#I tried to recreate how the lyrics feel in my mind

[squishedstrawberrydreams]

Just then?? A witch(!!) to satisfy an itch >:( went flying on her brOomstick thumbing for a hitch!

(A little Dorothy sketch, it looks a bit ugly with the filters to make it brighter so I’ll fix it in morning)

[rizsu]

food for thought, except it’s unwanted jujutsu kaisen : fem-reader.

have you ever wondered about a scenario so much that you must ask? well that’s exactly the last thing they’d wish to answer.

+ love ‘su: gojo, geto, itadori + ‘live, laugh, love’ hater final boss ( sukuna )

gojo satoru ﾉ refuses to answer.

“do you ever think about how it’d be if we never met?”

“ha— no. don’t even go there.”

satoru stops you there. he doesn’t wish to hear another word from you— especially if it extends your former question. he thinks about it— daily, in fact. it's a scenario that crosses his mind whenever he finds himself drunk on the temporary love he receives from you.

you’ve sung the lyric ‘i’ll love you until there’s no more left’ almost every week for him, silently begging that he gets the concept of genuine love through his head.

“why not? imagine if my friends didn’t make that bet where i either hit on you or pay for the night.” you reminisced, remembering the very night you lost the last touch of shame.

he hums, drumming his fingers on your thigh.

“bet or not, we’d still be fated to meet. next question!”

“anddd what makes you so confident?” you threw another question at him. this time, it's lighthearted.

“mind you, i’m the second coming of an angel. i predetermined this since three years ago.”

glances were exchanged, an expression of a grinning fool met the expression of a glaring responsible person who’s the said fool’s other romantic half.

you should've been familiar with satoru’s ways. it’s your fault for expecting a deep-dive conversation with satoru. not quite his cup of tea!

geto suguru ﾉ expects it and tries to escape.

suguru's home was no new, unexplored area to you. you knew his home's blueprint like the back of your hand. if needed, you'd walk through his home blindfolded and still end up in the room you want to be in.

this isn't a good thing to suguru. there are days where the feeling of confusion as to who he is piles up on him, leading him to isolate himself.. until he forgets there's a spare key of his isolation cube in your hold so now the plan goes awry.

that is exactly what’s happening. after he sent the text ‘k bye’ and silenced his notifications, he felt an impending doom. the reason was unknown by then but he should've guessed it was you.

you marched into his home, readying yourself with suguru-loneliness-begone techniques and, of course, the question that's been wandering your mind since you woke up from a dream.

“babe, what if—”

“fuck,” he curses under his breath, too exhausted to put a hand over your mouth.

“what if we were the last persons on earth? would you recreate humanity with me or kill yourself?”

there it is: your special ‘what if’ questions that know no bounds when it comes to absurdity.

“when would that ever happen? please, stop this,” he groans, pleading with his eyes for you to stop.

“that's the thing— you never know! so, what option is it?”

“i'd kill myself a long time ago if possible.”

“so it's the second one?”

“i'm... not cut out to be a good father.”

“i hate an indecisive bitch, my goodness,” it's your turn to complain, a little let down at his grey answers.

suguru's equally offended. you're the one who jumped him with such a question— who even thinks about that?!

“(y/n), baby, has it ever crossed your mind that your thinking skills aren't quite normal?”

“are you calling me stupid?!”

itadori yuuji ﾉ just as stupid.

it's mango season— yuuji's most anticipated season of the year. mangoes are to yuuji what your lipbalm is to you. a necessity, a survival item, a lifesaver, an important part of his lore, something he worships.

peeling mangoes and slicing them to equal pieces has never brought him such satisfaction before. it immediately brightens his mood. this must be how his grandfather felt whenever he took a walk around the neighbourhood.

now you appear, yuuji's second most anticipated person. you to yuuji is what mangoes are to him. this causes yuuji's current happiness level to reach its peak today. such a great level of happiness can defeat any evil being with just being in its area.

“say, yuu,” you begin, stabbing one of the mangoe slices with a fork.

he nods, signalling that he's listening but still focused on his current activity. a true mulit-tasker.

“if one of your limbs happen to detach from your body, do you feel the pain or does the pain go with it?”

he stops, allowing the question to sink in. he's never been asked such a.. divine question before. what's the answer? does the pain go with the limb or does it stay?

“oh... i gotta ask nobara this, she'd know,” he suggests, placing the knife down. a question that'll haunt him if he doesn't act quick for the answer.

“yes, yes!!” you encourage his actions, mindlessly enjoying the mango slices. mangoes are truly a blessing.

sukuna ryomen ﾉ no. nice try, though! A+ for effort.

“ryo, have you ever wondered if—”

“no, i never.”

“you didn't even let—”

“i haven't learnt since two-thousand years ago.”

“you old fuck, let me finish—”

“it's truly been a while since i've wondered.”

“DAMN, BITCH!”

you threw the remote at him, ultimately fed up with him cutting you off before the peak of the sentence. it could've been the question of the year and he'd still dodge it.

sukuna invited himself over since he ran out of entertainment options and you're always there for him. unfortunately, you do not find him as entertainin. he's annoying, arrogant, and attractive so it cancels out the negatives about him.

of course, sukuna caught the remote. his athletic capabilities are its prime despite him being dormant for centuries. it'd be a white lie to say he's not interested in your question, however it is way more benefitting to push your buttons.

he throws the remote back onto your bed, drying his hands with your hand-towel before making his merry way to you.

“your bed's small.”

“well no shit. it's for ME.”

“you mad? you look mad.” his hand holds your chin, turning your head side-to-side to observe your expression.

you rolled your eyes, “i don't get mad that easily.”

“is this how people felt when i told them an obvious lie? i should repent.”

[crookedkryptonitebeliever]

Best and worst of both worlds (part 44)

Tw: mention of previous assault, yves being manipulative as always

Vote down below pls i will only consider first 21 votes

Part 45

To your surprise, Yves wheeled you into a room that you have never been in. Neither did you realize it existed on the ground floor.

You called it the music room. There is a grand piano in the center, with various other orchestra instruments in the corner and on the shelves. It was lit by none other than a chandelier. Yves loves his chandeliers.

You asked him if he played all the instruments present here. He nodded and you found that impressive, since the number of items in this room is mind boggling. You don't even know the names to some of these.

"Would you like me to play something for you?" He asked, locking your wheelchair in place.

You said you would like to see it.

He walked towards the harp, positioning the seat properly before sitting on it. His elegant fingers strummed against the strings masterfully as he played a melancholic tune that you weren't familiar with. However, it was beautiful and moving, the rises and dips in volume invoked some powerful feelings in your chest.

Yves seemed to be completely immersed in his performance, his eyes were closed and his lips were pressed into a neutral line. His movements were fluid and hypnotizing, making you watch without ever blinking.

He ends his piece with an elegant fade. Yves opened his emerald eyes to see you gaping your mouth at him. He stifled a laugh as he rose from his seat.

"Did you like it?" He asked, gently pushing your jaw up to close your mouth.

You said it was amazing, you asked what was he playing. Yves tilted his head to the side and pouted playfully.

"I thought you would have recognized it. I was playing a song that is very popular among your age groups."

You were adamant that you have never heard it before. It sounded like something that was written by an angel, it was unbelievably ethereal and sublime. You don't think modern-day music was of this calibre.

An amused smile made its way to his face.

"Well, I am happy that you loved my rendition of it."

But you were curious, what did he intend to play?

He tapped the side of his face and looked to the side as he tried to remember the name of it.

"It is something that your peers danced to. I have only heard fifteen seconds of it, but it was repeated ad nauseam."

You asked him if he heard the full song.

"No. I improvised the rest."

You were wracking your brain, trying to figure out what modern "popular song" did he just let you experience in a completely different light.

Then you asked how were the dances like.

"There was a vast array of variations. However, they shook their rears in front of the camera for all of them."

And the lyrics?

"The artist managed to refer to her supposedly... fat buttocks four times in that short segment. They were standard lyrics about emotional infidelity." Yves was describing it almost clinically, only when it comes to the cheating part did he look disgusted.

You think you know which song he was talking about now. You're dumbfounded at Yves talent to recreate it in such a way it's unrecognizably beautiful. Not to say that the original wasn't good, it was. It's just that you're impressed at how Yves's musical abilities allowed him to create such a masterpiece.

For the rest of the afternoon, you tried out most of his instruments. Yves taught you the basics without boring you to death, he was patient and understanding when you either couldn't grasp the control or you gave up for being too hard. You noted that the quality of his items are always exemplary, he takes good care of all his belongings.

Occasionally, he would nag about being mindful of your property. He wanted you to share the same mindset of prolonging the health and life of an object.

But you were having fun, even if you were bowing the strings of his Viola horrendously so, that it could make a musician's ear bleed. Yves is elated to spend so much time with you while sharing his own interests.

And most importantly, your head is not filled with redundant thoughts about your dependence on Yves. Both of you are free to relax and be happy in peace.

__

You scrolled through your social media feed mindlessly as you laid on the loveseat of his music room, your casted leg hanging off the armrest. Yves had to leave you alone so he could speak with the professionals regarding his air conditioning system.

Yves told you to use a special fob to control the speed of the fan. You left it off because it's not sweltering right now and you believed that you should not waste too much electricity.

There was the occasional tinkering and stomping as they worked hard to remedy the issue. Other than that, the environment is pretty quiet.

You received a notification that your assignment has been graded. You reviewed it and found that you achieved the highest score possible, it wasn't surprising because you have Yves to guide you throughout the entire--

Where are your crutches?!

The thought shot through your head and everything that you were procrastinating talking to Yves about came rushing in.

You have got to talk to Yves about moving out and going back to school. And also, the whereabouts of your stupid crutches.

Just when you're about to send Yves a text about it, so you won't forget, you heard a knock on the door.

Yves entered holding a cold glass of freshly pressed fruit juice. It was beading with condensation as he took large strides towards you.

You took large gulps of the refreshing beverage, not realizing how thirsty and overheated you were.

"My apologies, dear." Said Yves as he dabbed a wet cloth on your forehead and cheek to further cool you down. "There was an accident causing the breaker to trip. They also had to cut the power supplying the ducts in order to repair the faults, why didn't you use the fan?"

You said that it wasn't that warm and you didn't want to rack up his electricity bills. He has nothing to apologize about, it didn't even affect you.

You couldn't understand why Yves looked defeated, as if he's expecting something bad was about to happen. It isn't like you're going to die from a little heat, you're simply going to sweat and whine. That's all.

"That is very considerate of you, my love. However your comfort comes first. I do not want you to worry about anything. Please. I will always take care of you no matter what." He pressed the cool cloth against your neck, soaking up droplets of sweat. It almost seems... desperate.

You told him that you're grateful. Then changing the topic about your crutches and the idea of going back to university, so that you could catch up on your studies.

His shoulders sagged in devastation. Yves sighed, burying his face in a hand for a bit before instantly regaining his composure. Oh, how he wished that he could just... control everything.

You wonder what that reaction was about. But you deem it unimportant in the end.

He switched the fan on to circulate the air in the room. You feel relief when the wind hits your face.

"(name)..." He called you quietly, crossing his arms over his chest. Yves squatted down to your level and looked you deep in the eyes. "Are you sure?" Yves spoke in a voice that sent uncertainty through your bones. You could feel an undertone of warning too.

You gulped and stammered under his scrutinizing gaze. You suddenly felt small and helpless, just like how when you first met him. Except, now it's much worse. Because you value his views on you a lot more.

Yet, you stood your ground. You noticed that you've been lacking a sense of agency ever since you got here. Yves wasn't treating you badly by any means, but subconsciously, you felt that there was something wrong. You felt like you were getting stuck in a trap that is slowly but surely killing you, and this is your attempt at clawing out of it.

No matter how much you tried to change the tone of the conversation to become lighter, Yves stayed there, unmoving, unsmiling and unblinking. He may not explicitly confirm it, but it is clear he is disapproving towards your desire to regain freedom.

You explained that you can get around with crutches, you need to go back to your old life- you can't stay like this forever, burdening Yves with your problems!

"You are not a burden to me, (name)." The seriousness of his intonation left no room for doubt that he was telling the truth. Deep down, you already knew it too, but you didn't like how he enjoyed taking care of you to this degree. It's as if he is intentionally incapacitating you so he could continue coddling you.

That wasn't a nice thought about someone who paid for your bills, housed and fed you. But it was a gut feeling that existed nonetheless.

You explained that you just wanted normalcy. Like how it was before your assault, where you would run from your own place to catch the bus. This sudden change in lifestyle is jarring and unnatural to you, it's stressing you out.

"It takes a minimum of eight weeks for your fracture to heal. You only rested for three, it is too early for you to start walking again." He explained, in a soft voice that sounded patronizing. You squirm under his unyielding and unsettling stare, he never stopped despite you showing painfully clear signs of discomfort.

You tried weakly arguing that you saw students move around the campus with a broken foot, they're using crutches and always arrived to class on time.

The room fell silent, save for the quiet whirring of the fan's propeller and the murmuring of the contractors.

Yves knew he was fighting a losing battle. But he tries, he tries to scare you into staying with him. Because he wasn't ready to let you go yet, not when he was spoiled with three weeks of uninterrupted bonding time with you. It is going to feel particularly excruciating when the luxury of being in close proximity to you is slashed tremendously.

So he waited. You were someone who associates silence and a stare as something terrible, hence he uses that against you. He calculated the chances of you backtracking or doubling down, and it was of equal probability.

You cower, feeling afraid and severely pressured even though Yves did nothing except appear menacing.

It is tempting to just dismiss everything and pretend like nothing happened, you could enjoy his pampering without a problem and let Yves take care of you like a delicate doll.

But... it's uncanny. You have never felt this strange towards a supposedly "good" thing. You will definitely have to participate in uncomfortable conversations with Yves, however, maybe the reward would outweigh the damages?

Using all your strength to temporarily push down the nauseating feeling of fear, you decided to choose a path.

[redlegumes]

I Feel the Rush

Written for @eddiemunsonbingo

Square: Square C3 Cheap Motel

Title: I Feel the Rush

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 3,686

Ship(s): Eddie Munson/Steve Harrington, Steddie

Major Tags: Smut, Idiots in Love

Summary: Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson have been hooking up in secret. They've been going at it anywhere that was convenient. But after a tryst when their only option was a cheap motel, Steve feels he has to reveal his true feelings about their relationship.

"Steve's stupid heart thudded faster in his chest. Thinking about me all day? No. No, he was thinking about my cock. Though I'd take that little admission anyway. Steve was not immune to flattery, but he was wary of it. Eddie's flattery at first had confused him, bold and silly. Nowadays it just made him melt into a puddle. By the time Eddie crawled over Steve, lube in hand, he felt it in his core. More than desperation.

'Eddie, I need you.'

'Course you do handsome. That's why we're at the cheapest motel in twenty miles.'"

Link: AO3

EXPLICIT SMUT AFTER THE CUT

I feel the rush

Addicted to your touch

Oh, I feel the rush

It's so good, it's so good

...

Pass your boy the heatwave, recreate the sun

Take me to the feeling, boy, you know the one

Kiss it when you're done, man, this shit is so much fun

"So you’re into little singing twinks now?"

Steve turned and angled his head away from his phone speaker. He had just finished pressing play, setting it on the nightstand. "What?"

"Troye Sivan?" Eddie crinkled his nose in what Steve recognized was the same expression he wore when he saw a jar of mayo: utter disgust.

Steve didn't question how, despite his disapproval, Eddie still knew who the artist was. Troye was a gay musician with a mainstream audience. Eddie kept an eye on that sort of thing. 'Keeping up with the culture,' he would offhandedly say as an excuse if questioned as to why he knew Kim Petras was from Germany or ABBA's top five hits.

"Dude, just-"

"You know the rules," Eddie interrupted, looking even crosser. "No ‘dude’ when I’m touching you."

"You aren't touching me yet. You're just being an ass, bro-" Steve barely got the word out before Eddie launched himself over the bed, pinning him to the wall.

