snapped back, folding his arms obstinately over his chest.
“You could be happy!” Jon reiterated, stabbing his index finger into the palm of his hand. “You could just...live your life! Forget! There’s no point in being here.”
“It’s a deal, remember? Where you go, I go. Fuck you very much, but I don’t break my promises.”
Jon stared at him for one beat, then another—and then promptly burst out laughing, his whole body shaking with the force of it. Martin stared at him, utterly bewildered, as the laughing slowly began to dissolve into desperate, heaving sobs, as he began rocking back and forth, arms wrapped around himself in a mockery of comfort.
“I miss you,” Jon gasped out, half-crazed. “So much. I miss you every day even though you’re right in front of me. But I can’t go to you, because I don’t deserve to, not when I’m the one who trapped you here. I’m everything that’s wrong with the world. I always have been.”
“Jon,” Martin sighed, low and tired.
Jon buried his face into his knees. “No, you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t forgive me just because you pity me, that’s not what I—I don’t—”
“Who said anything about forgiveness?” Martin shook his head. “Fine. You’re an asshole, and I hate you. But it’s like I said.” He gestured toward the Panopticon, the roots, the poisonous sky. “When has deserving ever mattered?”
Jon lifted his face from his knees, though his gaze stayed rooted to the floor. “...I suppose.”
“Right,” Martin agreed. “I’ve accepted that you’re not going to change your mind, but...at the very least, I don’t want to die alone. So can you please just…”
There was a long, weighted pause.
They’d had arguments like this what felt like hundreds of times before. Martin begging for Jon to change his mind, Jon refusing with that same resigned, determined expression on his face, before sending Martin back into his dreams.
Maybe it was because Martin wasn’t asking him to change his mind this time. Maybe it was because they were so close to the end of all things, and soon they’d be the last two people on earth. Maybe it was because Jon was tired, had been for so, so long, and he had won anyway, so there was no point in fighting any longer.
“Alright,” Jon whispered.
…
…
...
Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
“Ugh, five more minutes,” Martin hissed, throwing an arm across his face.
Somewhere in the far distance, the toilet flushed. A moment later, a pair of feet padded lightly into the room, hesitated at the edge of the bed, and then made their way over to the desk. The alarm abruptly went silent.
Martin uncovered his eyes and grinned up at Jon as he tentatively slid back between the covers, every movement careful and deliberate, like he was reading stage directions from a script.
“Look at Mr. Workaholic, having a lie-in,” Martin teased, pulling Jon into his arms and inhaling the scent of his coconut shampoo. “Must be the end of the world, or something.”
Jon stiffened for just a moment, before turning around and burying his face into Martin’s chest. “Or something.”
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apocalypse diaries
a little account of living in oregon during the 2020 wildfires/COVID-19 pandemic. mostly under the read more :)
Monday, 9/7
This morning, the sky was blue. Hot, the sun harsh for September, but blue and clear. I went on a walk with my mom, threading through shaded forests, cresting the hilltop with a view of town, and passing by fields rimmed with sweet ripe blackberries on the bush. We saw lots of people -- a perfect late summer day in a perfect little town, where the grand brick buildings of campus and small downtown storefronts are ringed by rolling farmland, a smooth-flowing river, and forested hills that grow into sheltering mountains.
Of course, we walked six feet apart, and hid our noses and mouths behind masks whenever we passed others on the narrow trails. And almost everyone else did too, in a show of courtesy -- it felt perfectly normal. I am still occasionally taken aback when I shy away from others or try to trap my breath or hear an announcement beginning “To stop the spread of the virus...” while grocery shopping. But these things don’t surprise me as much as seeing a photograph of two people unmasked and nearly touching, or watching the neighbors have a birthday party, people and music spilling out of their kitchen and onto the balcony. The connection and celebration I had known my whole life, now completely foreign.
Despite it all, that morning felt perfectly normal. After discussing our birthdays, my classes, and my mom’s anxiety about going backpacking, I returned home and made vegetable soup, watched Prince of Tennis with my roommates, and practiced taking integrals. The afternoon passed quietly, doing calculus at the table, until I glimpsed a sliver of strange sky through the blinded window. I stepped onto the balcony and into another kind of apocalypse.
The most welcome thing about outside was the breeze, making the dry air just bearable after the hot day. The concrete was still warm under my feet, comforting. It seemed the wind had blown in smoke from some fire, far-away until now. The sun, setting and shrouded by the smoke, glowed red and foreboding. The rest of the air was tinted yellow, and if not for the sepia tones, it might have just looked foggy, everything smudged and faded.
Notably, the smoke hadn’t stopped the games of beach volleyball in the park across the street. Quiet shouts and static-y pop music filled the air along with the wind, which rattled the trees’ dry leaves. Someone walked their dog by, pausing to take a picture of the sun. A car started and pulled out of our complex. A leaf scraped across the ground, and the smoke filled my nose.
I stood outside for longer than I needed to, somehow trapped by the warm concrete under my feet and soothing breeze on my arms. The smoke scent was light, and seemed innocuous until I thought about how far away the fires must be -- out in the Cascades, not the little hills that sheltered my town. The wind suddenly seemed a bit less friendly, carrying them closer. I thought about the emergency alert for high heat and winds earlier that day, and (among other things) the big signs along I-5 that discouraged travel during the pandemic, and slipped back inside.
Instead, I raised the blinds, to observe the progress of the red sun and the shrouding smoke and just-green trees buffeted by the wind. I did try to go outside again, to write, but the smoke was thicker, enough to make me cough. I thought about the virus, and watched bits of ash float past, and went back inside. It wasn’t worth the worry of giving myself a sore throat.
So now I’m sitting in my kitchen, and watching it grow unnaturally dark as the clock passes 7:00. The sky is yellower, and the trees and volleyball players have faded, drifting into the thickening smoke. I looked up the air quality a bit ago -- unhealthy for people with sensitive lungs, which is better than I expected. It all feels very strange, but mundane. The volleyball continues even as the sky grows dark. Cottonwood seeds float by with the ash. And I am just watching from a quiet kitchen, with dishes that still need doing. I wonder how long the smoke might last -- I’d love to open my window tonight.
This morning had felt so normal in comparison, even though the smoke is such a small thing in comparison to the shuttered schools and stores, the cancelled concerts, and the rules of six feet and masked faces. But still, I get up and do the dishes, move my laundry to the drier, and watch a movie with my sister (over Zoom, of course). I can hear the wind whistling outside, and the smoke scent begins to seep in even though all the windows are closed. I hope that I don’t wake up smelling smoke and that I can open my window soon. Wishful thinking, and I realize that I barely bother to wonder anymore when I might dare to touch someone I don’t already share air with.
Tuesday, 9/8
I wake up a few times as night fades into morning, mostly from the growing light, but once from the shower starting on the other side of the wall -- my roommate has work at 8:30. My comforter is on the floor, my battery pack and earbuds are in the bed where I discarded them before going to sleep. I am almost too warm under just a sheet, but I curl back into it each time I wake. The whole sky is yellow-orange, as if the sunrise fills all the air, but it’s just smoke shrouding my surroundings. It is alien, this dusty neon sky, but I go back to sleep anyway.
When I get up, the downstairs is dark, one window covered and smoke filtering light out from the rest. It feels like evening, but I make an egg and toast and eat a beautiful nectarine, which reminds me of yesterday morning, a flawless piece of summer. It is hard to think of anything about this summer as flawless. I can see bits of ash flutter by the window, like snowflakes, and I long for last winter.
After breakfast, I water the balcony plants. The smoke scent is strong, sharper than yesterday, and the fires creep closer. There is ash layered in the pots, and on our table and chairs. My bare feet leave prints. I also mist the plants with water, to make the balcony air, dry from the wind, more bearable. Balcony life is ill-suited to most plants, and I wonder if they know where they are, if they know that the salvatory humidity on their leaves is man-made.
I finish as quickly as possible, and return inside, where the air is already too warm (the cool morning outside had been a relief), but clear and clean. I would like to drive to the stormy coast, to go swimming in the cold water of the nearby river, even to cool myself with a mist from the plants’ spray bottle, but I don’t. Instead, I wash my face and brush my teeth and get my calculus workbook and another cup of coffee. I open to the chapter on motion problems and watch a dog-walker drift by with the ash. There is no volleyball today, the air hazardous.
-
The first part of today passes like yesterday. I finish my calculus and eat yesterday’s soup for lunch. I call our internet provider to complain about our abysmal internet speeds. The call takes 30 minutes, and we get nowhere. She asks about the weather where I am, and I hold back a laugh. I glance out the window, as if to check that the smoke hasn’t up and left and say “Not too bad. We have some smoke blowing in from wildfires though.” I guess it’s not too bad -- I’m safe, at least.
Afterwards, I go up to my room to get something, and wince at the scent of smoke inside. My throat has started to catch, and my roommate’s eyes are watering. We decide to venture out to get sealing tape. It’s nice to do something, and for a moment, this feels like an adventure, a brave expedition into the unknown to protect us and ours. For one of the first times since March, I am present, letting the moment, the heavy smoke sink into my skin. I will remember, but who will I tell about these days? What will still be here, who might still be shocked by it when this is all over?
The feeling of adventure only lasts as long as the Home Depot parking lot, where the smoke chokes thick in my throat and the wind whips ash into our eyes. It is evening, and the sun must be sinking again, because the sky turns from dusty brown to red-orange, far too dark for a summer 6:00. It makes the grass a plastic shade of vibrant green and suddenly, I want nothing more than to be home, out of the smoke. The adventure is gone, and even when we return home, the sickly orange from the windows and bright ceiling light makes me feel melancholy, lonely and lost.
I’m not sure what to do with the feeling, but I know that I need to start taping our doors and windows. I go downstairs, where it is the worst, and as I run tape along the seams of the front door, I feel ash beneath my feet. The flames seem to lick at our walls, and for the first time, I wonder how far the winds will drive the fires. Where would we go, when the rest of the state is already fleeing to us?
I think of March 11th, when my university announced they would go online for most of finals week and the first week of spring term. I remember how we watched other states, other colleges, shutter, and wondered when or if we might do that. I remember March 23rd, when the governor ordered us into our houses to stay, and how we planned grimly for a few weeks’ change. I wonder how long this will last.
Thankfully, we watch Prince of Tennis and read our dumb romance novel, and I forget for a bit -- it is nice to be stuck inside with these people, at least. As the evening winds down, we finish taping windows. We tell our other roommate, who is away, to come in through the garage when he gets home. It’s the only door we don’t tape, the double entrance acting like an airlock. I even carry the balcony plants inside, so we can seal it off. They are dry and ashy, but probably happier to be inside. Even coated in ash, the basil, sage, and tomato still smell like lovely and herby, and it makes me smile.
Wednesday-Friday, 9/9-9/11
The next few days pass like this. We stay inside, and watch the shifts of the sky from orange to yellow to sepia, a strange fog settled over us. We monitor the smell of smoke in the house, how it changes from day-to-day and room-to-room. At least the smoke blocks the sun, and keeps it cool while we can’t open the windows.
I am reading a Money Diary on Friday morning, and the author mentions how “shocking the images coming out of Portland are”. For a moment, I am amused -- Portland has some of the least smoke in Oregon right now. Then I realize she probably means the protests, or the detainment of protestors in unmarked federal vans.
I thought it was a good thing, how little the smoke bothered me. I’m a natural resources major -- I know that forest fires are inevitable. Even though they are unusually bad right now, in part because of climate change, their existence does not alarm me. It is tragic that people are losing their homes, but that is almost inevitable, as long as we build in forests and let fuel grow thick and close to what we love.
But even so, this has never happened before, and in some moments, it hits me. It is scary the fires have stretched so far, that they may continue to be this bad for many years, that we are so ill-equipped, that this happens as people go hungry and are evicted and die from this pandemic. As I typed the words “detainment of protestors in unmarked federal vans.” I wondered if I had become numb. I know this is bad, but it feels so distant, so unreal, so unavoidable. I am almost powerless, so what does it matter if I care? It’s easier to not feel anything, to fixate instead on the hundreds of tiny crises my mind makes of my body and life. I finish my coffee and do my math and try to ignore the pain throbbing in my elbow.
Saturday-Thursday, 9/12-9/17
It was supposed to clear up on Friday. When it didn’t, Tuesday and even Wednesday looked better, the air quality “moderate”. However, it remains “unhealthy”, and I cancel my trips to The Arc and Goodwill, so I can at least meet my mom outside for her birthday. She is struggling with the smoke, but glad to get outside for a bit. Instead of the long hike we had planned, we sit six feet apart on a bench, and I feel like a monster for cringing away from her. The breeze on my skin, though, is a blessing, salvation after a week of the same stale, still air in our house. I want to open my window.
There is rain coming, and wind, and maybe later this week the smoke will clear. We plan for my birthday, assuming that outside, the only safe place to meet our friends, will be safe itself. I imagine pulling all the tape off, and wonder if it will have to go back on. When will we feel safe enough to let the air in? Will I ever shake hands with a stranger again? Will I continue to recoil at the very thought of entering a store without a mask? It feels like being naked.
The rain does come, in drizzles, on Thursday night. It comes with flashes of lightning and rolling purrs of thunder, soothing, while we make pretzels and fondue, and I feel joyous, unhindered for the first time in more than a week. When we finish our cooking, we go outside. It is still smoky, but muted, and the smell is mixed with the delightful scent of a long-needed rain. I grin and hop onto the curb as we walk to the park. We talk and I climb on the play structures (I dropped my bouldering class, even though I miss it fiercely) until the thunder roars too close, and we return inside. It feels like a gift, something I could pray for.
Friday, 9/18
I’m listening to ASMR in bed (it’s after midnight, so technically Friday), and when I take my headphones off to go to sleep, I realize it is pouring. I briefly entertain the idea of going outside, but it doesn’t quite seem worth drying off after. Instead, I lay awake, listening to thunder and rain, and think about what could have been. I am still happy, finally given a good form of novelty.
I wake up that morning and the sky is clear as can be. I grin. As soon as I eat breakfast, I grab my bike to go shopping -- the air quality is “moderate”. I take deep lungfuls, uncaring that the air is public. It smells so good, smoke-free and rain-filled.
The first rain of autumn always feels like a return home. I don’t like the dry grass and merciless heat, especially when I am stuck inside, watching. It feels so strange, to see the exact same yellow-brown leaves littering the ground, feel the same cool damp air on my skin, the same weak, soothing sun. So much has changed, but this is still the same. I think of my middle and high school soccer games, of watching my favorite YouTubers play Undertale with a cup of tea on stormy Saturday nights, of sitting next to my dad’s fireplace with our kittens, of doing homework while my mom’s partner watches football. The season reminds me of home, but I’m not sure that I feel comforted.
I know that I’ve changed, and so has the world. I desperately, desperately, want this place to still feel like home, and maybe it will tomorrow, maybe it will next fall. I also don’t want to think about next fall -- what will have happened by then? What will have happened in five years? I have my hopes, but they feel slim. I hope that I am home and safe, and that I can take a breath without fearing smoke or virus or tear gas. And I am lucky, in the grand scheme of things.
At least I can breathe right now. I bike home from the Arc, and revel in cold rain dripping from my legs when I stop at Fred Meyer, where I get prints of my friends for our living room. At home, I pull off the tape and throw open the windows. Cold, fresh air rushes in, and it feels like life. The sound of pouring rain and thunder is refreshing, after so many days of static. Here, now, maybe not in five minutes, but now, I feel relieved, unweighted, even if just briefly. It will not be a long reprieve, but I am grateful nonetheless.
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a bubbline wip, featuring a dissociative episode by our fave punk rock vamp. set shortly after Stakes.
She doesn't know how long she's been hovering over the couch like this, with her gaze trained on the bumps and dips on the ceiling and her bass planted in her arms. How many times has she sung that old song, so old and resilient it survived the death and rebirth of the world (and the both of hers twice over, now) just by hiding in the corner of her mind she doesn't like to visit? She can't see the sun or moon rise through the entrance to her hideaway from this part of the house, and the cave-imposed darkness tells her nothing of the time or how much of it has passed.
