#17/02/2013 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

likeadevils · 1 year ago

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1989 Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on 1989 in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also included a few other songs she worked on while writing 1989 and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process

Of all the albums in Taylor's discography, I think this is the one that improves the most when you listen to it in order. All of those things Taylor was talking about in the promo for this album-- how this is an album of her coming into her own, figuring out her values, learning to stand on her own two feet-- it all clicks into place. Listening to it in order has made me cry on more than one occasion, and it's also the thing that made me start this whole crazy process of figuring out the dates she wrote each song.

If you don't want to read the whole post, check out this playlist of the album in order or this playlist of her entire discography.

I’ve also added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date:

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but all available evidence points to that date

Speculation: This date is based on guesswork and is highly likely to change, or, all that is known is the general season.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices)

Without further ado...

Oct 6, 2012: Taylor seems to have been in a studio in London (Note: I have no idea where this photo comes from and I can not find a place that specifies if this is a music studio or radio interview.)

This Love: Oct 17, 2012 (Confirmed)

October 19, 2012: Taylor mentions wanting to work with Imogen Heap, prompting Imogen to get in touch with Taylor

Time Interview: Who’d be your dream collaboration, especially now that you’re taking more musical risks? Let me think. Imogen Heap! She’s amazing. Taylor: Someone asked me in an interview "Who would you like to work with?" and I said Imogen Heap. I get an email to my management, sent like "Imogen just saw that Taylor just said an interview that she would like to work together" She said "Why don't you come out to my studio." Imogen: I got a phone call [in 2014] saying Taylor Swift was in London, she'd love to work with me and the only date she could do (between 4 sold out 02 arenas!) was the day after we got back, Sunday. It was both unexpected and not at the same time as I'd heard Taylor was a fan a while back via this Time magazine piece but somehow didn't think it would actually happen.

Fall 2012: Taylor possibly writes a song with Harry Styles and Jacknife Lee (her producer for The Last Time).

Jacknife Lee: “It was out of my field of expertise and interest, but I was intrigued and my girls were thrilled. Taylor was nice and very professional. She knew what she wanted and there was no fucking about. She was seeing Harry Styles at the time, so he came to Topanga on her recommendation. She wrote a few songs with him, and it was the same thing – quick. But this time it was more directed by the management and label. They were after something specific. I wanted more acoustic and gentle, almost Americana, and they wanted bombast. They got what they wanted, and that was the extent of my foray into teen-pop territory. It was fun.”

All You Had to Do Was Stay: Jan 10, 2013 (Confirmed)

Taylor is photographed outside Conway, and then tweets "Back in the studio. Uh oh..." Later, Taylor confirmed that she was recording All You Had To Do Was Stay. Taylor: I had a dream that my ex showed up at my door, knocked at my door, and I opened it up, and I was about ready to launch into the perfect thing to say [...], Instead, all that would come out of my mouth was that high-pitched chorus of people singing, 'Stay!'...and then you go to say something else, and it's just like 'Stay! Stay! Stay!' And I woke up, I was like 'Oh, that was mortifying. But that's kind of a cool vocal part.'

January 11, 2013: Taylor is photographed outside Conway again

How You Get The Girl: Jan 15, 2013 (Confirmed)

Taylor posts a picture of her playing a guitar in the studio, captioned "Somewhere in LA..". Later, Taylor confirmed that she was recording How You Get The Girl. Given what was going on in her personal life, she likely wrote this sometime in the fall/winter of 2012, but all we know for sure is the date she recorded it.

February 9, 2013: Tweets "Grammy rehearsals last night, studio today, who knows what tonight holds! (I do. Laying around watching TV and eating candy.)"

March 6, 2013: Taylor is photographed outside a studio in LA

March 23, 2013: Posts a picture of her playing guitar captioned "Pre show. Columbia, South Carolina"

I Wish You Would: May 28, 2013 (Inferring)

Taylor is photographed out for lunch in Rhode Island with Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff on May 27, before leaving for her show in Phoenix, Arizona the next day Taylor: "Max Martin and [Karl Johan] Shellback [Schuster] were the last people I collaborated with on [2012 album] Red, and I wished we could have done more and explored more. So going into this album, I knew that I wanted to start with them again. Then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be amazing to work with Ryan Tedder?” And then I was with Jack Antonoff and Lena Dunham at the beach, and we started talking about our favorite ’80s music. All of this started happening organically, and I found myself gravitating toward pop sensibilities, pop hooks, pop production styles." Jack: "We were hanging out at her house in Rhode Island and we were talking about John Hughes movies, and a lot of the music that inspired [them], and just this general culture of sound in that time period that was really larger-than-life in an anthemic, positive way. These songs could be at the end of films that were really, really beautiful and said a lot. That actually ended up being a song called 'I Wish You Would' which is going to be on her album. We first worked on that song together and realized we kind of have a good thing. Taylor: “This is a song I did with Jack Antonoff, and Jack is one of my friends and so we were hanging out and he pulled out his phone and goes "I made this amazing track the other day. It's so cool, I love these guitar sounds." And he played it for me and immediately I could hear this finished song in my head, and I just said "Please, please let me have that. Let me play with it, like send it to me" And so he sent it to me and I was on tour and this was me playing the track on my laptop recording me singing the vocal into my phone and it ended up being a song called "I Wish You Would", because Jack wrote back and said "I love that".”

June 7, 2013: At the CMA fest, Taylor is asked if she's started writing for her next album yet

“It's starting, all the anxiety is starting and when the anxiety starts, then the writing happens right afterward, usually. Um, so, yeah, I basically... I like to, I like to write for about two years before I'm finished with an album because I... at this point I kind of know that whenever I write in the first year is going to get thrown away, because, I'm going to like it, but it's going to sound a little bit like the last project I had, and the second year usually ends up sounding like the next project. So I think at this point, at this point I feel like staying the same is the easy way to go but it's not the way that I want to go, creatively. I think you need to challenge yourself, I think you need to change up your influences, I think you need to be inspired by different things that you've been inspired by before, and, uh, y'know, It's harder to call people you don't know, and it's harder to think of topics you haven't covered and think of new ways to say old emotions that everyone feels, but, that's the goal at this point."

June 20-21, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez hang out, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

July 15, 2013: Taylor gives a brief interview to Rolling Stone

“The floodgates just opened the last couple weeks,” she says of the songwriting process. “I’m getting to that point where I’m irritating to be around because I’ll be with you for half the conversation and then the second half of the conversation I’m clearly editing the second verse of whatever I’m writing in my head.” “I really loved collaborating [on Red],” she says. “You work with a lot of different people and you find the people you have this dream connection with in the studio. I know those people and I know the ones I want to go back to. But I also have a really long list of the people I admire and I would really love to go and contact. So that’s kind of where that is.” “I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point? It’s so overwhelming that when you’re starting a project there are such endless possibilities if you’re willing to evolve and experiment. If you’re willing to become a different version of yourself, you can really go anywhere with it. And that’s kind of where I am. The kind of the laboratory experimental stage of really catching onto a new thing that I’m liking.”

July 18, 2013: Taylor unfollows the three backup dancers that left her tour for Katy's, meaning Bad Blood was likely written sometime between July and November 2013.

Sweeter Than Fiction: Summer 2013 (Speculation)

Taylor wrote this one over email, and then it was recorded in New York (partially in Jack's living room, partially in an actual studio)

August 25, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez hang out at the VMAs, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

August 25, 2013: Taylor gives a brief interview on the VMAs red carpet

"But I think [songwriting is] about to start to kick into full gear. I'm about to go into the studio. It's about to get really intense."

Out Of The Woods: September 14 2013 (Inferring)

On September 14, Fun cancelled their show. Taylor was likely either flying to or from Charlottesville, where she had a show for the Red Tour. Jack: "When I did the track for Out of the Woods, which is a Taylor song that I'm really proud of, there was some issue at a venue and our show was canceled that night and I didn't have my stuff, I had left it on the bus, so I only had these old samples on what was on my laptop, and caught up that 'oh oh'' thing, and I only had one drum kit on there, and these dumb little things [sometimes turn into a great song]" Jack: "So 'Out Of The Woods' was the third thing we worked on together, and probably the easiest. I sent her the track for it, and she sent back a voice note with the verse and chorus in what felt like five seconds. And it was just perfect. It's eerie how similar it is to what the final product is." Taylor: "This is a track that Jack Antonoff sent me, and I was actually on a plane, I got it and I got on a plane and I'm listening to it, and I'm just like listening to it and mumbling melodies cause the song came to me immediately like, in full [...] I think what I should start by playing you, is when I got the track, what I sent him like an hour later, and it is, me.. um, me singing what came to me, which ended up being the finished version of the song, or at least really close to it."

