#I haven’t been on Spotify in like a month so these are like month old on repeat songs lmao

[babygirllinds]

Share 5 top songs you have on repeat right now! 💜🎵

tagged by: @radiocheck (now I know your side-blog lmao) — thanks for the tag, lovely 💗💗💗

According to my Spotify ‘on repeat’ playlist…

Hungry Eyes — Eric Carmen

If I Could Fly — One Direction

Willow — Taylor Swift

Man! I Feel Like A Woman! — Shania Twain

You Can’t Hurry Love — Phil Collins

no-pressure tags: @foreverralways @awkwxrdapple @jynxmirage @fantasygirlsuniverse @sweetlittleladybug @callsign-shortstack

[linghxr]

My 2023 in Mandopop/Chinese music (update & recs)

It’s been too long since I last shared some music recommendations/updates on what I’m listening to! Admittedly, I haven’t been discovering as many new artists because I’m busy listening to 薛之谦 on repeat. But we'll focus on the new.

You can check out my Spotify playlist featuring these songs (plus bonus ones). In addition, I’ve included YouTube links below.

五月天 / Mayday 五月天 is a legendary band, so of course I knew of them and had heard a few of their songs over the years. But I never proactively sought out their music until recently. I still haven’t had time to dive into their back catalog, but I’ve already found some songs I really love.

《我又初恋了》 I actually really didn’t like this song the first time I heard it, but it wormed its way into my brain. It’s just a lot of fun! Non-serious songs can be good too.

《转眼》 My favorite 五月天 song <3. I’m probably too young to fully appreciate the lyrics, but they make me feel so nostalgic and bittersweet, like transitioning to a new chapter of life and leaving the old behind.

《因为你 所以我》 This song didn’t stand out to me at first, but it grew on me! I caught myself humming it a lot. It‘s kind of corny, but it sounds so full of hope.

陈奕迅 / Eason Chan I first started listening to 陈奕迅 a couple years ago after my Album a Day August challenge, but I’ve found that his music has grown on me over time. I believe I’ve only mentioned him once before, so I thought now was a good time to highlight my favorite of his songs.

《之外》 This is probably my favorite 陈奕迅 song. The lyrics convey a sense of hopelessness, but the overall song has a smooth, light sound.

《娱乐天空》 You know a song is good when it’s over 6 minutes long but feels like it flies by! It makes me want to get up, get moving, and be productive.

《烟味》 This song is dramatic, and I love it for that. Also has a hint of orchestral flavor.

《淘汰》 One of 陈奕迅’s most well-known songs—for a good reason. It has big Cpop ballad vibes but is definitely livelier.

白举纲 / Bai Jugang You’re going to notice several mentions of 披荆斩棘 in this post. That’s where I “met” 白举纲. I instantly liked his voice and loved seeing him with his “brother” 高瀚宇 and “dad” 张晋! You may also see his music under his English name, Pax Congo.

《被动失控》 This is the only song on the list you could headbang to.

《Shy Boy》 I love this song because it’s cute and includes a children’s rhyme that I learned as a kid: 找啊找啊找朋友 找到一个好朋友.

苏诗丁 / Su Shiding At some point last year I did a one-month free trial of Apple Music. It was an interesting experience because the recommendations were very different from what Spotify tends to show me. I’m glad Apple Music led me to 苏诗丁!

《LUCIFER（傲慢宗罪）》 All I can say is that this song exudes coolness and confidence. It also has a fair bit of English, but honestly I had to look up the lyrics to tell what some of it was.

《梦幻病》 This song is from the same album. It’s dreamlike but gets more frantic as it builds. Overall, it’s just a bit…unsettling.

队长 / Young Captain I learned about 队长 from a random post on Instagram about his concert in Malaysia. I think these songs might have gone viral on 抖音 or something. I was surprised I liked them so much because they both have some rap (I’m not a rap fan), but it was love at first listen.

《11》 I love how this song builds towards the end. I spend the whole song waiting for the crescendo, and it’s great payoff.

《楼顶上的小斑鸠》 This song is like the slightly mellower sibling of the one above. But I ended up liking this one even more.

金志文 / Jin Zhiwen 金志文 was another artist who Apple Music recommended to me. I definitely need to explore his discography more but haven’t had the chance to do so yet. But he has some good stuff so far!

《自娱自乐》 Smooth and relaxing but in a fun way. Simple and no-frills but will put a smile on your face!

《远走高飞》 This one feels like enjoying the breeze on a beautiful sunny day. I also enjoy the duet with 徐佳莹 version.

163braces 163braces started out as a YouTuber posting song covers. I have watched a couple of her covers, but they didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I was pleasantly surprised by her foray into original music. I look forward to hearing what she does next!

《控制》 The song I would want as my “soundtrack” if I were a video game character. It’s energetic and loud.

《murmur》 Honestly this song is pretty similar to the first one. Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing them. But hey, if ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

小鬼 / Lil Ghost 小鬼 did what I can best describe as “pulling an MGK” by going from more rap to kinda pop-punk? That MGK album was my guilty pleasure when in came out, so I’m all for 小鬼’s new direction.

《Last Day》 This song really gave me MGK vibes. It’s about half in English, but I often don't even notice when he switches between languages.

《不良少年》 I just know I would have loved this song so much in high school. It’s an angsty teen anthem. 

《为明天写封信》 I can totally imagine this song playing at the end of a 2000s teen movie! Maybe while showing a montage of the main characters graduating.

《无所求必满载而归》 by 陈粒 / Chen Li This is technically cheating because I have recommended 陈粒 songs before, but it was at least a couple years ago. I heard this song covered on 披荆斩棘的哥哥 and immediately looked up the original. Honestly I should have known it was a 陈粒 song because you can totally tell it’s her style.

《轻红》 by 曹杨 / Young I keep coming back to this song! It’s from a drama soundtrack. I was super surprised the first time I listened to it because I thought it was going to be a typical ballad based on the first ~45 seconds or so—it wasn’t. There is also another version by 陈雪燃 (the king of cdrama OSTs). But I actually prefer the 曹杨 version.

《时光机》 by 吴克群 / Kenji Wu I was introduced to 吴克群 via 披荆斩棘2. He was instantly one of my favorite contestants after his team’s amazing 《新地球》 performance (check it out). This song is bouncy and a little dreamy. I kinda want to hear a remix with Harry Styles’ As It Was. I just wish it were longer than 3 minutes!

My Spotify Wrapped

I have a tradition of sharing my Spotify Wrapped, and I wanted to continue the streak in some form. So here's a quick rundown.

Top genre: ���语流行音乐 Representative city: Taipei Minutes: 21,750

Top artists

薛之谦 / Xue Zhiqian

林宥嘉 / Yoga Lin

五月天 / Mayday

李荣浩 / Li Ronghao

陈奕迅 / Eason Chan 

Top songs

《木偶人》 - 薛之谦

《狐狸》 - 薛之谦

《骆驼》 - 薛之谦

《转眼》 - 五月天

《后来的我们》 - 五月天

Also, fellow Mandopop fans should check out the Mando Gap newsletter. I stumbled upon it this year, and I know it’s going to be a great resource for discovering new artists in 2024!

[gigisimsonmars]

Reunions

Jake Seresin x F!Reader. This is my first fic, so please be nice! Dedicated to @sebsxphia - so proud of you! Thanks to @gretagerwigsmuse for reading this over. Tagging a few people who might be interested: @blue-aconite @anniesocsandgeneralstore @wildbornsiren @seresinhangmanjake @callsignvalley @theharddeck

Warnings: pregnancy scare, situationships, anxiety.

You stand on your tip-toes, peering around the heads of the people in front of you on the dock, trying to get a glimpse of the gangway. Jake will be in his camo uniform, blending into the crowd of sailors walking off the carrier. The sun is so bright, the wind blowing the sea air off the water and mixing with the smells of the crowd around you. You feel a little nauseous. You haven’t seen him in three months.

An excited little girl knocks into you, hopping up and down, tugging on her father’s hand. “Mommy! Can you see Mommy?” Her father is smiling, even as the lines of exhaustion from the past few months carve down his cheeks. “She’s almost here, baby.” You stare a little too long. The noise of the crowd, the pressure of the bodies around you, the light, it’s all pressing down on you. You’re a little lightheaded. You look again at the gangway but can’t pick Jake out.

You’re staring at a family reunion, parents clutching their gangly son – do they really let kids join this young? He looks sixteen – when Jake finds you.

He looks perfect, bronzed by the sun, sea glass eyes full of light. He asked you to come get him, and he emailed you every week while he was away and called twice, and he calls you sweetheart -  

“Sweetheart, you okay?” He’s been speaking. You should have been listening. You missed his first words to you.

“I-,” the words aren’t coming. Jake looks at you a moment, carefully.

“Too much noise?” he asks gently, so gently that it’s out of place in this boisterous scene. You nod, still unable to call up your voice.

“C’mon, let’s blow this popsicle stand.” He slings his arm around your waist and leads you back to the parking lot. Opens the passenger door for you, closes it gently. Slings his seabag into the trunk and comes around, settles into the driver’s seat.

You fold your hands tightly in your lap, braced against your stomach. It’s an old habit, to make yourself smaller. You haven’t been this tense around him since he drove you home after your fifth date.

Jake starts the car. The radio station you had on starts to play. He glances over at you as the old Garth Brooks song fills the car. You started listening to music like this with him, and kept listening when he left you. You’re pretty sure that George Strait will be in your Spotify Top 5 list this year.

The two of you head back to your place. Jake’s has been shut up for weeks, though you’ve been keeping an eye on it. He likes yours better anyway. You have soft pillows and pretty art posters on the walls, and a spice rack that you actually use. He complains that your couch isn’t big enough for a six foot naval aviator and his girl (your stomach flips again remembering when he said that), but you’ve managed okay.

Jake pulls into the apartment parking lot. There’s always a spot open for golden boy somehow, even though you usually have to circle around a couple of times and park in the back. He gets out, gets his bag, opens your door and takes your hand. You walk into the building together, take off your shoes together, bumping into each other in the small entryway to your place. You go into the living room and sit on the couch. You still haven’t spoken.

Jake joins you after he goes to the bathroom. He must have splashed water on his face, you can see the droplets on his collar. He’s tense now, too, you can tell.

“I thought I was pregnant.”

The words fall like a stone into water. His eyes widen, and drop to your flat stomach. Your hands are braced there again. You’d only been seeing him for two months before he left.

“I wasn’t – I’ve never skipped a period before, so I thought maybe – but it was probably just stress.” Stress from work, stress from family, stress from your maybe-boyfriend going to sea for three months, whatever.

But that week when you thought maybe? You’d thought about children as a hazy, dreamy someday. But this was real. You could have really had a baby – a sweet-faced baby with a round tummy and big green eyes. You could have made room in your apartment, changed your work schedule, spent Saturday mornings at the library story hour instead of sleeping off Friday night. You could have had a baby with a man who didn’t love you and probably didn’t even want to be a father.

Jake sucks in a deep breath, then exhales. “Sweetheart…” he clearly doesn’t know what to say. You’ve dropped this on him with no warning.