She doesn't dare budge from her spot. She's been turned twice now; she knows from experience that any sudden action, anything to startle her base thought process, could spark that bloodlust from last time. That was some ugly biz, if she remembers correctly. It's been a while, but something like an uncontrollable urge to drain the lifeforce of every living creature within 30 miles sticks to you. She's just going to have to wait it out, until the itch in the back of her throat dies down and she doesn't worry it'll become an insatiable burning for hot blood, no matter how long it takes.
Marceline has had an excessive amount of time to learn how to be alone; 1003 years, in fact. So why does it never get any easier? Why does being left never hurt any less? Why does she seem to be so completely destined for eternal loneliness? What asshat decided she deserved to spend the entirety of her neverending life without a single constant presence?
Mom went out with promises of keeping safe and finding food and I love you so much, sweetie, that alone is strong enough to bring me back to you. It took two weeks before little Marcy came to the conclusion that her mom wasn't coming back with food or supplies, or even returning empty handed. Simon let a stupid magical crown take over every single cell of his brain and wrote a bunch of scattered letters about it while it happened instead of, you know, telling the frightened 7 year old she was going to be left soon. Dad just up and left to go back to running the Nightosphere after a few weeks, with nary a parting word nor any notice. Her post-apocalyptic comrades had no choice but to flee from an otherwise inevitable extinction. Bonnie had to go and grow up, and in the process decide that her 900-something year old girlfriend wasn't mature enough.
(She checked that old, busted up camper as often as she could over the following months. There was never another life in that thing after she hopped down the little steps and let the screen door slam back with the carelessness of a 6 year old.)
(She found a decomposed corpse months later that just happened to be wearing some torn up rags that looked like her mom’s old sweater and jeans. It must have just been a coincidence, though; there were a lot of recently dead back then, and even more moth-eaten sweaters in the world.)
(“I’m trying to save you, but who's going to save me?” ‘I don't know, old man, maybe you could have saved yourself? You could have not purposely used the magical relic that was making you go bananas?’ If a 7 year old could make it through the apocalypse without magic then so could a fully grown man.)
(He left her to survive on her own in the name of being executive manager of hell and he still wonders why she wants nothing to do with him, why she used to have such a hard time so much as calling him “dad” when he’s never been anything like what she was lead to believe dads were supposed to be like.)
(She’s 1000 years old, how in the name of the nightosphere could she not be mature enough?)
(Over the years she’s replaced the world “hell” with “Nightosphere” the same way the being once referred to as “God,” back when even she was young, is now called by their proper name of Glob. The Nightosphere really is hell, so it fits.)
(Sometimes she takes the time to think about how she's the heir apparent to the actual, literal, real life hell, and how she's one of the oldest beings around these days, maybe the oldest to still really be sane, but still a messed up teen.)
(She doesn't know how old she was when she was turned; years and months and all that are hard to keep track of when the species that invented it is all but extinct. Is she old enough to drive? Probably. She does and can regardless, because screw the old ways. Old enough to drink, smoke, vote? Debatable. The point is that she’s 1000 years old but actually, like, 18. What the fuck.)
She drifts, both mentally and physically. She's had plenty of time and isolation to ponder the Big Things about life and the world and why and how things happened the way they did, and what it means. She will have an abundance of opportunities in the future to think about these things, too. Some day she'll reflect on this part of her life in the far away, nostalgia-filtered sepia tones she currently thinks of her childhood and adolescence. She'll remember when Finn and Jake were the heroes of Ooo, when Simon used to chase after princesses who will have long since passed, when she couldn't get over her ex-girlfriend who happened to be sentient candy. It will be distant and she will miss it terribly, the same way she misses her mother, and Simon when he was Simon, and fries in a long-abandoned diner. But it will be a wound long since closed and numbed, like the deep scar she got on her calf sometime in her early teens that still exists today, preserved in her immortality and a sentimentality that prevented her from insta-healing it away, sting and blood long gone.
She has forever to reminisce, but only right now to live in the present. She makes mental patterns in the bumps on the ceiling, and slowly loses grip on her body. She is a million miles upwards, where the sky holds no oxygen and the stars are still pinpricks in a sea of indigo construction paper. Like a kid poking holes in the top of a jar of lightning bugs, equipped with a fork and enthusiasm at being able to destroy something for the sake of encapturing something else. She is, at the same time, hovering above her uncomfortably hard couch. One of her hands slips from its place atop her bass, and Shwabl licks it from his spot next to her on the dusty carpet.
She doesn't hear the knock at the door. She is right there, but she is centuries back and in a different part of the continent entirely. She doesn't hear Bonnie getting increasingly agitated, trying and failing not to raise her voice at her through the door. She doesn't notice when Bonnie lets herself in regardless of Marceline’s lack of response, or when Shwabl jumps up to attention at the guest.
It's the “Marceline, what -” that breaks her dissociative spell. That tone of exasperation in that particular voice is a very familiar one, especially within the last decade. She comes to to find that there are fresh tears in the corner of one eye and the words to a song as old as her youth on her lips.
“Oh, hey Bombòn. How goes it girl?” Marceline has had a millennium to convince the world that she's chill and totally not a big mess, and it shows in the lilt to her voice that screams ‘I'm just chillin’’ and not ‘I've been dissociating and crying and probably singing for who-knows-how-long and I'm really messed up’. She still doesn't dare move from her spot, because moving around could still trigger what she's trying to wait out.
“It's been three weeks, Marcy. Three weeks, and all that heavy biz, and no one's heard from you since. Doesn't that seem even a little bit irresponsible to you? Didn't you think people would worry? Or even wonder ‘hey, what happened to that girl who saved all our butts and got revampified?’”
“Dude, I've just been chilling. You know how it is; jams, games, pets, it keeps a girl busy. It’s cool. Ice cold, in fact.”
Bonnie sighs. Marceline has heard that sigh a million and three times over by now, and she's learned to like that particular sound from the pink girl; it's the one thing about herself that she can't manage to sweeten to the point of oversaturation, until it (like the rest of her) is practically dripping sugar. Marceline likes to deal with the authentic rather than the idealized versions of people, because the latter rarely ever means anything good is coming her way.
(She rationalizes that the Ice King component of Simon, while not idealized, is not authentic in the least; the products of full humans getting mixed up with magic seldom are. The authentic Simon Petrikov is the one who found a 6 year old girl in the ruins of a suburban New Mexico town and still had enough selflessness in the aftermath of the apocalypse to comfort her and take care of her.)
The sigh doesn't lead to the reprimanding the vampire expects. Instead, she watches as Bonnie leans down in her peripheral vision to pet Shwabl, expression focused intently on the dog. She's doing that same schooled neutrality shit she used to do during those globawful trade meetings - the ones Marcy used to steal her away from the go gallivanting through the rock candy mines.
“What kind of sweet tunes have you whipped up, then? Lay it on me girl.”
Marceline lets her face adopt a smirk - the expression has become a reflexive habit after centuries of being a bitter undead loner - even as something in her stomach drops. Bonnie rarely asks about her music because she knows so much of it is personal, and that which isn't is vulgar or morbid and prone to being shared regardless, not to mention the fact that Bonnie’s interests definitely don't lie in the arts, or punk rock music, or most of the uglier parts of Marceline.
“You know my latest album is the epitome of personal mush, Bons. It's so personal I'd have to kill you if you heard any of it. But, I do have a new demo about a fisherman.”
Bonnibel definitely wants something out of her; she has that smile she reserves for Cinnamon Bun and Finn when he's going on about dumb 13 year old boy things, the one that's polite and reservedly encouraging, the one that Marcy has always found to be condescending although it always looks as sweet as its wearer who is literally made out of candy, almost as sweet as the girl’s public persona.
The thing about being 1000 years old and also a teenage girl is that you spend forever being a socially-minded person on some level or another, because back in the day that's how girls were socialized to be - social-driven creatures who cared more about what Allyson wore on Tuesday or what Theresa said about Serena in math class than anything practical. So Marceline has had a long time to notice the tells and ticks of the select few she surrounds herself with often enough to care about. PB smiles like her kindergarten teacher used to on particularly trying days when she thinks the people she's with are idiots but can't call them out for it. Her eyebrows droop when she's so tired that sheer willpower will no longer keep them up. She plays with her hands when she's nervous. She used to chew on her hair when she was younger and in the process of creating her kingdom, when stress was a new feeling she hadn't yet made a feedback loop out of.
This is totally, completely because of the sexist socialization of the old world, and nothing else. Totally not because they dated for a good chunk of time, or because one or the other might, maybe be having rose-coloured thoughts about the other again.
“Everyone and their granny has heard that one, Marcy. If you've had all this time to do nothing but groove and game then I wanna hear some tunes! Don't be a butt about it.” She's trying to gode the older girl, but Marceline is itching to get out of this particular conversation. Somewhere in her cursed, mostly re-dried blood she knows this is a test.
“I don't bust into your lab and start interrogating you about your experiments - can you just lay off, man?” she says it more harshly than she had meant to, but being yanked back to reality and immediately questioned over every move will do that to a person. “Tell me what's been going on in Candyland. You finally get all the earwax off of your junk?”
“You know if you did ask about my science experiments I would be happy to tell you all about them - well, the ones that aren't classified. It's called caring, Marce, it's a thing that friends do.”
A tense silence follows as Marceline thinks of something biting (but not petty!) to throw back at her.
“And yeah, actually, I did. The dingus left a huge mess but there's nothing my purple cleaner can't get rid of.”
Bonnie can't leave a single box unticked, can she?
“Glob, that stuff is nasty. The fumes make me gag, and I don't even need to breathe!”
The princess raises a brow at her. The queen furrows both of hers in frustration and fixes her gaze back on the bumps on the ceiling. When she was younger she used to make images out of the dips and dots in the kindergarten room ceiling; the RV’s was smoothed and didn't allow that particular part of her imagination to play around.
“And I think the expression you're looking for is sharing is caring, Bubs. It's a thing they used to say waaaaaaaay back in the day whenever the old people got tired of little kids fighting over toys.”
*******
this was gonna be a longfic feat. mutual pining by our fave disaster gays and more references to marcy’s life pre- and during the apocalypse bc i have a lot of feelings about Stakes. might come back to it, who knows!!!
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Prove me wrong
Bucky x reader
Warnings: smut, cocky Bucky, definitely 18+
A/N: Smutty one shot thing (this was supposed to be a short drabble, HA!). For the record, I know plenty of women can’t find pleasure through only penetration and there is nothing wrong with that at all; do what you need to do for you, ladies! Just needed something for cocky ass Bucky to challenge her on and that popped in my head.
Gif not mine, credit to owner
“What I’m saying is, you men have it so easy in terms of sex,” you slurred slightly, gesturing wildly at the group of Avengers seated around the room. “We women really get the short end of the stick.”
“Sometimes literally!” Nat called out with a devious grin.
“Care to run that by me again, sweetheart?” Bucky asked from across the sofa, his own voice not unaffected by the copious amounts of alcohol the whole team had enjoyed tonight.
“You, all of you,” you said as you turned to face him, your arm grabbing the back of the couch for support while your body leaned unintentionally in towards him, “you just get up, get off and go. You have no idea what it’s like for us!”
“I’m thinking this is one of those times when we just smile and nod, Buck,” Steve suggested wryly from his seat near the pool table.
“Don’t patronize me, flag boy!” you snapped.
Steve chuckled and held up his hands. “On that note, I think I’ll call this a night. Be good, Y/N, I know that you love me really. Bucky, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do and don’t do anything that Tony would do.”
You watched as the super soldier made his way out of the room with only the slightest falter to his step. Obviously, Steve had not had nearly as much to drink as you had. Why were you yelling about sex again?
“So tell me, Doll,” Bucky said, reclaiming your attention. “Why is it so hard for women?”
“Look, men are basically guaranteed an orgasm, right? You shove your cock somewhere nice and soft, thrust a couple of times and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, you’re all blissed out. I, like many women, do not reach orgasm through just penetration. That means that while you have achieved nirvana and are ready for a nap, I have to find a way to stimulate other areas in order to join you in happy town.”
Seriously, why were you talking about this with Bucky? Bucky, the cute, blue-grey eyed, quiet, man of mystery that you had been crushing on since he moved into Avengers Tower several months ago. Sure, you were friends with the guy but you had never talked about anything like this before. No doubt it had to do with your recent breakup and the incredible sexual frustration you had been building throughout that entire relationship. Those ingredients plus hormones and alcohol had mixed in your bloodstream to form a poison cocktail: it had killed all your filters and left you a rambling mess.
“Are you saying that you can’t achieve orgasm through penetrative sex or that you haven’t yet?” Bucky asked, cocking his head to the side slightly as he studied you.
“Same thing.”
“Not the same thing at all, sweetheart. Haven’t just means a man hasn’t done his job correctly yet.”
You stared back at Bucky, blinking stupidly. Was your brain so foggy because of the beer or because of the way that he was looking at you?
“See, I’m thinking we may need to do a little experiment, sweetheart,” Bucky suggested, his voice dipping lower as he moved down the sofa to be closer to you. His metal arm came up to brush against your arm on the back of the couch, the smooth cold of his touch instantly raising goosebumps along your skin, and you turned your head to look at it, perplexed by this new development.
“What do you mean?”
“I could get you off through only penetration.” His tone was matter of fact, not a hint of bragging to it, as though he was just stating the obvious.
“Bullshit,” you challenged without thinking.
A large smirk broke out across his face. “That’s what I thought you’d say. So let’s test that theory.”
The wheels of your mind were turning incredibly slowly. “As far as I can see...there’s only one way to do that.”
“Yup,” he agreed with another cocky smirk. “I can only think of one way too.”
“Why don’t you tell me what your thought process was and then I’ll see if it matches my thought process,” you said slowly, not wanting to embarrass yourself if you had somehow misread the situation.
“Well, first, we need to wait until you’re sobered up. You have to be sober so that you can give consent to test the theory, obviously. Plus, I wouldn’t want alcohol to interfere with any results. So I figure, we let you get a good night’s sleep and then tomorrow, I come and fuck you so good, you realize just how wrong you were.” Bucky finished speaking and gave you a charming smile, the kind of smile that would sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves in 100 degree heat.
You blinked at him stupidly in response. Even without the alcohol turning your brain to mush, you would not have been able to think straight. Not with Bucky’s voice, so low and tempting, speaking to you like this as his eyes seared into your own, burning more brightly than any star in the sky.
“What do you think about that, doll? Sound like a plan?”
“Umm...yes?”
“Good,” Bucky said with a triumphant smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Oh, and, don’t be alarmed when I stand up...talking about this with you has had an affect on me.”
You continued to blink at him stupidly, all ability to speak having left you. The sight of Bucky’s pants pulled taut over a straining erection when he stood to leave the room did nothing to help you recover your powers of speech and you sat on the couch for a long time after he had left the room, wondering what had just happened and more importantly, what was going to happen tomorrow.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
The knock on your door came as you were towel drying your hair after your shower. It wasn’t early morning, there was no way that you were going to be getting up early after last night’s escapades, but you had only abandoned your bed about 30 minutes ago. As you looked over at the door in response, a shiver ran along your back. You hadn’t been able to get a good night’s sleep because of the way your mind kept returning to Bucky and his promises. Were you scared or excited? It seemed like a mixture of both. Now you felt frozen at just the idea that the man of your fantasies from the last several months could be waiting for you, just outside the door. Would he remember the conversation from last night? Would he still want to prove you wrong?
“You in there, Doll?” Bucky’s voice called from the hallway. “I got coffee.”
Walking over to the door you took a deep breath to steady yourself and tried to stop your hands from shaking. Coffee wasn’t anything new; Bucky often brought you coffee to start the mornings before training. He was especially good about it if you had had a late night the night before.
