Iconic historical stage designs for The Queen of the Night sequence from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” - the first image by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1815, the second by Simon Quaglio in 1818 (x)
So I don't know if you guys know this but Monterey Bay Aquarium Have Live Web Cams of some of their tanks
Monterey Bay Aquarium is hands down my favorite aquarium, and since I don’t currently live close to it anymore it’s nice to know they have live feeds of some of their exhibits including their Deep Sea tank
Their Kelp Forest
as well as many more.
The live cams are really relaxing and great if you don’t have your own aquariums to watch, or if you just want to see penguins walk around.
please be patient with yourself. you do not start out being able to do everything. you start out by doing very little, a little more, a little more
just because something is too much for u now does not mean that you will always feel this way. push yourself, yes, but gently, and dont be surprised when you fail occasionally. failing is part of the whole deal. if you think its happening too much, then you might be putting too much on your plate at the same time.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four [complete]
This was inspired by a gif set made by goddamnitgavin, based on an AU by teamsamevoice. Mavin, with a warning for mild coarse language. These links have broken. If you recognise the users, please let me know!
When you turn eighteen, your soul mate’s name is tattooed permanently on your skin. That doesn’t make things easy for Michael and Gavin.
-x-x-x-x-x-
His mum sold the house in Oxford after he moved, properly, to the US. When he visits back home he sleeps on Dan’s lumpy couch in a house twenty minutes away from anything, or on a stretcher bed in an out-of-the-way corner of his mum’s new place. They try to apologise for it but all he can do is smile, grateful to be back where people don’t ask him to repeat words or wrongly guess which country he’s from, where crisps are crisps and chippies can be found as easily as pizza restaurants in Austin.
The first week is busy; he plans the videos they’ll produce for the Slow Mo Guys channel with Dan and starts work on a couple of them, goes out drinking with mates he hasn’t seen since university, and agrees to do a workshop on slow motion camerawork for a local film group. He’s still checking his email regularly, so he’s surprised when he receives a text from Michael’s number: Get on Skype, you asshole.
Logging into his account, he finds messages from Michael time-stamped back to the day after his arrival in England.
February 10
Michael Jones
Wow, the office is really fucking quiet.
Hope you made it there okay.
February 12
Michael Jones
Hey.
I want to use that Mogar figurine for a video.
Where is it? On your desk?
February 13
Michael Jones
Are you seriously not using Skype at all?
Gavin! We’re your friends!
missed call
February 15
Michael Jones
Is this some fucked up thing with time zones?
If you’re seeing these messages, at least fucking reply.
missed call
missed call
Michael Jones
Are you kidding me?!
Gavin Free
Hi, Michael.
I didn’t realise you were trying to talk to me.
I’ve been checking my emails, you idiot.
Michael Jones
Were you serious about this?
You didn’t think there was anyone here in Austin who might want to talk to you?
Gavin Free
How much did sending a text internationally cost you?
After a minute he replies:
Michael Jones
I had to upgrade my phone plan.
He’s sitting thousands of miles away, on a childhood friend’s uncomfortable couch with a laptop that he doesn’t quite know how to use. It’s nine o’clock at night, and he can see from his Skype profile that it’s only mid-afternoon for Michael, who is probably at this moment at his desk in the Achievement Hunter office pretending to look busy.
Michael Jones
I’m not supposed to tell you this, but Ryan fucked with your desk.
Gavin Free
What did he do?
Michael Jones
It’s now half-desk, half-machine.
Gavin Free
He turned my desk into a cyborg?
Michael Jones
I’m pretty sure cyborgs are half-human.
That turns into a conversation about cyborgs versus transformers, whether or not Terminator Salvation is a movie they would ever watch a second time, and which celebrity they would choose to swap bodies with. He only realises how late it’s gotten when Dan comes up behind him and asks, “Is that the bloke you work with?”
“Yeah,” he says with a yawn, “this is Michael.”
“Huh,” says Dan, glancing down at their chat logs. “Well, I just came in to tell you that the van’s hired for tomorrow morning. Charlie’ll drive it over at five and help us load the equipment so we can be ready to set up at five thirty.”
Sunrise or sunset is ‘golden hour’, when the natural light reads well on camera. It’s a hassle to get up so early in the morning but a softer image that spends less time in post-production is worth it. He says goodnight to Michael and is surprised again when, while he’s standing near their equipment in the middle of a field and eating sandwiches someone’s girlfriend thought to bring, he gets another text message.
You didn’t tell me where the Mogar figurine is. I want to use it to promote the next Rage Quit on Twitter.
I left it on one of the game shelves, sorry.