You stand up, pace into the kitchen. You consciously tidied up your breakfast dishes this morning even though you usually leave them for after dinner. Jake is fastidious. You run the sponge over the stovetop instead. You can never get all the grease off. Jake can.

You hear him get up and follow you. He’s leaning against the doorframe, you know without looking. You’re throwing off mixed signals, you know that. You’re not angry at him. You want him to touch you again. But you’re afraid of what he’s going to say next. If he says that the two of you weren’t serious, that it was a good thing, that he likes you a lot but he’s not cut out for fatherhood, you will either chuck the sponge straight at his head or splinter all over your kitchen floor.

“Would it have been so bad?”

What.

You spin around and gawk at him.

“I mean, we’ve only been seeing each other for a few months, but I thought you wanted kids?”

What.

“I know we’ve never talked about it but it was pretty obvious when you were playing with Payback’s kid.”

Payback’s kid is adorable. She has the entire Dagger Squad wrapped around her finger. You’re pretty sure that she has never been put down the whole time she’s been in North Island. Right before everyone deployed you all had a picnic on the beach. She was wearing the tiniest sunhat you had ever seen and punched Fanboy with her tiny baby fist when he stopped her from eating sand.

“I – what?”

Jake shifts uncomfortably. You’ve never seen him like this. He’s always so confident and smooth, whether he’s sliding up beside you at the bar or opening a car door for you or carrying you to his bedroom or kissing you goodbye and whispering for you to meet him on the dock when he gets back.

“We would have figured it out.” The light through your window dapples across his face. It must be windy, you can see the branches of the tree moving from their shadows.

You literally had never considered the conversation going this way.

“Unless you didn’t – unless I’m not the one – then I guess –”

“You are.” You didn’t even realize that your mouth had started forming the words until they were out. “I didn’t – we’ve never talked about kids, or exclusivity or anything. I didn’t want to assume…” You know that your eyes are big and hopeful and watery.

Jake’s face relaxed the second you started speaking. He crosses the kitchen to you, takes the sponge from you gently and tosses it in the sink. Blindly you grope for a dishcloth to dry your hands before they come to rest lightly on his shoulders.

“Sweetheart, it’s been you since I dropped you off on your doorstep after our first date.”

Oh. Now you’re crying.

He kisses your cheeks, kisses the tears away, then lightly sets his mouth to yours. It’s the first time in three months. You’ve missed him so, so much. The week you thought you were carrying his child you’d curled yourself around your belly every night, thinking that there was a piece of him in there. It had hurt so much more than you had expected when the test came back negative.

Jake finally pulls away, looks at you with such tenderness.

“You want a baby?”

You nod, shakily. It still feels risky to admit it. Five months together, three of those apart, isn’t long at all.

“You’d better come with me to Texas for Thanksgiving then. My dad says he’ll give me my grandma’s ring whenever I’m ready, but he wants to meet you first.”

You suck in a breath. He’s told his family about you?

“Sweetheart, I like to think I’m pretty good at reading you, but I need to hear the words.”

You tip up your chin a bit. “Oh, was that a proposal?”

He grins down at you, eyes flashing.

“Oh, you’ll know when I propose, sweetheart.”

Your smile matches his.

“I guess you also know what I’ll say, then.”

[irisbleufic]

Of all the current Devil’s Minion writers your playlist is the one I want to see. Do you have one? If not, are there particular songs you’ve been listening into to while you write? The vibe of your prose with them is hypnotizing like the short story about them in the books, it’s impressive, and does your music also inform this choice if at all?

Intense question, anon. Fourteen-year-old me fucking hyperventilated after reading the DM chapter in Queen of the Damned (me, on the floor of my bedroom at 3am because I don’t want to get caught reading this book, staring dazed at the ceiling; me, now, three weeks ago, sitting shellshocked on the sofa after watching S1 and S2 over two days as a binge; me, over two of those weeks following the binge, rereading the first half of the Chronicles and starting to see double, tilt the prism, see what happens when the narratives are overlaid and blurred), and it still feels like that. Likely my prose turning out the way it is in these stories is about 90% my giddy teenage self having access to my adult self’s writing experience to finally write this beloved pairing without fear of litigious letters (IYKYK, my fellow elder Millennials in the fandom). I don’t often love film and TV adaptations of my favorite books, but I adore this show. It’s flawlessly transformative; its improvements only make the resonances and overlaps that much more meaningful. No notes.

However, I have been listening to the same small handful of songs on repeat for 6 days as I write these pieces. I imagine they are affecting my sense of scansion at points; my writing life didn’t begin with fiction, it began with years of poetry before I ever tried prose. These tracks are as meaningful to me as poems as they are songs. It’s as good a starting point for a playlist as any; I’ll keep adding and put it together on Spotify at some point.

1. Vesuvius - Sufjan Stevens

Vesuvius, I am here

You are all I have

Fire of fire, I'm insecure

for it is all been made to plan

Though I know I will fail

I cannot be made to laugh

for in life as in death

I'd rather be burned

than be living in debt

This song was my entire first 72 hours of writing. I’m that Autistic weirdo who will listen to a single song on repeat for a month and think nothing of it. Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii being the nexus point of their love story from beginning to end in QotD, this is everything to me; I was never going to be able to write about the show incarnation of them without integrating this location and this imagery in the most reverent love letter I know how. This is why my series title for these stories is Caldera. Volcanic crater blowout if ever I saw one; I ran with it.

2. I Forget Where We Were - Ben Howard

Hello love, my invincible friend; hello, love, the thistle and the burr. For you, I have so many words—and I, I forget where we were. I haven’t known this song for all that long in the grand scheme, but it found me via Spotify shuffle in 2022 right after something awful happened. The longing in this song hinges on one of the lovers in it waking up to something they’ve forgotten about their relationship, something precious, and I’m thrilled to finally have a fandom application for it.

3. Make You Better - The Decemberists

I sung you your twinges

I suffered you your tattle-tales

and when you broke sideways

I wanted you, I needed you, oh

to make me better

Oh, to make me better

But we're not so starry-eyed anymore

like the perfect paramour you were in your letters

And won't it all just come around to make you

let it all un-break you to the day that you met her

No excuse for this one; it does a great job of speaking for itself. Front-man Colin Meloy is one of my all-time favorite songwriters, and his work is frequently dark, creepy, and/or gothic enough in flavor that I could find a few more.

4. Song to the Siren - Elisabeth Fraser & This Mortal Coil

On the floating shipless oceans

I did all my best to smile

till your singing eyes and fingers

drew me loving to your isle

and you sang, “Sail to me,

sail to me, let me enfold you—

here I am, here I am,

waiting to hold you.”

This cover of Tim Buckley’s folk masterpiece completely transforms the vibe of the song, and in the kind of way you need for this pairing. This one is at responsible for the events and imagery in my “Still Life with Sunken Treasure.”

5. Hal - Yasmine Hamdan, Only Lovers Left Alive OST

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اطلعي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي شرّفي

لأ ما أقدرشي

وطلعت يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

يا عزيزة اتريحي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي اتلحلحي

لأ ما أقدرشي

وسمعت يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اتفرفشي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي قربي

لأ ما أقدرشي

فرشنا يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

يا عزيزة اقلعي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي اتجرأي

لأ مش ممكن

شلحنا يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اتغندريله

يا حبيبتي اتذوقيله

افهمي يا سيدي مش قادرة

وطبعا تقنعني مش واخدة

ايه يا عزيزة؟

ايه اللي إنتي عملاه ده؟

يا يا يا راجل يا هوه!

مش عيب عليك اختشي ونو

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اخلعي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي اتشخلعي

لأ مش ممكن

يا خيبتي يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

يا عزيزة اتبغددي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي جربي

لأ ما أقدرشي

وجينا يا ناس، غلبنا يا ناس

جينا يا ناس، غلبنا يا ناس

I don’t think the Arabic justified to the correct side when I copied this, but the translation is very easy to find. I don’t speak Arabic, but honestly the English translation is dull compared to the beauty of this language. If you haven’t watched Only Lovers Left Alive, what the hell are you even doing with your vampire-loving, monster-fucking life? All the tracks on it have the right vibe for DM, really.

[asimplearchivist]

𝑪𝑯. 𝑰𝑰 — 𝑭𝑨𝑪𝑬 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑩𝑼𝑹𝑵𝑰𝑵𝑮.

𝐂𝐇. 𝐈𝐈 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐈 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑.

[𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓶𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓽'𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽] [ 𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ] AO3 | SPOTIFY | PINTEREST summary 🕷️ ⤏ miguel struggles to come to terms with your brief encounter. pairing 🕷️ miguel o’hara/spider!reader word count 🕷️ 3.5k a/n 🕷️ ⤏ I don’t know that the collective’s HQ is actually an old Alchemax facility, but it made sense to me since the go-home machine is similar to the collider. I haven’t been able to find much information on the wiki about 2099’s world, much less spiderverse miguel’s version, so I’m gonna sprinkle in my own headcanons as we go along until I learn anything different. if any of you happen to know any details (like currency, layout of Nueva York, little things like that) please let me know! I’d prefer this fic not to have glaring discrepancies to the source material if at all possible. :) 🕷️ MASTERPOST 🕷️ 🕷️ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ⤎ 🕷️ ⤏ NEXT CHAPTER 🕷️

“I told you that you weren’t up for that. I could’ve handled it just fine.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He could feel Jessica’s eyes trained firmly on his back, though he did his damnedest to ignore the persistent prickling along the back of his neck. O’Hirn was struggling again, given most of the toxin had already worn off, and it was all the restraint Miguel could muster not to just toss him over the boardwalk into the yawning depths of HQ and be done with it.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“I’ve got it,” Miguel responded brusquely, clenching his jaw.

“Just because I’m pregnant,” she started, “doesn’t mean I can’t—”

“I don’t need you getting yourself hurt,” he interrupted.

“I’m only two months in,” she sighed. “I hate to think about what you’ll be like later on. Even my husband isn’t as worried as you are, Miguel.”

“You’re exposed to enough danger as it is,” he growled. “I had it covered.”

“If you nearly drowning is your definition of ‘had it covered’, then I worry about what it means for you not to have it covered.”

Finally, they made it to the containment center, and Miguel dropped the mercenary face-first into the cage, muttering under his breath all the while. The field turned on with a hum, and Miguel released a terse exhale of relief as he stepped back for it all to be finally over.

“Hiya, boss! How’d it go?”

Almost over, anyway.

“Fine.” He turned and started to walk towards his office. “Jess, remember to fill out a report. LYLA, catalog Alexander O’Hirn into the queue for departure.”

Her lax footsteps were declaration enough of her intention to do anything but that.

“You could have at least explained the basics, you know. Since she’s from an adjacent 2099, she’d understand the multiverse theory. The Alchemax in that reality is performing similar experimentations for dimensional travel, and she’d evidently run into their projects before.”

“What part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ do you not understand?”

“The part where it excuses you for being an ass.”

He stopped and turned on his heel, lenses narrowing as he glared resolutely down at his companion. “It’s classified to anyone not enrolled in the collective.”