“Morning Buck,” you said pleasantly, opening the door and moving out of the way so that he could come in.
The man was a vision of perfection: long, dark strands of hair framing his face where they had come loose from the bun at the back of his head, bright blue-grey eyes with just a hint of a crinkle around the edges, perfect, plump lips already curved into a smirk and just a hint of dark stubble along a jawline so sharp it would probably cut glass better than any diamond in the world. To complete the sublime view, Bucky carried a tray with coffee and brunch for both of you.
“Hey, Doll. I wasn’t sure if you’d be hungry so I brought some stuff just in case.”
“You know me,” you tried to play it cool as you closed the door and turned to find him sitting on your bed. “I’m always ravenous.”
“Sure, just didn’t know if it was gonna be food you were in the mood for.” Bucky’s smirk grew larger and his eyes darkened slightly. Oh, shit. He definitely remembered.
“Uh, I, uh-”
The man on your bed gave a low chuckle and held out a cup for you. “Relax, sweetheart. I know you were a little drunk last night. No hard feelings if you don’t want to test that theory of yours anymore.”
“It’s not really a theory. I mean, a theory is just a belief, an assumption. This is a fact, Buck. I’ve never had an orgasm just by having sex.” Your face heated as you spoke and you had to look down and drink a big gulp of your coffee. Bucky’s eyes had never strayed from you. Why hadn’t you just laughed it off and let the whole thing go?
“You’ve never had sex with me, sweetheart.”
It rankled you that he kept challenging you and his refusal to believe you was just enough to egg you into continuing the conversation.
“Not yet, anyway...” he added with another smirk.
“Alright,” you lifted your chin defiantly, your gaze meeting his. “so prove me wrong then. Penetration only. That means no hands wandering down to rub my clit or vibrating cock rings, you know.”
Another dark chuckle rumbled from his chest as he shifted slightly on the bed, his pupils now dominating his once bright eyes. “I don’t need gadgets to do my job for me, Y/N.”
“Get over here and do it then,” you challenged.
Bucky moved the tray off of your bed, setting it on the nearby dresser before coming towards you. You could feel your blood racing under the skin along every inch of your body; it suddenly felt as though all your life the world had been colored in sepia and Bucky had just turned on the technicolor. Everything was brighter, more vivid and more real. Just watching as the handsome man moved towards you like quicksilver was enough to make your chest heave with irregular breaths. The closer he came to you, the more alive you felt. He stopped walking with about a foot left between your chests and placed a hand on either side of your waist; one warm and soft the other cool and smooth, they easily found the edge of your shirt and slipped just underneath, brushing against your already over heated skin.
“You sure, doll?” Bucky dipped his head slightly so that he was on an eye level with you.
You nodded dumbly, staring deeply into his lust blown eyes.
“I need to hear you say it, Y/N.” Bucky brought his flesh hand up to run his thumb along your jaw bone. “Tell me that you want me, doll.”
“I want you.”
It came out as a ragged whisper but the words had hardly left your lips before Bucky’s mouth crashed against yours, hot and needy. The space between your bodies was gone, he was pressed as close to you as he could possibly be without actually being inside of you, the hand on your jaw angling your face towards his. His head tilted slowly, finding the perfect position to devour your lips from while his metal hand gripped onto your hip and held you steady. Your blood thundered in your ears as your own hands reached out to him, one wrapping a fist into the soft material of his t-shirt, the other reaching back to tangle into his hair. So much for keeping it tied back in a bun. As you tugged against his silky locks gently, Bucky let out a low moan, the vibrations causing your lips to tingle.
“Damn, doll,” he gasped, breaking away to catch his breath. “A guy could get used to being kissed like that.”
Without giving you a chance to reply, Bucky leaned in to kiss you again, this time more slowly. He caught your bottom lip between his teeth and pulled gently causing you to whimper. You could feel him smirking against your lips as he pressed light pecks over them, trailing down to reach your jawline.
“I think it’s about time to get you out of these clothes, Y/N,” he murmured against your skin in between smoothing kisses along your neck.
It’s hard to say which of you was more surprised by what happened next. Bucky had been thoroughly in control of this encounter from the moment he walked in the room but without any warning, your body took over, acting purely on impulse and driven by desire. The hand that had been wrapped in his hair jerked down to his t-shirt and with a sharp pull you found that each of your fists clenched around a long, jagged piece of fabric. Bucky looked down at his ruined shirt and bare chest in shock but before he could say a word, you were on him again, your mouth claiming his as you pushed him back towards the bed. His knees hit the mattress and you both toppled on to it, your body coming to rest on top of his as his arms wrapped around you, hands splaying against your back and pulling you closer.
It was obvious from his response that Bucky didn’t mind you taking control. You could feel his bulge beneath you, rubbing against your clothed core, as he hummed happily against your mouth and rolled his hips tauntingly. His tongue darted out to gently caress your lips and you opened yourself to him, reveling at the way he licked over them before delving deeply into you, kissing you as no one ever had before. His hands found the hem of your shirt again and slid the material up, flesh and metal both raising goosebumps along your back as they pulled the garment away. You sat up, straddling him, and finished the job of removing your top, watching as his hungry eyes traveled over every inch of newly revealed flesh. He stared at you the way a man dying of thirst stares at a glass of water. His metal hand sat on your hip, his thumb making small circles on the flesh above your waistline, while his flesh hand got busy exploring. He pressed his palm to your stomach and agonizingly slowly slid it upwards, traveling along the valley between your breasts before smoothing his fingers along your collar bone. Desperate for his hands to be on you, you reached back and unclasped your bra, letting the material fall to the ground with a soft thump.
For a long moment, Bucky simply laid beneath you and basked in your beauty. He had been dreaming about this for far too long to not enjoy the moment. In what felt like the most profound understatement, Bucky purred out, “Well, aren’t you just the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, Doll?” before dragging his hand down to capture your breast. Your head fell back as Bucky went to work, his hand groping and kneading one side as he sat up to press kisses on the other. A harsh gasp was sucked between your teeth as he bit your tender flesh, marking you slightly before sucking and kissing the angry skin soothingly.
“Bucky, please,” you whined. Your nipples were hard peaks and he seemed to be pointedly ignoring them, both his hand and his mouth circling around them but never making contact.
“Mhmm?”
“Teasing me wasn’t part of the deal,” you panted, one of your hands wrapping into his hair again.
In the blink of an eye, the former soldier had flipped you onto your back in the bed, his body fit snugly between your legs as he hovered over you. Looking up at you from under his dark lashes, Bucky smirked and then lowered his head, capturing one nipple and sucking harshly on it while flicking the other with his thumb nail. Your body was writhing beneath him, unclear words and curses falling in a nonstop string from your lips. You had never considered yourself particularly sexual and didn’t think that your breasts were very sensitive, but under Bucky’s care you could already feel pleasure coiling tightly in the pit of your stomach.
Moving slowly, Bucky drifted his lips across your chest, pressing soft kisses over your skin until his mouth reached the opposite nipple. His free hand began to snake down your body, expertly finding the closure on your pants and undoing them as he rasped his teeth over the hard bud. He didn’t bother to remove your clothing yet, choosing instead to simply slip his flesh hand inside the fabric, his warm fingers rubbing almost tenderly over you. You half expected him to plunge his fingers into you immediately but Bucky took you by surprise, his hand moving slowly, brushing and rubbing against your slit.
“You’re still teasing me, James,” you groaned through gritted teeth.
Bucky responded to hearing you say his name with a low growl. He instantly moved down your body, pushing your pants and underwear away before coming to rest between your thighs. His shoulders were so broad that you had to open your legs as widely as possible, your wet core on full display before his eager eyes.
“Fuck, Doll,” he murmured in a voice so animalistic you had to fight down a shiver, “you’re even more perfect than I imagined you’d be.”
He began to press soft kisses to the inside of your thigh, one of his arms wrapping around your leg where it connected to your body and coming to rest with his hand just above your sex. The other hand reached out until it found one of yours, intertwining your fingers with his own in a gesture so loving you could swear that you felt your heart thump against your ribcage in a wild attempt to reach the man between your thighs. Your hips lifted off the bed, searching for contact and eliciting a low chuckle from Bucky. He knew what you wanted. Moving slowly, the former soldier traced his mouth along the soft skin of your thigh, his stubble tickling against you until his face was positioned at the apex of your legs. You looked down to see his bright eyes shining up at you as he lowered his head and flattened his tongue against you, stroking a long, rough lick from your entrance up to flick against your clit.
“Bucky!” you cried on a wild moan.
He repeated the action, pressing a kiss against your bundle of nerves when he reached it this time. You could feel yourself getting closer to the edge.
“This doesn’t- this doesn’t count,” you panted. “You said- ugh...you said penetration only.”
Bucky sucked your bud between his lips briefly before releasing you with a smirk. “I can’t just shove myself into you, Y/N. Christ, what kind of losers have you been fucking?” He chuckled darkly and lapped his tongue against your folds again. “I have to get you ready to take my cock first. Get you nice and wet so that you can stretch enough to fit me. Consider this a control study; we know you can have an orgasm and now I’m gonna give you one to demonstrate that.”
True to his word, Bucky went to work. His tongue pressed between your folds, dipping deeply into you as his fingers began to circle against your clit in a demanding rhythm. Your hips rose to meet him as your free hand tangled in his hair, holding his face to your body. He kissed and licked and sucked at you as though he would never be able to get enough. His mouth took the place of his fingers, covering your aching clit while his hand moved to hold you down. As you tugged against his hair, he let out a feral groan that vibrated against you and pushed you over the edge. With a moan of his name and several unintelligible words, you felt the tight coil inside you snap, your walls spasming and legs trembling with the shocks of pleasure coursing through your body.
“That’s it, Doll,” Bucky whispered tenderly, still pressing kisses to your heated flesh as you began to go limp while coming down from your high. “Damn, Y/N, you are so fucking amazing.”
Unable to think of anything else to say, you simply panted, “you still haven’t proved me wrong, James.”
He let out a dark chuckle and moved off the bed, shedding his remaining clothing and grabbing a condom from the brunch tray he had brought along. Your head fell to the side as you kept your eyes fixated on him, your entire body feeling like mush after your recent release. Every piece of him was coiled muscle so it shouldn’t have surprised you that he was packing major length and girth below the belt. His skin shone slightly with a light sheen of sweat and your eyes traced every line of his abdomen before returning to the thick cock that was standing proudly as he rolled the latex over it. Bucky caught you staring and smirked again, knowing what was to come. He crawled up the bed, his eyes never leaving yours and began kissing you again, slowly, as his weight pressed you back to the bed. You could feel the tip of him brushing against you with each shift of his hips and it was driving you crazy with desire.
“Damn it, do you ever stop teasing?!” you huffed angrily as he moved his hips away from you again.
“Alright, Y/N,” he said with another light kiss to your lips. “No more teasing.”
He reached down to align himself with your opening, unable to resist rubbing his cock along your wet slit once more as he did so. You hissed sharply as he began to push into your tight core.
“You ok, Doll?” Bucky asked through gritted teeth, holding himself still with just his engorged head inside your lips.
To be honest, Bucky was almost too big. Even having this small piece of him inside you was causing a burning pain as your body tried to adjust to the intrusion, but that was why he had taken his time with his mouth earlier. You were still so wet and stimulated that after several moments the pain shifted to a kind of deep pleasure.
“More,” you begged, your nails biting into the soft flesh of his back as you tried to pull him closer.
Happy to oblige, Bucky slid a bit deeper into you, kissing you softly and watching your face for any sign of distress. Your head tipped back at all the new sensations you were feeling. You had never really understood why sex toys were made with veins and ridges until this exact moment. As Bucky sheathed himself fully within you, shivers ran along your skin in response to the rub and throb of the protruding veins along his thick shaft. He held himself in you, feeling how tightly you were wrapped around him and sucked soft kisses into the flesh of your neck, waiting for you to be ready. You had never felt so filled, so stretched, and although it hurt slightly, the pain was covered by the pleasure of the wet suction of Bucky’s lips on your skin, the feel of his cold metal arm at your waist, the brush of his warm fingertips against your cheek.
“I need you, Bucky,” you mewled softly, feeling his body tense in response to your words.
Moving slowly, Bucky began to draw himself out of you again, the feeling of each vein and ridge rubbing against your soft walls setting your nerves on fire. He pulled almost all the way out before plunging back into you with a low groan.
“Damn, Doll, you’re so tight and soft...you feel so amazing.” Each compliment he showered on you was accompanied by a thrust and roll of his hips. “I just want to worship your body for the rest of my life.”
“Bucky, I-I,” you were panting heavily, taken aback at the way your muscles were tensing and the pressure that was coiling deep within you. “Shit, it’s never been like this!”
With lithe ease, Bucky rolled you over so that you were on top, still buried deeply between your legs. He began thrusting his hips up manically as you moved to straddle him and you let out a near scream of pleasure. The new angle allowed his large head to hit repeatedly against a spot inside you no one had ever found before.
“I know, Doll. It’s never been like this because it’s never been with me. You were wasting your time with those fucking losers who don’t have any idea how to treat you.” Bucky was panting and ramming himself into you, his hands on your hips to allow him to sink as deeply as possible. You were nearly insensate with lust, your fingers clawing at his chest as he continued to pound into you. “You were made for me, Y/N. No one else compares to you. I love being inside you; I’ve been waiting for this since the day we met.”
“Bucky, Bucky, please, I’m gonna-” you whimpered, biting your lip and tipping your head back.
“Cum for me, Doll. Please, cum for me. You look so beautiful when you orgasm.”
With a snap and a roll of his hips, Bucky sent you over the edge, your body shaking wildly as your walls clenched around him and all your muscles contracted. A few tears leaked from your eyes as you gasped and moaned his name over and over again. The feeling of you tightening around him and the gorgeous look of bliss that came over you was almost enough to make Bucky cum right on the spot but the former soldier held on, riding you through your pleasure before suddenly rolling your bodies again to place himself on top. Staring deeply into your surprised eyes, Bucky reached down and grabbed one of your legs, hitching it up so that it rested against his shoulder.
“You’ve got one more in you, don’t you, sweetheart?” he asked sweetly, leaning down to brush his lips against yours as he resumed thrusting into you. Your body answered the question for you, tension beginning to build again. Now that Bucky had proven his point, he felt free to explore your entire body and his hand reached down to where you were connected, stroking and rubbing insistently against your clit in rhythm with his hips.
“Oh, god...JAMES!” You knew at the volume you had just called his name there would not be a single person in the tower who was unaware of what was happening. You also didn’t care.
“Doll...Y/N!” Bucky had become a panting mess, his hair sticking to his sweaty face as he slammed his hips against you like a man possessed. Watching you come undone for the third time under him was too much and he came with a groan of your name which he muffled against your lips.
It took a long moment before either of you could move, your bodies too overwhelmed by pleasure. Eventually, Bucky drew your leg back to your side and slid himself languidly out of you, chuckling when you whimpered at the sudden emptiness. He moved his weight off of you, pressing his body to your side and wrapping an arm around your waist.
“How’d I do at proving you wrong, Doll?” he teased lightly.
“Well, technically, you did but it was only 1 out of 3. Not a great ratio,” you quipped back.
He chuckled darkly and pressed his lips to your temple. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time, Y/N.”
“Next time?”
“Hell yes, Doll. I told you, you were made for me. You’re the only one I want. I’ve spent months waiting for you; I’m not letting you go now that I have you. And I think I just did a pretty great job of proving I was made for you too, Y/N.” He lifted a hand to your chin, turning your face so that he could look into your eyes which were suddenly feeling a little misty. “Oh, and by the way, it just so happens that I love you.”
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I saw on someone else's post that you offered to show them how to make gifs? I am super interested in making The Magicians gifs so I was wondering if you could teach me as well? Or even make a public post or tutorial or something? Thank you!!!!
