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soft-ris · 4 years ago

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Insatiable - Wolf!Risotto x Fem!Reader

Summary - Wolf Ris is in heat and fucks u, but then when he’s calmer he takes care of u uwu

Note - Female/Afab reader & animal hybrid au + fluff towards the end!

WARNING - NOT/SFW (SEX, praising, knotting, cunnilingus, fingering & creampie)

P. S. In a perfect world, I’d make him speak only Sicilian in this, but bc I don’t wanna butcher anything so...🌚

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It’s not enough.

No matter how many times he’s masturbated, his dick still stands tall.

Every rut against his own grip did nothing but intensify his lust for you because it’s not his hand that he wants wrapped tightly around his member, it’s not your pillow that he wants to sniff your scent from, and it’s definitely not the sheets he wants to feel underneath him.

When will she come home?!

Hours pass and Risotto’s muscles are taut and worn with almost every inch of his skin covered in sweat.

His hormones permeate the air in your shared home and it spikes as he dry orgasms for the 12th time. It’s safe to say he feels a growl about to rip through at the intense frustration bubbling inside him.

He wants to shoot his load and plug you up with his bulb while your pussy spasms around his girth, but all he has right now is his sore wrist, a restless dick that’s been rubbed raw, and balls that grow heavier and heavier with each unfulfilling climax.

Maybe the heavens heard his horny, desperate cries because not long after, Risotto smells your scent approaching the door to your home. He hears the sound of your keys and your hand turning the knob and honestly...that‘s all it takes for his cock to weep with renewed energy and his mouth to start drooling.

You, on the other hand, were a little surprised. Not because you found out your boyfriend was in heat, but because you could literally smell it 10 feet from your place! You didn’t know what to expect, but you hope he wasn’t too backed up...

You hoped wrong though because it takes Risotto less than a minute to slam the door shut and pin your body with his.

His mouth latched onto yours before you could even blink and his tongue licks at your lips for entrance, whining like a little puppy who’s been denied the attention he wants. It would’ve been really cute if he wasn’t dying to french kiss you into tomorrow while his hips grinds against yours like his life depended on it.

This level of open desperation is completely new to you, and you’re not going to lie...it’s a little intoxicating.

The taste of his lips and tongue mixing with yours as he laps away at all you can offer, the way he‘s pleading to fill you up with his throbbing dick and all of his seed, the heavy scent of his arousal and hormones pervades your lungs, and the force of his dripping erection rubbing and pushing against your core...it truly has you feeling flushed from it all.

You gush a little when his shaft roughly brushes your clit and Risotto can’t help but literally growl at the scent of your sex starting to invade his senses.

Forget fucking on the bed, he wants you right here, right now. At the door step, bent over on the floor, your ass flush against his pelvis, and his cock bottomed out in your cunt.

But before that can happen though, he knows your consent to it is important. While he usually asks you verbally, his wolf instincts had him drop to his knees to sniff at your nether region instead.

To be honest, he really didn’t have to do that because he very clearly smelt it from where he was standing, but the man’s horny wolf brain said ‘kneel and sniff’ and who is he to argue with himself right now?

You, on the other hand, are kind of embarrassed because your lover is literally sniffing your genitalia as a means of gaining your permission, but because he’s made you horny enough as is, you decide to lead his head to where the lower part of his face is pressed flushed against your clothed cunt.

Risotto steadies himself by gripping your hips and wastes no time in tearing away the clothes in his way before savouring your damp pussy as if it’s his last meal on earth.

You would’ve complained if he wasn’t so fucking good at oral. Licking along the dripping, wet slit of your sex, diving in every time he reaches the entrance to have a taste of what his dick will be enveloped in soon. He switches it up every now and then by nibbling and sucking at the bundle of nerves, and you could’ve sworn you saw stars at the back of your head with how good he was eating you out.

Gasps and groans stream out of your mouth almost in sync with each movement he orally made.

A particularly harsh suck on your clit has your thighs trembling and your grip on his hair tightening, and a muffled whine could be heard from below. When you managed to tilt your head downwards look at Risotto, you had in full view of his hips thrusting feverishly at the ground as he holds your wanton gaze with his piercing, concupiscent ones.

That alone almost brought you to your edge, but what truly did it was when he took to rolling your little pearl between his callous fingers.

You came gushing into his open mouth without warning and he welcomed every last drop, greedily gulping everything he could as if he was drunk on your juices...but it wasn’t enough.

His dick twitches almost painfully, practically crying for your hot walls around it. He needs nothing more than to feel that addicting friction and to spill his fat load into your pulsing cavern, but he knows that in order to fit himself inside, he needs to stretch you out properly.

Sex might be the predominant thought, but nothing turns him off more than to see you in unwanted pain. His heat be damned if it meant you were going to suffer, so Risotto does his due diligence and begins by fingering you.

His finger slips in almost effortlessly and holy fuck he couldn’t stop staring at where he’ll be inserting his dick next. He was so captivated and aroused by how receptive of his fingers (yes, plural already) you were along with all the sounds you were producing that you’d have to fight him to the death to pry him away from you.

Three thick digits spread open your hole as best as they could, and soon after, you achieve your second orgasm of the night, prolonged by his relentless fingers and the sound of his depraved groans as the scent of your sex, the delicious way your walls were milking his fingers, and your lascivious moans completely devour his senses.

If you were to peek into his mind right now, you’d hear just how jealous he was of his own fingers. The way your hungry cunt just keeps squeezing and sucking them deeper almost makes him wish he had dicks for fingers instead, but let’s just pretend that thought didn’t just appear in his mind...for the sake of his sanity.

However, none of that matters now because you’re finally gaping, drenched, and ready for the main event — the one thing that he’s been itching to do ever since he woke up with a hot flush and a standing ovation from his proud member.

Risotto honestly couldn’t wait any longer, seeing your hole so empty and needy, clenching and opening up as if calling for him to enter you...and so he did.

He manhandles your trembling frame and lays your upper body flat on the floor with your hips being hoisted up only by his strength.

Maybe if he hadn’t just took two orgasms from you then you could’ve supported yourself, but you couldn’t do anything except to turn your head and look back at him, involuntarily whimpering at the sight of him looking so...feral.

His ruby eyes glowed in the dim lighting of the sunset, his muscles flexed under his glistening skin and heaving chest, and his fangs glinted as they grew sharper and sharper as each moment passes — Risotto was very clearly at his limit.

He lines the engorged head of his cock at your entrance and he starts to push himself in.

“I’ve waited...all day...for this — for you!”, Risotto’s breath comes out in ragged pants as he slides the rest of his girth-y length into you, a guttural groan leaving his lips when he’s finally bottomed out.

Your velvet walls wrap around his penis like a custom-made glove, and your vocal pleasures from being filled up so full are like music to his ears — Risotto could honestly cry from how good he feels right now, how good he feels in you. But he wants more, and judging by the way you’re gyrating your hips, he’d say you do too. So he tightens his hold on your hips and immediately starts to pound away at you.

His thrusts are quick, deep, and rough as he gives you no time to rest from your previous orgasm.

The slick of your combined juices mix together to create an absolutely lewd cacophony with hips and thighs slapping against each other, the growing volume in your string of vulgar pleasures, and the filthy praises he breathes that has you clenching down on pistoning cock.

“You! Feel! So! Good!”.

Each word was punctuated with a hard thrust and a heavy breath, and your chest couldn’t help but swell with elation.

Risotto’s hips begin to pump his cock faster and faster, utterly enamoured with the sensation that comes with fucking into your sopping wet pussy to the point of near addiction, and he feels it. He feels the pleasure in his groins building up, urging him to chase after it so he can release into your expectant sheath and stuff you.

He leans his chest on your back, one hand rubbing at your clit and the other rips off your top to press messy kisses and hickies onto your mating mark. Growling ever so often at the possessiveness he feels with each contact on your mating mark.

Your eyes begin to roll backwards and your mouth hangs open to accommodate the unrestrained obscenities coming out. Your nails find his forearms to dig into from the sheer force of your orgasm and his unyielding thrusts. They draw a few droplets of blood from his skin as you continue to squeeze at his dick for all its worth, and that’s what it took for Risotto to finally be able to cum.

He thrusts and thrusts and thrusts while simultaneously shooting out thick ropes of his ejaculation. His mind blanks in pure ecstasy for a few moments before he plunges in to knot you.

You’re not gonna lie, no matter how many times he’s done this, you can never get used to the feeling of being stretched to the point where you’re gritting your teeth.

Once Risotto‘s a tad bit more level-headed, he carefully manoeuvres you to sit upright on his lap, relieving the pressure on both of your knees.

The two of you sat panting for a while before he starts to lick at the hickies he planted earlier. It’s slow and sensual, dragging out soft and airy mewls from you until they get thicker as Risotto palms at your breasts.

Large hands grope, massage, and grab at them, tweaking and pinching and rolling your nipples until they form stiff, sensitive peaks, and your body starts to tremble again.

Risotto turns your head for a sloppy, hungry kiss and that’s when you know he’s not satisfied.

You feel his bulb start to loosen as one hand leaves your breast to begin teasing your pert clitoris.

It’s not long before your mewls turn into moans. Risotto then breaks the kiss to whisper, “More, more...”, his breath is rough and raw with desire, “I want more!”.

Complying to his wish, you reach one arm back to tug at his hair to kiss him again. Tongues and teeth clash together and saliva was swapped and moans were muffled.

Soon enough, the bulb disappeared and he starts to grind against you.

Cum that couldn’t fit in your womb began to leak out, but you couldn’t give a fuck as your other reaches down to massage his heavy balls.

Risotto’s dick took no time in getting hard again and he had to hold back from letting his claws out while he’s still holding onto to you.

Everything you were doing just felt so euphoric, it would’ve been odd if he didn’t bounce back as quick as he did. But he didn’t like the current position enough, so he gets the both of you on your knees again and decides to sandwich you between his body and the door.

Your hands are held in place by his, fingers interlocking, and Risotto starts pumping himself into you again.

You‘re not sure if it’s because of your position or your current state of mind, but the sounds of your orgasms sloshing together as he fucks into your dripping cunt along with the sound of his unchaste moans were all you could hear right now, and you have to admit...it was deliciously filthy. So much so that your walls instinctually tightened up on his member, and it didn’t take long before he noticed.

“You like what you hear?”, he whispers. His voice so deep and sultry that the only reaction you could utter was unabashedly moaning a yes. A response that Risotto found so arousing that the only ‘logical’ thing he could do is to drive into you even harder.

The door starts to rattle from the force of Risotto’s animalistic thrusts. Your nipples and clit were being stimulated by the same force against the door, and when he hits that nice spot in you for the hundredth time, you came screaming his name.

Risotto can’t help but chase after the same high, ramming into you with no discernible rhythm with only one goal in mind. A goal that’s so close in reaching, and with the way your insides clench rapidly around him, wringing him for all he’s worth — it’s not long before his animal instinct take over and Risotto reaches his peak with a howl.

His knot expands in you once again and his cock spurts out the last of his semen into your womb.

The two of you stayed in place for a long while, heaving and basking in the afterglow of the debauchery that just took place at the front door of your home.

When Risotto gains some of his common sense back, he hears your soft whimpering, most likely from the overstimulation and from being stretched out twice in a row by his bulb.

He feels a little guilty about it, but what’s done is done and all he can do now is take care of you.

He carefully sits back down, making sure he doesn’t aggravate or hurt you more than necessary, and starts to pepper little kisses onto your head, hands, shoulders, and anywhere he can reach until his knot subsides.

You giggle a little when he kisses your neck, and Risotto couldn’t help smiling against your skin.

“How do you feel, bedda?”, he asks, hoping he didn’t take it too far in his lust-induced state.

“Tired...but I’m okay, so don’t worry about it, Ris.”, you replied with a loving kiss on his lips, quelling any remaining doubts he had.

The two of you sat there for over 20 mins, waiting for his knot to pass by exchanging sweet little pecks to kill the time.

Once it disappeares, Risotto carefully slides his dick out.

You gasped in response because all the cum starting leaking out and you‘re kind of surprised at the abundance of it.

“That’s a lot.”, you comment.

Both your eyes are trained on the liquids emptying itself out of your vagina and Risotto simply reasons, “You took too long to come home.”, with what you think is a very cute and playful pout.

“I’m sorry.”, a smile spreads on your lips as you gave his temple a smooch and he gladly accepts it, giving you one in return.

Risotto then proceeds to take care of you for the night, knowing your body is much too tired to do that yourself. Not that he minds though. He feels that it��s just right to look after you since he‘s the whole reason why you’re so spent in the first place.

He helps you clean up in the shower, lathering your body and making sure there’s not a trace of his...deeds left in you.

Honestly, even when you regained some of your energy, Risotto insisted on doing everything for you, from hydrating the both of you to carrying you princess style onto the bed, and that really made your heart soar and your cheeks burn.

When all’s said and done, your gentle giant settles you snug in his arms and under the thick blanket, placing a kiss on your lips to start off your nightly talk before drifting off to sleep in each other’s arms.

#not/sfw

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letterboxd · 4 years ago

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Spectacular Spectacular!

On the twentieth anniversary of its explosion onto big screens, Ella Kemp high-kicks into the Moulin Rouge! once again, accompanied by screenwriter Craig Pearce and a chorus line of jukebox-musical academics and swoony Letterboxd fans.

“You’re always writing for yourself, for the film you want to see. I like all kinds of different films and I think teenage girls do too.” —Craig Pearce, Moulin Rouge! co-writer

This is a story about love. A love born at the turn of the twentieth century in an iconic Parisian cabaret and brought to life in 2001 on Australia’s most spectacular sound stage. A valentine to excess, greed, fantasy and, above all, to the fundamental Bohemian ideals: truth, beauty, freedom and love. This is the story of Moulin Rouge! and how it still burns bright, two decades on, in the hearts of romantics all over the world.

The film, a fateful love story between penniless writer Christian and dazzling courtesan Satine—played by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman—premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 9, 2001 and opened in New York and Los Angeles cinemas only weeks later, on May 18. Cast and crew fought hard to get it there: unimaginably, writer-director Baz Luhrmann’s father passed away on the first day of filming, and Kidman’s then-marriage was in turmoil. “There were times of beautiful moments, but there were times where we were like, ‘This is so hard’,” Luhrmann recently told an Australian journalist.

And, though this seems strange to say in a world that has since welcomed Mamma Mia!, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, making a movie musical early in the millennium was a high-risk pursuit. Luhrmann again: “‘Musicals will never be popular again’ … I can’t tell you how many times I was told that.”

“It’s part of a cycle,” explains Dr. Eleonora Sammartino, an academic specializing in contemporary American film musicals. “It came after a period in the 1990s where musicals had disappeared from the big screen.” Lisa Duffy, Letterboxd member and Doctor of Hollywood Musicals, agrees: “Films coming out [that year] were a lot more dour, so this was a real gamble.”

Nobody understood this gamble better than the film’s co-writer, Craig Pearce, who has been Luhrmann’s close friend and professional partner since the pair were students together. Moulin Rouge! is the third and final entry in what we now know as their red-curtain trilogy, alongside Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Romeo + Juliet (1996).

“Baz had been thinking about the parallels between the Moulin Rouge and Andy Warhol’s Factory,” Pearce recalls. “Places where artists congregate, where it’s more than a place, it’s a petri dish of creativity. Like The Factory, and Studio 54, the Moulin Rouge was a place where the old and the wealthy pay a lot of money to hang out with the young and the sexy.”

At the end of the twentieth century, however, the Moulin Rouge wasn’t all that great (the original had burnt down in 1915). Pearce recalls: “We went to Paris in 1999 on a research trip and discovered, to our horror, that the Moulin Rouge now is just a hideous tourist trap. So we had to go on this journey to find out how this amazing creativity—artists and dancers and musicians—came out of what now feels like this tawdry girlie show.”

With the location and period locked in, Pearce and Luhrmann worked to find the story’s driving force. “This movie wouldn’t work without the exclamation point,” writes Adelaide. Pearce is the first to admit this: “It’s saying it’s Moulin Rouge, but it’s not that one. What we’re trying to do is heighten truth, but you have to start with that underlying truth,” he explains. “It’s not casting around for ‘what would be a cool idea’ because you never come up with one. It’s never as interesting as the truth. Like, there was an elephant in the garden of the Moulin Rouge. And why does that matter? It matters because there are certain inherent logics in the way human beings operate.”

“It's a musical of recycled parts. It’s a story which, beat for beat, has been told for centuries. It’s a staged show drawn from the lives of the characters themselves… This is a film [that] is bold enough not just to say that all art is about finding your own meanings behind someone else’s ideas, and that all art is just copying and stealing, but that this can be totally valid and authentic. When Nicole Kidman sings ‘Your Song’ to the Duke, she’s stealing from the writer, and Luhrmann is stealing from Elton John. But when Ewan McGregor is singing to Kidman, it’s the most magical moment you could possibly imagine. That’s what makes ‘Moulin Rouge!’ a true masterpiece. Cinema has never been more fake, and cinema has rarely been more real.” —Sam

Moulin Rouge! borrows from all over. There are hints of La Traviata, of Cabaret and of Émile Zola’s Nana. There were Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings (John Leguizamo tremendously embodies the painter in the film), Baudelaire and Verlaine’s literature, Jason and the Argonauts, Homer’s Odyssey, and the revues of the 1920s and ’30s. “Moulin Rouge! really embraces that vaudevillian component,” says Dr. Hannah Robbins, a Broadway and Hollywood musicals specialist.

Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann writing in Paris (1998) and New York (2019). / Photos from Luhrmann’s Twitter

“This genre lends itself to repetition and fragmentation,” Sammartino expands. “It’s part of the syntax of the musical and has always been, this idea of borrowing from other sources. This doesn’t take away from the daring postmodern approach Moulin Rouge! is defined by, it’s simply further proof that it’s, well, a very good musical.”

Above all else, the core of Moulin Rouge! is inspired by the myth of Orpheus of Thrace and his doomed love affair with the beautiful Eurydice, whom he followed into Hades after she died. “The show must go on, Satine,” the nightclub’s impresario Harold Zidler grimly tells his star, as their world begins to crumble. “We’re creatures of the underworld. We can’t afford to love.”

It wasn’t the first time Pearce and Luhrmann had looked to ancient mythology. Strictly Ballroom’s mantra, which tells us “a life lived in fear is a life half lived” owes everything to David and Goliath. But with the Orphean myth, the screenwriters were looking to dig deeper, to find something much darker. “The Orphean myth is a romantic tragedy in its essence,” Pearce explains. “David and Goliath is more youthful, and it’s about saying that belief can conquer anything. But as you get older people get sick, they die, and life is about resilience and finding ways to embrace the hard things in life and move forward.”

That might sound antithetical to the all-singing, all-dancing nature of the movie musical, but the genre has been trying to tell devastating stories like Moulin Rouge! for decades. “Hollywood is rarely interested in buying and remaking stories with devastating endings as much as stage musicals are,” Duffy explains. (See: Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera.)

This reluctance can be traced back to the classic era, during which there were rules about the ways a musical could end under the censorship laws of the Production Code. Simply put, they had to have a happy ending. (Which also led to a fair amount of bizarre deus ex machina to guarantee a nice, cheery final act).

But then in the 1960s the Code fades away, and Hollywood starts engaging with violence, sex and explicit trauma on-screen. “We have much more freedom in the contemporary era to have people die explicitly,” Duffy says. “And that’s why we keep returning to Moulin Rouge!: there’s the explicit negotiation of our entry into the fantasy world, and then we’re devastated, and the curtains close and we’re in reality again.”

“It’s one of the great 21st-century films. Baz Luhrmann is only good when figuring out how to make historical periods of excess into contemporary displays of grotesquerie, somehow turning great films (‘French Cancan’) or great literature (‘The Great Gatsby’) into tacky Technicolor vomit that somehow understands the underlying sorrow of the material better than any serious-minded adaptation.” —Jake

The red-curtain trilogy has a distinct set of rules: one, the viewer must know how the film ends from the start; two, the story must be set in a heightened world; and three, it must contain a device that keeps the audience awake at all times, whether that be ballroom dancing, scattershot Shakespearean dialogue, or pop songs.

