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darkchocolatedimples · 2 years ago

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endings are bittersweet (for you and me)

ngl its 11:00pm on saturday but i did want to make something for keefitz week considering the brain rot sorting through taylor swift's albums threw me into, but i was super busy so i just finished right now. i think this loosely follows the prompts for days 2 and 3. thank you @when-wax-wings-melt and @skylilac for hosting this!! its such a fun idea!

heavily taylor swift inspired fic under the cut!! (songs in the tags)

Hindsight is the clearest rearview mirror, and it’s in hindsight that Keefe should’ve known there was a flaw in his plans for the day. Afterall, Fitz being open to hearing him out wasn’t entirely in his cards.

Maybe when they were younger, before he’d ran way (twice), it would’ve been. But now, Fitz seems to have less to say and more scores to settle. Keefe guesses that's fair. He's not beyond owning up to what he did.

Yet he doesn't entirely expect Fitz to simply nod hello and cut to the chase of whatever he wanted to say. Although, Keefe had probably relinquished the luxury of speaking first when he tore Fitz’s heart in two and walked away.

At least, he assumes that’s what he did. And it was, if Fitz had actually cared. But maybe Keefe miscalculated that as well.

“You know, I was thinking…” Well that was wonderful, Keefe had been thinking too, over and over again, over the words they’d said and if they’d meant anything at all and if it was fair to ask for it all again- “And I want my bramble jersey back.”

Keefe blinks. “What?”

“You took it like, years ago? Remember the one?” Fitz prompts, accent crisp and unforgiving.

The bramble jersey. The one he forgot he still owned- no, the one he’d forgotten he’d stolen from Fitz’s closet ages ago, before they drifted apart, before everything got complicated, before Sophie even. Though some of those things were related.

“Do you seriously want it back?” he asks underneath his breath, lowering his head towards the ground so Fitz wouldn’t see the water beginning to gather in the corner of his eyes, as if he didn’t already know it was one of his nervous tells. Why was it so tough for him to imagine? Whatever this was between them fell apart ages ago. So why did returning the jersey feeling like sealing their tragic fate?

They’d always known they were bound to burn in the end.

“If you still have it,” Fitz confirms, digging his heel into the ground. Keefe can't tell what his face looks like, but if he had to guess, he’d imagine a perfect ‘gosh, I’m sorry’ grimace that doesn't look half as mean as it should on someone. Fitz is better than everyone else, anyways.

Keefe used to be able to contest to that. Keefe used to know the taller like the back of his hand; understand him better than he understood himself. Keefe knew Fitz, and even if he doesn't anymore, he knows what this must be to him. A last little loose end to wrap up so they can leave this decaying chapter of their lives in the past and move on. Be mature and embrace new beginnings. Ones that might last. But Keefe just feels like a weed being plucked.

He probably is a weed, infecting the perfect garden of Fitz’s life since the moment he’d taken his hand that day when they were kids. So if it's better to leave, if it's better to move on, why is it so hard? Why can't he let them die?

"I'll try to find it," Keefe mumbles beneath his breath.

Fitz shrugs, "Thanks," and then it's over and he's light leaping away like he didn't tear Keefe's plans to rekindle their relationship down the middle and leave him in sprinkles from the sky, slowly gaining weight. Only fitting, considering Keefe left first, and the weather was worse.

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Raindrops the size of bullets pierced Fitz's skin, drenching his hair and tunic and blurring his vision as he tried to find the right lock to click open the way Keefe had described to him years ago. A useless piece of information, considering he'd never intentionally brought Fitz to his home, but the request of "Tell me something I don't know about you," had arisen under lazy pink skies and that was the only thing the blonde could think of. They'd already known everything there was to know about the other at age twelve.

The door creaked and Fitz pushed it out of the way, fumbling into the foyer as his clothes dripped water onto the mat. He only rubbed his boots against it for moment before leading himself up to Keefe's bedroom.

If Lord Cassius was home at the moment, he didn't run into Fitz as he made his way through the halls. He wouldn't have much to say if he did, although his reason for the impromptu visit was innocent enough. Cassius probably wouldn't believe it.

Would anyone?

Maybe that's why Fitz was here: because he had something to prove. He needed to convince everyone he didn't consider his relationship with Keefe a hopeless cause.

He needed to convince Keefe himself.

So really, shuffling around in his closet for his favorite sweater wouldn't hurt. It would show him he cared, he remembered, maybe even help him remember-

A cluttering noise caught Fitz off guard before he could start ruffling through the clothes in the chest before him, and the man flitting quickly down the stairs shocked him cold.

Days later, Fitz would be stuck wondering why he didn't give up sooner; why he hadn't thrown Keefe away like a broken record when everyone had expected him to. At least then he wouldn't have been present for this. His heart would've been spared.

"Keefe?" he asked tentatively, making the blonde boy flinch as he raised his head, spotting him. "What are you doing here?"

Keefe shrugged, holding up the elixirs he was carrying, but he didn't speak. Fitz hadn't entirely expected him to.

"Back to pulling pranks already?" The empty smile Keefe gave him sent chills through his body. It almost felt...mournful. "I thought you're supposed to be at Elwin's."

At that, Keefe couldn't hide his grimace, and Fitz couldn't help but sound accusatory when he noticed. "What's the bag for?"

His hunch must have been right if it made Keefe curve into himself in shame. "No, you can't seriously be- Again?"

"Keefe, don't," he pleaded, abandoning the open chest to make his way towards his friend. "They said they'd help you, Alina and Oralie and whoever else."

"It's not enough," Keefe croaked out, facing the floor, and Fitz sighed.

"How would you know that? Have you even tried?" He shook his head, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "Keefe, please don't leave on all of us again."

The noise that left the younger’s throat sounded equal parts distraught and irritated, like he couldn’t deal with any of this much longer. That was probably why he was leaving anyways; maybe everyone’s nagging to just try and just believe wasn’t working, and maybe Fitz was only making things worse. So he tried a different approach. “Please don’t do this to us.”

Us was a large term in broad daylight; but like this, in the rain, alone, Keefe had to have known who Fitz was referring to. “Us” was Fitz and Keefe, like it should’ve always been. But things got too complicated for “us” to be just them anymore.

And it was probably those same things that made Keefe push back the hoarseness in his throat from lack of use just to say, “I’m sorry.”

But Fitz couldn’t give up. Giving up was giving in to everyone else’s idea that they were falling apart, and Fitz would be damned to call himself a Vacker if he gave up. “Please stay Keefe. For me.”

It was a stretch, but the words hung between them for a moment, vulnerable, open, and targeted, and Fitz almost wished he could snatch them back and fashion them into a more formal request, something that better fit the current state of their relationship.

And then Keefe shook his head.

“Oh…oh.” Fitz stumbled back, tripping into the bed. “Carry on, then.”

Keefe didn’t waste a second before exiting the room.

Fitz only wondered if he’d felt his heart splintering as he’d rushed past.

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The question itself was unfair. How could Fitz have expected anything else when there were bigger things at play than just the both of them? Keefe had a reason for leaving, and he doesn't entirely regret it.

But that wasn’t what hurt him. Fitz wasn’t stupid, he knew it wouldn’t work. Alas, he still put himself out there, waiting for some sort of signal or sign that Keefe cared. And he didn’t give it to him.

He walked out. Without a second thought. And he’s regretted it everyday since, because if he had to go back and pinpoint a moment when their lives stopped being intertwined and became two lonely strands of bitterness, he’d say it was right then, when he’d shaken his head and said nothing. That was his mistake. This is his fault.

He hadn’t said anything, and now Fitz is done waiting. He wants his jersey back. He wants this to be over.

So Keefe digs through his room and finds it buried under tunics he’d never liked and capes he wanted to tear to shreds for years. A piece of fabric that held more memories than he’d like to admit. Sifting through the emotions tied to a simple jersey shouldn’t feel like a landslide, but maybe Keefe’s empathy is still oversensitive. Or maybe Fitz just means much more to him than he should.

Keefe doesn't want to think about it anymore. He doesn't want to think at all, about how everything is falling apart, about how stupid he is for having this occupying his head when there was a war to be worrying about. But even if they won, what was he coming back to?

He slipped the jersey over his head, watching it fall down his frame in the mirror and wondering how it was still big on him. He'd always been smaller than Fitz, but he assumed he'd grown. Apparently, not half as much as he'd thought. He tore his eyes away from his reflection before he dwelled on it for much longer.

It became habit, at some point along the way, to flip open his gold journal to a fresh, blank page and cover it with the sparkle in Fitz’s teal eyes as he looked at someone else, the swoop of his hair and the angles of his jaw. Today, however, when Keefe let the pencil in his hand guide him to whatever image his mind was creating, the slopes of nose smaller, his jaw softer, and his hair longer and slightly more unruly. Fitz was younger, and asleep, in the same jersey Keefe was wearing now.

If he closed his eyes it almost smelled like him.

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“Fitz…Fitz wake up.”

It was a solemn thing, to have to wake up the boy when he was so blissfully passed out, gentle features rounded out by the pillow underneath his head.

Keefe considered letting him sleep, but being only six years old made him increasingly impatient, and there wasn't much to do with his best friend snug asleep in the bed next to him. He sighed, sitting up and letting the blankets pool around him.

"Fitz. Fitz. Wake up loser," he whined, pushing the elder's shoulder. He only let out a groan in response.

After another shove and tearing off the covers to expose him to the cold air, Fitz blinked groggily, rubbing his eyes to make them focus on the blonde boy next to him. Keefe reached over to the bedside table and handed him his glasses.

Fitz mumbled something like a thank you, slipping them on and looking at him with tired confusion on his face. Keefe misses the look of it, he hadn't worn his glasses in years, but they'd always hold a special place in his heart, nestled right next to the beginnings of their friendship. "Is it the middle of the night?"

"No, I think it's morning," Keefe answered. "And I'm bored."

"Well, I think we should go to sleep again," Fitz decided, turning over and burying his bed head back into the pillows. Keefe wonders how he hadn't changed in the ten years since.

"No!" And he hadn't either. Not by much, besides their friendship holding on by a single thread.

Fitz groaned as Keefe pulled the blankets away again, bothering him as much as he could. "Keefe, you know if we sleep in a little longer Mom and Dad will let us just eat mallowmelt instead of breakfast?" he mentioned.

Keefe stopped his meddling abruptly. It never really was a hard task to get his attention, especially with food involved. "Really?"

"Oh yeah," Fitz confirmed. Keefe considered it for a moment, about to settle back into the bed before they heard footsteps coming down the hall. The boys widened their eyes at each other.

The two dove under the covers, doing their best attempt of faking sleep before the door unlocked.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

The door swings open as Biana twirls in with at least six different cosmetics in her hands and a flowing purple dress barely hanging onto her shoulders. “Ah! Fitz, zip me up, will you?”

Fitz does as asked, moving her hair out of the way as she set all the products down on the bathroom counter and tries to find the lip gloss she wants. She settles on a light tint of purple that matches her dress.

“Where are you going?” Fitz questions, leaning back against the wall when he’s done.

“Dinner with the Dizznee’s. Haven’t really been able to spend time with them since school started,” she explains, rubbing her lips together.

“Right,” Fitz agrees, watching her flit about the bathroom, getting ready.

“How was Keefe earlier?”

“Oh.” Fitz doesn’t remember telling Biana what he was doing that morning, and something about her nonchalance was unsettling. He probably hadn’t told her at all. It wouldn’t be surprising, Biana knows everything there is to know about him anyways. Perhaps more than himself. “He was… Alright, I guess. I asked for my jersey back.”

Biana freezes. Her eyes fly across the mirror to look into his. “You did what?”

“I asked for it back. The jersey, from when we were kids,” Fitz clarifies.

She sighs, turning back to herself in the mirror. Her words are almost exasperated when she reminds, “You still are kids, you know. We all are. That’s why none of this works.”

Fitz could ask what she was referring to; the war? Being members of the Black Swan? Their friendships? He could ask, but he can tell with the tired look in her eyes that she means the latter.

“I don’t think I like Sophie,” he admits softly out of the blue. The words dance across the fragile ice in the air, like they’d break it and send everything crumbling if they wanted to. “No, I know I don’t.”

Biana’s responding chuckle melts the ice before they have a chance to crack it. “I think we knew that.”

Fitz freezes as the words flow through him. “You- what? Was I that much of a jerk?”

“Oh, she doesn’t know,” Biana corrects, working her deft fingers through her hair as she braids it back into a twisted bun. “You should let her know, kindly. But how could you have, honestly, with Keefe around.”

“I- I don’t know what you mean,” Fitz stutters, looking at her in the mirror with furrowed eyebrows. “Keefe’s my…friend.” Hardly. Was that really the message he sent to him earlier?

His sister’s hands drop from her hair as she spins to look him straight in the eyes. “Friends don’t use kisses as currency, Fitz.”

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

“If you come, I’ll kiss you.”

Fitz raised an eyebrow, making no move to get up from his arm chair. “And if I don’t?”

“I’ll never kiss you again!” Keefe decided, sitting on the chair’s arm. “It would be a shame though, I thought you said it was fun.”

“You’re seriously giving me an ultimatum about this?” Fitz questioned, dropping his book into his lap. Keefe nodded shamelessly, and the elder couldn’t help the smile growing on his face.

“It’s just a party, Fitz,” he pleaded, slipping down from the couch arm and landing next to Fitz. “We finished level 3, we deserve to celebrate a little.”

“We can leave after two hours if you get bored,” he added softly, studying the elder’s eyes. “I just wanted to go for a little bit. And I wanted to go with you.”

Fitz pretended to think for a moment, watching Keefe look up at him, wide-eyed and waiting patiently. Three years later, Fitz isn’t be able to remember the last time Keefe looked at him like that. He just misses it.

“I mean, a kiss?” he said after a moment, scrunching his nose. “You drive a hard bargain. How could I say no?”

Fitz doesn’t miss parties. He doesn’t miss the fake smiles and empty greetings, nor does he miss the noise and the lights and the small flaring headache afterwords. He does, however, miss Keefe.

Surprisingly for such a usually shy person, parties were Keefe’s scene. It was like all his introverted qualities flew out the window once he was in, and in contrast to Fitz, he loved the lights and the music. In the end, Fitz grew to like seeing the younger surrounded by it all.

Keefe also used parties as an even better excuse to flirt with anything that breathes. And more often than not, that ended up being Fitz. Not that he’d ever complain.

“Do you want to leave?” Keefe whispered quietly, leaving the crowd towards where Fitz sat blissfully alone. His hair was messier than when they’d arrived, like someone had run their hands through them, and Fitz’s jaw almost clenched until he remembered that no matter how confident Keefe got under bright lights and crowds, he wouldn’t let people get that close. Well, not anyone but him, of course.

“No I’m fine, go dance,” he waved off, sipping his lushberry juice. Keefe pouted instead.

“I want to dance with you,” he complained softly, tugging at the elder’s arms to get him off the chair.

“I don’t dance,” Fitz reminded, but his words didn’t match his actions as he put the glass down next to him and let Keefe pull him off the chair with a joyful smile.

The younger pulled him close, his lips almost brushing against Fitz’s ear as he whispered, “Thank you,” and Fitz would’ve kissed him again right there. Alas, there were people around, and he didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.

He’d also rather not have his second kiss have a crowd. Everything was sweeter in secret, wasn’t it?

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

It was. It had to be. It was the same mantra Keefe had been repeating in his head that whole summer.

There was a reason they weren’t telling anyone. And it wasn’t because they were doing anything wrong. It was just a fun little joke. They tried it once, it felt nice, so they did it again. And again.

It was simple. It was a normal thing to do. No one would say otherwise if they knew. But…they didn’t really need to know either. Best not confuse them.

Keefe was confused enough already.

Fitz was growing taller. He had a few inches on Keefe already, and the younger despised it. Maybe he would’ve hated it less if the other didn’t constantly lord it over him, standing just close enough so Keefe had to tilt his head up to see him, resting his arm around Keefe’s shoulders like it belonged there. They’d been the same height since forever, and Keefe was not going to let himself go down like this.

Especially not considering the way his heart rate sped up when Fitz was leaning over him. He couldn’t let the elder hold that power against him, and he couldn’t let him know. So he took a deep breath and stayed calm when Fitz pushed him into a tree halfway through his tangent about how cool Alvar was.

“Well, that was rude,” Keefe huffed, trying not to shy away from the elder’s bright teal eyes as they stared down at him. “I was talking.”

“I don’t want to talk about Alvar,” Fitz responded, as if it was an excuse. His hand didn’t move from where it was pinned above Keefe’s shoulder.

“You know Fitz, there’s this thing called communication, where you use your words-”

The elder cut him off by layering his lips over Keefe’s in a sweet, chaste kiss that still left Keefe stunned and a little breathless when he pulled away. “I don’t really want to do that either.”

Keefe rolled his eyes, avoiding his gaze. “Yeah I can see that.” But he didn’t stop him from kissing him again.

Kissing Fitz was a pleasant thing when it didn’t leave Keefe spiraling down a hole of Why do you care so much? It was easy not to think, with Fitz’s lips on his, about his father, or his mentors, or any of the small things plauging his life when they pulled away. Kissing Fitz made it feel like he’d never have to go home, like this was his home, and he’d never have to leave. He never wanted to leave.

But those were the same thoughts that kept him up all night that whole summer, as relieving as they were in the moment. Fitz had always felt more like home than anything Keefe had ever called home his entire life. And if he was honest, he never wanted that to change. He never wanted them to change.

He never wanted whatever this was that they were doing to change. He didn’t like the thought of Fitz doing this with anyone else, being this comfortable with anyone else, or sharing his space this much with anyone else, but he had to face that that was the reality. Someday, Fitz would go marry some girl, and all of this, all these remenants of them would be left behind in the past. But Keefe didn’t want to think about all that. He just wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.

Now, Keefe wishes it had lasted a little longer. But then they were in Level 4, and Fitz finally found Sophie, and their lives began to change so rapidly that Keefe just felt like he was along for the ride as everything he’d ever known turned upside-down and faded away.

Maybe Keefe had known back then too, that it wouldn’t last long, and that that day would have their last kiss, because when he’d pulled away, he’d asked, “You won’t forget me, right?”

Fitz had raised an eyebrow. “What? Where did that come from?”

“Nowhere, just-” Keefe looked back down at the ground as he caught his breath and sorted through his thoughts. “You won’t, right? Ever?”

The elder was only silent for a moment before he admitted, “Keefe, I couldn’t forget you if I tried.”

He was charming, Keefe would give him that. And it made him feel like a shy and red-cheeked kid all over again.

Sitting in his room years later, with the blush faded and rose-colored glasses lost, Keefe wonders if mememories like those haunted Fitz now, as he tries his hardest to forget him. If those promises meant nothing, and now both of them are nothing, it’s honestly better that they hadn’t told anyone. Looking back, they probably wouldn’t have understood anyways.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

“Just because you didn’t tell me doesn’t mean I never knew,” Biana continued on, ignoring Fitz’s frozen stare.

“But…how-”

“I’m your sister Fitz. And you kissed outside my bedroom once,” she admits, turning back to the mirror. "My point being, friends don’t do that.”

“Just because yours don’t-” Fitz cuts himself off as Biana gives him a sharp look in the mirror.

“You hear how ridiculous you sound, don’t you? There’s no point.” She continues pinning up her hair as she adds, “You love him."

Fitz gulps, watching himself go pale in the mirror. “That’s a strong word.”

“Yeah, and the right one," she agrees. "You’ve loved him since we were little kids, and you still do."

“You’re not an empath-" Fitz starts to argue, but Biana doesn’t want to hear it.

"I don’t have to be. I’m your sister," she reminds quaintly. "But he is an empath."

Fitz bites his lip subconsciously, going over the implication. "You think he knows?"

"No. I don't think he ever understood what your emotions meant, and he probably still doesn’t," she admits, looking through the products in front of her. "Especially not with you asking for the jersey back. Honestly, Fitz, what was that?"

"I just wanted all of this to be over," he answers shamefully, looking down at the floor so Biana's eyes in the mirror won’t rip him to pieces.

She slides over next to him, leaning against the wall as well. Her voice is the calmest thing wafting through his head when she speaks. "This is never going to be over unless you face your fears and try to figure out what you actually mean to each other."

It’s easy in theory. But the thought of actually acting on it is giving Fitz a massive headache. “How do I do that?”

“You think, Fitz. It’s a foreign concept, I know,” Biana chuckles, nudging him in the side to make him look at her. “Just sort through your memories. You have millions, we’ve been friends since he was 7. There has to be answer in there somewhere, even if its from when you were little.”

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Keefe always considered himself a strong eight-year-old. He held his own even when his father battered him down, and he dusted it off with a sigh and moved on. No one helped, definitely not his mom, but that was okay. Keefe could handle it.

He was sure of that. He really could handle it, he had so many times before, watching his father tear up his doodles and drawings, scold him for his childish acts when in the back of his head he couldn’t help wonder, Am I not still a child? but was too terrified to ask. He would draw more. They would get ripped up again. It was a fine, easy cycle.

He practically lived with the Vackers, regardless of how much his father nagged at him. It was the one thing Keefe liked that he supported. Keefe didn’t know why, but he learned early on not to question the good things. Fitz and Biana were a safe space, and he would take that gladly. Being at Everglen practically erased whatever distressing moment had taken place right before, and it was easy to laugh, move on, and play bramble without a second thought. It always was.

So why wasn’t it today?

Maybe it was because the drawing was a special one. Him and Fitz, sitting by the edge of the lake, small feet swinging over the water and wind brushing through their hair. He hadn’t even gotten to finish coloring it yellow and brown before his father had snatched it up without a second thought and shredded to pieces without even looking at it. He wouldn’t dare encourage any sort of foolishness.

The drawing stayed pinned in the back of his mind though, he had his photographic memory to thank for that, and he couldn’t help but feel the slightest remorse as he thought about it, even in Fitz’s room, far away from the man who’d ruined it all in the first place. It was a pretty drawing. It would’ve looked even better finished.

Fitz might have liked it.

Keefe didn’t notice the tears dripping down his cheeks until Fitz made a surprised noise, sitting in front of him with concern etched between his brows, looking far too mature for a nine-year-old.

“Oh,” Keefe realized, wiping his cheek with small hands. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Fitz responded, teal eyes peeled open wide as he watched him. “Are you upset?”

“Only a little. It’s not a big deal,” Keefe tried to wave off. But Fitz, even at this young of an age, was always a gentlemen, and waited silently and encouragingly for Keefe to explain further.

“It’s just…my dad tore apart a drawing I made,” he elaborated, eyes steaming as the tears started coming down faster. He wiped his hands against his cheek more furiously. “I didn’t even get to finish it.”

“Why would your dad do that?” Fitz asked catiously, tilting his head with the curiousty of a young kitten.

Keefe wonders how, even at eight years old, he’d known that Fitz was a Vacker, and because of that he’d never truly understand. “He doesn’t like it when I draw.”

Fitz was silent then, and Keefe was too busy trying to stop his crying to realize, but suddenly small arms were pulling him into a warm embrace and the tear gates flooded, making him give up. “I think it’s really cool that you can draw.”

The younger tried to choke out a thank you, but the tears were choking him and he couldn’t do anything but cry into his friend’s shoulder, letting him hold him and save him from everything that waited outside of his arms, in this room, and back at home. None of it mattered if he had this, anyways. His parents didn’t matter, if there was still someone willing to hold him together. And of course that someone was Fitz.

And of course he’d ask, like always, “Want a blitzenberry muffin?”

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“Make me blitzenberry muffins.”

“Is that an order?” Fitz questioned, his eyebrow raising as he continued folding his tunics.

Keefe sighed dramatically, throwing himself across the elder’s bed and distracting him. “Can it be? I’m so sick of these books and I need something to bring my dampened spirits up.”

“Dampened spirits, wow, you’re a poet, Keefe,” Fitz applauded, sitting down next to him. The empath flipped his head up towards him, blonde splashing against the green sheets. “What do you even read about? Isn’t empathy kind of straight forward?”

“Not really. Just because I can feel what you’re feeling doesn’t mean I know what it is. For instance-” Keefe laced his hand through Fitz’s, startling him. “Something creepy crawly is going on in your stomach right now, but you’re head’s kinda fuzzy. I think that’s happiness?”

Fitz stopped himself from blushing. “I think so too.” Keefe grinned.