Yeah, of course! There are a lot of ways to make gifs, some of them undoubtedly better than what I do. But, for me, I have a couple methods I generally use, one with Photoshop (when I want very specific control over the colors, composition, type styles, etc.), and the other with just a free tool (when I just want to make a gif that looks decent and not sink a ton of time into it).
I’ll go over the free tool method here; it’s more straightforward and limited, but wayyyy friendlier for someone just starting out. Also, again: it’s free. (But lemme know if you wanna talk Photoshop and I’m always happy to open that giant can of worms.)
One nice thing about gifs becoming the one true currency of the web is that a lot of gif-oriented sites have built gif-making tools in the past couple years and made them free and easy to use, so we can all become gif-producing worker bees, constantly toiling to keep up with the internet’s insatiable demand for gifs.
I use Gif Brewery 3 for mac, built by Gfycat. (There’s also Giphy’s GIF Capture which I’ve used a few times and didn’t hate.) So for the purposes of this tutorial, Step 0: Download and install Gif Brewery 3
So! Now let’s make a gif. Let’s say I want to make some gifs of Margo taking her throne as high king.
Step 1: Open Netflix in Google Chrome (i.e. not Safari because it blanks your screen if you try to record your screen while a video’s playing) or play a DVD on your computer, or pull up the scene you want on YouTube. Basically get a video of the scene you want playing on your computer screen in whatever fashion you prefer.
Step 2: Open Gif Brewery and select “Record Screen.” Resize the window that Gif Brewery then opens up so that it frames the video, hit record, and then play the part of the video you want to gif.
Step 3: When you’re done with video, click “Stop.” Gif Brewery will then open the video clip that you made in their interface. You can close your browser and the blue frame window. You can see the full clip you just recorded in Gif Brewery. Trim the extra bits off of the clip by dragging the green bar to define your start point and the red bar to define your end point.
Step 4: Resize! Tumblr’s main content box is 540 pixels wide. So if you’re making a gif that’s meant to be full width, you can size down to that width. Make sure “Maintain Aspect Ratio” is checked. (Now’s a good time to also crop if you want to, say, gif only Margo’s face without the space to her left and right.)
Step 5: So now we have something that’s the size and shape of a gif. If you want to add text, now’s a good time to do it. Use the “Text” button at the top of the window to open the Text box. Here you add your text, adjust the font weight, size, color, and border if you’re using one. I’m going to use a Billie Eilish lyric for this example because I’m cliche as hell.
If you’re making a standard-style gif with a text caption, you’ll use a bold san serif font like Helvetica, with a black border around it to make sure it’s readable, and then keeping it small and centered at the bottom of your gif, like so:
But! if you’re feeling Artsy, go nuts with your font choice and placement. Find a font that captures the tone your message and clip are conveying. You can find a wide range of free fonts on Google Fonts or good old DaFont. I want that badass Margo ‘tude, so I’m using a grungy font and Margo’s signature bright fuschia. Drag the text box to move and resize it until you’re happy with it.
Step 6: Time to fix your colors! Screen captured images basically always look more dark and muted than they should. The fix is to fuss and fuss and fuss and then fuss some more over the colors. Gif Brewery has limited color controls, but as I’ve learned, you can still spend an inordinate amount of time fussing over them. The Magicians makes this an especially good exercise in finding the limits of your patience because they’re always backlighting scenes in a way that blow out your brightness when you try to make even small edits. (Which is why I’m switching over to a different shot that’s easier to work with for this example. Margo’s hella backlit in our gif.)
Exposure Adjust: Increase exposure to make your brights brighter
Gamma Adjust: Increase gamma to make your darks richer
Saturation: Increase to make the colors as rich as they can be
Vibrance: I also like increasing vibrance for even more of a pop of color
Hue Adjust: their hue controls are funky, but you can make some minor adjustments if at this point your gif looks weirdly too red or yellow.
Play around until you find what looks good to your eye. For a gif that’s meant to look like it’s colored normally, watch out for things like: the whole thing looks too dark and you have to squint to see the details; you overbrightened and now the white is blown out and blinding; or you oversaturated so much things look pixely and glitchy.
Step 7: Open the Settings panel with the button at the top right. Time for more fussing to make sure the timing, frames, and settings are how you want them.
HERE’S THE THING: Tumblr does NOT let you upload gifs larger than 3mb. So everything you’re doing in this panel is a balancing game to keep your gif under 3mb without letting it look like trash. These are the settings you’ll fiddle with most often:
Speed is set to 100% by default. But you may want to slow it down, especially if your clip is only a couple seconds long. Slower means it’s easier to see the subtle changes in a character’s expressions and it makes the action look less jerky. The slower you set your speed, the more frames will be added to the gif, so keep an eye on that.
Frames per Second is what it sounds like. The lower you set this number, the fewer frames you’ll use, but the animation will look jerkier. You want enough frames per second that your animation looks as smooth as a hot knife sliding through butter. 12 is their default. I try to not go lower than 10. When I’m feeling particularly luxurious, I’ll set this to 15.
Color Count: Gifs can use as many as 256 colors and as few as 2, if you don’t care about your gif being an offense to nature. You can set it to the low 200s without compromising on quality, though, so that’s what I did here.
Step 8: Hit “Create” and wait an inordinate amount of time while your gif renders. When it finally, finally does, check the filesize on the bottom right. In the above gif, you’ll see my gif was 2.1mb. Perfect. So I can hit save and it’s done. But if it had said anything larger than 3mb, I’d have hit “Cancel” and then fiddled with the settings some more to get the number of frames down.
Alt-Step 6B: If I want to do anything fancier/artsy-ier/more unique than this kind of gif, this is when I’d usually crack open Photoshop. But there is some room for creativity within Gif Brewery. Let’s go back to Margo and look at some of our options:
In the Filters menu, you can see there are a number of bre-built Photo Effects to play with. Sometimes they look awesome; sometimes they look like trash. So experiment! There’s also rando filters like Halftone effects. And the Color Effects can give you options like adding a vignette, fading the colors to old-timey sepia tones, or creating a duotone like I ended up doing.
Have fun with it and look for effects that will support the tone you’re setting with clip and text you chose. So like for this Margo example, going black and white, or dark and heavy, etc. would not have been tonally consistent with the badass vibe I’m going for.
And I… think that’s it? At least to get started. Hopefully that helps, let me know if you have any questions! Or want to talk about anything beyond the basics. I’m always happy to dive into the specifics of how a particular effect was made, or how to add more advanced refinements.
#bookster-lover#tutorial#pls don't judge my gif-making abilities based on#the shitty gifs I had to make to capture my screen
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Sands of Time Ch.1
Yeah remember when I said I was gonna rewrite this and then silence? I’ve been working on it, rewrote chapter 1 like 5 times.
How’s this work out? I wanted to post it here before I put it up on ao3.
You were never good with time. It flows through your fingertips like sand. Individual moments, countless little memories, all fall out of order tumbling to the bottom of the hourglass. They crowd the tiny space until it breaks and everything escapes you. Lost. You know being lost very well. You have been lost, again and again. It kept happening until all you could do was let go. Of time, of memories, of yourself. You had no choice. It wasn’t the end of you but you will never have an end. You don’t even have a beginning anymore. Just time.
And you aren’t good with time.
It’s night when you walk the streets of Rome. You drift with untethered memories flowing around you. Drowning you. You’re so easily overtaken and can’t bring yourself to fight it. Or at least, to endure it. Why.
You walk a street of sepia tones and nostalgia. Is it winter? It must be; it’s cold and the streets are filthy. The path is poorly lit by flickering oil lamps and you can so easily pretend like there’s nothing getting buried beneath the sheets of snow. Cold white ice piling up to your neck and every pair of eyes that falls upon you is filled with suspicion. You are a stranger to them. Were. Are. Will be.
There are tracks in the snow. The patterns of tires, lines cut by wagon wheels, foot prints. A blank untouched canvas of freshly fallen flakes. Lamps lighting the street, electric, then oil, then, Nothing. No one went out at night. Just you, and you floated through the fog without caring where you ended up. Life could guide you wherever it wanted. From corner to corner, with ears full of the laughter of drunk scoundrels with their arms around your shoulders and your arms around them and you remembered the distant sounds of your own laugh. It was warm and then it was gone. And you were back to the oil lamps and horses with perfectly braided manes, back to carriages and cars that didn’t touch the ground.
You ended up in a nightclub. Crowded, dense. Countless bodies filling this finite space and not one of them noticing your presence. Yet.
You moved like the ghost that you were and were not. Twisting through the forms and figures as you wove your way to the center. For a moment you go still and you watch. These people were so alive. You were too but it was threadbare, ancient and stretched beyond your own memory. Not that your memory entirely worked. You were fractured, battered, bruised, tired. But you didn’t have to be tired for very long. You would settle for simply being fractured.
You idly dance, letting your concentration spread out into the crowd. You let out a silent call and the crowd’s attention snaps to you like iron sand to a magnet. The people watch and yearn and reach and tangle into each other in a desperate effort to get closer to you. Your lips part just barely and you breathe in. Pulling, draining, little twists of energy like strands of spun sugar pulled from each sweat misted body. You are renewed, strengthened. Empowered.
How long have you been doing this? You don’t know how long you’ve existed. Your past is a mysterious and shifting thing that writhes out of your grasp with ease. All you have is fragments that stick into your skin and the myths people share about your kind. Most of them are false. You love garlic. You think. You can’t shapeshift. You aren’t allergic to the sun personally. None of you had fangs or drank blood. A vampire that fed on the necks of lovers was a ridiculous thing. Sure you might be into it but the whole situation is not your fault.
It’s. It’s a little your fault. Don’t have affairs with Hungarian noblewomen.
The fact that you weren’t real was the only bright spot in the situation. You certainly didn’t feel real. You felt like a rough approximation of a person. A shambling puppet that ran on bioelectric batteries and dust. At least people didn’t think you traveled with the secret intent of eating their family. You could travel at night, come and go as you pleased, never stay in one place for long and no one cared. It was far easier than it used to be, when families stocked vampire hunting kits. Not that the kits worked but they made inns unpleasant.
There’s a distant boom and you release the crowd from your hold, just as confused as the rest of them. You follow them out, craning your neck to try to see what caused the sound.
There’s smoke, screams, people running past. The distant sound of bullets pebbling into buildings. You wonder if it’s present, or something that happened long ago. There are few places in this world that haven’t been scarred by violence. You can avoid it for the most part. It’s easy enough to just walk away or to throw yourself further into the past when there was nothing but trees and filtering sunlight.
But you are not walking away. For some reason, you’re walking towards the twisting clouds of smoke. Is it curiosity? Do you still experience it? The world is always discovering new things and yet for so long you just… you took it in and let it go. Let it get lost in the stream of everything that you’ve ever seen. Computers became stone tablets and holograms in your hands. Etchings in clay and ink on paper, one and the same. You don’t recall when you were last excited to see something new. But you are not walking away. You’re walking towards the twisting clouds of smoke.
There’s so much noise. Screams, shouts, bullets and crashes. You can sense the fear, then the rage, then… the hope. You follow that fragile line until you come to a small intersection flashing with strings of light blue. A young woman, pistols in hand, blinks in and out of existence around a raging person. An omnic, you think. Reading the thoughts of omnics is strange. Dangerous. You can so easily fall into them and through them the world around them. Although you seemed to fall through the world just fine on your own.
Another flash, another figure. A gorilla descended from above bringing a shield with him. That was. Well that was unusual. For a moment you thought you had lost yourself in a dream this time, but your dreams weren’t usually this different. Most of your dreams were just memories repackaged with prettier colors. Private picture shows that didn’t feel like you were being pulled in a thousand directions at once. You still felt like you were floating in the murk. This was no dream.
So you listened. The woman was relieved that ‘Winston’ was there. Now they could really get this situation under control. They could distract the omnics until all the innocents in the area were out of the line of fire. They were doing so well and everything was going to be okay. She was the source of hope you sensed. Winston though… He was upset. There were a lot of omnics and he hadn’t gotten many answers to his call. He had a few, but most of them weren’t steady. Come and go. He was still waiting for ‘Reinhardt’ to arrive. They would need more help. They needed help now. He would even take the risk of the police getting involved if they could help protect innocent people. Desperation. Dedication. Determination.
You didn’t know what you were doing. You did it without thinking. Stretched forward and slipped your power over them. Shielding them while they did the hard work of shooting down the omnic forces. Slowly they made progress. The omnics began to retreat and the chaos had been contained to a single city intersection.
At some point you had started to run. You didn’t notice until you were miles away and they boarded a plane and somehow the distance became too great. Your presence in their minds faded and you were gone. But you’d heard enough. You’d heard their hope. You’d heard their need. You knew where they were going. Your body didn’t stop running until you were back in the center of a hoard of people. Their words didn’t reach your ears. You stood there, silent, unfocused, drinking in energy while trying to figure out where you were.
They were going to Gibraltar. That’s where you needed to be. That’s where you had to go.
#Pharah x Reader#Mercy x Reader#Fareeha Amari x Reader#Angela Ziegler x Reader#Fareeha Pharah Amari x Reader#Angela Mercy Ziegler x Reader#gender neutral reader
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How I Make Story Mood Boards
Written by request!
First, here are some mood boards that I have made. I’m linking them so I can refer to them and give specific examples--I would advise having them open while you read.
Loud the Waves Roar | Winter Song | Yellow Rose | Tirsa
Before You Start
As soon as I start developing a story, I come up with a tag for it on tumblr. Sometimes it’s the name of the story, but if I don’t have a name, I call it “project—keyword.” That way I can save anything that might be relevant until I have enough of an idea about the story to start an aesthetic. Sometimes by the time I’m ready, there are some real gems there.
Finding images
This is really difficult and usually takes me a couple hours. I start by simply searching for anything that might be vaguely relevant to the story. For Yellow Rose, some of the terms I googled included: woman, 1930s film star, witch, witchcraft, dustbowl, storm, 1930s, cabin, gardening, farmer, field, vintage car, wolf, werewolf, guitar, musician, folk music, Bonnie & Clyde. Be creative with your terms, and scroll through a few pages of results.
Google tends to return a lot of stock photos, so I also use tumblr a lot, and should use pinterest more, but sometimes google image is good enough
Find actors who resemble your characters. Bonus points if the actors have been in movies set in a similar time period.
Remember that images can be cropped and filtered. If you only need a hands, try looking with terms like “gentleman” or “teacup” or “praying” or “shirt cuffs” or something that might have a hand doing something interesting in it.
Sometimes, finding the right image is a lot of work. The guitar image in Yellow Rose is one I found, cropped, and then put through like 6 Photoshop filters before I thought it looked sufficiently vintage (and I still don’t love it.)
Save everything you might use in a folder. You’ll be surprised what you end up keeping at the end. Each of the mood boards I linked has 25-30 images saved in the desktop folder.
Words (optional)
I like to put words on my aesthetics! For Yellow Rose, I took lyrics from a Laura Marling song. The album Semper Femina is basically the soundtrack for that story. I think for the Winter Song words, I searched “relationship” or “romance” on tumblr and scrolled until I found something I liked. I pick out words fairly early in the process because I need to know how much space they’ll take up.
While doing the layout, I also decide if the words should go over an existing image or on a solid colored background, which can take up space if you don’t have a lot of images, or put emphasis on the words if that’s what you want. That’s what I did in Tirsa’s mood board, since those words are so indicative of her journey.
Layout
I look at the images and pick out a couple that I know I have to have. That helps me decide how to arrange the other pieces, and then the other images usually get picked to fill in the gaps. You can see from my linked boards that I like playing with shapes.
There is nothing wrong with a standard set up! It’s non-distracting and lets you focus on the images instead.
Some classics are a 3x3 grid of square images or a 2x4 table of images that are wider than they are tall. Both are going to be automatically balanced and easy to read.