“Part of the appeal of the artifice is that it gives the audience permission to say, ‘This isn’t real, you’re about to see a fantasy, and that’s okay,’” Duffy says. “The pleasure is the fantasy of it. The whole film is us seeing how Christian is imagining what happened—and the musical is the most extreme genre that allows such imagination.”

The point was never to temper the elaborate, hyper-aware fakeness of it all, but to really commit to it. Says Robbins, “Musicals are ultimately artificial and exclusively constructed. And that’s what Moulin Rouge! achieves and quite a lot of films don’t. It goes, ‘This is where the story is going, this is the energy, this will be played in the soundtrack.’ There’s a deliberate thought process there.”

Luhrmann recently said: “The way we made the movie is the way the movie is.” An under-explored aspect of Moulin Rouge! is how the whole affair, with its ‘Spectacular Spectacular’ musical-within-a-musical device, is an insider’s guide to the mechanics and politics of making ‘big art’. How money can control both the art (the dastardly Duke insisting on “his” ending), and the artists (Satine is never told she is dying, because she is the golden goose upon whose shoulders the success of the company rests; Christian is likewise left in the dark, because he is the scriptwriter who needs to finish writing the show. Both are wrung dry for their talents).

There are shades of Luhrmann in Zigler, the impresario juggling cast, crew, investors and opening dates (Moulin Rouge! was originally slated for December 2000). Christian and friends in playwriting mode are surely Pearce and Luhrmann themselves, searching for the most economical way to say “the hills are vital, intoning the descant”.

And, from the show-within-a-show rehearsals, to the bustle of the backstage, to the gun-chase through the wooden bones of the fly tower, the production details are Catherine Martin to the very last diamante. Nobody does daring bedazzlement quite like ‘CM’, Luhrmann’s fellow producer and life partner. Electricity was the new, exciting thing in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century and this film was lit.

A necklace worn by Satine as a gift from the Duke was made of real diamonds and platinum. Designed by Stefano Canturi, It was the most expensive piece of jewellery ever specifically made for a film, with 1,308 diamonds weighing 134 carats, and worth an estimated one million dollars. Needless to say, Martin won both costume and production design Oscars for the film.

Also among the film’s eight Academy Award nominees: editor Jill Bilcock, about whose singular craft there is a recent documentary. Her breathless, kaleidoscopic cutting (also deployed in Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet) dropped us right on the dance floor; one 65-second sequence contained a boggling 85 cuts. And this is on the back of her superbly judged opening, a scene that repeats itself as she places Christian at both the start of his love story, and its devastating aftermath—heartbroken, unshaven, self-medicating, reaching for the words to begin making sense of his loss.

“I wondered, for the first hour of this, how Baz Luhrmann had managed to balance such in-your-face stylistic audacity while maintaining a genuine feeling of care for the characters and their struggles—is it all down to Ewan McGregor’s wonderfully earnest face, or the way Nicole Kidman’s smouldering-temptress persona is worn down by one of the most charming cinematic uses of Elton John’s ‘Your Song’? But as the ‘Elephant Love Medley’ transformed into David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, I stopped caring, I just swooned.” —Kat

If electricity was the thing that drove the kids wild in the 1900s, the internet was on everyone’s minds in 2001. We were just figuring out how to juggle tabs and text people. The real magic dust sprinkled throughout Moulin Rouge! is, obviously, the cacophonous soundtrack, which made sense to our collective, fragmented consciousness.

“No other musical of the modern era has so perfectly captured the sense of spinning an iPod wheel every 45 seconds to play something else,” writes Jake of the medley of songs by David Bowie, Fat Boy Slim, Nirvana, Police, Elton John, Rufus Wainwright, Madonna and many others.

Luhrmann and Pearce stopped at nothing to get every single track from every single artist they wanted. The journey took more than two years, and some bodies were left at the side of the road. “You constantly have to kill your darlings,” Pearce sighs. RIP to Rod Stewart’s ‘Tonight’s the Night’, The Rolling Stones’ ‘Under My Thumb’, Prince’s ‘Raspberry Beret’ and Fifth Dimension’s ‘Up, Up and Away’. (Hot air balloons were big in 2001.)

"We wanted the music to be modern, because we didn’t want it to feel like a fusty, crusty world,” says Pearce. “We wanted to find the universal modern parallels that have existed since time immemorial.” But it wasn’t just about finding the most popular songs at the time. “The structure had to be driven by the needs of the story,” the screenwriter explains. “The musicals on film that tend to fail are the ones where the music feels like a film clip. If it’s not serving the emotional needs of the story, you very quickly check out and it becomes boring. With good musical storytelling, it builds and builds to a point where you can’t do anything but express yourself through song.”

Has there ever been a more desperately romantic promise than when Christian starts telling Satine he doesn’t have much to give her, before nailing that one perfect high note to reassure her that his gift is his song? Why, yes: when the mirrored love stories of Christian and Satine, and of the penniless sitar player and the courtesan in ‘Spectacular Spectacular’, meet at their dramatic peak, with ‘Come What May’. (The film’s only original song, it had been submitted for the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack by writers David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert.)

“Moulin Rouge! was successful because it was using songs from different ages and periods, appealing to different audiences with something they could have a connection to. So it wasn’t just boomers, not just millennial or Gen X,” says Sammartino. “Something like Rock of Ages, for example, was much more narrow in terms of the kind of music you needed to like.”

“This film is a dramatic bitch and I love her.” —Mulaney

‘Moulin Rouge!’ co-writer and director Baz Luhrmann.

There is a pattern to our most emphatic reviews for the film: they come from relatively young people, who mainly identify as women. It’s something critics anticipated back in 2001. The New York Times wrote, in a fairly ambivalent review, that “young audiences, especially girls, will feel as if they had found a movie that was calling them by name”. We don’t have time to fully dig into the antiquated notion that “low art” (the publication’s quippy headline for that review was “An Eyeful, an Earful, Anachronism”) is aimed specifically at women, but surely we have to ask the question twenty years on: does anyone still think this could possibly be true?

“You’re always writing for yourself, for the film you want to see,” says Pearce. “I like all kinds of different films and I think teenage girls do too.” And let’s remember, it was Harry Styles who said of the broad demographic of his fanbase back in 2017: “Teenage girls—they don’t lie. If they like you, they're there. They don’t act ‘too cool’. They like you, and they tell you.”

Robbins: “The rom-com has made the connection between song and emotional display about female pain. The Emma Thompson crying to Joni Mitchell kind of lineage has tempered musicals—people think that’s what Mamma Mia! is: women and mothers and daughters and feelings.” Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a lot of musical-related data suggesting a broader scope. “When I went to see Frozen on Broadway, kids of all genders were wearing Olaf costumes, much more than princess ones. That is not the narrative Disney would like. And when people gender musicals and think of the princesses franchises, they don’t look to the fact that The Lion King and Aladdin were more successful.”

There has been an undeniable effort to reel male audiences in to see 21st-century musicals. On Hugh Jackman’s welcome, flamboyant career pivot (surprising to anyone but Australians), Duffy says: “Casting Wolverine in Les Misérables and The Greatest Showman is very, ‘See, manly men can do it too!’” Let’s not forget that Ewan McGregor had gotten his big break as freewheeling heroin addict Mark Renton in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting just six years prior to playing Christian.

Indeed, says Duffy, “more of my male friends have seen Moulin Rouge! than other musicals. The MTV tone might have been significant, and there was the ‘Lady Marmalade’ music video—the fact you have all these beautiful pop stars writhing around in corsets. And just having David Bowie on the soundtrack is like, ‘Okay, this isn’t just girl music.’ Pop music offers an easier way to move past the stigma of show tunes.”

Crucially, Robbins notes that all of this prejudice, and the effort to tear it down, is speaking to, and about, a very specific—cisgender, heterosexual—subsection of audiences. “I always wonder where the critics think the queer audiences are. I do wonder if there’s a cis-het vibe going on that has even more to do with it, reinforcing that norm rather than actually focusing on young girls as an audience.”

I asked my interviewees whether they thought, twenty years on, that Moulin Rouge! would be better received today—and which parts of our contemporary cinematic and musical fabric owe a debt to Luhrmann’s jukebox wonder. “We’re more receptive but we have specific demands,” says Robbins. “And today’s musicals sink or swim on whether they meet those demands. So The Greatest Showman is the Moulin Rouge! of now. I think people would be lying if they didn’t say that the cinematography in Moulin Rouge! hasn’t affected almost every movie musical that has been made since. We wouldn’t have ‘Rewrite the Stars’ if we didn’t have ‘Sparkling Diamonds’.”

Duffy agrees: “So many things that come after you can draw a line directly to Moulin Rouge!—Pitch Perfect, Rock of Ages, Happy Feet… but most significantly, Glee would not exist without this movie. The jukebox musicals of the 21st century owe everything to Moulin Rouge! and the blueprint it lays down.”

Among the films that premiered at Cannes in 2001—David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher—was another kooky little number: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson’s animated Shrek. Two jukebox musicals in the same prestige film festival, at a moment when the genre was considered deeply uncool? What a time to be alive!

If the last eighteen months have taught us anything, it’s that we film lovers enjoy nothing more than a comfort rewatch of our favorites. Moulin Rouge! and Shrek (and French Shrek) delivered untold comfort in the pandemic—but they had also soothed us much earlier, in the months following the unspeakable tragedy of the 9/11 attacks.

“For me it was very much a comfort film,” recalls Duffy, who had discovered Moulin Rouge! as a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old, during her first year away from home, studying in New York. “Part of that was rooted in this really traumatic thing that had happened, and all of us wanting to escape into this fantasy world as much as possible.”

Luhrmann said, in his recent Australian interview, “I love to see people united and uplifted and exulted. It’s a privilege to be a part of helping people find that.” As life outside our homes resumes, Moulin Rouge! will very much be part of a return to exultant living. The live musical—interrupted by Covid—opens in Melbourne in August and on the West End and Broadway in the fall.

Pearce last saw the film on a large screen in a derelict warehouse in London, at Secret Cinema’s interactive, carnivalesque spectacular. “I have to say, I was really proud of the film,” the screenwriter says, finally letting himself speak fondly of his accomplishment well over an hour into our conversation.

“I mean, some people liked it back in the day, but you’re never really satisfied with your work. You just tend to see the things that could have been better. But seeing the love for the film was really, really emotional.”

Related content

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Craig Pearce is currently producing ‘Pistol’—a biopic miniseries on the Sex Pistols, directed by Danny Boyle—and his next film with Luhrmann is a biopic of Elvis Presley, with Austin Butler playing the king of rock and roll. Additional thanks to Dr. Eleonora Sammartino, Lisa Duffy and Dr. Hannah Robbins.

#moulin rouge #moulin rouge!#baz luhrmann #catherine martin #nicole kidman #ewan mcgregor #children of the revolution #truth beauty freedom love #musical #movie musical #jukebox musical #paris #australian director #letterboxd

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mikauzoran · 4 years ago

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Ask Game: Mikau’s Headcanons - This Should Be a Drinking Game

Anonymous asked:

5&6

Thank you for the ask! ^.^

(The questions are from this list. So far I’ve done five, six, eleven, and fifteen.)

5. What’s your favorite headcanon you use in fics?

Oh my gosh. There are so many headcanons. XD I was actually just thinking last night that I needed to compile a list and turn it into a drinking game or something.

Take a sip of tea every time:

1. Félix is Adrien’s older brother (eight years older). He left home at sixteen, married Marinette’s cousin Bridgette, and now lives in Marseille where he’s a homicide detective. Bri runs her own bakery. They have a daughter named Noëlle and a son on the way. Fé used to play the violin competitively growing up, and Adrien learned to play Danse Macabre and the first movement of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata from him.

2. Émilie was a stage actress, and Adrien used to do the child roles in whatever production she was in, so he grew up backstage and going to the theatre to see his mum a lot. Her signature role was Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. When Gabriel and Émilie met going to high school in Marseille, she was performing Viola and dragged him into being on the costume crew for the school play once she discovered he was an aspiring fashion designer.

3. Adrien decides to pursue a career in acting. He misses performing from when he did it with his mum when he was a kid, and it makes him feel connected to her. He likes getting to portray all kinds of different people and experiencing what it’s like to be someone else. It’s a safe space for him to experience emotions since expressing emotions was frowned upon in his home growing up. The roles he really wants to play are Jean Valjean from Les Mis, the Phantom from Phantom of the Opera, Elphaba from Wicked, and Viola from Twelfth Night.

4. Adrien is originally left-handed but has learned to be ambidextrous. This is my hill to die on, and you can fight me over it. ^w^ It’s probably just production error/the creators not really caring, but I’ve noticed several times in canon where Adrien has been shown doing things left-handed. (I mean, he uses his right hand for things too, but...) In Origins, when he’s walking to class and signing autographs left and right, he does so with his left hand. In Marchand de Sable/Sandman when he’s doing homework in his room, his writing supplies are on his left side. (I just want some left-handed representation. Is that too much to ask? ;-;)

5. Adrien is biromantic asexual. Even when I pair him with Marinette, he’s never not bi. I don’t always write him as ace; sometimes he’s bisexual in my works, but I could see canon Adrien as ace.

6. Adrien’s comfort foods are mint tea and salad. When he was little, when he or Émilie had a bad day, she would kick the kitchen staff out of the kitchen, and they would make a big salad and some mint tea and enjoy it together. Now that she’s gone, he has mint tea and/or salad when he’s feeling down, and it’s comforting because it reminds him of his mother.

7. Adrien is a total anime nerd. He grew up relatively isolated from the outside world, so he learned about life and “normal”/“acceptable” human behaviour from Disney movies and anime. He’s always wanted to be a Disney princess and a magical girl. He was really inspired by Disney and anime protagonists who overcame the difficulties in their lives to achieve their dreams and find happiness and love. He has a lot of strong, female role models, starting with his mum, so he tends to identify with female characters more strongly than male characters.

8. Adrien is a polyglot. Obviously, he knows French, and he’s learned English because it’s required. Chinese lessons are canonical. He taught himself Japanese so that he could read manga and watch anime in the original (and pass it off as “studying”). He also speaks Russian (see “9″ below). He doesn’t speak Italian, but he has a passing familiarity with the language. He knows some phrases from opera from watching it himself and his mum’s career. He has some of his favourite portions memorized. He can insult someone’s sartorial choices in Italian from listening to his father do so on trips to Milan for business, and he knows survival phrases, but he can’t actually construct sentences or have conversations. He just hasn’t invested himself in it.

9. Adrien’s bodyguard’s name is Victor (really Viktor, but he uses the French spelling to fit in). He’s originally from Russia and still has family there. The reason why he doesn’t speak is because, even though he understands French just fine, he’s self-conscious about speaking it because of his accent. He’s also afraid to make mistakes, especially in front of Gabriel who is not a patient or tolerant man. Victor taught Adrien Russian, so now they can speak together, and no one knows what they’re saying. (Nathalie has picked up a little bit here and there, but not enough to have conversations.) Victor calls Adrien Adrianka. (It’s the Russian diminutive.)

10. Nathalie speaks a little bit of Mandarin Chinese. Her tones are so-so, but she can get her point across. She learned from listening in on Adrien’s lessons so that she could make sure he stayed on top of his curriculum. When Adrien has to miss Chinese lessons on short notice, Adrien’s teacher works with Nathalie instead.

11. Luka loves all music, not just rock or punk like we’ve seen on the show. I mean, the guy is portrayed as music being his whole life, right? He came to music through rock and roll because that’s what he was exposed to through his mother and her music career, but if you dig into the music and look at its history, where it came from, what inspired it, you start wandering back through time until you get to the big names of classical concert music. Luka is an inquisitive, thoughtful guy. I can see him digging into the roots of the music he grew up with and finding all sorts of cool influences. I can see him learning about and experimenting with different types/genres of music.

12. In university, Luka studies Literature with an emphasis on nineteenth and twentieth century Russia. Why? Below is excerpted from my response to a comment asking about this point.

Especially in the nineteenth century during the height of Romanticism, a lot of literary elements and themes made their way into classical music. Program music uses literary texts as a base and illustrates the story with music. Composers drew from the Russian literary tradition as well, particularly in opera. Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades is based on Pushkin's short story, and I just found out a month ago that Shostakovich turned Gogol's short story The Nose into an opera. In the arts, one thing always leads to another. It's like looking up something on Wikipedia. Two hours later you've become an expert on botany or Balkan folk dance. I think Luka would dig into the sources of inspiration for the music he was consuming in order to better understand the works and as a means of getting inspiration himself.

So that's why Russian Literature. I think he'd eventually find his way to it through music. Then, once you find Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, you really get sucked in. For me, those two have such a way of depicting real human beings and what it means to be human. They really get at deeper human truths. Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot really capture that essence for me. (War and Peace too to some extent, but not as much as the other three.) I think Luka would really be drawn to Russian literature too and come to love it for itself apart from the musical inspiration he was able to derive from it.

13. In his teens, Luka takes more of an interesting in the piano and falls in love with the violin. He adds piano and violin performance majors halfway through university and ends up becoming a professional solo pianist as well as a first violin with the Orchestre de Paris.

14. Luka wears reading glasses. I don’t think I’ve used this one much. Actually, I can’t find where I’ve used this at all. :/ Well. I suppose there will be no tea drinking at this time for this headcanon. ^.^;

15. Luka has tattoos. I don’t think I’ve gotten around to this one yet either. Adrien and Luka talk about possible tattoo ideas in Chapter Four of Nachtmusik, but... At any rate, the full extent of the tattoos would be a stylized snake on his pelvis, Odin’s raven’s on his shoulder blades, a stylized snake bracelet under his regular bracelets, and a Chat Noir paw print under his ring. So far the paw print is the only one that I’m one hundred percent positive that will happen. The stylized snake on the pelvis is pretty up there too because in the Jabberwocky/Daisy universe I was going to have Adrien and Marinette squabbling over Luka, and Adrien was going to say that he bet Marinette hadn’t seen Luka’s snake tattoo. When Marinette asks Luka where he has a snake tattoo and learns how low on Luka’s stomach it is, she’s left wondering what’s going on between Adrien and Luka. I’m undecided about the ravens and the snake bracelet.

16. The children are always named Hugo, Louis, and Emma, but the birth order depends upon the pairing. Lukadrienette have Hugo (biologically Luka’s), Emma (Adrien’s), and then Louis (Adrien’s). Lukadrien have Emma (Luka and Rose’s), Louis (Adrien and Rose’s), and then Hugo (Adrien and Juleka’s). Adrienette have Louis, Hugo, and then Emma.

Which is your favourite of my headcanons? Which one would you like to see more of? Did I miss any? ^.^;

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coeurdastronaute · 6 years ago

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Either/Or: Christmas Day 3 (Rosie)

The house on the corner was covered in a tasteful selection of Christmas lights that glowed against the few inches of snow that fell over the past week. From the street, it looked like a home that anyone would be proud to won, one that complimented the rest of the festive street.

Of course, the inside was nothing of the sort, though not on purpose.

“We should have just paid the movers to put it all together,” Lena sighed.

“I can handle this,” Kara disagreed, grunting as she tried to fit some pieces together for the crib.

The entirety of their lives remained in boxes with some of it spilled on the floor or tossed around as they generally grew sick of not finding what they were looking for and instead opted to dig and grow more angry. But they had jobs and lives and an alarming amount of holiday engagements which kept them out of the house and from doing anything too meaningful in the way of settling.

“Do you think it’s a bad sign that she’s sick?”

“She’s had a long few months. It’s not a bad sign, and we’re not bad moms,” Supergirl promised her wife, softening slightly, her shoulders slumping with the worry Lena felt. “Kids get sick.”

“But she’s so tiny,” Lena shook her head.

Clad in Kara’s old college sweatshirt, Lena held the cranky baby against her chest and rubbed her back. Tiny little coughs came from time to time, and their daughter looked miserable. Gone was the little glint in her eyes, gone was the ease of a smile. Instead, she bore the discomfort and sickness nobly.