September 20, 2013: In a brief interview with USA Today, Taylor says she plans to work on her next album between the next few legs of the Red Tour

"I’ll be in the studio, figuring out what comes next. I really like to take two years to make a record, and I’ve been writing and doing stuff for the last year. This is kind of the year that it goes into overdrive, and it’s all I think about and I become obsessive over it and I’m hard to talk to"

September 22, 2013: Taylor gives an interview to New York Magazine where she talks about her plans for TS5

These days, Swift is thinking a lot about her next record. While on the Red tour, she’d been writing songs and stockpiling ideas: reams of lyrics, thousands of voice memos in her iPhone [...] she plans to spend much of 2014 writing and recording the new album, a prospect she finds exhilarating and terrifying. “I worry about everything. Some days I wake up in a mind-set of, like, ‘Okay, it’s been a good run.’ By afternoon, I could have a change of mood and feel like anything is possible and I can’t wait to make this kind of music I’ve never made before. And then by evening, I could be terrified of the whole thing again. And then at night, I’ll write a song before bed.” Swift hopes to collaborate with new songwriters and producers. But she planned to begin, she said, by heading back into the studio with Max Martin and Shellback. “I want to go in with Max and Johan first, just to figure out what the bone structure of this record is going to be. “I have a lot of things to draw from emotionally at the moment. But I have to draw from them with a different perspective than on Red. I can’t say the same things over and over, you know? I mean, I think it’s just all the more important that I don’t ever allow myself to coast. At the same time, there’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting. The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do. Like, where there’s a dance break that doesn’t make any sense, there’s a rap that shouldn’t be there, there’s like a beat change that’s, like, the coolest, hippest thing this six months—but it has nothing to do with the feeling, it has nothing to do with the emotion, it has nothing to do with the lyric. I never want to put things in songs just because that might make them popular, like, on the more rhythmic stations or in dance clubs. I really don’t want a compilation of sounds. I just need them to be songs.”

September 28-October 5, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez are in the same city, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

October 12, 2013: Taylor gives an interview to the Associated Press

Swift: I think the goal for the next album is to continue to change, and never change in the same way twice [...] How do I write these figurative diary entries in ways that I’ve never written them before and to a sonic backdrop that I’ve never explored before? It’s my fifth album, which is crazy to think about, but I think what I’m noticing about it so far is it’s definitely taking a different turn than anything I’ve done before. AP: You said recently you’ve been working on songs for the new album for about six months. What can you tell us about what you have planned? Swift: It’s too early to tell who are going to be my predominant collaborators, but I do know that my absolute dream collaborators were Shellback and Max Martin on the last project. I’ve never been so challenged as a songwriter. I’ve never learned so much. I’ve never just been so excited to show up to the studio every day, just because you never know what we’re going to put together. I’ll bring in ideas and they’ll take such a different turn than where I thought they were going to go, and that level of unexpected spontaneity is something that really thrills me in the process of making music. ... What if we did this? What if we made it weirder? What if we took it darker? I love people who have endless strange and exciting ideas about where music can go."

October 14, 2013: At the NSAI, Taylor talks about reinventing herself for different albums

"I’m making my 5th record now, so I think you have to change things up, you have to explore different corners of music as much as you can. Cause I really, it’s been a big goal of mine to never make two albums that sounded the same. I really want my fans to be able to be like "Oh that song? Clearly that's from the Fearless album", "No that one, that one was from Red" and so I’m in the process of doing that thing all over again for my 5th album and it’s amazing to be in the studio and to be songwriting again, and be honored for songwriting tonight"

Blank Space: October 26, 2013 (Inferring)

It looks like she’s wearing the same outfit in this behind the scenes footage and these candids Taylor: "I was going into write with Max Martin and Shellback, who are two of the primary collaborators on 1989, and I... was preparing all these things, and I, I think Blank Space was like the third thing I played them, and they just stopped and they were like "NO, this is the first thing we're working on today." [...] I had the idea for the chorus and I had the hook, but a lot of the verse was gibberish." Taylor (On what song took her the least amount of time to write): "Blank space, cause I'd written a lot of the lines down already in the year preceding the session"

October 29, 2013: Tweets "Sitting in the studio writing the next album (!!!!) and wanted to thank you for the American Music Award nominations!"

November 1 : While promoting Keds, Taylor is asked about her next album

"What I go through is going to be the story that I tell. I think lyrically, I always try to tell my fans exactly what’s happened to me in the last two years, and that’s the thing they can expect. Everything else, they won’t be able to expect. Having been in the studio with this one, I’m just like… oh, this is going to be fun"

Bad Blood: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

The backup dancer drama seems to have kicked off in mid-July. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

New Romantics: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Unfortunately, Taylor doesn't really talk about this song. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

Wildest Dreams: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Selena reportedly told a fan she was there when Taylor wrote this, and I've noted above all the times Selena could have been with Taylor in 2013 (Here's my personal ranking of how likely each date is). Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013.

Wonderland: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Another one Taylor just doesn't talk about all that often. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

Nov 20, 2013: Taylor posted "While in the studio, I came to the realization that my bangs are long enough to use as a sleep mask on long flights. Then I remembered I don't ever use sleep masks on flights. So really, I just need a haircut"

November 25, 2013: Taylor and Scott Borchetta have a meeting to talk about her plans for TS5 and are both asked about the next album at the AMAs

Taylor: “We got a lot already. There are probably seven or eight [songs] that I know I want on the record. It’s really ahead of schedule for me. I’m just stoked because it’s already evolved into a new sound, and that’s all I wanted. And I would have taken two years to make that happen, but it just kind of happened naturally, so that’s all I could really ask for.” Scott Borchetta: "Well earlier today we got together and she played me seven new songs, and she’s just on fire. The level of desire and passion that she has just to keep getting better, she’s an artist that just really never wants to just say ‘Well okay this is good enough’. It’s always gotta be better. She’s in amazing creative place right now." By the end of November, Taylor had likely recorded This Love, All You Had To Do Was Stay, How You Get The Girl, I Wish You Would, Out Of The Woods, Blank Space, Bad Blood, New Romantics, Wildest Dreams, and Wonderland. That’s 10 songs total, 5 of which were likely recorded in the past two months, and 7 that had been made since Taylor and Jack had their conversation about 80s music in May.

Dec 21, 2013: Taylor briefly talks to Billboard about TS5

"I’m really loving collaboration right now [...] I see it as a bit of an apprenticeship. I want to be around people who love writing songs and have done it for years. Every time I’m in a studio I’m learning, like how to build a drum track, and getting a new perspective on things. It’s so thrilling to keep learning on your fifth album. As soon as [an album] comes out I’m figuring out what the next one will be. It’s gotten to the point where each one is a reinvention, which is what I like best. I like it when it sounds new and people don’t know where you’re going to go next."

Say Don't Go: Jan 1, 2014 (Confirmed)

Diane Warren: Warren, who typically writes on her own, says the two of them “sat down and wrote the song […] from scratch” during the last few days of 2013. She remembers being impressed with how specific Swift was with her lyricism and how considerate she was about how her fans might receive it. “She was very particular about how she said certain things. It was a really interesting experience. She gets her audience [...] She’s deeply aware of how her fans want to hear something. I can’t explain it, but that’s probably why she’s the biggest fucking star in the world.” Several days after writing the song together, they got into Warren’s office to record a demo, where Swift played it on her acoustic guitar. “We demoed it on New Year’s Day. And I’m a workaholic, and that’s fine for me,” she says. “But I remember being impressed that she did, too. Everybody’s on vacation, but she showed up.”

You Are In Love: Jan 2014 (Inferring)

This song is copyrighted for 2014. Taylor has said a few times that Clean, Shake It Off, and Style were the last songs written for the album, meaning You Are In Love was likely completed in January or early February. Given Taylor's busy schedule in late January and early February, I'd guess this was written at some point in early January. Furthermore, I'd guess it was sometime after the 9th, when she returned from looking at house in New York.