“Ooh, touchy,” LYLA commented, appearing over Jessica’s shoulder like the demonic conductor she was. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Miguel ground out.

“Something happened. Your vitals are all over the place, boss.”

“I told you not to monitor me.”

“Does it have to do with the fact that she’s—”

“Don’t,” Miguel bit out.

LYLA raised her palms placatingly, twisting and regarding him wryly. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“She’s not the same,” Jessica reminded him needlessly.

“Of course she isn’t,” he growled. “Why do you think—”

She raised a manicured brow at him, effectively shutting him up. He opted to glower instead. “And because she isn’t the same, you owed her a civil response—especially since the big lug back there almost popped her head off like a cork. She obviously knows your counterpart because she recognized you. I know you’re going through a lot right now, but it didn’t give you a reason to dismiss her like that. It’s not her fault that any of this is happening, and we always need new recruits.”

Miguel bristled. “I’m not recruiting her.”

“And why not?” Jessica propped her fists on her wide hips.

His lenses narrowed further. “You know why.”

“Yeah, I do.” She shook her head. “Because you’re letting your personal bias interfere with the job.”

Miguel scoffed and turned away from her once more. “All this is on a need-to-know basis, Jess. We’re not so sore in need of help that I have to pull every conceivable Spider-Person in the multiverse into the coalition.”

“Don’t you think she needs to know why her dead husband randomly walked out of a portal and acted like she didn’t exist?” LYLA remarked.

Jessica fell silent, obviously in shock, and Miguel dropped his head to pinch the bridge of his nose. “LYLA.”

“I ran preliminaries while you were gone,” she continued lightly. Miguel twisted just enough to watch her use multiple holograms to display your credentials and history as she listed off your name and date of birth. “...Spider-Woman of 928C for five years. Widowed by one Miguel O’Hara of eight years in a classified, freak accident at his laboratory in Alchemax. Refused answers regarding the nature of his death, she snuck in to investigate herself. She was then bitten by a genetically and radioactively modified Goldenrod Crab spider he had assisted in mutating, which imbued her with the classic spider powers, plus…” She squinted at the words streaming across the screen. “...boosted olfactory senses, organic webbing excreting a sedative pheromone, and pigment-shifting abilities that are largely ineffective as camouflage but make for easy changes in hair color and skin tone—oh, look, she gives herself temporary tattoos with it! Neat! She then proceeded to steal the experimental suit of UMF in the same lab and has since been doing her best to stop Alchemax’s schemes and protect Nueva York’s civilians. Heh, the suit colors kind of make her look like a strawberry pie.” She glanced up at Miguel appraisingly. “Did I miss anything?”

“No,” he said tightly. “That about covers it.”

“You said you didn’t know much about the canon events of that universe,” Jessica scolded.

“I knew the basics,” he snapped, “which is why I wanted to avoid confronting her. I wasn’t going out of my way to learn the rest!” He cut a glare towards LYLA, who shrank back slightly. “But thank you for the input.”

“Just trying to help,” she replied lamely.

“Don’t bark at her,” Jess interrupted. “You could have briefed me on it. I could’ve gone by myself if you didn’t want to risk exposure.” She tilted her head slightly. “And if you didn’t want to face her.”

The UMF dissipated from his head so quickly that both woman and AI jumped. The midday sunlight pouring in through the windows on the far wall stung his eyes, but he didn’t care. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

Jess regarded him coolly for a long moment, and Miguel spun to march himself into the blissfully quiet and empty haven of his own lab.

“You owe her an apology,” the woman called.

Gritting his teeth, he stopped long enough to throw his reply over his shoulder. “And why is that?”

“If you’re in this bad of a state seeing her now,” Jess said, “how do you think she feels having grieved you for five years?”

Miguel’s talons pierced into the meat of his palms as he stayed silent and stalked away.

The lab was blissfully quiet, save the hum and chirrup of the numerous machines and monitors working away in solitude. It was raining outside, drumming against the roof and narrow windows near the ceiling to allow in faint shafts of bleak, tepid gray light. The occasional muffled rumble of thunder made him wince, even as the dark room allowed his eyes to finally relax. Still, it would take a while for his head to stop throbbing.

He had been too harsh on Jessica—LYLA, too—he knew that. He didn’t have an excuse. But the migraine he’d woken up with that morning combined with the fact that any Rhino, no matter what universe they originated from, were royal pains in the ass. Almost drowning and scarcely avoiding impalement had not done anything to improve his mood, either.

Miguel let out a harsh sigh as he sank heavily onto the platform resting at floor level, propping his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands. His fingertips dug into his eyes and temples in a feeble attempt to assuage the aching pressure but to no avail. He needed to sleep, seeing as he’d gleaned none the night before after having determined a mission to the dimension directly neighboring his was necessary ASAP—the anomaly might not have fully transitioned until a couple of hours ago, but LYLA’s predictions had been correct and he knew they’d needed to act fast.

Even still, it had almost been too late.

He was always too late.

He gritted his teeth with a growl, shaking his head and straightening to glare up into the shadowy rafters. The patches of amber holograms flickered like candlelight, dancing with images and footage and readouts he couldn’t be bothered to check at the moment—his vision was blurring and if he tried to squint any more today he worried his eyes might pop out of his skull altogether.

“No new anomalies, jefe.”

“LYLA.” He dropped his gaze to the glowing figure floating at eye level. She had her arms folded over her chest, glasses pushed all the way up her nose to hide her eyes.

She rubbed her nose briefly. “Yeah, that’s the designation. Don’t wear it out.” She summoned a graph and pointed to it. “The spike is fading in 928C. Everything should be back to normal by tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” He swallowed, dipping his head to scratch the nape of his neck. “Hey, mira, I’m…sorry, about earlier.”

At her lack of response, he raised his eyes again and found that she had blinked away just as fast as she’d appeared.

Miguel released another sigh, cursing under his breath. He’d done enough damage for the day, he figured.

It didn’t take long to get to his quarters. The uppermost floor of the compound was glassed in on all sides, and bigger than Miguel would ever have wanted—but the construction of HQ had been primarily handled by LYLA seeing as he’d been busy hunting anomalies and recruiting other Spider-People to the collective, and with the haste to get everything up and running he hadn’t really stopped to consider anything besides the necessities. The old Alchemax facility suited perfectly to his needs, and having more money than he knew what to do with from his old position in the upper echelons of the blasted corporation, he’d let her have the reins so he could have more time to work.

To be fair, the living space was…nice. Just big, with amenities and furniture that felt a little too modern. (It made it feel all the more empty.)

Miguel shed the UMF suit and chunked it in the nano-regenerator, wincing as he tweaked the bruises around his ribs. Grappling with a man twice your size in a heavy suit of impenetrable armor while underwater was decidedly not his definition of a good Friday night.

He traipsed into the bathroom, tapping the screen to activate the shower and adjust its jet settings and temperature. He’d be healed by tomorrow, he knew, but the soreness would linger for a couple of days. He’d just have to try not to twist too much.

Miguel stopped to scrutinize himself in the mirror, not for the first time (and definitely not for the last).

The warm white light spilling from the mirror’s rim highlighted his silhouette and the numerous scars littering his frame, the edges of his reflection growing hazy from the steam billowing out over the top of the shower’s tall glass walls. He scarcely recognized himself from the man he’d been six months prior. Working so hard combined with constantly improving his strength for better mobility and endurance in the field had changed his figure so vastly from the lean muscle upon which he’d previously relied while managing Nueva York by himself. It felt surreal, sometimes—but if he could distance himself from the man he’d used to be in any way, he’d take it. Miguel no longer wanted to make mistakes like he did. (It might actually kill him, this time, if he did.)

Miguel shook his head with a low growl, reaching up to tug the loose locks of hair off his forehead—and, in so doing, reminded himself of the band still snugly hugging his ring finger. He regarded it for a long, tense moment as he ground his teeth until his temples throbbed. He fought down tooth and nail the tide of fluctuating emotions that the ring brought—when he wore the suit, he barely noticed it. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

Miguel swallowed roughly and pulled it free, dropping it into the little ceramic dish next to his sink before trudging into the shower to scrub away his woes.

He did feel marginally better afterward, which was a small boon. Dressing in his favorite pair of worn sweats helped, too. He wasn’t hungry, but if he wanted to dissuade the headache with the abnormal amount of aspirin it took to even put a dent in his hyperactive metabolism, he’d have to eat something—so he fixed himself a club and choked it down with water.

By the time he’d settled into bed, flat on his back and gazing blankly up at the dark ceiling with an arm thrown over his forehead to shade his eyes from the city lights glowing along the skyline, his nerves had settled for the most part. He’d apologize to the ladies tomorrow. Maybe, as tired as he was, he’d actually be able to get more than three hours of sleep for once. (Doubtful.)

Miguel sighed heavily, shutting his eyes. He didn’t want to think about it. If he thought about it he’d get upset all over again. It had taken every iota of willpower he possessed just to get through the whole damn mission to begin with. One would think, after the couple of months that he’d had to get over the entire ordeal (his mistake—his greatest mistake—one he would never be able to reverse or rectify no matter how much he regretted it), that he’d have a better handle on his emotions. He’d fucked up catastrophically. Now he was forced to pick up the pieces by holding the multiverse together with nothing but his bare hands and his sheer force of will. He could never afford to allow his selfishness to influence the fate of the multiverse.

Miguel sucked in a deep breath, but the stretch twinged his ribs again. He turned over onto his side with a terse sigh, grabbing the pillow on the opposite end of the bed and stuffing it under himself in an attempt to buoy the bruises. Despite the darkness, his eyes still made out the shape of the overturned frame on the opposite nightstand.

Even while it was face-down, its glass face cracked beyond repair from the force of a previous breakdown, he recalled in perfect detail the picture it housed. You’d always insisted on printing out physical copies despite it having long since fallen to the wayside with the mass digitization nearly a century prior—the photo albums crammed into a box in the top of the closet were painful reminders of that habit. That one in particular had been your favorite: the pair of you at the park, lying on a canvas, red and white gingham picnic blanket, faces turned toward each other’s and away from the sun. You’d snuck the picture while he hadn’t been paying attention, having shut his eyes briefly because it had been unseasonably warm for early autumn, and he’d admittedly almost drifted off breathing in the fruity scent of your shampoo. You’d never told him about it until he’d noticed it’s addition on your bedside table a week later.

It had been the day of your fifth wedding anniversary. He’d lost you in a nearly identical manner to 928C’s alternative version of you—an inexplicable accident at Alchemax in the robotics laboratory where you’d enlisted your profession. Only when he’d tried to investigate further, he’d been drugged with Rapture by the CEO, and his attempt to revert his DNA back to its previous state was thwarted, resulting in…well, the monster of a genetic disaster that he was now, having to regularly utilize injecting a modified serum to tamp down the more feral aspects of the spider DNA slowly but surely attempting to overwrite his own.

His suit was technology you had developed. LYLA was a product of your collaboration with him. There were still sprinkles of you throughout his entire life, even though he’d buried you three years prior—the dimensional travel watch was spawned from the earliest prototypes that you had started, the Go-Home Machine adjacent technology, the anomaly analysis system—he couldn’t escape the ghosts of your influence no matter how much he tried.