It knocked the breath out of Steve; Eddie's tongue quickly filled his mouth in a hot kiss that left him no chance to regain it. Steve's senses reacted the way they always did when Eddie manhandled him. His body prickled with heat. The longer Eddie plunged his tongue into Steve's mouth the more he salivated. Their jaws loosened steadily, adding a desperate, sloppy edge to each kiss. Eddie's hand worked up under Steve's shirt over his scars. The skin there had taken so long to heal, and Eddie loved exploring the sections on Steve that were now deadened to any sensation versus the patches that had become hypersensitive to touch.

Steve liked the beat of the song in the background even if he couldn't make out the lyrics any longer. Even as the playlist shifted to the next track, he felt it'd been the right choice. It fit the mood that night. Eddie was a rush. Wild and good and sweet. Steve tried to move from Eddie’s lips to other areas that had been growing into more tantalizing prospects, but in doing so he hit his head hard against the wall behind him.

All of Eddie's ferocity vanished, leaving a doe-eyed, attentive man Steve longed to call ‘darling.’

"Steve! Shit, are you okay?" His hand went to the back of Steve's head, cradling it.

God. He's so perfect. Steve felt his knees go weak. Eddie knew Steve had a history of head injuries, and even when they got rough he was always mindful of Steve's head. Steve had hardly noticed, but he remembered now, that when Eddie pinned him to the wall, he'd thrown his hand behind Steve's skull as a quick cushion before moving it under his clothes.

"No, I'm fine," Steve panted lightly. He reached up to drag his thumb over Eddie's wet, reddened bottom lip. "Hungry though."

Eddie looked puzzled for a second, and Steve used the opportunity to sink down in front of him onto his knees. He loved the wicked energy that reentered Eddie's eyes. His hand stayed, softly resting on Steve's head as Steve fumbled with his belt buckle and jeans. Eddie's cock waited for him under a pair of plain white boxers. Steve wrapped his mouth over Eddie's hidden head, letting the cotton soak up his saliva but keeping that barrier between Eddie's hot cock and the entrance to Steve's throat. Eddie always liked it more when there was teasing, a bit of a challenge or game.

He whined above Steve who was deeply proud. That noise normally didn't come till later. He continued to warm and wet Eddie's cock through the boxers until Eddie moaned. "Come stand back up. Christ."

Steve looked up at Eddie from his knees and licked his lips, knowing the position had to look good. He'd seen Eddie in it often enough. He adopted a tone of fake innocence. "Is that what I should be doing?" He ran his lips over the now translucent fabric of Eddie's underwear. "You don't want me to stay down here?”

"Steve. You trying to get me to cream my pants?" Eddie began mumbling just a little. "…because it might be working. You know I can't last when you play slutty like that." Steve smirked and blew his hot breath over his work. Eddie groaned, and his free hand gently ran along the underside of Steve's jaw until he guided Steve to look up at him by his chin. "Do I have to ask again?"

"No. I'll stand back up." Steve waited till he rose, eye level with Eddie once again before punctuating his sentence. "Dude."

Eddie practically tackled him onto the bed. His hands were now intentionally working at Steve's shirt, and he wanted so badly to be wearing less but there were rules to hooking up in motels.

Steve protested against Eddie's exuberant kisses. He pulled back, giggly and bright. "What were you saying, bro?"

Steve rolled his eyes. Okay, so maybe it is the worst. "The coverlet," Steve grumbled, barely getting the complaint out.

Eddie paused, bouncing his eyebrows rapidly up and down. “Eager to get to the main event?”

Steve huffed. “Oh fuck you.”

“Manners Harrington. Say please?” Eddie ground down onto Steve’s lap sharply.

Steve tried to stifle a moan, but his time on his knees had got him just as hard. His hips jerked up in response to Eddie's press. Eddie stretched over top of him, gathering his hair into a high bun, securing it with an elastic as Steve watched him. The motions were fluid, practiced, simple but Steve adored it. He could watch that movement on a loop all day long. Eddie's messy tresses tucked up out of reach, his long limbs stretching. Steve caught the way his lithe muscles flexed under his shirt as he tied the hair above his head. Eddie's face flushed, and his eyes narrowed as he observed Steve’s study of him.

“What were you thinking for this rondevu?”

“I think you know exactly what you want to do,” Steve said, letting his hands run along the bottom edge of Eddie’s shirt. “And I am perfectly happy with that.”

“Yeah?” Eddie cocked his head, trying to remain aloof while failing to suppress a shit eating grin. He loved to be given control. No matter how they switched it up, no matter the positions or roles, Steve had yet to be disappointed when he let Eddie take the lead. Steve loved the impression he got of a mastermind tinkering away in Eddie's head as soon as he did get that control. The ‘dungeon master’ at work.

"Yes. You devil."

Eddie laughed at that. He wriggled up and off of Steve. “Okay. Alright do your little bedbug check.” Eddie grabbed his backpack, no doubt pulling out the lube while Steve stripped the covers and checked for anything unspeakable.

The most worrisome part of the bedding had been the coverlet, which Steve stripped completely off and then began to strip down himself. It was visually apparent that the brief break from hot and heavy foreplay didn't diminish either of their appetites. Steve reclined nude back onto the sheets. Eddie made a little show of taking off his shirt and then fully getting out of his pants. He winked and bent down, turning away from Steve.

“Eds. Oh my God.” Steve felt his entire face heat up. Eddie had a black butt plug inserted and was displaying it for him. He had it this whole time?

Steve remembered the call he'd received earlier that day. Eddie had been insistent on seeing him.

Steve's folks were in town, and it was Wayne's night off. Eddie wanted a bed so that nixed the car, and now Steve knew why. He prepped himself so nicely. It would’ve been an awful waste if we hadn’t worked something out. Their hook up plans were nearly dashed till Eddie mentioned the Days Inn the town over from Hawkins. It was used by travelers only as a last resort and it was their last resort too that night.

Though it wasn't the first time.

There'd been a few nights where Steve needed to be out of his house, away from them when they were home. He knew he needed to move out, but it was so easy to be lulled back into the ease of living in his house by himself when they left. It was only when his parents were around that he remembered how acute his need to sever ties with them was. And there were the odd days when Eddie was unable to host. Having Wayne discover them was something Eddie seemed desperate to avoid. Most of the time, Steve liked it best when Eddie was home with him. Often enough they'd hang out and cook or watch TV after or in between ‘antics.’ The house would actually feel like a home, and Steve could pretend for a little while that they were actually a couple.

Steve sat up and brushed his fingers lightly over Eddie's ass cheeks, pausing to tap the base of the plug. "You gorgeous freak," he murmured. He could feel his cock dripping onto his thigh just at the sight.

"You love it," Eddie said, sticking his tongue out.

"I do."

Steve had replied in an instant, quickly regretting it. He was sure his face was painted with the amorous truth. Luckily, Eddie was headed to the bathroom to finish his preparations.

Steve lazily tugged on his cock, trying to keep his anxieties at bay. I'm about to have amazing sex because he's amazing. I'm still good with this. Just because he's into casual friends-plus-certain-benefits… it doesn't mean he wants more. And that’s okay. I’m okay. He's never talked about past relationships… only encounters and fleeting partners. That's his style. This has been working. Right?

Eddie reentered, looking sort of triumphant. As his eyes wandered to Steve's cock, the gaze turned ravenous. "Ooo I am going to ride that big boy. You've no idea. I've been thinking about it all day."

Steve's stupid heart thudded faster in his chest. Thinking about me all day? No. No, he was thinking about my cock. Though I'd take that little admission anyway. Steve was not immune to flattery, but he was wary of it. Eddie's flattery at first had confused him, bold and silly. Nowadays it just made him melt into a puddle. By the time Eddie crawled over Steve, lube in hand, he felt it in his core. More than desperation.

"Eddie, I need you.'

"Course you do handsome. That's why we're at the cheapest motel in twenty miles." Eddie was nearly giddy as he sat atop Steve. His thighs flanking Steve's, their leg hair brushing against each other's skin, as Eddie adjusted in its own delightfully light friction.

Steve was already caught up in a swirl of anticipation as Eddie rose and then gripped his cock. Steve let out a noise that sounded something like a hybrid of a moan and a sigh of relief. Eddie chuckled and dripped a generous amount of lube over the tip of Steve's cock. He wet his lips, watching Steve shudder as the cool liquid dripped down his shaft. Eddie finally angled himself so his entrance ran over Steve's head. He felt how loose his ring was against his cock.

Steve moaned again. “Eddie, fuck. Need you,” he repeated, “need to feel you.”

Eddie shut his eyes and exhaled as he sat slowly down on Steve's cock. “Ah. You've already warmed that lube up. Love how hot your body gets for me.”

Steve's eyes were slitted against the agonizingly slow pressure, fighting the urge to give in and burst. He was so sensitive. Oh. He realized that Eddie hadn't put a condom on him. They were both tested and exclusive. Barebacking had been discussed, but it was still rare for them.

“You only say that…" Steve hissed as Eddie slipped lower. "Because you have poor circulation. You're always cool."

“I don't see anything wrong with my circulation.”

Steve tore his gaze from Eddie's pink cheeks, his contorting lips, to look at his cock hanging hard. As Eddie's body came closer to fully enveloping Steve's cock. Steve’s hands reached out on the bed, his fingers anchoring in the lumpy mattress. He couldn’t trust himself to let his hands wander to Eddie when he was topping from the bottom like that. He wanted Eddie to set the pace. His mind blanked a little when Eddie slid down the remainder of the way. He began to slowly grind, rolling his hips.

“Oh fuck," Steve cried as Eddie started to move up and down. The passes were slick and steady. The plug had done its job well.

Eddie threw back his head as he rode. The tip of his cock brushed against Steve's stomach, creating a wet spot on contact. “It feels so right in me angel, just right. Heavy and good. Want you to fill me up tonight. Can't stop dreaming about it.”

“Eddie, oh.” The words were eroding Steve's ability to hold back. The tension in him built, growing unbearable with each slide of Eddie’s body’s tight grip on his cock. Steve needed release. “Please, please,” he begged. “Can I please?”

“Already? Looks like I got you worked up so good angel,” Eddie panted.

“Please Eds," Steve choked out. Even his brain felt overheated now.

Eddie grunted and sat down hard. “Come on then. Grab me. Fill me big boy.”

Steve's hands flew to Eddie's hips, his thumbs against the scarred skin he adored because it matched his own. He thrust up, bouncing Eddie above him, and then Steve let go. His orgasm drained all the tension, and in its place a rush of good flooded through him. The feeling traveled up his spine as his hips jerked upward once more. Eddie cried out a little with the added movement. He gasped as he lifted off of Steve, sprawling backward on the bed.

Steve raised his head to see his cum drip from Eddie's ass. A bit loopy and almost dizzy from the natural high, Steve readjusted so he could crawl over Eddie's thighs. He zeroed directly in on Eddie’s twitching cock. He began to suck it at a dogged pace. He let it slip further and further into his mouth till he deep throated the pulsing member. Eddie cried again, this time, some sort of warning that did quite reach Steve's lust-addled brain. He felt Eddie’s thighs tense and backed his cock out just enough to easily swallow his climax coating his tongue. He was greedy, still sucking for more even when he could tell Eddie was spent.

They both lay back on the cheap sheets, regaining their breath. Steve felt an unwelcome, post-orgasmic, clarity seep into his mind. He didn't want to be there. It was understood, neither of them wanted to sleep in the motel, but Steve wanted more than just getting out of their current location. He wanted to be in a place where he could wrap his arms around Eddie, sleep and wake in a few hours for another round. Steve's heart panged from his longing to clean up with Eddie and lay back down in soft linens. He knew that what he really wanted was to stop worrying about the time or place he and Eddie could be together.

But we aren’t ‘together.’

Eddie moved off of the bed. He stood up, and Steve visually traced his scars as they stretched with the action. The grafted skin along Eddie’s hips was especially taut and shifted as he reached his arms over each other and twisted his waist. Steve wanted his hands to be there again against his skin. Eddie cracked his neck and turned back toward the bed, shaking his hair down from his bun. He looked gorgeous. Like sin and sex and sweetness. Eddie was everything Steve desired to hold. Hundreds of moments that he wanted to share with Eddie flashed through his mind.

I can’t do this anymore. Steve scooted over to the edge of the bed and sat up."Hey. Look, it's not that I don't… I don’t want this to stop. Okay?"

Eddie looked at him suspiciously. The expression slowly shifted into one of bewilderment before he replied, "okay?"

"I don’t… love the motel, the van, the alleyway that one time." Steve tried not to think too hard about letting the word love slip out. Truthfully, I don't love the secrecy.

"The quarry." Eddie chuckled, his eyes glazing briefly. "That time in your dad's office."

Steve had a viciously visceral flashback to a desktop digging into his thighs. "Fuck. Yeah, um, those times. I want more, but like… Eddie." Steve looked at Eddie through his lashes, trying to get the right words out. "I want… more."

"Babydoll, repeating the word is uh, not really helping me out here." Eddie brought some of his hair up to his lips and his shoulders pulled inward. "’Mm not sure what you’re getting at Steve."

"Can we…" Steve groaned. Come on. I can be honest with him. He’s one of my closest friends… that I’ve fallen for. I just have to say it. Steve agitatedly ran his hands through his hair and down his face.

Eddie observed Steve’s frustration with one eyebrow cocked, his face was a mix of amusement and confusion.

Steve met Eddie’s eyes, a warm chocolate brown, softening the longer they held each other's gaze. Steve swallowed. Start small. "Can I take you out?"

Eddie shrugged. "Sure?"

Steve stood up off the bed with surprise. That was too easy, right? He pushed down slight embarrassment, remembering they were still both butt ass naked. "Sure?"

"Sure. Definitely, but, uh…” His eyes darted around the dingy room. Eddie was circling his fingers, stretching out his hair tie between both hands. “Do you one better? Steve, do you... Do you like me? Like, for real like me?"

"Yeah." Steve nervously licked his lips, staring at Eddie's while he approached, already in his space. 'Like' isn't the half of it, Steve thought wretchedly. "I really do."

"Fuck. I was hoping so." Eddie beamed back at him. Then he slipped into a slightly cockier smile. "I just needed you to be brave and tell me sweetheart."

Steve's heart leapt in his chest. 'Sweetheart' was reserved for Eddie's guitar. Everytime Eddie called him pet names there was normally a tease involved but now… He swallowed. “Eds. Look, I’ve fucked around. I didn’t know if that’s what you wanted. What you expected… but I can’t pretend like it's what I like anymore.” Eddie’s eyes flashed, a sadness tinged them. “I want to be in a relationship, y’know? Work towards having.'' Steve bit his lip and looked away, speaking so quietly he worried that Eddie might not hear him. He wasn’t ashamed of how he felt, just scared. He was terrified that Eddie wouldn’t want the same thing. “A solid, loving relationship. I want that so…”

"Hey.” Eddie's hands slotted against Steve's face, holding it so he had to face him; Eddie's thumbs were against his jaw. It didn’t feel rough or hasty like their normal touches. It felt steady, safe. “I’ve been in love with you since I saw you pick up the kids the first time. You did this crazy handshake hug thing with Henderson… Took me a while to be honest with myself about it, but I was a goner from that moment on." Eddie sighed heavily. "I also have had my heart broken by guys trying stuff out with me, so I promised myself I wouldn’t confess. Just go with it. Have fun with what I could get."

Steve gasped at the confession, and Eddie laughed at his response, kissing his lips. When he pulled back, Eddie seemed to tremble a little. Steve realized, if what he was saying was true, this was the first time Eddie was lowering that wall with him. Sex had been one thing; this was relationships, romance, love. Steve never wanted to see his wall go up again. He wanted that access, the genuine Eddie, all the time.

“Eddie, I’m sorry. I'm so sorry if I made you feel like I was toying with you.” Steve rested his hands on Eddie’s lower back, comforting himself with the contact. “I honestly… I thought this was all just what you wanted. You’re so flirty, joking all the time. I thought you hooking up with me was just… Hell,” he cursed. “I’m an idiot."