I Know Places: Jan 22, 2014 (Confirmed)

Taylor: "I sent this voice memo to Ryan Tedder because I'd always wanted to work with him, and finally we scheduled some studio time. So I always wanna be prepared, I wanted to send him the idea that I was working on before we went into the studio just in case he wrote back and said "I can't stand that, I wanna work on something else, think of something else" So I just sat down with the piano, put my phone on top of the piano and just kind of explained to him where I wanted to go with the song, how I saw the melody sitting in and we ended up recording the song the next day and it ended up being on the record called "I Know Places" So this was the voice memo that I sent to him the night before we ended up finishing the song"

Welcome To New York: Jan 23, 2014 (Confirmed)

Ryan Tedder: "I thought we were going to walk in and start something from scratch because that's what I was used to. Then she calls me and says, 'Is it cool if I already have an idea?' I said, 'Sure.' She said, 'I have this song, I'm obsessed with New York and I just moved there, I want to write an ode to New York because no one's done it in a long time.' And then she sent me a voice memo. She's like, 'I want it to sound like 1980s.' So the next day I brought in a Juno-106, which is a very 1980s keyboard and I literally programmed that entire song right in front of her. It was very much on the fly, and that song was done in about three hours. And I did the rest of the production I think later that week. I was in Switzerland on a tour bus, and I did four versions of 'Welcome to New York,' one of which I liked personally more, but the thing about artists is they become very obsessed with the demo. She was in love with the demo so no matter how hard I fought, she brought it back to the demo, so really what you hear is what I did on the first day."

January 26 2014: Dianne Warren says that she recently wrote a song with Taylor

"I worked with Taylor Swift on a great song [...] I'm excited about the [song] that we did, it's pretty cool Dianne in 2016: “I know [Swift] likes it, so hopefully it will see the light of day. I know she really likes the song. She didn’t want me to give it away, so hopefully that means she wants it.”

January 26 2014: Taylor loses Album of the Year at the Grammy's to Daft Punk. She tells a few different stories about what the rest of the night looked like for her-- in some she goes home alone, in some she has some friends over-- but in all of them, this is the night where she decides that she's gonna name the album 1989, and she's not going to let her label tell her to put any country songs on it.

Clean: Feb 9, 2014 (Confirmed)

According to Imogen Heap's blog post, Taylor had the first verse and chorus by the time they got into the studio, and then wrote the second verse and bridge during the session. Taylor's part was wrapped up in 9 hours, ending at 8pm, while Imogen stayed up until 4am because she didn't want to stop working on it. Taylor: ""Shake It Off" and "Clean" were the last two things we wrote for the record, so it shows you where I ended up mentally. “Clean” I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date— it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, ‘Oh, I hope he’s doing well’. And nothing else. [...] The first thought that came to my mind was – I’m finally clean." Imogen Heap: I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises to [“Clean”], played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day. She recorded all her vocals [for “Clean”] during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can’t possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great.

February 15, 2014: Taylor posts "It was a studio Valentines Day with Max and Johan!"

Shake It Off: Feb 15, 2014 (Confirmed)

Lover Diaries (From Feb 22): "This week I’ve been in the studio with Max and Johan every day and it has been the most creatively successful and fulfilling time. The first day, Johan just made a really up tempo drum beat because we decided we needed something UP and light. We worked at it for a few hours before I just started singing “shake it off, shake it off.” And then the best way I know how to describe it is that the chorus just fell out of the sky. It ended up being this song about doing your own thing even though haters are gonna hate, and you just have to dance to your own beat. We all went home and I wrote the first and second verses and brought them in the next day. We wrote this chanty cheer leader bridge that I absolutely LOVE. We spent all day doing vocals and the next day recording background vocals. I think it’ll end up being the first single and Max said it’s his favorite song he’s ever been a part of." Taylor: "The problem was, I had all these lyrics, and I didnt have, like... writing session was coming up and I'm just like "I'm not getting a melody, I'm dead, I don't know what I'm gonna do." The thought terrified me, so I just sorta sulked into the studio and I was like "Guys, I have like an idea but its like, lyric, but I... and I know the vibe I want-- I want it to start off and the second the song starts, I want it to be the song where like, if it's played at a wedding, and there's this one girl who hasn't danced all night at the reception, all her friends come over to her and there like "You have to dance, come on, you have to dance on this one!". That's what I wanted. So I was like "Shellback, can you just go to the drum kit and try to play that?" Taylor: "There's one thing that I've always said to Max, is like "I don't like horns" I just always had a thing about it, I was always like weirdly scared of it, or intimidated by horns, I don't know what it was? It's a weird, like, nerdy studio fear of mine. I was like "No, no horns!" and I don't.. I don't even know, I don't have a reason for it, I love songs that have horns on them, I was just like "I don't think I can pull off horns." Strange. But, he goes over to the mellotron and he starts playing this horn sound. I'm like "What are you doing. Don't do that." and he's like, "No, I think this is cool" and I'm like "No it's not cool, and where are your chorus chords, because, that, you're just playing three chords over and over again and I can't make a chorus out of them, why don't you go to like a chorus chord that starts off the chorus, where is the one, like why don't you go--" and then there was this moment, where I thought of the whole chorus, and it's over the chords that I had just told him are not "chorus chords", which is a ridiculous thing to say."

February 18, 2014: Taylor is photographed entering Conway Studios

Style: Feb 19, 2014 (Confirmed)

Niklas Ljungfelt (guitarist): I played on “Style,” a song I started with Ali Payami for ourselves. He was playing it for Max Martin at his studio; Taylor overheard it and loved it. She and Max wrote new lyrics. But I recorded the guitar on it before it was a Taylor song. It was an instrumental. I didn’t have a clue that Taylor would sing on it. The inspiration came from Daft Punk and funky electronic music. Taylor: I'm pretty sure after we finished this one I knew the record was done. Shake It Off and Style were the last two songs to be written for 1989.

March 2014: Taylor's interview with Glamour is published (likely conducted two months beforehand)

TS: Working on this album has been unbelievable [...] I'm already in love with it. It's so different. CL: What's the new sound? TS: On Red I did three songs with Max Martin Shellback [...] I think we'll be doing a lot more than three songs together on the next album [Laughs].

March 26, 2014: Taylor is photographed entering a music studio in New York

"Slut!": 2014 (Unknown)

Taylor: The song “Slut!” is a song we wrote for 1989 and in it, I kind of cheekily play on the discussions at that time of my life around my dating life. And that’s not the only time on 1989 that I’d done that, I’ve done that on “Blank Space” and when I came down to having to pick songs for the album, I think I though, “Okay, well, I’m going to choose ‘Blank Space’” and, unfortunately, had to make some tough decisions in terms of what to put on the tracklist. But I love this song because I think it’s really dreamy. And I always saw 1989 as a New York album, but this song, to me, was always California, and maybe that was another reason it didn’t make the cut, because sometimes, thematically, I just had these little weird rules in my head. But I’m so happy it’s finally going to be something you guys hear, because I have always been proud of it, I’ve always wanted it to come out into the world and now it is, so yay!

Suburban Legends: 2014 (Unknown)

Taylor hasn't talked about this song, and it was produced by Jack Antonoff, who she didn't schedule time in the studio with in the same way she did with Max Martin and Shellback, so there's not a lot to work with.

Is It Over Now?: 2014 (Unknown)

Similarly to Suburban Legends, Jack produced this, so there's no obvious point in time to point to. She has spoken briefly about it though. Taylor: “Is It Over Now” is a song I wanted to end the album with because I think it’s kind of a fun play on words of like, “Is the album over now?” I always saw this song as sort of a sister to “Out Of The Woods” and “I Wish You Would,” I kind of saw those songs as similar, so, unfortunately, when we were making these decisions of what to put on 1989 and what to leave behind, I had to make some tough choices, and now it doesn’t matter anymore because you guys are going to hear all the songs. I’m so happy this song is out. I really love the “let’s fast forward to three hundred takeout coffees later,” that session, I just feel like head banging to every time it comes on. Hope you agree.

May 30, 2014: Taylor writes in her diary:

So a crazy story unfolded in the last 24 hours. Last night, I had this vivid dream where the photo I’d chosen for the album cover wasn’t good enough, intriguing enough, artful enough. It woke me up. I couldn’t shake it and it stayed with me all day. Because that nagging feeling I’d been pushing back for weeks was now confirmed in my gut … It wasn’t good enough. I went to the venue, mind racing, wondering if I’d have to do an entirely new photo shoot … I got to my dressing room with newer versions of the “cover.” I looked at it and felt nothing. The team pulled up this new scanned file of the Polaroids we had taken during the shoot. I saw within 10 seconds. The shot. The cover. It’s a Polaroid of me sitting against a beige wall with a blue seagull swear shirt on. You can see my red lips, but the photo cuts off my eyes. From some reason unknown to me, it’s the most intriguing photo I’ve seen. I think it’s the mystery of not seeing my eyes. Maybe it just looks effortlessly cool. The craziest moment came when something caught my eye. The cover photo is photo 13. I kid you not.

August 23, 2014: Taylor is photographed walking out of a studio in LA (Note: I can not find a place that specifies if this is a recording studio, dance, photography, radio, or television studio.)