“See, it’s not like the words just come flying at me. People feel emotions differently, which makes it harder to decipher what someone else is feeling. Some emotions are easy, but others, not so much.” He sat up, keeping their hands intertwined. Fitz tried not to stare. “All those books are just theory, trying to teach you certain tells so you can guess emotions more easily. And then like…philosophy or whatever.”

“Sounds atrociously boring,” the elder commented, tearing his eyes away from their hands and getting lost in the sharp blue of Keefe’s eyes instead.

He didn’t seem to notice, huffing. “It is. That’s why I want muffins.”

“Valid.” Fitz stood up, yanking the younger along with him towards his room door. “Do you know where the kitchens around here are?”

“Calla showed me one the other day when you were staring into Sophie’s eyes or whatever,” Keefe grumbled. Fitz wonders if it was jealousy, or maybe that was just his wishful thinking. Just because he’s reinspecting their story didn’t mean he can add in details about Keefe that were never really there.

But the tightening grip on his hand was there, ever present, and Fitz hopes that Keefe didn’t notice his heart rate spike right then and there. Had he been that obvious all along? With an empath no less.

Keefe pulled him out of the treehouse and ran down the steps, pulling along Fitz just like he would when they were in Everglen, young and blissfully unaware of how dangerous the world really was. The worst problem at the time must have been Keefe’s parents.

In a bitter, unsurprising way, Fitz remembered they still were.

“There we are, the splendid gnomish kitchens,” Keefe presented with a flourish, cheeky smile flitting across his face as he walked over to the pantry. It was a kitchen alright, but everything was draped in browns and greens, giving the area a very much earthy vibe to it. Fitz loved it immediatley.

Blitzenberry muffins were routine, and soon enough the batter was being mixed together in a bowl with Keefe sitting on the counter, licking the finger he’d just dipped in without permission and Fitz shaking his head with a smile, always unable to put on a stern face at the younger’s antics. They made him feel rather normal, anyways. Like they weren’t teenage runaways or rebels or anything of the sort.

Keefe stared off into the distance as his finger left his mouth, and Fitz stared at him, watching his eyes glaze and something hard to decipher appear in them. It wasn’t the first time. Something about Keefe had been off lately, like he’d been thinking too much. There was enough to think about anyways, with his mom captured by ogres and his dad waiting back home. Even the pendant around his neck was enough to send him spiraling.

It was silent for a little too long, and Keefe’s eyes were getting a little too glassy, making the elder feel the need to interupt. “Are you okay-” Fitz started, then a tuft of white blurred his vision like a bakery-smelling blizzard. He coughed, daring to open his eyes wide to a sheepish looking Keefe with flour-stained hands.

“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry at all. “Intrusive thoughts.”

Fitz smiled right back, acutely aware of how ridiculous he must have looked as he slowly raised a large handful of flour from behind Keefe using telekineses, then promptly dropped it on his head. “Sorry. Intrusive thoughts.”

Keefe wiped his eyes in disbelief. “Don’t start with me.”

“You’re the one who started it!”

The younger didn’t seem to hear as more flour flew through the air, soon beginning to cover the entire kitchen in white. They ducked and hid behind the counter, laughed loudly like no one could hear them, smiled so hard their cheeks hurt from the motion. Fitz misses the feeling, misses being the cause of Keefe’s ectastic smiles instead of his nervous frowns. He misses the freedom, the moments they shared like this where there wasn’t a single other person in the world but each other, not another pair of eyes he’d ever care to look into. There wasn’t anything to see.

He misses Keefe. And his hair and his smirk and everything he’d been working hard to ignore and weave into their history just to leave them there, where they belong. But how could they belong there if Biana was right?

How could he forget about Keefe when he’d known him since they were kids?

“You’re my best friend,” Fitz spoke, breathless watching the white powder float down in the air around them like snow, like the winters they’d spent as children by the lake with ice skating and never ending adventure. Keefe was his best friend then too. Hadn’t he always been?

Hadn’t he always loved him?

“Yeah. Obviously.” Keefe smiled, shaking the flour out of his hair in Fitz’s direction, but the action was boyish enough to make his foolish heart long for a past they couldn’t reach back into. At least they had moments like this.

Not forever though.

“Nothing’s going to change, not for me and you,” Keefe added, smile softening and making the other’s heart melt right out of his ribcage.

Fitz wishes he hadn’t lied.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Leaping to Everglen is something Keefe is used to, but leaping straight onto the property will never fail to catch him off guard now that the gates have been taken away. Just another testament to how much has changed.

The way to Fitz’s room didn’t, however, so Keefe’s steps are a trail he’d walked many times before, straight down to the same door he had spent so much his childhood hidden behind. The jersey in his hands weighs more than it should, like instead of just giving back a piece of cloth, he’s about to hand over their past and everything they’d ever known. His place behind that door.

Or maybe he’s just overthinking it. Maybe he’s spent the whole day overthinking it, like the dramatic little boy he is. Things change, Keefe, the voice in his head reminds. You have to too.

He takes a deep breath, steels his face, and knocks before he can back out and leave it in Biana’s room with a note like a loser.

“Come in.” Keefe does.

The room is dark. His eyes take a moment to adjust before he notices Fitz buried underneath the blankets of his bed, staring blankly at the dark ceiling. Teal eyes lift themselves up to catch his. “Oh.”

It isn;t a bad oh, but it certainly not a good one either, and Keefe finds himself wanting to leave even faster than he came. “I found the jersey, I just thought I’d drop it o-”

“No, keep it,” Fitz decides, pushing himself up to a sitting position so he’s leaning against his pillows.

Keefe blinks in confusion. “What?”

“Keep the jersey, I don’t want it back,” he repeats, but Keefe still doesn’t understand. That isn’t what he had said that morning. All he said was that he wanted it returned!

“But you-”

“I was wrong,” Fitz shruggs. The younger can’t see him too clearly in the dark but if he’sstill wearing his nonchalant perfect Vacker smile, Keefe’s going to have a meltdown.

Or maybe he is regardless. “What do you want from me?”

Fitz might frown, Keefe can’t tell, but he sounds startled when he responds. “What do you mean?”

“I try to go and apologize to you for everything, and you don’t even let me start before you’re asking for the jersey back, and now you don’t want it anymore?!” Keefe catches his breath, eyes burning. “What were you wrong about? I wouldn’t want to be around me either.”

“I never said tha-”

“You didn’t have to.” Keefe drops the jersey to the ground, trying to keep the tears from falling out of his eyes. “I can’t even pretend to know what’s going on in your head anymore, Fitz, but that’s exactly what you wanted. And I can’t blame you, I’ve screwed this up two more times than I should have.”

“I missed you. Both times, but especially this last one. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I left and…” Keefe shakes his head, sighing under his breath. He’d practiced this more than enough times before today but here he is, and the words have run off once more, leaving his mouth dry. “I didn’t mean it like that. I would do so many things for you, Fitz, but I couldn’t stay. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I can’t be someone you still want.”

“Keefe that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” A record player scratches in Keefe’s mind, prompting him to look up again. Fitz is climbing out of his bed as he speaks. “Of course I still want you. I spent so much time missing you, and convincing myself you would be okay, and that all of this would be okay that I didn’t even stop to notice that it wasn’t. I don’t want the jersey back, because I want it to be with you. I want you to have the memories-”

“I don’t want memories,” he interrupts. Fitz stops right in front of him, looking down at his eyes and making Keefe gulp. That godforsaken height difference will never go away, will it? “I… That summer, I don’t know if I was imagining it but-”

Fitz grabs his hand and suddenly Keefe is hit with purple butterflies and crimson vines wrapping their way around his chest tight enough to suffocate him. “You’re not imagining anything.”

If those are Fitz’s emotions he’s feeling, and if he’s looking into his eyes like that, and if he’d meant it all back then, then maybe there isn’t much to make excuses for anymore when he leans in.

Keefe had missed it, the feeling of Fitz so close, his emotions flowing through the younger’s veins, so much stronger now, so much more desperate. Like they’d been starved for too long. Even the stupid bend in his neck when Fitz tilts his head up with a hand on his chin is nostalgic in a way.

It’s still dark, but that doesn’t stop Fitz’s eyes from twinkling when they separate, noses so close they were touching. Keefe could feel his breath hit his cheek as he whispered, tracing a finger along his cheekbones. “It’s always been you.”

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kidslovecudi · 4 years ago

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Man On The Moon III: The Chosen - Album Review By “kidslovecudi“

Before I say anything about this album, let me say that I am so excited that Cudi is finally releasing new music! Speaking for all Cudi fans, we have all been waiting for new solo material from the moon man for the longest time and the few teasers he’s been releasing over the last year, with “Leader Of The Delinquents” and his collaborations with Travis Scott, (“The Scotts”) and Eminem (“The Adventures of Moon Man & Slim Shady”) have not been enough to fully satisfy us. With Man on The Moon III: The Chosen, Cudi fulfills on a promise to his fans he made years ago and gives us quite a lot to digest. However despite how fulfilling this record is, Cudi still manages to leave you on the edge of your seat wanting more and I personally can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next!

1. Beautiful Trip (Intro)

Produced by Kid Cudi, FINNEAS, Plain Pat, Emile Haynie & Dot Da Genius

And it starts...

2. Tequila Shots ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Kid Cudi, Dot Da Genius & Take a Daytrip

On this first track Cudi brings us back into the dark world of the moon man but this time with a new outlook. Referencing his previous works, Cudi aims to prove that he’s “not just some sad dude” and feels that despite his mental well being still occasionally being unstable he’s ready for whatever he has to face. What I loved most about this record was Cudi’s consistency. Throughout the years Cudi has mastered the art of having his own unique galactic sound that transcends through all of his music, despite the genre, and that sound is very present here. Along with his classic hums and hypnotic melodies, this track, known as the fan favorite, has the potential to be a classic.

3. Another Day ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Dot Da Genius, Nosaj Thing & Take a Daytrip

When I first heard this song, I absolutely lost my shit. Cudi started this album off swinging and I was not prepared for him to go so hard. I’ve had this song on repeat quite a few times since I first heard it and along with the beat being absolutely sick, Cudi is rapping his ass off! My favorite part is when the beat breaks down in the second chorus, and I get hype as fuck every single time.

4. She Knows This ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by J Gramm, FnZ & Dot Da Genius

This song on first listen reminded me of a song by another of my favorite artists, called “The Let Out” by Jidenna but Cudi took it to a whole other level and isn’t as repetitive. Once the track speeds up Cudi goes even harder with even trippier sounds that will make you feel like you’re driving through space. One of my favorite things about this album is that a lot of the songs change in the middle keeping you that much more engaged in the whole song than to quickly digest it, like a lot of records on mainstream radio. On top of that his bars are on complete fire and it’s always great to see Cudi flex his rapping skill that a lot of people don’t give him credit for.

5. Dive ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Dot Da Genius, Anthony Kilhoffer, Aaron Bow & Teddy Walton

Dive ends the first act of the album and serves as Cudi’s goodbye to his fantasy high. The guitar riffs at the beginning of the song is my favorite part and I wish they were made a bigger part of the song. However this song is classic Cudi, I initially thought it was missing something but after listening to it on it’s own a few more times, I feel like this song is absolutely perfect. It’s groovy as fuck and I think because it kind of ends so abruptly that it leaves a lot to be desired, but that also might have been Cudi’s intent, allowing it to serve as interlude of sorts. I loved the transitional elements through out the song, like when the bass comes in, his adlibs throughout the song and especially the echoing adlibs like, “MOVE, MOVE” “towards the end. It takes a few really good listens to fully enjoy the song as a whole, like it did for me but the more I played the album the more and more I fell in love with it.

6. Damaged ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by MIKE DEAN, Dot Da Genius & Take a Daytrip

I loved the words to this song and the overall message that Cudi was trying to convey throughout the song, but the song itself didn’t do a whole lot for me until I actually found myself in a similar dark place. It’s one of those classic Cudi records that really makes you sit and reflect on your life and everything you’ve gone through, which was exactly what the song did for me. This song is where the album starts to slow down a bit and Cudi sings and raps about his trials and tribulations of being a damaged man and that sometimes his demons still come back and he has to deal with them. A common struggle most of us who’ve ever dealt with feelings of anxiety and depression all know too well.

7. Heaven on Earth⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Dot Da Genius, Anthony Kilhoffer & DST The Danger

This song really didn’t do a whole lot for me but what I loved the most about it again, were it’s adlibs. Cudi really showed out with the adlibs on this album and that’s what made this song enjoyable for me. The song for me just sounded too typical to me but even despite that, it’s still a great track to vibe to, just not something I’d put on my favorites.

8. Show Out (feat. Skepta & Pop Smoke) ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Dot Da Genius, Anthony Kilhoffer & DST The Danger

Easily one of my favorite tracks on the album, when I first heard this, I completely lost my my shit and it was almost impossible not to turn my entire bedroom upside down. For one beat is absolutely sick and picks the tempo right back up. Cudi, Skepta and Pop Smoke’s voices are infectious together and everyone shines on this song without any one of them over shadowing the other’s performance. Definite a track to rage the fuck out to.

9. Mr. Solo Dolo III ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Kid Cudi, Audio Anthem, Dot Da Genius & Plain Pat

This song is trippy as fuck. From beginning to end this song takes you on an absolutely journey from the chords and the keys and there are no words to describe it. I remember playing this song while I was driving home from work on my scooter at night and man oh man, the vibes this song had was incredible. It made me feel like I was traveling to another galaxy. As a loner, this song really spoke to me and it made me feel like someone else understood exactly how I felt. My favorite part was his scream after the second verse. It made me feel free and liberated and that my feelings in that moment had been validated.

10. Sad People ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Dot Da Genius & Take a Daytrip

This song is an absolute vibe. Cudi’s in his bag, back in his zone, as he said and my favorite thing about this song is the chorus. Cudi’s harmonies are absolutely incredible and my favorite part is towards the end of the chorus when the song takes on an eerie west coast like synth and it’s absolutely infectious.It’s like a dark B side to “Cudi Zone” from the first album which is one of my favorite songs by Cudi to this day. It’s songs like this that made Cudi the legendary moon man that he his, in the first place.

11. Elsie’s Baby Boy (flashback) ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by E*Vax, Kid Cudi, Heavy Mellow & Dot Da Genius

This song sounded like a leftover track from “Speedin’ Bullet To Heaven” and despite how much negative criticism that album got, I absolutely love when Cudi dives into his alternative roots and I really hope he decides to dive deeper into it even further at some point. In this song Cudi sings about his relationship with his mother Elsie and his childhood upbringings. By this it in turn gave me flashbacks to my relationship with my grandmother and my childhood memories which all brought back happy and sad moments for me.

12. Sept. 16 ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Emile Haynie, FINNEAS, Plain Pat & Dot Da Genius

What I loved the most about this record was Cudi’s vulnerability. Cudi has a few rare moments on his albums where he actually sings about love and being in love and it’s always great to hear. Cudi’s such a hopeless romantic and I love when he let’s his guard down and expresses his feelings. This song takes me back to “Kitchen” on “Passion, Pain, & Demon Slayin’“ and though I love that song more, this song was definitely cooked in the same pot.

13. The Void ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by Dot Da Genius, Kid Cudi & MIKE DEAN

The most uplifting song from the album, this song takes me back to some of the vibes from the first album, like his song “Up, Up, and Away”. That was one of the songs in my high school days that made me fully accept myself for who I was, regardless of what people said and this song is just as motivating and uplifting. On the same wave of “Reborn”, Cudi sings about avoiding all negativity on this record and only focusing on the positive. I almost cried towards the end when he thanked us, his fans, for staying with him and never leaving him. It’s a very beautiful song, but I just personally feel like this song should have been the one to end the album or close to end because to me this track is a hard one to follow behind.

14. Lovin’ Me (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by William J. Sullivan, Charlie Handsome, Rami Beatz & Dot Da Genius

It took a little while for this song to set in for me but after it did, it made me want to cry. If you ever struggled with self-love or self-acceptance then this song is for you. What I loved most about this song was the message because it really hit home for me. It’s a beautiful anthem about finding happiness within yourself that I feel a lot of people will relate to.

15. The Pale Moonlight ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Produced by E*Vax, Rami Beatz & Dot Da Genius

Wasn’t feeling this one all too much, but what I loved about it most again, were the adlibs. I loved Cudi’s multiple layering of his vocals throughout the song, especially the “la-la-la-la” parts. The sounds very remiscent to some of Cudi’s earlier music and if you didn’t know any better you’d swear this was a leftover track from “The End Of Day”.

16. Rockstar Knights (feat. Trippie Redd) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Produced by Jenius, WondaGurl, MIKE DEAN, Dot Da Genius & Take a Daytrip

I’m not a big fan of Trippie Redd but I really fuck with his contributions on this song. This is another song where I really loved the chorus and I also love Cudi’s flow once his verse comes in. Cudi’s wordplay is out of this world on this record and it’s hard not to beat your head as Cudi delivers bar for bar for bar throughout his entire verse. Cudi really shines on this record with his skills as a MC and if Cudi ever felt he had anything to prove as a rapper, he definitely did that here. As the song ends it feels like Cudi just turned the spaceship on hyperdrive and took us along for the ride as he drifted further and further into space- Totally sick.

17. 4 da Kidz ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Produced by WondaGurl, MIKE DEAN, Dot Da Genius, 18YOMAN & Take a Daytrip

A song dedicated to the “kidz” reminding us that we are not alone and this song is another song to vibe out to. With instructions from Cudi, to turn it loud if we need to, this song, on the same frequency as “love.” is another song where Cudi is speaking to us as our big brother and giving us a well needed pep talk. What I loved most about it was Cudi’s vocals on the chorus, especially the way he pronounced the “oo” vowel sounds. It was very reminiscent of a Baltimore accent which I always found comical in the best way which is one of things I love the most about Cudi. He’s not afraid to try different things or pull different things from his various influences despite the genre and on this record, he ties them up beautifully.

18. Lord I Know ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Produced by MIKE DEAN, Dot Da Genius, 18YOMAN & Take a Daytrip

Serving as the closer to the album and the man on the moon trilogy, this song is a classic Cudi hym that tells us that we’re not alone regardless of what we face in life. What I liked most about this song was the message, and that’s why I rate it so highly. In this song Cudi expresses being content with the path he’s on at life and after everything he’s gone through, it makes me happy to finally hear that he’s found peace within himself. The song/album ends with his daughter Vada saying, “To be continued” and I can’t wait to see what Cudi has in store for us next. I just have a strong feeling that all of us Cudi fans are about to eat REAL GOOD.

There’s been a lot said about this album, good and bad but I feel this album is merely a taste of what’s to come. Is this record my favorite? No, but what I can say is that it’s an ALBUM, meaning it’s not a group of songs that you can easily separate like many others. This is the kind of album where you have to play the whole thing all the way through time in and time again to really get what Cudi was trying to convey. It’s not a record that you can just play a few times and be done with, no, it’s a grower. There were a lot of songs on this record that I did not like at first, but after having some time to let them marinate, they became some of my favorites and it made me truly appreciate Kid Cudi as an artist because people don’t make albums like this anymore. There’s rare artists that are this detailed with the way the songs transitions, the interludes, and how copacetic the album is in it’s entirety. This album was truly a gift and I can’t wait to see what else Cudi has left up his sleeve.

Top Favorite Songs

Another Day

Dive

Tequila Shots

Rockstar Knights

The Void

Mr. Solo Dolo III

Listen For Yourself Here!

#kid cudi #man on the moon 3 #man on the moon iii #motm3 #album review #2020 #motmiii

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acatwithoutwifi · 5 years ago

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MY THEORY ON THE SYMBOLS

What if they’re related to the albums?

The Candle (Clarity) - I Brought You My Bullets

A quote that they’re using all over the place is “like phantoms forever” which can be a reference to Demolition Lovers (also their earlier release of just 3 songs before the actual album). The candle, which seems to be the main logo, could be seen as a reference to the rest of the lyric “like scarecrows that fuel this flame, we’re burning forever and ever”. The word clarity in my mind connects to the fact that the album is essentially a result of Gerard witnessing 9/11. Seeing just how ugly the world can be and how fragile life is pushed them to say screw it, we’re doing this and we’re doing it now.

The Drop (Courage) - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

This one I can’t pin point so much as see a running theme throughout the album. Blood, venom, tears, rain, it could be a drop of anything. All referenced through the songs, all seen in the music videos. The word courage could relate to how the album seems to be about saying you know what, I’m not okay. And I’m not going to apologize for it and I’m not gonna keep taking your BS.

The Hand (Sacrifice) - The Black Parade

When I saw this one I immediately thought of this scene from the wttbp music video (and it’s what got me thinking about all the other symbols). As for sacrifice, I see this as referencing the patient’s death. Either that his loved ones are having to give him up or that he’s having to give his own life up. Either way, the albums about death and what greater sacrifice is there than life.

The Sun (Devotion) - Danger Days

The entire story takes place in the desert. It’s not hard to connect the sun symbol to Danger Days. It’s also not hard to connect the word devotion to the Killjoys. The whole album is about looking out for one another and needing each other and that’s the basis of the universe they created. The characters risk their lives to save this girl they don’t even really know purely because Killjoys protect Killjoys and fuck the corporation.

All in all this is probably just my overwhelmed brain going crazy because OH MY GOD MY FAVORITE BAND IS BACK FROM THE DEAD AND I MIGHT ACTUALLY GET TO SEE THEM LIVE IN MY LIFETIME HOLY CRAP and making connections where there aren’t any but hey man what a time to be alive this is amazing.

#mcr #my chemical romance #return #theories #emo #im dying #i cant belive it #i really cant

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hanniiesuckle17 · 4 years ago

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The Comment Section

A/n: as a technically plus size girl myself i really liked writing this! feel free to request again after I finish the rest of the ones I have now! (sry this is not thoroughly edited)

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: cussing, mentions of hate

Requested by: anonymous

Tag List: @distrikt9 @mini-meanhoe @poeticallyspaghetti @hanstagrams @yangomangos @hoes4hoseok @desertfordessert

Summary: Being on the larger side had never stopped you from anything before. You were confident in your curves and loved how you looked. It was one of the reasons that Han Jisung fell head over heels in love with you. Who would have thought a few silly little pictures would turn your world upside down.

Genre: fluff, little angst, romance

✯

Meeting Jisung was a complete accident. A complete accident that changed my life forever. I was a lost foreign exchange student desperate to find her way back to her dorm in the hot summer streets of Seoul. By pure chance, I had bumped into him on the street. I had no idea who he was at the time and he seemed to find that fascinating.

We ended up walking together until the sun set and the store signs lit up casting neon glows on our faces. Soon we both got lost wandering through the streets talking about everything and nothing in my broken korean and his adorable english.

Jisung bought me dinner and then we finally found my dorms. He left me with the promise to take me out and get lost again. And that was the start of our relationship. About our fifth date, Jisung told me about his job and who he was. He was utterly shocked that I didn’t freak out about his celebrity status. He always said that what I told him after was when he began falling in love with me.

“Whether you sing in front of thousands of people, pick up garbage on the side of the road, or teach pre-schoolers not to pick their noses, I would rather be with you than any other place or with any other person on the planet.”

Now a year and a half later, we were dating and living together in an apartment near the company. Jisung was quite upset that he had to keep our relationship a secret. The company after many attempts at breaking us up gave in and let him continue our relationship despite his dating ban, but only if he kept quiet about it and nothing got leaked to the press.

This meant we rarely got to go out unless both of us wore masks and hats and for five months out of the year, I was sitting at home waiting for Jisung to come back from tour trying to pretend like I didn’t have a boyfriend to begin with. But, it was all worth it. Jisung was worth it.

“Yes, dad. I promise I’m eating well.” I said looking at my father through a computer screen. My ears picked up on Jisung moving behind me to open the fridge and I knew what was about to happen next.

“Jisung!” My father called. Hearing his name he turned and leaned over me to look at my father. “Jisung, how are you?” My dad smiled and turned to focus on my boyfriend.

Jisung laughed seeing me drop my head in my hands. He leaned against the counter, a bright smile on his face. “I’m fine, Mr. L/n.”

“How many times have I told you? Just D/n is fine. Now, is she eating well? I know she has exams. You have to make sure my daughter is eating!” Jisung’s arm wrapped around my stomach, pulling me to his side.

“Of course! We are going out to eat soon actually.” He said cheerfully, pushing the hair away from my face.