“It’s not a game for me Steve." Eddie's hands dropped down, one against Steve’s neck the other lay on his chest. Steve’s heartbeat quickened. “Not to say I don't like playing with you. But not with feelings. I’m starting to think we were both pretty big idiots here. Though the sex has been phenomenal."

Steve laughed and kissed Eddie’s cheeks and smiling mouth. "No more cheap motels?"

Steve could not think of a more endearing sight then Eddie Munson as he warmly agreed. "No more sneaking around sweetheart."

Steve's mouth went dry, and he managed to swallow before the words came tumbling out. "Move in with me?"

"Woah, what?"

"Let's get our own place.” Eddie looked at him slightly stunned, but Steve knew with absolute certainty. That's what I want. I want to be with him. “No sneaking around? Well, I’ve been in love with you since the boathouse. Eddie, I wanna come home to you."

Eddie's eyes grew a little unfocused, teary before he appeared to jolt back into himself. “Yeah. Yes."

"Yes?"

"Hell yes. But before that.” Eddie’s wicked spark was back. “We gotta sit down and make our own sex playlist. No more shuffle."

"What? You weren’t feeling ‘the rush?”’ Steve grinned back, trying to contain the boundless joy he felt growing in his chest.

He stopped Eddie's protesting groan with a kiss.

[dsenvs3000w24]

Nature in Music/Music in Nature

I think that music is very common in nature, and the more you look for it the more examples you can find. The obvious example of this is in the various melodies found in bird calls. However, many other things can make equally beautiful sounds. Walking around in Guelph, the sounds of toads and frogs calling add a bass-like musical drone or rhythmic beats. The crickets and cicadas provide more of a treble-y synth-like sound that I have spent multiple hours trying to recreate for my own music. The groaning of swaying trees can provide even more interesting sounds. Even the rustling of grasses and leaves can have a really lush sound that fills out the musical landscape similar to how people tend to add or leave in white noise in musical recordings to make them sound less empty. Some of the abiotic elements of nature can also be musical. The wind can literally whistle or function like a rising or falling synth effect as it changes intensities. The sound of moving water can also provide interesting heterogeneity to the background sounds.

Nature is also an essential part of music. Every human culture has some form of music, which seems to indicate we are naturally inclined to make and appreciate music (Gray et al., 2001). Similarly, a very common feature of good music is that it has an “organic” type of sound. This can either come from the sounds used and the production style of the song, or from the song structure and melodies or rhythms used. I find that I tend to like music that sounds more organic and has many imperfections and variations in the sounds used which can give a very warm quality to the music. Generally, this warm organic sound comes from using more analog equipment and real instruments instead of working digitally and using synthesized instruments, but many people will actually edit their digitally recorded music to try and emulate that analog warmth. This organic sound can be heard very easily in the sound quality of some of my favorite albums such as Pure Guava by Ween or this unreleased demo by them:

The vocals in this song are extremely warm and buttery, while the acoustic guitar and analog synth sounds add to the warm natural sound - the song also uses lots of natural imagery in the lyrics to add to the warm sunny vibe

However, another way to incorporate that “organic” sound can be through the actual structure or melodies of the song. This is a frequent part of improvisational music such as Jazz, Psychedelic Rock, or Klezmer music. Here is one example of this that I really enjoy and has a mix of both the organic sound quality and the organic sounding melodies and rhythm:

This recording sounds very warm and organic which is supported by the organic melodies and rhythmic and melodic variation throughout the song

Music can also be a great way to interpret nature to others (Beck et al., 2018). Music can be used to translate the emotional aspects of nature to an audience or to provide information in a memorable way (Beck et al., 2018). Well-made music can make nature interpretation more immersive and enjoyable for people and is a great way to translate and spread desired messages (Beck et al., 2018). Overall, we seem to naturally enjoy natural sounding music about nature :)

A song that immediately reminds me of being in nature is a song I made this past summer titled Hippy Dippy.

I used some of the warm and natural techniques to give this song an upbeat and sunny feel

During the summer I went for a series of long walks by myself through a local trail and tried to be mindful of the warmth and vibrancy of nature in the late summer. I then tried to translate those feelings into a song that I made for my partner. Listening to it both reminds me of them and of the warmth of the sun in August, the lush greens and yellows of open fields, and the vibrant colours of wildflowers. I get a similar upbeat feeling to walking around in the sunlight in summer when I walk around and listen to this song in the winter even when it’s cold and grey.

Works Cited

Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage: For A Better World. SAGAMORE Publishing, 226.

Gray, P., Krause, B., Atema, J., Payne, R., Krumhansl, C., & Baptista, L. (2001). The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music. Science. 291. 52-54.

[thesinglesjukebox]

YOASOBI - "IDOL"

Not a Jocelyn cover -- though there are parallels...

[7.79]

Ryo Miyauchi: You can call "idols," in particular the human exchanges and the parasocial relationships built around them, a lot of things. Using the words of Ai Hoshina from the manga-turned-anime Oshi no Ko, Ayase and Ikuta Lilas call it a lie. A performance would have neutralized, artifice would have made the critique more academic, and maybe fake would have softened the blow. A lie digs deep because it implies that I, the fan, am partly complicit in believing what I'm convinced to be true, whether or not I am aware of being sold to. And YOASOBI say the quiet parts fucking loud, starting from the most bombastic production they've made: a monstrous blast of brass, a blinding flash of synths, a trap-pop breakdown, and a gothic choir singing "you're my savior, you're my saving grace." But as "IDOL" places the onus also on the idol herself for knowingly selling a lie to her beloved fans, how could anyone resist buying into the spectacle? Ikuta embodies the superhuman ability of Ai Hoshina via her vocal performance: not only does she seamlessly maneuver through the trickiest melodies and a demanding production, she inspires in us the feeling that we can recreate the magic, too, as evident from the countless TikTok dance snippets and YouTube vocal covers uploaded this year. She fakes it until she makes it, fabricating her value before her reputation catches up to the level of work put in. But she also convinces herself this is how to love until her little fib starts to feel true. In a macabre, perfectly meta way, it's the idol's own dying words that give the song its most validating, emotionally moving moment, as she finally speaks her love into actual being: "I, I said it at last/I know it's not a lie as I'm voicing these words/I love you." I, for one, know all this is a lie, though it doesn't make the feelings any less real. [10]

Crystal Leww: Structurally and sonically, "IDOL" borrows elements that I associate with the two major, somewhat external-facing Asian pop music scenes -- the racing feeling and sweet vocal of J-pop and the cut-and-paste nature, especially second-verse half-time rap, of K-pop. It's been fun to observe this cross over into both -- on TikTok you can see not only J-pop idols covering the dance but a big contingent of K-pop idols doing the same. Ironically, all these idols are doing the little dance with a smile to a song about the dark side of the idol industry, which I guess is something that all idols from all countries can agree on after all. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There's too much going on here! Which, frankly, I love. Every single second of "Idol" feels stuffed to the gills with sonic ideas, burning through riffs and hooks like they've got an infinite supply. Some of it is more familiar to YOASOBI's earlier work (those mathy guitar-synth-piano passages, some of the more bombastic orchestral touches), while other parts feel more novel (those cadences on the verses call to mind J.I.D and Ski Mask; the "Heys" at the end are so very Mustard-coded; someone please tell me where those choral touches are drawn from). But it all comes together mostly by virtue of the raw power of juxtaposition. If you slowed this down and tried to dissect the individual parts of "Idol" I'm not sure it would all hang together, but why would you want to do that? The sick thrill of "Idol" -- both in sound and in lyrical message -- is in the rush and overwhelm of Big Pop Moments TM, of the joy of each individual detail as it wears you down in turn. [8]

Dorian Sinclair: Ayase is a hell of a writer and producer, and on "IDOL" he makes something that feels new for Yoasobi, even if he falls back on a few of his favourite tricks (that busy keyboard line does not feel meaningfully different from the one in "Yoru ni Kakeru" or a half-dozen songs since, even if there's a lot more around it to distract you). But if there was any doubt that Lilas Ikuta is as essential, "IDOL" should conclusively lay that to rest. It's two, or even three, unrelated songs that have been glued together, asking completely different things from the singer and doing little to ease the transition between sections. She navigates the transitions effortlessly, skipping between registers and delivery styles and making the whole thing cohere with her performance. The song's about a fictional character, but it's Ikuta's coronation. [9]

Taylor Alatorre: "IDOL" serves as an interesting companion piece to another viral Japanese smash of 2023, "INTERNET YAMERO" from the game Needy Streamer Overload. Both tread similar thematic ground: the tyranny of the public image, the codependency of entertainer and audience, the desperate search for a "savior" or "angel" in the wreckage of a mediated age. The latter, however, due to its origin in an indie visual novel, is able to shed all concerns of good taste and indulge its most ear-piercing denpa fantasies, of the kind that would be unbecoming for the theme to a Doga Kobo anime. The constraints placed upon "IDOL"'s composition may be necessary, and even beneficial to the franchise as a whole, but they are palpable throughout. It stretches against its need to serve as both a credible idol song and as a fashionably cynical take on idols, and as a portent of dark events to come -- a tough mandate indeed. Even with all of its trap interludes, wotagei chanting, and Square Enix gospel choirs, Oshi no Ko's theme ends up sounding not all that different than any random OP on the MyAnimeList top 200. Which is to say, it still pretty much bangs. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: Blurbing Stray Kids' "LALALALA" last month, I wrote: "I'm a complete mark for any pop song that sounds like its true spiritual home is on a Warcraft soundtrack." Nothing has changed, nor will it. Other things I'm a complete mark for: orchestra hits, key changes, faux harpsichord. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The half-time, militaristic reprise of the intro sequence got a chuckle out of me, as did the swiftness with which it abandons the idea. I've heard countless songs that have given me constant sonic whiplash, but "IDOL" is the rare one where you can envision that everyone involved was full-on grinning, excited to see what they could get away with. [6]

Brad Shoup: The audacity! My favorite bit is Ikura's swiping the "HUMBLE." flow for funsies: just one tool furiously, cartoonishly tossed out of YOASOBI's bag. It's like watching someone solve a Rubik's Cube while setting off a series of controlled demolitions. [9]

Nortey Dowuona: The hammering of the rap parts is so deafening; the rapping, filtered and compressed to the nth degree, has to be left alone to capture your attention. The piano line emerges at the pre-chorus but is quickly squashed by the drum programming that lightens the farther it stretches away from rap, leaving the voice to settle into the song instead of battling the synth horns stolen off a Southside beat from 2014. The theme rewards you with a brief piano line and the overly processed voice singing in the comfortable center of their range, allowing you to appreciate the creative excitement with which the producer and composer combined all these stylish sounds. But next time the production team composes a song like this, either find a vocalist who can comfortably handle the heavy-handed hammers of the rap verses, or tamp down to let this light uwu cutesy vocal shine. [8]

Michael Hong: YOASOBI's songs often sound like they could afford to be a touch faster than they are, and it's no different here. The topline of "IDOL" comes off as stiff, particularly across the opening clangs and the jumps of the chorus. As the duo race through all these ideas, Ikura stalls into a moment of exhaustion, as if the track's punch has started to weigh heavy on her. [4]

Ian Mathers: This one is genuinely baffling to me. I can't really parse out why some parts of it make my brain feel like it's fizzing pleasurably, while other parts trigger the avoidant feelings I get with certain strains of prog rock. Even worse, I'm not sure I can keep track of which parts are which from one listen to another. I love/don't love when it gets more measured and stompy. I love/don't love when it gets quieter, or when it just fully goes for it. Depending on which way this resolves in my brain, I'm either never going to seek out "IDOL" again, or going to start playing it on a loop. Hard to score that! [7]

Anna Katrina Lockwood: After reading up on Oshi no Ko, the anime for which "Idol" is the theme, this song made sense in a new way. It sounds like an idol group song shoved backward through a hedge at SMTown Tokyo in 2013, or a Dempagumi.inc song that was written by Yoo Young-jin and then performed with way more fervor than required. While I don't think it's required to enjoy this song, being familiar with the format of the titular idol, a profession with a decent amount of regional variation across Asia but entirely distinct from the Western boy/girl group, makes "Idol" more effective to me. The song really captures the troubling parasocial aspects of the idol industrial complex, issues that I feel a duty to grapple with as a long-time idol group fan. Parasocial attachment is by no means exclusive to idols, but the heady mix of accessibility, human as allegory, and physical beauty increases the likelihood of issues, sometimes with serious consequences for the idols themselves. This is all without even mentioning "Idol" being the runaway megahit of the year in a particular niche, which doesn't really demonstrate anything other than the song's wide appeal. Hey, a good song is a good song, and it's nice when that trumps everything. [9]

Leah Isobel: "IDOL" is so literal, and so garish, and so much, in a way that doesn't normally work for me. Its rapid consecutive U-turns, its pileup of shiny baubles, makes me feel like Yoasobi is playing a trick -- like they're using these techniques to gussy up what is, at heart, a relatively familiar story about the underbelly of fame. And then the final key change-into-chorus transition happens and, yeah, okay, I get it. The shifts in mood and mode raise the stakes so high that the last turnaround feels like squeezing an ocean through an arrow slit: for one person to hold the attention of millions is, after all, an impossible virtuosity. [7]

Tara Hillegeist: To love a piece of art is not, by necessity, to identify myself with the work involved in its making or feel any precious defensiveness about its merits. Indeed, when appreciating art for what it is and what it can be, it is often a richer form of love to come to that feeling through studiously antagonistic critique instead of immediately sincere affection. I already know all the work's faults, the reasons it's a failed work; and yet I still find it worth your time. There is a chasm of difference -- the kind that runs down the vein of this discourse, more often than it cuts across -- between loving art and loving "an artist," in the singular, as the bespoke creature/object/entity/producer/"person" that makes the art in question. There are many ways to prevent myself, as a critic, from falling into that trap, as many ways as there are critics. And with so many of these ways of putting distance between myself and my subjects of choice, it's easy to grow jaded and callous, to forget that these performances began as people, to make light of this business -- for it is a business, for what it does to the lives at its forefront. To crack jokes about the strain it puts on them to be the wick at the center of the candle, while we watch them flicker, flare out, and fade. Distance renders my protections as perverse as the alternative.

To find myself in love with "the artist" that makes the art I love, though -- there is no escape from the parasocial realignment of one's approach that follows. A part of me has already accepted it will betray the sensible ethics of the arrangement between that art's creator and its consumer, on behalf of a belief in the righteousness, the decency, the fundamental moral worthiness, of this image I've chosen to perceive within the actions of an otherwise total stranger -- a betrayal all the more dangerously stupid on my end for the obvious awareness that this is the image they want to sell me on. As an appreciator of art, as a fair critic, the worst mistake I can make is to take that performative sincerity at its word. It's even worse when that collapse of situational awareness leaves me with a sense of entitlement, in either direction -- a sense that the transaction involved is anything more than the exchange of the pleasure of creating for the pleasure of consuming, that in return for the joy I take in their ability to synthesize "truth" into "performance," I now owe them a debt in the form of devotion ... or, worse, that they owe me anything in kind. No matter how chaste or compassionate or self-effacing the gesture may feel, it remains a trap. I'm in love with being lied to. They're in love with lying to me. At best, it only leads to the tragedy of heartbreak -- a tragedy all the more cruel if one of us really meant it. It's enough to send one screaming to the madhouse, thinking about it seriously. Maybe that's why we all try not to. But sometimes, we let ourselves forget. It's so easy to do -- as easy as we say it is not to do it.

There was this ... girl, I liked, on the come-up in the entertainment world. She'd started as a wrestler, and I'd been what you might call a fan of her mother, a well-established name in the industry. So I was already paying attention when her mother introduced her in the ring to say she'd be pursuing the family business. I was already a fan of hers when it was announced she too would step back from wrestling to pursue a career in the wider entertainment industry. I thought she deserved the limelight, that she was made for it, that anyone could see how hard-working she was and how much she'd earned their adoration. In turn, I felt entitled to following her personal Twitter, because seeing her messages on my timeline -- whether upon waking or before bed -- and giving them the occasional like made me feel like I was supporting her in her pursuits, whatever she did. As a wrestling fan, seeing her succeed felt like its own reward, "one of ours" making good, one step at a time. In K-pop terms, you could've said she was one of my biases; in Japan, an "oshi," from the verb for "support."