On tumblr, images placed side by side get automatically cropped into the same dimensions. This keeps things balanced along a vertical symmetry line (the same on the left and right). If you’re working in Canva, photoshop, or another photo processing app, you’ll have more options
Yellow Rose: For this I started with the concept of a 3x3 grid. The wolf and the herb pictures were square, and the photo of the girl was nearly square, so it made sense to crop everything else that way. Instead of doing a perfect grid, I decided to put the wide image in the middle because it really captured the feeling of the wide sky being swallowed up by dust clouds. It went in the middle to keep the top and bottom balanced. The top row is Florence, and the bottom row is Rosa, so each of the girls get the same amount of images.
Winter Song: Winter Song is primarily a romance, set against a political backdrop. I knew that Irina, as the POV character, had to be more prominent than Viktor in the layout, so I put her up top. I loved that image of Emmy Rossum and knew I had to have it, so I found two images with similar proportions to go on either side of it. This mood board also tells a story as it goes down. The top row is Irina as she arrives in St. Karlsburg. The words show the change in her life that catalyzes the story—meeting Viktor. Then there are two images to show the political unrest in the city. One is a riot of peasants and one is a marching army, but both show crowds in mirror images of each other. (It’s possible I flipped one of the images to create this effect). The bottom row shows her personal life—her writing, her lover, and the long conversations they have together over tea.
Cohesion
Now for all the fiddly bits that really make the post come together. To make it look like a single art piece and not some images pulled together from google, they need to look like they came from the same source. The first thing I do is crop the images super carefully. I do the cropping first because sometimes it turns out an image won’t fit in with the others once it is cropped.
I build my aesthetic posts directly in tumblr, which is kind of janky so I have to be careful. You don’t have to do this, but I like being able to click on each image and look at it separately.
Next is color. I think it’s important that every image have a similar color feel, or that certain images are intentionally bright for emphasis. I do this by playing with saturation sliders and filters in the default photo editing software on my PC.
Part of color cohesion should be in your mind from the beginning, so you pick images with lots of blues and greens (as in the case of Loud the Waves Roar) or something like that. It makes your life easier later.
Yellow Rose: Sometimes a color choice is genre motivated. Yellow Rose is entirely sepia toned because (1) it’s set during the dustbowl and (2) it’s a metaphor for Florence’s state of mind.
LTWR: Sometimes color is setting motivated. Loud the Waves Roar is much brighter than my usual mood boards, but medieval courts were just Like That, and also it is set in a country that is tied to the sea, and blues and greens help emphasize that.
Winter Song: Sometimes color is more symbolic. All of Winter Song is slightly desaturated because it’s set in a fantasy world based on the 1910s, but there is more variety. I desaturated the city street to make it sit right with the other two images in the top row—if it was too bright, it would draw the eye and look like the most important image. The pictures of the crowds are intentionally sepia toned to look like vintage photographs or newspaper clippings (Irina is a journalist). The bottom row, Viktor’s row, is more brightly colored both the draw the eye and to show that that is the main focus of the story.
Tirsa: Tirsa’s mood board is mostly reds (her hair/blood) and green (gives a botanical/medical feeling), so I desaturated the blue sky so as not to unbalance the rest of it.
I love mood boards that are mostly desaturated except for two images in similar color that create a balance and draw the eye. Not every image should be equally important, because that exhausts the eye. Pops of color, or text to break up the images, keeps the eye interested. There’s also some color theory that goes into this, as too many different colors can look garish or cluttered, so picking a couple complementary ones and desaturating the rest can be helpful. Go with what looks right.
Once everything is laid out, I try to walk away for a little bit and come back to it with fresh eyes. Do the pieces still fit together? Do the right images draw my eye? Do I understand the essence of the story? Do I like it?
If the answers to all these questions are yes, it’s time to post.
OH AND PLEASE CITE YOUR SOURCES!!!!
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2 beaches
You already know it’s sad bitch hours! I wrote this a few weeks ago after seeing this pic of harry. It’s a lil bit of Dunkirk harry and idk how over everyone is of that but here I am loving every bit of it! It’s 3.5k words of mostly dialogue telling a story and it’s a bit flowery. Hope you guys like it!
Elise sits on the splinting wicker chair, pinpricks of flecked white wood scratching along her thighs. She’s come from her present home in the city all the way to her childhood one, 2 hours south into the countryside. The late afternoon is filled with an intense orange, sunlight washes over the fields of wheat before meeting the horizon. The sun stretches as far as it can before it ducks below the earth. With a light grimace and rubbing at her legs, she turns to look at the woman next to her, wearing a near identical pair of eyes only more worn, more misted. Elise’s face instantly melts into one of comfort.
Her grandmother, Sarah, is a familiar presence, having raised Elise for the better part of her life. On this little strip of land containing rolling hills and bushels upon bushels of poison ivy, coupled with a rocky stream winding through the woods and the largest weeping willow you’d ever see, Elise found herself. She found herself throwing her body down the hills with her friends, seeing who could reach the bottom the fastest. The sleepless nights spent itching at her skin, waking up her grandmother to have her rub the special homemade salve she always had onto the agitated hives, gently singing her to sleep. The rocks she collected that were slowly weathered down by the quick moving stream, hurrying on its way to get to the seaside. The weeping willow where she learned to climb, weaving herself in and out of its large body and hiding between the curtains of greenery when life seemed too much to handle.
The day they had to cut it down, Elise cried.
Sarah cried even harder. Elise could hear it that night throughout the house, accompanied by the wind whistling and the rain hitting the roof.
Sarah kept only a piece of wood from the graveyard of branches. A jagged piece, about 6 inches wide, with the initials, “H.S. + S.J.”, lay towards the back of her dresser. It lives next to a book, a book that’s never been moved from its spot for as long as Elise had been there, collected so much dust it’s turned gray. Elise had never asked. The memory of it seemed too painful.
The two have been chatting here and there on the rickety front porch, allowing the sounds of the country side to fill the pauses and smooth out their words. The glass jug next to them clinks with fresh ice as Sarah pours her second glass of lemonade with shaky hands. Elise reminds her of her health, to take it easy on the sugary drinks as her body isn’t the best filter for her sweet tooth anymore. Sarah just scoffs, one that turns into a harsh cough, says, “This body carried 4 children, it can carry another glass of lemonade.”
Elise smiles, although it’s a tight one. All she does is care but her grandmother has always been indifferent about the inevitability of aging, staring into the future with a mask of almost boredom while her body deteriorates. Sarah’s mind, on the other hand, is as sharp as ever.
Gazing up to the empty sky where Elise used to watch strings of willow leaves swing in the breeze, she’s reminded of the carved, rotting wood sitting atop a dark cherry dresser. As the sun sets and streaks of pink and red are thrown across the sky, Elise feels an overwhelming urge to ask about it. She’s getting older and with that, the fear of going to sleep one night and waking up to a world without her grandmother in it.
She asks about the piece of bark from the willow because if not now, she never will.
“Who’s H.S.? I know who S.J. is. That’s you. But who do the other initials stand for?” Sarah pauses and blinks once, shock written on her face and glass of lemonade stuck halfway to her open mouth.
Cicadas move in the tall grass, calling out for another in the suspended air. Elise gauges the reaction as Sarah moves to put the cup down on the porch, shutting her mouth with pursed lips. She’s almost positive she won’t get an answer, until Sarah moves to get up from her cushioned rocking chair. Elise jumps up to help her, thinking that she’s just going to leave the question hanging and turn in for the night. Sarah quickly waves her off, grunting a bit as she hobbles into the house.
A little deflated, Elise sits back down as the sun disappears almost completely. If she unfocuses her eyes, she can see the faint lights of the fireflies nipping about the grass and woods surrounding her.
A few minutes pass and the screen door creaks open, causing Elise to startle and kick her drink, causing it to spill all over the worn wooden planks. She hadn’t expected her grandmother to come back. Swearing lightly, she picks up the glass and raises her head to see Sarah turning on the porch light, an unfamiliar object tucked in the crook of her elbows, folded over like she could keep it safe. Like it needed to be kept safe.
As her grandmother steps further into the yellow light cast by the dingy bulb, Elise’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. She recognizes the black leather book only without all the dust piled on it, the same book she’s never seen moved from the spot next to the jagged piece of willow.
Sarah shuffles over to her designated chair, rocking back slightly and she puts all her weight onto the paisley cushion. Clearing her throat, she opens the book. The splitting sound of the leather spine indicates it hasn’t been opened in years. With unsteady hands, she pulls out a frayed piece of paper from somewhere in the middle, small and rectangular. It’s the color of sand with black ink on the side facing Elise, who is unable to read what it says.
Sarah closes her eyes, sparse eyelashes fluttering onto her gaunt cheeks. “You know when people ask you if your house was on fire, what would be the only thing you’d run through the smoke and flames for? This photograph is that thing.” Opening her eyes and meeting Elise’s, she hands over the fragile piece of paper.
Turning it over carefully, as if the soft night breeze could snatch it out of her grasp, Elise first glosses over the ink on the back. The date reads out, “25th of April, 1939. H on the beach.” Turning it over, she finds herself looking into the sepia toned eyes of a young man, no older than 20, handsome as can be with curled hair flying about his face, surely from the sea breeze in the background. The look in his eyes bore into Elise’s, holding a serious yet mischievous glare. The rest of his face is in a relaxed state while he squints head on into the lens of a grainy camera. The tall grass behind him caught in mid sway has her thinking she can hear the ocean waves if she tries hard enough. Tearing her eyes away, she carefully watches her grandmothers expressions change. She’s never seen such an open book.
On Sarah’s face, multitudes of emotions come and go, passing over like clouds in the sky, the most prominent of them; anguish, nostalgia, happiness. Love. Unparalleled love. Whole heart love, the kind that seeps from your skin and onto everything you touch, spreading like the sea in that old picture.
In awe of this beautiful photograph and part confusion from the sudden openness her grandmother is showing, Elise asks an important question, the only question: “Who’s H?” Sarah’s mouth quirks up in the smallest of smiles.
“Harry,” she says, the syllables of his name cracking, like she hasn’t voiced it in decades. It sounds bittersweet on her tongue, like lemonade, though more on the sugary side. “Harry Styles. A man I loved for a very short time, and a man who left for a very long time, the bastard,” she laughs but the sound isn’t very humorous. “Just had to go and be the first to enlist. Had to leave me here on this side of the war.”
Before Elise can say anything, protest that she really doesn’t need to hear this story because of how hurt the older woman sounds, Sarah shakes her head. “I’m going to tell you about Harry. I’m going to tell you about the willow tree, the beaches. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I never even told your grandfather. How could I? I would have ended up comparing the two and that would be unfair to everyone. Fantasizing about Harry while in the arms of my husband. It was easier to try and just...forget. At least until they had to cut down my tree.
“When I met Harry, it was September of 1938. It had turned out to be an Indian summer, not cooling down until mid October. I sat underneath the shade of the willow tree, fanning myself with some paperback I’d stolen from my fathers collection. I saw Harry riding his bike, basket full of plucked berries. As he rode by we made eye contact and even from the safety of my tree trunk, I could see the green of them, greener than the curtain of leaves draping down my arms. He didn’t look away and neither did I, until he hit a rock and flew off his bike, berries flying everywhere and splattering red and black on the ground like a crime scene. He tumbled a bit onto the grass not too far away from me.
“I remember gasping and it turning into laughter. Whole belly laughter. I remember him looking up from his skinned knees, sea soaked eyes opened as far as they could in surprise. I remember his smile growing wider and wider until I thought his face was going to break in half. I’d never seen such pretty teeth in my life. I know it’s a weird thing to say. It was even weirder to think. They were neat, white little blocks that shone with his happiness. I fell in love with that smile right then and there. It was the first time I made him laugh and I told myself that it certainly was not going to be the last. I got up and introduced myself. I held out a hand for him to take, to help him up. I think I miss his hands the most.
“He said his name was Harry and he was out and about getting some berries for his mothers pie, said he got a bit lost and didn’t quite know where he was. I remember that single brown curl sticking to his forehead in the immense heat. I offered him some refuge, leading him inside this house.” Sarah waves an arm, countless bracelets jingling as she gestures to the familiar structure around them. She continues.
“This house has stood here forever, you know. It’s been in our family since it was built. If I concentrate really hard, I can still hear the weight of his steps on the floorboards behind me. I led him to the kitchen and helped him clean his bloody knees. His pants were absolutely ruined, ripped and stained with dirt. He wanted to act like a strong man, like it didn’t hurt and that he didn’t need any tending to because he could handle a little pain. But once I laid a washcloth on the broken skin, he whimpered. He was sweet and soft inside, like a pastry.”
At the sound of a sharp coughing fit, Elise is torn out of her storybook haze. Rushing inside to grab a glass of water, she hands it to her grandmother, who gratefully takes it and gulps half of it down in one sip. Sarah takes a breath, regains her composure and closes her eyes, launching herself back into the nostalgia.
“He left that afternoon with no berries and a promise that he would be back, that Friday, for a proper picnic underneath the willow. My parents came home that night to my giddiness. They kept asking what had made me so restless but I didn’t tell them, couldn’t tell them. Wanted to keep Harry a secret to myself for the time being. He seemed like a mirage, something I had conjured up in my head short circuiting from the head. I Just excused myself up to my room. That night, I took out my last sheet of canvas paper and sketched the outline of his eyes to what I could remember. I remembered thinking if I never saw his eyes again, I would at least have this.
“That Friday, he came to my house with a bouquet of wildflowers. Knocked on the door and introduced himself to my parents. Said he was a friend of Sarah’s. I loved the way he said my name. We sat in the privacy of the draped leaves and talked for hours. Ate so many blackberries I thought my stomach would turn into one. We took turns throwing the sweets into each other’s mouths and, of course, he was much better at it. They stained his two front teeth. It was the most endearing thing I’d ever seen. After that there were many more days spent together, at the base of the willow. It was smaller then. Younger.
“One day, before the first snowfall in November on a particularly cold day, he took out a pocketknife in his right hand and put his other cupped to the tree to hide what he was carving. I was laughing, tugging at his hands trying to see what he was doing. When he finally pulled his hand away, I stopped in my tracks. He kissed me then and time unfroze. That winter was full of them. The kisses. Full of more than kisses. Full of love and tenderness and nights by the fireplace under heavy blankets and the weight of his hands on my body. His hands were beautiful. Wide and blunt, a single rose ring adorned his middle finger. I used to kiss it when he got sad or frustrated, trailing my mouth up his arm, to his shoulder, dragging my lips across his neck and finally landing on his mouth. They were very pink, bowed like a dolls. I thanked the heavens everyday I got the chance to taste them.
“Winter faded into spring. The leaves of the weeping willow grew back and it became our spot again. The photograph in your hands was taken on the beach near his grandparents house that spring. They were well off and could afford a camera and, well, a private beach. He looked so beautiful pressed up against the endless ocean, I had to capture it. I wish it could’ve showed how green his eyes were, especially next to the tall grass.”
Sarah stopped for a second, opening her eyes and contemplating her next words. Elise was completely enticed, soaking in every single word down to her bones. She didn’t want to forget this vulnerable moment. All around them, the night came alive. Above them, the stars shone silver and circled their heads like halos. In the light of the moon, as well as the dim yellow one on the porch, Elise watches her grandmothers eyes well up.
“Isn’t it funny how he loved me on this beach, but died on another, miles away, a year away?” She sniffled once and that’s all she allows herself. She continues on.
“Harry took it upon himself to immediately join the war. He was one of the first waves. Sure, they were drafting everyone but he really wanted to fight. Said he was getting nowhere in his fathers small textile business. He wanted do something right, he said. When he told me, I didn’t speak to him for a week. He would come by, sit under the willow while I sat on my bed. As it was getting closer to his departure I knew I had to suck it up. This was bigger than us, as much as I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to forget about it all and stay here until the war was over. I climbed up the tree and showed him my favorite branch that was perfect to lay on, the same branch I used to sit on all the time just thinking about life in its entirety. We spent those whole two weeks before he left together, never leaving each other’s sides.