I jumped at the opportunity Jisung secretly handed me. “Yes, Dad! So, we have to go! I love you, talk to you later, bye!” Jisung waved before I slammed my laptop closed, effectively hanging up on my father. “Can we really go out to eat?” I asked, wrapping my arms around his waist. He smiled taking my face in his hands, squishing my cheeks.

“Of course. I’m starving.” Placing a kiss on my forehead he exited the kitchen. While he was doing whatever he was doing, I ran to our bedroom and changed out of the pajamas I had worn all day.

Grabbing some shorts and one of Jisung’s shirts I started tying my shoes. How any of his clothes fit me at all was a mystery to me. Jisung was a twig compared to me. Granted he was a very muscular twig. But a twig none the less.

Jisung smiled seeing me in the baggy white fabric that covered my shorts entirely. He leaned against the doorway, dark hair falling in front of his doe eyes. He didn’t bother changing out of his gray sweatpants and tank top. “I never get tired of seeing you in my clothes.”

“I never get tired of wearing them.” He smirked, watching me get up from the bed and walk over to him. I let my hands travel up his chest as he looked down at me. “Are we taking the car or the subway?” I whispered, leaning up and kissing his lips. A cheeky smile slip onto his face as his hands grabbed onto my ass.

“I heard it’ll rain soon. Subway?” I nodded and kissed him again, fingers threading through his hair. “Ready to go, baby?” With another nod, we left our apartment, masks on and hats covering our faces. Instinctively, I pulled the white cap on Jisung’s head lower to cover his handsome features. He did the same with the black bucket hat (which was probably his) that I wore.

Just as Jisung said, a light sprinkled down on us as we walked to the nearest subway station. Unfortunately, the train was crowded, leaving no seats for me and Jisung. We got a few weird looks, most likely because of the excessive face covering.

We shared low whispers about where to eat and bickered about what stop to get off at. I turned out to right and dragged him off with train, just before the doors closed. Laughing, we ran through the rain to get to our favorite sushi place.

The woman who owned the restaurant greeted us happily when we entered, ushering us to a secluded back table. Jisung didn’t even look at the menu before ordering enough food to fill every inch of the table.

“How is the new album coming?” I said picking up a piece of fish. He nodded cheeks half full of food. I smiled seeing his little habit resurface itself.

“Good. I sent a song off to Chan this afternoon. He and I will work on composition tomorrow.” His long fingers maneuvered the chopsticks to place another roll onto my plate. I tried to put it back but he shook his head, adding another one as well. “How are your classes?”

“Stressful, but manageable. You know the girl next to me in my Maths class is a STAY. She has Seungmin’s photocard in her phone case.” Jisung smiled eating another piece of sushi. “Her phone rang in class the other day. Guess what her ringtone was?”

He hummed and looked up at me expectantly. “What?” He said covering his mouth, silver rings glinting in the low warm light.

“Close.” Jisung’s eyes lit up as he started laughing.

“I almost got in so much trouble when I released that song.” He said dipping a roll in soy sauce. “STAY almost figured out about us.”

“Well, you did all but put my name in the song,” I said with a laugh. Somehow we had managed to eat all the food on the table. “Did you really feel that way when we met?” I asked him, my elbow resting on the table.

A waitress came and cleared our table. Jisung stared at me, a soft look in his eyes. “Of course. You were the most gorgeous girl I had ever laid eyes on.”

“You are just saying that because you thought I had a great ass.”

“It is a great ass.” He said eyeing me up and down, a sly smirk on his face. “We should get going. It’s already raining cats and dogs.” Jisung paid for our meal and shoved his black hat back on my head with a smile, draping his arm over my shoulder as we walked out. He was correct. The rain was pelting down on the streets like bullets. “You ever been kissed in the rain?” He asked out of nowhere.

That mischievous smile glowed on Jisung’s face. “No, why?”

Without another word, Jisung pulled me out into the rain, soaking us both. His brown hair turned dark and stuck to his forehead as he pulled down my mask. My eyes glanced around the nearly empty street, before staring back into Jisung’s bright eyes. His long fingers lifted up my chin before resting on my cheek. The cool rain dropped around us, but I felt warm in his arms.

His lips dragged over mine, butterflies thundering in my stomach along with the rumble in the sky. My chest pressed against his, the wet fabric rubbing together. His teeth cheekily dragged over my bottom lip as I pulled away.

“Get out of the street!” Someone yelled honking their horn. Jisung and I turned to see a car’s headlights shining through the rain. We laughed and moved back under the awning. “Crazy kids!” The man yelled as he drove passed us.

I kissed Jisung again, tangling my fingers in his wet hair. “I love you,” Jisung whispered, pulling away. “All of you,” His hands ghosted over the curve of my hips. “Do you love all of me?”

“More than anything, Jisung.”

The cool rain sent a breeze under the cover. He pulled me closer to him kissing the top of my head. “Home?” He muttered looking around the wet street.

“Home.”

I pulled the dark fabric over his face, leaving nothing but his round lively eyes for me to see. His warm hand enveloped mine before we ran through the rain. Our feet splashed through puddles as each step brought us closer to the train that would carry us back to our little apartment.

✯

Bright light streamed through the bedroom window. An arm was wrapped tightly around my stomach. I smiled and shifted under the blanket so I could look at the handsome face of the man next to me. My eyes glanced at the clock before reaching over and stroking his hair.

“Jisung?”

He hummed, nestling into the pillow. I smiled feeling him reach for my hand and bring it to his lips. Drowsy kisses from his plump tired lips trailed over my skin. “You saying my name in the morning is so sexy.” My laugh filled the bedroom. His raspy voice never failed to send shivers down my spine.

“You think anything I say is sexy.” Jisung’s eyes slowly opened and his hands moved to rub his face, the muscles in his arms flexing ever so slightly. My fingers traced patterns over his bare chest, the skin radiating a welcoming warmth under my touch.

“No way. Prove it.” He said with a goofy smile.

Chuckling, I kissed his cheek. I thought about what to say. Leaning down, my breath fanned across his cheek. “I have to go shopping because we have no ramen left in the kitchen.” My words floated into his ear and I could see his cheeks redden at my tone.

Jisung groaned, pulling me fully on top of him. “Yeah, you were right. Anything you say is sexy.” He laid still for a moment, his hands rubbing up and down my back. “Do you need money for groceries?” He hummed. Shaking my head, I sat up, legs falling on either side of his waist. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Ji. You don’t have to pay for everything, you know.” He laid back with a smile on his face, hands behind his head. Jisung stared up at me keeping that sleepy bright grin on his face. “You should get up. You’ll be late before you know it.”

A sigh heaved from his chest as he watched me leave the bed. It was evident his eyes were trained on me as I sorted through our shared closet. “You’re right.” The rustling of sheets told me he was shuffling out of bed and most likely towards the bathroom to shower.

Soon I was walking Jisung to the cab he had called down in front of our building. The fabric of my leggings brushed together as I rushed forward pulling him back for one more kiss before he entered the taxi. “Don’t forget, we have a date with pizza and a drama tonight,” I whispered against his lips.

His long fingers gripped my waist, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. His warm touch slipped into the waistband leaving something paperlike between the tight fabric and my skin. “For the groceries.” Jisung pecked my lips before getting into the cab. “Love you!” He called, rolling down the window.

Waving back, I watched the car pull away from the curb and drive my boyfriend to his company. Curious, I reached for the money he slipped me. Had I worn a hoodie and not a crop top, he wouldn’t have been able to do so easily. It was a habit he had of spoiling me and paying for things despite my protests. “Good grief, Ji,” I muttered to the near empty street.

My feet carried me to a nearby supermarket. I walked the aisles tossing anything we needed into the cart I picked up at the entrance. My hands lingered on a bag of chips, debating whether I actually needed the study snack. Jisung never cared how much weight I put on or how much I lost. I was confident in how I looked, so I wanted chips. I would get chips. Smiling I tossed them in the basket before moving to the next aisle to pick up a few bottles of wine and soju. I never knew when Chan and Changbin would pop by for a ‘lyric session’ and need ‘inspiration’

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two girls whispering and looking my way. More than a year with Jisung had taught me to have an observant eye in public places whether he was with me or not. They stopped their talk when I turned to look at them. After placing the bottle in my cart I waved to them with a kind smile before going on my way.

Jisung returned later than usual. But, then again. There was no usual for when he came home. He passed out on the couch while I ordered us a pizza. While I waited, I lazily scrolled through twitter until something caught my eye.

“Rapper Han Jisung Spotted With Supposed Secret Girlfriend”

My eyes skimmed the article searching for any proof. My heart sunk finding what I sought. Several pictures of Jisung and me from the day before were shown below. Our faces were seen as clear as day despite the rain. We should have been more careful. I sighed, head in my hands. Curious, I scrolled to see what his fans were saying.

“I can’t believe this”

“So he really was seeing someone?”

“She’s so fat! She doesn’t deserve him”

“My friend and I saw her at the supermarket. She had like eight bottles of soju in her cart. Alcoholism puts on wait you know.”

“She’s a drunk and fat. I can’t believe she’s dating our Han.”

“She looks like a cow. Seriously I understand why he hid her from us.”

“Guys, stop. If he is happy then leave him alone.”

“He looks disgusted in those photos”

“Does she not care about herself? She’s dating one of the greatest rappers in the industry and she looks like a heavy slob.”

I tossed my phone onto the kitchen counter, not wanting to look a the comments anymore. My shoulders felt heavier than usual. Shower. A hot shower always made me feel better. Abandoning my device, which was blowing up with notifications, on the counter I marched to the bathroom and turned on the water letting steam fill the room.

The scalding water pelted against my bare skin as I stood under the showerhead. After my skin turned red, I stepped out of the shower, wiping steam away from the mirror.

My eyes raked over the body I once thought beautiful. How could my mind change so quickly? The curves I used to love now seemed ghastly and unflattering. The rolls on my stomach seemed more prominent as I looked over my bare body. My fingers traced over the waved marks on my thighs and pelvis, wondering how I never noticed them before today.

“Y/n, baby?” A knock sounded at the door but did not wait for an answer to open. Instinctively, my hands slammed it shut shocking the man on the other side. “Woah- Babe, what’s wrong? Are you okay? It’s nothing I haven’t seen many many many times before.” The smirk in his voice was evident, but I still felt exposed, despite the towel I moved to wrap around myself.

“Just go away. I’ll be out in a sec. There is beer and soju in the fridge. Go get one; the pizza will be here soon.”

I waited until I heard Jisung walk away before turning the knob and sneaking into our bedroom. My fingers grasped at the first baggy shirt I could find, but looking in the mirror it hugged in places that should not be hugged and made my body look lumpy and fat. Throwing on some leggings and one of Jisung’s fluffy jackets I decided this was enough coverage suitable to walk around in.

Jisung’s eyes widened when I entered the living room. “Wow. You planning an expedition to Antarctica?”

“I’m just cold, Jisung.” He watched with wary eyes as I pull the jacket further around my body. The doorbell rang turning both our heads. “I’ll get it.” Jisung nodded and picked up the remote, turning on the TV.

Opening the door I expected to see a pizza delivery man waiting for his tip, but instead, the hallway was empty. Before I closed the door, my gaze landed on something on the welcome mat.

A bouquet of wilted, dried, dead flowers. A ribbon darker than black was wrapped around the fragile stems. With shaking hands, I picked up the flowers. Petals and leaves fell to the ground. A note was tucked between the graying stems.

Fat Bitch.

Subconsciously, I pulled the jacket around my body, covering as much as possible. “Y/n? Everything okay? They didn’t forget my garlic knots, right? They forgot last time.” Jisung’s voice called out. My eyes still stared down at the bouquet in my hands. “Baby?”

I felt cold. It felt like I wasn’t in my own body; like my soul had left this world leaving me a shell standing with no will of its own.

“What the fuck is this?”

Shaking myself out of the trance, I looked to see Jisung standing beside me anger flooding every inch of him. Not waiting for an explanation he took the bouquet from my hands, more petals falling to the floor. The note seemed to make him even angrier.

“Fuck,”

I closed the door and watched him throw the flowers onto the counter, sending dead leaves flying across the kitchen floor. He turned to me, fury in his eyes. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “We both knew this was going to happen sooner or later.” His jaw dropped, not believing my words.

“You aren’t furious? You aren’t pissed off? Why are you not bothered by this?”

“Jisung, I can’t be bothered by something I already know is true!”

He stared at the flowers littering the counter. “You can’t possibly think that...can you?” Jisung sighed watching me shrug and fiddle with the sleeves of his jacket. “Y/n...this is not you. What happened to the girl who surprised me in my studio wearing nothing but a trench coat and lingerie just because I said I missed your smile?” My gaze fell to the floor, fixated on one of the leaves. “Where’s the girl who went skinny dipping with me on the night of our anniversary in Jeju?”

“I don’t know, Jisung!” He was shocked hearing me yell. “They are right! Okay! I am a fat cow with no reason to be dating you. I’m not sexy and skinny and I don’t have the body of a model. You know who does? The girl you should be dating! Maybe I just don’t like myself anymore!”

“The Y/n I know and love didn’t care how much she weighed.”

“Well...maybe I’m not your Y/n anymore.”

“That I don’t believe.” Jisung took my face in his hands, staring into my eyes. “I know about the photos. I know about the comments. They are all false, okay? None of them are true and you know it.” His thumbs brushed over my cheeks, voice full of desperation and sadness.

“Jisung, I’m not beautiful. I don’t feel beautiful anymore. I don’t see how you can love someone who can’t even see themselves as pretty.”

He sighed, leaning down and capturing my lips in a breathtaking kiss. I could feel all his emotions, everything he wanted to say as his lips moved against mine. Jisung pulled away, his eyes looking lovingly into my own. “I don’t love you because you are beautiful,” He whispered, pushing a strand of wet hair behind my ear. “You are beautiful because I love you. All of you.”

“Even the stretch marks?”

“The stretch marks. The curves. All of you.”

Sighing, I rested my head against his chest. “Why did I even think that?” Jisung let out a shaky breath stroking my still damp hair. “Shit, I was so stupid to believe those comments for even a second.”

“I can’t blame you. I’ve done the same.”

Pulling away, my hands cupped his cheeks before moving to wrap around his neck. “I love you,”

“I love you more.” Jisung kissed my forehead, dark hair falling in front of his eyes. A thought came to mind that made me giggle. “What?” He asked with a smile, leading me back over to the couch.

“How did you even remember that studio thing? That was like...in the first month we were dating!”

He laughed, pulling me into his chest and falling back onto the sofa. “Are you kidding? That may have been the single greatest day of my entire life.”

“You are just a pervert.” Again the doorbell rang, causing both of our heads to peek over the top of the couch cushions. “Can you get it?” Jisung nodded and got out from under me. A few moments later he came back with two pizzas and his beloved garlic knots. “They didn’t forget?”

“Nope!” He said happily flipping open the boxes. “Here.” He pulled one away and fed it to me, the fluffy breading melting in my mouth.

“You know what I think?”

“What?” He asked already somehow halfway through the box of garlic knots.

“I think I can eat this entire pizza faster than you.”

He closed the garlic knot box, a wry grin on his face. “Oh, you are so on, babe.” He planted his feet firmly on the floor and turned to his pizza box. “Ready? Three....two....-” Before he finished counting down I grabbed a slice and stuffed it in my mouth. “Y/n that’s cheating!” Between bites, I laughed as I watched him try and catch up from my early start.

“Come on, twig boy! Catch up.” He laughed and shoved another slice into his mouth filling his cheeks.

✯

Requests are Temporarily Closed! Sorrrrrryyyy

Masterlist

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artxyra · 5 years ago

Note

I got another request! So, Jason is Red Hood at the time when he sees Marinette clutching a backpack (it has the miraculous box inside and some essentials and clothing) as she was falling from a portal (even tho a cloud was covering it so it looked like she was falling from the sky) into a river. He jumps in, saves her, and says something like "Holy sh*t I just saved an angel" He stays hidden for 2 weeks helping her until the fam meet her. [Anything you want from here but end goal is daminette]

It was close to midnight when the Red Hood notice that something was up. Little did he knew was that his next encounter with someone would have changed his entire life. He looked up to the cloudy night sky that always plagues Gotham, nothing felt out of the place. Well, the moment lasted into his begins to see a silhouette of someone falling from the sky. The person was coming down fast, real fast.

Rushing to what he presumed to be the persons landing grounds, he failed to realize that the person wasn’t going to reach the cold hard concrete ground but the river not far from him. As the person was falling quickly than anticipated, he ditched his jacket and ran towards the river.

Splash. Splash.

He breaks for air pulling the formerly falling person with him to shore. Back on dry land, the Red Hood was finally able to get a good look at the person he saved.

“Holy shit, did I just save an Angel?” He whispers to himself brushing back strands of dark hair that clings to the girl’s face.

Looking around for any signs of help coming, he picks the girl up into his arms and disappears into the night, not caring that it was his night to patrol.

Marinette woke up the next day with a massive headache. Quickly leaning upward, she calls out for Tikki as she searches through the blankets looking for her backpack. It hasn’t registered to Marinette that wasn’t at home nor was she in Paris anymore.

Tikki flies up to Marinette, giving the panic guardian a sense of reassurance.

“Where am I? Kaalki?” Marinette finally takes in her bearings as she touches face noticing the lack of glasses that is the horse miraculous.

“Kaalki’s fine, Marinette. Your entry coming here was rather shaky.” Tikki states keeping close to Marinette as the realization hits her. Turning to the side table, Marinette sees the horse miraculous and puts.

“Kaalki, where did that portal send us?” Kaalki finally appears but she scoffs and looks around the room.

“The portal sent us to a place called Gotham. In the Americas, apparently.” Kaalki answers before flying off to who knows where.

“Gotham, like in the Batman comics?” Marinette says before groaning resting her hand over her forehead and lay back down. All she could do is think, how was this possible.

“Hey Angel from the sky, you alright in there?” A voice startles her out of the bed. She stares at the tall muscular man in front of her. He has a turf of white in his dark hair, blue eyes, and wearing the worst kind of leather jacket she has ever seen in her life.

Racking through her brain, she tries to find the words to say in English, “Uh… and you are?”

“I should be asking you the same, but the names Jason, and you look like someone who has been trucked over, twice,” Jason says cautiously take a few steps forward.

Marinette’s shoulders relax. “I’m Marinette.”

Marinette walks over to Jason, shaking his hand, thus creating one of the most cherished siblings’ bonds ever created in the city of Gotham.

Over the course of a week, Jason quickly learned that Marinette’s English wasn’t that great (she knew basic English, but then again who doesn’t know anything past basic English), he also learned that Marinette was only sixteen almost seventeen, just a year younger than this youngest brother. Marinette had learned that Jason lives by himself in this rundown apartment complex, though he does spend a handful of times over at his adoptive family’s house. She also learned he really enjoys guns and rock music, so of course they bond over Jagged Stone’s latest new album.

At the beginning of her second week in Gotham, Marinette was growing anxious and a little stir crazy. After Jason had left to go to work, she decided that it would do her and the kwamis well to leave the apartment and explore. She doesn’t know why, but she found herself drawn to the park.

Pulling out the remains of one her sketchbook, she finds a dainty little bench underneath a tree far away from people. Looking around, inspiration hits her, so she begins sketching out an outline.

Marinette doesn’t know how long it has passed until a ball dropped in front of her. She sets the sketchbook aside and is immediately greeted by black Great Dane wagging his tail. Marinette giggles before bending down to search for a name tag.

“Titus?” Marinette mutters before scratching Titus’ head and neck.

Titus nudges the ball towards her getting the message to Marinette. She managed to play ball with her new furry friend until a concerned voice calls out the dog’s name. The person she assumes is Titus’ owner walks in fury towards her direction.

“Hi, he came over to me…” The owner cuts her off turning his attention to the dog who wags his tail in the owner’s face before walking over to Marinette. Marinette tries and fails to conceal her laughter.

The owner sighs and turns his attention to Marinette, “Damian.”

“Damian,” Marinette test the name, “Well you have a very nice dog. Actually, I’m very thankful for him pulling me out of my zone.” She holds out her hand. Damian shakes it after a moment of eyeing her down.

“Titus does have a tendency to do that.” She’s beginning to wonder if Damian was a person against small talk or better yet talking about himself.

Marinette bends down to say goodbye but not before wishing to see him and Damian again in the future.

Damian turns to Titus who does the same, and Damian could have sworn that he says a smirk on that dog’s face.

After their first encounter, Damian and Marinette continuously met at the park. Their second encounter was by pure accident. Marinette had wanted ice cream the following day and decided to enjoy her soft serve back on that dainty bench. Titus wanted to get out again, so Damian took him back to the park around the same time. After that, they decided to meet at the park every day around the same time.

As another week past by, Marinette finally began to wonder what was going on in Paris. She doubts that any besides her parents would care that she was missing, but she can’t help but wonder whether that person (or group) that was after her left Paris alone.

As Marinette grow closer to Damian, she did the same with Jason. He even took her to the shooting ring for practice one night and was blown away by her aim. Jason now swears that if Bruce doesn’t adopt his newly claimed sister then he would find a way to do it legally.

After having Marinette to his lonesome for two weeks, Jason decided that it might be best to introduce her to the family against every bone in his body. He knows that Marinette is hiding something, but it also seemed like she didn’t know what she was hiding also.

“Hey Pixie-Pop, you would you mind coming with to B’s house?” He asks on that faithful Sunday morning, which is odd considering Sundays were the days he typically leaves Marinette to herself.

“Sure,” She pauses for a moment, “Are you sure that they wouldn’t mind? I hate to be—” She rambles on getting a chuckle out of the older male.

“Nah, Pixie-Pop, they wouldn’t mind.” He tells her easing her growing anxiety.

Marinette smiles up at him before rushing into the guestroom that slowly became her room.

On the back of Jason’s bike reminded her of her Nona. In fact, every time she rides with him it’s a constant reminder of her Nona, the rush of wind blowing through her hair. The feeling of someone close to you knowing that you’re most likely being protected. Marinette had dreamed of getting a bike of her own when she older and in case she can never return to Paris perhaps Jason would be willing to teach her.

“Jay-Jay this a house, it’s a mansion.” Were the first few words upon entering the Wayne Manor grounds. Jason laughs it off by rubbing her head and motioning for her to follow him.

“Sup nimrods, I’m back and I brought a guest. Treat her right and there will be no bullets shooting tonight.” He calls out to the group of people settled into the room.

Marinette squirms underneath all the glances she was receiving but upon seeing the familiar sight of green eyes and a certain Great Dane, she slowly became at ease.

“Hey Damian, I didn’t know you lived here.” Well, ring the alarms because immediately she is greeted by screams of all kinds some projected to the green-eyed teen while one was projected to her.

Ignoring the commotion that is aimed at him, Damian curtly nods to Marinette as Titus rushes over to her. “Hi, Angel.” Cue another round of commotion.

So, dinner was a complete mess, well not like food is thrown everywhere kind of a mess but it was an emotional disaster. Tim was knocked over the table, the like of caffeine and sleep finally getting to him. Dick and was having a heated conversation with Jason about Marinette, all while Bruce sat there in silence. Secretly he was hoping for the chance of grandchildren in the future if this girl can make it through with his family.

Once Damian had finished his food and notice how uncomfortable Marinette is, they managed to disappear down the halls to who knows where. Alfred walks in shaking his head all while cleaning up the dishes.

Marinette ended up moving into Wayne Manor just days after the dinner at the request of Jason who ended up tag-teaming with Bruce. It didn’t take her long to figure their secret identities and it wasn’t long after that when they question her as to why she was declared missing and presumed dead in Paris. Let just say that was another heated conversation because it unleashed a whole lot of emotions.

Damian finally worked up the courage to ask the bluenette out after her staying with them for over a month. Both of them were too afraid of ruining the friendship they created. Not long after they started dating, Marinette learned that the people who were after her in Paris were a part of some cult under the name League of Assassins. This is then prompted Damian to talk about his past and Marinette telling the family that she had known their identities for quite some time. It didn’t them long to meet the kwamis and adding Ladybug to their personal alliance.