Kara sat back on the floor, a dozen pieces that didn’t really look useful or like they made up a crib waited to be assembled. She watched Lena shift from side to side and coo to the baby.

“Why don’t you two go take a bath, and you can get her some more meds before bed?”

“If she’ll sleep,” she fret. “The bath helped last time. A little.”

“It helped.”

“Okay. I’m going to try that. Don’t worry about this. She won’t sleep unless I’m holding her anyway.”

Kara smiled and nodded, though she continued to work on her project because sooner or later, Rosie would feel better and need her own crib. And simply that Lena was too worried about the task at hand to realize that soon, she’d be frantic because Kara hadn’t finished. Lena offered her a look finally after snuggling the baby a little more.

“What?” Lena asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“You’re my absolute favorite person in the universe and you’re the best mom.”

“I don’t know about either of those. We’re going to have Christmas, our daughter’s first Christmas, without a tree and with our house still in boxes.”

“None of that negates my opinions,” Kara assured her, earning a roll of her eyes.

She didn’t care. It made her wife stop worrying for about thirty seconds, and that was important enough work. Lena moved through the yard of crib pieces and let her wife hug her hip. She leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“I love you.”

“Go have a bath. I want my girls in their Christmas jammies as soon as possible.”

On cue, the baby coughed and cried, whimpering slightly. Lena was back to being too worried, and Kara nodded to herself, ready to finish her mission. A few minutes later, light Christmas music could be heard just above the sound of water filling the bath. Lena sang along and Kara smiled as she fit a piece into another. Her mind though, was infinitely distracted with plans.

Fresh from the bath and slightly relieved of her cough, the naked baby wiggled and squirmed on the bed with the mismatched sheets. Clad in her duck towel, she gurgled and accepted the gentle hands that rubbed lotion on her chest. She coughed a little and kicked her feet, but nothing deterred the smiling, doting mother that hovered over her.

“Oh baby, your nose is so stuffy. We’ll get you feeling better soon,” Lena promised. “And we’ll have much better holidays. Holidays so good you’ll never want them to end.”

Rosie fussed but accepted the red and green striped pyjamas. She whined and yawned and did not like the medicine that was syringed into her mouth.

As soon as she was finished, Lena slipped on her own set of red and green pyjamas.

Halfway through some Christmas movie, the baby was asleep and Lena dozed on the bed, her laptop occupying her wife’s spot.

Kara paused at the door and surveyed those in the bed. With a slight wheeze, the baby snored, congested and sleeping off her sickness. Half asleep, Lena rubbed her back and yawned.

“Come to bed already. It’s Christmas Eve,” Lena complained.

“I finished the crib.”

“That’s my girl,” she smiled and slid deeper into the bed.

“I’m going to put Rosie in there. She deserves a quiet night.”

“She’s fine here.”

“She’s not,” Kara disagreed, and picked up the sleeping infant.

The baby slept through it, and Kara placed in her in the freshly constructed crib. By the time she turned off the light and left on the night light, she returned to her room and found her wife asleep in the middle of the bed.

Tired as she was, Kara stole the baby monitor, closed the laptop, and closed the bedroom door for she still had work to do.

With a sick baby, a move, and the normal requirements of being Lena Luthor, it’d been a little while since she last had a solid night’s sleep. It seemed oddly fitting that Christmas Eve would be the one that finally fulfilled that need.

Lena stretched in the bed until she met a sleeping hero beside her, and she wrapped herself around strong shoulders, and she kissed through flannel pyjama top, finding warmth radiating there. She slid her hand under Kara’s shirt and held her ribs, held her breath, held her skin and woke up with a smile on her lips.

“Merry Christmas,” Lena yawned as she felt her wife stir.

And when Kara turned over, Lena kissed her throat and hid in her chest as strong arms encircled her.

“Merry Christmas,” Kara mumbled, exhausted after only a few hours of sleep.

“She made it through the night without a fuss. Maybe she’s feeling better.”

“I told you.”

“You did,” she agreed, burrowing deeper.

But, attuned as she was to her daughter, Lena should have known that her waking would mean that Rosie would cosmically sense it and be up within a few minutes. A baby sniffle and shuffle and wiggling could be heard on the monitor, earning a growl of complaint from the retired superhero.

“Sleep a little more,” Lena tried extracting herself. “I’ll go change her and start breakfast.”

“Mmm, okay.”

Kara was exceptionally pliant when nails raked up and down her back, just beneath her top, trailing along the skin there.

“We don’t have a regular Christmas, but we can still have a good Christmas morning breakfast.”

“Waffles. And eggs. And bacon. And french toast. And toast toast. And pineapple. And hash browns. And sausage.”

“Is that all?”

Lena managed to escape the bed just in time to see Kara furrow as she debated before relaxing into Lena’s now empty pillow.

“Yup.”

“Coming right up,” she promised with a smile, kissing her wife’s temple and smoothing it back.

Before she was at the door, she knew Kara wa already back to sleep. Lena watched her, how she looked so peaceful in the sheets, and how she had this serenity on her face. Sometimes, she couldn’t understand how she loved someone so much. It seemed impossible to have those feelings for someone.

Humming a quiet little song, Lena made her way into the nursery and found it nearly unpacked and set up much the way she’d planned. It made sense why Kara was still in bed on her favorite morning of the year.

Smiling beneath her star and moon mobile, Rosie kicked her feet and gurgled, getting a little more excited when her mom appeared.

“Merry Christmas,” Lena cooed, leaning on the edge of the crib and running her hand along cheek. “You sound better. No fever.”

Rosie wiggled at the news.

They had a routine already. Lena changed her and made her way downstairs, eager to grab the presents she’d hidden in a box labeled ‘Clothes,’ and give the baby breakfast. She’d brew the coffee and hope her love would wake up shortly.

Lena made it halfway down the stairs before her song trailed off and she saw the Christmas tree in the living room. There were still boxes stacked everywhere, and the walls were bare, but a Christmas tree brimmed with ornaments and lights, taking up much of the space.

Already, there were presents under it. The stockings were tacked up somewhat haphazardly on the fireplace.

“I love your mom so much,” Lena sighed.

“I don’t want to spoil her. Everyone else is going to spoil her.”

“Well, she’s eight months old, so I don’t think we have to worry about that just yet.”

Lena nodded, really considering it as she looked at the baby in the bouncy chair who was happy to suck on her pacifier in peace, no other need in the world.

The remnants of the Christmas morning scattered out in all directions. They didn’t get each other many gifts because they really didn’t need anything. But it was easy to see that the potential for their kid to become infinitely spoiled was at an all time high.

Wrapped in the scarf Lena found and thought that her wife absolutely needed, Kara smiled and toyed with the new camera she’d gotten as well. She held it up to her eye and snapped a picture.

“I’ll spoil her. You have to make sure I don’t spoil her,” Lena nodded.

“I can do that.”

“When I want to buy her a car, you have to stop me.”

“Definitely.”

“I mean it. And only like three presents for Christmas. We’ll spend the holiday doing charity work and stuff.”

“I can do that.”

“And you’ll let me take you on a vacation next month.”

“You have a long list of things I have to do, huh?” Kara laughed.

The tree glittered and the family unit sat on the floor of their new home. Kara slid over and wrapped her arms around her wife so that she settled between her legs. She shared her new scarf and kept her cozy and close, kissed her shoulder, felt her laugh through her spine.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Let’s have a few more in this place, but with furniture,” Lena decided.

“Yes, dear.”

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zimniysoldat-fiction · 7 years ago

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Across the Universes; The Great Escape

Summary: S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, and close friend of the Sorcerer Supreme, Tazia Cozier, is inadvertently sent to a different universe where nothing is the same. To get his friend back, Dr. Strange sends the Winter Soldier across universes to find her and bring her home.

Warnings and Ratings: The Great Escape: rated G, no warnings

Author’s Note: I really don’t know what this is, or rather, will be. Angst? Smut? Slow Burn? Absolutely zero clue. All I know is that it’s a serial (I don’t even know how many parts it’ll be). Feedback, requests, questions, and comments are always welcome. Also, images found via Google Image Search. Credit where it is due, text added by me.

Series Masterlist

The shackles were heavy and snug. Good. Bucky stayed perfectly still, sitting on his heels, arms chained to the marble floor, head bowed in apathy. He had honestly had enough of Russian decadence. Why did their torture chamber have a marble floor? He wanted to fidget with the chains, test their strength, their flexibility—he was getting impatient; bored.

«Who sent you? Who are you working for?»

«I work for no man.»

Bucky didn’t move, but he could see his interrogator clearly in his periphery. The man was short, sleight, and well-dressed in an immaculately tailored suit. He had no visible tattoos, but the two brawnier men who flanked either side of him did. They were dressed more casually, in steel-toed boots, ill-fitted jeans, and tight-fitting black tee shirts. They were pretty good at standing at attention, though their occasional shift in weight, or crack of their necks betrayed their eagerness for violence. Only the interrogator remained perfectly calm, composed, and patient.

All three of them were studying his left arm, reading the tattoos and their placement in order to find some clue about who he was, what he was capable of, which family he worked for. The tattoos did indeed tell them a story, but it read like a child’s fairytale, not a professional dossier. They concluded that he must be an imposter, a punk playing a role whose shoes he simply could never fill. All three relaxed at the conclusion, exchanging looks of amusement. If they hadn’t looked away from their prisoner for that split second, they would have noticed the tattoos jump, a glitch that was getting worse as the camouflage tech failed.

«No man, huh?» the interrogator chuckled, his voice hoarse, undoubtedly from years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. «then, which bitch are you working for?»

«I work for no bitch» Bucky deadpanned. It took all of his concentration not to smile, not to look up at the sound of the lock sliding open. His ride was here.

“I thought I told you to watch your fucking language.” The faint Irish mixed with the old French in Tazia’s voice to create the most melodic accent Bucky had ever heard, it was always music to his ears, though he would never tell her that.

Finally he was able to pull at the chains, relieved to find them taught. It won’t take much for him to pull them free from the floor. As he flexed his biceps, working at the chains, he listened to his old partner take control of the room. He let himself look up, allowed himself to watch her use one thug’s neck as leverage, lifting her up just enough for her to plant the soles of her combat boots firmly against the sternum of the other thug. She was so strong, so graceful, that even that simple assisted dropkick landed with a loud, hollow thud, sending him to the ground. She commanded her momentum to swing over the shoulder of her captive thug, landing behind him with such a velocity that his neck easily snapped upon contact with her knee. Bucky was so busy admiring her grace that he missed his camouflage failing completely. It was his interrogator’s panic that alerted him.

«Oh my god, oh my god, no. It’s the Winter Soldier. It’s the fucking Winter Soldier! Send everyone!»

“Jesus, Bucky, are you sleeping on the job, or what?” she chastised him, immobilizing the second thug before turning to the interrogator.

“It’s not my fault you’re so god damned boring, you always put me asleep.” he shot back, breaking the chains free from the marble, using them to choke the well-dressed Russian.

“Did you find her?” she asked while she worked, liberating Bucky’s weapons and checking her own before moving into the hallway.

“I found her, she’s safe,” he nodded, cocking his gun. “she’s evacuated to her next mission in Latveria.”

“Damn, that woman never takes a holiday, does she?”

“She doesn’t know how to.” he smiled warmly at the thought.

“That’s why you married her. Yeah, I know.”

“That’s why she divorced me.” he chuckled, committing to the headshot on the approaching armed guard. “Tell me you have a quinjet.”

“You’re a bloody fugitive, Buck. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t going to authorize a rescue mission for you.” she lectured, disabling the alarms on the roof access point.

“So…no quinjet?” he frowned.

“I didn’t say that.” she looked back at him, glaring. “you fucking owe me, Barnes.”

Bucky worked to stifle his laughter. If she couldn’t requisition a quinjet from the spy agency, and she was here on her own, it meant she put herself in one very awkward situation just to help him out. He wanted to tease her about it, but if he did it now, she wouldn’t hesitate to leave him stranded.

Still, he couldn’t hide his amusement, his smile was wide and smug, though it fell from his face as soon as they hit the roof. They were outside, free in the open air, and yet the tension was still suffocating. Bucky’s eyes immediately began darting around the roof, looking for a way to slip away from the situation.

“Tony?” Tazia’s brow was furrowed with confusion, her voice laden with worry.

“Wh-who are you?” Tony Stark was visibly shaken, his voice trembling with every syllable. “Where am I?”

“Tony, it’s me, it’s Taz—”

This wasn’t the Tony Stark Tazia had left in bed back in New York. This Tony looked like he had just literally went through hell. His clothes were in tatters, his Iron Man armour was pulverized, only covering a quarter of his body. His face was bloodied, and as she studied him, she noticed the field surgery he had done on himself to fix what should have been a fatal wound.

“Winter Soldier,” she barked, her entire demeanour shifting, “call in the Sorcerer Supreme. Stat.”

“Yes ma’am.” he nodded, immediately boarding the quinjet and jumping on comms, thankful to be away from the couple.

Not that they were a couple. The way Tazia was acting, Bucky had to wonder if this Stark was an imposter. If he was, he was good. Despite knowing that it wasn’t her Tony, he still had Tazia visibly worried, upset even. Bucky allowed himself to watch the situation on the roof unfold while he worked the comms. Tazia had knelt down beside this Tony, she was being kind, even compassionate, while he rocked back and forth, hugging himself tightly, blocking himself off from the world. Bucky hadn’t even connected with Strange when he noticed the missile-like projectile hone in on the roof.

“Tazia, what the hell!” Tony slowed his approach, noticing the man the raven-haired woman was comforting, fixing his scanners on him. “What the hell?” his voice shifted quickly from anger to utter confusion.

“Tony!” Tazia jumped up and lunged herself at Iron Man, his helmet folding back just in time to let her lips crash against his, his robotic fingertips digging into her hips to steady her, while her long, slender fingers grabbed hold of his neck, pulling him deeper into her kiss. “I thought—I-I almost thought…” she kissed him again, this time sucking at his bottom lip.

Suddenly, Tony wasn’t so mad about her seducing him just to steal his quinjet. His fingertips dug deeper into her flesh, drawing her in tighter against him, frustrated by the barrier created by both armour and clothing. Her lips were so soft, her kiss was so intoxicating, that he had temporarily forgot about the other him curled up on the ground.

“You have to stop running back to your exes, Taz.” Stephen Strange groaned as his portal closed behind him.

The sudden interruption startled both Tazia and Tony back into the situation at hand; startled them back into reality. Tazia was quick to put distance between her and Tony, watching her caped friend study the other Tony.

“It’s me,” Tony cleared his throat, “I mean…it’s not me, but every scan I’ve run says that, in every way that matters, it’s me.”

“Yes,” Strange agreed, “that much is obvious. Thank you, Tony.” he chided the genius.

“Uh, guys?” Bucky interrupted, taking out a thug that was approaching behind Tazia. “Can we take this somewhere else? We weren’t exactly quiet about our escape. Half the Russian underworld is converging on this building.”

TAGS: @oneshot-shit; @thevanishedillusion

#fan fiction #Dr Strange #Winter Soldier #Iron Man #Batman #Marvel #DC #Marvel/DC crossover #am writing #across the universes #the great escape #serial

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frerin-shixiong · 7 years ago

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I missed you •3•! I don't really have any requests, but some LDL would be cute, you make such a beautiful ship out of them

You don’t want me to-

Well, okay!!

HERE YOU GO!!

Just a little writing dealing with the Monsters AU!

Warning sex ahead;

Oh mama, did I need to write this.

How longhad he been here in this realm? This odd place that seemed like amirror to the world he had been born. When he first came he wassurprised that the sun came up, that it wasn’t in perpetual darkness.That was when he had met Michelangelo, or Mikey. He was a playfulsort given his nature. Mostly harmless unless he must fight then hewas a formidable foe. Mikey took him to Raphael whom was strong andsilent, his sense of scent so strong he knew something was off aboutLeonardo right away. He wasn’t “normal”. He wasn’t a monster likethe rest of them. When he tried to communicate then it solidified inthe half werewolf’s mind that Leo was indeed, foreign. The two tookhim to see the Necromancer. Imagine his surprise that the person hewas sent to kill by his betrothed, Karai, was a Midwife byprofession. A necromancer was simply and linguist that knew how tospeak “through the realms” or “with the dead”. It was theonly reason why Donatello knew what Leonardo really was, a human sentto the Monster world.

Stillfocused on his mission, Leonardo lied in wait. He was taken in bythat Incubus midwife, living in his oddly shaped home. It had beenmonths and he was still trying to remember which room held what.Donatello had rooms reserved specifically for several types of herbs,a room for processing them, more storage rooms than he could countthat were filled with odd glowing bottles, jars, and pots that talkedwhen opened. There were cabinets and closets filled with tools tohelp the “women” during birth. He had a building in the back thathad many different baby items for new borns, and there was a wholeother building dedicated to what would be needed for any new born.

At first hehad thought that Donatello was deceptive. Tried to turn him againsthuman kind but when Donatello never mentioned even the word “human”Leonardo started to question. He questioned more when he saw how thehalf turtle creature soothed and aided his patients. He witnessed thesoftest expressions on his face as he would gently clean a baby,cooing as it cried for its mother. No one that could look at suchinnocence like that could be as dark as Karai tried to make himbelieve… right?

Not tomention, Donatello… he… Leonardo looked down at the blade in hishands, the very one he was supposed to plunge into the Necromancer’sheart to free his master from his curse.

He felt hisheart sink.

He had tosteel himself. Keep on target. He was sent here for a reason. OrokuSaki, his master, his future father-in-law was under that terriblecurse, slowly withering away while being plagued by visions ofterrible creatures eating him. He had an obligation.

“Leo!Mikey and Raph sent word that they are going to be at the taverntonight!!” Donatello’s voice rose up from the stairs that were nearhis room. His room… one that Donatello had cleaned out, gone andbought him a bed and a dresser… took him to the market to get whathe wanted so he would be comfortable… What kind of “monster”would do that?

He closedhis eyes and tried to focus. He wasn’t Leonardo. Leonardo was hiscode name, his real name was Yuuta. He was Hamato Yuuta. He had toremember that, cling onto that. He knew he would be deceived here,tricked into thinking this was an innocent world.

“Leo?”There was a soft knock on his door.

Donatelloquietly opened the door slowly, peeking in just enough to seeLeonardo sitting at the foot of his bed cradling a dagger in hispalms.

“Leo?”

“Hm?”He didn’t look up, only stared at the blade, its shining surfacereflecting back the green color of his turtle skin.

“You notfeeling up for the tavern? I could send word to Mikey and Raph thatwe’ll have dinner here.”

“Oh…Oh! No, no it’s okay. We can go, if you want.”

Donatellostepped in, the wings on his back, folded up to look like a shellpulsed as he shifted them.

“Do youneed relief?” His hand came down onto Leonardo’s shoulder.

Leoswallowed as he looked up at those soft lilac purple eyes. He knewwhat the incubus was offering, he had done so several times. Any timethat he thought Leo, no Yuuta, needed comfort.

He shookhis head as he had grown accustomed to doing.

“Are yousure?” Donnie’s clawed hand slipped up to his neck leaving aburning trail of desire.

Yuuta tookin a deep breath, he felt a tremble race through his body. He triedto rationalize that his reaction to Donatello was purely because hewas a beast of seduction. It was a natural reaction. But if that wastrue, then how could he refuse him so many times. Why was it that hehad a growing need to be around him? His touch felt so good, at timesit was calming, others it made his face flush and heart race.

“Donnie,I-”

The incubusstepped closer, a knee coming up beside Yuuta’s thigh. Heinstinctively moved the dagger he held away, he let it tumbleharmlessly to the floor as his hands opted to hold something else,something warm and lean. He cupped Donnie’s hips, fingers under thepouches that strapped to his belt and around his thighs like gunholsters. He looked up at the monster that gazed down at him. An oddsound crawled up his chest, vibrating in his throat. He didn’t knowwhat it was but Donnie gave one in return his sounding almostmusical. An enchanting melody that made the blood rush to his groin.

“I can’tdo this.” He whispered as Donatello’s hands caressed his head. “Itwouldn’t be for relief.”