Michael sends him a text with a photo attached, of Mogar right at the back of the shelf. Finally found it. Why was it hidden behind the NASCAR games? Nobody ever fucking plays those.
I actually don’t remember, he admits. Isn’t it expensive for you to be texting me? Like 50p a message or something?
50 cents a message, yeah. Did you type the wrong letter by mistake?
Gavin sighs to himself, locking the phone screen so he can leave it in the van while they’re filming. When the equipment’s packed away and everyone thanked for their work, he gets into the passenger seat so that Dan can drive back into town. They’ve been friends for so long that of course Dan knows the passcodes he would use for his phone, and of course he would click around the damn thing if he was curious or bored enough – as it is, he looks fairly unsurprised.
The wallpaper he chose was a picture of him with an arm around Michael’s shoulders, smiling as they stand outside the Rooster Teeth office building together. He had his hand unconsciously angled up so you can read clearly the letters, Michael.
“Is this him?” Dan asks, holding it up so that he can see the screen.
“That’s, er – yeah.” He goes faintly red and purposely looks out the side window.
Dan grins and locks the phone, then turns the key in the ignition.
February 16
Michael Jones
Geoff wants us to do another Surgeon Simulator video.
Gavin Free
I haven’t been on YouTube. Did people like the last one?
Michael Jones
No kidding, it might do better than Slender.
There are secret missions, set in space or an ambulance or some shit.
Gavin Free
All right, we can have a go at it when I get back to the States.
Michael Jones
:)
February 17
Michael Jones
Do you have anyone picking you up at the airport?
Gavin Free
If Geoff’s too busy to manage it, I’ll just take a taxi.
Michael Jones
I can pick you up, if you want.
Gavin Free
Really?
That’d be…yeah, that’d be good.
Thanks, Michael.
Michael Jones
Anytime, Gavin.
“What’s it been like, living in another country?” Dan asks while they’re lazing about in the lounge, drinking beer to celebrate another sponsor for their YouTube videos.
“It’s different, yeah?” he tells him, leaning his head on the back of the couch. “I didn’t realise how different it was until I’d been staying with the Ramseys for a couple of months. Weather, food, shoe sizes, spelling things without as many vowels… Sometimes if I’m not paying attention it’s like they’re speaking another bloody language.
“I think there was this moment where I was at, I don’t know, RTX or something, making small talk with a stranger while we waited for the lift. And I didn’t mess it up. I’d had so many conversations with people who thought I was weird, or stupid. I finally figured out what they expected me to say and I said it, no problems.
“I’ll never be American, but I have friends there and an amazing job,” he says with a sigh, idly raising his phone above his head. “And that moment made me realise that I could live there for the rest of my life, quite happily.”
Dan glances at him from across the couch. “Are you going to, then?”
He remembers what it was like to arrive at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport for the first time without a return ticket to England, and how that conversation with a stranger had seemed like such an achievement after months of culture shock.
Unlocking the phone screen, he thumbs through the photo gallery and sees himself grinning or making weird expressions with Geoff and Griffon, Barbara, Ray, Michael… There are people who are waiting for him to come back to Austin and would miss him if he never did.
Thinking of his upcoming flight as ‘going home’ makes Gavin smile. “Yeah,” he says. “I am.”
-x-x-x-x-x-
“Look at this. LOOK AT THIS!” he shouts into the pop filter, pressing the buttons of an Xbox controller furiously. Banana Splat! is the worst indie game he has ever played in his life, about a banana with stick figure limbs riding a bicycle across a busy intersection. In the harder levels he not only has to memorise which direction the cars are coming from and when, but also avoid banana peels from the previous times he had died. “Go, you weird fucking piece of fruit! Cross the god damn road!”
Gavin is sitting next to him, completely silent and focused on getting an achievement in his own game.
“Oh my god…” he says in a low voice and exhales loudly into the microphone, as the banana is hit by another car and dies with the shittiest animation ever to grace this gaming platform. Leaving the bike where it was hit, the banana goes awkwardly sideways until it’s suspended half under the asphalt. Then it reappears suddenly, back where he started.
After several more tries Michael quits the game, shouting, “GET YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE, YOU ASSHOLE!” and turns off the screen manually so he doesn’t have to look at the fruit bowl-themed menu.
He makes sure the capture was okay, puts it into a folder to edit later and asks Gavin, “Do you want anything from the vending machines?”
“No thanks, Michael,” he replies without looking away from Call of Duty: Black Ops II. When Michael comes back into the room he’s shifted the controller into his lap. Their chairs are close enough that he stretches his legs out to rest across Michael’s knees.
It’s quiet in the office, since everyone else has already gone home for the day. He’s gotten used to these afternoons staying late to record footage for future episodes of Rage Quit, sometimes playing a one-on-one match with Gavin to wind down afterwards.