Marinette only went back to Paris after some convincing from the Batfamily to at least give her parents some sort of closure that their daughter is safe. She took Kaalki to make the trip easy. Her parents were, of course, mad at her for not contacting them sooner, but after she explained everything it was Sabine that had some choice words to say to some “old co-workers” of hers from her early teen and adult years. As much as they didn’t want Marinette to leave, her parents knew their daughter was happier in Gotham than she ever was after the whole Hawkmoth ordeal and even both that. Her missing person case was closed, and Marinette went back to Gotham with the promise to come to see them again in the summer.

Damian and Marinette finally shared their first kiss with each other after a couple of months of dating. It was Titus that pushed them to do at the park underneath the bench where they meet.

#maribat #platonic jasonette #daminette #ml x dc #mlb x dc #dc crossover #ml crossover

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plainsight6578 · 4 years ago

Text

aftersome.

Pairing: Mista x Giorno

Genre: fluff to angst to a tiny bit of smut and fluff

Summary: Mista and Giorno had been there for each other since that fateful day that they met.

Word count: 3,422

A/N: I don’t really remember the time-line of the anime very well, so forgive me if I made any mistake xoxo. Characters may be a little OOC but i tried my best.

aftersome

adj. astonished to think back on the bizarre sequence of accidents that brought you to where you are today—as if you’d spent years bouncing down a Plinko pegboard, passing through a million harmless decision points, any one of which might’ve changed everything—which makes your long and winding path feel fated from the start, yet so unlikely as to be virtually impossible.

(via The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)

Since Giorno was little, he’d been repeatedly told he was a failure, a disappointment, and an eyesore by his loving parents. And, as little children do, he believed every word. So, he never made any friends. In his mind, he was better off alone. Other people would be better off without him. Consequently, he never had anyone to tell him that he wasn’t all those things that he and his parents believed he was.

Giorno never had any, nor thought that he needed any friends. They were useless and would only serve as a distraction from his dream. When he was feeling down, he never had anyone to talk to; since talking was also useless. He just needed to pick himself up, work harder, do better. He didn’t need someone to tell him how proud they were of him, or that he’s been working too hard and that he deserved a break. Those were all useless.

He didn’t need anyone and no one needed him. Giorno never considered himself anything other than what he was told, he never had any reason to. The words that scarred him as a child would haunt him for the rest of his life. He’d always been alone. As far as he knew, he only ever hurt those that were close to him.

So, when Mista called him his “lucky boy”, he was so shocked he could barely process what that implied. That nickname given to him by this strange man he’d just met would mean that everything he’d known about himself - everything he’d been taught about who he was - was a lie. That couldn’t be true. 15 years of bringing misfortune to everyone around him couldn’t be wrong (although, admittedly, he never had many experiences with any other people that weren’t his abusive parents).

‘What a weird guy...’ was Giorno’s first impression of Mista. That was the only way to describe him: weird, not necessarily in a bad or good way. Mista was just weird; he’d contradicted everything Giorno had stood for.

Mista was a simple man, simply following orders from his higher-ups, doing what he had to in order to survive. He was honest and upfront. Everything you needed to know about him, you could see. Giorno was far more mysterious, hiding his years of trauma underneath a calm and collected façade. He had his underlying intentions, and never fully exposed himself around anyone.

Giorno could never understand the strange man. He certainly wasn’t a lucky boy. It wasn’t luck that allowed him to survive, it was his own intuition, taking things he’d learnt and putting them to good use. It was his own skills that had lead him to where he was, and would take him to even higher lengths. He knew he was capable of achieving that with his skills, not luck.

Giorno stopped in his tracks. This was a first for him; how did this single interaction with this man he barely knew got him to reconsider everything he’d done? It was true, though, Giorno had faith that his plan could work because he had faith in himself. He just never previously realized it. And it felt like all the work he’d put in to get himself this far was paying off, like he was starting to reap the rewards of perseverance. In an instant, he could clearly see where he was going when it had previously felt like a daze. He supposed that he wasn’t entirely a failure, if he’d made it this far. How is he suddenly coming to question everything that he thought he was?

As far as Giorno knew, he was the most unlucky boy on earth. Mista didn’t seem to see him that way. Even though they just met? What did he know? Mista was a simpleton who didn’t know anything about Giorno or his life.

Still, he’d appreciated the nickname. It felt nice to have someone call him something that wasn’t an insult.

________________________________________________________________

After Giorno had saved Abbaccio and Fugo from the Man in the Mirror and had returned safely to the gang, Mista had pestered Giorno for more detail because neither Abbaccio nor Fugo were much of the bragging-about-our-super-cool-epic-win type (and neither was Giorno, really).

“Gimme all the juicy stuff! This dude was tough to beat right?! So, why’re ya leavin’ all the cool parts out?!” He’d yelled.

Giorno had no idea what classified as “juicy”, so he’d simply given Mista a quick summary of the fight: how he’d turned that brick into a snake to find the enery stand user, and how they eventually defeated him. Giorno only realized after he’d finished that he’d been talking for quite sometime. Mista was enthusiastically nodding his head throughout the story, adding in some “wooooah!!” sound effects of his own here and there. Giorno blushed, he got too carried away.

“Man! You’re so cool, Giorno!! I’d never think to do that!” Mista said, with an almost glimmer in his gaze, he was looking at Giorno in a way that hecouldn’t recognize. Rather than hostility, he was feeling...admiration coming from the other man. He remembered a similar look coming from Bucciarati, but that was when he had beat him in a fight then. What did Giorno do to deserve this from Mista? He could almost believe that Mista actually meant what he said.

‘I’m not cool...’ Giorno thought, but when Mista was staring at him like that... Who was he to say no. He didn’t know how to respond, so he blushed and looked away. Maybe he could allow himself to think he was slightly cool in that moment, he certainly did feel... cool, if only just a little.

________________________________________________________________

The long road trip to retrieve their boss’s order from the statue that Giorno and Mista had gone into meant more time alone with Mista. For some reason, Giorno’s heart couldn’t seem to slow down. He decided it was from the paranoia of being attacked by another stand user. Since they’d started this mission, they’ve been relentlessly attacked by stand user after stand user, with barely any time to relax. That’s why his palms won’t stop sweating, and why there was a strange, tingling sensation in his stomach, and why his heart skipped a beat when Mista had called his name... Yeah, he’s just nervous about being attacked again.

Wait. Mista had called his name. He was talking to him.

“Right, Giorno?” He’d asked. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening, Mista,” Giorno replied.

“What are you overthinking now? There isnt another stand user for miles, we’ll be fine.” Mista kicked his legs up onto the dashboard, emphasizing his complete lack of anxiety. Giorno almost envied his ability to be so relaxed (although, he knew Mista was always prepared for an attack, he never really let his guard down).

Considering how they’d had lots of time to kill in one cramped car, the pair had talked quite a bit, well, it was mostly Mista talking at Giorno. He liked it that way, though, Mista’s voice helped him unwind, and something about the way Mista’s lips moved as they talked made his stomach clench and his mouth dry.

Being with Mista, just the two of them, like this, it could almost convince Giorno to take a break and enjoy the little things in life, all things that Giorno had deemed ‘useless’. And yet, this philosophy that Giorno had held close to him as a protection mechanism was slowly falling apart. Rather, it was being undone. And Giorno didn’t know why, but he felt like a part of him was letting it happen, like, deep down, this is what he wanted: to sit back and be able to enjoy.

“Useless...” He muttered, under his breath he was getting influenced by Mista. He couldn’t afford to relax. But Mista brought that side out in him and he didn’t know why. Giorno couldn’t help but feel slightly at ease with Mista beside him, and it felt nice not to have to keep his guard up around someone all the time. It felt nice to be able to rely on someone else.

________________________________________________________________

Mista somehow always found a way to get himself horribly injured during their stand fights. After the battle with Ghiaccio and his stupidly powerful White Album stand, and after he’d made sure Mista was fully healed, Giorno made sure to give the older man a thorough lecture about his actions during the battle.

“Getting yourself injured like that is useless, Mista. You shouldn’t do useless things like that. What would the team do if we didn’t have you? You should think about that too!” Giorno rambled, “your actions were dangerous, Mista, don’t do useless things like that again.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he replied, an embarrassed flush covering his cheeks, “I had the amazing Giorno to cover for me though, so I wasn’t that worried!” He finished with a wink towards the younger boy. And something in that made Giorno’s heart beat faster. Mista is alive, he’s still with him. A feeling of relief washed over Giorno, and he released the breath that he’d been holding in.

Giorno sighed, he could almost cry. Remembering the sight of Mista’s body filled with bullets and then seeing him here, laughing and joking like everything was fine. Giorno’s heart clenched. Without saying anything, Giorno layed his head on Mista’s shoulder, close to his heart, and listened to the sound of the blood flowing through his body. Mista was left wide-eyed, but laid his hand on top of Giorno’s, who was clenching his fists. Soon as he did, Mista felt him relax against him.

They sat like that in silence for a few minutes, just breathing in each other’s presence. Mista was caught completely off guard by this, he didn’t know that his actions would affect Giorno like this. Perhaps they’d gotten closer than he’d thought in the short time span that they’d known each other.

“I meant what I said, though,” Mista whispered, “as long as I have you with me, I know everything will be just fine...”

________________________________________________________________

Staring at Abbaccio’s corpse, Mista waited for some sign of life from his comrade. Giorno couldn’t heal him... He was just... Gone. There was nothing they could do. Mista’s head was racing at a million miles an hour but none of his thoughts formed anything coherent.

How did this even happen? They were gone for a minute. Why did this happen? With every blink Mista expected to see Abbaccio in a different position than he was. But Abbaccio never moved. He didn’t even blink.

“WE’RE NOT JUST GONNA LEAVE HIM HERE, RIGHT?!” Narancia yelled. Mista wanted to agree with him. Watching Bucciarati walking away from their teammate - no, their friend - he understood Narancia’s anger. But he knew there was nothing they could do. Bucciarati was probably hurting more than any of them were.

Clenching his fists, he ripped his eyes off of Abbaccio’s corpse and followed Bucciarati. They all knew the risks of this mission. They had no choice but to continue.

Back inside the turtle, the gang continued on with their mission. It would take some time to get to Rome, so Bucciarati volunteered to keep watch outside the turtle while the rest of them got some rest. Inside, Narancia had passed out on in an uncomfortable position on the couch and Trish had curled up on the floor, eventually drifting to sleep.

Mista couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep. After seeing Abbaccio like that, he was wondering about his other comrades, he didn’t think he could keep his sanity if he had to see that again.

Mista was so lost in his thoughts he failed to notice that Giorno had placed himself next to him, “you shouldn’t think about useless things, Mista,” he said.

Slightly startled, his first instinct was to go on the defensive, “I’m not thinking about anything...!”

Giorno just stared at him blankly, although, Mista detected a faint hint of sympathy.

“Uh, well, I guess I am just overthinking...” He admitted. “I mean, Abbaccio died without anyone even noticing... So, I can’t help but think... That could have been any of us. If our enemy is that powerful... How many more of us are gonna die? Are we even... gonna be able to defeat him at all-”

“That’s useless, Mista,” Giorno stated firmly, “what you’re thinking about is useless. It’ll only distract you when we’re in battle.”

“Y-you’re right...” There was a slight twinge of shame inside Mista for having to be told off by someone younger than him for the second time now, “still, after everything we’ve been through, we all could have died so many times...” He adjusted his position slightly to face Giorno and then cupped both his hand inside his palms, “you amputated your own arms, for God’s sake, and... I almost died too! I just...” His tone was all over the place. Even now, he hadn’t fully grasped the concept of what it means to die. “I really don’t want to lose anyone else...” He said.

Giorno knew how hard this must be for the him, he’d just lost one of his closest friends, they must’ve been like family, and with barely any time to properly grieve, they were going head-first into a much more dangerous battle. He didn’t know what to do or say. This is the first time he’d gotten this close to someone to consider them a friend and, frankly, he didn’t want to lose anyone either. After everything they’ve been through, Giorno felt a sense of fondness towards the gang members.

“We’re right here, Mista,” he decided was appropriate, and leaned in to touch his forehead to Mista, “I’m not going anywhere, either.”

Mista’s hold on Giorno’s hands tightened. The look in Giorno’s eyes was so tender and soft, something Mista hadn’t seen in such a long time. Something snapped inside Mista, and he could no longer hold back his tears. Giorno didn’t know what to do as Mista sobbed into his shoulder. He just let Mista let all his grief out, if he could help Mista in any way, he would. This is his way of showing Mista just how thankful he was for him. Thanks to Mista, Giorno felt so much less of a burden to himself and others, he realized that everything he’d thought he knew as a child about himself was so much farther than the truth.

Giorno’s chest ached seeing Mista like this. He wished he could take his pain away, just as Mista had freed him from his. He let Mista cry into him as long as he needed.

Even after Mista had calmed down, he didn’t move from his position. The way Giorno was leaning forward had exposed his star-shaped birthmark. Mista stared at it for a while, admiring how it seemed to glimmer despite the darkness in the room. He wondered where they would be without Giorno. He would certainly be dead, they probably all would be; with how many fatal wounds he’d healed for them.

Mista couldn’t really face Giorno right now. He liked the position they were in particularly because Giorno couldn’t see Mista’s puffy nose or blood-shot eyes, nor the snot that threatened to drip out of his nose. He’d always showed himself as this strong and care-fee guy; so breaking down in his teammates arms like that felt almost humiliating - or at least, it would be if this was anyone else but Giorno. Still, he didn’t want Giorno to see him in this state. So, as a thank you, Mista had placed the lightest peck right onto Giorno’s star-shaped birthmark. Giorno physically tensed up, and he blushed all the way to his ears. Giorno, being who he was and having absolutely no social skills, he couldn’t understand why.

“M-Mista-” He’d began to protest. “This is how I’m saying thank you, dumbass,” Mista answered, and intertwined their fingers, just for emphasis. “Why...” Giorno asked, what was there to thank him for?

“Because you’re here.”

________________________________________________________________

Mista was the first one kiss Giorno’s hand after he’d taken over the organization. He experienced Giorno’s skill first-hand, there was no one better he could think to take over the organization. He was a simple man, he followed orders and was stupidly honest. That’s why he swore his loyalty to Giorno.

When the pair had finally gained some privacy, Mista immediately slumped his shoulders, no longer needing to impress his higher-ups or assert dominance to his subordinates. Though, he was still restless. He’d been like that all day, in fact. Being around all the other gang members, meeting new ones, and receiving hunderds of condolences from them, he, naturally, couldn’t stop thinking about finding his comrade’s corpses, the sight and smell of their blood...

Giorno merely stared at Mista as he paced around the room. No doubt he was stressed right now. Everything that he was used to was changing. Nothing was simple anymore.

But everything was over now. Things would get better... Right? Giorno wasn’t sure- No! He shouldn’t be thinking like this. Abbaccio, Narancia, and Bucciarati had sacrificed their lives for this. ‘Thinking like that is useless.’ He told himself.

He had no idea what was going through Mista’s head right now, and he wasn’t sure how to ask. Giorno had inhaled, preparing to say something before Mista approached him and grabbed both his hands, “Giorno!” He yelled, “you’re still here!”

Their faces were mere centimeters apart, Mista was blinking at him, like he was waiting a response, “that’s right...”

“And you’re not going anywhere!”

“No, I’m not.”

Mista touched their foreheads together, just like they did back inside the turtle, and he smiled, “and as long as you’re with me... Everything’s gonna be alright!”

Giorno blinked. That’s what he said back then, too, and he didn’t exactly classify what had happened as ‘alright’. But, as he was being held by Mista, and seeing Mista’s unwavering smile, he just couldn’t bring himself to disagree.

“As long as I’m here,” Giorno started, lifting his hands from Mista’s grip to cup his face, “everything will be alright,” he whispered into the taller man’s mouth. Giorno also wanted to protect Mista with everything he had.

They were so close to each other... It seemed like they were slowly inching closer until the gap between them finally closed. All of their pent-up desire for each other, the feelings that Giorno had absolutely refused to acknowledge, they were all reaching their climax. They pulled away after a few seconds, before Mista swiftly closed the space between them again, and then proceeding to pull at Giorno’s bottom lip with his teeth, and placed his hands on Giorno’s hips to hold him closer.

Giorno gasped and grabbed onto Mista’s collar for support. His head seemed to be completely taken over by Mista. His scent, the way he tasted, the way his hands felt on his hips, Mista, Mista, Mista. All these new emotions he was feeling made his head spin in the most euphoric way.

Mista took advantage of Giorno’s open mouth and shoved his tounge inside his it. Giorno definitely wasn’t expecting this to heat up so quickly, and he definitely wasn’t expecting to feel Mista’s tongue inside his mouth. Giorno was losing control of himself, he moaned into Mista’s mouth, completely overwhelmed by just making out with him.

Giorno was almost completely leaning on Mista for support, his legs were about to give way any second . When they pulled away for oxygen, Giorno let out a desperate, “M-Mis...ta..” His face was entirely coated with a glowing shade of red, his eyes heavy-lidded, with Mista’s name on his lips. Mista’s lower half twitched at the sight, already addicted to it.

He did have to admit, he felt slightly weird doing this so soon after his friends’ deaths, but with Giorno being the most important thing to him right now, he wanted to feel him in every way to convince himself he was still here. He needed to feel his heartbeat, feel the warmth of his breath, feel the movement of his tongue inside his mouth, feel him moaning into his mouth... He needed to be able to feel that Giorno was alive.

Mista hugged him tight, just taking in Giorno’s presence, “you’re still here...” He whispered into Giorno’s neck, who barely had it in him to point out how, of course he’s still here, where else would he be? So, instead, he simply whispered a quiet, “I’m not going anywhere.”

________________________________________________________________

A/N: ASDKJSFHLSK OMG OMG OKAY IK THIS IS KINDA ALL OVER THE PLACE BUT I WROTE THIS OVER THE SPAN OF LIKE THREE DAYS AND I HAD THIS HUGE ESSAY DUE SO I WAS LIKE WRITING THIS AND MY ESSAY AT THE SAME TIME IT WAS SO CHAOTIC AND MY EMOTIONS WERE ALL OVER THE PLACE

ANYWAY IF YOU READ THIS FAR I RLY HOPE YOU ENJOYED TY FOR READING PLEASE LEAVE ANY FEEDBACK YOU HAVE!!!! I proofread it like six million times but if there are any mistakes I’m sorry!!! Pls lmk so I can fix them :3.

#giomis #jojos part 5 #jjba #golden wind #giomis angst #giomis fluff #jjba fluff #jjba angst #giomis is cannon araki told me himself

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callmeblake · 5 years ago

Photo

Frank Iero, New York, NY, June 2019 (X)

Aug 29, 2019, 09:10am

Frank Iero May Just Be His Own Puppet Master

Photo Credit: Audrey Lew

Interview below the cut

Derek Scancarelli

Contributor

Hollywood & Entertainment

I am a music journalist living in New York City.

Frank Iero is breathing deeply and fighting off nausea. This isn’t uncommon for the 37-year-old guitarist and vocalist, given his predilection for debilitating anxiety. But on this occasion, it isn’t pre-show jitters.

“Oh my god, I hate this f*cking boat,” Iero says, as the docked vessel on which he sits knocks against a pier in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Iero and his band, The Future Violents, just finished an intimate Saturday matinee show as fans sweat, sang and caught a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

It had been about 16 years since Iero and his now defunct band, My Chemical Romance (the band broke up in 2013), first performed on water. In July of 2002, the band released its debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. In October of 2003, the soon-to-be emo heroes performed alongside New York Hardcore legends Sick Of It All at an aquatic gig booked by New Jersey college radio station WSOU. And in June of 2004, My Chemical Romance released Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, the band’s platinum-selling breakthrough record. In a matter of two years, Iero’s life changed dramatically.

In 2019, Iero still hasn’t found his sea legs, but a lot more has changed. He’s fathered three children, released three full-length solo records (including 2019’s Barriers), and survived a near-death experience. And as he gets older, he finds truth in life’s greatest clichés.

“Time flies, it just screams by,” Iero says. “You think you’re appreciating the time, but it’s easy to take it for granted. It’s a shame.”

But Iero is trying his hardest to pay attention to the little things, especially when it comes to family. He and his wife, Jamia, have three children together: nine-year-old twin daughters, Cherry and Lily, and a seven-year-old son named Miles.

“It’s wonderful to see them evolve and come into their own,” Iero says. “But it’s funny how personalities are innate. We shape the way they experience things or teach them the ropes, but for the most part, I’ve found that we are who we are when we’re born.”

From the start, Iero has seen an even split in the twins’ personalities. Cherry, he says, most behaves like her mother, whereas Lily possesses her father’s attitude.

“Some of the sh*t I hear coming out of my daughter's mouth,” Iero says laughing. “My God! It’s stuff I think but never say — they don't know to be ashamed yet! It's amazing and honest and pure. And I know exactly where she's coming from because I feel the same way.”

As part of fostering a relationship of trust and honesty, Iero has been age-appropriately transparent with his kids about the 2016 accident that almost killed him, his brother-in-law and guitarist Evan Nestor and his manager Paul Clegg.

While unloading gear from their van in Sydney, Australia, a city bus crashed into the group and their vehicle. In a 2017 interview with MTV, Iero recounted, in vivid detail, the moment he was dragged underneath the bumper of the bus, the screams of his brother-in-law, and the blood pooling from his manager.

Although Iero was able to walk into an ambulance carrying one of his friends, the scene was a spectacle overrun with emergency personnel — they even landed a rescue helicopter in nearby Hyde Park. Despite serious injuries, amazingly, there were no fatalities.

When Iero returned home from the hospital, he explained to his children that he was in a car accident, but that it was a singular freak incident.

“You don't want to lie,” he says. “They're getting older. Their friends and their parents are on the internet. They're asking questions. It does get back to them.”

Iero was as honest as possible, but avoided any gory details. He was also conscious that it wouldn’t be long before he would travel for work again — and he didn’t want to scare his kids any further.

Almost four years later, residual damage from the crash is impossible to ignore. Nestor has nerve damage in his leg that may never be corrected. Clegg’s leg and knee have undergone multiple surgeries, but are in poor shape. And Iero still has a tear in his shoulder that hurts every time he plays the guitar. Despite the pain, he’s afraid to undergo surgery.

“I was lucky enough to walk away and still play,” Iero says. “If I were to test fate again and go under the knife, if something were to go wrong… to let that be taken from me … no, I can't.”

On some days, the emotional toll of surviving such a traumatic accident weighs more heavily. Iero describes his recovery as non-linear: some days he feels collected and in control, other days the memory rushes back into his mind.

After his new band finished recording Barriers, Iero and his team went back to Australia for appointments pertaining to the accident and corresponding litigation. As soon as he exited the plane, Iero felt like he’d returned to the horrific scene. For the following week, he was barraged by an unending state of panic.

“You go through these instances of PTSD,” he says. “You never know what's going to trigger and send you all the way back to the beginning with recovery.”

Iero greatly underestimated how difficult his return to Australia would be. When navigating to a doctor’s office near where the accident occurred, he couldn’t bring himself to walk down the street. And suddenly, he felt surrounded by buses.

“I don't know if this is true,” he says. “But it felt like every other car on the street was one of these f*cking buses. They were everywhere. It was frightening. I couldn't do anything. I was shaking like a leaf.”

Despite the traumatic flashbacks, Iero continues to reflect on that day. In the promotional run for Barriers, he discussed the accident at length. And on the record itself, he addresses the complicated ripple effect it’s had on his entire sense of self.

“I don't think it needs to define me,” Iero says. “But it was something I needed to talk about on this record. It's not something I could sweep under the rug. But do I want to dwell on it every day and relive it? No. But I think about it constantly. I feel the pain constantly. It's on my mind.”

In recent interviews, Iero has tended to frame a few philosophical takeaways from his ordeal. In simple terms, the first idea is that he’s found a new lease on life — that everything happens for a reason and he’s been given an opportunity to seize the day. The second philosophy is much darker, a sort of survivor’s guilt compounded with fear and existential dread. The third and most abstract consideration is closest to Simulation Theory — where Iero has the ability to control his own artificial timeline.

Sometimes, Iero questions if actually died that day. He wonders: Is this all real?

“It’s hard. No one can tell you what to believe,” he says. “But you come to this realization, ‘Well, this is real to me, the hand I was dealt, so I have to make the best of it!’”

Through the acceptance of uncertainty, Iero surmises that he just may be his own puppet master.