“Whatwould it be for?” Donnie wiggled his long tail slipping it down toslip over Yuuta’s knee.

He lookedup at the creature touching him. He pleaded with his eyes for him tounderstand how wrong this was, how he was a human in the guise of amonster. Donatello didn’t deserve him, a wretched creature that wasgoing to marry a woman he hated out of obligation. There was no roomin him for what this was. He had tradition to worry about, a masterto obey…

Donatelloleaned down, his lips barely touching Yuuta’s as he whispered. “Ilove you too, Yuuta.”

He ask howDonnie knew, all he was aware of was the incubus and his taste. Histongue had been the one to betray him, he had kissed the monstertrying to desperately drink him. He moved his hands, pushing againstthe strapped on packs to grab fistfuls of flesh. A moan that he ateonly fueled him. He pulled the incubus fully onto his lap, hisalready hard cock slipping free from its confines.

“Mm-”Donnie pulled their mouths apart, panting. He leaned back, unbucklinghis utility belt. “G-girl or boy?”

“What?”

“Do youwant me as a woman or man?”

“Whatdifference does that make with a creature like you?” He asked as hekissed along shoulder.

“I- ohgods, that feels good.” Donnie tilted his head, offering his neckas the semi-human kissed. He bit his lip as he felt a hard wet cockrub against his belly. He allowed his body to take over, do what itwanted. His body adjusted, doing what it was born to do. He liftedhimself up onto his knees, feeling shakey being on the edge of thebed. He reached between them, grabbing the thick green cock and linedhimself up. He rested down, sheathing it deep inside. His head fellback, wings relaxing down as Yuuta held onto him, sucking on his neckwhile bucking up into the now succubus.

“Y-yuuta.”

He stilled.The name felt dirty. Wrong. He pulled Donnie up, slipping out of hiswonderful body. He slipped his arms under legs and rolled them so themonster was underneath. He ran his hands down to the clasps of theleg straps and undid them. He pulled Donnie’s packs and utility beltfree, dumping it off to the side.

“Leo.”

“Leo?”Donnie repeated as the semi-human spread his pretty green legs. Blueeyes looking down at his vaginal lips.

“Call meLeonardo.” He lowered himself down, slipping his tongue between thelabia.

Donnie bithis bottom lip as he was french kissed. Heat running through his bodyas he felt every lick. That clever tongue poking into his vagina asLeo brushed the pink little bud of a clitoris. He arched his backagainst the mattress, his long tail wiggling as his toes curled.

“L-leo,p-please.”

Leonardogave one last long lick before he drew himself up, paralell toDonatello. He grasped his cock and took the head to brush against hislover’s clitoris.

“I wantyou, Donnie. Every sexual form. I want to take you as a man, as awoman, and anything in between. Will you let me?”

Donniequickly nodded, trying to rock his hips up to get more of thatdelicious torture that Leonardo was giving to him.

“I wantto claim you so thoroughly that you won’t desire anyone else.” Hesuddenly thrusted his cock into Donatello’s body. The monster let outa howl of approval as he kicked out a leg.

Leo tookhold of Donnie’s legs, bending them up and over his shoulders. Hecrawled up closer and up onto the balls of his feet. He placed hishands on their side of Donnie’s head forcing the incubus, into aball, ass up with Leonardo fully mounted on top. He moved his hips ina pistoning motion digging in as deeply as he could. His cock rubbingagainst the velvety walls that hugged so tightly around him. Hejerked to a stop when he felt the tip of Donatello’s tail up againsthis anus.

The purpleeyed monster whimpered, his claws gently raking down his arms.

“Don’tstop, please don’t stop.”

Leo lickedhis lips as he felt the tip of that tail press against him once more.

“Push itin, just a little.”

Donnie didas he was told, pushing the tip of his tail into his lover’s ass. Heslowly pumped it, not going in deeper as Leo got used to the smallintrusion.

“Leo-please.I need to feel your seed in me,” Donnie begged.

“Fuck,”Leo groaned under his breath. He rolled his hips finding he enjoyedthe feeling of the tail in him while he fucked down into this lovelycreature.

Donniehowled as Leo started to feverishly pound into him. He was helplessin his position. He could feel Leonardo’s dick driving into him,rubbing him almost raw as he found that spot inside that made Donniedig his claws in and scream from ecstasy. The coiling heat of matingtwisted tighter and tighter inside of him. He clamped down aroundLeo’s cock, cumming harder than he had with any previous sexualencounters. His lover stilled, pressing down onto him. He let out ahelpless shout as he couldn’t push Leo’s cock out of his body, hisjuices welling up and pushing out around the penis that piraticallyplugged him up. He could feel the wetness slip down around his ass aswell as down his stomach as Leo continued to dive into him. The lewdslapping sounds only made him purr with pleasure as his overlysensitive body swam in a sea of desire. He could feel himselfstarting to coil once more. Oh gods, blessed gods, he was going tocum again. That’s never happened before.

Leonardoson stilled, pushing his hips in as tightly as he could as his facescrunched up. He held his breath as he shot his load deep withinDonatello’s velvety purse. He pumped his hips a few times afterward,milking every drop out. He cursed as he felt Donatello cum for asecond time, squeezing around him, this time forcing his cock out.

He pantedheavily as he started to lean back. He wrapped his arms aroundDonnie’s legs so that the monster wouldn’t just flop to the side. Hesat back on his feet, Donnie’s legs still resting over his shoulders.He looked at the messy cream that colored Donatello’s gender.

“Th-thatwas- AH!” Donnie gasped trying to twist away as Leonardo’s mouthfound its way between his legs, licking at his sensitive sex.

“Sorry.”Leo gave it a soft kiss before releasing his hold on strong legs. “Iwanted another taste.”

Donnie tookin a deep breath as Leonardo finally laid down beside him. “Fuckme.” He purred while he stretched out his legs.

“I planto, as much as I can.”

“You sureyou’re not part Incubus yourself?”

“I justknow what I want.” Leo leaned over Donnie.

Lilac eyespeered back up to him. “What do you want?”

“To bewith you.” A leaf green hand caressed an olive cheek.

Donatelloleaned over, sealing his lips over Leo’s. If that was what Leo wantedthen Donnie was going to help him achieve it. If what he wanted wouldmake them both happen, then all the better.

#my writing #monsters au #leotello #tcest #turtlecest #leo/donnie #leo/don #leonardo #leo #donatello #donnie

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secretradiobrooklyn · 4 years ago

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Plant Shadow Edition | 2.27.21

Secret Radio | 2.27.21 | Hear it here.

Liner notes by Evan, art by Paige

1. Stéfan - “J’suis pas méchant”

In our continuing dive into French music for French culture we have been finding our way towards the origins of French punk — which apparently all springs from the overnight, international, transformative success of Plastic Bertrand’s “Ça Plane Pour Moi.” That created a sudden realization in the French music industry that punk had big potential, and they started trying all kinds of variations on punk… or “paink,” as it’s spelled locally. Basically, it was treated like a novelty fad. I don’t know anything about Stéfan beyond what he wants me to know, which is that he is not mean (“méchant”). I think that’s adorable, getting all wound up just to tell us not to be scared. I hope the whole band is like 10 years old.

2. African Brothers Band - “Ngyegye No So” - “Afro-Beat Airways”

Credit as always to Analog Africa for providing the very best in the history of African rock. This is from the first volume of “Afro-Beat Airways,” this one focused on “West African Shock Waves: Ghana & Togo 1972-1978.” The first pressing sold out a while ago, but they just put together a repress. Their packaging is always stellar, full of useful information about bands and musicians that it is difficult to research alone. The compilation was the result of a happy accident: AA founder/research adventurer Samy Ben Redjeb had a flight from Frankfurt to Angola get canceled, so he picked a flight to Ghana instead, where he hooked up with the once-legendary (in Africa) producer Essiebons, who had just digitized about 800 previously recorded songs. From that came “Afro-Beat Airways,” which is just overflowing with a huge variety of rock and funk and psych shamanism and catchy hooks.

There’s a great passage in the middle of the song that bears noting: “Yes! Clap for him,” says the singer of the keyboard player, then announces, “I’m now going to introduce myself,” lists his accomplishments in the band — composer, singer, arranger, master guitarist — and then says, “Now: I will give you some phrases on the guitar. You watch me,” and proceeds to wind some gorgeously rhythmic lead patterns through the tapestry the band has set up. It’s such a real, recognizable moment, that really helps translate the song from a hypnotic slab of funk to a performance by a band unfolding right in front of you.

3. They Might Be Giants - “Don’t Let’s Start”

Thanks to our recent rediscovery that “Birdhouse in Your Soul” is a thoroughly excellent song, we’ve started into a TMBG period. My favorite thing in re-encountering them is that they’re such pure geeks of theater and band and video and books — which is exactly how I saw them at the time, and it’s so great to see it stand the test of time. It still feels extremely unique and tuned to a frequency that is transmitting cool new ideas. And: they’re so concise! So much happens in the songs they make — it’s like they write a full-on pop song arrangement, and then just trim out every measure that doesn’t feature vocals. You can get so much done that way in two and a half minutes!

4. Ata Kak - “Obaa Sima”

I love this tape so, so much, and we’re aware of it thanks to Awesome Tapes from Africa. The lead adventurer of that label bought a copy of this tape at a street table in Ghana (I think), fell hard for it, then went on a hunt to find the artist Ata Kak, finally did, they found that the original master tapes were hopelessly destroyed, and together they realized that as far as they could tell, he had bought the ONLY locatable copy of the tape. That’s the one that you are hearing here — this is the opening track. ATFA sold it as a combo cassette tape and tea towel, which I personally think is a really odd pairing. Like, is the tea towel for handling the cassette? Still, it’s turned out to be a very welcome tea towel in the kitchen.

Apparently the copy we hear runs faster (and higher) than the original. They decided to present it as the artifact was originally discovered, holding that even more important than releasing as Ata Kak originally intened. I think it sounds so freakin amazing, I’m glad they presented as is.

5. Evariste - “Wo I Nee”

Such a strange character! This song was released in 1967, but it sounds (and looks) completely outside any norm of any decade. For starters, the singer is wearing his hair as if a monkey were up there — a big tail drops down and curls across his nose. The song structure is traditional, but the sounds that he makes are just something else entirely.

Really, the video does all the work that the song hasn’t already done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOfdJ8ZcLJc

- The Velvet Underground - “Booker T. - live in NYC 1967”

6. Abdel Halim Hafez - “Ahwak”

We were surprised to see we had a new soundcloud follower in Egypt, and we looked at their playlist and they were all songs as cool as this. We still have no idea how they ended up on Sleepy Kitty though. Great tracks though!

7. Boreal Hills - “Belcher” - “Dope Hugs EP”

Man, this EP was one of the prizes of being the Eleven editor. This thing was the soundtrack of a fantastic summertime. St. Louis freakos’ first release and forever my favorite. Tom O’Connor is the drummer on this EP and the two guys together just make this killer ruckus that I can’t get enough of. Also, it hits the reptile part of my brain where Swell Maps’ “Full Moon in the Headlights” reigns. Tom does tons of cool recording now, including Julian’s band Nerve Estates.

Every track of “Dope Hugs” could be a hit in my opinion. I feel like the pop world could have bent itself around this set of recordings. It reminds me of Jeff The Brotherhood in some ways, though I have to admit I prefer Boreal Hills in this moment.

8. Strychnine - “Ex BX”

‘70s French paink music. There’s a really entertaining summation of some of the forces French painks were rebelling against — “to bring together the wicked use of guitars with an unfathomable disgust for everything and a skin-deep boredom which undermined as much as they nourished the adolescent daily life.” It sounds very sincere and hard-felt. I can’t wait to dig deeper into this “Paink French Punk Albums 1977-1982”; already had to restrain myself from including an Electrochoc track as well.

9. David Bowie - “Queen Bitch”

It’s really impressive how Bowie can paint feelings I believe he was feeling, that I’ve never felt but that I can get through him. He’s a pure uncut crystal of glam. His heavy rhythm rock period is pretty much the most exciting rock n roll in the world.

10. Le Tigre - “Hot Topic”

Paige: I don’t think any of my teachers were ACTUALLY using this song as a syllabus, but there’s a very high overlap.

I personally feel like underlining Marlon Riggs — “Tongues Untied” was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen when I saw it in History of Video Art. Also just noticed: Did they say Justin Bond? As in Justin Vivian Bond?

This is the first of two songs this episode that has lists of idols/icons in the lyrics.

11. Erkin Koray - “Arap Saçi”

We’ve been meaning to look further into Erkin Korya’s Turkish psych music, and this one has high overlap with “Cemalim,” the first song of his we heard. This one lands a little harder — and I love the way it pulls the melody in unexpected direction, like it’s floating on different breezes. The singer sounds like he was transformed into a singing hookah.

12. The Little Rabbits - “In the Bathroom”

This album is one of the all-time most overlooked gems from the turn of the millennium: “Yeah!,” by the Little Rabbits. My impression is that they got bigger later, maybe? This one seems to have disappeared pretty much without a trace, even though I swear it contains some of the DNA of Beck’s smash genre-bender “Odelay.” I don’t understand why this album wasn’t gigantic — it’s as turned on as Sonic Youth but coming from a completely different perspective. I hope they were all friends at least.

- The Velvet Underground - “Booker T. - live in NYC 1967”

13. Les Rita Mitsuoko - “Marcia Baïla”

They have a song called “Les Histoires d’Amour Finnisent Mals en General” that Paige’s French teacher referred to in passing. We looked up the song and it was awesome. The more we checked em out, the more interesting they got. Everybody seems to have a background in clown in France, we have found.

A pretty worthwhile video experience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zWlnzFXcKY

14. The Brims - “Anti Gandja”

This song arrived to us via a collection called “Those Shocking Shaking Days,” which Eleven received from Now Again Records. I dug it but couldn’t find a place for it in my brain. Now it fits right in. The collection is gorgeously made, with a fat book of photos and text and 20 heavy Indonesian psych tracks that pretty much all trip way past San Francisco albums from the same time. They’re so committed to the psychedelic overdose… even when singing a song about NOT smoking weed.

15. Cave - “This Is the Best”

There were so many nights at the Art Castle on Cherokee where we had to make peace with the music coming through the walls from 2720. It was so bass-heavy, so anarchic and often key-free, that we really couldn’t counter-program it if we tried.

One night, though, we heard something undeniably cool through the wall. That happened from time to time — that’s how we discovered Aleuchatistas and Prince Rama, among various others. We dropped what we were doing and slipped in the door that shared a secret hallway with our spot, behind where the band was set up. Turned out to be Cave, a band we knew of via Chicago and a very loose acquaintance with Rotten Milk from the Lumpen scene. The whole show was an ecstatic experience, getting lost in a rowdy, ever-circling, ever-growing drone. But the song that brought it all together was this one — I completely lost my shit, crashing around the dance floor zone. When we learned the name of the song from them afterwards, “This Is the Best,” I was like, YES: so they know it as well as we do. We’re all in this drone together.

16. Marpessa Dawn - “La petit cuica”

Paige has been interested in who Marpessa Dawn in for awhile — she’s a black American from Pittsburgh. She apparently went to Franc4 and became a start in music and films. She was in a ton of films. She’s not very well known in the States, but it seems like kind of a next-generation Josephine Baker story — or at least that’s what it is in my fantasy.

17. Ebo Taylor & The Sweet Beans - “Odofo Nyi Akyiri Biara”

The first several things I found by Ebo Taylor really didn’t hook me, and I think I felt like he was working a different angle than I was into. But then lately I’ve been hearing these amazing tracks from him, so I stand corrected. Which is a win all around!

18. Hedwig and the Angry Inch - “Midnight Radio”

Paige: It’s the only time that something that is a rock musical truly works as a work of rock itself. One of two if you count “Rocky Horror.” I can listen to this soundtrack as a rock album — in a way that Rent, love it as I may, I cannot.

Evan: I’m recognizing some serious influences on Sleepy Kitty — especially when it gets to the guitar solos. We haven’t gone for the anthemic singalong yet, but the structure that builds to an instrumental crescendo of overwhelming guitars is pretttty familiar.

- Frank Zappa - “Watermelon in Easter Hay"

We saw the documentary “Zappa” last month and this tune really stands out from the rest. It appears to be the second most popular Zappa track, which I will admit surprises me quite a bit. Great movie to watch, we highly recommend it fan or no.

19. Jeffrey Lewis - “I Wanna Be Vaccinated”

An anthem for our times.

20. Joan Jett - “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”

I think if I’m honest, I probably heard this version of “Dirty Deeds” before the original. I really like how it has the infinite rock feel of the AC/DC take but with a completely different underemployed hit man in the lead role. A rare case of pure ‘80s glam-rock aesthetic working to advantage.

21. Katerine - “Moment parfait”

Philippe Katerine is a character who would be impossible in American culture — he’s not handsome in any way that American popular art recognizes, and he utilizes the deep-seated instinct for clowning that runs through French culture and pop culture. Meanwhile, though, his melodies are giant, his production is varied but always innovative, he’s a screen actor as well, and his album art features him as a character with large ears, wispy blond hair and an uncircumsized nose — in some contexts we’ve even seen his nose blurred.

Paige: I can’t tell if it’s maybe like if Beck and Jack Black were the same guy in the culture.

22. Teshua - “Wild Dog”

This song is written by one of the most important people in St. Louis for us: Tim Gebauer. We’ve been listening to the ways they’ve been working together for the last few years, when we come over for a late-night hang at Electropolis Studio. This is a song I think we first heard Tim sing and play himself in the kitchen. This version makes gorgeous use of the theatrical aspects of Teshua’s voice cradled inside Tim’s dreamy reverberatingly quiet production.

This song was written suspiciously soon after getting a new cat — a wild cat that didn’t want to come in yet. Aben is beautiful and tough and prowls the streets of south city but comes home to the comforts of his family.

23. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - “Karateka”

I think this song is on “The Skeletal Essences of Afro-Funk,” a T.P. Orchestre collection, but I first consciously ran across it while scouring Discogs for more information about the most Tout Poissant band ever. This one is composed by Papillon, with Joseph Vicky on lead vocals. Papillon is their secret weapon guitarist who can also bust out some trippy Farfisa as needed.

24. Silver Jews - “The Country Diary of a Subway Conductor”

When we did our welding at the City Museum — before we ever suspected that we would live in St. Louis for a day, much less ten years — we used a quote from this song on the back page of the invitations that we handprinted: “This is the way pioneers took to other settlements.” “Starlite Walker” is one of our all-time favorite albums together; I’ve always dreamed of covering this entire album. The soundscape of this track captures some of my very favorite aspects of Stephen Malkmus’ voice and guitar frenzy… as well as the completely unskilled but perfectly rendered drumming. And over it all wander the characters sketched in by David Berman. He was sometimes the most mysterious voice in rock music, and he wrote my very favorite book of poetry. I will always be partial to this album above all others, though “American Water” and “The Natural Bridge” are right there as well.

- Dan the Automator - “Bombay 405 Miles” - “Bombay the Hard Way”

25. Amanaz - “Sunday Morning”

This is the most Velvet-Underground-without-being-the-Velvet-Underground bands ever, which is amazing because this song was written in 1968 on the other side of the world from New York, in Zambia, at a time when music had to physically travel miles to reach distant shores. It’s astounding to think of Lou Reed’s instant influence on people he would never meet and likely had never even imagined. It’s very strange as well, though, to think that what this song sounds most like is “Loaded” — which hadn’t yet come out when this song was recorded. I suppose there’s no reason to think that the influence — actual, implied, or somewhere on the astral plane — didn’t run the other way.

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wakabond-blog · 7 years ago

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PyeongChang Men’s SP Reaction

FOREWARNING: someone remind me to never do this again I literally sweat through my shorts going through this emotional earthquake

I had reservations about doing this reaction post but I’m watching the NBC mini-promos for everyone (cue lil’ kid saying that Javi is his ONLY hero <3) competing tonight and all the feels flooding in.