Now That We Don't Talk: Summer 2014 (Speculation)

Seeing as Taylor said she didn't have time to figure out the production, I imagine this came fairly late in the process. Taylor has a habit of adding songs right up to the deadline-- with Folklore and Evermore, she added multiple songs a week before the album came out. The latest she added songs to albums while signed to Big Machine was September, though (both Forever & Always and So It Goes...), so I assume that's the absolute latest she could've added a song to 1989. Taylor: "Now That We Don’t Talk” is one of my favorite songs that was left behind, it was so hard to leave it behind, but I think we wrote it a little bit towards the end of the process and we couldn’t get the production right at the time. But we had tons of time to perfect the production this time and figure out what we wanted this song to sound like. I think it’s the shortest song I’ve ever had, but I think it packs a punch, I think it really goes in. For the short amount of time we have, I think it makes its point.

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

#txt*#timeline*#taylor swift #OH MY GOD ITS OUT ITS OUT ITS OUT I'VE BEEN RESEARCHING THIS FOR THREE YEARS AND IT'S DONE #!!!!!#as always let me know if you want further sourcing on anything/if you spot a typo or something

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allthedoorsareopennow · 7 months ago

Text

Incomplete collection of Marius lore

suggestions for additions are welcome, but it MUST HAVE A SOURCE

overview

He is the ship’s medic[1]/ship’s doctor[3], plays fiddle and has a mechanised right arm[1].

The ace of hearts card in his hat indicates he is asexual [18].

'He likes love, and love songs, and people in love' [18].

His own romantic inclination is unknown [18].

He knows some German words, but is not fluent [19].

backstory

He is neither a baron nor a doctor[3][5]; ‘Baron’ is a corruption of his original name, Byron von Raum[2][5].

Marius has a sister called Dorothea, and they were raised by a single nonbinary parent. Marius doesn’t remember their name or face, and knows them only as Zeze[6].

It is strongly implied that Marius was not mechanised by Dr Carmilla [7].

Marius is 5’5 and very skinny. This is apparently because he came from a world that is ‘somewhat medieval in its nutrition levels’ and Marius was not a healthy child. [14]

He piloted a mecha called KISMET. She was 5-6 storeys tall and slightly insectoid, like a dragonfly or butterfly. [17]

‘The control pod’s entirely in the head, which allows the internal control rig to right itself like a ball bearing, keeping the pilot upright whether she’s standing on the ground, hovering, flying horizontally, banking sharply or even rolling.’ [17]

The mecha is not meelee-oriented. [17]

time with the mechanisms

Drumbot Brian said that ‘given that we're immortal and don't need a doctor, it's the job we're most comfortable giving Marius, and it keeps him busy’ and also that he ‘frequently tries to psychoanalyze inanimate objects’ [5]

His mechanism was ‘probably botched’ and he has a ‘tenuous grasp on reality’[2]

According to Jonny, he grew a beard presumably around 08/02/2014 ‘almost instantaneously, and without warning’ and was apparently ‘very upset’ and ‘said he’d been holding it in for decades and just that momentary lapse of concentration as I kneecapped him had ruined all his hard work’[8]

He once dressed up as the Toy Soldier for a halloween concert [9]

Drumbot Brian once responded to someone asking how the mechanisms were by describing marius as ‘mad’[10]

The Aurora describes Marius as ‘the broken doctor’ [16]

songs/albums

He had a planned lecture on the psyche of the olympians, but this was cancelled[11]

He helped Ashes install at a minimum the camera in Ulysses’ vault in UDAD, though he does not remember this[4]

Apparently, ‘Marius spent his time on Fort Galfridian sitting at the porthole for days staring into the sun because he didn't realise it was supposed to be unbearable, and now the Ghouls think he's some sort of prophet’ [12]

In The Bifrost Incident, Marius does not know where he got the violin - in fact, he doesn’t even realise he’s holding it until Lyf points it out [15]

death

Marius was always skeptical of the crew’s immortality and was less surprised to meet his end. ‘One day, at something of a loose end, he will decide to check on the octokittens. Unfortunately, the purring horde has not been fed in many decades, and devours him, head to toe, in 11.7 seconds.’ [13]

Jonny is implied to have already witnessed Marius’ death before the final concert; he says ‘11.7 seconds. At least, by my watch.’ [13]

In Marius’ death, tunes from ‘Blood and Whiskey’ and ‘Favoured Son’ can be heard [13].

[1] Mechanisms Marius von Raum Available at: https://themechanisms.com/the-crew/marius-von-raum/ Last accessed: 11/01/24

[2] Young (2020) Future Projects: The Death of Byron von Raum (spoiler free) Available at: https://kofiyoung.com/2020/07/25/future-projects-the-death-of-byron-von-raum-spoiler-free/ Last accessed: 11/01/24

[3] Revenge of Spaceport Mahon

[4] Mechanisms Eskhatos Available at: https://themechanisms.com/fiction/eskhatos/ Last accessed: 11/01/24

[5] Below (2013) Why do immortals need a ship doctor? Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/58736308596/why-do-immortals-need-a-ship-doctor-i-need-an Last accessed: 11/01/24

[6] Young (2023) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/727612334921678848/holding-checklist-titled-qualities-to-kill Last accessed: 11/01/24

[7] Rasputina (2013) Where'd you folks pick up Marius and Raphiella? Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/58960694562/whered-you-folks-pick-up-marius-and-raphiella Last accessed: 11/01/24

[8] Sims (2014) Ingratitude Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/75995731661/ingratitude Last accessed: 11/01/24

[9] wickedacephotos (2013) The Mechanisms at The Cellar, 29 Oct 2013, for Halloween with Polar Patterns Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/wickedacephotos/65528149745/wickedacephotos-the-mechanisms-at-the-cellar Last accessed: 11/01/24

[10] Below (2013) Hooray for questions! Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/58734952128/i-apologize-that-i-didnt-ask-a-question-to-make Last accessed: 12/01/24

[11] The Mechanisms Ulysses Dies at Dawn Available at: https://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/album/ulysses-dies-at-dawn Last accessed: 12/01/24

[12] thedreadvampy (2020) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/thedreadvampy/624522490768736256/i-feel-like-i-should-clarify-because-it-does-at Last accessed: 12/01/24

[13] The Mechanisms (2020) Death to the Mechanisms Available at: https://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/album/death-to-the-mechanisms Last accessed: 12/01/24

[14] thedreadvampy (2020) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/thedreadvampy/630817295229468672/so-i-am-absolutely-going-to-go-draw-tim-with Last accessed: 12/01/24

[15] thedreadvampy (2020) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/thedreadvampy/631436135234699264/you-dont-need-to-awnser-this-because-i-am-lore Last accessed: 12/01/24

[16] themechanisms A Bedtime Story Available at: https://themechanisms.com/fiction/ghost-in-the-machine/ Last accessed: 06/03/24

[17] Young (2023) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/708247931183153152 Last accessed: 11/04/24

[18] Young (2024) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/754005393719640064 Last accessed: 22/06/24

[19] Young (2024) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/759338848830554112 Last accessed: 20/08/24

To do:

not yet added Marius’ dttm dialogue

may add more detail to what is contained in expert testimony

could probably add detail on things seen doing in photos, e.g. Marius playing rock paper scissors with TS. (are photoshoots canon? I assume so)

[3] missing a link

wow did I really miss pilchard. I will Get To It at some point maybe

fungus arm https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/712149115253948416/

perhaps more backstory info from byron

https://x.com/neitherabaron/status/1231124594544783361?s=20

https://x.com/neitherabaron/status/1231604579529302018?s=20

numbers are ordered mostly in when I added the source rather than order of appearance as I have moved things around a lot. as above this is very incomplete and I don’t have the willpower to update this now maybe I will later. I’m just uploading it now since someone wanted marius lore

#doors.txt #the mechanisms #marius von raum #doors researches

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago

Text

Meatspace twiddling

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

"Enshittification" isn't just a way of describing the symptoms of platform decay: it's also a theory of the mechanism of decay – the means by which platforms get shittier and shittier until they are a giant pile of shit.

I call that mechanism "twiddling": this is the ability of digital services to alter their business-logic – the prices they charge, the payouts they offer, the particulars of the deal – from instant to instant, for each user, continuously:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Contrary to Big Tech's own boasting about its operations, the tricks that tech firms play to siphon value away from business customers and end-users aren't very sophisticated. They're crude gimmicks, like offering a higher per-hour wage to Uber drivers whom the algorithm judges to be picky about which rides they'll clock in for, and then lowering the wage by small increments as a way of lulling the driver into gradually accepting a permanent lower rate:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is a simple trick. The difference is that tech platforms like Uber can play it over and over, and very quickly. There's plenty of wage-stealing scumbag bosses who'd have loved to have shaved pennies off their workers' paychecks, then added a few cents back in if a worker cried foul, then started shaving the pennies again. The thing that stopped those bosses was the bottleneck of payroll clerks, who couldn't make the changes fast enough.