“If this is a figment of my imagination,” Iero says. “If this is all in my head, then I am the master of my own destiny. If I want to do something, I can manufacture it. And if it's not the case, then at least it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe putting positive vibes out into the universe is beneficial. If we didn't make it and we're just going through this weird labyrinth in my mind, I can do anything I want.”

And lately, he’s been doing just that. Call it sorcery or the power of positive thinking, but Iero is motivated. For Barriers, he was able to assemble a dream band, The Future Violents (different lineups of his backing band have previously gone by The Cellabration and The Patience), featuring his brother-in-law Nestor on guitar, Thursday’s Tucker Rule on drums, Murder by Death’s Matt Armstrong on bass, and Kayleigh Goldsworthy on keyboard.

The theme of the album — and his own internal dialogue — mostly relates to tragedy and timing. Did the universe have a course set out for him? Or was he just some random victim?

“The crazy thing is that you didn't do anything wrong,” Iero says of the accident. “Yet, all of this stuff was taken from you and you have to make these decisions. You get angry a lot.”

He continues: “These random, abrupt, violent actions. Do they happen to us? Or for us? I wouldn't have been able to make this record if it didn't happen. And it made me realize a lot of things about myself. Am I happy it happened? No. But I'm happy where I am right now.”

Iero views Barriers as an exercise in vulnerability. If the aftermath of his accident taught him anything, it’s that success was meaningless to his character, but adversity helped him grow. For the first time, addressing childhood trauma helped Iero expose himself in a way that felt freeing.

“When you put something to song, it gives that memory weight,” Iero explains. “If you never talk about it, it's almost like it didn't happen. There's a fine line between relinquishing that power to this memory, situation or trauma, or holding that power over it and creating your own narrative from it.”

Barriers also intertwines Iero’s childhood experiences with his current perspective as a father. This go around, he felt comfortable writing about his parents’ divorce — the couple split when he was three and divorced when he was seven.

He looks back on the unpleasantness of the process and his consequential understanding of his mother’s issues with addiction, depression and mental illness. On his 2016 record, Parachutes, Iero first referenced his mother’s struggles and his own liability to inherit her traits. He’s still horrified by the idea of predeterminism.

“When you're a young kid being surrounded with it, it doesn't feel right,” Iero says. “You're not happy. You're scared. You're constantly concerned for your parent. It’s almost as if you become the caregiver.”

He continues: “Then you see yourself falling into these patterns that you were witness to and maybe in a roundabout way were taught. That addiction, that depression, runs through you. It's easy to fall off that cliff. I don't want that for my kids and I need to stop this cycle. Like this sh*t stops with me. Whether it be I get okay, or I f*cking turn my lights out.”

It’s this sort of tongue-in-cheek use of concerning language that keeps Iero’s fanbase enthralled, yet somewhat on edge. Take for example, in the comment section for his video “Young & Doomed,” some diehard fans are troubled by his repeated use of the words “hurt myself again.” While he’s surprised to hear about the response, he counters that the record is ultimately meant to feel uplifting and positive, even if addressing dark topics.

“I don't think that we should strive for perfection,” Iero says. “This idea that we should all have this perfect life and be pretty and purse our lips to post a picture on social media is bullsh*t. The things that make us unique are important.”

He continues: “Sometimes we're our own worst enemies and we hurt ourselves. Those scars, though, are important. They're beautiful. ‘Young And Doomed’ is a call to arms to celebrate the things people think are wrong with us.”

Now, Iero just hopes his story and music inspire fans to try, fail and try again.

“You don't find out who you are unless you get a scar and get hurt,” Iero says. “You should be hurt, hurt other people, and learn that it feels terrible to hurt someone else. You should feel sorry for it and make amends for it. These are important lessons to be a better person. You find out who you truly are by attacking things that scare you the most.”

Frank Iero is currently touring Europe with Laura Jane Grace & The Devouring Mothers.

#frank iero #august 2019 #forbes #audrey lew #red eagle shirt #all blue #october 2019 #bus crash #navy blue tiger windbreaker

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

Text

The Weekend Warrior 5/7/21: WRATH OF MAN, HERE TODAY, THE UNTHINKABLE, MONSTER, THE WATER MAN and More

It’s a new month, and I guess going by previous years pre-COVID, this weekend would normally be the start of summer. This year, we’re instead getting a summer with a lot of movies that would normally be dumped into April or February or some other uneventful month. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t or won’t be any good movies, but really, there’s nothing that feels like a summer movie until A Quiet Place Part II and Disney’s Cruella open on Memorial Day weekend.

There’s been lots of great developments, though, including the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn reopening this Friday and then in a few short weeks, theaters may be allowed to be open with no capacity rules although social distancing and masks will probably still be in place. Believe me, it’s been a confusing week as the city that got used to being on the backburner when it comes to reopenings, especially with movie theaters, is now dealing with arguing politicians competing to see who could throw open the then most doors fastest. It’s actually pretty embarrassing.

That aside, this week’s The Weekend Warrior column is brought to you by the new album “Coral Island” from Liverpool band The Coral, which I’ve decided to listen to on loop until I finish this column, because it’s taking me so long to get through it. (Eventually, I switched to Teenage Fanclub’s “Endless Arcade,” since I hadn’t had a chance to listen to it yet…. And to an old standby, Royal Blood, with their own excellent new album, “Typhoons.” At least the record business seems to know it’s the summer!)

Before we get to this week’s new movies, a couple tidbits. First of all, I’m thrilled that my friends Larissa Lam and Baldwin Chiu’s documentary FAR EAST DEEP SOUTH can finally be seen by the entire world, or at least the United States. It debuted on PBS World Channel on Tuesday night as part of the “America ReFramed” series, but for the entire month of May until June 3, you can watch it On Demand HERE, and that is huge! (There will be other ways to see it that you can read about here.)

This is an amazing MUST-SEE doc that looks into the little-known Chinese communities that took root in Mississippi in the early 20th Century and how they became such a huge part of that area with their markets, also bonding with the African-American communities that were similarly dealing with racism from the typically white post-Civil War South. It’s not just a history lesson, and it’s an incredibly moving story about a family trying to find its roots in the most unexpected places. There was a good reason why the couple’s short “Finding Cleveland” won the Oxford Film Festival while I was on the jury that year, and Far East Deep South similarly won an award there last year after its World Premiere at Cinequest was almost scuppered by COVID. It’s amazing how much more relevant and important this film has become since I first saw it last year, since both Asians and African-Americans are dealing with serious racial issues, and this movie shows that more than anything, they should be working to boost each other rather than fighting. Do check it out On Demand this month if you get a chance!

Another musician making movies is Mr. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. I mentioned his documentary WHAT DRIVES US last week, but I actually only got to watch it on Thursday, and like his previous film Studio City and HBO mini-series, Sonic Highways, it’s a fantastic look at the music biz, this time through a variety of artists who began their careers by piling into vans and driving around the country. That is, except Lars Ulrich from Metallica, who mentions that the band was never so small or indie that they didn’t have a bus. But Grohl has used his vast connections to bring in a lot of great musicians including The Edge from U2, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more, making this a very entertaining movie both for fans of the various bands but also live music fans in general. I gotta admit that as much as I loved What Drives Us, it did bring me down a bit since it’s been almost 14 months since I’ve seen any live music, and I really miss it. This is now streaming on The Coda Collection, which you can subscribe to through Amazon Prime Video.

Guy Ritchie is back with his latest movie, WRATH OF MAN (Miramax/MGM), which reunites him with Jason Statham for the first time since 2007’s Revolver, I believe. Statham plays the enigmatic Paul “H” Hill who works at cash truck company Fortico, responsible for moving hundreds of million dollars around Los Angeles each week. Fortico has recently been hit by a lethal robbery, and H’s team soon learn that there’s a lot more to their new coworker, who happens to be looking for revenge against the man who murdered his son.

(Unfortunately, reviews for the movie are embargoed until Thursday at 6pm, so I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not. Until Thursday night. Sorry!)

But I will talk about the movie’s box office prospects, because why not? Ritchie’s last movie, The Gentlemen, opened in January 2020, during the “before times,” with $10.6 million, but that was more of a classic Ritchie ensemble crime-comedy. Wrath of Man is more of the type of movie Statham has been making over the past few years, a cross between a revenge thriller and a heist flick. In fact, Statham has done a pretty good job creating his own brand through a variety of action-thrillers as well as a number of franchises including “The Transporter” movies, “The Expendables,” and eventually joining the “Fast and the Furious” franchise as Deckard Shaw with Furious 7 in 2017. Statham then went off to make Hobbs and Shaw with Dwayne Johnson, which didn’t do bad with $174 million. Before that, Statham starred in The Meg, a summer shark attack movie that grossed $145 million. Statham going back to help his old mate i.e. the director that gave Statham his start is pretty huge.

But as I said earlier, those were all in the “before times” and with the box office the way it is, it’s hard to imagine that the exciting reunion of Statham and Ritchie can open with more than $10 million but maybe closer to $8 million, because MGM/UA just doesn’t have the marketing clout of a Warner Bros. or Universal. Even so, that should be enough to be #1 this weekend as both Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer continue to fall away. Unfortunately, if the movie *is* any good -- and I can’t tell you one way or another -- then by the time reviews hit, people will already have other plans for the weekend than to go see the movie. So yeah, that’s pretty dumb on the part of MGM, huh?

UPDATE: MGM is putting the movie into 2,876 theaters and maybe I'm being overly optimistic, because, as you'll read below, the movie IS pretty good and reviews have remained positive with the American reviews rolling in last night, still at 70% Fresh at this writing. Maybe that'll help the movie do a little better, maybe as much as $9 million, although I'll probably owe MGM an apology if it cracks $10 million, and I don't think it will.

Mini-Review: If you’ve seen the trailer for Wrath of Man, you might go into Guy Ritchie’s latest thinking you know what to expect, because it’s sure being sold as another typical Jason Statham revenge thriller. Don’t be fooled by the marketing, the movie really is Ritchie’s chance to make his own version of Heat, an L.A. heist movie that owes as much to Rashomon as another movie being released this week.

Wrath of Man begins with the heist of an armored truck that turns deadly with the wanton murder of a couple guards. From there, you might think we know where things are going when Statham’s “H” company whose truck was hit, and on his first day, he stops a similar heist by killing the truck’s attackers. H is immediately the hero of the company, although he still has quite a few suspicious coworkers and the feeling is quite mutual. Ritchie’s film then slips into the second episodic chapter which goes back five months to that initial heist where we learn that Statham’s son was killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don’t want to go too much deeper into how the movie and story play out, because like The Gentlemen and some of Ritchie’s more intricate films, there’s a lot that purposefully isn’t made very apparent at the beginning. To many, this movie will be seen as even more macho than most of Ritchie's films, to the point where even the only woman guard, Dana, being just as macho as the men. As the movie begins, there’s a lot of joke-cracking and crotch-grabbing, all while Statham’s character silently observes and only acts when necessary.

The film’s shift to more of a classic Ritchie ensemble does slowly take place, but by the third chapter, it shifts to the group perpetrating the cash truck heists with an “inside person,” taking the movie to yet another place that makes it more obvious that this is Ritchie’s attempt at delving into the L.A. heist genre that other filmmakers have done so well.

Oddly, Statham doesn’t have too many lines, acting almost like a Terminator in his determination to right wrongs, but as always, Ritchie puts together a fantastic ensemble cast including a number of great American character actors who we rarely get to see in such great roles. I was particularly impressed with Jeffrey Donovan, who has appeared in a number of otherwise forgettable crime films this past year. The same can be said for Holt McCallany as H’s truck driver “Bullet,” but Ritchie also cast the likes of Josh Hartnett and Scott Eastwood in smaller yet still significant supporting roles, all of whom become more interesting as you start figuring out who all the players are.

Like I said, the movie is fairly macho and the few women play very small roles, but it’s how things are set-up in the first few acts to then change course and build to an absolutely amazing third act that will undoubtedly bear comparisons to Heat. And yet Wrath of Man (which is actually based on a little-seen French crime-thriller) does branch away from some of Ritchie’s standards, first of all by being far darker and even more violent with any of the wisecracking humor that pervades a lot of Ritchie’s work to counterbalance such violence disappearing once the flashbacks begin. It’s all punctuated by a fantastically tense score by Christopher Benstead, which seems a bit much at first but eventually settles into the perfect pace and tone for the action.

Despite disappearing for a good chunk of the movie, Statham is still great, basically killing everyone as his characters are wont to do, but watching how all of the different ideas come together leads to such a satisfying conclusion that one hopes those who might be put off, thinking they know where it's going due to the somewhat pathetic and obvious marketing will give it a chance to see how Ritchie has changed gears as effortlessly as he did with Aladdin a few years back.

Rating: 7.5/10

After even a longer time since he directed a movie, Billy Crystal once again takes the helm for HERE TODAY (Sony/Stage6), a movie in which he plays comedy writer Charlie Burns, whose chance encounter with Tiffany Haddish’s lounge singer, Emma Payge, leads to an unlikely friendship, as he struggles with early stage dementia.

I’ve known about this movie for over a year now, and I was pretty excited to finally get to see it, since I was such a fan of the other movies Crystal has directed, 1992’s Mr. Saturday Night and 1995’s Forget Paris, and it’s just amazing to me that he hasn’t directed a movie since.

At first, it seems like it’s the type of meet-cute we’ve seen so much in Crystal’s past filmography, but his pairing with Haddish isn’t something that might work on paper, but in fact, their comic styles mesh so perfectly together that it’s amazing that no one thought of putting them together before.

Crystal wrote the film with comic Alan Zweibel, who adapted it from his own short story “The Prize,” which refers to Haddish’s character winning Charlie in an auction for a lunch. Actually, her ex won the lunch, and she decided to use it because… free lunch! It’s a pretty simple set-up but one that allows the filmmakers to explore some of the odder things that happen in life.

Much of the movie’s humor plays upon the differences between the two characters, and how unexpected their friendship is. I can totally relate, because I have a lot of good long-time friends who most people might never expect us to be friends, but Crystal, Zweibel and Haddish pick up on that and create a movie that’s very funny but has enough other characters around the duo toa allow their characters to show how they’re just really nice people. We see that with how Charlie takes a young writer at his late night show under his wing or how Emma livens up the bat mitzvah of Charlie’s granddaughter. Oh yeah, and Haddish sings. She actually has a number of great performances in the movie, and seriously, anyone who watches this movie is gonna wanna see a smart filmmaker put Haddish in a musical immediately.

The film also acts as a truly touching tribute to Crystal’s friend, the late Robin WIlliams, who was diagnosed with the exact same type of dementia after his suicide death, and knowing that fact, makes the film even more poignant. More importantly, it doesn’t use Charlie’s condition for laughs, and for that alone, I feel like this is ten times better than that overrated Oscar winner The Father.

Here Today’s biggest problems come in the third act when it feels like the movie is starting to over-extend its welcome, even going into somewhat expected places, but it recovers from that rough third act to land a really nice ending. Crystal has always proven himself to be a really strong mainstream filmmaker (ala Rob Reiner and others) who makes crowd-pleasing movies, and it’s so nice seeing him going behind the camera for a movie that’s obviously very personal but also highly relatable.

As far as box office, I certainly have high hopes that Crystal still has an older audience of fans who might want to see him on the big screen again. I’m just not sure if this will be in more than 1,000 theaters, and though I’ve seen quite a bit of marketing, I just haven’t seen Crystal or Haddish do nearly as much in terms of getting out there that would be necessary to reach an audience that might want to venture out into movie theaters to see the movie vs. waiting until it’s on cable/streaming. There’s also Tiffany Haddish’ fanbase, and there could be some benefit for the movie coming out the same week as her new CBS show “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

I’d love to be optimistic with this making $4 to 5 million but it’s probably more likely to be closer to $3 million especially with capacity limits still in place for most theaters and the audience generally being older.

UPDATE: Maybe I was a little too optimistic, because I enjoyed the movie so much and it will probably be closer to $1 or 1.5 million since other reviews aren't as great.

Next, we have two movies finally being released many years after their festival premieres…

The Swedish apocalyptic thriller THE UNTHINKABLE (Magnet), directed by Victor Danell, is finally being released after playing genre fests in 2018 and 2019. It stars Christoffer Nordenrot as Alex, a young piano virtuoso who ran away from home due to his abusive father Bjorn (Jesper Barkselius). Years later, he returns home for his mother’s funeral after she’s killed in a terrorist attack on Sweden. At the same, there’s a virus that’s erasing people’s memories, but Alex is still in love with Anna (Lisa Henni), the girl he had a crush on when he left, and the three of them will have to help each other face all the horrible things hitting their home at the same time.

As I was watching this movie, a lot of it felt eerily familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. The more I watched it, the more I realized that I actually HAD seen the movie before. Sure enough, I saw this movie over two years ago at the “What the Fest?!” in New York two years ago, and I honestly don’t remember loving it. Still, I decided to give it a fresh look, hoping to get more out of it on second viewing.

Some of the same things bothered me on this second viewing, because it’s really hard to figure out exactly what is going on and whether the horrific events are natural, man-made or a combination of both. For some time, we get so mired into Alex’s lame relationship with Anna, and when he returns home, his conspiracy theory-driven father is busy protecting a bunker that’s being invaded by foreign military troops he thinks are Russians. We cut between these two disparate scenarios while sometimes returning to the capital of Sweden and throwing in a few big set pieces. It’s so disjointed that you feel like you’re watching a lot of random unrelated events, maybe a bit like last week’s About Endlessness -- maybe it’s a Swedish thing?

There are aspects of The Unthinkable that are quite commendable, particularly those action moments and how the mystery about what is happening develops as the film goes along. Eventually, the film does find a more consistent pace, and things start becoming a little clearer, which makes the final act better than much of what we’ve watched earlier. Even so, it’s still quite annoying how long it takes to figure out what’s going on, even on a second viewing, and for most people, that may already be far too frustrating to get through it.

Hitting Netflix on Friday over THREE years after it premiered at Sundance is music video director Anthony Mandler’s directorial debut, MONSTER (Netflix), based on the novel by Walter Dean Myers. It stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves) as Steve Harmon, a 17-year-old film student put in jail, accused of murder in a bodega robbery. His defense lawyer (Jennifer Ehle) is trying to help him be released, but he’s fighting against the odds of a judicial system that sees him as a “monster” because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have to be honest that I did go to see this at Sundance the week it premiered, and for whatever reason, I just wasn’t feeling it, so I only really caught about twenty minutes of it. Watching it now with more time and a little less weary than I usually am towards the end of Sundance, I was able to appreciate Monster more for what it is. On the surface, it’s just about Steve’s case and how what really happened unfolds before our eyes and we learn more about those around Steve and how their influence may have pulled a smart and studious young man into the criminal world that now has him in prison with much more violent life-long criminals.

We already knew that Harrison was a great actor, but Monster shows us that he was already on his way to greatness with this movie that for whatever reason got buried even as it dealt with issues that have been in the headlines almost every day since this debuted.

Mandler takes an interesting approach, both non-linear and also with blatant nods to Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which is even cited by Steve’s teacher, played by Tim Blake Nelson. Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson are decent as Steve’s parents, but they’re generally smaller and non-showy roles compared to the moments between Harrison and Ehle. Much of the film takes place in the courtroom with flashbacks showing what happened through the viewpoint of whomever is on the stand, which eventually includes Steve himself.

The way Mandler handles the material may lean more on the artiness rather than something more mainstream -- Michael B. Jordan’s Just Mercy comes to mind -- but it’s just as powerful in showing how someone like Steve can be othered by society into being a criminal. Sure, there have been other handlings of this sort of material that I thought were better films, but if you know anyone who has ever had dealings with the “justice” system and know how unfair and horrible it can be even to the innocent, then Monster will certainly strike a chord.

Also hitting Netflix this week is the new series based on Mark Millar and Frank Quitely‘s comic books, JUPITER’S LEGACY (Netflix), another kind of twist on the superhero genre ala Amazon Prime Video’s series based on Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s The Boys. I love the comics, and I can’t wait to finally get around to seeing Netflix’s first adaptation of a Millarworld property.

David Oyelowo makes his directorial debut with THE WATER MAN (RLJEfilms), a movie about a young boy named Gunner Boon (Lonnie Chavis), whose mother (Rosario Dawson) is battling leukemia. In an effort to cure her, Guner goes off on a journey along with a teenage girl named Jo (Amiah Miller) to find the mythical Water Man, who can provide them with a magic token that might save Gunner’s mother’s life.

I’ve interviewed Oyelowo a few times before, and I really like him a lot, so I had really high hopes for him as a director since I feel he’s just a terrific actor. Unfortunately, the material here is just not strong enough that I think even a far more experienced filmmaker could make something out of it.

Set in PIne Hills, we meet Gunner, a bright kid who loves drawing comic books, but he has trouble connecting with his father (Oyelowo), so when he has an idea that might help his sick mother, he goes off with a head-strong teen named Jo, in search of the Water Man, a summertime adventure permeated by a lot of very bad low-budget visual effects.

Honestly, I’m not even sure where to begin with where The Water Man falters, because Oyelowo has such a great cast, including Alfred Molina and Maria Bello in tiny parts. The story is a problem, as is the writing, which is just so bland and dull, that there’s really nothing in Oyelowo’s direction or any of the performances that really can salvage it. Neither of the child actors have much charisma or personality, and even Dawson’s performance, which would normally be a showstopper is repeatedly lessened by the constant cutting back to the kids. (And as someone who beat leukemia myself, I’m never a fan when cancer is depicted in movies as a death sentence rather than just another hurdle in life that needs to be overcome.)

Oyelowo himself may be one of his generation’s best actors, but he brings so little to the role of Gunner’s father, maybe to not take away from his younger star, but it hurts that he doesn’t do more to create a stronger conflict by making the character more horrible to drive Gunner away. The actual Water Man doesn’t improve things when he finally shows up, essentially talking like a pirate but not even remotely paying off.

Honestly, The Water Man seems like such a misguided venture -- Exec. Produced by Oprah, no less -- and it might have been totally forgettable if the characters didn’t keep saying the title of the movie every five minutes.

Hitting theaters Friday after a festival run is Tran Quoc Bao’s action-comedy THE PAPER TIGERS (WELL GO USA), starring ALain Uy, Ron Yuan and Mikel Shannon Jenkins as martial artists once known as “the three tigers but now middle-aged men must set aside old grudges and dad duties to avenge the murder of their teacher. I’ve had a screener of this since last summer when it played at Fantasia Festival in Montreal, and I just never got around to watching it, but if I’m able to squeeze it in before the weekend, check back here for my review.

Streaming on Shudder this Friday is Ryan Kruger's South African comedy-thriller FRIED BARRY (Shudder), starring Gary Green as Barry, a violent street junkie who is abducted by aliens who take over his body in order to… well, actually… they do a lot of drugs, have a lot of sex and other craziness. It’s a pretty strange and bizarre movie that reminds me a little of movies like a lower-fi Under the Skin or Beyond the Black Rainbow, and much of it is driven by the insane and unique performance by Green and the odd characters he encounters that I think will find its fans for sure, but it will definitely be for a very select audience of genre festival fans, as this is by no means a mainstream genre film.

Speaking of which, another movie out this week which I wasn’t allowed to see in advance is Gia Coppola’s MAINSTREAM (IFC Films), starring Maya Hawke as a young woman seeking internet stardom by making YouTube videos with a charismatic stranger, played by Andrew Garfield, until “the dark side of viral celebrity threatens to ruin them both.” Yup, it’s one of THOSE movies. It also stars Nat Wolff, Jason Schwartzman and Johnny Knoxville, but I haven’t heard anything good about it, and I’m not sure my curiosity is piqued enough to spend any of my own personal money to check it out.

Hitting Amazon on Friday is the doc THE BOY FROM MEDELLIN (Amazon) from Matthew Heineman (City of Ghosts, Cartel Land), a portrait of musical superstar J. Balvin, as he prepares for a massive sold-out stadium show in his hometown of Medellin, Colombia, which is hindered by the growing civil unrest in the area.

Lots of other movies this week, but a few that i just wasn’t able to get to this week, including:

ABOVE SUSPICION (Lionsgate) INITIATION (Saban Films) ENFANT TERRIBLE (Dark Star Pictures) QUEEN MARIE (Samuel Goldwyn Films) SILO (Oscilloscope) CITIZEN PENN (Discovery+)

That’s it for this week. Next week, Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson star in SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW (Lionsgate) and Angelina Jolie returns for the thriller THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (New Line) and Timur Bekmambetov’s thriller, PROFILE (Focus Features). That’s right. This will be the first weekend in over a year where we’ll have three or maybe even four new wide releases.