Also gonna put my dream podium out there in advance so I can lay claim to my fantasies before they possibly flop: Yuzu, Nathan, Javi (in that order for Gold, Silver, and Bronze), but ofc the best scenario is that everyone skates well and leaves the ice happy and the gremlin judges can do whatever. I haven’t watched a lot of the earlier-group men this season, but looking at their music choices I’m pretty excited for Julian Zhi Jie Yee’s Build a Home program (P/C’s 2016 FS from Euros that year still sticks with me) and hopefully Yaroslav hits his 4F. Just writing out everyone’s name is getting me hella nervous

THIRTY ONE GUYS UP 4 HOURS FML LET’S GIT TO IT, first group up on warmup ice: ayyy Vincent hitting a nice 4Lz-3T

AHHH NBC dropping me randomly into Felipe Montoya’s program right into a botched 3F-2T; c’mon man AISH U TOOK AWAY JAVIER RAYA’S SPOT FOR THIS uwu I kinda dig the all white costume tho but must be a binch to find from the audience viewpoint

Chafik Besseghier actually into taximan more than during the Team SP like yeah sure NBC say it’s part of “French creativity” but that taxi look is wonky...points for commitment though, right? 77.01 with all those lil’ green boxes gouda job Chafik; also a note on that French quirky creativity comment anyone else remember Brian Joubert trying to “disprove” people calling him gay by doing a nude photoshoot

MY BOI Vincent Zhou HITS DAT 4Lz-3T first at the Olympics with that 4Lz-3T combo!!! gah other two jumps off-axis but damn he has the hardest technical content but man you gotta deliver all of it including rotations and GOE; also *pushes glasses up* Vincent ~almost~ got a perfect ACT score wat u doing get that 36 (LOL AT THE COMMENTATORS SAYING HIS SIS GOT A PERFECT SCORE); BANG 84.53 with some stubby GOEs I can live with that new season’s best YAAAS u chase those cars

Okay so the announcement for Denis Ten is in English over the loudspeakers but there’s like a little interruption when they just repeat the word “Kazakhstan” but in Korean phonetics; REIGNING BRONZE MEDALIST LET’S GO nope there goes the 4S-->2S, NICE triple axel though!, also loving the royal blue shirt, triple lutz triple NO (sorry had to say that), but the music is great kinda operatic but not like a loud Bocelli; considering his injuries and other hurdles this is alright, his entire season had a rough start ALSO the flower girls have dresses that match the rink so QUTE also Frank Carroll is still not retired mkay

Matteo Rizzo NICE 3A also considering that this is choreo’d by his mom this is great, strong Italian vibes, really good lines, straight camel with the leg position above the hip, good rotation; love the arms out of the 3Lz this would be a program I would want to do OKAY NBC WE GET THAT U NEED A QUAD TO GET ON THE PODIUM but friggin Matteo’s job is to make his mom choreo proud also considering how this is by far the biggest stage he’s been on after dethroning Ivan Righini, dis is gr8

Michael Christian Martinez honestly still love his taking YOI in stride basically Phichit IRL, not a great performance by any means, really low score in the 50s sheesh but hey that signature Biellmann though! this first group was alright still looking ahead

Yaroslav Paniot that was rough :/// also he took out the 4F and fell on all 3 passes (I mean he landed on his knee on the axel but like...what do you even call that?) damn Tammy Gambill coaches him too, into last place :(( it’s okay Yaroslav

Yan Han going for that hard nose blow and tissue grab looks intense LOVE THAT HARD SLAP ON THE BARRIER you got this my man, AHHH yas more Twilight, NICE TRIPLE AXEL BEST SO FAR man was that rotation fast, crap that 4T still looking for a clean toe in this comp; also these SPs are passing really quickly, Vincent still in the lead after Han’s 80.63

Julian Zhi Jie Yee OMGOMGOMG okay excited for this, awww love the shot back to the opening ceremony; love his shirt with the slight slit V not intrusive but modern and sleek LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE it; AHHH THE BEATS OF BUILD A HOME ready for this show off for Malaysia, NICE TRIPLE AXEL he had so much space coming down, maintaining composure, come on GREAT LUTZ halfway mark here come the lyrics and ahhh slipping on the 3F-3T, I think that content should be enough for him to make the FS, lines could be a bit better but his spin levels seem there good for him! Man he really floated on the 3A I’m hoping this’ll go into the low 70s yep 73.58 good score for him

And cue more ice-less places Brendan Kerry kinda attractive in that down-under way, used to be really smol but then hit that caucasian puberty WHOOO first clean 4T of the comp, like the shimmery dark blue shirt, nice 3Lz-3T who needs a quad sal if there’s anything the pairs comp taught us it’s that going clean leaves a greater impression than hard tricks, saved that 3A, this cut of Everybody Wants to Rule the World is so #inspirational someone get me my book of self-affirmations also getting all these coach-skater revelations Nikolai Morozov coaches Kerry?? dang, whoa slots right in behind Vincent with an 83 and change

Moris Kvitelashvili okay who tf put his name as Morisi on the official docs they actually announced his names as that ETERI U ONLY HAVE ONE BOY, bring on the Buble, smooth 3A that flow, def on feelin good on that 4S, after Boyangman’s Spiderman program I’ve grown to have a deeper appreciation for Michael Buble, he’s really tall but one of those lanky awkward guys but eh I give him props for having the gumption to compete for Georgia and getting to compete on Olympic ice

Keegan Messing LOL his intro “actually born in Alaska, proficient Yo-Yo master” aww singin in the rain WOW nice 4T-3T I’m laughin at clouds too Keegan, oof that 3A fall though, very fast spinner no travelling either...okay but seriously can we get RIka Kihira here to give these guys a 3A clinic or something, for a second this really feels like a Javi program, nice 3Lz to finish out the jumps my god I thought his coach was either Eteri/Shawn White c.2010 hair wow 85 taking away the lead from Vincent; 12 men done, 18 left!

This next warmup group Danny wit dat fresh haircut, NBC hyping up the final group omg chill ur horses, Michal with those sleeve ribbons!

Michal Brezina those bedazzled dragons, WOW QUAD sal (okay I thought it was a flip at first), good 3A nothing under review, not to compare but to compare this is like Seimei beta ver., beautiful delayed 3F, also I feel like I hear people clapping along to the drums but I don’t see anyone...it’s prolly the NK cheer squad, this skate should just sneak into 1st, damn his profile sideshot looks like a dinosaur, AWWW RAF lol still surprised by these coaching situations OH BOI lol just into 1st by 0.04 over Keegan

Cha Junhwan c’mon get that gypsy dance on bring the soul of Wakaba to the games (I expect shoulder shimmies), TAKE A DEEEEP breath Brian, wow dicey moment with the 3F-3T but landed flawlessly, even better 3A crowd goes WILDDDD, quick interjection these scores that are starting to pile into the mid-80s are seriously reminding me of the bronze-medal battle in Sochi I mean yeah now there’s a pretty solid list of 5/6 guys for the podium but still..chills..., might have urs but really bringing the energy otherwisein the stsq arms flairs right on the beat of the music (I’ll count those as shimmies) wow first standing O very well deserved all the korean flags!!

Other sidenote you know who’s gonna get more cool team jackets than Marina Zueva? Brian friggin Orser: Canada, Korea, Japan, Spain, Kazakhstan! all those colors!! gotta catch ‘em all and with a score of 83+ Junhwan goes into that pack of mid-80s

Paul Fentz jacksepticeye doppleganger back on the ice, honestly great 3T-3T screw the squad his air position is really good, wow wild like on the 3A but again great air position (honestly this plus straight legs on camel spins are like the must-haves), also loving this jazzy music it works for him, Wonderwall was WUNDERFUL

Interjection of hockey testosterone jeez being a referee in that would be terrifying you’re wearing no padding sheesh

Misha Ge okay srsly what is the point of saying “Uzbekistan” in English and then again in Korean phonetics? not into the brown ombre, good 3A, getting gypsy pirate vibes gawd that spin extension though ta die fo

Cutaway to Yuzu absolutely DESTROYIN that EZ applesauce pouch (okay it’s not applesauce but man is he twistin every last drop out)

And since I’m already doing this huge ass shitpost I might as well comment on some of the commercials, the 23andme thing where Warren Buffett narrates “ill let u choose any car but u only get one you’d take care of it so well right WELL THAT’s UR BODY”...kinda hypocritical coming from a dude who only eats McDs, See’s Candies, Coke and steak...

Jorik Hendrickx awww I actually had no idea his sis Loena made it too, gosh Je Suis Malade reminds me of Adelina’s failed comeback...anyway good 3A to start; I remember how emotional his qualifying through Nebelhorn was enjoy this bb, wow he’s gonna join the mid-80s pack too judges panicking how tf do we separate them AWW Loena clapping so cute and Jorik smiling!! love this

Also screaming about how I can see the final group on my shitpost list getting closer to my cursor *bites nails*

Literally the biggest actual fuqboi of this comp Daniel Samohin is up with a new ‘do that fresh fade also doesn’t he have that company/group thing black wolf white wolf WELL DAMN BLACK WOLF JUST HIT HIS 4T-3T god remember when he destroyed his shoulder at Skate America, whoa first two clean quads of the comp so far who knew flopchild would it get together at the Olympics also classic Daniel guitar solo ay fuq down on the 3A gdi this is why we can’t have nice things LOL also the first skater to finish in the wrong direction, cute lil’ smile at the end though! Also gonna hit the low-80s aww happy tears!!! omg is that Nikolai Morozov yup 80 points and change jeez top 6 all separated by less than 2 points lol

Group 4 on the ice jeez those short sleeves SLAY BOI LOL THESE ADAM PROMOS literally all of the vernacular “fierce, I’m a full prone monster” *smizes* okay I’m going for a walk and hope to be back by Deniss see ya’ll in a quick sec and good luck to the first five in this group...but srsly I gotta get up or else risk carpal tunnel at this point </3

Adam Rippon, Dmitri Aliev

Okay jk I made it back for Patrick Chan midway through his performacne looks like his first couple jump elements were good supposedly missed his 3A he looks really tense damn PChiddy it’s alright (sidenote his chest looks bigger than I remember), also ofc Dimi is in the lead now with a tech score over 50

Keiji Tanaka, Alexei Bychenko both happened but I took a shower to be clean for some clean skates

Also isn’t it crazy how Deniss is literally skating right before Yuzu man those world standings were a bit of a surprise at first Deniss Vasiljevs (jk my shower also overran his performance so I’m looking at the protocols rn but hey, good thing is my energy’s now conserved for GROUP 6!)

YESS NBC showing (at least part of) the warmup; Javi hits a BOSS 4S so smooth; Nathan’s smiling, Yuzu looks healthy! my god seeing all the faves on ice together warming up at the OLYMPIC stage is just *clutches chest* a lil’ too much for a casual Thursday evening; okay one more set of commercials and we are off to the RACES!!!

Yuzuru Hanyu TAKES THE ICE the first bars of Ballade a personal fave piece, breatheee, head roll, sway,ohmigod you could hear the sound of a pin dropping, come one quad sal to open...YES OH MY GOD NICE 13 POINTS!!! for that one element, great donut spin, 1 2 3 1 2 3 getting all of his levels ofc great character in spins timed to music, love the sound of his blades BLIND MOHAWK INTO 3A TRADEMARK HIT IT’S HAPPENING ONLY THE COMBO LEFT IS HE GONNA DO THE RIPPON ON THE END YES NICE HE HIT IT OH MY FUQQIN GOD THE POOHS THE OBAACHANS IN THE AUDIENCE THIS IS SERIOUSLY MAGICAL BEAT THAT WOWOWOW THE POOH BEARS RAIN DOWN AGAIN I have never seen so many thrown down at once at him DAMN; this is a true champion, my god yes yes YES!!!! my god I don’t know how get got that 3T WITH RIPPON out at the end lol Ghislain Briand and B Orser jumping; WORLD RECORD GIVE IT TO HIM NEVER DOUBT YU.ZU.RU. HAN.YU; BAM 111 triple ONES BEAT THAT YESS AND HE’S SMILING

OKay okay I gotta calm down for Nathan Chen the Poohs are cleared, yes this is a POTO costume but he looks good; GOD DAMN IT CAMERAMAN YOU MISSED THE FUQQIN DIP YOU HAD ONE JOB ARGHHHH, blade sounds are louder than YUZUS BUT HERE COMES THE 4LZ...OH SHIT MY GOD AND THE QUAD TOE JESUS FUCKING HELL IT WASN’T A COMBO either wow...I’m speechless..come one Nate finish it out finish it out OH FUCKING...33 TECHSCoRE?!?!?!?!?!? He’s still breathing though, looks alright, okay he’s still honestly so young and I understand he exudes this chill outlook which is great but all the pressure had to have gotten him (or he just got unlucky with this bad day :///) nerves?? I know there’s still the free skate left but I want him to walk away from all this feeling okay, not hating skating or anything and making a comeback (hopefully??) in Beijing and maybe having a Chloe Kim kind of moment OH FUQ 13th place 82+...my god

Mikhail Kolyada actually shaking his head after seeing Nathan’s scores we’re all shocked buddy; but skate well hit that sky-high lutz loving your mozart, come on come one; okay triple honestly I just don’t want to see any more thuds on the ice that’s good oh fuck...4T a goner out of the four disciplines this is the one that has the least assured gold medalist and maybe that’s contributing to the nerves? It’s okay Mikhail, your 3A was pretty, and YAY GOT A SMILEY SPASIBO y’know at the Olympics all I can hope for as a spectator is that everyone skates happy and goes as big and clean as possible and leaves happy or at least not too hard on themselves and I know that’s easy to say but so much of sports/life in general is psychological and it just pains me to think of how these guys might react to this under-delivered performances

Shoma Uno smolma please whisk us away with Winter, literally gonna bounce the fuq off of Shrooma if he lands everything please save this; NICE 4F, lines ofc can’t compete with Hanyu but you know...World Silver...he’s got the goods, get those clean edges, skating skills, stsq levels, okay 4T YES YES YES 3T great my god SHOMA SAVES THE TRIPLE AXEL PRAISE AWWWW THE SMILE!!!!! FUCKING MELTING FOR THIS DARK HORSE WHO BTW IS WORLD SILVER REIGNING, MY GOD THIS IS CLUTCH; AND HE HAS HIGHLIGHTS TAKE THAT BINCH, ugh I’m so conflicted right now with all of these flops and clean skates and my head is muddled guessing 106 okay okay lowballed the components gets a 104 also had to save a couple landings I get it but THOSE THUNDERTHIGHS SAVING THE DAY

Javier Fernandez oh please please please all I want is for you to bring home a medal GIVE US CHAPLIN GIVE US 4S AND 4T3T THIS IS YOUR CHANCE GO FOR IT, NICE ON THE COMBO, NICE 4S HOLY HELL ALSO SHOUTOUT TO MY MOM FOR RECOGNIZING THIS AS CHAPLIN U KNOW HE’S DOING HIS JOB and that AMAZING TRIPLE AXEL; so lovely oh my god this is beautiful, tbh I think my mom is actually falling in love with him “his costume looks so good on him O.O” she’s predicting he’ll win and my mom is like...never wrong so...okay tech score just exactly 60, I’m hoping 109 range oh my god GIVE HIM THE PCS IF NOT FOR HIM FOR MY MOM OH MY GOD

HYPING UP Jin Boyang for my mom okay come on GIVE US THAT CROUCHING TIGER MAGIC, LORI CHOREO DO UR FUQQIN $10K MAGIC, AMAZING 4LZ-3T, ONE OF THE BEST 4T, OG QUAD KING TARA MENTION THAT YES YES *DOES MERYL MEME POINTING FINGERS*, BEAT DRUM DROP, ERHU YES THAT 3A OH MY GOD YES YES YES JIN GO GO GO YES THE KARATE HANDS IN THE SIT SPIN, WORD THE STSQ YOU’RE GETTING ALL OF THE LEVELS GO GO GO THIS IS YOUR LAST ELEMENT HIT THE POSES GET THE EDGES GET THE TURNS KICK TWIZZLES BUTTERFLY KICK YES FIST PUMP YES YES YES YES YESSSSSS MY GOD YES GIVE HIM A SCORE TO COMPETE WITH SHOMA 104+, okay okay I can work with 103.32

Okay wow so heading into the FS tomorrow:

-Nathan, get that redemption skate, go big, go clean, love it, love yourself

-Yuzuru: bring that Seimei power, work your natural magic, be yourself, keep the intensity, and just let it flow

-Javi: VAMOS VAMOS VAMOS BE QUIXOTE, get your own redemption from Sochi (also lol I don’t think it matters what happens in the end but you’ve already won in my mother’s heart)

-Shoma: SHOOM SHOOM INTO OUR HEARTS EVEN MORE, channel your 2017 Worlds Diva moment, do it do it DO IT

-Boyang: BRING THE STAR WARS HIT US WITH THAT ANGELIC SAUCE

#text #reactions #pyeongchang 2018 #olympics 2018 #too extra

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sinceileftyoublog · 7 years ago

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Top 60 Albums of 2017

You’ll see the same narrative everywhere: 2017 sucked, so we found solace in incredible music. That narrative is true and vital, but not the one I’m here to wax about today. This year, I made a conscious effort to dig deeper. Instead of listening to more albums, I decided to listen more to the albums I did discover. At SILY, we reviewed well over 100 records that came out in 2017--mostly original LPs, but some EPs, live albums, compilations, and reissues as well. Most importantly, we listened to each record with open ears--even the bad ones--discovering something new upon repeat listens.

With the help of contributors Daniel Palella and Lauren Lederman, here are our top 60 albums of 2017.

60. Katie Ellen - Cowgirl Blues (Lauren Records)

On Katie Ellen's Bandcamp page for Cowgirl Blues, there's a manifesto that follows the track list, reading, in part:

I will be deliberate and unafraid, discerning and kind. I will not live under the umbrella of shame. I will not accept responsibility for your feelings or your bullshit. I will say no and be taken seriously.

Rising from the ashes of a breakup and the disbandment of her previous band Chumped, Anika Pyle crafted a record that’s not just about endings. To categorize it that way, as a breakup album, would be reductive. It’s an unapologetic statement for existing on your own terms, for embracing what you feel even if it’s messy. It’s one of Pyle’s strengths as a songwriter: taking something so personal and making it feel universal.

At just shy of 30 minutes, Cowgirl Blues is compact and efficient, capturing an array of emotion that touches on just about everything from the quiet moments of desire in “Drawing Room”, to the institution of marriage (see “Lucy Stone” and “Proposal”), to accepting the difficulty of moving on. Pyle’s lyrics recognize those feelings and let them exist without belittling them, without apology. It’s an album about independence and navigating a newfound world in exactly the way you want. - Lauren Lederman

59. Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else - Enjoy The Great Outdoors (Run For Cover)

Having been long obsessed with Spencer Radcliffe’s Blithe Field project, I had come to know him as a warm figure, one whose careful and gentle approach to sound-making provided a sort of unrivaled comfort. Upon discovering his songwriting project as Spencer Radcliffe, these expectations were met even outside of his electronic tinkering—his deep but assuring voice complements a loose and sarcastic tone to his songs. The breezy world of Enjoy The Great Outdoors, his first release with a full band, takes all of these elements and ups the musicianship while still maintaining the wit and charm of all of his past efforts. Speaking so nonchalantly about the promise of life after death on “Long Con”, about love on “Trust”, there is always a sense of humor underlying his sometimes tragic poetry. With that is a shade of hope and unbridled confidence too, though, a smirk cutting through rough times: “O’er the fields we go / We bring lightning, we melt snow,” he sings on “Wrong Turn”. Fantastic songwriting and a unmistakable bond with his band makes for a unique and special record. - Daniel Palella

58. Felicia Atkinson - HAND IN HAND (Shelter Press)

French experimental artist Felicia Atkinson creates a jarring but cathartic soundscape on HAND IN HAND, a record which keeps its extreme frequencies close and intimate—from crackling buzz to soft-spoken voice. The record’s most calming and disorienting qualities both serve to envelop the listener in a visceral experience, where all of its sounds feel within arm’s reach. ASMR sensibilities and a complex world of layered poetry makes for one of the most interesting experimental records of the year. - DP

57. The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die - Always Foreign (Epitaph)

The world feels a little upside down these days. It's easy to feel that the outlook is bleak, but it's in those moments where I turn to particular bands for something like a glimmer of hope. The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die is one of those bands for me, and Always Foreign captures that same positive momentum even at its most biting.