Maybe you've already guessed how this story ends. It made international news, after all. They changed laws because of it. Her mother made sure they did. But for me, the volcanic upheaval that resulted was on a much more personal and unavoidable scale. All I saw, at first, was someone struggling to put her best foot forward and finally getting what looked to be her big break -- on a reality show, but one of the most popular reality shows on television at the time, where thousands of people could see her! I'd wake up every morning, eager to see whether she'd say anything new about it. So I was already awake and alert, locked down in COVID quarantine on that cold morning in the spring of 2020, when she tweeted out her suicide note for all her friends and followers to see, and followed it up with picture proof of how deeply serious she meant her attempt to be. I sat there, a helpless voyeur, those pictures a constant companion. I waited, one of the lucky few, to learn whether what my "support" had led me to witness being done "live" could be undone, or whether I'd have to live the rest of my life knowing my last memories of someone I thought I'd valued as a person would be those bloody images, all because I "cared" so much to keep tabs on her social media on the regular.

Within the hour, we all knew the answer. Her friends and family were able to at least get Twitter to take the images down before they had to put out any further statements themselves. By the time the wider world awoke to learn the news, the pronouncement of her death was a matter of recorded, impersonal fact, accompanied by photographs of her alive in the ring and on set, rather than the catastrophic tableau of judgmental violence that the internet and the television crew drove her to inflict upon herself. The price I would pay for my mistake, in thinking my support of her entitled me to knowing as much about her as was publicly knowable, would be that my witness was as much my own fault as my worthlessness. I could only live with what I'd seen and damn myself for why.

I threw myself into other spheres of my interest -- "virtual YouTubers" -- in the vain hope that my awareness of the failings of the genre would cushion me from such a tragic mistake another time. I was no stranger to the cynical mode in which the subculture operated, using surreal motion-tracked avatars as a means by which tech startups could showcase and sell their proprietary apps. I was hardly uninformed on its casually abusive handling of their talent and lax management policies. Before I'd ever started engaging with any of the talent responsible, I'd heard about managers needing to be fired for power-harassment who went on to stalk and threaten their former clients. I already knew about performers needing to go on hiatus because their audiences turned violent over the sound of their mic accidentally picking up a roommate's presence. I already knew about performers needing to reveal their own behind-the-scenes identities to prevent themselves from being replaced as the voice of the model they'd made famous.

Naturally, the artists I grew to appreciate most in the scene were the ones most aware, if not outright forceful, about reminding their audience where the boundaries were between the audience, the audience's perception of themselves, and themselves, the person putting those perceptions and boundaries in place. One of those artists mentioned that one of her favorite manga was this niche series that she felt was the most relatable and compelling depiction of the ins and outs of being, at once, both a performer and someone who had performers she loved in turn: a series called Oshi no ko. I jotted it down as something to look into, later -- it sounded like a pretty out-there title, so I didn't expect I'd find many, if any, translations of it; there certainly weren't any being published legally at that time.

But she kept bringing it up, and soon I started hearing other VTubers doing the same, so I took the curiosity more seriously. Two or three volumes in, a strange horror overtook me. The events that led to what I was reading were anything but events that I had any connection to, although I'd noticed similarities between them and real events in the industry. But now the characters in the manga had been roped into performing on a reality show, one of the most-watched television shows at that time ... and there it was. Ripped from reality, turned into performative art: the same events that I could never forget happening, had never really forgiven myself for putting myself in the position of being a helpless witness to. They had been turned into a cathartic lie -- because in the fictional tale of Oshi no ko, the protagonists, who had become her friends, were able to prevent her story from ending the same way: the way, in the fiction, that they hadn't been able to prevent their mother's ... and the way, in reality, that they couldn't have prevented their inspiration's. Through the artists' efforts, I realized I wasn't suffering that heartache alone. I, too, didn't deserve to regret having lied to myself enough about what I loved that I turned that love into a lie, that I loved a lie that can never be true. Maybe that, too, is a lie, but it's no less a lie than the belief that as an audience, our personal responsibilities should ever matter to anyone but ourselves. Cut to the spring of 2023: Oshi no ko, shocking me to the core, receives an animated adaptation. Tapped for the opening theme is YOASOBI, a group comprised of a former idol and a former Vocaloid producer, mostly known for moody, emotional rock songs. The song they make for it is this one: "IDOL"; the charts make the rest into obvious history, and the lyrics speak for themselves. So now that lie belongs to the rest of you. For what it's worth, I hope you love it as much as I did. [10]

[liliallowed]

end world normopathy lyrics

(a music video is literally playing in my brain)

Noelle/angel/angelfollower

sans/blighted lightners

spamton/jevil/secret bosses/lighted darkners

Kris/demon/demonworshiper

ralsei/darkners/puppets

The path you showed me how to walk was cold

Algorithmic dreams, a vessel of your soul

Through her eyes of perfect ambiguity

We were born to keep the world in harmony

And through the days we saw this place create

Normopathy that would collate

The passages in detail on your palms

A world enveloped proudly by your heart

The gift of life would soon impart

The tears were born from fires of a psalm

A spark alight behind those eyes

Ensured damnation as a failed attempt

Enlightened windows to the mind

were damaged still

While your claws laid across your chest

And now you're all alone

.

.

.

Fleeting words in pen, I tell the story of Salpêtrière

Dissonant again, and shown disorganized, without a prayer

Cornered by a psyche in a world that never truly ends

Though you'll never die, you've found that

All eyes are staring at your hands

The core of my design

Your eyes look down at mine

It never truly ends

As metal breaks and bends

The path you walk eternally is cold

Knowing clarity is out of our control

I can't understand the way you seem to pray

But reality's contorting at your say

A new façade, a prophet's masquerade

You recreated on your face

Those eyes designed and carried by your fate

Our hands embodied roles to automate

To never feel, to never break

The writing on the wall remains the same

And yet you live between these states

Never belonging, in a futile daze

But were the ethics appraised?

Now it's too late...

I fear you're lost in the holy gate!

The core of my design

Your eyes look down at mine

It never truly ends

As metal breaks and bends

As metal breaks (And bends, it breaks, and bends, it breaks, and bends, it breaks) As metal breaks (And bends, it breaks, and bends, it breaks, and bends, it breaks) As metal breaks (And bends, it breaks, and bends, it breaks, and bends, it breaks) As metal breaks

[segway to dusttale]

Listen, this is not a question,

I have tried and I have failed

If you wanna kill the world

You should start by getting it backwards

I know that I can feel the pain in my heart

And we've had to say goodbye to all illusions that are shattered and gone

To see the world again

And my sister just gives me that weird, surreal look

To see the world again

To see the world again

[thoughtsbyharu]

Born Pink Album Thoughts

My thoughts regarding Blackpink's 2nd Full Album

Hello and Hi!

A little bit overdue but this is gonna be a short review of Born Pink album.

Born Pink is the second full album of Blackpink, a south korean girl group under YG entertainment.

Just a PSA: I'm a Blink so I might be a bit biased with my opinions ><

I remember the hype of this last year because they rarely release comebacks! The moment I heard there was a FULL album, I immediately pre-ordered all versions.

Anyways, this review will be super short compared with the one I did with Olivia's Sour album so without further ado, let's go!

1. Pink Venom

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts:

Ok don't be mad but on first listen, I absolutely hated the chorus. I love everything except that chorus. But well since I keep streaming, it kinda grew on me 😂 Now it's my freakin anthem lol.

JenLisa rap parts were fire and ChaeSoo bridges were amazing! The "Blackpiiiink" chant was amazing as well. We sounded like a cult when we were chanting it on the concert ><

2. Shut Down

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts:

I LOVE this song no matter what anyone says. For me, it's one of their best title songs Jisoo's chorus part is fire, what a bias wrecker. I like the mix of classical La Campanella strings and modern beats. Also, the MV gave me goosebumps and made me cry a little. I've been a blink since their debut and seeing them reference and recreate their previous MV scenes made me realize that they made it despite all the hate that they got. My girls came so far 🥺

Also the lyrics?? Like hello! It's obviously for those who are dragging them down. My favorite lines are "Bunch of wannabes that wanna be me, me three of I was you" and "Praying for my downfall many have tried baby" like yes girls tell 'em!

Whip it whip it whip it is hard to pronounce tho haha

3. Typa Girl

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts:

This song has been stuck in my head for months. I lost count of how many times I had this on repeat haha. I absolutely love the beats and the line, "I bring money to the table not your dinner".

Lyrics is a bit of a pick me girl moment but eh, it's good and catchy 🤷‍♀️

Also, has anyone watched their Coachella set for this song??? The choreo? The creative direction?? EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT. Blackpink headlining Coachella is well deserved 👏👏

4. Yeah Yeah Yeah

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts:

A song written by Rosie and Jichu! Finally members getting credited amirite?? I actually like it. It's kinda perfect for encores and ending their concerts. Has a retro vibe.

GIF is from yours truly~ They sang this song in Born Pink Bulacan!

5. Hard to Love

Rating: 10/10

Thoughts:

My absolute favorite. This is what I expected Rose's solo to be like haha. OTG and Gone are good but Hard to Love is THE song for her. This song is stuck in my playlist for months. The guitar is just ❤️❤️

Please Rosie sing this on your tours or concerts I'm begging you.

6. The Happiest Girl

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts:

It's a pretty...sad song. The lyrics hurt my heart and soul. Maybe it's a song when you are going through a breakup.

I was shookt when Lisa sang! She has such a pretty voice.

I gave it a 7 score bc well it's not really my cup of tea (don't attack me pls). It's good tho don't get me wrong but personally won't have it on repeat.

7. Tally - 10/10

This song is one of my faves. It has a pretty great message about just being yourself and never minding what other people says.

For me, this song reflects them SO much. Let's be honest here, they've been through so much unneccessary hate. Everything they do, no matter how small, is just always under scrutiny. Like, give them a f**cking break 🙄 So yes, I imagine that this is THE comfort song for them. We say f*ck when we feel it \m/

8. Ready for Love

Rating: 7.5/10

Thoughts:

I actually like this song why do other Blinks shade it so much ����

The bridges are probably my favorite! Jisoo + bridges are such a good combination

-----------------------------------

Top 5 Songs:

Hard to Love

Tally

Typa Girl

Shut Down

Pink Venom

---------------------------------

Overall Score: 8.3/10

[stargazing-and-peoplewatching]

a collection of lyrics that make me think of someone else

i think it's time to go now i think my curtain's falling just don't forget about me when you get out of college if it's my final album and if i am forgotten i hope i made you smile that's all i ever wanted

both my current college friends who are already graduating next year and my old high school friends who i feel like i'm falling out of touch with. i have this,, fascination with being forgotten, you'll see.

am i ready for love? or maybe just a best friend should there be a difference do you have instructions? maybe i'm stuck on what i see on tv i grew up on disney but this don't feel like disney

i love you, angel. i'm not going to leave, but god this lyric plays through my brain every other day. i knew how hard this would be and it still knocked me off my feet. i'm going to keep trying.

maybe a hundred bad days made a hundred good stories a hundred good stories make me interesting at parties

i miss you. you introduced me to ajr and this was the first song you showed me. you thought it fit sylvie and the time, and i think it fits you now. i wonder where you are. i hope you're okay.

and i took a job for just july but feels like i might be here for life yeah, i'm in it now, i'm in it now could i start again somehow? ... so i spent last night blowing up my life now you won't see me again cheers to the front, and cheers to the back and cheers to the 2010s i could hate my guts when the sun comes up but i like myself like this i like myself like this

this is for the same person as the last one. i remember you saying how you liked this song when the album came out. you had that shitty taco bell job over the summer and i haven't really heard from you since. we still wish you happy birthday. we leave posts for you like leaving a light on for when you come back. i would get it if you don't though. maybe you're figuring out how to move on. know we love you.

two months since you got back how have you been and are you bored yet? ... that makes a lot of sense this place is such great motivation for anyone trying to move the fuck away from hibernation ... time moves so damn slow i swear i feel my organs failing i stopped caring 'bout a month ago since then it's been smooth sailing i would leave if only i could find a reason i'm mean because i grew up in new england i got dreams but i can't make myself believe them spend the rest of my life with what could've been and i will die in the house that i grew up in i'm homesick

you don't like noah kahan. i associate you with this song because when it came on at 2am you said you don't listen to him because his songs would be too real for you. you flipped off my laptop at the chorus. that night we talked about how we tried to get out of our childhood spaces. that's the easiest way i can put it, because nyc doesn't really count as a hometown, does it?

are you tired of me yet? i'm a little sick right now but i swear that when i'm ready i will fly us out of here

nowadays i only go to you when i don't have anyone else to talk to. i try not to, you deserve better than that. yknow you were probably the first transmasc person i ever met. you matter so much to me and you were a lifeline and we don't really talk anymore. it's probably my fault. back when we were younger, back when i didn't know how to play the ukulele, you played and i sang and that was the first interaction i remember having. i kept trying to recreate it. that last time didn't feel the same.

so can i call you tonight? i'm trying to make up my mind just how i feel could you tell me what's real anymore? i hear your voice on the phone now i know i'm not alone just how i feel could you tell me what's real anymore? cause i wouldn't know.

it feels crazy, i feel crazy thinking i've lost a dozen people to distance and time. you all are right there but it doesn't feel the same anymore. we're all growing up and we don't have the time anymore. yknow, i'm thinking of doing my old experiment again. i could. and then maybe i'd feel close to you guys again. i miss staying up with you all. now i just do it alone.

we were tight knit boys, brothers in more than name you would kill for me and i knew that i'd do the same and it cut me sharp hearing you'd gone away but everything goes away, yeah, everything goes away but i'm gonna be here till i'm nothing but bones in the ground and i was there when you grew restless left in the dead of night and i was there when three months later you were standing at the door all beat and tired and i stepped aside

i think about those characters we made once. you were the murderer and i was the ghost. the days when we were the closest pair feel like forever ago, and if i said it like that, you'd probably say it's both of our fault. that i can't be mad that i also let our friendship fall through. it is my fault, isn't it. every duo i write is what i wanted us to be. i miss you. i thought we'd stick by each other's side forever. i know it's my fault.

[battymuses]

Mary Dahl Headcanons

I can’t get over how many of these lyrics fit (my take on) Mary Dahl.

“Don't do love, don't do friends I'm only after success” Mary was relatively unloved growing up. Her parents were focused on her acting success so they could feed off her earnings (and not be ashamed of her condition). When very young, she tried to earn their love through her success. As for friends, she didn’t really have any. Every interaction was surface level or outright horrible for her with others’ cruelty. She grew hardened over the years and became rude to those around her, believing no one would ever truly like her for who she was. This earned her the reputation as a brat, even in her adult years. Her only focus was the success of her career and enjoying what it could buy her. “Don't need money, don't need fame I just want to make a change “ Deep down, Mary knows she doesn’t want money or fame. She wants love and feels she could only get that if she makes an impossible change; growing up. “I know exactly what I want and who I want to be I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine” Mary wants to be a “normal” woman. Because she can’t, she went through her routines both as an actress and a recluse. “I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy” Mary did try to take hold of her own destiny, but failed. “One track mind, one track heart If I fail, I'll fall apart” When Mary sets her heart on something, she’ll do anything for it. When it comes to failure, she crashes hard. “Maybe it is all a test 'Cause, I feel like I'm the worst So I always act like I'm the best” This ties into Mary’s old diva mentality. “If you are not very careful Your possessions will possess you” Mary is a hoarder, doing her best to hold onto anything that can give her some semblance of happiness. “TV taught me how to feel Now real life has no appeal” If this isn’t Mary Dahl, I don’t know what is. She was so unhappy in her life, she felt the only way to go forward was to recreate a television show in which her character was loved. “I'm gonna live, I'm gonna fly I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna die” Basically Mary’s ups and downs and her mental health issues, including depression. (I just love this song and Mary.)