“It was the first time I’d seen him cry. It was in my arms, in his bed, the night before he was supposed to leave. He said he loved me so much it hurt him. He said he would write to me every goddamn day. He said he needed me to wait for him. I’ll never forget the shine of the ring in the moonlight. He proposed to me, tears in his eyes. I said yes. What else would I say? No? Of course not. No matter how much I hated his choice to leave, it would have never been greater than the amount of love there was in me, for him. All throughout the night the only words said were, ‘I love you’. In between kisses, in between sighs, roaming into the air and disappearing out the window. I ran my hands through his hair, I licked his two front teeth, I kissed his ring, his fingers, I stared into his eyes and found myself wanting to dive into them for the millionth time. I was hoping, hoping so hard that it wouldn’t be the last time his hands held me.
“He left the next morning. I never saw him again. We didn’t even have a body to bury. He sank somewhere off the coast of a beach in France. Dunkirk. I felt my heart shatter, the pieces floating up my throat, stabbing my lungs, cutting up the inside of me. The pain was just too great. I cried for what seemed like a lifetime. I slept with this picture in my hands every night. I started to forget how green his eyes were. Whenever I looked at the ring on my finger, I wanted to throw it in the stream and have it be carried into the ocean and the currents would bring the ring to him, somewhere in the deep. But the ocean is far too large. I wore it, for years after, telling men I was married, that I was so, so lucky. The war ended in 1945 and whoever was left, beaten and battered as they were, came home. I was bitter. How come they all survived, how come all of those troops on Dunkirk survived, but not my Harry ?”
Elise’s breath shudders. The intensity of her grandmothers words were too much. “Grandma..” she trails off. She doesn’t know what to say. How could she? “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine.”
The older woman nods her head, a small and tired smile slipping onto her face. “These are the memories I would try to forget. I look back on them many ways,” she admits. “In anger, in sadness, in all-consuming love. Don’t get me wrong. Time lessened the hurt. If only microscopically. I took off the ring eventually and found your grandfather and created what would soon lead to you. I loved Harry so much. I still do. It’s unfair that he stays in my mind as a young, vibrant man so full of life. While that will never be what happened. While I grew old. If I didn’t have this photograph, I wouldn’t even remember clearly what he looked like. It would be watery, whittled down to only the basics; curly hair, sharp jaw, face-splitting grin. I just wish I could remember the color of his eyes. I never painted in that sketch I made. Not that I could ever do the green of them justice. I know how much those eyes loved me. I just wish I could look into them one more time, you know?” She trails off.
Elise didn’t know. She hoped she never did.
Sarah shakes her head as if to rid herself of the indulgent thought. “I’m going to go to sleep. It’s getting late and I have to run into town tomorrow morning,” she announces while slowly standing up, her body cracking under the weight. She stops and turns to face her granddaughter. “Thank you for asking about the tree. About the initials. Nobody’s ever asked. I would have never told anyone. I would have carried him to my grave.”
Elise goes to place the picture of a young man, who existed a very long time before her, into her grandmothers hands. Sarah shakes her head again. “I want you to keep it for now,” she says. “The memories are fresh enough.” She turns around and walks through the same front door she walked through with Harry trailing behind, all those years ago. It seemed like it happened in a different universe.
So much love, Elise couldn’t even dream of it. She was drained from just listening to the story. The moon rose higher and higher in the sky and the wind was starting to rattle through the house in a familiar sound. Harry existed once in this house. He knew the nooks and crannies of it intimately, just as Elise does. The childhood home took on a new form, more solemn and full of shadows. As she tip toes behind her grandmother, whose arms are slung around the little black book, she ensures she climbs the stairs safely. As her grandmothers bedroom door closes, ever so softly, Elise wanders into her old room.
Falling into bed, she puts the picture of Harry standing up against her bedside lamp, bright pink just as young Elise liked it, the sepia colored rectangle a strange contrast to the loud color. As she slept that night, fragments of green, adorned by thick eyelashes, float in and out of her dreams. And she thinks she can almost hear the ocean.
#harry styles#harry styles imagine#dunkirk harry#short story#honestly if you read this all youre a trooper#why do i always write harry in past time periods???#bc that bitch is timeless#kinda sad?? idk i tried to make it whimsical and nostalgic#not sure if i succeeded#anywho#writers on tumblr#my writing#harry styles au#harry styles fic#dunkirk au
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My name is Jenny Kroik. I was born in Russia, grew up in Israel, and now live in New York City. I started painting very young. I always felt that painting was a great tool to communicate my point of view with the world. I think the biggest struggle I had (and still have) is to find a meaning or purpose in what I do. When I was younger, I felt that you should only do things if they benefit society in some large, heroic and long-lasting way. That idea brought a lot of aggravation into my work.
It also took the joy out of it to some extent, because no matter how I looked at it, my paintings seemed smallish in the great scheme of things. I went to grad school hoping to resolve some of these conflicts relating to my work, but even though my degree was in Painting, I found that I was making art that I didn’t like to please others. Lately, I’ve found that, ironically, as an illustrator, I was making art that was more pleasing to me, and felt more like it was for myself (even though there is a clear “client” and “market” involved). It was an important re-discovery, and I became more confident about the things that I produce now.
I started to take painting lessons when I was about 13, and I started with watercolors (because my mom deemed all other paints too toxic). I’ve used watercolors a lot, and it is still my go-to medium. I think that as a kid, I felt that the watercolors were missing a bit of solidity to them, so when I tried gouache paint years later, it all clicked. With gouache, I could use the paint in the watery-style that I am used to, while adding opaque tones and solid layers. I think it fits how I feel now, that I’d like the painting to be more like a statement rather than a suggestion, or something in between those two.
I use Yarka St. Petersburg for watercolors. This was the first set I used, and my mom actually brought it with her from St. Petersburg. Sometimes, when I run out of a color in my set, I squeeze some M. Graham watercolors or Winsor & Newton, whatever I happen to have around. The most important colors for me to have are sepia, cad orange and ultramarine blue. Besides all the basic colors, these complete my color palette and I have trouble painting without these.
For gouache paints, I use Holbein, they are my favorite. Their colors are very solid. I found with some other brands, when you open the tube for the first time and squeeze out the paint, lots of liquid comes out, this doesn’t happen with Holbein. If you pre-mix them in little tubes with a few spritzes of water (like I was taught by my art mentor) then they last for a long time.
I like to use brushes that are on the cheaper side, because they are usually stiffer. They are not quite as stiff as acrylic brushes, but not as soft as the nicer watercolor brushes. The softer ones are not as precise for me. Maybe I used crappy brushes for so long that I got used to them, and when I paint with a fancy sable I just don’t like it.
I can’t really name any particular brand of brush. I used to love these Princeton Art Advantage brushes that I would always get at the $2 bin at the university bookstore in Oregon, but I haven’t been able to find a good substitute yet, I’ll let you know when I do.
My current favorite for paper is Fluid 100 paper, hot press, 140lb. I also use Arches hot press paper a lot, and sometimes Arches cold press for portraits and quicker paintings. (the cold press absorbs too much, and for longer paintings it just eats all my paint).
I also like to use “mystery paper”- I have a stack of paper I’ve collected throughout the years, and I have no idea where it’s from or what it does. some of it is for printmaking, some for markers, some of it rice paper.I pick a sheet from the stack and paint on it, and see what happens. It’s always most stressful when it works out really great, because then I don’t know what this paper was and where to find it again. But it’s good to be a little bit stressed about your art sometimes.
I use palette paper (any brand) and the paint tub with two sides – one with a scrubby side. That is perfect for cleaning the brush and avoiding running to the sink every 4 minutes. Also, a cotton rag is crucial. If I forget my rag I feel lost. Paper towels absorb too much and I don’t like to pollute the planet.
I used to use a lot of waterproof pens, like the Winsor & Newton pens or Microns for sketching and doing a wash on top, but I haven’t been working with line in a while. Maybe I should go back to it a bit. I also like Pentalic sketchbooks.
Learning meditation really helped me and my work as well. It’s similar in many ways to the artistic process, and learning and reading about mindful meditation helped put into words the things I was always struggling with at the studio. For instance: how can I sit down every day and make painting after painting, and still find new possibilities in the work? Or how can I reconcile the painting I planned to make with what actually came out (including spills and dirty fingerprints)? And one of the hardest things: how can I sit down to paint when my mind is constantly filled with noise, judging voices, criticisms, endless comparisons to other artists and their successes, and just random static?
Meditation definitely made my time in the studio not only less torturous, but also more productive: It gave me the framework to study unpleasant emotions like an objective observer, and I find many treasures in the icky moments that I would normally try to push away.
After moving around a lot in my life, I now live in New York City. This is probably the favorite place I’ve lived in so far, and also the least comfortable, dirtiest, cramped with jerks, and most aggravating at times. But I feel most comfortable in the city, and I feel like being around so much creativity and energy has really given me an artistic push. I can let my inner jerkness out and be pushy and demanding. Things that were absolutely not allowed in Oregon, where I lived for 8 years.
Oregon was quite the opposite of New York. it was quiet and calm on the outside. There was one museum in the town I lived in, and the art scene was fairly small. I developed a practice of mining for inspiration in daily life. Going out and looking for interesting things, applying a “filter” on the world, trying to see everything as an interesting or funny painting. Instead of museums, I roamed around thrift stores and antique shops, sketching what I saw. Finding visual interest in an army of white older ladies that all wore the same khaki pants and Patagonia fleeces. Going back to the same place or person, and painting them over and over again.
Oregon was maybe a quiet, and lets face it, boring place, but it was an awesome place to really figure out what I’m into as an artist. It’s a great place in general where one can fall apart and reconstruct oneself. (If you’re looking for such a place, I recommend it.)
The way I developed my practice came from all the time I spent thinking about what “inspiration” is. It started from this damaging idea I had that inspiration is something that comes to you like a vision from outer-space: I had a vague memory from some time in my past, maybe high school or when I was working on my BFA, that art ideas would just float into my life like a religious experience, and I would see the painting in its entirety in my mind, accompanied by a strong emotion that made it feel like it’s going to be the most important painting that ever existed.
This was my idea of what inspiration is, and I had no way to go back to this magical past memory and confirm or deny that this is actually what I felt, but I was left with a strong belief that, at one point, I was inspired, and painting was easy, and now I’m all tapped out. It was a very upsetting feeling. There’s nothing more damaging to your practice than to become convinced that once upon a time you had a sack of magic art beans, and now that they’re gone, you have to live out the rest of your life being uninspired.
Finally I’ve decided that, even if I did have magnificent magic art beans and now they are gone forever, then those beans were bullshit, and I didn’t need them anyway. They were crap scam beans. Instead I’m going to develop a sustainable practice that won’t fail me. It’s going to be with me on good days and bad days, when my art is pretty and loved, and when it’s just an undefinable mess. When I’m in the middle of New York surrounded by hordes of amazing drawable people, or if I’m in a deserted industrial truck-depot.
And, honestly, without such a practice, I wouldn’t have known what to do with all the amazing visuals I encounter. I probably would have “saved them for later”, too intimidated to approach them.
My practice consists of doing something hands-on, art related on a daily basis. Ideally, I would paint/draw at least an hour a day. It could be anything from sketching or doodling from life, drawing silly cartoons, mixing colors, cutting papers into little compositions (I haven’t done that in a while, that sounds like fun right about now!) .
Sometimes on an unproductive kind of day, I count collecting imagery as part of my daily practice, but I don’t think it exercises the same parts of my brain that keep it playful. Taking photos or looking for reference material online is important to plan a solid illustration and keep concepts sophisticated and fresh, but this process can become too mechanical if you make that your only prep work before a painting.
Doodling and playing with actual materials brings the lightness and fun into my work for sure. That said, I work from photos and think it’s very important for my paintings to have a variety of really solid photo reference. Sometimes, one blurry photo is all I have, so then I have to supplement it with studies of my own anatomy, or search for pictures online of someone holding a certain pose, a material, a detail, a machine or animal I don’t quite know how to paint, etc.
While working from photos, the biggest challenge is to stop it from becoming flat, or just a copy. There should be a point to why this is better as a painting, something that you’re trying to show with it. A lot of it is about editing and color. I want to stop the world, remove everything that isn’t important, and shine a spotlight on a little moment, a beautiful expression, a funny juxtaposition, or something that tickled me in the right way, but I’m not sure why.
The painting process for me is definitely a way to reexamine a fast-moving life and slow down time in order for me to think about my experiences, but do it in a form of indirect conversation with whoever looks at my work.
I think I have been slowly bringing together all my styles and interest, and distilling them. All my interest: abstraction, figurative art, concept, color and a journal-style practice, where I draw very fast what I see that day, I have been cooking these down into a nice reduction of all the sauces of my previous practices. The test of what a “successful” painting is to me is that I actually love looking back at my work over and over, and I feel like it’s “me”.
In this past year of living in New York City, I realized that painting people was something I really love doing more that other subjects. A big part of my work has been loitering around town. This is a practice I revived back form when I lived alone in Boston when I was working on my BFA.
I used to spend a lot of time walking around thinking about what I should paint. Now that I’m older and bolder, and also shameless, I incorporate into these walks taking pictures of strangers and also sketching them, when I can.
One of the things I felt most deprived of in Oregon are museums. I made it a point to go to all of the museums in New York City. (So far I haven’t even seen half! There are so many!) One thing that I discovered is that museums are a great place to look at people. Not only do they walk slowly, they are also usually well-lit.
I can sketch and photograph them, and if I miss a cool person, I can snake around the displays and catch up with them in the next gallery! (I’m not creepy at all). There are also a ton of tourists in museums who take a thousand pictures of everything, so I blend it well.
There are a few museums that I found people dress up for more than others, for instance the MOMA. I love it when people dress up for a museum, it makes me hopeful that art means something to people. It’s almost like the artists themselves were there, and people want to honor them with their best clothes. The recent fashion exhibit at the MET (Rei Kawakubo/ Comme des Garcons: art of the in-between) brought out the most amazing people. My head almost exploded trying to capture everyone I saw. So many interesting people!
I still have a huge backlog of ideas for paintings on my to-do list. Since moving to NYC I probably shot about a Terabyte of photos. I probably did about 70 paintings of people in museums so far. I really enjoy it, so I hope that people aren’t sick of seeing them! This is a fun project, and maybe it will evolve into something more in the future.
In the next step in my art, I would love to continue evolving my composition style, making it more sophisticated, and also developing concept further in my work. I would also love to work in animation again.
Jenny Kroik
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second feature from Jenny Kroik who was one of the very first guest artists on Doodlewash back in August 2015. The format has changed a lot since that time. If you’re a former guest and would like to share your latest story with the community, please contact me!
Don’t Miss World Watercolor Month In July!
GUEST ARTIST: Aimless Strolling, Kind Trolling by Jenny Kroik - #WorldWatercolorGroup @jkroik My name is Jenny Kroik. I was born in Russia, grew up in Israel, and now live in New York City.
#WorldWatercolorGroup#conceptual#doodlewash#featured#gouache#illustration#museum#New York#painting#watercolor#watercolour
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Color:Black | Style:Base
Product Description
Canon PowerShot SX410 IS 20 Megapixel Compact Camera – Black 0107C001 Digital Cameras
From the Manufacturer
Amazing Results are Never Too Far Away
The PowerShot SX410 IS camera is packed with advanced Canon technologies that make it easy to capture your best images ever. The camera’s powerful 40x Optical Zoom (24–960mm) and 24mm Wide-Angle lens gives you amazing versatility: you’ll capture wide landscapes and zoom in for impressive close-ups you never thought possible – all with bright, clear quality thanks to Canon’s Optical Image Stabilizer and Intelligent IS. The 20.0 Megapixel* sensor and Canon DIGIC 4+ Image Processor help create crisp resolution and beautiful, natural images. Your videos will impress too: simply press the Movie button to record lifelike 720p HD video – even zoom in and out while shooting. Images you’ll want to keep and share are easy to achieve with Smart AUTO that intelligently selects proper camera settings so your images and video look great in all kinds of situations. You’ll get creative with fun Scene Modes like Fisheye Effect, Toy Camera Effect and Monochrome, and see and share it all with the camera’s big, clear 3.0″ LCD with a wide viewing angle. For versatility and value, the PowerShot SX410 IS camera is a best bet!