Whether you hear "Faker" about the band's lineup change in the time between albums or as a statement about our current commander-in-chief, when the guitars pick up and vocal shift to, "Are we awake yet?", you're filled with a feeling that villains can be vanquished, that there's got to be a way forward. There's a stream of anger throughout the album, and rightfully so, but it never leaves listeners alone to simply seethe or wallow.

With the release of Always Foreign's first single, the band reminded us that they can write a tight pop song ("Dillon and Her Sons"), but it's "Marine Tigers", the album’s seven-minute epic, that stands out. The sprawling track builds and builds, tackling the xenophobia that vocalist Dave Bello's father experienced as a young man and that truly hasn't disappeared. "We're here / I told you so," a gentle, almost ghostly chorus of voices lulls mid-song before Bello declares, "Please remember as a person / It's the land that's always foreign". Then, the song explodes into a cacophony of horns, creating an almost foreboding moment. It feels like a rallying cry. It's the kind of line that demands to be shouted in a dark venue or in the streets, with your community, and that's something we need right now. - LL

56. Amine - Good For You (CLBN)

It’s been a long year, hasn’t it? January feels like a lifetime ago, and the rollercoaster of this country’s current political state doesn’t seem to be anywhere near stopping. So, take a break and listen to Aminé’s Good For You. The Portland rapper exudes a kind of joy and self-aware silliness that feels refreshing, an antidote to the chaos everywhere else. Whether turning up the flirting with his breakout hit “Caroline” or “Spice Girl” (for which, yes, he did need approval from each of the actual Spice Girls) or poking fun at the way no one can pronounce his name in the introduction to the Girlpool-assisted “Hero”, Aminé’s debut exudes the sunniness of his signature color yellow. But it’s not all sunshine all the time. Aminé digs a little deeper, balancing that light joy with a keen awareness and introspection (“Sundays” and “Beach Boy”).

If you need another example, take his performance of “Caroline” this November on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. With a massive platform before him, decked out in a bright yellow leather jacket, Aminé effortlessly combines his upbeat breakout hit with a brief yet critical verse directed to the current administration. It’s that ability to pivot between those two moments that make Aminé and Good For You stand out so brightly. - LL

55. Joseph Shabason - Aytche (Western Vinyl)

“An album about physical and mental decay and memory loss risks being emotionally manipulative. But Joseph Shabason’s debut album Aytche, a collection of instrumental experimental saxophone-based tracks with a malleable sonic palette, actually puts you in the place of the haze. Shabason, who has contributed his playing to albums by The War on Drugs and, more notably, Destroyer (you have him to thank for that cornball saxophone playing on Kaputt), asserts himself as a player in the saxophone world like Colin Stetson–pushing the instrument not necessarily to its limits but exploring a side of it jazz musicians don’t often explore: Its potential for deep textures.”

Read the rest of our review here and our interview with Shabason here.

54. Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent (Domino)

“On Relatives in Descent, Casey finds a newfound sense of purpose, simultaneously sardonically railing on the evildoers and hypocrites while rising and resisting. Just as notable is the guitar playing of Greg Ahee; on many of these new songs, he finds a way to alternate between gorgeous, higher pitches and pummeling riffing. Drummer Alex Leonard is equally steady and chaotic. In essence, the band has learned how to really lift you up and knock you down.”

Read the rest of our review here.

53. John Moreland - Big Bad Luv (4AD)

“On 2015′s great High on Tulsa Heat and now on Big Bad Luv, Moreland describes suffering from old wounds in old towns and the emotional abysses that follow them. His lyrics hit hard, his voice pure gravel but never sounding too much like his mouth is full of coins. What differentiates the new material from the old is his band. With Aaron Boehler on bass, Paddy Ryan on drums, Jared Tyler on dobro, Tulsa Heat engineer John Calvin Abney on guitars and keyboards, and Lucero’s Rick Steff on keyboards, Moreland has the perfect backers for his tales of neon signs and nooses, relics of what once was and the dire results that come from them.”

Read the rest of our review here.

52. Waxahatchee - Out in the Storm (Merge)

“By the end of the album, Crutchfield has made peace with herself and her situation. On closer “Fade”, she sings, “I feel amazing today / You interrupt, you yell in my face / But you finally hear me say / That I’ll walk, I’m walking away.” A soft acoustic track, despite the lyrics, it’s not an extroverted kiss-off but reflective and ultimately empowering. There are hints of such positiveness sprinkled throughout Out in the Storm, mostly in the form of her familial and musical safety net. Whether it’s her personal or professional relationship with her sister Allison (she sweetly sings “I see myself through my sister’s eyes” on “Sparks Fly”), who plays keyboards and percussion on the album, or relying on a chorus to back her up on “Hear You”, Crutchfield is never really alone. But she is the star of the show, and that she ultimately becomes the director of her own real-life show makes the payoff of the album that much sweeter in the end.”

Read the full review here.

51. Bitchin Bajas - Bajas Fresh (Drag City)

“For their first non-collaborative effort in three years, Chicago experimental trio Bitchin Bajas (Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, Dan Quinlivan) have changed things up a bit. Added to their usual lineup of synthesizer, guitar, saxophone, and flute are, more concretely, percussion and more horns, and, more broadly, a newfound willingness to explore. Bajas Fresh is the band’s best record yet for this very reason: It’s varied enough to stand out, similar enough to form a logical progression from past work.”

Read the rest of our review here.

50. Tinariwen - Elwan (Anti-)

“Of course, the instrumentation on Elwan is top-notch. In general, the album starts out borderline festive and becomes more somber as it goes on. “Sastanàqqàm” is an ode to friends and loved ones, its raw, imperfect riffs and funk strut exemplifying its celebratory nature. Recorded at Joshua Tree and in Morocco, Elwan is in general full of lively percussion and back beats in the background, its production only enhancing the rich layers of the music.”

Read the full review here.

49. Jens Lekman - Life Will See You Now (Secretly Canadian)

“The truth is, after listening to Life Will See You Now, I’m not sure what I’ve heard, either. The album is chock full of songs about paranoia and anxiety that also have a real sense of humor, all backed by confidently cheesy, funky, and tropical appropriations of disco, bossa nova, and jazz–on one song, he literally samples Charles Mingus. On paper, none of it should work, but it does because Lekman is too smart to completely over saturate himself. Plus, who else would name a song “Hotwire The Ferris Wheel”?”

Read the rest of the review here.

48. Drake - More Life (Young Money)

After the grandiose slog of Views From The 6—an album whose scope and breadth of ideas made for a fine but exhausting album—More Life was a great sigh of relief for Drake. Above all else, the supposed playlist shows Drake having fun again. In a year dominated by “Mask Off,” one flute-centric rap song went criminally underplayed: The first time I heard “Portland”, with its infectiously dumb recorder beat that totally understates the raucous interplay about to ensue from Drake, Quavo, and Travis Scott, I absolutely lost it. It’s one of his greatest tracks to date and is just a shining of example of him letting loose. Channeling his usual introspective melodrama with splashes of South African house and grime and some amazing features, More Life is easily one of Drake’s most inspired efforts to date. - DP

47. The National - Sleep Well Beast (4AD)

“The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast is not a reductive study of nature versus nurture. Instead, the very fact that lead singer Matt Berninger is explicitly considering his mortality is new, and we’re there, as usual, for his many internal monologues. Really, for a band notorious for a dour sound, The National’s songs–especially on 2013′s Trouble Will Find Me–found the light in the struggle for upward mobility. Well, The National have made it, and what now? Berninger’s thinking about the day he dies. Donald Trump is president, and it’s all a recipe for disaster.”

Read the rest of the review here.

46. Alex Lahey - I Love You Like A Brother (Dead Oceans)

“Expanding on the upbeat songwriting from her EP B-Grade University, Alex Lahey’s debut album, I Love You Like a Brother, shows a young musician with a masterful grasp of infectious hooks and lyrics that embrace an every-person kind of storytelling you might expect from more veteran songwriters. One of the most exciting aspects of Lahey’s craft is her ability to take those seemingly simple moments in relationships – the elation, the excitement, the awkwardness and anxiety – and fashion them into seemingly effortless rock and roll.”

Read the rest of the review here.

45. The XX - I See You (Young Turks)

“But more impressive on I See You is the singing of Madley Croft and Sim. Whereas before the two seemingly attempted to sound like each other, on I See You, they come into their own. They yearn instead of whisper. Madley Croft attempts a higher vocal register on “Lips”, holding her own against the high-pitched guitar and sample of David Lang’s “Just (After Song of Songs)”. She’s also just as strong as the surf guitar tones, subdued harmonic vocal samples, and militaristic drums on “Brave For You”. And closer “Test Me”, which begins with Madley Croft’s one-syllable-at-a-time delivery, has Sim joining in on the final three syllables, providing the ultimate contrast to the first time you heard the band.”

Read the full review here.

44. Mike Cooper - Raft (Room40)

Mike Cooper’s latest release for the Room40 label pits his laid back lap steel improvisations against a dreamy backdrop of warm synthesizers and sporadic glitched sounds. Similarly to Fennesz’ Endless Summer, Cooper wonderfully weaves the summery analog in with the spastic digital, creating a world all his own. The image of the raft—all at once adventurous, creaky, and impractical—is perfectly captured on these sonic experiments. Though Raft seems difficult and odd on the surface, repeat listens reveal its easy-going nature. Even its harshest glitches and most aimless moments feel like necessary wrong turns in this enthralling exploration. - DP

43. Ex Eye - Ex Eye (Relapse)

“On Ex Eye, every song besides the opener is a journey. Third track “Anaitis Hymnal; The Arkose Disc” starts out with drones and then introduces a deep kick drum, pulsating saxophone, and subtle finger-picked guitars. The blast beats and wilder saxophone again come in later, sounding at first like a battle but retreating to a slow march. The final track, “Form Constant; The Grid”, meanwhile, starts with minor guitar notes and familiar saxophone. Here, though, it’s Ismaily’s gorgeous synth textures that stand out. (They wouldn’t sound out of bounds on a Pink Floyd album.) The beats and guitars start out akin to slowcore and become more sludgy as the song goes on. It’s less ambient than other tracks, everything coming to a head at the end. Ismaily’s upward synth melodies sound like vocals even more than Stetson’s actual vocal intonations into his saxophone. It’s an instrumental masterpiece that ends an album that truly transcends genre, let alone side project novelty.”

Read the full review here.

42. Jake Xerxes Fussell - What In The Natural World (Paradise of Bachelors)

“Jake Xerxes Fussell takes old songs and makes them very much his own. Reading their lyrics alone, they look like the classics or standards they are. But listening to them, you’d think these songs were originals. On his new album What In The Natural World, as with his self-titled debut, with his voice, arrangements, and playing, Fussell sells songs as portraits of modern life even if they go back a hundred years. His voice is wonderfully unforced, bringing the outsider art of the album–from the Roger Brown painting on the cover to the songs themselves–inside your head and heart.”

Read the rest of the review here and our interview with Fussell here.

41. Chicano Batman - Freedom Is Free (ATO)

“On the heels of breaking into the mainstream, L.A.-based Latin soul band Chicano Batman have given us their best offering to date. Immaculately produced by Leon Michels, Freedom is Free is a big album in every sense, from personnel to ideas. Each track is composed and played with care and precision, featuring great work on everything from the guitar to the synthesizer to the organ. Lyrically, it sees lead singer Bardo Martinez at once hopeful and full of despair and existential dread. In other words, it’s life in a nutshell.”

Read the rest of the review here.

40. Bibio - Phantom Brickworks (Warp)

“Haunting” as a word to describe music is already a cliché, and perhaps even more cheap as an attempt to describe Phantom Brickworks, a record built on mysterious reverb and long-form spacial ambience. It’s also an apt word, though—every note on Phantom Brickworks feels like the reverie of a sound from a decaying space. Decay may be the main feeling evoked by this effort. Every piece builds slowly and patiently on ideas, always seeming to plod curiously through a long abandoned space. There are no jarring discoveries or sudden turns. The world of Phantom Brickworks is slow and methodical, at times joyful or dull, but always mystifying and beautiful in its haze. - DP

39. Myrkur - Mareridt (Relapse)

“But the most affecting track on Mareridt is “Crown”, closer to a Lana Del Rey song than black metal, adorned with layered vocals and gorgeous harmonies. There’s one line in particular that seems to address Myrkur’s sexist detractors head on, in which she rhymes “Am I adored?” with “Am I a whore?” Here, she not only stares right into the eyes of the outwardly sexist, but uses “whore” as a synecdoche of all things a woman isn’t supposed to be. In other words, she outlines the limitations put on and expectations of a woman in metal, a woman in music, and a woman in general. The supposed dichotomy–the adored versus the whore–underlies the attitudes of the guy I heard at a Myrkur show surprised she was “not that bad,” as if he couldn’t believe he was hearing such otherworldly and evil screams from a woman. On Mareridt, Myrkur is not trying to prove anything. In battling sexism, and in battling her nightmares, she simply shows she can do it all, and there’s not much more powerful than that.”

Read the full review here.

38. Demen - Nektyr (Kranky)

“But the two best tracks on Nektyr wow you. “Ambur” features bowl-like sounds in front of a drum beat, Orm’s singing guiding you through the lead-out. And then there’s “Morgon”. It’s a nine-minute epic, starting out with beautiful drones and introducing drums a minute and a half in, giving and taking these elements until you can barely hear the hi hats around the noise. Ultimately, again, piano is in the forefront, Orm’s formless yet steady voice providing stability and breathtaking technical mastery. It’s compositions like this that make Nektyr one of the most exciting experimental releases and best debut albums in recent memory.”

Read the full review here.

37. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - On the Echoing Green (Mexican Summer)

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s latest efforts have seen him frequently lumped in with shoegaze, creating massive, screeching walls of beautiful density. On his last EP, In Summer, he even admits to a direct influence from Cocteau Twins. On the Echoing Green takes these dreamy tropes and doubles down. After the gorgeous and curious intro of “In a Copse”, “A Song of Summer” builds upon synthesizers that literally feel like a summer breeze, layering warbling guitars and actual vocals from Argentinian artist Sobrenadar to create his dreamiest composition to date. His less guarded approach to collaboration has allowed him to craft a brilliantly layered and joyous record without betraying his normal sonic signatures—a blend of sounds so brilliantly in the red that they blend together in cacophony and seamlessly, a backbone of drum-machine tempos and splashes of recordings and otherworldly sounds that position Cantu-Ledesma as one of today’s most interesting sound artists. - DP

36. Algiers - The Underside of Power (Matador)

“The essential thesis of The Underside of Power–and of progressive movements throughout history–you can find in the title track. “I’ve seen the underside of power,” Fisher sings. “It’s just a game that can’t go on.” Resistance comes in many forms. Closing track “The Cycle/The Spiral: Time To Go Down Slowly” is a fast jazz piano number with gospel and blues call and response, referencing a musical genres steeped in stunning black optimism despite all odds, and referencing an era when black culture began to flourish in the public eye despite oppression. “I cried out for power,” Fisher sings. “Someday I will find it.” Algiers makes you, too, believe.”

Read the full review here.

35. Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper (Profound Lore)

“While you may be able to pick apart certain segments of Mirror Reaper–for instance, the quiet around the 17-minute mark could be an interlude–it’s clearly meant to be heard as a continuous piece, one that goes by in a blur. The interplay between conflicting elements, like chanting and growling, or uplifting bass and repeated bass notes that test your patience, makes the whole experience blend together. Shreibman’s organ at the end is the most funereal the album gets, really shining with emotive bass and drums laden with distortion. Of course, there are the moments with Guerra’s and Moggridge’s vocals, but the very fact that Mirror Reaper, a doom metal album through and through, ends with singing, shows how boundary pushing it is.”

Read the full review here. (and look out for a profile of Bell Witch in early 2018!)

34. Converge - The Dusk In Us (Epitaph)

“Converge captures it well on “I Can Tell You About Pain” as well, its odd time signatures reflecting the constant hypocrisy of the song itself: Despite the title, the song’s main refrain is “You don’t know what my pain feels like,” rendering the initial act of sharing fruitless, consistent with the old adage that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over and expecting the same result. Indeed, many times throughout The Dusk In Us, Bannon feels crazy. But that, too, he overcomes. His best metaphor is in Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet Navy officer whose lone vote is credited with preventing a nuclear strike. It’s important, Bannon argues, to abide by morals even in trying times.”

Read the rest of the review here.

33. Allison Crutchfield - Tourist In This Town (Merge)

“Allison Crutchfield’s Tourist In This Town is, in her own words, a record about all types of change. What better way to encapsulate that theme musically than to fully realize a change in sound? With the help of synthesizer master Jeff Zeigler, Crutchfield abandons the raw rock for a more curatorial and experimentally electronic approach. Combined with her always clever lyrics, it makes her proper solo debut a success.”

Read the rest of the review here.

32. Nadia Reid - Preservation (Basin Rock)

“What’s also amazing about Preservation is that the combination of the instrumentation and the production from Ben Edwards makes it one of the best albums of the year. Reid’s layered vocals perfectly complement the fuzzed out guitars on “The Arrow & the Aim”, while “Right On Time” is perhaps the catchiest song she’s ever recorded, its post-punk guitar riff and upbeat drums making it an effective follower to the bare “Hanson St Part 2 (A River)”. And her sub-genre jumping is also impressive. She does straightforward rock (“The Way It Goes”), slow-burning country (“Ain’t Got You”), and even slowcore (“Te Aro”). The album establishes Reid as one of the biggest–and perhaps most underappreciated–singer-songwriter talents in recent memory.”

Read the full review here and our interview with Reid here.

31. Kelela - Take Me Apart (Warp)

Take Me Apart is about the process behind Kelela breaking up with one lover and then going into another relationship. We’ve all been there. Where we haven’t been is where Kelela’s at as an artist. Transitioning from mixtape/EP territory into album territory mirrors her growth as a person detailed over the course of the album. After establishing herself four years ago with Cut 4 Me, she’s finally delivered a truly fully formed statement. Take Me Apart is R&B with somehow tasteful inclusions of some of the least subtle production genres of the past decade--dubstep and trap. That’s due to the constantly burbling dark synth and bass undertone of songs like “Frontline” and “Turn To Dust”, plus the Janet-inspired R&B of “Waitin”. But it’s also a testament to Kelela’s abilities as an honest and personal songwriter and lyricist. The title track, with star production from the likes of Arca and Arield Rechtshaid, is still Kelela’s show, a tale of diving in deep with an ex, rekindling a flame where the sex is good but you know it’s bad for you. She’s empathetic on “Onanon”, singing from both her and her partner’s point of view, and on “Better”, the “Call Your Girlfriend” of 2017, becoming platonic friends with her ex. Most importantly, though, Take Me Apart is about black and female self-love that persists throughout all of Kelela’s trials and tribulations. She demands respect and communication on the sparkling “LMK”, and on closer “Altadena”, she sings, “There’s a place for everyone / Let me remind you.” “Universal” is a word that gets tossed around a lot, but it feels appropriate here. - Jordan Mainzer

30. Charly Bliss - Guppy (Barsuk)

“Overall, despite what it may initially sound like, Charly Bliss’ Guppy is not a light album. What becomes most important on it is that Hendricks, for the most part, writes deceivingly complex lyrics about what she knows, and as it turns out, what a lot of us, independent of background, know, too.”

Read the full review here and our interview with Charly Bliss here.

29. Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the Alps (Dead Oceans)

The debut from Phoebe Bridgers, Stranger in the Alps, combines a culturally aware sense of time and place with devastating personal emotional experiences. From the start, she sets the scene: Lemmy and Bowie have died, “How Soon Is Now?” plays as trash is burning. But it’s all background for her story and subsequent empathetic looks at depression and anxiety. “I have emotional motion sickness,” Bridgers sings on one of the album’s standout tracks. It’s an apt description of trauma-related depression, but over an almost upbeat funk strut, it becomes an anthem for the times: We can find solace in each other. “I have a friend I call / When I’ve bored myself to tears / And we talk until we think we might just kill ourselves / But then we laugh until it disappears,” Bridgers sings on “Funeral”. Sure, Stranger in the Alps is not for the faint of heart--at one point, Bridgers compares herself to Jeffrey Dahmer--but it’s also got a sense of humor. The title comes from the censored version of a famous crude line in The Big Lebowski, while another standout track, “Demi Moore”, takes its name from a misheard lyric. Like all of us, Bridgers is fascinated with pop culture and what it says about humanity, but mostly, she takes a look deep into her own soul from the perspective of a humanist and a realist. - JM

28. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream (Columbia)

“To title an album American Dream in 2017 is cultural suicide, especially when you’re a band inexorably linked to Brooklyn elitism. Yet, LCD Soundsystem, having gained wisdom (yes, and notoriety) from breaking up with a bang and reuniting a mere 5 years later, pull it off. Just as the musical and sociopolitical landscape have changed, so, of course, have the people in the band, most notably leader James Murphy, who divorced around the band’s initial breakup and is now a father. The previous ideas, musical and thematic, LCD Soundsystem has explored–experiencing regret, not selling out, staying cool–are present on American Dream. But references to old songs aren’t just a wink and a nudge. They actually manage to contextualize the new and old songs in a linear narrative, an amazing feat for any band, let alone one releasing their comeback album.”

Read the rest of the review here.

27. Jay Som - Everybody Works (Polyvinyl)

The phrase “bedroom pop” always conjures something of a stock photo in my mind: The artist atop an unmade bed in a bedroom that's dark with the shades drawn, surrounded by the tools necessary to craft intimate, emotional songs. Jay Som’s Melina Duterte crafts “bedroom pop” with an admirable DIY ethic, but the care and craft in each song on Everybody Works is what makes this album stand out among a wealth of great albums this year. Writing every lyric, playing each instrument, and producing the album’s 10 eclectic tracks, Duterte is a seemingly unstoppable force.

Whether exploding the intimacy of the album’s shimmery opener of “Lipstick Stains”, the funky guitar solo on “One More Time, Please”, or the fact that “Baybee” demands you dance (which the crowd happily did at Jay Som’s Chicago show this past March), the impeccable songwriting of Everybody Works is on full display. “I’ll be right on time,” Duterte repeats on the album’s closer, “For Light”, and her timing couldn’t be more perfect. - LL

26. Young Thug - BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS (Atlantic)

Prolific releasing, mumbling, embracing gender fluidity: It always seems like Young Thug is ahead of the game, spearheading trends in hip hop. BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS, his latest “commercial mixtape,” has been hailed as “country trap,” the acoustic guitars on songs like “Family Don’t Matter” and “For Y’all” and the now-infamous Bright Eyes interpolation on “Me Or Us” giving Thug ample opportunity to rise above the beats and instrumentation for a singing album. Was this to be the next trend? Well, while acoustic elements are present on BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS, framing the entire release in any of the aforementioned ways takes away from its raw honesty. It reads like a relationship in real time, ups and downs with Thug’s (now ex-) fiancee and kids leaking into his life as a star and occasional target. “I’m about to buy you your own ride / I don’t need you involved in homicides,” he sings on “Tomorrow Til Infinity”. (He wants to see his family tomorrow, which means he’ll have to see tomorrow). More blunt, he declares, “I pray my daughter never ever experience no train” (gang rape) on “Daddy’s Birthday”. But apart from his promises and more-than-occasional braggadocio, he’s also confessional. He admits to affairs on “Relationship”, something that would eventually lead to his very public breakup with his ex-fiance. Even in hindsight, however, what would eventually become of Thug’s relationship doesn’t take away from BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS, a document of a time and a place in his life. - JM

25. Fever Ray - Plunge (Mute)

Karin Dreijer’s second album as Fever Ray is somewhat of a coming out party--as a single woman and as a queer person--but it’s notable for its simultaneous frank sexual politics and banging beats. Like her previous music as both Fever Ray and half of the late, great The Knife, Plunge imagines the dance floor as a place without judgement where the blurry lines of gender and sexuality fade into non-existence. But Plunge is the first Dreijer record to tackle the system head on. “This Country” sees Dreijer present what she wants with both directness and double meanings: “Free abortions and clean water / Destroy nuclear / Destroy boring.” Later, she delivers an instant classic line: “This country makes it hard to fuck.” Ostensibly from the perspective of both policy and rigid social norms, Dreijer knows that declaration is the first step towards the eventual destruction. “You’re not curious / I don’t think you should hang with us,” she sings on opener “Wanna Sip”, a line that out of context seems exclusive but is really more about power dynamics and solidarity with the non-conforming. Sexual power play is perhaps the album’s main theme--“First I take you then you take me,” she offers on “To The Moon And Back”--but it’s the pride and confidence with which Dreijer delivers like “I want to run my fingers up your pussy” (only three lines later) that makes Plunge astoundingly radical. - JM

24. Tyler, The Creator - Flower Boy (Columbia)

The same kid who was once saying vile, homophobic things both in public and in his songs is now rapping about individuality and perhaps even coming out of the closet. So went the hype behind Flower Boy, Tyler, The Creator’s second major-label album. But the reason it’s his best to date isn’t so much the context, or even the usual washy synth-based Neptunes-inspired production. It’s that Tyler has finally learned how to rap about things we all face, like loneliness and depression, without being destructive towards others or himself. That’s what Frank Ocean-featuring standout “911/Mr. Lonely” is about, yes, but he shares it from the get-go on “Foreword”: “I was never into the beaches and all the sands / See, I was in the woods with flowers, rainbows and posies.” He finds his way out through his individuality. “Tell these black kids they could be who they are / Dye your hair blue, shit, I'll do it too,” he says on “Where This Flower Blooms”. His singing has improved to an unrecognizable level, as on sweet love song “See You Again”, purportedly originally written for Zayn. But his level of inclusion shines through most on “November”, a song that uses the month as a metaphor for the best time of ones life, giving time for his peers--Syd, Kilo Kish, Taco, Jasper Dolphin, and even manager Christian Clancy, who he questions throughout the album--to share their “November,” too. The record ends with a funky, soulful, sparkly instrumental, putting Tyler’s amazingly multi-faceted growth on display. - JM

23. Paramore - After Laughter (Atlantic)

If you’ve followed Paramore throughout their career, you’ve seen their constant evolution, whether through their lyrics, their sound, or their lineup changes. But with After Laughter's core group of Hayley Williams, Taylor York, and the return of Zac Farro, the band takes a poppier turn which complements the not-so-sunny lyrics. The opening to “Hard Times” feels like light years away from the pop-punk of the band’s first album. Coated in an 80’s pop sheen with a catchy-as-hell marimba, you might be surprised to hear that the opening lines don’t mirror that same sunniness: “All that I want is to wake up fine.” Williams has been through a lot in the time leading up to After Laughter, grappling with depression and learning how to navigate through it. The juxtaposition of the album's biting song titles ("Fake Happy", "Idle Worship") and that infectious, danceable sound is a perfect depiction of the album's title: that almost lonely moment after a laugh subsides. But it doesn't always have to be so lonely; sometimes, you just need a beat to move to and an anthem to sing, two things Paramore are experts at creating. If this is the band's new direction, it's an exciting indication of what Paramore, and this particular lineup, is capable of. - LL

22. Moses Sumney - Aromanticism (Jagjaguwar)

Aromanticism is one of the best sung, written, and played albums of 2017, from the layered, harmonized vocals of its opener and closer, lovely strumming of “Indulge Me”, finger-picked guitars of “Don’t Bother” and “Lonely World”, and analysis of modern notions of love as oppressively capitalist and heteronormative. Wait, what? Indeed, the debut album from Moses Sumney is the most personal, political, romantic anti-love album you could find, as a result of its honesty. Sumney’s ability to simultaneously paint visceral metaphors--a swollen, hungry belly representing his heart on “Plastic” stands out--while crushing your soul with simple words of worries is mesmerizing. “Am I vital / If my heart is idle? / Am I doomed,” he croons on “Doomed”. For Sumney, researching and making Aromanticism provided not necessarily the answer, but a sense of acceptance - JM

21. Sheer Mag - Need To Feel Your Love (Wilsuns RC)

“With their full-length debut album Need To Feel Your Love, Philadelpha’s Sheer Mag have made their most self-consciously 70′s-inspired music yet. Lead singer Tina Halladay’s Janis Joplin-meets-Joan Jett vocals rise above Thin Lizzy guitar riffs to make songs that both kick your ass and make you want to kick some ass. But Need To Feel Your Love is presented in the context of today’s political climate, where the need for self-care and care of others is just as if not more important than actively participating in inclusive politics. On the record, Halladay sings about good and bad relationships, sexual desire, and comfort just as much as she does rioting in the streets. Still, since every song has the same or similar instrumental base, the most interesting and gutsy tracks juxtapose heavy sounds that are conservative by today’s musical standards, with radical politics.”

Read the rest of the review here.

20. Gas - Narkopop (Kompakt)

Having not released music for nearly two decades under the Gas moniker, there was understandable speculation as to Wolfgang Voigt’s direction. Given Voigt’s distinct trademark formula for this project, it’s always astounding how he manages to keep his compositions within the scope of his specific brand of ambient techno but still cover new ground. Narkopop feels right at home with his previous work, now treading through somewhat darker territory. Though moments of his previous work, namely on Zauberberg, are slightly more sinister in tone, there is a malaise on Narkopop that feels new and enthralling. It’s almost as though the listener is dealing with the post-euphoria of 2000’s dense, lush Pop, all synapses fizzling and recovering. The more grating moments toward the middle of Narkopop--specifically, a slow, down-sampled march on “Narkopop 5″--are its signature, perhaps making it a bit more challenging in the context of Voigt’s discography but still perfectly placing it within his sonic universe almost two decades later. - DP

19. Julien Baker - Turn Out the Lights (Matador)

Turn Out the Lights feels like a massive step forward for Julien Baker, who could have easily put out Sprained Ankle 2.0 and likely satisfied fans. What’s so moving and exciting about Baker’s second album is the steps she’s taken to expand not only her sound but the way she approaches the themes she introduced on her debut. “Over” gently welcomes the listener to the album, signaling something more than the sparse guitar plucking listeners may have come to expect. That familiar guitar sound isn’t far away, though, as the track bleeds into the album’s first single, “Appointments”, which also introduces something new outside of this fuller sound: a glimmer of hope in the lines “Maybe it's all gonna turn out all right / And I know that it's not, but I have to believe that it is”.

Baker has always been open with depicting the struggles of addiction and mental health. She's open about those seemingly endless conversations around faith, too. Here, she takes these themes and pushes them further, expanding her sound with piano, strings, and even horns. Her lyrics continue to bloom, pushing the boundaries of the deeply internal so they reach further, stretch outward. On the album’s closer, “Claws in Your Back”, she reflects on that familiar feeling of hopelessness, but there it is again--that glimmer of hope in her final note sustaining on the final word of the album: “Cause I take it all back, I change my mind / I wanted to stay”. Sometimes hope is all you need. Baker knows it, and on Turn Out the Lights, finds the power in it. - LL

18. Lorde - Melodrama (Republic)

“But her strength as a writer is in her creation of an atmosphere. “Supercut” has a chugging synth line perfect for a highlight reel; as she sings, “In my head, I do everything right,” it puts you in the exact same place, playing your biggest regrets back in your head. She also offers an impassioned defense of her generation, the butt of many an avocado joke, as on “Hard Feelings/Loveless”, the album’s 6-minute emotional centerpiece laden with finger snaps and beautiful blips. The transition from the first half of the song features sampled dialogue from Paul Simon in a recording session because, well, why not? She presents it proudly without care, mirroring the lack of care her generation takes towards old-fashioned notions of love.”

Read the full review here.

17. SZA - CTRL (RCA)

With just a guitar and her stunning voice, the opening track of SZA’s CTRL immediately grabs you, plunging you head-first into the world of the album. It’s a place where every part of desire is laid bare–both the sexiness and the insecurity–and control is often an elusive force. The raw, almost diaristic lyrics are so direct and honest, it’s hard as a listener to not lose yourself in the private world of SZA’s songs. “Let me tell you a secret / I been secretly banging your homeboy,” she sings, and there you are, in the middle of it all with her as she navigates the album’s 14 tracks.

Even before its eventual release, CTRL had an air of mystery around it. Its continuous delays left listeners wondering if it would ever see the light of day. In the end, SZA brought forth an album that explores the electricity, the beauty, the messiness, and the self-consciousness of present-day relationships. It’s a close examination of modern sex and romance that doesn’t hold back, and it was absolutely worth the wait. - LL

16. Milo - Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! (Ruby Yacht)

Milo is a rapper for people whose favorite author is Thomas Pynchon--his references and metaphors are so layered and plentiful you almost have to have Genius open to fully understand what he’s saying. He’s the type to sample James Baldwin and reference Fargo on one song and make a computer science joke the next. He quotes Nietzsche even when he doesn’t have to. He’s also a true poet, one who is not afraid to simultaneously speak his mind about the effects of the prison-industrial complex on people of color and appear goofy and bourgeois. But if that makes him sound flashy, he isn’t. Milo frames his use of 10-dollar words on Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! as essential and radical. “The vocabulary is so vast, so big,” he says on “Landscaping”, later proclaiming, “My vocabulary pays my rent.” Milo has made a point of making a living off of his art and poetry, and he’s starting by truly believing he’s revolutionary. (“I be to rap what Keynes be to Locke,” he spits on “Paging Mr. Bill Nun”.) The production is appropriately jazzy, funky, and spaced out, the Herbie Hancock-like piano on “Pablum // CELESKINGIII” and harmonic beat of “Take Advantage Of The Naysayer” perfect complements to his unabashed flow. His words not only give him a sense of empowerment but an almost mystical life-saving quality. On final track “Rapper”, he gives the reins to Busdriver: “Spray a homie just with a simple ten bar / Verse or two, I will curse your crew.” It’s a form of non-violence rooted in a genre of music protected by a higher power. - JM

15. The Regrettes - Feel Your Feelings Fool! (Warner Bros)

“What’s perhaps most important about Feel Your Feelings Fool! is that it has the ability to reach a wider audience while promoting ideas of equality and acceptance more relevant today than ever. “A Living Human Girl” celebrates the imperfections of the body and life itself, Night singing, “An ass full of stretch marks and little boobs / A nice full belly that’s filled with food / Sometimes I’m pretty and sometimes I’m not / So let’s take a listen, hit me with your best shot.” “Bronze” is an honest song about female friendship and the dangers of being fake, while “Ladylike/WHATTA BITCH” dispels classic male stereotypes about feminism. And of course, there’s “Til’ Tomorrow”, the quintessential punk song that says you better express what you feel today because you might not be alive tomorrow. It’s a remarkable sense of perspective for a young band’s debut, but The Regrettes know just as well as anyone that, just like our bodies and our rights, love doesn’t last forever.”

Read the full review here.

14. Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Navigator (ATO)

“Lyrically, on The Navigator, Segarra explores being a woman and one of Puerto Rican descent in a complicated world–and all of its contradictions. On “Hungry Ghost”, she sings, “I’ve been a lonely girl / I’m ready for the world,” displaying a simultaneous sense of humble honesty and confidence. On the title track, she sings, “Today I feel weak / but tomorrow I’ll feel a queen / I was raised by the streets / Do you know what that really means?” The message is heard; we don’t know what that means, but what’s important is that she does and deserves to be listened to despite what white society tells or suggests her.”

Read the full review here.

13. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - The Kid (Western Vinyl)

“Let’s get this out of the way: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s The Kid is concept album about four stages of life. It’s not obvious if you listen without that context, and that context is not necessary to enjoy the album. In fact, after listening to the album for the first time, by the end, I forgot the entire concept behind it. That’s because The Kid is another chapter in Smith’s mastering of the Buchla synthesizer, used on The Kidamong a heap of other synths.”

Read the rest of the review here.

12. Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness (Ba Da Bing)

“Not Even Happiness is a beautiful album that sees singer-songwriter Julie Byrne getting the most out of simple, yet deep elements: her stunning voice, illustrious guitar finger picking, and natural imagery. A woman who spends her time not writing songs studying environmental science and working as a ranger in Central Park, Byrne turns to nature to make memories and associations. “And when I first saw you / The sky, it was such a natural blue,” she sings on “Natural Blue”. She may not remember the shirt she was wearing that day, but she sure as hell remembers the chicory grass.”

Read the rest of the review here.

11. William Basinski - A Shadow In Time (Temporary Residence)

“Like the best tributes, “For David Robert Jones” doesn’t attempt to sound anything like Bowie or even ambient co-pioneer Brian Eno. Instead, it sounds very much like William Basinski, his own personal way of honoring one of his musical heroes. Taken as a whole, A Shadow in Time shows Basinski as someone who, like Bowie, can try seemingly polar opposite styles within the realm of the avant-garde and absolutely succeed.”

Read the full review here.

10. Pile - A Hairshirt of Purpose (Exploding In Sound)

“On the first song of Pile’s incredible new album A Hairshirt of Purpose, lead singer Rick Maguire refers to “worms like you.” Who is he talking about? An ex-girlfriend or friend? Our current leaders? All that matters is that we’ve felt the same way before at some point in our lives. That is, Pile is an every-person’s band. Whether providing us with ballads–there are more of those on Hairshirt than ever before–or noisy rockers, they draw us in, inviting us to explore the absurdity of everyday life along with them.”

Read the rest of the review here and our interview with Pile here.

9. Vagabon - Infinite Worlds (Father/Daughter)

“Laetitia Tamko of Vagabon has reworked early material to make a statement of a debut album that will inspire kids to start bands and become musicians and songwriters. Masterfully self-produced and self-recorded (Tamko plays almost everything on the album), Infinite Words is a bedroom recording that doesn’t sound like one at all, the mix of acoustic and electric guitar, drums, and Tamko’s broken voice all combining to make songs that cut deep and hit hard. While the songs on Infinite Words don’t directly or specifically reference Tamko’s story (the Cameroon-born artist moved to NYC in high school), they’re lyrically honest and easy to relate to.”

Read the rest of the review here.

8. Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me (P.W. Elverum & Sun)

“That death is real is not something all of us truly know, and it’s safe to say that up until a year ago, Phil Elverum did not know it. After his wife Geneviève Castrée was diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and died a year later, Elverum wrote songs about the before, during, and after and recorded them in the same room his wife died, using her instruments. The result is A Crow Looked At Me, an incredible album, an instrumentally minimal affair that’s not so much art as a concrete document of Elverum’s coping process. For those who have gone through something similar to him, it likely has the potential to be a saving grace.”

Read the rest of the review here.

7. Sampha - Process (Young Turks)

“Process in turn plays like an affecting journey from nihilism to selflessness, the compositions as breathtakingly cinematic as they are musically curatorial. He displays the creative courage that collaborators Drake and Kanye West used to boast, using repetitive staccato background vocals, layers of synths, and his soulful voice on almost every song.”

Read the rest of the review here.

6. Arca - Arca (XL)

“Alejandro Ghersi’s new self-titled album as Arca is unique in his discography, and not just because it contains untreated vocals entirely in Spanish. Despite synths, beats, and sound design reminiscent of his past work, it’s a leap in all ways, an effective artist statement and personal statement of identity and sexuality. When he sings, “Quítame la piel de ayer,” or “Take off my skin from yesterday” on opener and first song released from the album “Piel”, he’s presenting a new Arca.”

Read the rest of the review here.

5. (Sandy) Alex G - Rocket (Domino)

“So what differentiates Rocket from past Alex G releases is not that it sounds different. It does sound different, and every song is unique. What matters is that every song is essential. From the whooshing, vocoder-laden “Judge” to the wiry indie rock of “Big Fish”, there’s something for everybody here. But really, everything is for everybody–even closer “Guilty”, with its jazz beat, cheesy saxophone, and disaffected chorus of 20 somethings. “Has the question become darker than the answer?” Alex G probes on that song. Throughout Rocket, he asks questions of possibility, but he lets you provide the answer: He really can do anything.”