Not that he wanted to. It was both torture and comfort to have you so close.

But losing you prematurely is what had spurred him to irrationality, upon discovering the neighboring universe where you’d lived instead and his alternative self had died—and the fact that you’d had Gabriella had broken what little resolve he’d tried to initially maintain. (Miguel didn’t want to think about the possibility that you might have been pregnant when you’d gone—he’d been vehemently avoiding the thought for years, and he’d continue to do so until the day he died because he wasn’t certain he could bear the confirmation of his worst fear.)

But his desperation to deny the multiverse of its cruel dictation of his life story had come back to bite him—he had paid the ultimate price for his negligence twice over.

Miguel squeezed his eyes shut against the hot sting threatening to spill over. He thought he’d been doing better—an incorrect assumption, evidently. The inconsistency of grief was what struck him blind every time. He’d known that he faced the likely possibility of running into another you going in to apprehend the anomaly, but…hearing your voice had nearly unmended him at the seams. Knowing he’d almost been too late to stop yet another you from getting killed…it had been all he could do to keep it together. Yes, he’d come across as dickish as a result—but if Jess knew how hard it had been to look at you (even if you weren’t his you) without falling at your knees, she’d understand why. He had to distance himself in order to spare both himself and this different version of you from the perpetual destruction that plagued him wherever he tread. He couldn’t lose you again. It would unmake him.

The rip of fabric tipped Miguel off that he’d accidentally perforated his pillowcase. Again. He groaned under his breath, curling himself further around the pillow wedged under his ribcage. The faintest whiffs of your old perfume clung to the cotton, and Miguel inhaled it greedily despite the sorrow that threatened to overcome him at the visceral memories it summoned behind his eyelids.

…He remembered that day in the picture clearly. You’d tasted like strawberries from the large bowl you’d eaten mostly by yourself, the sweetness and tartness lingering under your tongue. He could still feel the warmth of your hands on his face, your fingers carding through his hair as he’d rested in your lap while you read to him from your latest rom-com novel. You’d both ended up falling asleep for a few hours, exhausted from long shifts at work with increasingly demanding schedules, waking to the evening golden hour being overtaken by an ominous cumulonimbus. Halfway home the rain had started, and you’d both been soaked to the bone clambering into your shared apartment—and despite the chill, despite the wicker basket forever remaining warped from the overabundance of moisture, despite your recurring teasing over the years about his forecast research falling painfully short, you’d often recalled that day with unfathomable fondness.

He also remembered the desperation of his name on your lips when he’d found you after the explosion, already half-gone. You’d been terrified, confused—yet once you’d realized the inevitability of the situation, you’d circled around to comfort him instead. He’d never forgive himself for his own weakness preventing him from giving you peace, knowing he’d be all right as you’d slipped away, far beyond his mortal reach. (He wasn’t. But he’d wanted you to think he would be.)

That same desperation had tinged your alternate’s voice earlier. The terror, the confusion. He’d been fighting back tears at the agonizing recollection.

He let them spill, now, muffling himself into his pillow in a vain, feeble effort not to break the silence of his empty bedroom in his empty quarters that comprised his empty home.

…Maybe Jess had been right, after all, he thought later, once he’d had no more grief to shed. Face damp, eyes aching, head throbbing once more, he traced mindless patterns into the top sheet where you would have lain with his talon—always facing him, unless he’d managed to talk you into letting him hold you from behind. If this is how badly he felt from less than a minute’s worth of dialogue, how would you feel?

He did owe you an apology. And as much as the thought pained him, they did need more help around HQ. Miguel drifted into a fitful sleep, wondering if you looked any different under your mask.

[heeracha]

▸▸ now playing: waiting for us, stray kids.

▸▸ dedicated to: park jongseong.

genre/warning(s): post breakup au, exes to lovers, a drop of angst, kissing mwehehe. let me know if i missed something! unproofread

note: to the anon that requested #57 !! thank you, i hope u like it !! event is open until all 100 spots are taken, so send in if you want <33 thank youuu <333

wc: 1k 🧍🏻‍♀️ oops

heeracha's spotify wrapped 2022 — [ open ]

relationships were hard, everyone knows that.

but you honestly thought you wouldn’t be one of those people who had a time that broke up. you just thought that if it’s really it, there’s no need to spend time apart from each other. 

it was stupid how you and jay broke up. it was a stupid fight, a stupid misunderstanding that could have been easily fixed if you two took the time to calm down. but jay was stressed, he was on the edge and so were you. there was an unspoken tension with the two of you. probably because you two haven’t seen each other for weeks and only sent dry messages to each other. you just remembered jay shaking his head and left the apartment with a slam of the door.

the moment you heard the slam, you regret everything. you wanted to chase him and apologize for everything, but you thought maybe he wanted to break up already. you didn’t know jay, on the other side of the door, walked back, about to open the door again. but he thought maybe you didn’t want him anymore.

jay was the perfect boyfriend you asked from heaven, your 11:11 wish, your shooting star wish, literally what you thought was something impossible and you were heartbroken when you two broke up. you thought it was already over.

you didn’t expect after a few months, you would run into jay at a coffee shop. you expected it to be awkward, expected jay to even pretend like you don’t exist, but when he looked at you, he gave you a small smile. then, he talked to you. it was like reminiscing with an old friend. he proceeded to ask for your number to catch up with you to which you gave right away.

jay never deleted your number, but he had to ask in case you changed it. 

months flew by, you and jay became close again. you two see each other almost everyday. you don’t know how you feel anymore. you know you love jay, still, but will you still take him as your lover again? you don’t know. you were having so many thoughts. maybe being friends was better with you and him.

there was no occasion, but you and him wanted to go out for the night. you both went to a nice place, talking for hours as you both ate your food, not realizing you two were the only ones left. it felt like you were dating again.

“those were good times.” you say, looking at him as you rest your temple on your knuckles, elbow on the table. jay smiles, leaning forward as he presses his lips against yours. you kiss back, of course. it’s park jongseong, the love of your life. and then, your mind started to think of all the possible scenarios that would happen. things could get bad again and one of you walks out again. no more chances again.

jay softly pulls away, looking at you to see if it was okay with you as you stare back into his beautiful eyes. he slowly leans in, but you move back. jay halts his movements, before moving back and clearing his throat.

“i’m sorry.” he mumbles and you shake your head. “i thought…” he chuckles out of embarrassment. “i thought you were in the same place as i am.” he admits, looking down. if it was wanting to be with each other again, then yes.

you sigh, leaning your forehead against his temple as your hand plays with his collar. “i am, jongseong.” you mumble. “i want to be with you again, but the past couple of months got me thinking, what if we’re better off as friends?”

“i understand.” jay says, putting his arm around you. “it’s okay.” he softly says, his finger tracing your arm up and down. “i will wait for your decision, okay? i’ll wait for you, for us.”

“what if it’s a no?” you mumble, looking up at him and he only smiles.

“It’s okay. just let me know.” he says.

“jongseong, i don’t want to lose you again—”

“hey, hey.” jay says, holding your hands as he looks into your eyes with so much love. “yes or no, you won’t lose me. i will be here for you, always.”

“yeah?” 

“yeah.” jay confirms and you slither your arms around his waist as he puts his arms around you, pressing a kiss on your hair. 

that night, he takes you home with a smile, wishing you a good night. he waits for you to get inside your house before he drives off. by tomorrow, he didn’t bother bringing up what happened and didn’t act any differently. he was true to his words, he understands and he will wait.

but even though he acted as is, you failed not to think too much about it because you can’t deny it. you really wanted to be with him. you couldn’t wait for the morning, you didn’t care it was already three in the morning. you wanted him.

so, you got up, grabbed your jacket, phone and keys. you drive to his house, pressing the doorbell and knocking because you weren’t satisfied until he opens the door. you were being annoying, you know that. but you wanted him.

the door opens, a sleepy jay rubs his eye like a five year old. “y/n? is everything okay?” he asks and you step closer, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. jay, still confused, wrapped his arms around your waist. “everything okay?” he asks, trying to get a look at your face.

you lightly pull away, pressing your lips against his. jay was startled, but he composes himself right away. he kisses back, kissing you like it had been awhile, but also as if it was his last.

you pull away, leaning your forehead against his as he looks at you through his lashes. “everything’s great.” you mumble, hands settling on his neck as your finger softly plays with his nape.

“yes?” he asks, hopefully and you nod.

“yes.”

a hand comes up behind your head as jay presses a kiss on your temple, then your lips. he pulls you in an embrace, placing his lips on your shoulder as he closes his eyes, savoring the moment.

“i love you, jongseong.”

“i love you, y/n.”

— likes, comments/feedbacks and rbs are highly appreciated mwa 🫶🏻

[brae-brae]

I speak Italian Darling

This is part one of something I've been working on. this is my first post on here so please don't judge:))

Gia Iseppa De Luca. the only daughter of an immigrant mother and sister to 6 boys, one of which is in prison, which isn't exactly smooth sailing. Ive lived in the sunshine state most of my life. That is until the end of last school year. My parents had the bright idea, "Oh let's move from Florida to Massachusetts! WHO NEEDS SUMMER BREAK WHEN YOU CAN MOVE STATES AWAY! It's not like we could have just stayed there after we had our 4th kid and just bought a bigger house which we obviously could afford if we moved to FLORIDA! Oh how smart we are." Yea no. Not to mention just when I think I have this 16 year old girl shit down with making friends and fitting in, they throw 2 boys into my house for A WHOLE MONTH?! Whatever summer I have left, I better enjoy. I will be blaming my parents.

Sinceramente tuo, il pasticcio adolescenziale

P.S. I speak Italian Darling

  As I got out of my shower I heard my mom welcoming some guests. “Hey, boys! Hey Susan and Frank, how have you been? David and I..” I walked into my room, cutting out their convo. I turned on Spotify on my TV, blasting The Great Escape by Boys Like Girls while I got ready to go to Kristi’s house. As I threw on my sweats and plain black bra, I heard my door open and my mom’s voice. “This is Gia’s room, the boys are at their clubs and whatnot right now. Oh, dear! I didn’t realize you were getting dressed!” My mom quickly shut the door. Before she closed it, I caught a glimpse of a black-haired boy with eyeliner, looking at his phone with headphones in. “Dio, mamma! Impara a bussare! Gesù!” I yelled through the door. I quickly put on a plain black shirt with the band name KORN, putting my unruly curly hair in a low-effort ponytail. I put on some mascara, eyeliner, and highlighter and grabbed my guitar bag, phone, vape, and AirPods. I walked out with my things in hand, jogging down the stairs. When I got to the door, I looked over at Mom catching her attention. “Hey, I’m heading to Kristi’s. I’ll be back later. Love you!” She made a huff before stopping me. “First I want you to meet the guests. These are the Heffley’s!”