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #WrathOfMan #HereToday #Monster #The Unthinkable #TheWaterMan

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remywrites5 · 5 years ago

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Please please please more spider-man/deadpool fluff!!!! That fake-ex thing you posted was *chefs kiss*

Thank you! This was actually inspired by a post I saw of Tom Holland talking about having to wear thongs under his suit. I was like man Wade would lose his shit if he knew about that.

***

Wade Wilson was bored. He was between movies, and he’d just been sold to Disney, so he didn’t have a lot going on. So Wade decided to do what he always did when he was bored – bother Spider-man.

He snuck into Peter Parker’s apartment through the window and began going through his stuff. It seemed like Spidey wasn’t home but Wade wasn’t exactly in a hurry. Besides, it gave him some time to snoop on Spidey and that was just delicious.

He made himself a hot pocket from Peter’s freezer and walked around while he ate it, taking everything in. Whitey was mentioning that maybe Peter would see this as a huge breach of Spider-man’s trust after Peter went and revealed his secret identity to Wade. Wade promptly ignored him as he took a bite out of his hot pocket, some of the contents spilling out onto his suit. “Fuck,” he said, grabbing a paper towel and wiping it off.

He found an old photo album Peter had and sat down on the sofa to peruse it. He cooed at pictures of a baby Peter, giggled at pictures of teenage Peter, and swooned at pictures of Peter now. Man, did Wade have it bad. He also got his first glimpse of the illustrious Uncle Ben, knowing all about Peter’s backstory.

He flipped the book closed and left it on the couch as he went into Peter’s bedroom. If Wade hadn’t already been aware that Peter was a massive dork, he certainly got that impression from Peter’s room. He had a periodic table on the wall, a bunch of Star wars shit, and even a microscope. Everything about Peter’s room screamed nerd.

Wade went over to the dresser and began rifling through it. He slid open the underwear drawer and smiled to himself. He pushed aside a few pairs of boxers and his eyes widened in shock when it landed on a few very thin strips of fabric. He lifted one up and held it between his fingers, stretching it between them to get the full view. “This is the greatest day of my life,” he said, staring at the thong.

“Wade? What the fuck are you doing here?”

Wade hadn’t even heard Peter come in. He spun around with the underwear still in his hands.

“Oh my god,” Peter said, turning almost as red as Wade’s suit.

“You wear thongs?”

Peter sputtered for a moment. “I – It’s my suit… it’s very tight and – you know – can be very revealing.”

Wade cocked his head to the side and watched Peter have a tiny meltdown. “I always wondered why your ass was super jiggly.”

Peter buried his face in his hands. “Oh my god, can we not – “

“But talking about your ass is one of my top three favorite subjects of conversation, baby boy.”

“Wade…” Peter pushed his fingers up into his hair and took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm down. He was still a bit red though. “Why are you in my apartment?”

Wade shrugged. “I was bored. I thought I’d come see you but you weren’t home.”

Wade flipped open one of his pouches on his suit and as stealthily as he could pushed the thong into it.

“Please don’t make a habit of breaking into my place,” Peter said with a heavy sigh. He walked over and opened the same pouch Wade had just stuffed the underwear into. Taking it back, he slipped it into his own pocket. Apparently Wade hadn’t been quite as sneaky as he had hoped. “That is absolutely the last thing I need.”

“Fine, baby boy, I’ll keep the B&Es to a minimum.”

“Thank you.”

***

Wade was so distracted the next time he went out on patrol with Peter that he got himself killed. They had been in the middle of stopping a robbery with two guys who had knocked over an ATM. It was just a tiny little killing of getting shot in the head but Peter was very unhappy with him. In Wade’s defense, it was absolutely not his fault. He couldn’t stop looking at Peter’s ass and imagining what he was wearing underneath. Especially now that he’d seen it.

He woke up back in Peter’s apartment after his brain stitched itself back together. Peter was in the kitchen back in his civvies and looking extremely annoyed. “Back with us then, Wade?”

Wade groaned and sat up, rubbing the side of the head where the bullet had been. “How long was I dead?”

“A couple of hours,” Peter responded, bringing Wade a beer even though he looked pissed as hell.

“Problem, baby?”

Peter’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Of all the idiotic ways to get yourself killed,” he said, his hands curling into fists.

“I heal up fine, Petey, there was no reason to be concerned,” Wade said, rolling his mask up and taking a swig from the beer. “Thanks for dragging my sorry ass out of the alley though. Waking up in alleys isn’t my favorite.”

“Wade, I swear to God – “

“What’s got you so upset, Petey?” Wade asked, unsure why Peter cared that Wade had kicked the bucket. “I always bounce back.”

“That’s not the point!” Peter shouted, grabbing Wade and hauling him up to his feet. Wade was so surprised that he dropped his beer and it began spilling over the carpet. “Do you think I like watching people get shot in front of me and being unable to stop it?”

Suddenly it all made a lot more sense. Uncle Ben had been shot by a mugger. Probably brought up some painful memories for Peter and then Wade had gone and practically done a reenactment for him. Shit.

“I’m sorry,” Wade said sincerely. “I didn’t think – I didn’t mean to – “

“Yeah, well you did,” Peter said, releasing Wade and shoving him away.

“I didn’t know you cared so much about me, baby boy,” Wade said, chewing on his bottom lip. “I would have thought you’d be glad to be rid of me.”

Peter worked his jaw for a moment, his eyes hard, and Wade knew instantly he’d said the wrong thing. “I don’t want people to die, Wade. Yeah, you drive me crazy some times but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

“So you do…care?”

Peter sighed heavily and scrubbed his hand down his face. “Look, I’m kind of wrecked right now. You can stay or not but I need to crash. We can talk about this some other time when I feel a little more ready to answer that.”

Wade nodded and mimed zipping his lips. Peter immediately went into his bedroom and shut the door. Wade sat in the living room and debated between staying or getting out of Spidey’s hair. Eventually he finished his beer and decided it’d be better for Peter if he made himself scarce.

He stopped to steal a thong from Peter’s underwear drawer because – well – he couldn’t help himself.

***

Wade took a job in Barbados and didn’t see Peter for a month. He felt like he owed Peter some peace and quiet after their last run-in. It hadn’t exactly been a successful team up and Wade didn’t want Peter to hate him.

It was his first time back in New York since his hiatus and he was looking for a little action. The job in Barbados had been a lot of surveillance and very little un-aliving people so Wade felt a little restless. He wanted to beat up some baddies and maybe if they were bad enough give them the old katana through the neck.

He was on the rooftop waiting for any signs of commotion or distress when he heard the unmistakable noise of web shooters. He turned around just in time to see Peter land on the roof behind him.

“Where have you been?” Peter asked accusingly.

“Took a job in the Caribbean, you know, have to work on my tan for summer,” Wade quipped, trying to play off how awkward he felt.

“Oh,” Peter said, rubbing the back of his masked head. “You didn’t mention anything about it the last time we spoke. I thought maybe you were avoiding me.”

“I was, a little bit,” Wade said, shuffling his feet. Fuck but this was uncomfortable. The last time they had talked it had been some heavy shit.

“So are you going to give them back or am I going to have to take them by force?” Peter asked, clearly grinning by the stretch of his mask.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Petey.”

“Mmhmm, sure you don’t,” Peter said, walking towards Wade. “I guess force it is then.”

“I don’t have them on me, baby boy.”

“Oh but you do have them,” Peter said, confirming his suspicions. Shit, Wade had said too much. “I guess I’ll just have to break into your place and take them back.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Wade insisted, taking a step back when Spidey got too close. “You’re a good guy.”

“You broke into my place,” Peter reminded him, closing the distance between them again. “I think it’s only fair.”

“Spidey, you woudn’t steal.”

Peter pulled his mask off. “Well considering they were mine to begin with, it’s more like reclaiming.”

“I could buy you a new thong, a better thong,” Wade offered, wondering why Peter kept getting so fucking close to him.

“I don’t need you to buy me underwear, Wade.”

“Maybe I want to,” Wade shot back.

“I missed you,” Peter said, reaching up and beginning to roll up Wade’s mask until Wade’s mouth and nose were revealed. “I’ve thought about you a lot over the past month.”

“Okay, who are you and what have you done with Spidey? Are you an evil clone? An alternate dimension Spidey who lost his marbles?” Wade asked, hating that his fucked up skin was partially on display. He desperately wanted to cover himself back up but Peter must have rolled his mask up for a reason. Besides, Peter had seen him without the mask before. It didn’t mean Wade didn’t feel better with it on, though. “Touched any black goo lately?”

Peter laughed and shook his head. “Nope, I’m just me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “You asked me a month ago if I cared about you,” he said, reaching up and touching Wade’s cheek. “I’ve had an entire month to think about it and I’ve decided the answer is yes. I care about you a whole fucking lot.”

“Petey…”

“Wade, for once in your life shut up,” Peter said, closing the gap between them and pressing his lips against Wade’s. Wade couldn’t help the little surprised noise that escaped from his lips.

He wrapped his arms around Peter and held him close just in case Peter ended up changing his mind. If this was all Wade was getting, he was going to make the most of it. He slid his hands down and gripped Peter’s ass.

Peter chuckled and broke the kiss. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly. “And you better not be planning on going anywhere either.”

“Are you sure about this, Petey?” Wade asked, still slightly awed that Spider-man was willingly kissing him. “You’ve seen what I’m like when you let me in just a little bit. If you give me more I’m just going to keep taking it.”

Peter smiled and wrapped his arms around Wade’s neck, pressing in closer to him until they were touching in all the right places. “Then take it.”

Wade didn’t need to be told twice. He captured Peter’s lips and proceeded to take and take and take.

#spideypool #i write things #peter parker x wade wilson #fluff #violence tw #long post #anon prompt #slight angst #character death #but it's Deadpool so he lives

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monstermashdefunct · 4 years ago

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all the multiples of 5 from the song asks!

thank you so much thats so many. here we go

5. a song you can relate to - haunted house by sir babygirl. literally one of the songs of all time. actually u know what the entirety of crush on me (2019) makes me say meme voice wow they are literally me. but literally LITERALLLLYYYYY haunted house

10. a song that makes you feel young - well i usually feel approximately a billion years old despite being the youngest person alive but um. lets go with a song ~from my childhood~ and say one step beyond by madness because it was my absolute favorite song for like the entirety of my early childhood. imagine spending 9 months gestating a child just for its favorite bands at age 6 to be madness and my chemical romance

15. a song to listen to on rainy days - the ENTIRETY of the first released album by american rock band my chemical romance, ‘i brought you my bullets you brought me your love’ (2002). uhhh also desert song on a loop amiright ladies and theys. we havent gotten any good ol fashioned Weather Events in a few months (other than like one snowstorm the other night) and im MISERABLE i want it to rain and i want to sit on my front porch at 5am

20. your favorite song from a musical - so im not the biggest musical person because my entire moms side of the family is just a long line of theater kids (like legit great grand parents OWNED a theater level of theater kids) and so i wasnt one out of spite. that being said. there are worse things i could do from grease. take me or leave me from rent (which is the song that unfortunately i based my entire conceptualization of Romance off of and so i will never date). uhh i like the first half of les mis but i hate the second half because i hate young people i only like hearing about old mens problems. i like most of cabaret and chicago. i used to be genuinely obsessed with the gaston song. also i know l*n m*nuel m*randa is cancelled six ways to sunday but breathe from in the heights is one of my all time breakdown songs. anyway i just said i wasnt a theater kid and didnt like muscials and then proved myself to be such a huge liar what EVERRRR

25. your favorite love song - ezra furman love you so bad but that ones sad. uhh charlie burg instead of my room. sir babygirl pink lite . READ MY MIND BY THE KILLERS. magnetic fields book of love

30. a song with really good lyrics - heels by sir babygirl!!! jesus christ. hang em high by mcr fucking Obviously the angels just cut out her tongue call her black mariah would i lie to you that girls not right in the brain.

35. a song that motivates you - this question is weird and i dont know how to answer it but any time i need to stop being a piece of shit and start Doing whatever i need to be doing i listen to 20th century boy by placebo on a loop

40. your favorite song in a language different from your native one - ive been listening to sooooo much glukoza lately. i was also very into rammstein as a child and im reliving that era of my life lately. uhh gott ist ein popstar by oomph

#julez.txt #Anonymous #long post

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webbergirl · 5 years ago

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A First Look at Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story

The director talks about reimagining the musical that riveted him as a child.

Steven Spielberg has been making West Side Story in his head for a very long time. As a boy in Phoenix in the late 1950s, he had only the soundtrack, and he tried to picture the action and dancing that might accompany it. “My mom was a classical pianist,” says the filmmaker. “Our entire home was festooned with classical musical albums, and I grew up surrounded by classical music. West Side Story was actually the first piece of popular music our family ever allowed into the home. I absconded with it—this was the cast album from the 1957 Broadway musical—and just fell completely in love with it as a kid. West Side Story has been that one haunting temptation that I have finally given in to.”

The film, out December 18, is both a romance and a crime story. It’s about dreams crashing into reality, young people singing about the promise of their lives ahead—then cutting each other down in bursts of violence. It’s about hope and desperation, pride and actual prejudice, and a star-crossed couple who find love amid it all on the streets of New York.

West Side Story became a global sensation when it hit Broadway in 1957, with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim that made generations swoon, snap, and gasp. The show was both dazzling and gritty, layering a Romeo and Juliet romance between Tony and Maria over a contemporary story of street gangs, racism, and violence in the shadows of rising skyscrapers. When director Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins adapted it into a film in 1961, West Side Story broke the box office record for musicals and dominated the Oscars, winning 10 awards, including best picture. Six decades later, the stage show has toured the world and been revived repeatedly. (A new production, directed by Ivo van Hove, opened on Broadway in February.) Of course, it’s also so commonly performed at high schools and community theaters that if you haven’t seen it, it’s probably because you were in it.

Threaded throughout the story is the question of who has the right to call a place home and why people who are struggling look for reasons to turn on each other. “This story is not only a product of its time, but that time has returned, and it’s returned with a kind of social fury,” Spielberg says. “I really wanted to tell that Puerto Rican, Nuyorican experience of basically the migration to this country and the struggle to make a living, and to have children, and to battle against the obstacles of xenophobia and racial prejudice.”

Like Fiddler on the Roof or The Sound of Music, West Side Story locates the joys that endure in hard times. For the new film’s dance sequences, Spielberg recruited Justin Peck, resident choreographer for the New York City Ballet. For the new script, he turned to Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner, who previously worked with him on Munich and Lincoln, to craft an updated story that retains the familiar songs but embeds them in a more realistic cityscape. That realism also applied to casting. Many of the “Puerto Ricans” in the original movie were white actors in brown makeup. Spielberg only wanted performers with Hispanic backgrounds to play Hispanic characters, and he estimates that 20 of the 33 Puerto Rican characters are specifically Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent. “They brought an authenticity,” he says. “They brought themselves, and everything they believe and everything about them—they brought that to the work. And there was so much interaction between the cast wanting to be able to commit to the Puerto Rican experience. They all represent, I think, a diversity, both within the Puerto Rican, Nuyorican community as well as the broader Latinx community. And they took that seriously.”

“The cast brought an authenticity,” says the director. “They brought themselves—and everything they believe—to the work.”

The film stars newcomer Rachel Zegler in the role originated onscreen by Natalie Wood—purehearted Maria, part of the wave of Puerto Rican migrants who traded one island for another when they came to New York seeking a new life in the post–World War II economic boom. Her streetwise Casanova is Tony (Baby Driver actor Ansel Elgort, taking over the part played by Richard Beymer), who once led a gang of local toughs known as the Jets, but has since outgrown them. Tony’s old friends are engaged in an escalating battle for control of the neighborhood against Puerto Rican rivals who call themselves the Sharks, led by Maria’s brother Bernardo (David Alvarez, one of the original leads of Billy Elliot the Musical, playing the role that earned George Chakiris a best supporting actor Oscar).

When a neighborhood dance devolves into hostility, Maria’s best friend, Anita, tries to be a voice of reason. Now played by Ariana DeBose, Anita has one of West Side Story’s most vivacious numbers, extolling the wonders of living Stateside in the song “America.”

Anita: “Life can be bright in America.”

Bernardo and the Sharks: “If you can fight in America.”

Anita and the girls: “Life is all right in America.”

Bernardo and the Sharks: “If you’re all white in America.”

Rita Moreno won a best supporting actress Oscar for playing Anita in the original film, and, at 88, has returned to play a different role in Spielberg’s project. Remember Doc, the old-timer who ran the corner store that served as neutral ground for the gangs? Moreno plays a new character, Valentina, Doc’s widow, who’s also a peacemaker—although perhaps a little tougher. The actor says Spielberg and Kushner “really wanted to right some…should I say wrongs? I don’t know if that’s…yes, that’s fair, because the [1961] film had a lot of things that were wrong with it, aside from the fact that it had a lot of things that were very right.” One of the wrongs, she says, was that she was one of the few Puerto Ricans in the cast. “That’s what they were trying to fix and ameliorate, and I think they have done an incredible job.”

Spielberg made Moreno an executive producer on the film and urged her to share her perspectives on that time and place with the younger actors. For one scene, in which the cops arrive to break up a rumble, Moreno thought that the dancers playing the Sharks didn’t quite appreciate how much worse the situation would be for the Puerto Rican boys. “I was using bad language and all that, and I said, ‘You are fucked! You are fucked if they catch you! You don’t have a chance,’” she says. “And they’re all looking at me with big beautiful brown eyes. I said, ‘Talk to each other before you do the scene again! Scare each other!

One person she tried to put at ease was DeBose. Moreno gushed about the actor who inherited her signature role of Anita. “She is a ferocious dancer—way, way better than I was,” she says.

DeBose was nominated for a Tony Award for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical and was one of the original cast members of Hamilton, renowned for dancing as “The Bullet” that kills the founding father. Like Spielberg, she’s been obsessed with West Side Story since childhood: “I just absolutely loved the music. Every time a number started, I couldn’t help but get up and dance with them. I would say that the music of West Side Story has always lived inside of me.”

“West Side Story was actually the first piece of popular music our family ever allowed into the home,” says Spielberg.

In the new film, DeBose swishes through “America” in a golden handmade dress with scarlet ruffles beneath, but the actor says she was haunted—and daunted—by the violet swirls of the woman who originated the part on screen. “I grew up watching the film and I just fell in love with the woman in the purple dress,” she says. “Even before I really understood what the story was about, I knew that I loved what she was doing. As I grew up, I discovered who she was and her name was Rita Moreno, and she looked like me. She was one of the first women onscreen that actually had skin color that was close to mine—especially in a film made at that time, where there weren’t many women of color on the screen. That was very influential on me during my childhood.”

DeBose says that, as with Moreno, Spielberg often asked for her views on the way her character was depicted. The actor recalls one pivotal conversation during auditions. “I’m Afro-Latina and I said to him, ‘As a woman of color, if you’re going to consider me for this role, I would potentially be the darkest woman to play her onscreen,’” says DeBose. “There’s also the reality that it’s a period piece and there’s racial tension.” Having a biracial Anita intensifies that for the new film. “In one way, you’re not really sure if Anita’s African American or if she’s Latina,” she says. “I was like, ‘I think there’s really something to lean into, if that’s of value,’ and he was intrigued by that observation. It was fun from the jump to feel like I was contributing to his new vision in a way.”

DeBose’s presence adds a new dimension to her character’s unshakable faith in a country that has so often failed people like her. “The way that I see Anita, she is the consummate optimist,” she says. “She believes in the American dream. And she believes in her right as a woman to pursue it. There’s something really amazing about not only Anita, but women in general who constantly find a way to see the world—not with rose-colored glasses—but with hope.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/03/a-first-look-at-steven-spielbergs-west-side-story

#West Side Story #Steven Spielberg #Rita Moreno #Rachel Zegler #Ansel Egort #ariana debose #David Alverez

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in-dire-need · 4 years ago

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Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge- My Chemical Romance

The only 2004 album that could even come close to giving American Idiot a run for its money is Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. My Chemical Romance’s second full-length album shot the band out of its familiar water. Its numerous hits continue to reach billboard charts, such as opening track “Helena” and world-renowned “I’m Not Okay.” According to frontman Gerard Way, Revenge stands as a “pseudo-conceptual horror story”. Every track on the album ties into this twisted and supernatural story of the two lovers featured on the cover, which was created by Gerard Way.

“Helena (So Long and Goodnight)” opens this story of Three Cheers with a heartfelt yet twisted dedication to the Way brothers’ grandmother, Elena Rush, had passed away under circumstanced unknown to the public during the band’s tour of I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. Elena had heavily influenced the brothers from a very young age and inspired them to pursue their dreams. When she passed, Gerard Way was sent into a spiral of anger and self-destructive behavior. He wrote the song to be somewhat of a letter to himself, expressing the hatred he felt for himself at the time. Despite the dark theme behind the lyrics, “Helena” continues to be a radio classic on rock stations everywhere.

The story element behind the album begins during the second track, “Give ‘Em Hell, Kid”. A man has been divided from his lover after the devil resurrects him from the dead and, in order to resurrect his wife as well, he must kill one thousand evil souls and present them to the devil. While he ventures out to accomplish this, his wife wonders where he has gone and is clueless of his plans. She is livid at him for wrecking their marriage that began when they were young and dumb. In the next few tracks we listen as the protagonist crashes a wedding in order to kill the guests. He begins to question his sexuality and if his wife is worth one thousand souls. Continuing the double-meaning, the “To The End” is also based on the short story “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner. In this story, a rich wife begins suspecting that her husband may be a homosexual, so she poisons him before he cheats on her or leaves her.

“You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us in Prison” features Bert McCracken, frontman of The Used, with whom all of My Chemical Romance was extremely close with at the time of Three Cheers’ release. Gerard was also featured on their 2004 album, In Love and Death, which toured with Three Cheers after its debut. Since then, the bands had a falling-out and didn’t speak for years before heavily hinting that The Used would be opening for My Chemical Romance’s reunion tour that was scheduled for 2020. This information was never officially announced, though, seeing as COVID-19 has ruined every hope and dream that it could lay its greasy paws on. Anger aside, “Prison” continues the protagonist’s journey to kill one thousand evil souls to resurrect his wife as he is arrested in a restaurant gunfight. Once in prison, he begins falling for an inmate of the same sex, which confuses and upsets the protagonist who had assumed he was heterosexual for his entire life. He still dreams of his deceased lover, whom his journey is all for. The other inmates begin to take advantage of him, forcing him to dress in drag and give blowjobs to accommodate to their sexual desires. He begins to lose his sanity and believes that he might as well be executed since he will not be able to fulfill his mission from prison. He decides that when he leaves, he will burn down an entire hotel to quickly raise his body count.

Another track that has gone down in history is number four, “I’m Not Okay (I Promise”. It follows a girl who struggles with dealing with the problems in her life. She vents and complains to her boyfriend, who is dealing with his own problems. He puts them aside to comfort his girlfriend time and time again. She does not take this into account and simply continues to wallow in her own pain, attempting and failing to relate to sad songs with deeper meanings. He has finally had it with her by the end of the song and explodes, telling her that he is not okay and he is done with her melodrama. “The Ghost of You” is another smash hit produced by this album, which continues the story already present. The protagonist expresses the grief he experienced after losing the lover he is trying so hard to save. Later tracks emphasize this as the protagonist begins to doubt his ability to bring his lover back.

Standing as a message of inspiration and a sign not to give up, “Thank You For The Venom” has become very popular within its target audience. Critics began to blame My Chemical Romance for making music purely to become famous, to which the band responded saying that the fans are a huge impact on their music. They never wanted to be on the front covers of magazines and at the head of the rock scene, but at a certain point they could no longer fight the inevitable. The song narrates what is possibly a nun attempting to convert a horrible sinner, then being murdered by the man. The sinner could be the protagonist continuing his killing spree, knowing that no amount of preaching could save him. In the following tracks, he questions again if his lover is really worth kill one thousand evil souls. After a woman representing his lost love holds him at gunpoint and tells him to stop his killing spree, he considers shooting himself and therefore dying for her instead of killing. He trudges on still and vows revenge on this woman as his story nears its end. After killing nine-hundred ninety-nine evil souls, he realizes that the last one he must take is his own. He begins hallucinating that his wife is there with him and even holds conversations with her before remembering that she is not there. It is heavily suggested that his lover committed suicide after getting drunk, though the means are unknown. The protagonist finally comes to terms with the fact that he is destined to die and that he would never have been able to resurrect his wife.