Read the full review here.

4. Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory (Def Jam)

“Vince Staples is a ¾ glass empty kind of guy, so it’s no surprise that perhaps his best record to date centers around the different things that limit us. Concentrating on the walls we build around ourselves, Big Fish Theory is a Staples album in that it takes you on a tour through his psyche, but what makes it so bitter is that at one point he’s rising above what holds him back only to be summoned by tragedy once again. His daydreams are nightmares of him murdered by racially motivated violence or alone and heartbroken obsessing over a woman. (It’s actually the latter that seems to haunt him more these days.) Fame and money, meanwhile, may not break his heart, but it won’t fulfill him. There’s a con to every pro.”

Read the rest of the review here.

3. Circuit Des Yeux - Reaching For Indigo (Drag City)

“Circuit Des Yeux’s Reaching For Indigo was inspired by something difficult that happened to Haley Fohr on January 22, 2016. That’s all we really know about its inspirations; yet, the songs themselves are even more shrouded in mystery. Reaching For Indigo is the type of album that doesn’t come around often, where every track is both different and essential. It’s amazingly sung. It’s a masterpiece even if too “experimental” to ever become a widespread classic, save for those who cite Debussy as their favorite composer.”

Read the rest of the review here and our interview with Circuit Des Yeux here.

2. Jlin - Black Origami (Planet Mu)

“I’ve always been skeptical of those labeling Gary, Indiana producer Jerrilynn Patton, best known by her stage moniker Jlin, a footwork producer. True to the title of her remarkable new album Black Origami, she treats every sample like an immaculately constructive crevice coming from the dark depths of her soul, piecing them together requiring the work of a great mathematical mind. Her collaborations with dancers and fashion designers make her music aware of the body. And her compositions have so many peaks and valleys that, unlike so much exhausting, overwhelming, monotonously dissonant and droning maximal electronic music, it lets the tracks–and you–breathe.”

Read the rest of the review here.

1. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. (Interscope)

“It’s hard to dissect any Kendrick Lamar album and simply ignore the sheer magnitude of his lyricism and rapping: His sense of time and place is impeccable, his flow unrivaled. Even without any ostentatious sampling of Tupac interviews, there’s still a heady concept behind DAMN. just as there is behind all of Lamar’s albums. It’s just not one that’s as immediately thrilling as past artistic statements. It’s a bit tough to swallow. But it’s every bit as necessary. I think of Phil Elverum singing, “Death is real,” and I think of DAMN. But Kendrick Lamar’s disproven the next line–you can make death into art.”

Read the full review here.

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throughthelookinglasses-blog · 7 years ago

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Ready For it? the Breakdown

So. I’m gonna start off with a disclaimer that I usually do not write these kind of posts. I don't know why, I just haven’t gotten ‘round to writing them yet. SO if this seems like it’s all over the place, that’s why. Secondly, the reason I felt the need to put this down in words is because, literally EVERYONE on the internet,save for a select few which maybe I haven’t seen are clueless about the video. They are misinterpreting it and it is messing with my head.

@taylorswift if I totally butchered it, I am so sorry.

So here goes.

First things first.

I’m sure everyone noticed the lip curl. And I’m sure everyone remembered her do the same one in LWYMMD.

Now as we all know, we saw two taylors in the RFI video. Now here’s what those two taylors are according to my theory.

The Taylor wearing the bodysuit is the old taylor and the one in hood is the new taylor who was starring in the LWYMMD video. Did you see how, in the last line up, there were some new taylors, and there were some old taylors and all the new taylors were taking a shot at insulting the old taylors? Yeah. SO according to the LWYMMD video, taylor wants us to think that the new taylor is against the old one and hates her with passion.

But things change in RFI!

Here we see, that The new taylor is in a shady place with gangsters and stuff which I think is supposed to symbolise the dark corner of herself. (forgive me if it sounds corny. Or dont. I don't care)

And we see that she’s enclosed the old taylor in a glass box. Notice how I said ‘enclosed’ and not ‘trapped’ Cz she wasn’t trapped. The new taylor hid her there because she was so broken that she needed protection.

Further proof.

(maybe? It's a theory)

The new Taylor is still TAYLOR! And this is symbolic of how only she can understand how truly broken she was.

The new taylor isn’t against the old taylor, she’s PROTECTING old taylor. Its almost as if she’s working for the old taylor. She’s feeding her, nursing her and letting her rest while the new taylor faces the world and slams everyone down who doesn’t treat her with respect.

And when she doesn’t need the facade anymore, she destroys it. Time to get real. (PS. did you see how the new her has straighter and styled hair while the old taylor is rocking her natural curls? Thats sick!)

Also, do you see how, throughout the video, the new taylor is not at all upset, or scared or angry by the fact the the taylor inside the glass box is gaining power and actually seems to be pleased and excited that the old taylor is now strong and can break free? She herself encourages her to get out of the box now and the new taylor is actually the one who presses the buttons to let er out.

More proof that the taylor in the bodysuit is the old @taylorswift. She literally spoon-fed it to us and we didn’t see. Which is a shame on us really.

White horse? WHITE HORSE? white horse. Rings a bell? No? Let me break it down for you.

And it's too late for you and your ‘white horse’ to come around.

Okay? Okay.

Oh this also means that now she’s the one on the white horse. Meaning she don't need no knight in shining armour on a white horse to save her. She ain’t no damsel in distress. She can save herself. WHICH SHE DID!

And for all those who are critical of the nude bodysuit, fuck you! (excuse my french).

DON'T YOU SEE IT? ITS SYMBOLIC OF THE VULNERABILITY OF THE OLD TAYLOR! YOU GUYS!

Did all you swifties really believe that @taylorswift, the queen of deeper layers in her songs, would herself, with her own free will, put on a nude bodysuit, which is slightly promiscuous, without it having some deeper meaning to it? Like really?

Why do you think the new taylor isn’t letting anyone see her? Why do you think there’s only one person the old taylor trusts and that person is herself? Because she’s vulnerable. Now, more than ever! She is not using the media in any way for promoting her album. The media on the other hand has turned her into a clickbait! And I’m glad @taylorswift isn’t letting them use her just to increase the views and ratings. I’m honestly so happy. There’s not press interviews, no TV appearances. She is not letting anyone in! Except for the people she truly trusts. which is her fans. She trusts us enough to know that if she releases music, we will know about it, we will jam to it and we will give it the love it deserves without necessarily judging her.

Now that that’s out of the way. (I'm sorry if Im coming off too strong, I just feel really strongly about people misunderstanding her and then judging her.)

But Now, things are changing. The old taylor has almost recovered and is now stronger than before. She has rebuilt herself and mended all that was broken.

Do you see this? The ball of light? That ball of lights is the power that she found when she stopped caring about her reputation and became the 'new' taylor. The look of wonder in her eyes is the uplifting she felt when she realised that she doesn’t need to change herself to save herself. She just has to shut out all the negative voices and focus on the ones that truly care for her.

Which brings me to.

'Touch me and you"ll never be alone'

It’s not just a superficial touch! You guys! Dig deep!

She actually means to say that now, after the old taylor is back if what you do for me and how you treat people touches my heart, If you are genuine and truly care for me, I'll never let u be alone...

Thats why shes been scouring the net for true fans… That she sends goodies to the ones who can’t meet her... @taylornation is legit contacting anyone taylor mentions and invites them to the Secret sessions if @taylorswift wants. She’s filtering people by how much she trusts them and by how much they touch her.

It’s also a clever sexual pun ‘cz the media has labelled her as being irresistible but fast. But I believe she really means touching her emotionally when she says that. (I may be wrong but that's how i think it goes.)

Speaking of clever lyrics. Here’s one more.

She says 'no one has to know' to the old taylor.

So she’s healing herself without letting anyone know that she was broken in the first place. No one has to know she is broken. No one has to know that this is just a mask. no one has to know that she’s soft and healing underneath the hard surface.

And here comes another connection to the LWYMMD lyric. She says the old taylor can’t come to the phone right now ‘coz she’s dead. But in RFI we clearly see she is not. So the new taylor is hiding the fact that the old taylor is still there, under all those layers of new she has put around herself, she’s still there. But ‘no one has to know’ this until the old taylor is ready to let everyone know.

And now ‘Baby let the games begin!’ Shes ready now. To come out of hiding as herself. And show the world that she can still conquer the world even if she doesn’t morph according to the society’s standards.

And also, the lightning?

The one that gives taylor the power and strength back in flash of seconds. I think it’s a play on the word ‘enlightening.’

Again for the realisation she had that she doesn’t have to care what people think about her decisions as long as she herself is okay with it.

Oh My god! This whole video, in first look doesn’t seem like it makes sense, or has concept.

But for people who have been here a long time, and for people who know taylor for who she truly is, it’s the most epic video she can make. And it’s the first song of the album. So it makes sense that the taylor that was dormant for so many years is now coming back. So are you ready for it?

the album, my thoughts.

I think the album is gonna show both sides of taylor. One that she shows only to the people close to her and the other that she shows the entire world.

You know how people have been saying that ‘Gorgeous’ sounds more like a mix of Red and Fearless? Yup. that's the old taylor of the album! It's the third track. SO i have a feeling that after she breaks out of the glass box in RFI, she starts being herself again, only this time, there's no inhibitions and she’s not letting others know that she’s back to her old self (again ‘no one has to know’). So we can expect the 2nd track to also be like the stuff that taylor usually makes. But the song would be with a more empowering lyric. Like, a lyric that shows how she’s getting stronger. Kinda along the lines of Out of the woods - She lost him but she found herself.

I dont know, thats a shot in the dark I’m taking.

I really urge you to watch the video again, with all this in mind, and I guarantee you, you will not be confused anymore.

Also, if there’s any theories that you guys might have that make more sense than this, PLEASE let me know. This video has been messing with my head and I’m just glad that now I have some context to it.

P.S. I Love you @taylorswift. You are an inspiration for me in so many ways! You show that you dont have to stop loving people altogether just because you have been hurt. You showed me that feeling for people is not a weakness. Feeling Love and being compassionate is not a weakness. Its strength. You just need to nurture the love and compassion that you have within you instead of banishing it.

PPS. I think the reason the new taylor is a filter for boyfriends to. And this guy that she’s singing about, he’s won her trust and is much more compassionate and caring and loving than anyone she’s met before. and thats why she’s now letting the old, real taylor come out and expose herself to him, because she trust him.

@taylornation Please help me get Taylor read this. I really want to know if it makes sense. Thank you for being so nice to the fans and working so hard for @taylorswift

#taylor swift #ready for it #reputation #Taylor Nation #Swifties #gorgeous #LWYMMD #look what you made me do #theory #breakdown #taylurking

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vieuxnoyesrp · 7 years ago

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Krys. We’re really not sure whether you’re the angel answering our prayers or the devil who appears a day after her name is spoken in good company. We’re not about to look a gift-horse in the mouth however, especially given the fact that you totally nailed this application once again. We can claim that came as a surprise, but it wouldn’t be true given how effortlessly you played Jackson the first time around too. That said, your numerous and varied headcanons were an absolute delight to read and brought us even deeper into Jackson’s psyche. Everything was spot-on, and we’re very happy to have you in the group once more!

Krys, thank you very much for applying. As for Jackson…

⚜ ~ WELCOME TO VIEUX NOYÉS!!! ~ ⚜

Wondering what to do next? Click here and let the good times roll!

⚜ ROLEPLAYER:

⤜ Name/alias: Krys

⤜ Pronouns: she/her

⤜ Age: 28

⤜ Timezone: CST

⤜ Activity: 7/10 - i work about 40 hours a week but that work happens to be on a computer so it gives me some leeway with how often I will be able to post. Yay new jobs!

⤜ Best form of contact: skype, tumblr

⤜ Any Triggers? nada

⤜ How did you find Vieux Noyés?

I have role played here before buuuut before that i know one or two birds that got me interested real quick.

⤜ What drew you to the RP?

The in depth plot, the intricate map of characters and the new ways to explore characters from the shows that would be fresh and original.

⤜ What is one subplot/element from the Plot page that you are particularly looking forward to seeing in this roleplay?

I’m excited for a few different things going on here. I am really interested in seeing how the salem way of magic disrupts the ancestral way. Not being tethered to the whims of the old would probably be incredibly freeing if the witches of the french quarter are willing to embrace it. Another thing i am really interested in [consider me biased] but the were plot and how it can unfold. Having multiple types of were and new wolves trying to figure out their place among packs that are in their own form of turmoil is huge. I think it would be something fun to flesh out and really see how everything will turn out.

⚜ DESIRED CHARACTER: JACKSON KENNER

⤜ Why do you want this character?

Jackson Kenner is the love of my life. I would marry him so of course I want to play him. No but seriously he is a character that has a lot of depth to him. There are many different things that are playing in his head. As an alpha there is a responsibility on his shoulders but as a man there are certain things he would want to see play out that may be in conflict. He has to stand tall and be strong but he can’t be too iron willed. There is a balance he needs to find and i think for a little while now he has been struggling to find it. On the outside he probably seems like he has got his shit together but on the inside there is so much turmoil… I can tell.

⤜ What are your future plans for this character?

For him it’s that inner battle that I want to see. I want to see him struggle. I want to see him hate so strongly that it is nearly blinding but he has to pull himself back. Because above all else he wants peace. He wants his pack, his family, his friends, he wants them all to have a better life. Now that isn’t saying the life they have isn’t something he enjoys but being sequestered off in the damn bayou in pain of death.. That sure isn’t what he had planned for his people when he stepped up and took the alpha mantel. In a way that incredibly simple want is going to be the hardest thing for him. He has vampires on one side who happen to be old ass grudge holders that may or may not still be pissy as shit even when he hadn’t been involved with the bullshit in the first place. The other side is the potential weres that are angry. The ones that want a better lot in life but they’ll be damned if they don’t take it with bloody fingers.

In my opinion it is the perfect scene of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, that is what I want to explore and exploit. His inner battles, his guilt, his anger, and even a certain amount of loneliness. The push and pull between him and Hayley is also something I want to dig into. I want to see how they differ and how they are similar in opinion. I feel like fundamentally they want the same thing but it is how they will go about getting it that will have them standing apart.

⤜ Put yourself in your character’s shoes. Give us a few lines to describe a day in the life of your character… Where do they live? Where and how do they spend their time?

He rises before the sun. mostly for the peace and quiet but there is a part of him that enjoys it for nostalgia. It’s a part of the day when things are still. The parts when he can still see their old life before the battles and wars. Before curses and death threats. A simpler life. For that first hour and a half he has an inner peace that he can keep for the rest of the day. From there on out his day is spent making sure things get done around the bayou. Taking care of the pack and the little ones. His favorite moments are when he can take a second to show one of the younger ones how to track an animal or to skin and clean one. Little pieces of the bayou that he can remind himself that while they are forced to stay he probably would have chosen to be away from the city on his own terms. Of course he avoids the city at pretty much every cost, rarely ever stepping foot in unless he has something that needs to be done and there is no other way to do it.

After his time of reflection he may had up to Laplace to check his PO box or he will work on a woodworking order that he took for something custom made. It pays well enough and even werewolves need to make a living. Most days before he can even blink, it is over. The sun is setting and his body is ready to relax. They eat around a campfire or at least cook over it and eat in one of the built halls he took his time in making sure still stood. He spends his day around family friends. Honestly he doesn’t complain much unless he had to play peacekeeper between overly aggressive wolves all day. That is a bit of a bummer.

⤜ Give us three headcanons regarding your character of choice.

There is extreme guilt on his heart for the loss of the Hale pack. While the situation had been far more complicated than any outsider would know, he still thinks about it daily. Every time he sees Cora his heart is weighed down by shame. They may have been distant but they were still his people. Wolves that died because he could not help them.

As a kid his parents took life in the bayou seriously. It wasn’t just because of whatever fears they had but it was giving Jackson a portion of his heritage. Hunting was something he was taught practically from the moment he could walk. There isn’t a better tracker south, west or even east of the mississippi. He still hunts now for a little bit of solace. It soothes him most days and it helps him thinking about life when it wasn’t turned upside down. Little reminders help him through the weeks.

His mother is the reason he has such a way with controlling himself. She was an unturned wolf and wanted to see him have control in such a way that many of the other wolves his age didn’t. To this day Jackson still doesn’t think that it was meditation but it was certainly something close to it. ‘One with the world’ is what she called it. Something about knowing where he was and where he had been would be what helped him find a center when other people couldn’t. He never thanked her enough for that. He has seen wolves lose themselves and he never wants to be that.

Good ol’ southern boy. Yeah that is a very good way to describe him. His music taste goes from bluegrass to real twangy country. His drink taste ranges from cold beer to a damn fine whiskey. Some days all he wants is a cold drink and someone playing music for him to close his eyes to.

That curse hadn’t always been a curse in his mind. They were trapped as wolves, yes. Taken from their lives in a way, yes. For his people it had been something they had never wanted but for him, in the end, Jackson saw it as something he welcomed. When he was young, his parents ingrained in him that being a wolf was precious. Turned or unturned. You belonged to a people that would bind you stronger than other bonds. It was sacred to him in his own mind and when he had to live as one completely without the moon pulling at him it was - serene. Once he got over the spitting rage he found a simplicity in it. It was in so many ways far more simple than being a normal person was.

Other than hunting his father was always good with his hands and it was something he passed down to Jackson. While he mama made sure he could sew a little tear in his own clothes if he had to, his daddy taught him how to pulled things. From big to small. In another life he could have made a living as a contractor and honestly he thinks about it some days. Woodworking is a part of him. Whittling small figures, building doors, shaping boats, strapping together docks and pretty much whatever else the bayou needs. It’s the way he gets some spare cash for his people’s needs. A bit of a handyman. Flannel and muscles included.

⤜ What are some plots you’d like to explore with your character?

This is gonna pull a lot from the plans of how I am going to play with him. I want to explore just how far he would be willing to go for his people. If that means trying for a strong truce with vampires or involving other weres or creatures. Or it could even mean going behind Hayley’s back and not involving her in the decisions he could make? Could that mean he takes on a strange twisted form of Machiavellian thinking or would he be willing to stand his ground and lose his people? Would it come to such an extreme?

I’m als really excited for the Hales portion of it all. The loss of that pack tore a piece of him away. Just another nail in the coffin of his own inner guilt. I want to explore how that changed him and how it changed the way he would interact with other weres or packs. I could definitely see it being a slight voice in the back of his head always reminding Jackson of what happened the last time he didn’t couldn’t help. It weighs on him and his relationships. Very specifically on how he would approach them. Look i just wanna see him react to his guilt and see how and if he can push through it.

Okay now let us talk about Mary Sibley and those witch bitches from Salem. I want to toy with that instinct that has a soft whisper in the back of his head. I think it would be a lot of fun to have him question his own instincts. For so long he had been able to rely on them without any doubt but now with the whispers and the potential rift that could form between him and Hayley with the pack, I think that could push his mind in all sorts of directions. Now, if that means it gets him in trouble or if that means he gets to have that moment of clarity that yeah, trust no bitch.

I pretty much just want to strip him down to his emotional bones [still] and see how he builds himself up again. Or if he honestly can. Who is he without his pack? Who is Jackson Kenner?

⤜ Para sample:

(Redacted for privacy)

⤜ Would you like to be considered for another character if not accepted as your primary choice? Vincent Griffith/Finn Mikaelson but I love him as his real self the most, Mercy Lewis, Kol Mikaelson [yep that is three but the more you know]

⤜ Have you read the rules?: sure did

⤜ Anything else? Hello, is it me you’re looking for? Okay we have met before… a few times and i love you guys but i made 3 playlists [x] [x] [x] for his gentlemen since last I played him [also his link on my blog [x]]. I miss him and I miss ya’ll and blaaaah…. I have already been lurking long enough. It was time to see if I still had the Jackson Mojo

#nathan parsons #nathan parsons fc #Jackson Kenner #Jackson Kenner RP #the originals rp #accepted

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