* Image processing may cause a decrease in the number of pixels.
Extend Your Reach
40x Optical Zoom and 24mm Wide-Angle Lens
Once you start shooting with PowerShot SX410 IS camera, you’ll quickly wonder how you ever did without the versatility of its powerful zoom lens. The 40x Optical Zoom lens has a reach all the way from 24mm to 960mm, so if you’re capturing a child on stage from the back of the auditorium, you’ll see her every expression. The Wide-Angle lens just as easily delivers superb landscapes and large group portraits. The Optical Image Stabilizer helps ensure you get clear, noise-free images, even at the long end of the zoom.
Intelligent IS
It’s easy to capture clear, steady images with PowerShot cameras, even in low light without using a tripod. That’s because the camera is equipped with Canon’s innovative Intelligent IS. The system automatically analyzes camera movement and applies the best shake correction method for the shooting situation – allowing you to focus on framing and capturing your shot. For stills, the system selects from Normal IS, Panning IS, Macro (Hybrid) IS and Tripod modes. When shooting video, the system selects from Dynamic IS, Powered IS, Macro (Hybrid) IS and Active Tripod IS modes. New icons clearly mark the image stabilization mode, whether you’re shooting still images or video.
Still Image Shooting Normal IS Corrects for a wide range of camera movement when shooting stills. Panning IS Panning motion is detected so that IS does not interfere with desired camera movement. Macro (Hybrid) IS Corrects for shift-type camera shake, which typically occurs in macro (close-up) shooting. Tripod When tripod use is detected, the Image Stabilizer is stopped because it is not needed. Video Recording Dynamic Effective for video shooting at wide-angle focal lengths, helping to eliminate the unwanted shaking that typically occurs while walking. Powered Compensates for hand movement when shooting video at the telephoto end of the zoom range, where camera shake is magnified. Macro (Hybrid) IS Corrects for motion blur that is likely to occur when shooting video while walking. Also compensates for the shift-type camera shake common in macro shooting. Active Tripod IS When shooting video while using a tripod, the image stabilization is active to compensate for slight camera shake.
Powerful Core Specs Deliver Beautiful Images
20.0 Megapixel* Image Sensor
The PowerShot SX410 IS camera’s 20.0 Megapixel* CCD sensor delivers impressive photos with fine detail and brilliant color. The high resolution helps provide superb image quality even when cropping or making very large prints.
* Image processing may cause a decrease in the number of pixels.
DIGIC 4+ Image Processor
The Canon DIGIC 4+ Image Processor powers the PowerShot SX410 IS camera’s advanced functions and capabilities. Its accelerated processing speed creates fast, responsive performance, for a shooting experience that’s easy and natural. The DIGIC 4+ Image Processor also enhances image quality: processing of high ISO shots has been shortened by approximately 60% compared to the DIGIC 4 Image Processor. This significantly reduces noise for brilliant color, smooth gradations, and beautiful detail even in low light. The processor’s highly efficient design also extends battery life.
Preserve and Share Your Memories in HD
Canon HD Video Advantage
The PowerShot SX410 IS camera lets you record highly detailed 720p HD video at up to 25 frames per second with clear sound. Imagine the fun and excitement of being able to shoot high definition video whenever you want, right from your compact digital camera.
Dedicated movie button, Wind Filter feature and Optical Zoom while shooting
The PowerShot SX410 IS camera has a dedicated movie button that lets you start and stop recording instantly. The camera is always ready to shoot stills or video whenever you want. The camera also incorporates an electronic wind filter, which helps suppress wind noise that can muffle or distort the sound. You can even use the camera’s full range of optical zoom when you’re shooting a video without sacrificing HD video resolution.
A Smarter Camera Means Better Photos and Videos
Smart AUTO
Smart AUTO is a sophisticated Canon technology that makes getting that great shot as simple as pressing the shutter button. It automatically detects scenes by assessing various factors in both the background and the subject. Detected scenes are analyzed using predefined shooting situations*. The camera then makes optimal settings to help facilitate the best possible image capture, whether you’re shooting stills or video. With Smart AUTO, all you have to do is frame your shot and capture away.
* 32 predefined shooting situations for still images, and 21 predefined shooting situations for videos.
Shooting Modes
PowerShot cameras offer shooting modes that make it easy to take impressive photos in a wide range of shooting situations by providing intelligent presets with optimized settings.
Program Access advanced exposure compensation features while shooting mostly automatically. Live View Control Enables Brightness, Color, and Tone adjustments to your images using easy-to-understand controls. Smart AUTO The camera automatically selects the best shooting settings for optimal quality based on subjects and environmental factors to provide point-and-shoot simplicity. Portrait The camera sets a large aperture, focusing on the subject and artistically blurring the background to make your subject “pop.” Face Self-timer The camera waits for a face to enter the frame before releasing the shutter. Low Light For high quality image capture in an amazing range of dimly lit situations. Creative Filters This setting provides easy access to special filter effects and scene modes, such as Toy Camera Effect, Poster Effect, Monochrome and more. Fisheye Effect Add a classic photo distortion without a fisheye lens. Miniature Effect for Movies & Stills Emphasizes perspectives for a miniature effect by blurring upper and lower portions of the image. Toy Camera Effect Simulates photos taken with “toy” or pinhole cameras, darkening the image at the edges to create a vignette effect. Monochrome Choose from three single-tone effects: Black-and-White, Sepia, or Blue. Super Vivid Super Vivid intensifies existing hues, saturating the scene with bright colors. Poster Effect Poster Effect combines several similar shades into one color, turning subtle gradations into eye-catching, scene-popping contrasts. Snow Shoot clear snow scenes without darkened subjects or an unnatural bluish tint. Fireworks Grab brilliant images of skyrocketing fireworks. Long Shutter Use to blur moving subjects for artistic effect, ideal for urban night photography. Movie Record video in monaural sound. Unwanted scenes can be deleted in playback mode.
Actual results may vary from examples shown above.
Final image may vary depending on picture composition.
More Ways to Get Creative
Creative Shooting Modes
The PowerShot SX410 IS camera provides shooting modes that easily give your shots a distinctly artistic feel without the need for any extra lenses and filters. Super Vivid heightens and saturates colors for eye-popping intensity. Poster Effect eliminates gradations between colors for an illustrative feel. Miniature Effect enhances perspective in a scene, blurring the top and bottom to make it look as if it were created with miniature models. You can also make a quirky portrait using the Fisheye Effect or add a beautiful single-tone effect with Monochrome. Toy Camera Effect simulates a vintage look as if capturing the photo using a “toy” or pinhole camera.
See What You’re Shooting on a Clear, Big Screen
Large 3.0-inch LCD screen
Easy to see from a wide angle, the camera’s 3.0-inch LCD screen with a great resolution of approximately 230,000 dots gives you the big picture, whether you’re shooting, reviewing or showing off your images. This high-resolution screen offers a crisp, clear picture to make shooting, playback and using the camera’s menu functions especially convenient.
A Charge that Lasts as Long as Memory
ECO mode
The PowerShot SX410 IS camera features ECO Mode to provide more shots per single charge through LCD monitor and camera power management. The mode can be activated via a dedicated button for easy power preservation when an outlet is unavailable or the moment is too exciting to put the camera down. ECO Mode quickly wakes the camera from sleep when a button is pressed so you won’t miss the moment. When the fun with family and friends runs late into the evening, ECO Mode helps makes sure your camera keeps up.
Additional Features
Secure Grip
Canon developed an innovative grip for the PowerShot SX410 IS, optimized specifically for the camera’s powerful zooming capability. The invitingly curved grip fits effortlessly into your hand. Without any strain, your fingers comfortably and naturally reach the shutter, helping to minimize the potential for shake at long zoom lengths.
Make sure this fits by entering your model number.
20.0 Megapixel sensor and Canon DIGIC 4+ Image Processor
Powerful 40x Optical Zoom (24 to 960 millimeter) and 24 millimeter Wide Angle lens
720p HD video at up to 25 frames per second with clear sound
3.0 inch LCD screen with a great resolution of approximately 230,000 dots
ECO Mode to provide more shots per single charge
[amz_corss_sell asin=”B00T3ER1OW”]
Canon PowerShot SX410 IS (Black) Color:Black | Style:Base Product Description Canon PowerShot SX410 IS 20 Megapixel Compact Camera - Black 0107C001 Digital Cameras…
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AW18 Trend Report: All the looks you’ll be wearing this autumn
http://fashion-trendin.com/aw18-trend-report-all-the-looks-youll-be-wearing-this-autumn/
AW18 Trend Report: All the looks you’ll be wearing this autumn
Autumn trends 2018: it might not feel like it, but it’s time to get ahead and jump on board the new season trend train – here’s our ultimate guide to the hottest key looks to start stocking up on…
Yes, we know the phrase ‘autumn trends 2018’ isn’t really music to the ears right now. And yes, we know your mind’s probably occupied by summer fashion trends 2018 like crayola brights and how on earth to wear suit shorts. The current weather conditions don’t really have you thinking, ‘MUST buy more Arran knits’. But never has the saying ‘success is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration’ been more apt. The last model stalked off the last Paris Fashion Week AW18 catwalk a while ago. And after traipsing round the four fashion capitals, we’ve filtered all the shows into the best Autumn Winter 2018 trends for you. So come on, fashion fans. Time to put that Ganni sundress down and brace up. A teeny bit of brow-mopping in the changing rooms and clever summer sales blitzing now and you’ll have your entire autumn/winter wardrobe sorted – while other, less organised beings are still panic-buying bikinis on their way to the airport. Mwah ha ha.
So, what did we learn from the NY/London/Milan/Paris AW18 Fashion Week whirl?
The buzzword of the coming season is ‘protection’ – whether it’s from the mean streets, or just from the elements, the options for cosseting and swathing yourself in layers of coverage are endless. It might not sound that welcome now – but when the chill winds start a-blowing, you’ll see this mega trend in a whole, grateful new light (we promise). Parkas, puffas, blankets, double, even triple coats – if in doubt, it’s all about adding another layer. And we’re starting from the head down. Balaclavas, silk headscarves, beanies, glamorous Little Red Riding Hood style hoods for evening… basically, it’s going to be a really good season for bad hair days. Hurrah! Without further ado, here are the trends to start planning your AW18 wardrobe around.
Scroll on down for all the Autumn Winter 2018 trends to know about…
Autumn trends 2018: Check print
Her Majesty appearing in Richard Quinn’s frow, Prince Charles’ support of the British Fashion Council, the fashion furore surrounding The Wedding…the royals are on trend as never before. And fashion loves them right back – stiff upper lip style in the form of trad tweeds, plaids and Balmoral-perfect silk headscarves are everywhere. Quinn worked foulards (the classic patterned silk scarf) into crazy layered looks, while Paul Andrew crafted archive foulard prints into chic shirtdresses for his Ferragamo debut.
Autumn trends 2018: Colour blocking
Designers including Marc Jacobs and Francesco Risso at Marni brought all the joy by showing off their skills as colourists – beautiful, unusual palettes were everywhere, reminding us of some of our favourite artists. Full-on Keith Haring neon at Prada, refreshing David Hockney pastels at Eudon Choi, tonal blocking a la Rothko at Marni and amazing Matisse style primary colour combos at Marc Jacobs.
Autumn trends 2018: 70s fashion
It’s the decade that won’t die when it comes to recent trends. And the sepia-tinged retro mood continues for autumn. But which 1970s character are you? Roksanda’s uptown girl, Marco de Vincenzo’s flares-wearing preppy or Louis Vuitton’s sporty jersey dress fan? Whichever way you go, remember – it has to be caramel, tan, toffee, tobacco..any colour as long as it’s a variation on camel, basically.
Autumn trends 2018: Boho clothes
Womens’ rights, LGBTQ rights, anti-sexism, anti-Trump, plastic in the oceans…you name it, we’re feeling strongly about it. Maria Grazia Chiuri has stoked controversy – and sales – with her political slogan t-shirts at Dior. And there was another heavy waft of CND-protest feeling in her AW18 Dior collection – nuclear disarmament symbols, tufted woven-rag knits, flat caps…Elsewhere, Missoni and Peter Pilotto also made a strong case for studenty knits and tie-dye.
Autumn trends 2018: Floral prints
We all love a floral dress for summer, but designers are amping them up with a dark, dramatic twist for this winter too. Rendered on black backgrounds, flowers look dark and decadent – at Saint Laurent, Anthony Vacarello covered his signature micro Dynasty dresses with flowers including sequinned poppies. Over at Preen and Erdem, there was a more historical mood, with blowsy roses winding over coats and silk dresses.
Autumn fashion trends 2018: Leopard print
Zebra is galloping into the spotlight as the animalia du jour – see Tom Ford’s OTT red take – and luckily for the Bet Lynch at heart, there’slots of amazing leopard. And there’s a lot happening in the world of furry coats – after Gucci’s recent announcement that they would no longer use real fur, we’re pleased to say that other major luxury houses are following suit. Designer of the moment Claire Waight Keller produced silky, standout leopard coats at Givenchy – and they’re all faux. Hur-roar…
Autumn fashion trends 2018: Hats
Whether it’s all about drama, a move towards the modest or just being plain toasty warm – covering your head is autumn’s biggest accessory message. Raf Simons set the tone at Calvin Klein during New York Fashion Week with standout knitted balaclavas – watch out for homages galore coming to a high street near you soon. Versace was all about the 1980s-tastic coloured beret, and the large silk headscarf is your best new accessory friend. Your mum will be so pleased.
Autumn trends 2018: Puffer jackets
‘Protection’ was the buzzword bandied around during the shows – a sense of clothes as urban armour, whether you’re stalking the mean streets, or just battling the elements. Shows like Balenciaga, Maison Margiela and Marni sum up the season’s styling – take a functional, sports-inflected polo, pile on a coat over a jacket, and add a puffa (and then another one)…
Autumn trends 2018: Blanket coats
Cape lovers – there’s a new update in town. Say hello to the blanket. And it’s not even a ‘blanket coat’ as such – it is quite literally a blanket. They were draped round the girls at shows including Roksanda and Isabel Marant, for an insouciant take on covering up for the cold. Easy to whip on, easy to take off and use for emergency winter picnics. Just joking – Roksanda’s cashmere would definitely demand a table, not grass.
Autumn trends 2018: Graphic print clothes
If delicate winter blooms aren’t your thing, there’s a whole other bold, non-pretty pattern trend to make a statement with. Choose from a host of graphic prints with a strong 1980s urban art vibe: Burberry’s graffiti squiggles looked as if they’d been lifted from the side of a New York subway carriage, while Jeremy Scott paid tribute to Lichtenstein cartoons at Moschino and Mary Katrantzou did bold Bauhaus lettering.
Autumn fashion trends 2018: Pajamas
The perfect antidote to animal print, bold colours and aggressive outerwear – say bonjour to the new AW18 update on robe dressing. Silk pajama suits, flowing belted robe coats and Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s pretty lace-trimmed separates at Chloe. And relax…
Autumn fashion trends 2018: Silver clothes
Global Bacofoil shortage incoming. That’s right, cool futuristic silver is the metallic to shine in. At MM6, it was head to toe (and wall to wall – the presentation took place in a blinding silver-lined room) – from trenches to boots. At Balmain, it was all about the glamazon that Olivier Rousteng loves so much, dressed in high shine lame. There was good old-fashioned movie star glamour courtesy of Givenchy’s swishy silver beading. Butif all this is making you think ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ – fear not. There are also cool, less ‘Hollywood’ takes on the trend – like the parkas at Marques Almeida and a holographic trench at Sies Marjan.