[absolutebl]

Hiii. A bit of a two tiered question :) I watched the end of Not Me and the scene when DanYok are reunited at the painting Yok did. In my mind they're deciding to make a go of it being a couple, did you get the same sort of take from that scene? Just with Auld Lang Syne playing in the background where a lyric is 'should auld acquaintances be forgot? Although Yok does sat to Dan about keeping their promise 🤔

Also I really adored DanYok and their chemistry. I would love Gawin and First to work together again. On Twitter a lot of people were tagging GMMTV asking for the actors to be given their own series. I was wondering do GMMTV take notice of fan opinions if it's in great numbers? I know Between Us, BounPrem was given their own series? 🤔

DanYok

In my mind they're deciding to make a go of it being a couple, did you get the same sort of take from that scene?

Yep.

I really adored DanYok and their chemistry. I would love Gawin and First to work together again.

First has a new BL coming from GMMTV called The Eclipse where he's paired with Khaotung that I m actually HUGELY excited about - much more so than the idea of more DanYok or Gawin & First together. Sorry. 

So let’s get my bias out of the way and talk about BL couples and GMMTV studio marketing tactics, shall we? 

GMMTV and Co-Branded BL Couples 

I actually take The Eclipse as a sign that GMMTV is considering actively bifurcating their pairs. By which I mean, they seem to be taking a different approach to BL couple brands these days depending on the pairing:

It used to be that they firmly cast a pair and then keep trying that pair over and over again in the hopes that they would stick. No other option available to the actors. (In an eternal quest to recreate the magic of OffGun.)

These days it's different. They seem to have 3 tactics now. 

TACTIC ONE - EARTHMIX 

Some pairs they are sticking together and keeping that way because they get great sponsorship deals, have good talent range, and consistent chemistry. EarthMix is a successful newer example. PondPawin for perhaps a less successful but still trying attempt. 

This, I would call: the old fashioned approach.

TACTIC TWO - FORCEBOOK 

Other pairs they are throwing at the wall to see if they stick (PoddKhaotung tried and failed, I feel like this is ForceBook right now). But if they don't stick, they'll recast again opposite someone else. (This is actually how EarthMix happened, remember there was EarthNew and EarthWhite before them?) GMMTV can do this because they have a HUGE stable of actors. We can see them experimenting with these tactics in the Safe House reality TV shows. ForceBook does seem to be working, although probubly not as well as GMMTV hoped. 

I would call this: the wide talent pool approach. 

TACTIC THREE - KHAOTUNG 

Otherwise they now seem to be okay with just floating a talented actor, trying him in different matches (which they are currently doing with Khaotung). These actors may never end up in a permanent pairing since they work well with multiple partners and can do side BL plots etc... 

This is the most modern approach. 

First & Gawin both seem to fall into this third category.

Which is a VERY long way of saying I don’t see GMMTV putting them into the GMMTV pantheon of permanent pairs. They’re too valuable as assets separated from each other. 

ALSO it’s possible the actors don’t want that kind of branding hellscape. 

What keeps happening from GMMTV’s perspective is attrition (Singto leaving, Frank on military duty, BL actor scandals, and couples aging out) which they don’t like. Or the pair doesn't stay matched because they grow apart (sorry but I think this is TayNew, it’s not that they don’t want too, it’s that they don’t much care), or the pair just never gelled with audiences (FrankDrake, MikeToptap). 

GMMTV is, kind of, learning that they can’t force it. We have been watching them learn that lesson since 2018. 

So if the actors really don’t want it, then I don’t think a permanent pairing will happen. (This is a GOOD thing.) Gawin, in particular, I don’t see wanting a permanent pairing. He never does much promo, and he isn’t into things like Safe House or the GMMTV games, or even variety shows. He never has been, since Dark Blue Kiss.  

Which is an even longer way of me saying ifFirst & Gawin don’t want to pair up as a brand, these days GMMTV will let them stay separated so long as they stay in the stable. 

Now if a really good project came along that they both liked and went into casting for? We could see them paired again. But GMMTV is likely to reserve those projects for an establish actual pair first (it’s much more profitable/easy to raise capital, gain sponsorships, and market on an existing established brand - and remember that is how most Thai BL is made). So it think it’s more likely, if they are paired again in a new project, it would be as a side couple, again. (Read on for: as a spin off from Not Me.)

I was wondering do GMMTV take notice of fan opinions if it's in great numbers?

Sometimes. But they are more likely to take into account the above factors first, than they are fan opinion. Sorry, this is a truth throughout the film industry. Fans are notoriously fickle, and everyone knows this. Once the Not Me fervor dies down, people will forget how great DanYok were. Probubly sooner than we think. 

The public has a VERY short attention span.

There will always another pair for GMMTV to try and for us to get obsessed over. No one knows this better than GMMTV. 

In fact the beauty of a branded pair, from a marketing perspective, is that it circumvents this attention span. 

OffGun remained bankable even when they were not starring in anything. In the film industry, that’s a holy grail. 

But, if you can’t force it, you can’t force it. GMMTV has finally learned that lesson. I think Singto leaving was a HUGE blow to their marketing tactics. 

This is the reason I always refer to MaxTul as the Kings. They never seem to be forcing it, ever, and they have ridden the BL tide out of college-set stuff into mature gay romance in a way that is... enviable. (Especially for a studio like GMMTV.) 

Now if First & Gawin start to show up in fashion shoots and with sponsor gigs as a pair, that would indicate a seed change and that they’ve jumped from category 3 to category 2. Or are trying to. Then they might get their own BL, but it wouldn’t be until next year at the very earliest.

And, like I said, I think this is the least likely outcome. 

But that’s what you should be paying attention to and looking out for and really take optimism from. Not them in each other’s IG or shit like that. That’s just promo for this one show. Photo shoots and sponsor gigs, that’s a lifestyle switch. 

Fuck this is so much industry talk. 

Wabi Sabi and Co-Branded Pairs

I know Between Us, BounPrem was given their own series?

There isn’t a way to directly compare First & Gawin to BounPrem, as BounPrem are outside of the GMMTV umbrella and so are entirely different as a brand. You can compare BounPrem to OhmFluke or to MaxTul ,but not really to any of GMMTV’s holy trinity (TayNew, SintoKrist, OffGun). Indie pairs, as I call them, behave differently from those kept in GMMTV’s stable. 

Wabi Sabi isn’t as proprietary and doesn’t keep a stable (in quite) the way that GMMTV (or Star Hunter) does. Hence you see BounPrem show up in other shows outside of Wabi Sabi’s network, as side characters etc... 

So indie pairs = they opted to co-brand of their own volition. In BounPrem’s case they kept up with promo work as a couple even post active UWMA gigs (when they would have been actively encouraged to do so) - and, fortunately for them and us, are probubly getting a larger cut of the sponsor deals etc... as a result. 

Their forthcoming BL (Between Us) is an adaptation of an existing y-novel, Hemp Rope, that was already ready for their characters. So once those characters gelled and hit in UWMA, and once it became clear they were a good pairing, it was a natural evolution they would get picked up to anchor their own show. 

This kind of spin off doesn’t happen often in BL. I don’t think a DanYok y-novel spin off exists for Not Me, for example. Although I don’t follow the y-novel industry, so I could be wrong. And if the author is smart she’s writing this RIGHT NOW. Someone correct me in the comments if I’m wrong here? 

GMMTV could give DanYok a short special, though. However, they might be prohibitively expensive (production value costs for non-uni set BL is at least double). But they have done that kind of thing before as extended sponsorship or tourism promo deals (see Our Skyy). 

It should be noted that, Boun has been on the fringes of BL for years before Prem came along. So he, at least, knew what he was getting into. I do think they are good friends, but I also think their brand is very well executed and managed. They are doing a great job as a pair (like OhmFluke) and I can see them having a long career as this pair, if they want to (like MaxTul). That said, they have more of a teasing brotherly relationship, like OffGun. So like OffGun they may age out of the field, without the options that MaxTul are afforded by their physicality. 

MaxTul were always going to be the best at transitioning from BL into mature gay romance because they act right as a brand and they also LOOK right. Because that transition is partly a move from Thai style BL to Taiwanese style. 

Oh. 

Can you IMAGINE what Taiwan could do with MaxTul?

Holy BL saints preserve us. 

No wait, don’t. They both speak some Mandarin, don’t they?  

PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN. 

So there it is.

As always seems to happen on this blog with BL couples, I don’t really want to talk about it (it’s a bit squeaky), but I have a ton to say anyway. I think I just find the whole principle fascinating. It’s so golden age Hollywood. 

MaxTul are the Fred & Ginger of our time. 

Other stuff on actor pairs:

A Guide to Thai BL Actor Pairs for New Watchers (OLD & no longer updated) 

Thai BL Actor Pairs... REDUX! (also old and not updated) 

It’s hard to keep up with and it makes me uncomfortable, okay? Speaking of: 

Skinship and Thai society?

Is that BL actor actually queer? 

BL Actor Homophobia

And some nicer stuff:

OffGun & The Evolution of Chemistry for a BL Pair

Crazy BL Actor Pairing I'd Love to See

TOP 10 BL PAIRS + What They Should Play Next 

(source)

[bananaofswifts]

Taylor Swift Turns on a Facsimile Machine for the Ingenious Recreations of ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’: Album Review

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

By Chris Willman

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

There is no “best actress” award at the Grammys, perhaps for obvious reasons, but maybe there should be this coming year. And the Grammy would go to… Taylor Swift, for so persuasively playing her 18-year-old self in “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” her beyond-meticulous recreation of the 2008 recording that did win her her first album of the year trophy back in the day. It’s impossible to overstate just how thoroughly the new version is intended as an exact replica of the old — all the way down to her startling ability to recapture an untrained teen singing voice she’s long matured and moved on from. It’s a stunt, to be sure, but a stunt for the ages — mastering the guile it takes to go back to sounding this guileless.

There are two different, very solid reasons to pick up or stream “Taylor’s Version,” regardless of whether you share her ire for the Big Machine label, whose loose ways with her nine-figure catalog precipitated this, the first in a six-album series of remakes where she’ll be turning on the facsimile machine. One is to marvel at her gift for self-mimicry on the album’s original tracks, where she sounds as possessed by her younger self as Regan ever was by Pazuzu. The other reason is, of course, to check out the six “vault” numbers that Swift wrote during that time frame but has never released before in any form, which dispenses with stylistic fealty to the late 2000s and frames her “Fearless”-era discards in production and arrangements closer to “Folklore.” Those half-dozen (kind of) new tracks really do sound like modern Taylor Swift covering her old stuff.

But those original lucky 13? It’s the same damn record… which is kind of hilarious and marvelous and the kind of meta-ness that will inspire a thousand more think-pieces than it already has, along with possibly efforts at forensic analysis to figure out how she did it.

It would not be surprising if, as we speak, Big Machine was putting a combined team of scientists and lawyers on the case of the new album’s waveform readouts, to make sure it’s not just the original album, remixed. Honestly, it’s that close. The timings of the songs are all within a few seconds of the original tracks, if not coming in at exactly the same length. The duplication effort doesn’t allow any detours. If “Forever and Always” had a cold open then, it’s going to have a cold open now. If the 2008 “That’s the Way I Love You” had slamming rock guitars with an almost subliminal banjo being plucked beneath the racket, so will the 2021 “That’s the Way I Loved You.” A drum roll to end the old “Change”? A drum roll to end its body-snatcher doppelganger. And if she chuckled before the final chorus of “Hey Stephen” 13 years ago, so will that moment be cause for a delighted giggle now.

Of course, much analysis will be put into whether the new laugh is a more knowing-sounding laugh. And that will be part of the fun for a certain segment of audiophile Swifties who will go looking for the slightest change as evidence of something meaningful. When “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” first came out weeks back to preview the album, there were reviews written that swore she’d subtly changed up her phrasing to put a contemporary spin on the song. And maybe they were right, but, having done a fair amount of A/B testing of the two versions of the album, I found myself feeling like I do when vinyl buffs insist there are significant sonic differences between the first stamper version of an LP and one that was pressed a year later. If you can spot those very, very, very modest tweaks, go for it.

But my suspicion is that if Swift has decided to turn a phrase a little differently here or there on this album, or done anything too differently aside from brighten the sound, she’s doing it more as an Easter egg, for the people who are on that kind of hunt, than anything really designed as reinterpretation. Because the last thing Swift wants most of her fans doing is A/B-ing the two versions, the way I did. The whole point is to have folks retire the OG “Fearless” from their Spotify playlists, right? The Swift faithful were already threatening to rain down damnation on anyone caught sneaking an audio peek at the old version after midnight. What she intended was to come up with a rendering so faithful that you would never have a need to spin the vintage album again. In that, she has succeeded beyond what could have been imagined even in the dreams of the few self-forgers who’ve tried this before, like a Jeff Lynne.

Is there any reason to find value in the new versions if you couldn’t care less about the issues of masters and contracts and respect in business deals that made all this strangely possible? Yes, with the first one being that the new album just sounds like a terrific remastering of the old — the same notes, and you’d swear the same performances, but sounding brighter and punchier just on a surface level. But on a more philosophical one, it’s not just a case of Swift playing with her back catalog like Andy Warhol played with his soup can. It’s really a triumph of self-knowledge and self-awareness, in the way that Swift is so hyper-conscious of the ways she’s matured that she has the ability to un-mature before our very ears. With her vocals, it’s virtuosic, in a way, how she’s made herself return to her unvirtuosic upstart self.

On Swift’s earliest albums and in those seminal live shows — at the time when she was famously being told she “can’t sing,” to quote a song from the follow-up album — there was a slight shrillness around the edges of her voice that, if you lacked faith, you might’ve imaged would be there forever. It wasn’t. That was partly youth, and partly just the sheer earnestness with which she wanted to convey the honesty of the songs. She’s advanced so much since then — into one of pop’s most gifted modern singers, really — that the woman of “Folklore” and “Evermore” seems like a completely different human being than the one who made the self-titled debut and “Fearless,” never mind just a woman versus girl. It wouldn’t have seemed possible that she could go back to her old way of singing at the accomplished age of 31, but she found and recreated that nervous, sincere, pleading voice of yesteryear. And maybe it was just a technical feat, of temporarily unlearning what she’s learned since then, but you can sense that maybe she had to go there internally, too, to the place where she was counseling other girls to guard their sexual virtue in “Fifteen,” or wondering whether to believe the fairy tale of “Love Story” or the wakeup call of “White Horse,” or proving with “Forever & Always” that writing a song telling off Joe Jonas for his 27-second breakup call was better than revenge.

If at first you’re not inclined to notice that Swift has re-adopted a completely different singing voice for the “Fearless” remakes, the realization may kick in when those “vault” tracks start appearing in the later stretch of this hour-and-50-minute album. The writing on the six songs that have been pulled up from the 2008 cutting room floor seems primitive, even a little bit by the standards of the “Fearless” album; there are great lines and couplets throughout the rescued tracks, but you can see why she left them as works-in-progress. But she doesn’t use her youthful voice on these resurrections, nor does she employ the actual style of “Fearless” very strictly. Of course, she feels more freedom on these, because there are no predecessors in the Big Machine catalog she’s asking you to leave behind. Her current collaborators of choice, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, divided the co-producing work on these fresher songs, as they did for the two all-new albums she released in the last year. (The “Fearless” recreations are co-produced by Swift with Christopher Rowe, someone who worked on remixes for Swift back in that era.) They co-produce the vault songs in a style that sounds somewhere between “Fearless” and Folklore”… a more spectral brand of country-pop, with flutes and synths and ringing 12-string guitars and a modicum of drum programming replacing some (but not all) of the acoustic stringed instruments you’d expect to be carried over from “Fearless” proper.