     I looked over at them. Normal, basic-looking people. Then I realized the older boy was staring at me. I thought I grew a 3rd eye or something. Honestly, it was getting a bit awkward. Before I could dwell on it anymore, the mom chimed in. “Hey Gia! Oh my goodness, I haven’t seen you since you were as big as Manny!” she said lifting the little boy in her arms. I straightened my lips into a line and looked out at my car in the driveway. 

     “Wish I could say I remember you..” I said looking at my feet. “Gia Iseppa De Luca-Void! That was rude!” I threw my hands up in the air, “Hey I! I wasn’t trying to be, I just don’t know who she is!” I told her. I looked at the dad and the boys, the older one not having moved an inch. “Oh well, the last time I saw you, you and Rodrick were only about 3.” my mom quickly gaped,” Oh Susan, do you remember when they would take cute little baths together? Oh, I miss those days..” my mom said holding where her heart should be. 

     “Ma! Really? What the hell?!” Her face hardened. “Iseppa! Watch the language! Ci sono piccole orecchie per sentire! Continua così e passerai il fine settimana qui. Capire?” I rolled my eyes. “Sì, capisco, mamma…” I mumbled, “Kristi is texting me, can I go now?” my mom rolled her eyes. “Introductions, then yes.” I put down my guitar and walked up to the family. “I’m Susan, as you might have guessed, this is Frank, Manny, and these are-” the smaller one walked up to me taking my hand. “bonjour beauté..” I looked at him questioningly. “I speak Italian. Not french,” I smiled. He blushed and dropped my hand. I turned to the other boy and looked up at him, his eyes following me. 

3rd POV: 

Earlier

     As the Heffleys arrived at the house, Rodrick put his headphones in and texted Bill. They started planning when our next band practice could be. He wasnt paying attention as he made his way up the stairs, causing him to step on Greg’s shoes. “Hey! Watch it bigfoot!” Greg snapped back, which only made Rodrick do it purposefully. “Mom, why do we even have to be babysat? We learned not to throw parties! Promise!” Susan turned to them quickly. “No, you learned how to be sneaky, not responsibility. So you are staying here. There are other boys here, you'll be fine. Your father and I need this, so please. Behave.” Greg looked at his shoes and Rodrick, well, rolled his eyes, popping his earbuds back in. He didnt even notice the half naked girl that was just walked in on. 

     As they stood in the dining room, Rodrick felt a light poke on his side. He ignored it, only to be poked again. He looked at Greg who was pointing at something. Rodrick looked up and locked eyes on her. His breath stopped and his hands instantly got warm and sweaty. Even his loud music went silent. He saw her lips moving but he couldn't focus on what she was saying, only how her lips moved and how her pale green eyes popped against the dark colors around them. Small strands of hair escaped her ponytail that hung against her back, bouncing with every step she took closer. Wait, is she walking over here? Well no shit, we are the only ones over here she could be walking towards. Think Rodrick, fuck. His eyes never left her, especially when she inched closer and closer at him.

He didn’t even realize she had said something until she looked at him and stopped talking for a moment. “Huh?” was all he could muster. He internally punched himself at his stupidity. Now is not the time to be dumb, get it together!  “I said, do you want some water? Your mouth seems a little… Dry..” she grinned and looked at his lips. He closed his mouth and shook his head, maybe a little more than he should have. She looked back at his eyes and spoke. “I’m going to assume you’re Rodrick. My bathing buddy?” my heart stopped. “W-What?” he asked rather fearfully. She tried to suppress her smile and looked at him, probably noticing how nervous he became at her words. “Mom was saying that we used to take baths together when we were babies.” The thought of them taking a bath together when they were babies made Rodrick cringe, but then another thought ran across his mind. A more present one, one that made him blush and wouldn't let him get words out. “Anyway, Ciao! A dopo, mamma, Papà!” with that she walked out, guitar in hand. Oh hell. This girl is gonna be the death of me. 

“I'll show you boys to your rooms!” Julieta announced. 

Well shit.

[blueindigo17]

WIP intro: The Together List

An introduction to my second WIP!!

Pinterest board -> The Together List

Spotify playlist -> The Together List

Summary: Audrey is in her first month of college. Within three weeks, she’s moved out of her childhood bedroom and into a room with a window that seems to open on its own and a door that creaks loud enough to wake up the whole floor, she’s stumbled into a friend group that seemed to pull itself together like drawstrings, and she’s gotten a job at an adorable independent milkshake shop with her roommate and one of her new friends. What more could she possibly ask for?

The world, it seems.

Audrey has a list ten miles long of all the little things she wants college to be. One night, she starts listing them out loud. Her friends—Logan, Lennon, McKinley, Aspen, and Levi—chime in with their own after a moment, and before anyone knows it it’s been three hours and they haven’t stopped. They aren’t even sure whose idea it is, but they start writing it down. Every box on this ridiculously decorated list will be checked off by the end of the year, they swear.

Someone makes an Instagram account as a joke, but by the first post it’s become as serious an endeavor as they’ve ever had. They wouldn’t call themselves local celebrities, but they certainly wouldn’t correct you if you did. The thing about fame at this age, even at small amounts, is that it's bound to go to someone's head...

Genres: realistic fiction, young adult fiction, new adult fiction, coming of age, LGBTQ+ fiction

Themes: LGBTQ+, friendships, fame, college, becoming an adult, relationships

Character Introductions

(all photos found on Pinterest)

Audrey Abigail Marshall 💙

"So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it. You've got no reason to be afraid." - You're On Your Own Kid, Taylor Swift

Age: 19

Gender: female

Pronouns: she/her

Sexuality: pansexual

Birthday: May 16th

Star sign: Taurus

Friends: Logan, Lennon, McKinley, Aspen, Levi

Family: Julia (mom), Adam (dad), Trevor (younger brother, 16)

Occupation: barista at a milkshake shop, college freshman (studying education and sociology)

Fun facts: she was named after Audrey Hepburn

Audrey spent the past year trying to learn more about herself. "Did it work?" you ask. Nope! Now she's moving into her college dorm a year later than her high school classmates, and she can feel the desire to catch up burning in her veins. She claws at every opportunity to prove that she wasn't wasting her time this past year. She would probably do well to realize who she's trying to prove herself to...

Logan Olivia Levine 🧡

"I don't want the world, but I'll take this city. Who can blame a girl? Call me hot, not pretty." - HOT TO GO!, Chappell Roan

Nicknames: Lo, Halo

Age: 19

Gender: female

Pronouns: she/her

Sexuality: lesbian, asexual spectrum

Birthday: July 25th

Star sign: Leo

Friends: Audrey, Lennon, McKinley, Aspen, Levi

Family: Katherine (mom), Richard (dad), Carter (older brother, 21), Danny (older brother, 24), Jordan (older brother, 26), Noelle (sister in law, 26)

Occupation: barista at a milkshake shop, college freshman (studying psychology and sociology), part time middle/high school tutor

Fun facts: she asked Disneyland Rapunzel to marry her when she was seven years old

Logan knows what she's good at, including but not limited to: decorating her lecture notes, pulling off outlandishly oversaturated outfits, and making things fun. The Together List is such a Logan idea she's appalled that she didn't think of it first, but once it takes off, she's thriving. This is the most fun she's ever had. Until the real world catches up, people lash out at each other, and she has no clue where she stands. She has a lot of love in her body, but figuring out what to do with it is way harder than she expected...

Lennon Lillienne Adler 💛

"Quick pause in conversation, she plays songs I've never heard." - Canyon Moon, Harry Styles

Nicknames: Lemon, Lemons

Age: 19

Gender: female(ish) (her words)

Pronouns: she/her/they/them

Sexuality: asexual, heteromantic

Birthday: November 19th

Star sign: Scorpio

Friends: Audrey, Logan, McKinley, Aspen, Levi

Family: Ariana (mom), Jonathan (dad)

Occupation: college freshman (studying photography and cinematography), campus library assistant

Fun facts: she’s Australian, they have a cat named Spritz

Lennon is about as far from home as she can get. They’ve been to the states before, but that was only ever for a few weeks to visit her dad while he worked. Now she lives here, and their plan is pretty much just go to class, go to work, go to sleep, repeat for four years, and graduate. It’s probably a good thing that plan is going straight down the drain with this new group of friends…

McKinley Savannah March 💜

"It's not a perfect narrative, there's beauty in mistakes." - Best Friends, 5 Seconds of Summer

Nicknames: Kinley

Age: 19

Gender: female

Pronouns: she/her

Sexuality: who fricken knows (her words)

Birthday: April 29

Star sign: Taurus

Friends: Audrey, Logan, Lennon, Aspen, Levi

Partner: Aspen

Family: Amber (mom), Nathaniel (dad), Cecelia (younger sister, 16)

Occupation: college freshman (studying history and anthropology)

Fun facts: she has ADHD

McKinley knows she talks too much, too fast, about things people don’t usually care about. That’s fine. It just means she should only surround herself with people who don’t mind her the way she is. The problem is… there aren’t many of those people around. Her parents, her sister, Logan, and Aspen, and that’s about it. Oh, and her cool Australian roommate. And Logan’s roommate, Audrey. And Audrey’s friend Levi. Well, actually, now that she thinks about it, there are actually a lot of people who really like her. She’ll have to get used to that…

Aspen Noel Brady ❤️

"I don't know much about love. Come find my in the crowd of all the boys and girls." - Boys & Girls, Conan Gray

Age: 19

Gender: gremlin (their words)

Pronouns: they/them

Sexuality: bisexual

Birthday: August 2nd

Star sign: Leo

Friends: Audrey, Logan, Lennon, McKinley, Levi

Partner: McKinley

Family: Andrea (mom), Matthew (dad)

Occupation: barista at a milkshake shop, college freshman (studying English and film)

Fun facts: they sleepwalk and sleep talk

Aspen sort of loves being weird. They embrace it. They’re strongly considering getting it tattooed somewhere. But in high school, “weird” is a gateway drug to “bullied”, which is harder to embrace. It was bad; months went by where they were hesitant to leave the house, and they accidentally got very good at self-isolating when life went sour. It’s been a long time since then, and once they settle into regularity with their new group of friends, they look forward to never resorting to that again. No matter how badly circumstances want them to…

Levi Declan Avery Jackson 💚

"And it ain't so pretty when you're playing cute when your body's up against some fool." - 1983, Neon Trees

Age: 20

Gender: male

Pronouns: he/him

Sexuality: gay

Birthday: September 20th

Star sign: Virgo

Friends: Audrey, Logan, Lennon, McKinley, Aspen

Family: Phoebe (mom), Chris (dad), Lena (little sister, 7)

Occupation: college sophomore (studying journalism and creative writing/composition)

Fun facts: he has citizenship in the US (where he was born), Canada (where his dad was born) and the Philippines (where his mom was born)

Levi doesn't care one way or the other about the idea of love languages, but don't even think for one second that his isn't gift giving. He grew up with money, so anything his friends want, his friends get. The problem is that he's gotten quite used to people who would rather be friends with his bank account than him, and his only real friend since… well, ever has been Audrey. Shockingly, the people Audrey introduces him to don’t seem at all interested in his credit card. Weird…