In the final track, “I Never Told You What I Did For a Living”, the man completes his transaction with the devil. He accepts his fall from grace, but knows that once he is with his love again it will all have been worth it. Once he kills the last soul, himself, it is revealed that the devil tricked him. As a result of his astounding body count, he has been damned to hell instead of being reunited with his lover. His final realization is that it was all for nothing and that he has simply become a monster.

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge’s final lines are a callback to the group’s first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, or Bullets for short. Dozens of lines throughout the album reference Bullets, and the lovers featured are even referred to as two “Demolition Lovers”. Initially, fans and critics believed that the two albums were linked as one continuing story, but that theory has been denied. Past its horrific tale, many songs actually send a buried positive message- keep going. Specifically “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Thank You For The Venom” have worked to debunk the band’s stereotype of being a suicide cult. Ironically, these songs have also become symbols of this said suicide cult, given the references to death and self-destruction, which leads many younger listeners to fall prey to this cult mentality that the media has created. That very concept was something that My Chemical Romance vehemently spoke out against, seeing as the very reason they began making music was to help people. Even despite being twisted and forgotten by the media, that is still exactly what they did. Although fame wasn’t what they wanted, in the end they achieved exactly what they wanted: to help people. Their worldwide fame simply allowed them to reach farther and wider than ever imagined.

As previously stated, all tracks on the album not only tie into the crazy narration of two dead lovers, but into the real lives of the bandmates, specifically Gerard and Mikey way. For example, “The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You” personifies Gerard’s struggle with alcoholism and cocaine addiction in the form of a woman. He says that he could stay with her for hours even though she will eventually kill him. He was able to sober up and toured for Three Cheers during his first full year sober, which he described as extremely difficult. “The Ghost Of You” helps paint the picture of how the brothers were grieving after the loss of their grandmother, Elena.

Elena was one of the most powerful influencers behind the creation of My Chemical Romance and continued to inspire them throughout their entire career. Thanks to her, the band went on to inspire millions of young adults worldwide. Had she not supported her grandchildren like she did, so many more influencers would have never developed the confidence to take their first steps into the sunlight. These influencers include Palaye Royale, Twenty One Pilots, Post Malone, and Yungblud. Who knows how many more celebrities truly are that wouldn’t be where they are without the influential messages of My Chemical Romance? Who knows who the next possible star will be? I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out. Go enjoy yourselves, internet.

“And we'll love again, we'll laugh again We'll cry again, and we'll dance again And it's better off this way, so much better off this way I can't clean the blood off the sheets in my bed!”

#three cheers for sweet revenge #my chemical romance #music

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twdeadlysins · 5 years ago

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Save the Last One

Season two, episode three (1/1)

Pairing: Eventual Daryl Dixon x Reader

Word Count: 3,857

Warnings: Slow burn, mention of character death, mention of suicidal thoughts, mention of suicidal attempt, mention of abuse, the usual walking dead violence, language, blood, and such with possible typos

Author’s Note: I don’t own anything from The Walking Dead, so all credit goes to their respective owners. This is a twd series rewrite with the reader inserted into the mix. I did and will continue to use dialogue from the actual show because I want it to be similar to what you’ve already watched, but obviously have the reader in it. Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve uploaded another part for this series!

If you want to be (un)tagged for this series rewrite, don’t hesitate to send me an ask, message me, or leave a comment and I’ll add/remove you. The same goes for any other fics! I’m in no way, shape, or form a writer. Any feedback is appreciated, but hate is a different story. Thank you and enjoy!

The gifs I use aren’t mine, so all credit goes to their respective owners.

MASTERLIST // TWD SERIES REWRITE

After the outburst Lori had about Rick leaving, you wobbled your way outside and sat in the wooden rocking chair that you basically claimed with the amount of times you had sat in it already. Rick and Lori had been in Carl’s room the entire time and you saw Maggie bring a sandwich and a cup of water for Rick. He had to eat especially after donating all his blood to his son and if he refused, you knew Lori would force him to. If not for himself, then for her and Carl’s sake.

The fever you had died down a little, but you were still burning up, shit you’d rather be cold, only then could you bundle up. This time though you went without your blanket, opting to feel the night air against your clammy skin. Your head was against the back of the chair, injured leg stretched out while the other was rocking you back and forth. A breeze rolled through, making you flutter your eyes close once it made contact with your flaming hot skin. The faint sound of an engine made you perk up and look out onto the farm, seeing a car approaching, it was small and it even made you second guess yourself, like you were hallucinating. You sat up straighter and leaned forward, eyes squinted to make out the model of the car to see if it was familiar to you. Once the vehicle got closer, a smile etched on your face and you slowly got up to carefully step down the porch.

“Long time no see,” you quipped, limping to give a concerned Glenn a hug. He had a double barrel shotgun in his grasp, so he could only return the hug with one arm. You went to give T-Dog one as well, but your smile faltered. “What the hell happened to you?”

He barely had his eyes open and he was sweating bullets with a blanket draped across his shoulders, his forearm like yours was bandaged. “I could say the same thing to you,” he teasingly shot back before waving both of his hands towards him, gesturing for you to give him a hug. You obliged and gave him a feather like hug, not wanting to make things worse like apply more body heat for his and your sake, but to your surprise he was pretty cold. “Blood infection,” he added after you retracted, making you wince at his condition. That explains his unusual body temp, fever and chills with low body temp.

“Y/N, you’re like a furnace and you’re pale… like paler than usual,” Glenn pointed out, earning a hit in the chest from you at the last bit.

“I have an infection as well, but it’s only in my wounds.” You turned over your forearms and displayed your bandages. “Hershel, the vet- I mean doctor, took care of them before it spread like what happened with this guy over here,” you joked, getting a bitch face from T-Dog. “And you already know about my hip… well I made it worse when I sprinted to get Carl here,” you said, slowly making your way back to the house with the guys.

You lifted your leg onto the first step and stopped, noticing Glenn wasn’t moving, he was gawking at the steps. Following his orbs, you saw the thin trail of blood that belonged to Carl when you carried him inside. “Carl’s stable for now, Shane and Otis are getting the supplies as we speak.” Glenn peered up at you and nodded with a slight smile, so you held out your hand for him to take to hopefully ease him. It could be a little overwhelming, not knowing what to do at a place you’ve never been before, especially with what happened. He accepted your hand and you continued to make your way up the stairs to see a shadow in the other chair with their knees hugged to their chest.

“Did you close the gate up the road when you drove in?” Maggie questioned, creeping Glenn out since he squeezed your hand in surprise. You chuckled while he hesitantly greeted her and told her that they did in fact shut the gate. “Hello, nice to see you again. We met before briefly-”

“Look, we came to help. There anything we can do?” T-Dog interrupted getting straight to the point making you smile at Glenn’s awkwardness and T-Dog’s impatience. Maggie stood up and widened her eyes once she noticed T-Dog’s makeshift bandaged arm. “It’s not a bite. I cut myself up pretty bad though.”

“We’ll have it looked at. I’ll tell them you’re here,” Maggie replied, walking to the door before Glenn let go of your hand and interjected, opening his bag and saying they had brought painkillers and antibiotics. “I already gave him some, but if Carl needs any…” he said, handing her the pill bottle. She then told you guys to come inside and that she would make you guys something to eat.

“Thanks, Maggie.” She smiled at you before opening the door and going inside, holding the door behind her for you to follow. You and Maggie led Glenn and T-Dog to the bedroom that Carl occupied, stopping at the door frame as the men went in just a tad, still in arms length of you. Their features were a mixture of shock and remorse, seeing the little boy in that condition and his parents at his bedside. Hershel was checking his blood pressure once again and Glenn took off his hat to scratch his scalp as he made their presence known. “Hey.”

Rick replied with the same, visibly not doing okay as he brought his hand up to his forehead. He was still pale, but he looked somewhat better and that was progress. Glenn let them know that they were here for them to which the sorrow couple thanked before the three of them left so Maggie could get them situated.

You limped your way to stand at the end of the bed, witnessing Hershel uncover Carl’s abdomen that was descended at the bottom which he said would happen before Shane and Otis left to get the supplies. Your breath hitched and you hung your head, that wasn’t good. “They don’t get back soon, we’re gonna have a decision to make,” Hershel warned.

“And that is?” Rick tiredly asked.

“Whether to operate on your boy without the respirator-”

“You said that wouldn’t work,” Lori mentioned, cutting him off while toying with something in her hand while holding her husband’s in the other.

“I know. It’s extremely unlikely, but we can’t wait much longer.” Within a blink of an eye, Lori was out of her seat and out the room which made a weak Rick go after her. You sighed and shook your head, dragging your hand down your face, defeated. “If there’s anything you need…” you trailed as you went to exit the room, earning Hershel to nod his head. Glenn and T-Dog sat at the dining room table, eating a sandwich and there was a plate waiting for you. You smiled and sat down, picking up the sandwich and taking a bite.

“How are the others?” you asked after swallowing, setting the food down to take a sip of your water. Glenn nodded as he chewed. “They’re good? I don’t know. They’re coming in the morning though, so we’ll be together as a group again. They wanted to stay just in case Sophia-” He stopped, letting the room go quiet before T-Dog brought something up that wasn’t depressing to think about.

“You gonna tell Y/N that we brought her stuff?” T-Dog said annoyed, but his voice was laced with some teasing . You jerked your head to stare at Glenn’s face that morphed into realization before he reached down on his other side where you couldn’t see to reveal your backpack. “Before we left, Daryl had given this to us saying it was yours and that you’d want it back.”

You slightly smile and thanked Glenn, grabbing your bag and opening it to see the rest of your knives, photo album and some snacks he must’ve put in there. It made you confused, was this his way of apologizing? You were still mad at him for scolding you and on top of that, ignoring you. Daryl was one puzzling man, one minute he’s decent and the next he’s an asshole… what was his deal? You were taken out of your mental ordeal when Lori, visibly upset, walked through the front door and into Carl’s room. You turned to Glenn and T-Dog, quirking a questioning brow, earning shrugs before you got up to check on your best friend seeming it was best to leave Lori alone with her son.

Once you stepped outside, you stood beside Rick, leaning forward with your forearms draped over the railing while he held it with tight hands. You didn’t say anything, you just wanted to be there for him and if he wanted to talk about it, then you were there. That was what you both did to each other whenever something happened or you just felt down… the presence was enough to say ‘I’m here for you.’

“She thinks… she thinks it’d be better for Carl… if he didn’t make it.” Your eyes widen as you looked at Rick whose expression was filled with anger and sadness. “What?” It left you at a loss for words as you stared at the landscape before you straightened up and looked at Rick once more with your brows furrowed and eyes squinted, scoffing. “What?”

“I know… I know,” he said, wiping his face and opening his arms. “Apparently this world isn’t meant for children anymore.”

“It’s not meant for anyone?!” you confusedly stated, getting more and more upset at the mere thought of those words coming out of Lori’s mouth or letting Carl die. “I don’t care what she says, we aren’t letting him die, Rick. Shane and Otis will be back with those damn supplies or so help me I’ll go there and get them myself,” you spat, pointing out towards the yard. “She even begged for Jenner to give us all a chance, so what? Does she regret it now? Does she really believe what he said? That it'd be better if we all just end it? That we should’ve let him blow us all up without even trying?”

“I guess… I don’t know… she said that Jacqui don’t have to feel anything anymore, didn’t have to see the highway, the herd of walkers, Sophia or Carl-”

“‘Cause she’s dead, Rick! She don’t feel a damn thing and that’s worse than living! Yeah, she might not get to feel all the tragic things that come with this cruel world, but Jacqui doesn’t get to feel joy, love. The world was already fucked up to begin with and trust me, I’ve wanted to end it a long time ago, hell I even tried before the dead showed up, but ya know what? I’ve learned that when you’re dead… the world and everyone one in it still exists, that they keep living without you.” You deeply inhaled and exhaled, rubbing the tears off your face and out of your eyes. You didn’t mean to get so worked up about it, but it bothered you so much what Lori said.

“I know, Y/N, I know,” he whispered as he engulfed you into a hug, rubbing your back while you stuffed your head into the crook of his neck. “I disagreed with everything she said. She wanted me ta’ give her a good reason why it should be the other way, where Carl lives and ya made me think of that reason.” You lifted up your head, tucking you hair behind your ears as you peered at him wanting to know what it was.

“The deer,” he whispered with a smile.

Carl ended up waking up and aside from the pain and asking where you guys were, he talked about the deer. Despite the situation, it made you grin and peek over at Rick who had an even wider one. Carl brought up a good memory, a living one, but the moment was cut short when he started to seize. You wished you could do something, but you knew you had to let him ride it out… you’ve had one yourself before.

It was your second tour in Iraq and you were in the med bay; you and a few other soldiers that became your close friends over the years had been in a building that exploded. You suffered a brain injury from the impact when your head collided with the ground. Once you came to, you kept begging to know what happened to your friends and after much debate, your commander told you that you were the only survivor. A couple hours after hearing the tragic news, you had a seizure due to the physical trauma your brain endured and you were sure learning that you were the only survivor contributed to that.

Hershel, Rick and Lori had left to leave you alone with Carl, you haven’t had the chance to be with him by yourself and speak to him even if the conversation was one sided. Even though you and Rick weren’t biologically related, you were still brother and sister at heart, so you referred Carl as your nephew and he was the best nephew you could’ve ever asked for.

You scooted up a chair after dampening a rag and tapped it against his pale, clammy forehead… something you both had in common, but obviously he was under a more serious condition. “There ya go buddy, hope that helps,” you softly smiled, leaving the cloth on his forehead after patting it against his upper torso. You don’t know what you’d do if he didn’t make it, you didn’t even want to think about it. The thought shouldn’t even cross your mind, he’s just a kid, but here you were… staring at a little boy who hasn’t even lived his life yet.

“Shane and Otis are gonna be back soon and Hershel will fix you up, then you’ll get to run around in the big field once you’re all healed up. By the time that happens I’ll be able to too… we can chase each other then,” you chuckled before feeling a hand softly grip your shoulder. You looked behind you slowly knowing who it was and saw Rick give you a little smile as you placed your palm over his and gave it a squeeze.

Hershel and Lori had came back in not long after you and Rick had finished reminiscing over the time you all had gone to the town’s annual carnival and you had finally talked Carl into riding the Ferris wheel. He was afraid of the top, but you reassured him he’d be safe and you’d be there for him, so he gave in. Rick and Lori rode in a seat while you and Carl were in another and you don’t think Carl’s grip on your hand could get any tighter. “Once we went around a couple times, he started to loosen up and he had the biggest grin on his face… he even had one when we went to get ice cream and his dropped on the ground,” you giggled, making Rick chuckle and nudge your shoulder with his hand as he leaned back. “Most kids would’ve whined or gotten pissed, but no… Carl laughed right along with us. This kid is one of the good things in this fucked up world.”

“He’s still losing blood faster than we can replace it,” Hershel informed after he was done taking his blood pressure. You sighed before taking the pills he gave you and chugged down some ice cold water. “And with the swelling in his abdomen… we can’t wait any longer or he’s just going to slip away.” You slowly shut your eyes and leaned forward in your seat, clasping your hands together and leaning your forehead against them. “Now I need to know right now if you want me to do this because I think your boy is out of time.”

Rick and Lori were standing by the end and they gawked at their son while you stared off to the side at the hardwood floor, waiting for a response. “You have to make a choice,” Hershel hurriedly said.

“A choice?” Lori angrily questioned, not believing the words that came out of his mouth, that he would demand such a thing for a parent to do. To decide whether their son lived or died and the trying option wasn’t even guaranteed to work.

“A choice,” Rick turned to his wife. “You have to tell me what it is. You have to tell me what it is,” he repeated in a whisper, staring her in the eyes. She bit her lip and caressed his face in thought before saying to do it. Rick nodded and embraced Lori while you closed your eyes and mentally thanked God, if she would’ve said the other option that you couldn’t even believe was one, you would’ve fought it and even her if you had to.

Hershel and Patrica came in the room with an operating table, requesting for anyone to get the corner of the bed to transfer him to the table. You stepped aside, not trusting your body to be able to help move Carl, your leg couldn’t support that kind of weight. Once the four of them carried him over to the table by the sheet. Patrica revealed the medical tools and set up a lamp to provide light, Hershel had a scalpel in hand and advised the three of you to go in the other room, but before you could do so, you heard an engine outside. Rick peered outside and looked relieved, so you wobbled as fast as you could behind him.

The whole house except Patricia, since she was requested to stay with Carl, came barreling outside. Shane was breathing heavily and walked with a limp making you wonder what the hell had happened at the high school. “Carl?” He wheezed and Rick put him at ease when he told him that he still had a chance. Hershel quickly snatched the bag from his grip and then searched behind Shane and that was when you noticed he was alone. “Shane, where’s Otis?” You questioned and that made Shane gawk at everyone before looking down. “No.” You bit your lip before glancing at your boots, running your hand through your hair with the other on your hip.

Hershel shifted back and forth, not knowing what to do. “We say nothing to Patricia, not ‘till after, I need her!” he instructed before striding inside with Glenn and T-Dog behind him. Shane’s eyes wandered everywhere before Rick hugged him. He looked mortified… he saw Otis die… he had to of seen it.

“They kept blocking us… at every turn. We had nothing left, we were down to 10 rounds, then he said… he said he’d cover me and that I should keep going. So that’s what I did, I just… I kept going, but I- I looked back and he…” Shane tried to explain in between breaths and pauses, getting worked up at the tragic event.

“He wanted to make it right,” Rick assured him, placing his hand on his best friend’s shoulder. Lori was comforting Maggie as she tried not to sob and your orbs connected to Shane’s for a second and you just weren’t sure. Something didn’t settle right with you and yes, he was shaken up, but it could be one of two things… he saw Otis die or Shane made a horrific decision that he couldn’t believe he made. You’ve seen that look before… someone so traumatized over what they had done that they were haunted by it… it was that same look Shane had… the same look all the suspects you had that were soon found guilty.

Rick and Lori sat at the steps, holding each other, T-Dog sat in a chair on the porch, Shane sat down, leaned against the blue truck while you sat in your claimed rocking chair waiting on any news from Hershel on Carl’s condition. You quietly hummed a tune to yourself, gently rocking and staring off into the yard. The door opened and out came Hershel, Glenn and Maggie, making you perk up in your chair to hear what the vet had to say.

“He seems to have stabilized,” Hershel said, a smile tugging at his lips, making you give a loud sigh of relief and so did everyone else. Rick eloped the doctor in a hug, appreciative that he saved his son. “I don’t have words,” Lori emotionally said with a smile.

“I don’t either, wish I did. How do I tell Patricia about Otis?” Everyone went silent as you all looked at each other with bewilderment, as bad as it sounded, you had forgotten about what happened to Otis while you waited and in the gleeful moment. “You go with Carl, I’ll go with Hershel,” Rick said before following the doctor inside. You saw Lori nod towards Shane before going inside herself to go wait for Carl to wake up as you carefully stood up, watching Shane limp towards the house.

You scurried your way over and grabbed his hand, helping him up the stairs. “Looks like we’re twins,” you quipped, earning a scoff as he hung his head and looked up with a smirk. When his head was down, you didn’t miss the absent patch of hair on his head, it was small, but it was there. You decided it was best not to question him about it, it would send off warning signals and he’d know you were suspicious. You interrogated people when you were in the military and as a cop… something was definitely up with him since he was obviously hiding something and lying or leaving out what really happened with Otis. “How’d it happen?”

“Walkers were on us and I had no choice, but ta’ jump out a window.”

You whistled, that window must’ve been very high if the landing injured him that bad.

Once you two got inside, you could hear the loud sobs in the kitchen that erupted out of Patricia, crushing your heart that she had to go through such a thing. She lost her love and had to live without him, live without him through this mess and you couldn’t imagine what she must be going through. Sure, you had loved ones that passed away like your aunt and uncle, your parents, etc… but it isn’t quite like losing the person you thought you would be spending the rest of your life with. It made you chuckle at your once gullible self… you thought you were in love with your abusive, good for nothing boyfriend and settle down with him, but when you left that night… you didn’t care what happened to him. Now that walkers littered the planet, you hoped that he was dead… that he was the dead.

_____________________________________

MASTERLIST // TWD SERIES REWRITE

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! If you’d like to added or removed from the tags don’t hesitate to send me an ask or message! <3

A/N: Omg sorry for the lack of Daryl. I’m obviously sticking to the show since this is a series rewrite lmao. I JUST WANT MORE DARYL X READER!!!

Taglist:

@jodiereedus22 @sourwolf-sterek32 @jll72-blog @mtngirlforever @haleypearce @nikkipea @sombra--speaks @the-three-eyed-ravenclaw @bunnymother93 @holyn0vak @myshakespeareandarling @million-dollar-milkshake @thatsoragan @firehoopinmama @mummy-woves-you @sheebthezeeb @j-a-val @filleinterrupted @gruffle1 @lonewolf471 @youhavemyfantasticbeasts @gabbygurrl @burningsorr0ws @siren-queen03 @mcublinders @randomfandommess @dixonluvv @aestheticmattilyn @samlott2202 @freggietale @fandomfanatic97 @lxdyred @ii-chuuya-gravity-ii @dashesoflipstick @bucky-barnes-babies @magnumstyles @selvadorada @jordangdelacruz @evilunicorns4minions

#daryl dixon x reader #daryl x reader #daryl dixon #daryl dixon fanfic #daryl dixon fanfiction #series rewrite #twd series rewrite #save the last one #season 2 episode 3 #s2e3 #twd spoilers #twd #the walking dead #amc the walking dead #twd fanfiction #tw: suicidal thoughts #tw: attempted suicide #tw: abuse #f.

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pivitor · 5 years ago

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My Top 10 Albums of 2019

2019 will go down, for me, as the year my beloved iPod died, and I finally bit the bullet and signed up for Spotify Premium. Thus, I listened to more new music in 2019 than I ever have before, and realized how much of it I found disposable. Bands I grew up loving put out mediocre efforts, new darlings grew in directions I wasn’t interested in following, but thank god, thank god there are still plenty of terrific musicians putting out work that resonates deep within my soul. Music is subjective, so I wouldn’t dare call this a “best of” list, but below are the ten new releases of 2019 that I listened to the most, vibed with the most, that just plain ol’ meant the most to me this year.

(PS: Don’t think too much about the exact order and ranking here. It changed multiple times even as I was writing this. What really matters is that all ten of these records rule)

10. Radar State -- Strays

Radar State are the Avengers of the early 2000s mid-west emo scene -- a band combining The Get Up Kids’ Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic, The Anniversary’s Josh Berwanger, and The Architects’ Adam Phillips into a single supergroup. Pryor has described the project as “just having fun with [his] friends,” and that dynamic shines through loud and clear in Strays. It’s like each member is pushing the next to just create the catchiest song they possibly can, and the competition leads to great results; Pryor favors fast and sloppy punk and Berwanger moody earworms that fuse themselves into your brain through sheer repetition, but it’s Suptic who fulfills that edict best with his shiny, addictive pop love songs. Radar State never quite hits the emotional highs of its members’ main projects, but that was never the point in the first place; Strays is just fun from front to back, and it’s an album I’ve returned to consistently throughout the entirety of 2019.

Highlights: Making Me Feel, Self-Hurt Guru, Artificial Love

9. The Early November -- Lilac

Lilac is an album about learning from your mistakes and making a conscious choice to be better, and it’s a theme, an ethos that truly defines this release on every level. The Early November originally planned to release Lilac back in 2018, but ended up scrapping the original recording and going back to the drawing board, knowing that they could do better, and funneling that ambition, all their lessons learned, into their most ambitious release outside of The Mother, The Maker, and the Path (“but less self-indulgent,” I say with love). Horns, piano, and a wide variety of tempos spice up the proceedings, and the lyrics are more raw and honest than ever, but Lilac’s greatest weapon is the vocals, which Ace Enders wields with virtuoso skill. He plays with different cadences and deliveries, giving every song a unique feel, moving from soft and pleasant (“Perfect Sphere [Bubble]”) to menacing (“My Weakness”), from the joy of “Ave Maria” to the cathartic, powerhouse vocal explosion of “Hit By A Car (Euphoria)” to the pure, crackling, barely contained emotional breakdown threatening to burst right out of the chorus of “Our Choice.” There’s no other vocalist out there quite like Ace Enders -- and no other record quite like Lilac.