Of the previously unheard tracks, Swift was right — she’s always been her own best self-editor — in putting out “You All Over Me” first, in advance of the album. With its imagery of half-muddy stones being upturned on the road, this song has advanced lyrical conceits more of a piece with the level of writing she’s doing now than some of the slightly less precocious songs that follow. Still, there’s something to be said for the sheer zippiness with which Swift conveys teen heartbreak in “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” which has a lyric that shows Swift had long since absorbed the lessons Nashville had to offer about how to come up with a high-concept song — the concept, in this case, being just to stick the word “mister” in front of a lot of phrases relating to her shallow ex, as if they were honorary titles to be conferred for being a shit, while she employs the “miss” for herself more sparingly.

Some of the remaining outtake songs go back more toward the sedate side of “Fearless”-style material; she didn’t leave any real bangers in the can. “We Were Happy,” the first of two successive tracks to bring in Keith Urban (but only for backgrounds on this one), employs fake strings and real cello as Swift waxes nostalgic for a time when “you threw your arms around my neck, back when I deserved it.” It’s funny, in a good way, to hear Swift at 31 recreating a song she wrote at 17 or 18 that pined for long-past better times. The next song, “That’s When,” brings Urban in for a proper duet where he gets a whole second verse and featured status on half a chorus, and it’s lovely to hear them together. But, as a make-up song, it doesn’t feel as real or lived-in as the more personal things she was writing at the time — and the fact that its chords are pretty close to a slightly more balladic version of the superior “You Belong With Me” was probably a pretty good reason for dropping it at the time.

the 18-year-old Taylor Swift is a great place to visit, but “Folklore” and “Evermore” are the place you’ll want to return to and live, unless you have an especially strong sentimental attachment to “Fearless”… which, sure, half of young America does. It’s not irreconcilable to say that the two albums she issued in the last year represent a daring pinnacle of her career, but that “Fearless” deserved to win album of the year in 2008. Has there been a greater pop single in the 20th century than “You Belong With Me”? Probably not. Did the album also have lesser moments you probably haven’t thought about in a while, like the just-okay “Breathe”? Yes. (I looked up to see whether Swift had ever played that little remarked upon number in concert, and according to setlists.fm, she did, exactly once… in 2018. Because she’s Taylor Swift, and of course she did.) It’s not certain that her duet with Colbie Caillat really needed to be resurrected, except it’s fun, because hey, she even roped former duet partners back into her time warp. But there are so many number that have stood the test of time, like “The Way I Love You,” an early song that really got at the complicated feelings about passion and fidelity that she would come to explore more as she grew into her 20s… and just kind of a headbanger, too, on an album that does love its fiddles and mandolins.

It doesn’t take much to wonder why Swift put up “Fearless” first in this six-album exercise; it’s one of her two biggest albums, along with “1989,” and it’s 13 years old, which does mean something superstitious in the Taylor-verse. In a way, it’ll be more interesting to see what happens when she gets to more complicated productions, like “1989” or “Reputation.” But maybe “Fearless” did present the opportunity for the grandest experiment out of the gate: to recreate something that pure and heartfelt, with all the meticulousness a studio master like Swift can put to that process now, without having it seem like she’s faking sincerity. Let the think-pieces proceed — because this is about six hundred different shades of meta. But, all craftiness and calculation aside, there’s a sweetness to the regression that’s not inconsequential. It harks back to a time when she only wondered if she could be fearless, before she learned it the harder way for sure. What they say about actors “disappearing into the role”? That really applies to Taylor Swift, playing herself.

[softieteez]

ivy’s relationships with ateez

ivy and her relationship with each member

{ hongjoong }

status: “father & daughter”

ship name: jijoong

popularity: 5/10

she messed with him sooo much

the amount of times he scolds her whenever she’s around wooyoung and san ✋🏼

besides that though, he jokes that she’s his most well behaved child

he is her mentor, especially recently, she’s gone to him to help write lyrics. she says she wants to try producing soon too.

she is the person that keeps him sane half the time, brings him food while he’s working, just making sure he’s staying healthy.

when they finish promotions she usually forced him to go out and buy a milkshake with her or something.

he always keeps an eye on her to make sure she’s always comfortable

he likes to tell this story about ivy when one time she walked into his and seonghwa’s room at 2 am without saying a word and just laid on top of him

you know how hongjoong once said “don’t look at other oppa’s”? yeah that rule kinda applies to her too

he’s so protective, anytime another idol or staff member flirts with her, he’s watching closely.

he likes with she get plain white acrylics because she lets him paint them how he wants.

she refused to buy her anymore stuffies and scolds mingi and seonghwa when they buy her more which is maybe too often

“leader hong in the houseee”

“ivy, i’m trying to sleep”

{ seonghwa }

status: “mother & daughter”

ship name: ivyhwa

popularity: 5/10

she is his motherfuckin baby, no one touches her.

she’s clumsy so ever time she trips, falls, stubs her toe, he face palms and the helps her ‘injuries’ that she exaggerates

has to cover her mouth whenever they play explicit music during vlives because she will swear with pride

stuffie buyer #1

screams and closes her eyes every time he does something sexy for fan

back. hugs. either her giving him back hugs or vise versa.

plays with his hands when she’s anxious

scares him every time she does a flip on variety shows

whenever they’re at a fan sign or something and she starts doing sexy parts of their dances he just stands in front of her to block people from seeing, recently however she tells atiny to yell at him to move.

she organizes, he cleans. they’re a team.

dancing on vlive and killing every atiny there is.

on time he made a joke and called her ‘poison ivy’ and she punched him so hard. which shocked both of them because she isn’t that strong (jongho was proud)

“seonghwa got me a new stuffie !!!!”

“you weren’t supposed to tell ! hongjoong will yell at me”

{ yunho }

status: “besties”

ship name: yunsoo or yunvy

popularity: 5/10

big back rides #1

they’re really close but a lot of atiny’s don’t see it 🤷🏼‍♀️

she makes him laugh so much

he’s older, taller, and stronger, but he is her baby

twerking 101

the reasons she got to see nayoung again thank you imitation

“yunho’s an actor now” literally any chance she gets

buys her food, so much food. even on diets.

she currently has one of his photo cards in her phone case

her contact name for him translates to “abnormally large puppy man”

she just stares at him. and then when he gets weirded out and asks why she says ‘because i can’ or ‘mind your business’

like to paint with her

“ivy, seonghwa yelled at me for letting you twerk on that on vlive”

“he’s the man that sexy danced to baby shark, i think he’ll live”

{ yeosang }

status: “best friends”

ship name: yeovy

popularity: 7/10

gemini’s. need i say more ?

they make fun of the members behind their backs together

refuses to buy her anymore chocolate

she ?? keeps ??? wearing ?? his ?? shirts ???

she lowkey fangirls over how pretty he is

they’re too shy for their own good

she tried teaching him how to do flips, but he gave up after a kart wheel and seonghwa stopped it before they could even make it to round offs

he acts shocked every time the stylists give her sexy outfits even though he’s used to it by now

buys her chicken tenders all the time

he once said that ivy is giggly and clingy when she’s drunk and somehow he’s usually the one to take care of her

gives him weird looks, for literally no reason

she’s proud of yeosang because of his recent confidence boost

“why is hongjoong wearing that?”

“i don’t know, let’s go make fun of him”

{ san }

status: “best friends”

ship name: sansoo

popularity: 7/10

they’re so cute until they get on stage

constant hugging, it never ends.

they compliment each other allll the time

he likes to flirt with her just to make her shy and flustered because he finds it funny

feeding each other for some reason ??

he buys her dumplings

she wants to recreate every hair color he’s ever had but she’s lowkey too scared

she wants him to get a facial piercing so badly !!

he held her hand when she got her first tattoo

random dance parties together >>>

san said he’s proud of her because her confidence has grown so much and shes been working hard lately

there was a time when she cried at a fansign because a fan gave her a really meaningful note and san immediately went over to hug her

“sannie, i just got called sexy!”

“you’re too young”

{ mingi }

status: “they crushing?”

ship name: minvy

popularity: 10/10

piggyback rides #2

her number one cuddler

stuffie buy #2

literally do not separate them. e v e r

a lot of fans actually ship them because of how close they are. and because they’re cute asf

buying each other food >>>

she said that the time during mingi’s hiatus was the hardest for her because they had so much going on and mingi not being there made things worse

she was the first one to wish him happy birthday

he helps her a lot when it’s to like… everything. in airports when they feel anxious they hold each other’s hand, when she can’t stay focus he rubs her back.

ivy told atony that mingi was the first person she cried to before their debut

they were roommates with jongho before the room switches, now they both have their own rooms

when she was in high school still, he’d help her with homework.

“mingi looks very cute today”

“thank you jiji”

{ wooyoung }

status: “dude he’s flirting”

ship name: woovy

popularity: 8/10

he flirts too much !!!

fans love them together because they pick on each other yes, but they’re also alike in a lot of ways that’s kinda scary

secret stuffie buyer

she likes to joke that one day she’s gonna leave wooyoung alone in a ditch

she gets soooo flustered when he flirts with her

when they were in america he asked her to take him to her favorite stores and restaurants that she grew up with

even though she doesn’t like video games, he forces her to play or at least watch

friendship bracelets >>

he buys her some random ass shit.

her baby picture is his lockscreen

his mom and brother love her.

cuddles >>>

“your moms so sweet”

“she told me to shut up so that she could talk to you”

{ jongho }

status: “BEST FRIENDS” or “oh?”

ship name: jijong

popularity: 9/10

people love them together, some ship them, no one knows why

maknae shit

impressing people with his strength and her flexibility

she got so excited when he dyed his hair red

jongho’s character in imitation was her favorite and yunho got pouty when he found out

hitting high notes together !!!!!!

he breaks fruit. she eats fruit.

they act so shy whenever the spot light is only on them

sits on his lap, because she can.

man doesn’t like skinship too often, but he will hug her and hold her hand any day

she calls hun cute any chance she gets.

they post all the time when they have meals together

“why are you sitting on jongho”

“i don’t know san, why are you in my business?”

[olivemac]

1300 miles | chapter one | b.b.

Summary | Bucky Barnes is adjusting to civilian life, living in Brooklyn, visiting Sam in Delacroix when he can, and trying to figure out what he wants. When he meets Jo Landry, the tattooed lead singer of a New Orleans-based band, he thinks he might have found the answer. Too bad they live 1300 miles apart.

Time Frame | post-TFATWS

Pairing | Bucky Barnes x fem!oc

Rating | explicit

Warnings | mentions of combat-related injuries, alcohol use, tattoos/body piercings, coarse language, gay male character, bisexual female character, recreational/medicinal drug use (weed), pet names (doll, Sarge), smut (f/m, mutual masturbation, fingering, slight dom!Bucky, praise kink), angst if you squint but not really, and all the romance tropes/fluff because I'm a sucker for it; more warnings to come; 18+ ONLY, minors DNI

A/N | It’s my birthday, so to celebrate I’m sharing chapter one of my new WIP. This started its life as a one-shot but then my enneagram 4 brain took over and now it’s looking like it’ll be a multi-chapter short. Enjoy!

Also, feedback – comments, likes, etc. – is always appreciated, my loves.

AO3 link | 1300 miles playlist

_____

The sun is just starting to sink in the sky as Sam and Bucky finish the latest repairs on the boat. Sam has spent the last hour pestering Bucky about things he’s missed over the last 80 years — things he needs to do, shows and movies he needs to watch, music to listen to, places to go. Bucky is considering the consequences of putting his vibranium fist through the new Captain America’s face.

“You’re telling me you’ve never been to New Orleans?” Sam half-shouts at Bucky in amusement.

“Sam, besides the airport, when would I have been to New Orleans?” Bucky sighs.

“We’re going. Tonight.” He stands up. “But none of that Bourbon Street bullshit. I know a place,” he says.

_____

The bar is crowded on a Saturday night, but they manage to find a table near the small stage where a band is setting up.

“I’ll get drinks,” Sam says, heading to the bar.

“Sam said he knows the owners?” Bucky asks Sarah.

“Jo and Danny. Yeah,” Sarah says. “Danny served with Sam on his last tour. Real young kid when he served. Took some shrapnel to the chest and face in an RPG explosion and got out early. He and Sam kept in touch.”

Bucky watches Sam talk to a man with a mop of curly, brown hair and an auburn beard behind the bar. From where he sits, Bucky can see a jagged scar peeking out from the top of the man’s beard over his cheek, stopping just below his right eye.

Sam returns with three beers. "Danny says hi," he tells Sarah. "Says he'll come over when he has a free minute."

"Jo around?" Sarah asks.

Sam nods toward the stage. "She's playing tonight. Danny says she's in the office rewriting the set list."

Bucky sips his beer and looks around. When they entered, there was a wave of enthusiasm as people recognized Sam as Captain America, but it seems to have died down and now no one is paying them much attention. Bucky prefers it that way, though he’s happy that people are excited for Sam.

“Speak of the devil,” Sam says, smiling and nodding toward a woman emerging from a door beside the bar marked ‘Employees Only.’ She’s wearing a loose-fitting white tank tucked into light-wash jeans cuffed just above a pair of black combat boots. Her wavy, dark hair fans out behind her as she rushes towards the stage. She's clutching a piece of paper in one hand, and the smile on her face makes Bucky's heart stutter for a moment.

Sam catches the way Bucky is watching Jo as she jumps onto the stage. He elbows Sarah and nods at the lovestruck look on Bucky's face, and they share a smirk. Bucky doesn't notice the exchange. He's too busy studying Jo. Her arms are covered in tattoos, from shoulders to fingers. When she tucks a strand of hair behind her left ear, Bucky can see the row of piercings adorning the curve of her ear. There's a gold ring between her nostrils. Bucky's seen some of the kids in Brooklyn with that piercing, but he doesn't know what it's called. He's seen plenty of women like her since moving back to New York — with tattoos and piercings and dark hair — but there's something about the combination with her green eyes and soft smile that makes his mouth go dry and his palm sweat.

He takes another sip of his beer to ground himself.

Jo picks up an acoustic-electric guitar from its stand, swings the strap over her shoulder, and plugs the guitar into a small amp at her feet. She raises her right hand in the air and sets a count with her fingers — one, two, three, four. The band starts, and Jo strums the guitar, smiling at the crowd. When she steps up to the microphone and opens her mouth, Bucky is surprised at how sweet her voice sounds. He was expecting it to be rougher, but it's gentle and warm, and he likes the way her mouth looks as it forms the words to the song.

Next to him, Sam taps his foot along to the music. Bucky can't remember the last time he saw a band play live. God, he thinks, it was before the war, before everything. He takes another sip of his beer before Sarah hands him a fresh bottle. He hadn't even noticed that she'd left the table and gone to the bar. He smiles and nods his thanks.

Sarah leans over and whispers to Bucky just loud enough for Sam to hear, as well, "You should ask her out after the show."

Bucky grimaces and shakes his head. As he told Yori once, there's a dance to these things, and he's eighty years out of practice. Plus, his last date didn't exactly go as planned.

But he can't stop staring at Jo's painted black nails and tattooed fingers as they move across the guitar strings. LOVE is written across the top knuckles of her right hand, HATE on the left. A series of lines and dots decorate her lower knuckles. There’s a snake curling around her left wrist, its inked head resting on her hand, and several large peonies cover the back of her right hand and up her forearm. Bucky wonders what her tattooed hands would look like wrapped around his cock. He also wonders where else on her body she has tattoos and what that voice would sound like when he's between her thighs. Fuck.

The band transitions into another song, and Jo's eyes land on Bucky. She's used to people staring at her, especially when she's on stage, but she's caught by the way his eyes never leave her, never wander to look at the band's female bassist or to Sarah sitting next to him. She's certain his stare could burn a hole right through her, and she wouldn't even complain. He’s fucking gorgeous.

She knows who he is, of course. She’s seen the recent footage of him with Sam in New York and read the Times article detailing his move from assassin to almost Avenger. Plus, her twin brother, Danny, was a bit of a history nerd as a kid so she’s definitely seen a Captain America documentary that mentioned the Howling Commandos. And they may or may not have hidden a fugitive Captain America and Falcon following the Accords.