[mattscoquette]

top ten songs of the week !⋆.˚ 𐙚 ུ⃛

stole this idea from my bae @stonermattsgf i thought it’d be fun:) this is in no particular order just my current top ten

୨୧ save your tears (with ariana grande) - the weekend

this song will never not give me goosebumps. ariana’s vocals kill it everyyyyy time she and abel sound so good together i just love this remix

୨୧ i should hate you - gracie abrams

this is the song that made me a gracie fan. i love the lyrics, its just all so relatable and her voice is just so good on this song

୨୧ superstar sh*t - dominic fike

I FUCKINF LOVE DOMINIC FIKE!!!!!!!!!! i go though phases of having favorite dom songs, this is it for this week. the instrumentals and his voice work so well together on this song it’s so amazing pls listen if u haven’t ever

୨୧ location - playboi carti

i loveeee love love old carti and this song came up on my spotify shuffle and i forgot how much i loved it. the instrumentals never fail like this song is sooooo good

୨୧ two ghosts - harry styles

forever my all time favorite harry song. his voice, the instrumental, the lyrics, it just kills me every time. this song sounds like a warm hug from someone you love

୨୧ bags - clairo

“i know everything about bags sweetheart” but who’s been having this on repeat since freshman year????? i do not care how mainstream this song is, it will always be one of my favorites. the lyrics are so relatable to me and this song is just so 2019 vibes

୨୧ today - the smashing pumpkins

i’m such a sucker for 90s grunge. it’s just soooooo good. makes me wanna start a garage band

୨୧ punisher - phoebe bridgers

prob my fav phoebe song. i’d even go as far as saying this is my favorite title track ever. her vocals are so beautiful on this song it mixes so well with the instrumentals it truly brings a tear to my eye

୨୧ sneaky - 21 savage

rediscovered american dream whilst doing homework this week and forgot HOW GOOD THIS SONG IS UGHHHHH. i love 21 he’s honestly probably myfav rapper and this song killed and revived me the first time i heard it i just loved it sm

୨୧ love me - lil wayne

i do not care how basic this song may be it’s forever my hype song. gun to my head and the only way out is singing this word for word? tell my family i’ll be home in four minutes fifteen seconds. i saw wayne on tour w drake a few months ago and when i tell you i LOST MY SHIT during this song. it’s just forever a banger to me

[autisticempathydaemon]

for your matchup game! thank you for doing these they look super fun though i’m sure you’re super busy with them lol!!

* my fave song in the last few weeks has been otherside which is a minecraft song. it’s got a sick beat drop and i like listening to it for focus music

* 2w1

* I don’t know about gargantuan BUT i do love a good video essay/deep dive. mike’s mics pretty little liars vids have been my go to the last few months

* i don’t actually remember having an imaginary friend :/ my parents said i had one, and most i can remember is we used to have tea parties

* i have to have asmr or some kind of ambient noise in order to fall asleep, and i also have to have my body pillow to hug or else i cannot sleep

* emily irene. it’s the name my parents were going to give me bc it honored their grandparents but my mom hated irene (my dads grandmothers name) so she refused. i’ve always wanted to change it to that.

* probably camping with your tsundere alpha werewolf boyfriend because it’s the first real time we’ve seen davey share memories about his dad in a peaceful way, which was really nice. also the scratch offs reminded me of my own dad bc it was something he used to do for me and my sisters and it made me cry after listening and i had to call him and tell him i missed him LOL

* james probably? i just haven’t rlly gotten around to listening to all of the audios with james anton and marcus yet (still p new to the fandom)

* howl’s moving castle

* damien. i think we could commiserate over a really nice chocolate cheesecake abt our mommy issues.

* internet drama i come across. i have a bad habit of digging myself down a rabbit hole of the most inane internet drama and then telling my best friend abt it when we’re both sleepy but not ready to SleepTM yet

* reese’s sticks and a dr pepper, or if i’m feeling savory it’s pringles and a dr pepper and if they have slushies/icees then it’s a cherry slushie/icee and whichever above snack i’m feeling

* i have a playlist called georgia peach which is a country music playlist i made of all the old music i grew up on. i like listening to it on warmer days when i’m on a drive

* a tie between the twilight movies and bbc sherlock but i feel like twilight is more um. socially accepted, at least on social media. bbc sherlock is only the first 2 seasons

* ummm i’m a libra. myer briggs type is infp. i’m autistic/have adhd. i have a black cat named pika whomst i love dearly, i used to love reading as a kid but i kind of fell off and i’ve been trying to get back into it recently, i’m a middle child, i like farming sim games and rpg games and narrative games (like telltale games) and romcoms and some light horror movies. my top 5 movies of all time are howl’s moving castle, pride and prejudice (2005), scream, pacific rim, and the princess bride. my top artist the last 7 years in a row on spotify was hozier. my current favorite author is emily henry. my love language for giving is quality time/gift giving, receiving is acts of service/quality time.

Anon, I am gently patting your cheeks, I adore you so. You’ve given me so much information to work with, and every bit that I got just further cemented my hypothesis that you’ve gotta be paired with Huxley.

Speed run, let’s go- Type Two’s are characterized by a desire to be loved and confident in that love; Huxley leaves no room for doubt. Your sisters would probably be protective and want the best boyfriend for you; does it get better than Huxley? You’ve got mommy issues; he’s got two amazing moms who’ll love you and heal them. You’re autistic; we’ve got proof Huxley’s awesome with autistic people (i.e Damien and Lasko).

You and Huxley would make each other so endlessly happy. I think both of you are big “Quality Time” people, so nothing makes you feel more loved than a simple, domestic weekend at home. Huxley loves those cozy, lazy days of cuddling your cat (which loves him duh) and reading together. The only kind of day he might like better is y’all going for a hike or leisurely drive together, singing along to country music on the radio. (He definitely has a soft spot for the same genre, having heard his moms listen to it when he was a kid.)

Song:

First time that I saw you, mmm/ You took my breath away/ I might not get to Heaven/ But I walked with the angels that day/ She takes me by the hand/ I am the luckiest man alive/ Did I tell you, baby/ You are the joy of my life?

Speaking of country, I love to imagine Huxley as a Chris Stapleton fan specifically. He’s just so quintessentially, classically country and writes the dreamiest love songs; I can totally see young!Huxley singing Tennessee Whiskey long before he ever drank alcohol. Now, he sings it and other Stapleton songs like this to you. (Badly, I might add. I like to headcanon that Huxley can’t hold a tune to save his life, but he pulls it off well.)

Runner-ups:

Asher would be a fun runner-up for you because I think y’all would have fun playing games, like next to each other and with each other, you know? Like, imagine running a Stardew farm with Asher; it’d be chaotic and amazing. I also like Lasko for you as a runner-up, because who better gets mommy issues than another person with mommy issues, you dig? /lh

note: Irene is such a cute name boooo anon’s mom /lh

Read this post and send me an ask if you’d like a match-up of your own! 💌

[colleencrossingg]

So this happened.

I apologize for my inactivity, school and work has been absolutely insane. I have been playing New Leaf every day though to get as much as I can before the servers shut down. Yes, this includes exchanging 100 visits with randos on Reddit for unlimited hacked Sanrio items. I decorated the bottom floor of my house, so I’ll post that later. I also started the Beautiful Town ordinance, because I am SICK of watering flowers.

I finished funding for both the Roost and the Dream Suite (with the help of friendly Redditors), so my main focus has been trying to visit others and get to 500 dreams. If you want me to visit, leave your Dream Address!

Things in my personal life are not going as well. My dog passed away yesterday at 6 years old. We have no idea what happened, but it seems as if he had severe organ failure. He was always very sick, even as a puppy, but this was very unusual and he declined very quickly. I don’t want to get into it, but this was the third major health scare in less than 9 months where we thought we’d have to put him down.

I am struggling to get things done because I am having POTS flare ups and I have been dealing with depression-related fatigue. I am trying to keep going, but it is hard. I am also dealing with a lot of stress because of my fiancée, because we might have to move in June so he can start grad school. He is stressing me out with financial talk and trying to convince me to enter a mortgage on a property I’ve never even seen in a city we’ve never been to. The FAFSA delay is screwing us because we don’t know how much in loans we’ll have to take out, so this affects which school he chooses to attend. I also don’t know what I’ll be doing until I can start my MA program. I may try to take Chinese or Vietnamese courses as a nonmetriculated student at the university my fiancée is going to, or I may be ambitious and try to do it at the Ivy League school nearby…

I recently won two awards for my thesis as well as my service to the department I belong to. I am dealing with major impostor syndrome because of this. I don’t feel like I deserve to win, and I even consulted my favorite professor to make sure that he didn’t influence the decision in any way because he is the department chair. I’m not sure if I want to even attend the ceremony because I am dealing with intense body image issues and if anybody tries to take a picture of me, I’ll go insane.

I will try to post occasional updates if I can. Animal Crossing is my main coping mechanism through everything going on. I have so many other games I want to play, but so little time.

I want to try the new Stardew Update, but I have such minimal progress in my main save file. I’m horrible with getting through the Skull Cavern mines, and it’s really holding me back. I haven’t played Stardew in a very long time, so I may just play from a completely different save file and start over.

Another game I’ve been playing more lately is Minecraft. I wouldn’t say it’s been a full-on intense Minecraft phase, but I started a new "Survival" world (I play on Peaceful until it’s not convenient for me - I have been playing for 12 years and beaten the game numerous times, I know what I’m doing!) and I’m trying to exit my comfort zone by building in biomes I would usually skip over.

Sorry for my inactivity, shit is rough right now. I don’t know what else to say. I deal with grief really weird for someone who is extremely mentally ill and emotionally unstable. I’m oddly fine. He died in such a traumatic state, so maybe it’s me knowing that he’s at peace now. I don’t know.

Also this has been me every morning sitting in my office at school high as FUCK listening to Strawberry Switchblade/Rose McDowall and getting absolutely nothing done. I have absolutely cooked my Spotify Wrapped and it’s not even April.

Ok I’ll update you in another month. 🫡

[lostyoursignal]

if only i'd thought of the right words

Hesitation only makes it worse. The best course of action is to rip off the band-aid, right? The layers of skin that come off with it will grow back.

read it on ao3 | sawtober series | prompt list

words: 1k

written for sawtober day 17 - PHOTOGRAPH

for anyone that's enjoying these, feel free to check out the spotify playlist that i made to compile all of the song titles i've decided (so far!) to use for a sneak preview of what's to come! more to be added when i circle back to the beginning of the prompt list in november. (:

He’s been an adult doing adult things for almost a decade now, but Adam still finds himself begrudging the menial tasks that come along with it. He thinks that if he had to create a comprehensive ranking of those sorts of things, he’d put changing all of his things over to a new wallet somewhere near rock bottom on the list.

The only reason he’s doing it in the first place is because this wallet has disintegrated into something that doesn’t quite resemble a wallet anymore. The chain broke a month ago, and the new hole that he’d punched for it using one of his friends’ stud setters had ripped, too. There’s a hole in the billfold that means that he almost loses his cash when he has cash to carry, and it’s a fifty-fifty chance his ID lands on the ground any time he pulls the useless chunk of leather out of his pocket. It’s gotten more inconvenient than he can really excuse, so he’d snagged the cheapest bifold he could find at the chain department store.