Uber plays crude tricks – like claiming that a driver isn't an employee because the control is mediated through an app – and then piles more crude tricks on top – this algorithmic wage discrimination gambit.

Have you ever watched a shell-game performed very slowly?

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-do-penn-tellers-famous-cups-and-balls-trick-in-12-steps

It's a series of very simple gimmicks, performed very quickly and smoothly. Computers are very quick and very smooth. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye: do crude tricks with superhuman speed and they'll seem sophisticated.

The one bright spot in the Great Enshittening that we're living through is that many firms are not sufficiently digitized to to these crude tricks very quickly. Take grocery stores: they can get up to a lot of the same tricks as Amazon – for example, they can charge suppliers for placement on the most prominent, easiest-to-reach shelves, reorganizing your shopping based on which companies pay the biggest bribes, rather than offering the best products and prices.

But Amazon takes this to a whole different level – beyond simply organizing their product pages based on payola, they do this for search. You ask Amazon, "What's your cheapest batteries?" and it lies to you. If you click the first link in a search-results page, you'll pay 29% more than you would if you got the best product – a product that is, on average, 17 places down on the results page. Amazon makes $38b/year taking bribes to lie to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Amazon can do more than that. Thanks to its digital nature, it can continuously reprice its offerings – indeed, it can simply make up each price displayed on every product at the instant you look at it – based on its surveillance data about you, estimating your willingness to pay. For sellers, Amazon can continuously re-weight the likelihood that a given product will be shown to a customer based on the seller's willingness to discount their products, even to the point where they go out of business:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

Twiddling, in other words, lets digital services honeycomb their servers with sneaky wormholes that let them siphon value away from one kind of platform user and give it to another (as when Apple silently began spying on Iphone owners to create profiles for advertisers), or to themselves.

But hard-goods businesses struggle to do this kind of twiddling. Not for lack of desire – but for lack of capacity. Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon Fresh – an online grocery store – can change prices and layout millions of times per day, at effectively zero cost. Jeff Bezos, owner of Whole Foods – a brick-and-mortar grocer – needs a army of teenagers on rollerskates with pricing guns to achieve a fraction of this agility.

So hard-goods businesses are somewhat enshittification-resistant. It's not that their owners are more interested in the welfare of their customers, workers and suppliers – they merely lack the capacity to continuously rejigger the way their business runs.

Well, about that.

Grocers have been experimenting with "electronic shelf labels" in order to do "dynamic pricing" – that means that prices change quickly, in response to circumstances:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197958433/dynamic-pricing-grocery-supermarkets

This doesn't have to be bad! As @planetmoney points out, it's a little weird that grocers don't discount milk whose sell-by date is drawing near. That milk is worth less to shoppers, because they have to use it more quickly lest it expire. Instead of marking down the price of perishable goods – day-old lettuce, yesterday's bread, etc – grocers put them on the shelves next to fresher, more valuable products, leading to billions of dollars' worth of food-waste and and unimaginable quantities of methane-producing, planet-cooking landfill.

In Norway, ESLs are pretty well established and – at least according to Planet Money's reporting – they are used exclusively to offer discounts in order to reduce waste. They make everyone better off.

But towards the end of the story, they note that Norway's grocery sector – which alters prices up to 2,000 times per day – has been accused of using ESLs to rig prices, hiking them and blaming them on pandemic supply-chain problems and loose monetary policy. Greedflation, in other words.

Greedflation is rampant in the grocery sector, all around the world. Remember when the price of eggs doubled and they blamed in on bird-flu, even as the CEO of the one company that owns every egg brand you've ever heard of boasted about how he could hike prices and suckers would just pay it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep-calm-and-crack-on

In Canada, grocers rigged the price of bread, the most Les-Mis-ass form of corporate crime you can imagine (do you want guillotines, Galen Weston? Because this is how you get guillotines):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada

EU grocers – another highly concentrated industry – also collude to rig prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

Which is all to say that while these companies don't have to use the twiddling capabilities that come with ESLs to enshittify their stores, we'd be pretty fucking naive to assume that they won't.

And here's the bad news: US grocers like Whole Foods (owned by Amazon, the company that wrote the enshittification playbook) are already experimenting with ESLs. So is Alberstons/Safeway, the massive, inbred conglomerate that has already demonstrated its passion for using twiddling to fuck over their workers:

https://knock-la.com/vons-fires-delivery-drivers-prop-22-e899ee24ffd0/

Economists love "price discrimination" – where prices change based on circumstance, trying to match the perfect price with the perfect customer. On paper, that sounds plausible: if I need a quart of milk for a recipe I'm making tonight and I get a 50% discount on some about-to-expire 2%, then everyone's better off. I get a discount and the grocer gets some money for milk they'd have to throw away at the end of the day.

But these elegant, self-licking ice-cream cones only emerge if the corporation offering the deal is constrained. Perhaps they're constrained by competition – the fear that you'll go elsewhere. Or perhaps they're constrained by regulation – the fear that they'll be punished if they use twiddling-tech to cheat you.

The grocery sector, dominated by a cartel of massive companies that routinely collude to rip us off, is not constrained by competition. And for years, regulators let them get away with ripping us off (though finally that might be changing):

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/us/politics/grocery-prices-pandemic-ftc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.t2Pr.g4n2usbxEcoa

For neoclassical economists, the answer to all this is "caveat emptor" – let the buyer beware. If you want to make sure that ESLs are only used to offer you discounts and not to gouge prices, all you need to do is note the price of everything you buy, every time you buy it, and triple-check it every time you go back to the grocery store. Just be eternally vigilant!

Thing is, the one thing computers are much better at than humans is vigilance. With ESLs and other twiddling mechanisms, you're a fish on a hook, and the seller is tireless in giving you a little more slack, then a little less, until you finally drop your guard.

Economists desperately want these elegant models to work, but "efficient market hypothesis" is a brain-worm that always turns into apologetics for fraud. Dynamic markets sound like a good idea, but they are catnip for cheaters. "Just be eternally vigilant" is miserable advice, and no way to live your life:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

In his brilliant novel Spook Country, @GreatDismal describes augmented reality as "cyberspace everting" – that is, turning inside-out:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/07/31/william-gibsons-spook-country/

The extrusion of twiddling technology from digital platforms into the physical world isn't cyberspace everting so much as it is cyberspace prolapsing.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

#pluralistic #fraud apologetics #caveat emptor #twiddling #competition #groceries #price discrimination #norway #electronic shelf tags #planet money #enshittification #constraints #greedflation #efficient market hypothesis brain-worms

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whumpetywhump · 2 months ago

Text

Heartless City (2013)

Jung Shi Hyun

01:

- Has a glass smashed over his head, bleeding

02:

- Car crash, knocked out, crawls from the wreckage, face cut and bruised, stumbling, falls to his knees

03:

- Stabbed in the gut, punched in the wound, stumbling, collapses, stitches and cauterises his own wound, screaming in pain

04:

- Grieving, sobbing

05:

- Flashback: Arrested, handcuffed, manhandled

08:

- Stabbed in the arm during a fight, hit over the head, stunned, collapses, writhing in pain, tries and fails to stand

09:

- Still weak, concussed and bleeding from the arm after last episode

10:

- Reveals a scar on his chest

11:

- Smacked in the face, bloody lip, forced to his knees

12:

- Lip still split from last episode

13:

- Hit over the head, knocked out, tied up, wakes up gasping in pain, has his throat stepped on, kicked in the face, loses a tooth, bleeding from the mouth

14:

- Lip still bloody

- Hit over the head with a metal pipe during a fight, bleeding, punched in the face, cuts on his cheek and hands, limping, doubled over in pain

- In a state of shock, collapses, crying, crushes his own hand with a rock, bleeding, later seen with it bandaged

15:

- Hand still bandaged and cheek still cut from last episode

- Emotional breakdown, collapses to his knees, sobbing

17:

- Stabbed in the gut, manhandled to his knees, later performing first aid on himself

19:

- Shot in the back, bleeding

- Betrayed, in a state of shock, sobbing

- Has the wound on his back cleaned for him

- Repeatedly beaten with a wooden bat, bleeding from the head, face bruised and bloody, collapses to his knees, punched in the face, rescued

20:

- Face still cut and bruised from last episode

- Emotional breakdown, sobbing, comforted

- Watches his friend die in his arms, grieving, sobbing

- Shot in the chest, collapses, cradled, dies in his girlfriend’s arms

Kim Hyun Soo

02:

- Ambushed, restrained, stabbed in the gut, bleeding out, left for dead, carried to hospital, unconscious in bed, carried from the hospital to avoid police

03:

- Stomach still bandaged from last episode, struggling to walk straight, refusing help

08:

- Cuts his cheek and lip during a fistfight

- Kidnapped, held hostage, unconscious, bleeding from the head, tied up

09:

- Still bleeding, unconscious and tied up from last episode, rescued, unable to walk without support, clutching his head, later seen with his wound dressed

- Flashback: Bruised face, stabbed in the gut, collapses

13:

- Split lip after a fight

14:

- Reveals the scar from his stabbing

- Hit across the back with a pipe, knocked to the ground

15:

- Bleeding from the head after a fight

17:

- Kidnapped, face bloody from being beaten, bound and gagged, has his wrist cut, collapses, passes out from blood loss, carried to safety, recovering in hospital with his arm and head bandaged

18:

- Head still bandaged from last episode

20:

- Outnumbered in a fight, punched in the face, repeatedly struck with wooden bats, face cut and bruised, stabbed in the gut and back, collapses, rescued, dies in his friend’s arms

Ji Hyung Min

03:

- Slapped in the face

04:

- Grieving, screaming, sobbing

- Shot, dragged to safety, recovering in hospital

06:

- Hit by a car, nosebleed, passes out, rushed to hospital, unconscious in bed

- Tries to fight someone while still hospitalised, dizzy, unsteady on his feet, migraine, clutching his head, gasping in pain

- Migraine, collapses and passes out, carried to safety, wakes up in hospital

16:

- Outnumbered in a fight, beaten up, hit with a wooden stake, bleeding from the head, spitting blood, taken hostage at knifepoint, has his bruised arm examined by a doctor, wincing in pain, has it bandaged

17:

- Arm still bandaged from last episode

TW: Contains themes of suicide, noncon, drug abuse and forced prostitution

#heartless city #kdrama #whump #kwhump #whump list #jung kyung ho #lee jae yoon #yoon hyun min

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verysium · 4 months ago

Text

『02』出発: departure

ft. rin itoshi, sae itoshi

summary: a star's life is its counteraction against death, an endless deadlock against the brute force of gravity. in the constant struggle between space and time, rin cannot tell if he is being held up or held down. perhaps he has already dictated the terms of his own demise. cw: epistolary montage, mentions of blood in film, rin violently crying and throwing up, highly implied hallucinations, swearing, suicidal ideation, disillusionment and lots of hard angst. word count: 4.9k

previous || series masterlist || next

Two weeks after Sae took off from Haneda Airport, his words still lingered inside Rin's mind. His brother had left with a fiery flick of a grin—a gaping, white-hot maw right where his mouth should have been. It blazed then sputtered cold in his gums by the time he turned back around, but Rin still knew what he saw. The smoke never lied.

A triple tap of tongue against hard palate, the message moving fast as light. Something had flickered between Sae’s teeth. Something about split knuckles and brotherly love. Something about calling him back.

But Rin couldn’t hear over the boarding announcements, the roar of engines propelling out of the runway, the heat waves of people out in front. At half past noon, his brother had already departed from Tokyo, ten thousand miles westbound in a floating aluminum dream, reeling contrails through the sky.

And Rin still stood on Earth, waiting. Like some dumb thing left behind.

It wasn’t until his mother laid a gentle hand on his shoulder that he finally tumbled back to reality, an empty gate at his feet, no arrival or departure calling. The afternoon sunlight had grown dim, splintering against the glass windows and whirring the blood through his ears. His chest felt strangely suspended.

It was in the backseat where it all began. Three floors down in the parking garage. Fumbling through his pockets, his coat had snagged between the door and car frame, ten digits on a crumpled paper sent fluttering to the ground. Looking back on it now, he should’ve thrown that damn thing away. But he was stupid then, drunk on a heat stroke and the beginnings of terminal grief. Right on the exit of the Shuto Expressway, he made his parents turn the car back around and drive ten miles down to the nearest World Mobile, a wretched inhale of hope stuck squirming in his chest.

It took him several weeks before he finally decided to punch in those numbers, and then another several weeks to call after that. His body shuddered, sweat-faced and suffocating, as he trailed sticky fingers down the waiting screen. The phone rang once then twice. Then rang on forever.

Nobody ever bothered to pick up.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

2013 年 6月 17日 Nii-chan,

It still feels like you never left. And I say this with a miserable lack of sincerity because you did in fact leave just two weeks ago. Kaa-san still makes your bed. Square corners and all. Your duvet goes in the pile with the rest of my laundry.

Just the other day, I think I saw your shadow. I was sunbathing on the roof when I felt something brush against my back. Does Spain have big shadows too? I hope so. A country with so much sun must leave those poor shades short and stunted. Maybe they’re just a little shy. Be nice to them, will you Nii-chan? Not everyone can shine as bright as you do.

I hope you’ll make friends soon. Write to me often. I want to know everything.

2013 年 7月 7日 Nii-chan,

How are you? I didn’t receive anything in my inbox, and I checked with Kaa-san twice. She said you didn’t text me, but there is no way such a thing could have happened. Perhaps old age has finally gotten to her, or maybe something’s just wrong with this phone. Either way, I should’ve asked her to buy me a newer model.

On second thought, if you don’t text me, I will be very upset. But it will be a childish sort of anger. You wouldn’t be very proud. You will be pleased to know, however, that I have grown a total of ten centimeters this summer, and my bones are looking very strong and wide. My shots have improved too, and I scored three goals today.

Otou-san took us out to dinner for Tanabata this weekend. He told me it is about time I became a man. I smiled and said I didn’t want to disappoint. But then he said ten and three quarters is no longer a youthful sort of age, and I suddenly felt a little mad about it. I don’t want to grow up without you.

The festival was crowded as usual. I ate every selection of wagashi then chased it down with some of the sake Otou-san lent me from his cup. Pretty sure that was illegal, so I threw it all up on the way home. But then we all went and saw the tanzaku, so I guess something went right. I wrote down a wish, but I won’t tell you. Otherwise it won’t come true. I hung it up on the highest branch though, so that someday it might reach you.

Tell me what you think. Text back soon.

2013 年 8月 31日 Nii-chan,

I did not receive your reply from last time. I think this phone must still be broken. Perhaps you should check on your end. Even if it’s just a greeting, I will be content. Anything from you is fine, really.

I visited the beach again. It was peaceful until the wind blew hair in my face, and I went blind for almost fifteen minutes. I tried cutting it, but Kaa-san got mad at me. After your disaster five years ago, she said she’d never let her sons hold a pair of scissors ever again. Don’t tell her, but I laughed. Inside, you know?

Sometimes I still see the waves in my sleep. The ones at Koshigoe Beach. They cradle me, and suddenly it feels like my head is floating even though my body isn’t. You’d probably think I’m crazy. But lately dreams are the only way I can reach you.

I do watch the news though. And I train hard. Very hard. I can pass like you now, though not nearly as good as your highlights on TV. Coach says I still need to learn. You always said the same thing. But I am nearly as tall as Otou-san now and twice as strong. That must count for something, right? I hope the guys overseas will like this new me. When I finally come over there, that is.

Make sure you aren’t training too hard. I don’t want you to overstrain yourself. And if you don’t like it there, promise me you won’t force yourself to stay. You’ll pack your bags and come home early.

Promise me. Please.

That you’ll come home to me.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

For the second time in his life, Rin finds himself on his knees, heaving up everything that has ever made him whole. The bathroom mourns with every dry retch of his throat, and suddenly he’s laughing into the porcelain, clutching at the sides in a mad form of desperation. His ribs shudder—tough in their hurt—yet nothing of substance ever lies between them. He’d smiled out his guts a long time ago.

Is empty space still a space or just the photonegative of presence?

Sometimes Rin feels like his body can never truly filled, but it can never be completely emptied either. No matter how much he regurgitates, there will always be more to come. The space inside him widens until it hangs on a threadlike line of limbo: so much to give yet so much to keep. It tugs at him—a crude form of baptism—pulling him up for air and then crashing his head beneath the waves again.

Another harsh hurl reverberates across the bathroom tiles, this time accompanied by the loud smack of spit. He’s emptied out so much his bowels might just prolapse at any second, the boy inside him turned into some sort of liquid slop, sloshing back and forth in his ribcage. It’s all over the front of his shirt now, the stomach contents soaked for hours in bodily brine, the grief his body tries to hold. No amount of bleach is going to erase the stench.