Autumn fashion trends 2018: Accessories
More is more is more. Our favourite kind of season…cowboy boots have been taking Instagram by storm and they’re set to continue as the must-have footwear trend for autumn. In keeping with all the layering going on, even scarves are getting in on the act – Karl Lagerfeld piled different coloured versions round the models’ necks at Chanel, and we are obsessed with Miu Miu’s punky retro knitted scarf-lets (is that a word? We say yes). Also on our wishlist: the giant squashy clutch, the fluffy Muppet bag, OTT earrings…and lastly – the cheap and cheerful banana clip. Splash out on a designer version – or hit the bargain bucket at the local chemist. You’re welcome!
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Björk: Homogenic
Robed in silver satin, luminous against iridescent grey, Björk stares out as us from the cover of Homogenic. Filigreed flowers crawl across the background like frost crystals, mimicking the embroidery on her gown. The Alexander McQueen-designed garment looks vaguely Japanese, with a kimono-like sash; her elongated neck is wrapped in rings reminiscent of those worn by tribes in Burma and South Africa, while her pursed, painted lips smack of Pierrot. Behind narrowed lids, her eyes glaze like camera lenses. The longer you stare into those enormous black pupils, the more adrift you begin to feel. Beneath two tombstone-shaped slabs of hair, she appraises us coldly, her expression unreadable. She might as well be made of wax—or marble.
After the dewy naturalism of Debut’s sepia-toned portrait and the bullet-train rush of Post’s blurry postcard from the edge, McQueen and Nick Knight’s Homogenic cover showed Björk in a way viewers had never seen her before: at once ancient and futuristic, elegant and severe, part warrior queen and part cyborg—a picture of near-perfect symmetry rendered in colors of ice and obsidian and blood. The album followed suit. Trading the playful eclecticism of Debut and Post for distorted, hardscrabble electronic drums and warm, melancholy strings, it showcased a newly focused side of the musician while embracing all of her most provocative contradictions.
By 1997, when she released Homogenic, Björk had been a familiar face to pop fans for a decade. The Icelandic singer and composer had first appeared on many listeners’ radars in 1987, when the Sugarcubes’ surprise hit “Birthday” made actual stars out of a quintet whose entire raison d'être had been to lampoon pop. (Her countrymen, meanwhile, had been listening to her since 1977, when she recorded her debut album—a collection of covers translated into Icelandic along with a few original songs, including an instrumental written by Björk herself— at the tender age of 11.)
After a few whirlwind years with the band, she struck out on her own with 1993’s Debut, enlisting Nellee Hooper of Soul II Soul and Massive Attack to co-produce the album. It was a clean break, trading the Sugarcubes’ jangly alt-rock for the electronic sounds then coming out of the UK: house beats and basslines, trip-hop atmospheres, and the rippling textures of experimental techno, which she fleshed out with orchestral strings, big-band jazz, and a smattering of world music. Surprising even her record label, which scrambled to manufacture enough records to keep up with demand, it went all the way to No. 3 on the UK albums chart. On this side of the pond, some listeners were less thrilled with her new, electronic direction: Rolling Stone carped that Hooper had “sabotaged a
ferociously iconoclastic talent with a phalanx of cheap electronic gimmickry,” adding, “Björk’s singular skills cry out for genuine band chemistry, and instead she gets Hooper’s Euro art-school schlock.”
Björk paid no heed to critics (including fellow Sugarcube Þór Eldon, now also her ex-husband) who were dismissive of her burgeoning interest in electronic music. Moving from Iceland to London, she threw herself into UK dance music, soaking up its club culture and collaborating with 808 State’s Graham Massey, Tricky, Howie B, and Talvin Singh, among others. She may have come to electronic music as an outsider, but she had good instincts: For remixes, she avoided the usual suspects in favor of some of the most adventurous artists on the scene: the Black Dog, Andrew Weatherall’s Sabres of Paradise, the junglist Dillinja, even Mika Vainio, aka Ø, of Finland’s scorched-earth analog noiseniks Pan Sonic. Today, the material gathered on her early remix collections—1996’s Telegram and also the lesser-known, cleverly (if not at all succinctly) titled The Best Mixes From the Album Debut for All the People Who Don't Buy White-Labels—holds up far better than the vast majority of remixes from that era, keenly balancing the songs’ essences with a restless experimental spirit.
Part of that is because Björk never saw remixes as a simple marketing gimmick: Her youthful study of classical music had taught her to think of remixes as a contemporary iteration of the longstanding concept of theme-and-variations. “When I think of that word remix, it’s recycled, like trash,” she told Rolling Stone. “But for me, the word remix means ‘alternative version.’ It is just another word… for a variation. It’s like Bach—his symphonies were not completely written out so every time he played them, they would be different.”
Björk’s unconventional instincts and her keen understanding of the hidden links between classical and experimental electronic music—she had interviewed Stockhausen the year before, in fact—guided her on Homogenic, as strange and uncompromising an album as pop music has produced. From the album’s opening bars, it’s clear that she’s on to something new. Björk’s approach to electronic music had never been conventional, but it had generally been tuneful, and her beats tended to keep one foot tapping in time to house music’s reassuring thump. Not so “Hunter,” which bobs atop fluttering, fibrillating kicks and snares, its reversed accordion glistening like an oil slick. Aphex Twin had toured as Björk’s opener after Post, and you can hear his rhythmic influence across the album: in the filtered breakbeats of “Jóga,” “Bachelorette,” and “5 Years”; the resonant zaps of “All Neon Like”; and the buzzing, headlong stomp of “Pluto.” (The engineer Markus Dravs assisted in the beat-making, as did LFO’s Mark Bell, who co-produced much of the album.) Throughout, drums crunch and sizzle, throwing up little clouds of dust with every impact. And with the exception of the relatively frictionless skip of “Alarm Call,” her beats are far more kinetic than most programmed rhythms, twitching and flexing like fistfuls of cellophane curling open.
After the stylistic zigzags of her first two albums, Björk was determined to create something more focused. “This is more like one flavor,” she told SPIN of the album. “Me in one state of mind. One period of obsessions. That’s why I called it Homogenic.” The working title, in fact, was Homogenous. The Icelandic String Octet, performing Eumir Deodato’s arrangements along with string parts she had written herself, was the glue that held it all together. The result is a strange, captivating mix of impulses, with seesawing drones exploding into lush, neo-classical passages. You can hear the influence of the Estonian minimalist Arvo Pärt, whom Björk had interviewed for the BBC the year before, on the slow, elegiac string harmonies of “Unravel”; conversely, the cut-up harp and strings of “All Is Full of Love” faintly mimic the burbling pulses of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. “Even though my arrangements are quite experimental, I’m very conservative when it comes to song structure,” she told SPIN. “So it’s this beautiful relationship between complete discipline and complete freedom."
Many artists have attempted to fuse dance music’s rhythms with classical instrumentation; recently, between events like Haçienda Classical (a pops take on the hallowed Manchester dance-music institution) and Pete Tong and the Heritage Orchestra’s Ibiza Classics, the concept seems resurgent. But endeavors like those, and even Jeff Mills’ more highbrow attempts at orchestral techno, nearly always fail; it turns out that DIY electronic dance music and classical orchestras, a format that has barely evolved in over 100 years, are largely incompatible. Björk succeeded where so many others have failed by weaving the two inextricably together into an undulating fabric as flexible and as durable as Kevlar, processing the strings until it’s impossible to tell where the silicon ends and the catgut begins. You can hear the influence she exerted upon a young Alejandro Ghersi, aka Arca, who would go on to collaborate with her on 2015’s Vulnicura; his own music’s viscous textures and mutating forms would be unthinkable without the example set by Homogenic.
Blanketing the album’s electronic elements like a heavy layer of snow, Homogenic’s strings give the album a somewhat monochrome palette; it’s a dense listen, and in songs like “Jóga” and “Bachelorette” there’s not a lot of breathing room. But those rolling, subtly shaded contours periodically give way to jagged crags and extreme contrasts. This was not accidental: The album was meant as a kind of sound-portrait of her native Iceland. Björk envisioned beats “like rough volcanoes with soft moss growing all over it,” recalls Markus Dravs, whose percussive sketches formed the rhythmic foundation for her songwriting. “I wanted Homogenic to reflect where I’m from, what I’m about,” Björk told MTV. “Imagine if there was Icelandic techno! Iceland is one of the youngest countries geographically—it’s still in the making, so the sounds would be still in the making.”
Many of Björk’s collaborators over the years have discussed her tendency to describe music in unusually synaesthetic terms: Despite her intensive formal schooling in music—she began studying music at five, and was introduced to the work of modernist composers like Messiaen and Cage while still very young—her studio vocabulary, when she’s trying to get a point across, leans toward terms like “more angular” or “pink and fluffy.” So it’s hardly surprising that she would take formal inspiration from Iceland’s steaming geysers, igneous formations, and other geological features that lend themselves especially well to the visceral textures and rhythms of late-’90s electronica.
But there were also more personal reasons for her shift of focus. After years in London, she had become homesick for the land of her birth. She had traded a country with a population of fewer than 265,000 people for a city of some six million; not only that, she had been through hell and back in the years leading up to the album’s creation. A string of relationships with high-profile artists—the photographer Stephane Sednaoui, Tricky, jungle producer Goldie—had all fizzled. A physical altercation with a journalist outside Bangkok’s international airport had landed her in tabloids all around the world. And in September, 1996, a 21-year-old Miami pest control worker named Ricardo Lopez, furious about her relationship with Goldie—unbeknownst to him, they had actually broken up just days before—assembled a sulfuric acid bomb in a hollowed-out book and mailed it to Björk’s management before locking himself in his apartment, putting a loaded revolver in his mouth, and pulling the trigger, all in front of a video camera while Björk’s “I Remember You” played in the background. Police managed to intercept the device with no further casualties, but Björk was left shaken—concerned for her ability to protect those closest to her, including her son, and conflicted about her own openness with her fans. Returning to Iceland for the Christmas holidays, as she did every year, she fell under the island’s sway. Inspired by the country’s landscape, she became determined to make music that expressed a geological essence that was as raw as her own nerves.
You don’t need to know any of these details to connect with Homogenic, however; its emotional impact far transcends the biographical footnotes of its making. Lyrically, the record picks up themes she had already explored on her previous two albums—loneliness; sexual desire; desperate, even defiant love; the feeling of being a fish out of water—but her writing is more vivid than ever before. “I’m a fountain of blood/In the shape of a girl,” she bellows in “Bachelorette,” and later, “I’m a path of cinders/Burning under your feet.” The song is a kind of epic saga, and Björk has explained that it forms the third part of a loose trilogy with “Human Behaviour” and “Isobel”—a sort of Bildungsroman about Björk’s own adventures in the wider world.
Many lyrics take place as internal monologues grappling with her own contradictions. “How Scandinavian of me!” she yelps on “Hunter,” a desperate ode to self-empowerment, chiding herself for having believed she could “organize freedom.” (To Icelandic people, she later explained, Swedes and Danes are hopelessly regimented.) The distorted, minor-key “5 Years” is lovelorn and angry—for anyone who has ever been stuck in a dysfunctional relationship, is there a more relatable lyric than “You can’t handle love”?—while “Immature” channels broken-heartedness into a kind of empowering self-reprimand (“How could I be so immature/To think he could replace/The missing elements in me?/How extremely lazy of me!”). Despite the self-flagellation, it’s a quiet, tender song, with a beat carved out of a sigh; its twinkling arpeggios sound like a dry run for Vespertine.
When love turns up on this album, it is almost always something that is over or absent—a missed signal, a sailed ship. But she makes real poetry out of these small, bitter tragedies, and she occasionally even finds hope in them. In the soft, delicate “Unravel,” she sings of her heart unraveling like a ball of yarn while her lover is away. The Devil promptly steals it: “He’ll never return it/So when you come back/We’ll have to make new love,” she sings, in a strangely affecting conceit about the fickleness and resilience of love.
But the main theme running through the album is the wish to rush headlong into a life lived to the fullest—an unbridled yearning for the sublime. “State of emergency/Is where I want to be” she sings on “Jóga,” a song dedicated to her close friend and tour masseuse, in which churning breakbeats and slowly bowed strings mediate between lava flows and Björk’s own musculature—a kind of Rosetta Stone linking geology and the heart. “Alarm Call,” the closest thing on the album to a club hit (the Alan Braxe and Ben Diamond remix, in fact, is a storming breakbeat house anthem) shouts down doubt with the indomitable line, “You can’t say no to hope/Can’t say no to happiness,” as Björk professes her desire to climb a mountain “with a radio and good batteries” and “Free the human race/ From suffering.”
If you’re looking for catharsis, you won’t find better than the album’s final, three-song stretch: Following “Alarm Call” comes the incensed “Pluto”: “Excuse me/But I just have to/Explode/Explode this body off me,” she sings, launching into an ascending procession of wordless howls as buzzing synthesizers flash like emergency beacons. Finally, the quiet after the storm: The soft, beatless “All Is Full of Love,” a downy bed of harp and processed strings. The title is self-explanatory, the lyrics wide-eyed, nearly liturgical. It is a song about ecstasy, about oneness, about infinite possibility—and about letting go.
Björk’s voice is, without question, the life force of this music. You can hear her finding a new confidence on “Unravel”: The edge of her voice is as jagged as the lid of a tin can, her held tones as slick as black ice. A diligent student could try to transcribe her vocals the way jazz obsessives used to notate Charlie Parker’s solos, and you’d still come up short; the physical heft and malleability of her voice outstrips language.
Videos had long been an important part of Björk’s work, but they became especially crucial in building out the world of Homogenic. Compared to the sprawling list of collaborators on her first two records, she had pared down to a skeleton crew for this album; working with an array of different directors, though, allowed her to amplify her creative vision.
Chris Cunningham used “All Is Full of Love” as the springboard for a tender, and erotic, look at robot love. Michel Gondry turned “Bachelorette” into a meta-narrative about Björk’s own conflicted relationship with fame—an epic saga turned into a set of Russian nesting dolls. Another Gondry video, for “Jóga,” used CGI to force apart tectonic plates and reveal the earth’s glowing mantle below. At the end of the video, Björk stands on a rock promontory, prying open a hole in her chest—a pre-echo of the vulvic opening she will wear on the cover of Vulnicura—to reveal the Icelandic landscape dwelling inside her. In Paul White’s video for “Hunter,” a shaven-headed Björk sprouts strange, digital appendages, eventually turning into an armored polar bear, as she flutters her lids and wildly contorts her expression—a vision of human emotion as liquid mercury. Her use of different versions of her songs for several of these videos also contributed to the idea that the work was larger than any one recording—that these songs were boundless.
Björk’s initial idea for Homogenic was to be an unusual experiment in stereo panning. She imagined using just strings and beats and voice—strings in the left channel, beats in the right channel, and the voice in the middle.
It’s kind of a genius idea: an interactive, self-remixable album, a sort of one-disc Zaireeka, that goes to the heart of the dichotomies that have always made Björk—theorist and dreamer, daughter of a hippie activist and a union electrician—such a dynamic character. And while it’s easy to see why the concept never came to fruition—there’s no way such a gimmick could have yielded an album as richly layered as Homogenic turned out to be—it turns out to have been a prescient idea: the direct antecedent to Vulnicura Strings, which excised the drums and electronic elements of Vulnicura and focused on voice and strings alone.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see the way that Homogenic paves the way for later career triumphs like Vespertine and Vulnicura: In its formal audacity and sustained emotional intensity, it represents a phase shift from Debut and Post, fine though they were. Björk’s personality has seen her seesaw between extremes throughout her catalog, and after the shadowy intensity of Homogenic, Vespertine would end up a softer, gentler record. (Björk has said that she envisions “All Is Full of Love” as “the first song on Vespertine.”) Created in the glow of her nascent relationship with Matthew Barney, it is the domestic album, the comfort album, the beach-house-weekend album. But Homogenic is the one that complicated the picture of Björk, that threw aside big-time sensuality in favor of more volatile forces, revealed a glimpse of her deepest self for the first time.
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