All of the contents of his old wallet are scattered across the rough surface of the table in the kitchen of his apartment. Random coins, half-crumpled bills, his ID (that’s expiring in two weeks, but going to the DMV for a renewal feels sort of like torture, and that means something, coming from him), a few ticket stubs from movies that he’s caught with friends that haven’t made it into one of his scrapbooks quite yet.

He slides the hang card along the imitation leather of his new wallet, tossing it in the vague direction of his overflowing trash can and most definitely missing. He’ll pick it up later. (He won’t.) He’s been meaning to clean up around here anyway. (He’s become blind to the mess.)

Adam carefully tucks his cash, his mementos, and his ID card into the appropriate places in his new wallet, and then folds it shut. Unfolding his left leg from where his knee is tucked against his chest, he slides the wallet into the front pocket of his jeans, testing out the shape of it there. It’s rigid, nowhere near as worn-to-the-shape-of-his-body as the last one was, but that would come with time. This would definitely do.

The wallet is placed back on the table, and Adam traces a particularly deep gouge in the wood with one finger, picking up the lit cigarette he’d left smoking in the ashtray. His eyes land on his old wallet and linger there, and the longer he looks without moving, the more his organs squirm and shuffle themselves around in his chest cavity.

Hesitation only makes it worse. The best course of action is to rip off the band-aid, right? The layers of skin that come off with it will grow back.

Eventually.

He picks up his old wallet and slides two fingers into the slot behind the ID window, and when he withdraws them, a small stack of photos comes out with them. He tosses the wallet aside, taking the cigarette from between his lips and exhaling smoke through his nose, flicking his ash in the vague direction of the ashtray.

One-by-one, he looks at the photos, sliding them into their new place, behind his new ID window. One of him with his bandmates, sweaty and drunk after a show. One of his favorite stray, from the alley behind his old apartment building. One of his mother, framed in sunlight coming in from the window over the sink, in the kitchen of his childhood home.

He sets down his cigarette as he turns over the last photo, holding it between the thumbs and index fingers of both hands.

Lawrence beams up at him from the glossy photo paper, smiling so wide that his blue, blue eyes are crinkled at the corners. Adam can see the fine lines of his crow’s feet, even from an arm’s length away from the picture. He can see his own smile, too, half-obscured by Lawrence’s shoulder where he’s tucked his face in against his wool sweater at his shoulder. He remembers the moment with crystalline clarity, remembers how Lawrence had cracked the stupidest joke seconds before he’d pressed the shutter on the cheap disposable Adam had brought to the New Year’s party.

It’s rare that he looks so happy in a photo, and even rarer that he keeps a photo of himself that he can actually say that he likes, but this is one that ticks both boxes, and the thought leaves him feeling hollow and cold.

He remembers the way Lawrence had been practically glued to his side all night, until they were both tipsy on champagne and propping each other up.

He remembers the kiss at midnight, and three-word declarations at midnight-oh-one.

It’s hard to forget the five-word sentence that had brought it all crashing down around them.

(”I’ve been lying to you.”

"What do you mean, lying?”)

He can’t ignore the silent phone calls from blocked numbers, the notes slipped under his door, the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck everywhere he goes.

("Adam, I’d really like to talk about this,” says the eerie-calm voice in the messages he leaves. “I wish you’d let me explain.”)

Adam reaches for the lighter tucked into the plastic of his cigarette pack, yanking it out hastily. His brow furrows, and his vision blurs, and he grits his teeth in an ugly snarl before his bottom lip has the chance to wobble.

The flame flickers orange, and he holds the photograph over it, and he’s panting like a cornered animal, lurching with each breath like his whole body is working to get the oxygen in-out-in. The heat warps the paper, and Adam watches it bubble for a moment before his senses come back to him.

He tosses the lighter away, and it skitters across the table to clatter onto the dingy laminate. He feels lightheaded as he draws the photo close again, and when he blinks at it, tears track hot and angry down his cheeks. Lawrence’s smile has been transformed by the flame into something closer to a grimace, and Adam’s stomach feels as though it’s made of lead.

The photo is tucked behind the ID window with the rest of them, at the very bottom of the stack.

He prefers the pain of a slow-peel, when it comes to band-aids.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I don’t keep up with new music nearly as much as I used to. Not even discovering new artists or anything, but even new stuff put out by people I already like, it passes me by more than it used to. Late in 2023, I was shocked to learn two of my absolute favourite musicians had put out new albums in 2022 and I didn’t even notice. For most of my life I’ve found out about new music – both new artists and new albums – via folk festivals and country music blogs. Which is why so much of my music collection is Canadian folk music and American (plus some Canadian) country music.

But I haven’t been to a folk festival since pre-COVID – last year I finally started going to see live music again sometimes, this week I’ll be going to my sixth music gig since last August, which is less than I used to but significantly more than I did from 2020-2023, and it’s been really good. I let myself forget, in the depths of the pandemic, how big a part of my life live music was. I took it for granted most of my life, just going to folk festivals with my dad because that’s what happens every summer. And while I’ve been back to concerts, I haven’t been back to festivals, so I haven’t learned about anything new. And I don’t read country music blogs anymore because I’m too busy reading comedy forums.

So aside from blogs and festivals, how am I supposed to know if even my very favourite musicians put out new stuff? I also don’t do Twitter or anything. And of course I don’t do Spotify. I didn’t really know how Spotify worked until recently, I was just vaguely aware that it’s some demon ruining the music industry so I never looked into it. And I am still not going to look into it! Don’t worry everyone, I still have my principles, I am still horrified by the fact that my brother owns no music files and thinks it’s fine to just rent access to music that he only gets to keep hearing as long as he keeps paying and he has internet access and a corporation chooses to keep it on their platform.

However, my friend whom I moved in with in December uses Spotify, and when I hang out with him in the living room, we listen to music via the TV that’s connected to his computer, and I have to admit it’s convenient. Especially when I started typing in my favourite artists and learned that some of them have entire albums I hadn’t even known about. And, even though I’m pretty sure algorithms are a terrible thing to introduce to art, I have found a few new people I like from that.

I haven’t entirely sold out, though, because I did not sign up for Spotify (I would genuinely never do that, I will draw the line at occasionally benefitting from my roommate using it), I went and bought the albums on Bandcamp. Quick reminder of a thing that I never miss an opportunity to remind people, Bandcamp is the way to buy music where the highest percentage of the profits go to the artist (aside from just handing them money for a CD at a gig, I guess), also it’s the most convenient way to get it for the consumer (one easily downloadable folder with every song on the album as DRM-free mp3s).

I also recently raided the CD collection in my dad’s basement, because there was a bunch of stuff I knew he had and I knew I liked but was somehow not in the music collection on my hard drive. So as a result of that, I have a bunch of new music, and I’ve been greatly enjoying it.

Okay, here’s the actual point of this post, after all that pre-amble: Cody Jinks put out an album one month ago, thanks to the evils of corporatized technology I became aware of it when it was only a month old, I’ve been listening to it non-stop for several days, it’s fucking fantastic. It might be my favourite Cody Jinks album, though I’m aware that recency bias in in play. And I like Cody Jinks’ previous stuff a lot.

I should actually say that this might be my favourite Cody Jinks studio album, because he has a live album called Red Rocks Live and nothing's better than that. It's a solid cross-section of his earlier work so a good introduction, if anyone's interested in getting to know him. Which you should be, if you like his sort of thing. His sort of thing is modern American outlaw country music by a guy who used to be in a metal band. All the best country singers used to be in metal bands (him and Corb Lund).

This live version of his song Head Case is as good as country music gets. Good thing to play for anyone who spouts that claim that country music was only good back in the 70s (it was good back in the 70s, but probably wasn't good back then either if the only thing you listened to was pop music on the radio that incorrectly markets itself as country). My horrible abusive high school coach used to nickname me and any other athletes who struggled mentally/psychologically "head case", and now I play this song whenever I get sad about that, which definitely isn't that often or anything because I'm fine and not still trying to win every argument I had when I was 17. Definitely not.

Anyway, his new album is called Change the Game, and I can't stop listening to it.

It covers the usual themes - sad, angry, drinks too much, would like to stop drinking so much (going a little harder on that last point than some of his previous albums, or maybe I'm just predisposed to notice that these days), and of course the designed outlaw country anthem, in this case it's the title track and it's great. I keep finding new stuff in it.

I often find that my favourite songs on an album change from what they are when I first hear it, but at the moment, the one I've had on repeat the most is:

And then I listen to the level of guitar going on in this one that's ages ahead of some of the older stuff:

But I think once the initial excitement of the new album wears off, this song is going to end up as my favourite:

I was on the bus to work yesterday when I first put this one on and had to change the track, because the bus is not an appropriate setting for being as emotionally moved as I was by a lyric like "Don't waste your days on dreams that don't fill you/Find out what you love, and let it kill you".

Anyway, I might need to start subscribing to some musician mailing lists or something. Because I'm not signing up for Spotify or Twitter but it is nice to actually find out about this stuff.

[bradshawsbaby]

Oh my gosh Hi!! I hope you’re doing okay!

The coolest thing happened over thanksgiving break. We were looking through boxes of old pictures from my grandmother and we found a couple stacks of letters that my grandfather wrote to his parents during WWII!!

Immediately made me think of Letters to My Love! Even though these are to his parents, he didn’t meet my Gran till after the war. (Although he did mention someone named Norma in a couple letters. Haven’t figured out who she is yet)

Anyway I’ve been scanning and transcribing all the letters to share with the rest of the fam and it has just been so stinking cool!! Grandaddy died before I was born so it has been so cool and honestly kind of emotional getting to know him through these letters. He had such beautiful cursive handwriting that I would never had expected based on what I knew of him

And he was such a good writer! One thing he wrote that I thought was just so beautiful it made me cry: “Seeing everything you do here, Mom and Dad, you get so homesick you can hardly stand being gone. I don’t know when I’ve been so conscious of being from home and wanted back so terribly as I have during the last month or so. If you ever get me back, you’ll have someone devoted to home.” 😭😭😭 How touching is that?!?!

Anyway finding those just reminded me of your story and sweet Bobby and Peach!! I knew you’d appreciate how cool I think these letters are!! I’ve even put on your Letters Spotify playlist a couple times when I’ve been transcribing 😊

Oh my gosh, this is so awesome, I might cry!!! 🥺🥺

I actually have not been having a very good week, but this message made me so happy! What a wonderful and personal way to get to know your grandfather! I bet each letter feels like a brand new adventure ☺️

I’m so touched that your grandfather’s letters reminded you of Bobby and Peach, and that you’ve listened to the LtML playlist while transcribing them! That’s so amazing! ♥️🥹

[randomvarious]

Terminus City - "Landlord Bastard" The East Coast of Oi! 1999 Oi! Punk

Plays: 2.2K+ on Spotify // 300+ on YouTube

If you've been following me for over a year now, you probably know that a big component of this blog at one point was to present songs by mostly obscure acts that I felt were deserving of much more love and attention than they'd ever received. I've said it many times before and I'll say it again here: one major goal of this blog is to dig up all this slept-on shit and ultimately, little by little, piece together a thorough and mostly untold and unknown history of music.