Some days Rin just wants someone to cradle him like a child does a bird, gentle and afraid to hurt. He had a dream about this once, many moons ago. After wringing himself out to dry, he had gone to work, looping the washing line around his feet until it resembled some sort of upside down noose. Once the wind picked up, he let go of the string like a pendulum, watching his body sway in third person: up and down and up and down. In this reality, he was a creature of feathers and clothespins, his body molting in the breeze. So long as he swung back and forth in this state of suspension, he would remain in the middle, not tethered down enough to live but not free enough to die either.

He’d simply exist.

Some nights Rin still can’t sleep. His eyes lay limp in their sockets, two dead weights sinking into bone. He tried to pry them out with his fingers, but they only pressed deeper into his face, rigid and wax-cool to the touch. No matter what he does, Rin knows he will be too late. He can never reverse this decay—the post-mortem withering of his own heart.

Just this afternoon, he died once again, his body slumped with the hollow weight of disappointment, his spirit sinking like a fault line into earth. He had been drying his hair in the locker room after practice, the friction of the towel’s loops causing small pinpricks of static to echo along his nape. The static had carried over hushed whispers, trailing along his scalp down to his ears. God, he hadn’t meant to overhear.

“Damn it, we’re really done for this season, huh? I’m telling you it’s the striker. We could’ve won this match if it weren’t for him.”

“I mean, if Itoshi were here, he would’ve destroyed their whole team by himself.”

“You mean the older one?”

“Of course I do. Who else did you think I was referring to? The younger one’s just been blessed up until now.”

“Without his brother, he’s just an ordinary guy.”

“Oi, Haruto, shut up! What if he hears?”

“Hear what? It’s not like it isn’t the truth!”

Rin still remembers how his surname burned on their lips, the tip of the tongue caught raw between teeth, the vowels seared into flesh. Itoshi was a burden coming apart at the seams, a title for something he could never possess. They were right and it left him smarting, reeling. He hadn’t laughed a day since Sae’s departure, but in that moment he wanted to shove his whole fist up his mouth and choke for the first time in five resentful months. The laugh had been a silent one, with tears on his waterline and a smile bruised onto his face.

Ha.....ha.....hah.....

There comes a point in every boy’s life when he simply exists. Still young but no longer impressionable. Salt in the eyes. Salt in the mouth. Take it like a man. When he hawks back the knife, it must come out breathing and clean. Living but not dead.

His teammates had every right to blame him.

He can’t score goals like he used to. Can’t run and bleed. Can’t love like before. There’s nothing but shame waiting for him when the realization finally breaches the bathroom air and his teammates scramble off the benches, cleats stained with guilt. They saw his reflection in the mirror, weeping right above the communal sinks.

“R-rin! W-we didn’t know you were here.”

“Y-yeah! You didn’t hear much, did you?”

Rin had never hated his name more in that moment. They uttered it like a euphemism, hand over his stupid bullet-riddled heart, the blood too runny to salvage. It only hurt him more. So he did what he knew best. He clenched his fist, the nails fisted into the meat of his palm, eyes caught on a hardened edge. It didn’t matter if Haruto was his senior. He’d beat him within an inch of his life.

“So you call me Rin now? Wasn’t I just younger Itoshi to you earlier?”

“I didn’t....We didn’t mean...”

“Then what did you mean?”

Only the scurry of shoes answered—two scuff marks against the dirty floor, Haruto’s yelp in the distance. Rin was left all alone again, his thin shadow blown wide across the whitewashed walls of the locker room.

“Damn coward,” he wanted to yell after him. “Run! Run and tell them how it’s not your fault!”

But he was just talking to himself.

Is empty space still a space or just a pseudonym for absence?

He hadn't been thinking at the time. Within the liminal space of the abandoned shower stalls, he lent himself a moment of weakness. He let himself cry. The shower head was cold and dirtied, and he stood there for forty-five minutes, waiting to be filled with a warmth that never came. In the end, he let his tears mix with the brackish water, staring at the evidence of his failure before it swirled down the drain.

He realized he must have been a mistake. There was no other explanation. The real Rin Itoshi was swapped at birth and replaced with someone else. Inside the four-walled confines of the shower stall, his imposter reared its head through the mist, long baby hair drowned down to the ears. He didn’t belong. Not in this body bathed in condensation. Not in this namesake crowned in tempered glass. But by the time the water trickled down to his nose, Rin was already knee-deep in self-doubt, wading his way into misery. What more did they want from him? No one could ever replace Sae Itoshi. Not even his younger brother.

Not even him.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Six hours post-death in the locker rooms, Rin went home and passed out with his head on the toilet seat, two slick fingers shoved up his throat and his luminous guts buried somewhere down the pipe drain. Six hours later, his lids peel back scarlet, gelatinous with haze—a ringing in his ears. Some fucker is calling him again.

He doesn’t answer. Twice. But the telemarketer is either underpaid or rudely insistent, so Rin finally picks up just to curse him out on the line. He doesn’t need any scripted intimacy. Doesn’t need other people counting his own losses. He just needs to be left alone.

At midnight, he staggers out of the bathroom, fingers absentmindedly flicking off the lightswitch before collapsing into bed. The sheets aren’t even his own. He doesn’t notice until he sniffs the pillow and stiffens. It smells god-awful. Like tiger balm and soothing menthol. Like somebody he used to know. And much to his chagrin, the images come stumbling back: knee-deep in the salted sea, shirasu swimming around his toes. What color were his eyes again? Blue ice between teeth. Sour like a bad star. Oh, what can he remember? Disappointment peeled into spirals. Happiness running down the back of his hand. The blood of an orange, sweet and dripping. He’s forever staring at someone’s back. Always a few steps behind.

Fuck you, Sae.

There’s haunting laughter coming out from the window panes, and he can hear the waves crash on shore in the distance. Two children run across sand. Muted footsteps. One soft thump then another. The vision is so close he can practically taste it. Salt in the wind, in the eyes, in his mouth. The seagulls pluck at his eyes, but he takes it like a man, breathing and clean. Living but not dead.

One of the children stands with his arms behind his back, face hidden by the shadows of the horizon. The ocean spray nips at his burgundy fringe, the hunger of a whole world engulfed in his gaze. In the distance, a younger boy shouts his name, dark hair framed by a cowlick, turquoise eyes smoothed over by water. He runs as fast as his little legs can carry him, his arms filled with bone-white shells.

“Nii-chan, wait for me!”

Sae’s face blurs before he can turn around, and Rin is left staring at the wooden slats above his childhood bed, resenting something he can no longer remember. Why did people have to go and change? Three years later and his brother had gone straight from stealing seashells to swindling stars clean out of the sky. Three years and he still had nothing to show for himself.

He imagines the look on Sae’s face when he tells him this. Conversations over Sunday dinner. The family gathered round the kotatsu, piss-yellow light slicing every dish into halves. He spoons pickled radish and chokes Sae’s teacup till it breaks. Would it be disappointment he sees on his face? His brother’s features crumpled mid-smile, blue-green eyes wounded into a porcelain state. Why? Why haven’t you done anything with your life while I was gone?

Or perhaps it was anger. Smoke on the lips, bruised fists, and the heat of his mother’s blazing scream. Her son bares teeth and scrapes every syllable of their surname clean. Wrestles her other son’s shoulders down to the ground and shakes until the boy—the real Rin—gurgles and sloshes up inside. Do something, Rin. Do something! Or else you’ll never make it this lifetime.

Both, he could live with. But not this. The silence that burrows into his mind while he sleeps. The constant calling and the phone that just rings and rings and rings. It’s a circle, some sick sort of cycle. Every night he dreams of war—of sights and slights and stars. Things that end then don’t end then never end. He dreams until he wakes up screaming, on his hands and knees begging. Say something, will you? Anything. Fuck, why won’t you just say something?

Three years later and his brother still can't love him in a way he understands.

But what did he expect? Sae was like that: pale and blistering, beautiful even when burning. Last dream cycle, his brother fell down three stories and erupted into flames, limbs compacted into fine dust. Should’ve screamed but didn’t. By the time Rin got down to him, Sae was already on his feet, sputtering soot from his lungs then flaring back up like nothing had ever happened. As if his hurt was merely bursts of light gathering and bunching, violence in free fall.

And he was beautiful, Rin thinks. A boy of the blaze, man in the making, hair aorta-red, staring right back at him. By the time Sae opened his mouth, Rin’s arms were already open, ready to embrace the glittering shards. He crumpled before him as a building does a god, set alight on his brother’s palm. Strike me. He begged, blood around his mouth. Strike me anywhere and set me free.

But that’s not what happens when you die. Not when his brother said it best.

I think I’d die and become a star.