Highlights: Hit By A Car (In Euphoria), Ave Maria, Comatose

8. Magazine Beach -- Sick Day (EP)

Most year-end lists probably overlooked this record, a debut four-song EP from a small DIY band released in mid-December, and man oh man are those critics missing out. Sick Day isn’t just the biggest and best musical surprise I received all year, but quite possibly the most fun I had listening to music in 2019. Seriously, I played this on loop probably two dozen times the day I discovered it, and spent that evening forcing friends to listen to it too. Magazine Beach’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics, gonzo riffs, and stunning background harmonies are combined with vocals whose flatter, sardonic tone initially masks, but soon reveals their perfect cadence and quick crackles of emotion; they’re as close to a perfect pop-punk package as I heard all year, with their quirky, relatable songs about flaky friends, overstuffed social calendars, and other mid-twenties challenges filling that gaping Modern-Baseball-You’re-Gonna-Miss-It-All-shaped hole in my heart. If this had released earlier in the year, and I’d had more time to see how long it truly stuck with me, it might have placed far, far higher on this list, but either way I look forward to carrying this album forward with me into 2020, and I look forward to following Magazine Beach’s future career closely. I think they could go places.

Highlight: Living Room

7. Masked Intruder -- III

It’s easy to look at Masked Intruder and think that they’re more of an act than a band, just because they’re so good at playing hardened-yet-harmless criminals on stage, at enchanting an audience with their antics and banter alone. Thankfully, they’re equally skilled as musicians as they are performers; III isn’t just quick content for their live shows, but an entertaining, addictive, artfully made pop-punk record in its own right. Okay, maybe pop-punk is a bit too restrictive a descripter -- between the doo-wop, call-and-response harmonies and the raging riffs and solos, III sometimes sounds like a modern spin on sixties rock and roll, which is something I did not know I needed but absolutely needed. The lyrics never break kayfabe, but there’s some real clever stuff going on beneath the surface of these silly crime-themed love songs; contrasting the creepiness of Blue’s romantic pursuits with the shenanigans of a typical radio love song shows how few differences there actually are between the two, how creepy the entire genre is when you stop to give it any thought. It’s thoughtful and subversive without ever being preachy, just one more spinning plate kept perfectly balanced in the act that is III.

Highlights: Not Fair, Maybe Even, I’m Free (At Last)

6. Martha -- Love Keeps Kicking

Martha’s secret weapon is the empathy and compassion their songs cultivate for their subjects. Love Keeps Kicking is an album largely about the way love can kick you when you’re down, yet throughout the album Martha never villainizes even the bad actors in relationships. “Into This” finds the narrator jerked around by a potential partner who just won’t clarify what they are to each other, but the song isn’t out to attack the partner, simply to get a solid answer. Likewise, “Love Keeps Kicking” lays out a myriad of detailed complaints about romance and relationships, not to insult, but simply to find a way to endure them. “Orange Juice” rues the way the narrator diluted their partner just by being with them, showing impressive (and heartbreaking) levels of self-awareness. That kind of emotional maturity and complexity makes the true love songs (“Sight For Sore Eyes,” “Wrestlemania VIII”) all the more joyous, and makes their social commentary (“Mini Was A Preteen Arsonist”) that much more effective. Martha are a wonderfully catchy, fun band filled with great harmonies and British twang, but it’s their earnest, compassionate storytelling that truly made me fall in love with them, and with Love Keeps Kicking.

Highlights: Wrestlemania VIII, Love Keeps Kicking, Orange Juice

5. Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties -- Routine Maintenance

Hot take (?) incoming: Dan Campbell is the best songwriter of our generation. I already sang his praises pretty thoroughly last year when discussing my favorite album of 2018, but Routine Maintenance is just further proof of this truth, almost Campbell flexing. The previous Aaron West record was a character study of the worst year of a man’s life, but Routine Maintenance expands Aaron’s world in terms of scope, characters, and themes, all to the project’s (and character’s) benefit. The record is a tale of redemption, taking Aaron from rock bottom to a new place of security, all through the power of friendship and community, the power of music, and the power of family, of fulfilling your responsibilities to them, of finding your role and your home wherever you are, with the people who care about you, with people you can make proud. They’re themes Campbell has been exploring throughout his entire career, but brought down to a more personal level, and somehow that makes them hit harder than ever, perhaps because it makes the way they can fit into any listener’s life that much clearer. I’ve cried listening to this album. I’ve cried hearing these songs live. There’s true, true catharsis on Routine Maintenance, and it’s because Campbell’s taken Aaron West on a real journey, and it’s one I feel blessed to have been able to follow.

Highlights: Runnin’ Toward the Light, Rosa & Reseda, Winter Coats

4. Pkew Pkew Pkew -- Optimal Lifestyles

Pkew Pkew Pkew’s 2016 self-titled debut was an album told solely in the present tense, not worried about the future, but simply about the drinks, pizza, skateboarding, and parties to be had right here, right now. It was a blisteringly fun, gang-vocals filled powerhouse of a record that solidified Pkew Pkew Pkew as one of my new favorite bands. Optimal Lifestyles, though, is an album that has started to look back, if only to question the present. Are they still content to be these same fun-loving, hard-drinking party guys? Ultimately, as proven by lyrics such as “Shred until you’re dead, or until you break your wrist again” and “We lead thirsty little lives, and all we want’s another,” the answer they come to is a resounding “yes,” but the journey they take to find that answer not only makes it feel earned, but opens Pkew Pkew Pkew to some exciting new songwriting avenues, be it the touching introspection of “Drinkin’ Days” or the surprisingly beautiful nostalgia of “Everything’s the Same” (or even the more raucous nostalgia of “Mt. Alb,” for that matter). Don’t let words like “introspection” and “beautiful” scare you, though -- The Boys still rock as hard as ever, as the wailing, chugging guitars and even a totally rockin’ saxophone solo fully attest to (though I do miss all the gang vocals). And I’d be remiss to not mention “I Wanna See A Wolf,” an absolute songwriting clinic. In only a minute and nineteen seconds, Pkew Pkew Pkew takes a simple statement -- “I wanna see a wolf” -- and unravels it until it reveals a song about longing for freedom from the careers that cage our lives, even when they’re our dream. I don’t know if Pkew Pkew Pkew could have written this song three years ago. Talk about growth.

Highlights: I Wanna See A Wolf, Point Break, Adult Party

3. The Get Up Kids -- Problems

After their most popular record -- 1999’s Something To Write Home About -- the Get Up Kids’ next three albums all went on to be incredibly divisive among their fans. While all three records showed significant creative growth, none really sounded like what came before (personally, I very much enjoyed two of those records -- sorry, There Are Rules -- but I guess I’m not most fans). Problems, though, sounds like the natural evolution of Something To Write Home About without ever feeling derivative of it -- it sounds more like “the Get Up Kids” than anything the Get Up Kids have released in over a decade, which is an incredibly exciting thing let me tell you. Yet, Problems still benefits from everything the band has learned in that time: there’s new introspection (“The Problem Is Me”), a wider storytelling scope (“Lou Barlow”), and a shift from wallowing in their own pain to examining the pain of others (“Satellite,” which Matt Pryor has said is based on one of his sons). Problems also manages to pack in absolute bangers like “Fairweather Friends,” sensitive, tender ballads like “The Advocate,” and mid-tempo jams like “Salina,” a guaranteed future Emo classic that threatens to dethrone the Kids’ own “Central Standard Time” as The Quintessential Emo Song. Problems is the synthesis of just about everything that has ever made the Get Up Kids special, and it not only makes for one of the year’s best albums, but one of the Get Up Kids’ best as well.

Highlights: Fairweather Friends, Lou Barlow, Salina

2. PUP -- Morbid Stuff

The A-Side of Morbid Stuff is perfect -- a legitimately flawless five song stretch of punk rock that continues to blow my mind almost ten months after its release. The unmistakable opening notes of “Morbid Stuff”; that irresistible background riff from the bridge returning in “Kids’” second chorus, combined with some of the most nihilisticly romantic lyrics I’ve ever heard; the raucous sing-along that is “Free At Last”; the purest, most undiluted diss-track of the year in “See You At Your Funeral”; and, finally, the best song of the year bar none, “Scorpion Hill,” a sonic journey through multiple musical genres, telling a story of uniquely American misery that legitimately moves me to tears. The B-Side doesn’t quite live up to these first five tracks -- there’s a couple stand-outs (“Bare Hands” needs to make it into a live set pronto), a couple songs more interesting in concept than execution (sorry, “Full Blown Meltdown”), and a few more perfectly fine, standard PUP tunes (and I swear I don’t mean that as an insult!) -- but, well, how could it ever really have anyway? All together, it still makes for an outrageously enjoyable album that reaches the upper echelons of what 2019’s new music had to offer. That PUP was not only such a terrific band right out of the gate, but has remained so this far into their career, makes me so, so happy.

Highlights: Scorpion Hill, Kids, Free At Last

1. The Menzingers -- Hello Exile

It took me a few listens -- and, truthfully, seeing it played live -- to truly crack this album. At first it was a bit too slow, the vocals a bit too filtered, but once it clicked, I lived and breathed Hello Exile and nothing else for months. The slightly slower pace gives the Menzingers a chance to play around with some new musical tricks, be it the back-and-forth opening or the fun background guitar melodies of “Strangers Forever” or the almost hypnotic vocal melodies in the choruses of “Portland” or “Hello Exile,” and they pay off with great effect. Lyrically the Menzingers are at the top of their game; tracks like “High School Friend” and “Strain Your Memory” are more adept than ever at painting stories that make you nostalgic for a life you never even lived, but absolutely feel like you have, and lines like “it only hurts til’ it doesn’t” hit your heart with sniper-like precision. “Anna” may be the quintessential Menzingers song, a tale of longing, love, and location that drove the entire scene into a frenzy that still hasn’t subsided. “Farewell Youth” is the best closing track the Menzingers have ever released, a song about grief in multiple forms that manages to find poignant takes on each and every one of them. I’m not yet sure whether Hello Exile is the beginning or the end of a chapter for the Menzingers, but either way, it’s clearly an essential and unmissable part of their story, and one I feel privileged to be able to experience.

Highlights: Anna, Strangers Forever, Farewell Youth

#pivitor #the menzingers #pup the band #the get up kids #aaron west and the early twenties #pkew pkew pkew #martha #masked intruder #magazine beach #the early november #radar state

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insomnihan · 5 years ago

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han’s Entire Thoughts and Feelings on Dreamcatcher’s “Deja Vu”

youtube

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

MY TIME HAS COME 2.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FULL INSOMNIA MODE DONT. LOOK. AT. ME.

there are no read mores here so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ALRIGHT SO-

THE SONG OKAY LETS JUMP RIGHT INTO IT i wasnt expecting something lowkey sad BUT im not mad at it!!!!!!!!!! i had conflicting emotions when i desperately wanted to cry but also headbang?????? HOWEVER thanks to force and air the tears in my eyes were drying as i headbanged- LIKE this song really PUT ME THROUGH IT like that chorus didnt have tO DO ME LIKE THAT™!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUT THEN THE VERSES AND THE PRE-CHORUSES WERE SLOW (and the bridge but bridges be like that in nearly all songs) WHICH IM ACTUALLY REALLY INTO it was like being in a roller coaster with the verses being the slow hill and the chorus was the fall THAT PIANO GOES HARD...................... but like in a soft way????? DONT ASK ME WHAT IM SAYING IS IM A HOE™ FOR PIANO THOSE DRUMS DURING THE CHORUS STOP IT I CANNOT I FELT THEM VIBRATE THROUGH MY BONES

like i DEADASS have nothing to criticize or change about this song its PERFECTLY FINE AS IT IS (except for like more gahyeon and dami????? pls??????)

siyeon starting the song.......................... thank you.............. I STILL STAND BY SAYING I WOULD LISTEN TO HER VOICE FOR LITERALLY FOREVER HER VOICE DURING THE CHORUS QUEEN OF SINGING CHORUSES OH BUT THEN THAT HIGH NOTE ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????? SHE DIDNT HAVE TO KILL ME LIKE THIS BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH I- and now....... im in the deja vu P L E A S E

gaaaaaaaahhhyeeeeeooonnnn her voice is so pretty!!!!!!!!!!! BUT I WANT MORE!!!!!!!!!! HOWEVER youre the second one to sing with this beautiful gentleness of a part and to be honest this part paired with siyeon starting it really eases you into the song and its quite the blessing to hear thanks- and then yknow this part right after handong........................... Heaven™

SPEAKING OF HANDONG LISTEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE AMOUNT OF LINES SHE HAS MAKES ME WANNA CRY OKAY THIS PART RIGHT HERE............................. PLS.............. (i think its just me but theres a smaller voice singing like right under her voice????) HER PRE-CHORUS PARTS ARE LITERALLY THE BEST PARTS IN THE WHOLE SONG TO LISTEN TO pls believe me when i say this its NOT bc shes my ultimate bias like i genuinely like her parts the most

sua pls i was already prepared for softer vocals and you really gave that to me and then this is absolute perfection they were beautiful and amazing OF COURSE got me feeling like i was floating on actually clouds god TAHNK YOU AND THEN YOU JUST HAD TO HIT ME WITH YOUR PART RIGHT HERE???? i understand its just the chorus but I Felt That™ okay!!!!!!

JIU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i stand by saying how your voice be powerful as hell still even during these lines VERY short but VERY effective and very good leading into the chorus i love- and then your bridge....................... B I C T H really put me in my feelings but i welcome it with EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING and with open arms.......................

YOOHYEON AKA THE OTHER QUEEN OF SINGING CHORUSES I MEAN..................................... I LITERALLY DUNNO WHAT TO SAY!!!!!!!!!!! LIKE THEIR BEAUTIFUL SOUNDING HER VOICE GOES WELL WITH THEM like i really like the parts she sings after siyeon like................. Y O O F if a feather became a voice-

i need more dami too..................... P L E A S E like obviously with their other songs i was expecting dami to be in the second verse and with a smooth rap section and the former was correct HOWEVER to my pleasant surprise SHE SANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! her singing voice suited this SO MUCH and im actually glad there wasnt a rap part at all in this song especially that SECOND PART.................. Heaven™ 2x

my favorite lyrics (x): i know i said handongs were my favorite to listen to but i like these lines dont hurt me

난 이 숨결이 허락되는 날까지 As long as I can breathe 다신 너를 놓을 수 없어 I can’t let go of you again 우린 모든 순간 함께 할 테니 We’ll be together for every moment 내 곁에서 beside me

THE DANCE OKAY IM GONNA DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT ill be referring to THIS PERFORMANCE can we pls talk about how loud the fanchant is im crying and really take it in and all of their talented glory ANYWAY OF COURSE the choreography F UKCING SLAPS just so many different position changes and just alwaYS SO IN SYNC WITH EACH OTHER ITS INSANE ill just list them briefly and keep the points short this is long enough:

THE BEGINNING AND THE END BEING THE SAME...................... CERTAINLY DEJA VU-

SIYEONS TUTTING THING THANKS

handongs majestic spin

this and this with how the formation changes and how their arms swing AND the kick

ALSO in those parts in the last bullet i dunno why but i like that move jiu does when she sings IT HITS

i recall sua spoiling literally the first move of the chorus dance in that vlive THE CHORUS DANCE ALL THOSE FORMATION CHANGES LITERALLY MESS ME UP and THIS most important move in the entire choreography and they line up and its SO COOL to look at

when they lie on each other doing yoohyeons lines

handongs part again when theyre in the line and how satisfying it is to watch

THE ENTIRE BRIDGE

LITERALLY THE ENTIRE DANCE FROM START TO FINISH

QUEENS OF STABILITY

sidenote: can we talk about how handong and dami?????? literally spin during their parts????? and they sounded super clear??????

THE VISUALS SO.......................... if you had asked me two days ago (maybe a little bit of yesterday) about how i felt about this video.................. i wouldve mentioned some unpopular opinions regarding the videos look............ i mentioned to gwen @loonapunk that i wasnt TOO into it............ BUT- after finally sitting down to do this long ass post i dont hate it!!!!!!!!!!!! i think bc i have to remind myself that this song (album???? well song-) is for that kings raid game and all the visuals AND story are based off that????? i dunno BUT WHAT I DO KNOW IS I LIKE TO WATCH IT

IM TOO BIG STUPID™ TO COMPREHEND THIS STORYLINE AND COME UP WITH MY OWN THEORIES EVEN NOW AND I WOULD L O V E TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU BUT THIS IS LONG ENOUGH AS IT IS SO ILL REDIRECT YOU TO THEORY POSTS (TWO (2) FROM MY GALAXY BRAIN MOOTS) THAT I LIKED:

@highsomnia NITAS POST WHICH I PERSONALLY FOUND ENJOYABLE TO READ SO IF YOU COULD READ THIS YOU SHOULD ALSO READ THAT

@in-somnias ELENAS POST WHICH WAS ALSO AN INTERESTING READ RIGHT HERE

AND THEN THIS ONE THAT WAS ORIGINALLY FROM TWITTER i dont follow her so im not gonna @

AIIGHT IMMA GO CRAZY WITH THESE SHOTS (with only small one/two sentence captions this is LONG ENOUGH):

BICTH I SAW THIS AND KNEW I WAS GONNA GET GOT™ like its just super duper INCREDIBLY PRETTY TO LOOK AT

THIS WILL BE FOREVER ICONIC™ DONT ARGUE WITH ME

this is what the calm before the storm looks like

went back to the mv film making video and turns out they got slippers on under that table love that for them

how in the hell am i supposed to interpret this exchange

okay longer section i think im supposed to interpret this more as a sister bond than a romantic one?????? i remember being taken aback and believed this to be something gay BUT 99.9% OF INSOMNIAS say its gay subtext so ill just put it like that i dunno but like i just wanna say they have beautiful smiles and im love them!!!

a youtuber reacting to this mv saying it just looks like theyre shading each other.................... anyway-

i CANNOT i repeat I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU how Shook™ i was when i saw this for the first time i basically jumped out of my chair i couldnt i-

this mv really led me to believe jiu was the evil one.............................

POETIC. CINEMA.

THE WOMAN. THE MYTH. THE LEGEND. THE FIREBENDER. THE WOLF. LEE SIYEON. pls light me up

Symbolism™................ SYMBOLISM I CANNOT COMPREHEND GO TO THE THEORIES

MORE SYMBOLISM GO TO THE THEORIES

T H E M

NOT ONLY IS THIS VIDEO SUPER AESTHETIC™ BUT THE SEVEN (7) MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN THE WORLD BLESSING US ONCE AGAIN WITH THEIR PRESENCE AND ALLOWED THEIR ROYALTY VIBES SHOOT INTO THE MESOSPHERE INTO REAL LIFE KILLING ALL OF US

THE DANCING SCENES WITH THE TEASER OUTFITS...................................... AT EASE.....................

LITERALLY NO COMPLAINTS MOVING ON:

JIU

L I S T E N KIM MINJI YOURE A FULL PRINCESS this pink fluffy dress with the flower crown in this picture............................ i may have cried- like a lot of people were trying this look to persephone and im HERE for that concept for her and like the white outfit AND black outfit is probably super symbolic again im too Big Stupid™ anyway when i saw that black outfit in the teaser........................... i was attacked jiu with a sword is just EVERYTHING i wanted and more

SUA

LITERALLY I CANNOT- her hair being wavy looks SO GOOD on her THIS BLACK DRESS WITH THE FLOWERS she is always a Serve™ WE KNOW THAT but her visuals just HIT DIFFERENT this time lighter colored hair really suits her and then of course she looks FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC in the dance scenes in the white and the black that low pony tail pls

SIYEON

purple on this woman just shoulders and collarbones out being Beautiful™ ALL THE WHILE staying ON BRAND with herself and was wearing pants good for her G O D i just love the way her hair looks in the white and gold outfits like it just LOOKS PRETTY to me i dunno how to describe it also her with a pony tail WHAT ARE YOU SO PRETTY FOR-

HANDONG

i just................... want closer shots of this.................. CLOSER SHOTS IN GENERAL OF HER ACTUALLY like LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL™ SHE LOOKS HERE I WANNA SEE MORE OF IT??????? PLS??????? nothing gets me weaker than her hair being styled exactly like in the picture i just love that her royalty and regal vibes and looks were FINALLY realized and WAS BROUGHT TO THE FOREFRONT

YOOHYEON

THIS MV MUST CONVINCE ME SHE IS EVIL BY SHOWING HER FOREHEAD first of all the first outfit turning her into an Actual Entire Princess™/Queen™ that red one i dont really understand SHE MAKES IT WORK THO THEN THAT BLACK OUTFIT LISTEN yo it was like getting hit by a whole truck full speed i wasnt ready and i just wanna admire that yoohyeon and gray colored hair is an actual match made in heaven i just have to say-

DAMI

i love this suit and the patten on it so much this outfits color (what is that teal????) and her hair color is such a GOOD PAIRING and on her SHE JUST KILLED ME WITH HER SOLO SCENES i wish i had more to say about her and her outfits but what else can i say other than that she is INSANELY ATTRACTIVE AND I WANT HER TO STEP ON ME???????

GAHYEON

she really broke my neck when i saw her the first time LIKE DEADASS LOOK AT THIS PICTURE i had fallen for her and i cannot get up when i saw this outfit in the other shots like the black top and the see through sleeves but her skirt is like different colors she really Served™ in this outfit bangs usually look cute but in her solo parts she was coming for my heart like miss lee gahyeon pls-

BONUS TIME: B-SIDE TRACKS (just short thoughts and point out specific parts i liked lmao)

Intro:

their intros always slap are you kidding me-

The curse of the Spider

i wasnt ready for this bop to slap me in the face on my spotify that chorus didnt have to do that to me THAT GUITAR DIDNT HAVE TO DO THAT TO ME i love the way dami and handong sound in this song i mean wrow-

favorite lyrics (x):

소름이 끼칠 만큼 It’s chilling 도망치고 싶어질 it makes me want to run away 그런 두려움일 테니 such is this fear

Silent Night

B I H C T i knew when i heard this in the highlight it was going to be my favorite one IT REALLY WOKE SOMETHING IN ME these lyrics i cant- gahyeon and handong hurted me with their lower registers Y AL L YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE HURTED ME THAT D R O P DID

favorite lyrics (x):

겨눈 칼 끝은 a blade directed at someone 결국 돌아오게 돼 eventually returns 더 다가오지 마 don’t come closer

Polaris

this song is as if i was wrapped in the thickest blanket i got and im resting on the softest bed in the world with a fireplace going nearby and i could finally rest peacefully bc the lord knows i need it- i really cried a little bit listening to this pls leave me be i legit cant pick a specific member i liked the most for this song i just love it and everything it got

favorite lyrics (x):

그게 너라서 행복해 I’m happy that it’s you 그 많은 인연 속에 Among those numerous connections 수많은 사람 중에 Among those numerous people

LIKE im so completely satisfied with every song on this album and im completely in love with it!!!!!!!!!! the only ‘issue’ i really had was with the mv visually but as you read i warmed up to it lmao LIKE IM JUST SO PROUD OF THESE WOMEN AND HOW TALENTED AND HARDWORKING THEY ARE like i have to say the japanese release?????? and this????? being so close to each other????? you telling me they learned TWO (2) different choreographies one after the other???? i absolutely love this album and i desperately desperately DESPERATELY want so much more success for them bc ITS WHAT THEY DESERVE!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is supposed to be just about the overall mv and deja vu but i might as well just type what i feel lmao

IN CONCLUSION: MY INSOMNIA ASS IS BOTH ALIVE AND DEAD BUT MOSTLY ALIVE I LOVE THIS IM STREAMING

i have to bring this back its relevant again:

#THREE (3) DAYS IN THE MAKING #it took longer bc ive been having the worst stomachaches rn #it probably shows in this post lmao #but anyway Y E A H im love them #LETS GET THIS BREAD #if you read all of this i appreciate you #dreamcatcher #han.txt #han's mv afterthoughts

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