And I think various artist compilations and DJ mixes are a pretty neat avenue for accomplishing that goal. They can be retrospective and present the big, era-defining hits; they can be samplers that show the best of what a label has to offer; and most importantly, they can be ephemerally contemporaneous and provide a snapshot of what a certain slice of music was like during a highly specific period of time. Those latter ones seem to capture those raw, authentic, and pure little moments of history like nothing else out there really can and it's those types of compilations and DJ mixes that I tend to derive the most joy out of.

The simple fact of the matter is that almost all music is ephemeral and also cloistered. It stays in its scene and it gets some brief play within that scene and then it just pretty much vanishes into thin air, never to really be thought of again. But of course, it doesn't actually vanish; it just sits there on dust-collecting vinyl, tapes, CDs, 8-tracks, hard drives, and iPods that haven't been touched in years and it also hides in the dark corners of YouTube and streaming services, almost totally ignored by ~[<{the algorithm}>]~.

So, here I am, like the guy at the beach with his trusty metal detector in hand, recognizing the fact that there's all this cool, decades-old shit just laying out there that's barely ever been exposed to the masses, just wanting someone to get the same level of pleasure from it like I have.

I love so much music, I love discovering all these little gems, and I love showing them to other people. And now I'm happy to say that I'm gonna be writing about individual songs once again. I'm gonna be providing you with killer tunes that you've more than likely never heard before by acts you've more than likely never heard of, and I'm going to give you their backstories and provide their proper context. Simply put, this shit deserves to be more known than it currently is and you should know how it all fits into this vast, woven quilt of music history.

So, without further ado, let's fuckin' go, shall we?

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Today's song post is about landlords. We sure do hate 'em, don't we folks? We fork over a hefty portion of our paycheck every month to them just to keep a roof over our heads (that's fucked up, isn't it?) and then they do little to nothing in return to make that payment ever seem worth it. They're never there when you need them when something needs fixing, so what's the point of them in the first place? Why do we let them get away with all the scummy, underhanded shit that they pull? Hey, someone should write a song about these bastards!

Well, here's a group that did just that. Introducing a relatively short-lived punk band from Atlanta called Terminus City. Critic Mesquita Borges provides some background on 'em:

Assembled in 1998, Atlanta-based Terminus City endowed frenzied conceptions of hardcore punk, taking on Oi! style's most dashing heritage. Associating pushy guitar sets with raging vocals, the squad crushed the local punk rock scene and quickly began to be named along with the best Oi!-styled teams. Formed by Frank (vocals), Guillermo (guitar), Wes (bass), and Chris [drums], the band started off by playing a series of concerts in the Atlanta area, being the opening act for bands such as Patriot or the Dropkick Murphys. Recording a series of singles and appearing at the Arizona Street Punk Festival in 1999, Terminus City gradually began to congregate a respectable fan base. During late 1999, the crew recorded what turned out to be their debut full-length, Justice Isn't Always Fair, which hit the record stores in 2000.

So, '99 is when Terminus City made their first releases, which consisted of a 7-inch of their own, plus three other 7-inches that they split with other bands. And in addition to those releases, they also ended up contributing a pair of exclusives to two different compilations that year as well: "You Shook Me All Night Long" for Oi Oi - A Tribute to AC/DC and "Landlord Bastard" for The East Coast of Oi!

Now, oi! as a genre has something of a checkered past. It's a working-class kind of punk rock, but it's had some strains of fascism, white nationalism, and reactionary politics within its ranks. And you'll even find some of that grossness on the East Coast of Oi! comp itself, with a song like "Welfare Case" by Squiggy. That's a song I'll never write praiseworthy things about, and, by the way, Squiggy, didn't Clinton pretty much obliterate welfare by the time you'd released your dumb song anyway? Find a fresher shitty thing to write about!

Anyway, I don't know the full discography of Terminus City, but if "Landlord Bastard" is any indication, then it doesn't seem like these guys fell into that bad strain of oi!. Landlords are typically an enemy to working class politics, so I don't think you'd find a right-wing band lamenting about them. But I guess I could be wrong 🤷‍♂️.

Anyway, it's never *just* the message that'll get me to love a song; the music itself's gotta be good too, of course. And Guillermo's guitar tone as well as the main squealing riff that he sports with it throughout the verses on this song are both nothing short of spectacular; pretty simple in execution, but also catchy as hell, and serving as a nice contrast to both Wes' deep, accompanying bassline and Frank's gravelly vocals too. Blast it in front of your landlord and if they give you any guff about it, then crank it up a notch with this classic from The Coup (YouTube) 😈.

Also, if you like this song, I included it on this broad 90s punk playlist that consists only of tunes that I’ve come across by way of compilations. And it’s also on YouTube and YouTube Music, with a few more added bonus tracks that aren’t on Spotify. 

Feels really good to be fully back ☺!

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you own anything from Victoria's Secret "Pink" line? Do you really think the clothes are worth the price? Nope and no.

What does your last incoming text say, who was it from, and how do you feel about that person? It was my from my brother earlier letting me know he was going to pick up our lunch. He’s my lil bro, I love him. We’re super close. 

Did you have a New Year's kiss? Nope. I’ve never had one. 

Are there any words that you cannot pronounce or that you pronounce incorrectly? Probably, but I can’t think of one at the moment.

After a long day at work or of doing something physical what tends to hurt more? Your back or your feet? For me it’s my back because I don’t have feeling in my feet but also I have a fucked up back that causes chronic pain.

Do you have a smart phone? If so, what's your favorite app? Yes. I think all phones now are unless you get like one of those Cricket phones. Anyway, I use Kindle, TikTok, Facebook, and Spotify the most.

Who would you say is the overall best person you know, and why? Both my mom and my brother. I couldn’t do this thing called life without them, they are what keep me going. 

If you had to choose between being a Nurse or an English teacher which would you choose and why? I used to want to be a teacher when I was a kid and English was always my favorite subject, so out of the two I’d say an English teacher. I definitely could not be a nurse, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Do you have a specific gas station you usually go to? Or do you stop wherever? I don't drive.

How much older than you was the oldest person you have dated/had a relationship with? The guys I had a thing with were each a year younger than me.

Is anything stressing you out at the moment? Of course. 

What is your opinion on dating someone who already had a child/children from a previous relationship? I honestly don’t want that, but at almost 34 years old I feel like if I went into the dating world it’d be hard to find a guy who doesn’t have children. 

Have you ever actually found a mascara that makes a huge difference for your lashes? Yes.

Would you rather have one or two great facial features that stand out, or have just an overall pretty face but have no special features? I’d love to have nice eyes and a beautiful, pearly white smile. 

Do you have any plans for Valentine's Day? Did you do anything last Valentine's Day? No, I didn’t do anything. I never do. I’ve never even had a Valentine, soo. 

Do you check your horoscope daily? If so, did you relate to your horoscope at all today? I don’t check my horoscope or believe in that. 

When you need to remember something, how do you usually go about doing so? I use the calendar, reminder, and notes apps a lot.

Do you think you're a confident person? In your opinion what makes someone "confident" anyways? No, definitely not. I have no confidence in myself. 

How would you describe someone that is your type of guy/girl? It’s wild like I haven’t liked/had feelings for someone in like 7 years. :O I don’t remember what that feels like anymore or what I like anymore. I’m in a very different place than I was 7 years ago. A lot has changed about me.

Do you read books often? What is your all time favorite book and author? I used to, but I haven’t been reading very much these past few months and I don’t like it I need to change that. I really do love to read. I couldn’t possibly choose a favorite book or author, but I can tell you the few authors I’ve been obsessed with the past several years and have read several of their books and counting: AJ Rivers, Willow Rose, Mary Stone, and Elle Grey. 

Have you recently accomplished anything that you are proud of yourself for? No. :/ I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything in a very long time. If ever? I suppose getting my BA in psych was an accomplishment, but that degree has sat collecting dust since 2015 and I still have no idea what I want to to do in life. I don’t want to pursue psychology anymore, so that’s great. I don’t feel like I’m cut out for anything. I don’t have anything I’m passionate about either. So yeah, even that I feel like is ultimately a failure. 

Are you still friends with any of your exes? Do you still communicate with any of them at all? No.

What is your opinion on people that shop at Sephora for makeup as opposed to buying makeup from the drugstore? I really don’t care. 

When you enter a store like Target or Walmart where is the first section you go? Usually at Target I just love strolling around the whole store and usually start In the clothes section. As for Walmart, I tend to head for the side with the soaps, shampoos, hair stuff, makeup, etc and then work my way to the grocery section.

Are you the type of person to fight for someone or walk away? I’ve ended up ruining a lot of good things cause I fucked up and didn’t try hard enough.

Is marijuana legal for "recreational use" where you live? Also what is your opinion on the recent legalization of marijuana in certain states? Yes it is and I’m in full support of it. 

Do you live on your own or with your parents/a roommate? Do you think you'd like to live alone? I live with my parents and brother. I do not want to ever live alone.

How often would you say you use Microsoft Word? I couldn’t even tell you the last time I used that because when I was in college I was using Google Docs. 

What is the last online purchase you made? I’m blanking, but I have a few things in various carts right now I want to get.

Do you usually have bad symptoms around "that time of the month"? I don’t have a “time of the month” anymore, but yeah I had the worst pms/pmdd. It was awful.

Is there anyone you have to see on a daily/weekly basis that you really dislike? No, thankfully.

Is your hair thick or thin? Would you say it's easy to manage? It’s really thin.

Have you ever had to deal with any type of long distance relationship, whether it be a romantic relationship or a friendship? I’ve had online friendships with people from other states and countries.

Are you procrastinating doing anything right now? No.

How do you feel about being called sweetie/dear/honey/etc.? I don’t mind. I don’t like babe or baby, though. I think having unique little nicknames for each other is cuter. 

Have you ever had a thing for/relationship with a coworker? How did it end? No, I’ve never had a job, so therefore I never had coworkers. 

What type of deodorant do you use? Do you notice any difference between powders and gels? I use Secret in the powder fresh scent. I’ve never used gels, so I don’t know.

What would you say is your worst habit? Picking: nails, lips, scabs, pimple, just anything. 

Do you have a place you go to a lot that you may be considered "a regular" at? Yeah, but I’m not the one who’s actually going to get it. Like, I would be a regular at Taco Bell if I was the one went and got it cause I have it like 5 times a week. I guess I’m still a regular though since I get it... regularly? I’m a regular, they just don’t know it’s me lol.

Do you ever read the articles posted on the home page of Xanga? Has there ever been one that has really stood out to you? I don’t think I read those, but who knows the days of Xanga are a lifetime ago. 

What is the weather currently like where you live? Um, hot as hell. Literally.

Is there anyone that you text on a regular basis that you do not have saved in your phone? If so, why don't you have their number saved? No.

Do you have any plans for Mardi Gras? I don’t celebrate it.