So he holds onto this life. Bunches it between fingers and twines it around his fist until he knows the person he’s dying for. Until he’s blacked out and dreaming in that damnable backseat again. Experiencing everything in the third person—the news, the screen, the slow-motion reels of an astral body wound up in constant replay. He can only watch as his brother slowly becomes a stranger in his own life again, and it guts him every time.

Sae Itoshi Dominates at Junior Championships, Secures Victory with Hat-Trick. Future Star? Sae Itoshi’s Sensational Performance Stuns Fans and Scouts Alike.

Who the hell is Sae Itoshi? Man, celebrity, celestial body? Not even his brother knows. But what Rin has learned over these past few years is that all stars are really just dead people, housed in a mausoleum of glittery beginnings and explosive endings. It’s binary—circling, really. A blinking eye in the sky, ticking time bomb, crying corpse, then everything wailing before its implosion. Sae could never comprehend this. The smoke-sputtering reality beyond tangible substance. This form of dying.

But dying isn’t even the worst part of it all. It’s people like him who suffer. Unlucky stars are cursed with another, forced to revolve around each other. If one collapses, the companion gets ejected out the deep end of space and time—stumbling, groping, searching.

Three years later and he’s still searching.

Hey Google: Can stars still be seen from Madrid?

The results for light pollution pop up. In a city of light, even light cannot be seen. How ironic, he thinks, that Sae is now a shining thing, flaring tendrils a million light years away. Post-nebula and he still loses himself in people who look exactly like him.

But that past has already come and gone, leaving nothing but the future behind. In the next dream cycle, Rin too will die, sputtering and choking, like a firework lit from within—violence in free fall. And when the time comes, he will leap off the fire escape, the city blocks spinning and spinning, every second a little death. The faster he falls, the more alive he’ll feel. He’ll drop all the way down until the only way he can go is up. And then he’ll ascend, floating past the skyscrapers, the streets, the sprawling metropolis. His toes curled, caught on the hook of night, the burnt flesh peeling back on bone. Floating until he disappears, his body nothing but white light.

Someday his brother will drown himself in his own artificial brightness. And Rin will follow, screaming, rearing, and set ablaze.

If you die Nii-chan, I think I’ll die along with you.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

There are rare moments when seasons die a sunless death, quiet and wilting into the earth. Rin’s final birthday without Sae falls on one such month—a red September during which nature bleeds, the autumn leaves rusting around Engakuji Temple. He’s taken up long walks during that time, pacing for hours around the park nearby. Something about taking his mind off things. Something about counting his own losses.

By late afternoon, his hands are shoved fist-deep into his coat pockets, on track to finish his ninth lap around the perimeter. The daylight has long pooled down his back, tiny dollops of brightness slow-dripping and honeyed, settling into the hollow divots of his spine. The mise-en-scène frames him in a languorous ochre—the kind of lighting reserved solely for an aged romance. And the wind plays his lover, its post-meridian breath tender as it brushes against his cheek. It’s all a range of motions from there. He takes another step, adjusts a stray earbud, then tugs his scarf all the way up to his nose. Ten laps now, and he still walks. The only time he ever stops is when he stalls mid-way to check his phone.

Zero messages received. Message not delivered.

His thumb hovers briefly over the send button. The cursor at the end blinks with an almost human hesitancy before it opens its mouth, swallowing everything back up. The screen clears itself again, reduced to nothing but absence: a small square of light where silence reigns. Rin sighs before trudging home, a thousand words lodged into the back of his throat.

Nii-chan, I miss you.

The kitchen is empty by the time he slides open the shoji, removing his shoes with practiced ease before padding across the soft tatami. His mother’s gone on an errand for groceries, her hastily scrawled note tucked under his door with a bowl of persimmons. The house is empty, the joss sticks still smoking in the living room, tips warm and powder-soft. He grows heady on their incense, locking himself away in his bedroom and drawing the curtains. His old Fujitsu laptop whirrs to life, propped up against two pillows and an oversized owl plush. This time he puts on a splatter film, splayed on his stomach as he reels through the opening credits.

He can watch without the subtitles now, even converse with tourists at the station in Enoden. He recalls his teammates’ faces last Saturday—breaths held tender, jaws slackened with faux horror—when he gave out directions in perfect English. Sae would’ve been proud, if only he knew how much it meant. But lately, there hasn’t been a single interruption to Rin’s nights alone, despite how desperately he longs for one. The most his English is good for nowadays is translating the kooky foreign films he puts on rotation, ninety minutes of runtime for thirty-one evenings.

He must have gone through a dozen franchises by now: Halloween specials, 90’s vintage, slashers, the paranormal. The American flicks still remain his favorite, mostly because of the chainsaws. Something about the suspense of disembodiment scratches an itch inside his brain. Like the adrenaline before a final goal, moments before he implodes—naked body slathered in pools of primary color.

In the darkness, the films weave together: a tidal wave of light that washes down his bedroom walls. The victim shrieks before she is bathed in an eerie swathe of red, pierced at the helm of a bloodshot lens. Something about her death is both alien and terrifying, and Rin feels himself come alive again.

At climax, the light from his laptop is nothing short of searing, carving-knife intensity digging slowly into thin, rousing bodies. He can only watch as the killer sharpens his blade, each stroke a day-bright epiphany, cutting little wounds into the night. His figure is lit up from behind, illuminated in such a way that Rin can see his organs and count every one of his ribs. The scene peels back like water, reflecting montage after montage on the glass display case next to his closet. The trophies electrify themselves in the shadows, each silhouette splayed neatly on the shelf and serrated round the rim. The metal handles distort the characters’ faces in two-frame slashes, decapitating nose from ear, eye from mouth. Another scream rips through the background as Rin digs graves into his palm. This time the murderer chases a mother down the stairs, gleeful when her child fails to keep up.

He’s seen this scene play out before—three years and eleven months ago, when he first got himself killed. It’s the final match against Tokyo Metropolitan Youth, and he’s running on fumes, ten minutes into additional time. There’s only a few more meters to the goal area, the footsteps fast approaching from his left. He has to make an escape. The opponent closes in behind him, knife in hand, and all he can do is run, body barreling straight toward the camera.

The impact hits him right before the shot, his leg flaring out in some desperate attempt at a goal. The ball soars as he stumbles forward—violence in free fall, the boy inside him lit from within. In the final moments before he combusts, time stretches itself thin over his bones, smoking and exorcized from the fire. The shadow of his killer looms behind him, arm raised with the promise of metal and memory, the blade gleaming in sparse light.

Got you.

The child on screen turns around, facial features contorted in dramatic horror. Rin can hear her scream before the lips even part. He can already predict this ending. He can predict the next one after this too. Plight of the final girl: last to die but forever immortalized in her own grief and helplessness.

In six months, he will be named the most valuable player for Kamakura United Youth. In another six, he will be hollowed from the inside out, cursed to feel only the loss inside every win. This motion picture has rewound itself one too many times, the credits rolling and taking him along with them. End scene and he’s standing there in a pool of his own triumph—the grass strewn with painted carcasses—a thousand boys dead at his feet. His knees make hard contact with the earth, nothing but penitence in his eyes. This is all he knows: love and its smoking aftermath, the weight of it iron-hot on his tongue. Victory has never tasted so bitter.

But it always ends the same. For the final girl, the film star, everyone crucified by the crowd. All good auteurs come from a long line of men who have already run out of time, color pooling past their waists, crashing in over their heads. They don’t want to die, so they preserve their souls into billboards, spool strands of silence into substance. They only shoot what is in their blood: the sensational guts, glory, and gore. Because what better way to keep your memory alive than burn it onto the emulsion side of thirty-five millimeter filmstrip?

The red lights have begun to feel suffocating—the last of his breath now a belt around his neck—as the cameras pan down to a mutilated body. Rin secretly envies the child’s soaked shirtsleeves, the ground beneath her perfused in violent color. If only he could be filled with something that beautiful. But instead he was given the body of a pale child filled with longing, constantly waiting for a change and constantly wishing for something to flow out of him.

Eventually the clock strikes twelve and Rin closes his laptop, the backs of his eyelids whited out, brain overstimulated from the psychedelic screams. His brother’s portrait blurs in his peripheral vision, overexposed from the red glow, staring up at him from the cluttered nightstand. And in the moment, he briefly wonders if Sae left Japan in search of a new image. Perhaps Spain was just ninety minutes of solid technicolor screen where people could scream without horror, where the protagonist could freely bleed. And in the end, there was no death. The audience remains seated in theaters, their memories replaying over and over, bodies forever housed in cinema.

At the director’s cut, Rin’s consciousness falls under, hand still clutching the frame. End scene and Sae’s blown-out face smiles just a little into the darkness.

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