Jo tears her eyes away from the super soldier and focuses on the rest of the audience. She can see Danny behind the bar, flirting with the man he's been trying to sleep with for the past two weeks. She catches his eye and smiles her encouragement between lyrics. Get his number! she tries to say with her eyes. Danny's usually pretty good at reading her mind. She doesn't know if it's a brother thing or a twin thing or just a Danny thing, but when he holds up his phone in surrender and smiles back at her, she knows he got the message.

The first half of their set ends with a crash of drums and a long guitar riff. Jo takes a swig from the mason jar full of water she keeps on stage. Her eyes meet Bucky's again as she swallows, and he licks his bottom lip. Heat curls in the pit of her stomach at the thought of what else that tongue could do.

Willow, the band's bassist, steps over and whispers in Jo's ear, “If you don’t fuck him after the show, I’m going to."

When Jo looks at her, she can see the amusement dancing in Willow's eyes. She rolls her own eyes and avoids looking directly at Bucky for the rest of the set.

_____

After the last song, Jo thanks the crowd and helps the rest of the band tidy up the stage, unplugging amps and turning off the mics. She's still trying not to look at Bucky, even though she can feel his eyes on her.

"You have to stop staring, man," Sam whispers to Bucky.

"I'm not staring," Bucky grumbles.

Sarah laughs, "You're definitely staring."

“Here," Sam says, "I'll introduce you." And before Bucky can protest, Sam is waving Jo over. "Josephine," Sam says, hugging her.

"Samuel," she returns, smiling. "Congrats on the new gig." She punches his shoulder lightly. "Better you than that John Walker douchebag," she says. Bucky snorts, and she catches his eye and smirks before turning to Sarah. "Hey, Sarah." They exchange pleasantries while Bucky tries to get his tongue to turn back from lead.

Sam points at Bucky, "This is—"

Bucky stands. "Bucky. Barnes."

Jo smiles and shakes his gloved hand. "Jo. Landry," she says, matching his cadence.

Sam was right. Bucky can't stop staring at her. This close, he can see there's a bit of gold in the green of her eyes and a slight gap between her two front teeth. She smells like sandalwood and citrus and just a little bit like pot.

Jo returns his stare. His five o’clock shadow doesn’t hide the dimple in his chin, and she briefly imagines pressing her lips against it. She’s trying to name the exact shade of blue of his eyes when Sam clears his throat.

She’s not usually so easily flustered by attractive people, but Bucky's blue eyes and chiseled jaw have done a number on her self-control. “Let me grab a drink,” Jo says, turning quickly.

“No need,” Danny says, appearing in front of her and handing her a glass. He leans in and whispers in her ear, “He’s cute.”

“Please fuck off,” Jo hisses in return, widening her eyes at him. She’s only half-serious, and Danny knows it. It’s a twin thing.

When she looks at Bucky again, he’s smirking, and she wonders if enhanced hearing is a super soldier trait. Bucky pulls out the fourth chair at the small table for her to sit, and Jo can't remember the last time someone did that for her.

"The show was great," Sarah says, grabbing Jo's attention.

"Thanks," Jo replies. "Took a while to get back to it after…” she snaps her fingers but doesn’t finish her sentence.

"You were snapped?" Bucky asks.

Jo nods. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah."

"Cheers," she says sarcastically, raising her glass in a toast. She shakes her head again and pushes her hair behind her ear. "Five years just," she holds her hands open, "gone. Danny was still here, holding all this together by himself."

She tucks one leg under the other, and her knee bumps Bucky’s beneath the table. When she moves to pull her knee away from his, he places a gloved hand on her thigh, holding her leg in place.

Bucky surprises even himself with this move. He hasn’t been this forward with a woman since an auburn-haired nurse in Italy during the war. With her, it was all hands and mouths and skin on skin because he was certain he was going to die any day. Now he supposedly has all the time in the world. He just isn’t sure what he wants to do with it.

But in this moment, he's comfortable here, in this tiny bar, with a beer in his hand and Jo's knee pressed against his. He's confident that Sam would never introduce him to someone he couldn't trust.

Bucky's flirted with Sarah, sure, but that was mostly to irritate to Sam. And as much as he doesn't want to admit it, the thought of something happening between himself and Sarah and then ending badly and ruining his relationship with Sam makes his stomach hurt. Pursuing Jo seems safer in that regard. She and Sam are friends, but if — when, he thinks — he ruins things, he can just go back to New York instead of losing his only friend.

Jo asks Sarah about AJ and Cass to distract herself from the butterflies forming in her stomach at Bucky’s touch, and Sam starts a story about the boys' latest interests. Bucky is content to listen to the three of them talk, his eyes barely leaving Jo. When she flicks her gaze over to him every now and then, she doesn't seem phased by his staring, and she hasn't pulled her knee away from where it's softly touching his. After a while, Danny emerges from behind the bar and joins their table, introducing himself to Bucky with a firm handshake.

While Danny and Sam trade updates about people they know, Jo leans towards Bucky and asks, “You want another drink?”

“Sure,” Bucky replies.

Jo doesn’t say anything else, just nods her head toward the bar, stands, and offers Bucky her hand. He takes it, the leather glove of his right hand warm against her palm. He wishes he could feel her skin without the gloves between them. He doesn’t usually wear them around Sam and Sarah and everyone in Delacroix, but he wasn’t sure how the metal arm would be perceived at this bar he’s never been to. Sam told him not to worry about it, but Bucky doesn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to himself.

Jo leads him through the sea of tables to a barstool, then moves behind the bar and grabs him a fresh bottle of the beer he's been drinking all night. "Unless you want something stronger," she says, pausing before she hands it to him.

"This is good," Bucky replies.

She pops the top and hands him the bottle. He takes a sip as he watches her maneuver around the bartender on duty to fix herself another whiskey sour before taking a seat on the barstool next to him.

"Full disclosure; because it's only fair," she says, taking a sip of her drink. "I know who you are, Sergeant Barnes. Not the whole story, but bits and pieces."

Bucky pauses. He searches her eyes for the fear he's expecting but finds none. "And you're okay with that?" he asks.

Jo quirks the corner of her mouth up in a half-smile and says, “If Sam trusts you, I trust you."

“I’m not great with meeting new people, and I was telling myself the same thing about you," Bucky admits, almost sheepishly.

“You know we can never tell Sam about this, right?" Jo says, conspiratorially. "We’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Never,” Bucky agrees, and knocks his beer bottle lightly against her glass in understanding.

They talk for a while, just the two of them alone at the end of the bar. Jo asks him how he likes Louisiana ("Hot, but the people are friendly"); where he's staying ("Sarah's"); when he's heading back to New York ("A week from tomorrow"); what he likes to do for fun ("Still figuring that out"); his favorite place ("Wakanda") and favorite book ("The Hobbit"); and a myriad of other questions — some of which Bucky answers easily and some that make him pause. He makes her give her own answers to each one in turn.

Jo leans close to Bucky so she can hear him over the noise of the room, and he takes the opportunity to study her features more closely. He's practically mapped all of her face when her eyes leave his for a brief second and land on Sam, Sarah, and Danny staring at them from the table across the room.

"Don't look now," she whispers, leaning even closer, "But we seem to have an audience."

Bucky makes a big show of looking over his shoulder at the group.

"I said 'don't look!'" Jo laughs and swats casually at his arm.

Bucky takes the opportunity to pin her hand with his own, holding it tightly and licking his bottom lip before smiling at her. He can see the blush paint her cheeks and creep down her neck and chest.

He likes Jo, likes how easy it feels to be around her. He isn't used to that. He isn't used to feeling comfortable with people. Hell, he thinks, I barely feel comfortable with myself. But there's something about Jo that makes him feel safe and calm. Of course, there's attraction there — plenty of it — but he's sure it's more than that.

For her part, Jo is enamored with Bucky. She likes his hard edges and his snark, but she also likes the small glimpses he's given her of the man beneath all of that. She doesn't usually fall for people so easily, but she's found herself drowning in the sea of blues that make up Bucky's eyes, and she doesn't want to be rescued. How fucking cliche, she tells herself.

"We should probably go back over there," Bucky says, squeezing her hand once before releasing it.

They both stand and make their way back to the table. Bucky pulls Jo's chair out for her again, but this time, he makes sure to pull it a little closer to his chair in the process. This doesn't go unnoticed by Sam who smirks at him. Bucky returns the smirk with a thin-lipped smile of his own before scooting even closer to Jo.

Jo finds it hard to focus on the conversation in front of her with Bucky's warm body so close to her own, and she realizes she misses the pleasant feeling of his gloved hand around hers. She places her own hand on his thigh and hopes he gets the hint.

Bucky’s fascinated by even the slightest movements of Jo's tattooed fingers, and when her hand rests on his denim-clad thigh, he thinks the sight alone might kill him. Before he can second-guess himself, he pulls the glove off his right hand and links his own flesh and bone fingers with hers.

Jo doesn't look at Bucky — she's trying not to draw attention to her hand in his lap — but Bucky watches the corner of her mouth quirk upwards into a smile, and he squeezes her hand in response.

The conversation continues a bit longer before Danny leaves the table to check in with his bartender. Jo excuses herself to get another drink, and Bucky watches her pop behind the bar to fill a glass for herself.

"I need to get home, relieve the babysitter," Sarah says when she finishes her beer.

"We're heading out then," Sam says, then turns to Bucky, "You coming?"

Bucky looks toward Jo and says, "No, I'm gonna stick around. I'll get a cab back or get a hotel room in the city."

Sam smirks. "I don't think you're gonna need a hotel room, man."

Bucky rolls his eyes.

"Just promise me you'll use protection," Sam laughs. "We don't need any little super soldiers running around just yet."

Bucky gives him a sarcastic smile, but realizes Sam's probably right, and he definitely doesn't have any condoms in his wallet. He's not planning on sleeping with Jo tonight — he just met her, and he's not sure he's ready for that yet — but if the army taught him anything, it's to be prepared. As if reading his mind, Sam pulls out his wallet and places a condom in Bucky's palm before pulling him in for a hug and clapping him on the back.

"Have fun, man," Sam says.

Sam and Sarah say their goodbyes to Danny and Jo on their way out, and Bucky joins Jo at the bar, sitting on the barstool next to her where they sat earlier.

"Sticking around, soldier?" she asks. She reaches for his dog tags and tugs them gently. The drinks have been strong, and she's feeling more flirtatious than she would otherwise.

"If you don't mind," Bucky replies.

Jo smiles and reaches for his hand this time. "Not at all."

"Are you gonna finish your interrogation of me?" Bucky asks, amusement apparent in his voice.

Jo laughs in return. “I thought I'd read your palm instead," she says, turning his hand over in her own.

Bucky snorts but doesn't pull his hand away. "Is this a trick you use on all the guys?"

"And girls," Jo says, meeting his eyes. Then she studies his hand carefully, running her index finger across the lines that crisscross his palm.

"Your dominant hand," she continues, "determines your future, while your non-dominant hand is tied to your past."

Bucky snorts again at the truth of it all.

"I'm not making this up!" Jo laughs. "I mean, someone did, but I'm not!" She can see the laughter shining in Bucky's eyes, so she goes on, "Your head line is deep, meaning your thinking is clear and focused, but it's also curved downward which indicates a creative spirit and an appetite for literature and fantasy." She looks up at him, "Explains the love for Tolkien."

"I'm not sure I'm buying this," Bucky says.

"You've literally fought aliens, and you're gonna give me a hard time over palm reading," Jo laughs.

"The aliens were real," Bucky deadpans.

"And in New Orleans, palm reading and psychics and crystal balls and voodoo are real," Jo says, still laughing. "But I promise not to read your palm again or read your aura or get out the tarot cards."

Bucky likes the way her slight accent makes New Orleans sound more like Nawlins. He also likes the sound of her laughter and the way her face lights up when she smiles. She's still holding his hand in her own, so he turns his palm over in hers and brings her tattooed knuckles to his lips.

_____

Meanwhile, the bar closes, and Danny and the bartender clean glasses and close up for the night.

Danny points at Jo as he comes around the bar. "I’m locking up then heading upstairs," he says.

"Thanks, love," Jo replies.

Danny walks the bartender out and locks the front door, then retraces his steps to the back of the bar. On his way past Jo, he stops and kisses her on the cheek, saying, "Be good. And set the alarm."

He turns to Bucky. "And you, Sergeant Barnes," he says, pointing at him now, "I know you're an Avenger or whatever, but if you hurt her, I'll kill you."

"Bye, Danny," Jo says, rolling her eyes as he disappears through the door marked 'Employees Only.' "Don't worry about him," Jo says, turning back to Bucky.

“Older brother, right?” Bucky says. He understands; he was an older brother once.

“Twins, actually,” Jo smiles.

Bucky takes a sip of his beer. "Sarah said Danny served with Sam," he says.

"Yeah. Afghanistan. A lifetime ago," Jo says. “He only had one more mission before he could come home so he switched with someone. An RPG barely missed the helicopter he was in, and he was pretty badly injured in the explosion and the resulting crash. Almost lost an eye. He came home, got out of the Air Force, went to business school. Now we own the bar..." She pauses to take the last sip of her drink. "...and the building. Sam's really helped Danny get past everything."

"He's good at that," Bucky says.

"Another thing we can never tell him," Jo laughs.

"Agreed. So, when do I get to ask about your tattoos?" he questions.

"What do you want to know?" she asks.

Bucky licks his bottom lip. "Anything."

He likes her dagger tattoo the best. It’s inked on the inside of her right forearm, nestled amongst the peonies, the hilt facing the crook of her elbow and the knife’s tip pointed toward her wrist. It’s feminine and dangerous and incredibly sexy. She blushes when he tells her how much he likes it. He doesn't tell her it reminds him of one of his favorite knives, currently tucked at the bottom of his backpack back in Sarah's living room.

"In some ways, they're my armor," she explains. "When I'm on stage, people look at the tattoos, not me, and I kind of like that. It lets me be whoever I want to up there."

Bucky understands the desire to hide better than anyone. But she knows who he is so there's really no point in hiding from her any longer. Plus, he feels like his arm is something she would understand, something she could accept — not just because of her brother's military record but because of her own unique body modifications.

He pulls his left glove off and shrugs out of his leather jacket, revealing the vibranium arm beneath his black t-shirt.

Jo takes in the black metal and gold details. "That," she says, pointing to his arm, "is lovely."

"It's lethal," Bucky warns.

She cocks her head to the side and says, "If you're trying to scare me, it won't work, Sergeant Barnes."

Bucky can't stop the corner of his lip from pulling up in the slightest hint of a smile.

"Okay,” she says, placing her palms flat on the bar top. “You want another beer?" she asks.

Jo stands and turns to move behind the bar, but Bucky's vibranium hand on her arm stops her. She looks at him curiously, and he slides his arm behind her back and pulls her flush against his chest. She settles between his open thighs, her palms resting gently on top of his legs. He's staring at her so intensely she's convinced he willburn that hole right through her, but she can't bring herself to look away.

He leans in, his lips only a breath away from hers.

"Can I kiss you?" Bucky finally asks, his flesh hand moving up to cup her cheek.

"Please," Jo whispers, desperately.

Bucky closes the distance between them, and his lips meet hers. He's hesitant at first, but when he feels Jo respond, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing even closer, he runs his tongue along the seam of her lips until she opens them for him. She tastes like bourbon and lemon from the whiskey sours she's been drinking, and Bucky loves it. His tongue sweeps along the roof of her mouth, and Jo moans. Bucky is determined to hear that sound again.

He kisses across the corner of her mouth and over her jaw. The hand that was cupping her cheek moves to her hair to angle her head backwards and give him better access to the bare skin of her neck. He laves his tongue over the corded muscles there, then nips at the skin with his teeth. She moans again, and Bucky is on fire.

Jo's right hand weaves into his short hair and tugs until his mouth comes away from her neck. He catches his breath while Jo nuzzles his nose with her own and places a soft kiss against the Cupid's bow of his upper lip. His eyes meet hers, and her pupils are blown wide with lust.