He stops Gavin’s leg kicking distractedly by resting a hand on his calf, as he clicks around the folders to check that the footage and edited videos are where they should be.
And he realises, as they sit there next to each other in easy silence, that this isn’t what he expected it would be when he was eighteen years old.
He stills at the thought and glances over at Gavin, who’s focused intently on his game. His hair is mussed from constantly putting on and taking off headphones; there are darker shadows under his eyes than usual because they were filming a podcast late yesterday; a hoodie is slung over the back of his chair, and the fact that Michael recognises the plain, long-sleeved shirt that Gavin’s wearing pretty much rids him of any plausible deniability.
Around his neck is the creeper necklace that Michael bought him for a joke, and his desk is littered with things that have rolled across the increasingly narrow divide: the wooden pickaxe, the mini soccer ball with goals that a fan made for them out of paper and dental floss, a South Park badge with Make Love, Not Warcraft written on it.
The Mogar figurine looks at him with eyes that never blink, as if saying, no shit.
Michael breathes in deeply, then takes a risk.
“Do you want to have dinner with me sometime?”
“You want to get pizza?” Gavin asks, distracted by his computer screen. It’s pretty normal for them to go out for food or drinks after work, especially on a Friday night.
“No, I… Like, a date. Do you want to go on a date with me?”
Gavin goes quiet. Then: “Huh?” He turns to look at him, startled. “What?”
“A date,” Michael says, covering his nervousness with frustration. “A romantic date. I wear something nice and pay for dinner-”
“What?!” he nearly shrieks. “You want to go on a date with me?”
For some weird reason, Michael finds that funny and has to stop himself from laughing as he says, louder than before, “What are you talking about? Gavin, I’m asking you out on a date right now. That’s what this is-”
“Why?”
With that single word, his smile fades. For a moment he’s not sure how to respond. “Because I like you,” he tells him honestly. “Because you’re attractive. I want to go on a date with you.”
With those words, Gavin looks like he’s about to spontaneously combust.
Michael is expecting him to turn red with embarrassment, or make some high-pitched shrieking noise, or stand up and walk out of the room without another word.
Instead, Gavin purposefully takes off his headphones and leans over, slow, close as he can get while they’re still sitting tangled up with each other—and kisses him, gently.
It’s little more than a brush of their lips. Michael makes a sound of protest when he pulls away, tugging him back with a hand at the nape of his neck. They kiss again, his fingers twisting up into that ridiculous, perpetually messy hair.
Gavin smiles into the kiss before nipping at his lower lip. His skin is rougher than Michael is used to, stubble beginning to come through in the time since he last shaved. And it’s…! Michael doesn’t have the words to describe how it feels, gasping instead.
“You want to go on a date with me,” Gavin murmurs. His fingers are drawing maddening patterns along Michael’s forearm and he’s studying his features intently, as if trying to memorise them.
“Fuck yes.” He’s mildly horrified to hear his own voice crack.
But then Gavin grins at him, brighter and more beautiful than he would have believed possible, and there’s more borderline-inappropriate-for-the-workplace kissing, which continues into the front seat of his car and nearly distracts him from ordering pizza.
There’s a Halo tournament that turns into more kissing, late night confessions and hands twisted together, the realisation that Gavin can fall asleep in less than a minute and is even more restless than he would have guessed, tangled bed sheets and a too-warm body pressed up along his side when he blinks blearily at his bedroom ceiling sometime around 3AM.
Then there’s bad breath, leftover pizza slices and several failed attempts to start up the car while Gavin fucks around with the seatbelt or leans across the gearstick to kiss him again. By the time they arrive at work, his face hurts from smiling.
Ray gives him a thumbs-up when he sees that Gavin is wearing a sweatshirt that’s too big for him and a knitted cap that he ‘borrowed’ from Michael’s wardrobe.
They sit next to each other at the staff meeting, during which Geoff keeps making gagging noises and patting either of them on the shoulder.
And the rest of the day passes much like it normally would. Except that Gavin has decided to try out pet names, to the apparent surprise and disgust of their co-workers. There’s a hand resting thoughtlessly on his thigh when the office gets quiet, or a kiss pressed against his cheek when Gavin leaves the room, a can of Red Bull waiting on his desk when he finishes up what he was working on and distracted smiles from his…soulmate?
Boyfriend, Michael thinks to himself. The word is full of potential.
you should always carry around very small clothes that can fit a frog. listen to me. listen. what if you meet a frog one day and you instantly have clothes for him. youll be that frog’s bro
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
kaledo-art
jacobvanloon