The need to kiss her again is overwhelming. Bucky’s lips find hers, and Jo somehow leans even closer into his body, her hands tracing down his chest to his waist. Bucky lets his own hands move to Jo’s ribs, resting just beneath her chest, his thumbs teasing the underside of each breast. Jo gasps when Bucky’s right thumb moves across her taut nipple.

Fuck, he thinks, I need to slow down. While he’s shared kisses with the handful of women he’s met on dating apps, he hasn’t done anything this intimate in a lifetime.

Bucky pulls away, panting. He rests his forehead against Jo's and stares into her green eyes.

"I should leave," he says. “I’m getting carried away. I…I want to do this right.”

And he does. Desperately. He wants to buy her flowers and take her out and learn what makes her swoon. But he also wants to map every tattoo on her body with his fingers and tongue and then fuck her until she can’t walk straight.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

Jo laughs breathily. “We don’t have to do anything, but it’s almost three o'clock in the morning and your ride already left. You can sleep on my couch if you want to be a gentleman.”

Bucky groans. “I should be a gentleman."

She kisses him again, lightly, then moves away to set the alarm and turn the rest of the lights out. She leads him through the 'Employees Only' door and up a set of stairs to her apartment.

"You're not allergic to cats, are you?" Jo asks, as she unlocks the door.

"No," Bucky says. As far as he knows, he's not allergic to anything thanks to the knock-off serum, but he doesn't say that.

Inside her apartment, Jo kicks off her combat boots at the door, and Bucky does the same, leaving them both in their socked feet. There's a fluffy black cat sitting on the back of the green velvet sofa.

"That's Toulouse," Jo says. "Or Louie. He doesn't answer to either, so it really doesn't matter what I call him."

The cat regards Bucky with indifference before standing up, stretching, and leaving the room.

"Guest bathroom’s just there,” she nods. “Let me get you some blankets and pillows for the couch," Jo continues. "Unless you've changed your mind about being a gentleman." She smirks at him.

Bucky laughs through his nose. “Don’t tempt me.”

Jo leaves the room for a moment, which gives Bucky a chance to look around. He's standing in her living room; one wall features a set of French doors that lead to a balcony overlooking the street, and the opposite wall holds bookcases stuffed from floor to ceiling with books, framed photographs, and various knick-knacks. From where he stands, he can see a small room with an upright piano and guitars hanging on the walls. The exterior walls of Jo's apartment are brick, and everything else is set in jewel tones. He likes it. It's dark and cozy, and from what he knows of Jo so far, her living space matches her well.

When she returns, Jo is holding a stack of blankets and pillows. She sets them on the ottoman and moves across the room to close the curtains.

"There are some sweats and a t-shirt there that should fit you" she says, turning to Bucky.

"Thanks," Bucky says, smiling softly.

Now that they're here, in her apartment, Bucky isn't sure what he's supposed to do or say. He can still feel the heat of Jo's lips on his, and he's painfully aware that the condom Sam gave him is still in his pocket.

Jo must sense the hesitation rolling off him because she crosses the room to stand in front of him and takes his hands in hers.

"Get some sleep, Sarge," she says, squeezing his hands in tandem before dropping them.

"Goodnight, Jo," Bucky returns.

_____

Bucky lays on Jo's couch in the dark beneath blankets that smell like laundry detergent. He wishes they smelled like her. He unlocks his phone and looks up the distance between New Orleans and Brooklyn. Just over thirteen hundred miles. He sighs and drops his phone onto the coffee table before closing his eyes and reliving each kiss as he falls asleep.

On the other side of the wall, Jo falls across her bed, deflated. She likes this guy. She wants him — painfully so. But leave it to her to fall for the one guy in her bar who lives half-way across the country.

_____

next chapter

[criadne]

TASK 2 ➔  MEDIA INSPO:

KATY CHEN (from shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings)

shang-chi: [telling the story of how they first met] and right before he was about to throw the first punch, katy comes out of nowhere, steps right between us, and starts screaming the lyrics to hotel california. john: what? katy: it's the art of confusion. works great on stupid people. shang-chi: and that's how we met.

katy represents ari’s fun and impulsive side, she’s a little reckless but very loyal and a good friend. like katy arielle loves a drunken karaoke night too.

MAYA HART (from girl meets world)

maya: we got this under control, matthews, my human nature is completely under control, and there’s nothing or nobody that can change that. [hot person walks in] maya: [cackles] i’m wrong.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ maya: you made that entire night an adventure until the storm passed, and i woke up the next morning and it was a sunny day, don’t you remember that? kermit: no, maya, i don't. maya: that's because it never happened. the storm happened but you weren’t there.

maya is both fierce and funny, but she also deals with abandonment issues just like arielle. maya is not great in school because she believes if she doesn’t try then she cannot disappoint or be disappointed. this was the same case for ari who was never academically gifted and didn’t enjoy school much. 

SANSA STARK (from game of thrones)

sansa: i’m a slow learner, it’s true. but i learn.  ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ sansa: sometimes when i’m trying to understand a person’s motives, i play a little game. i assume the worst. 

as a child arielle was naive, she did not think anyone would hurt her if she gave them no good reason to. like sansa stark she learned that was far from true in the most brutal of ways. she grew wiser and now her eyes are open to see the worst in people, she prepares for it but still expects the best. she still believes the good generally outweighs the bad. 

RUE BENNETT (from euphoria) 

rue: i promise you. if I could be a different person, i would. not because i want it, but because they do. but here's the thing. one day, i just showed up without a map or a compass, and at some point, you have to make a choice ... about who you are and what you want. and therein lies the catch.

rue represents ari’s darker side, the part that still struggles with the mental scars of her abuse, about the insecurities that developed from that, and the anxiety that she has struggled with for years. she knows that she needs medicine to thrive, and she often turns to alcohol and recreational drugs on the hard days. arielle is generally a happy person, but her lows are very low and she desperately wants to escape her mind on those days.

CAITLYN KIRAMMAN (from arcane)

vi: you’re gonna help me up, cupcake? caitlyn: stop calling me that, my name is caitlyn.  vi: but you’re so sweet. like a cupcake.  caitlyn: [laughs shortly] shut up.

arielle is a hard worker, and despite having a parent who doubts her abilities and tries to interfere, she continues to work just like caitlyn. she is incredibly stubborn and is sometimes blinded by her privileged upbringing in a rich part of the city. ari wants to do the right thing, but the path is not always clear.

ELLIOT REID (from scrubs)

paul: sometimes it feels like you're holding back.

elliot: of course i'm holding back, i'm insane, you idiot. remember the other day when you told me i had pit-stains, well i have cried every fifteen minutes on the half-hour since you told me that. i am racked with self-doubt, i have panic attacks, i'm claustrophobic, germ-phobic, phobia-phobic. i talk to myself, i talk to my cats, i talk to three separate shrinks about the fact that often my cats respond to me in my mother's voice and, yesterday, when that stupid, pretty surgical nurse handed you a pair of latex gloves i almost killed the guy whose leg i was stitching up because i couldn't stop thinking about the two of you having sex on a box of steaks. why a box of steaks? 'cos my dad had an affair with a female butcher and, as i mentioned before, i am insane. there, i opened up, are you happy?

elliot is the personification of ari’s anxiety, she sometimes overcompensates to try and combat the shrieking voice in her head telling her all the reasons why she is the worst and how everything could go wrong. like elliot then arielle can be neurotic, her reactions can sometimes seem very dramatic, but they stem from her anxiety. she has learned to stand up for herself, but it took time for her to realise her own worth - and she still struggles with it sometimes.

[romeomahbromeo]

guys i’m back on my bullshit

thoughts on rewatching the les mis movie

⁃ wow they really messed up the musical timeline

⁃ stop changing the fUCKING LYRICS

⁃ jackman is... ok, but still. valjean ought to be DILFier. buff, with white hair

⁃ javert looks like a beauxbatons reject. where’s the ponytail. where’s the sideburns. this isn’t a wolf, this is a guy who read warrior cats once and now identifies with one of them (idk i haven’t read the books since elementary school)

⁃ the seggsual tenshun between a bastard police officer, his club, and the criminal he’s hunted for 14 years with single-minded homoerotic precision...

(more below the cut duh)

⁃ anne hathaway really is a fantastic fantine, good for her

⁃ got to admit, i’m not a fan of the shaky camera, except for in the riot scenes

⁃ love the aesthetics in this movie, feel less so about the costumes

⁃ ah yes we will have fantine be the only one in pink and with her hair down to signify that she is Innocent ™️

⁃ i’ve always thought this but why didn’t fantine just say that she was a widow like it’s not like anyone could prove it

⁃ i feel like switching Lovely Ladies and I Dreamed A Dream made it more powerful but i still prefer the original order

⁃ like i said, timeline is fuckt

⁃ also some of these accents are just. hard to listen to

⁃ i wish we had a movie of the original french musical

⁃ okay i love the shot of little cosette where they recreate the original poster they did a great job at casting her

⁃ sacha and helena are great but i’m still partial to matt lucas tbh

⁃ hello baby gavroche

⁃ the santa part was not needed, it was uncomfortable for everyone involved

⁃ ok that one guy madame tried to seduce in her verse of Master Of The House is pretty damn attractive

⁃ can you imagine the actress of little eponine on set while they filmed that number

⁃ sHoW mE wHeRe yOu LiVe

⁃ “i’ll be father and mother to you” wow #girlboss AND malewife <3

⁃ no stop idc about an original song give me Grantaire’s verse in Drink With Me

⁃ ah yes #hoistthechild

⁃ glad they brought fauchelevant in, he shoulda been in the musical (besides ya know, the cart)

⁃ heehoo javert singing in a high place no foreshadowing there Oops I Hope I Don’t Fall

⁃ the transition into Paris/Look Down is great but fuckin. STOP MOVING SONGS AROUND. I NEED CHEEKY LITTLE SHIT GAVROCHE TO MAKE FUN OF JAVERT AFTER HIS BIG SERIOUS SONG. IDC IF IT MAKES MORE THEMATIC SENSE. I REALLY DON’T.

⁃ still love gav’s elephant home. and gav.

⁃ god i fuckin love gavroche.

⁃ VIVE LA FRANCE

⁃ FUCK YEAH COURFEY-PIGGYBAC

⁃ *pauses* *deep breath* *screeches* ITS MAH BOIZ

⁃ enjolras is the only blond i’ll ever find attractive

⁃ god samantha barks is just SO pretty. and SUCH a good eponine omfg she’s almost TOO pretty

⁃ joly my bby 🥺

⁃ why they got rid of enj’s classic vest idk

⁃ still mad they made it seem like marius and enjolras were actively friends are you kidding me

⁃ okay but the waterfall chords when marius and cosette make eye contact for the first time 🥺😭

⁃ why does parnasse look Like That 😬

⁃ WHY DOES JAVERT PICK GAVROCHE UP LIKE THAT BAHAHA I FORGOT GHAT HAPPENS

⁃ the thenardiers are supposed to be funny but they just make me so uncomfortable

⁃ why on earth cant i remember pontmercy’s actors name holy shit its not evan, right?? anyways he’s good but i prefer gareth gates personally </3

⁃ OOH THEM FUNKY LITTLE HORNS ITS REVOLUTION TIME

⁃ heLLOOOOO PRETTYBOY (grantaire, obvs)

⁃ literally how dare george blagden be so pretty

⁃ george, internally: “STARE AT AARON. GAY. ACT LIKE YOU’RE IN LOVE BUT NOT IN A WAY THAT HE’LL NOTICE. YOU ARE A 19TH CENTURY BISEXUAL. KEEP IT CHILL, JUST CONTINUALLY GLANCE OVER WITH ABSOLUTE ADORATION IN YOUR EXPRESSION.”

⁃ goddammit marius you slut

⁃ *insert mean girls quote here*

⁃ literally the amount of eyefucking in this scene... get a room. whether you argue or fuck, grantaire will be satisfied either way

⁃ i love the courf+gav friendship in the film but you know i’m a slut for that grantaire+gav friendship in the musical

⁃ a travesty they don’t ever let lesgles be bald </3

⁃ listen. i love amanda seyfried. what a queen. but as cosette she sounds like she swallowed a vibrator. we don’t need that much vibrato girl, it’s okay

⁃ tbh the same goes for a lot of the movie actors in this as opposed to the musical actors

⁃ i’m so sorry but i’m skipping the marisette garden shit i don’t have time for heterosexual bs right now

⁃ i fuckin adore samantha barks did i mention that already

⁃ a queen. you know all the girls in 2012 wanted to be her

⁃ jesus christ it’s been almost 10 years do you think they’ll do a reunion concert

⁃ god i can’t stop thinking about all the behind the scenes from this movie

⁃ hell yes there’s one day more

⁃ cosette “your neighbor is gnc af” marius “you’re insane”

⁃ yes queen bind those breasts. give me gender envy why don’t you

⁃ mmmm enjolras tastey

⁃ stop making javert this important figure he’s just A Guy

⁃ and in that moment, i swear, we all wanted to be Madame Houcheloup

⁃ the flags waved throughout the streets 😀 this will def end well

⁃ tbh i kinda like Do You Hear The People Sing as the start of the revolution

⁃ in 8th grade i would have this scene as a youtube video on repeat while i did my homework

⁃ ok yeah this will never not move me to pieces

⁃ fuckign yeah enj wave that flag

⁃ ooh yuh get it i guess grantaire, drive that coach

⁃ and in that moment, i swear, we were infinite

⁃ pontmercy: *doesn’t know how to hold a gun* also pontmercy: *steals a fuckin horse*

⁃ TO THE BARRICADES

⁃ gEt oFf yOuR aRsE iTs bEgUn yeah mate i was already there driving the fuckin coach i’m just that fast mynameisbarryallenandimthefastestmanalive—

⁃ ah yes the demonic pontmercy smile how i’ve missed that

⁃ WE NEED AS MOCH FORNITURE AS YEW CAN THRO DOWN

⁃ i sincerely wish i could have been there

⁃ HELL YEAH BARRICOW

⁃ AND IN THAT MOMENT, I SWEAR WE ALL WISH WE WERE MADAME HOUCHELOUP

⁃ okay so if gavroche was there to say “fleas will bite” then why didn’t he recognize.l javert right then and there

⁃ GOD THE FIRST SIGHT OF THE BARRICADE 😩👌

⁃ yes daddy enj you can shoot me with your rifle any time 😏🤤😽

⁃ enjoltaire shippers in 2012: “oMg eNjY pRoTeCtEd R fRoM jAvErT tHaT mEaNs he LoVeS HiM bACk 😍😍”

⁃ and they were absolutely right

⁃ no joke aaron tveit could beat me with a pipe and i would be grateful

⁃ “who’s there?” “french revolution!” plz tell me that wasn’t pulled directly for the brick but i feel in my heart of hearts that it was

⁃ the assthetics 😫🤌 the simbalism....

⁃ marius really is dense not only did he not notice the girl in love with him for literally uhhhh years? he also didn’t notice the fuckin rifle two inches from his face

⁃ the lines shouted at marius as he retreats from the gunpowder gambit... initially poetic cinema

⁃ no but boyponine is so gender

⁃ oh man little fall of rain

⁃ i wrote a songfic to this for miraculous ladybug back in freshman year 💀

⁃ oh to be cradled in the arms of the boy i love as i die and also look super hot as i do it

⁃ eponine deserved better but better is not marius

⁃ lol drowned rat enjolras sheds a single manly tear you can’t fool us you fuckin twink

⁃ dammit gavroche hasn’t even died yet but still. get him AWAY from that BARRICADE

⁃ i already know the final battle is gonna end me

⁃ (just like it ended les amis 🤪)

⁃ oh to have a pistol held to my head by george blagden as grantaire

⁃ he really is so pretty

⁃ lol you know valjean’s internal monologue the SECOND he spotted javert at the barricade was just. so much cursing

⁃ lmao enjolras grinning as he shoots the roof dude

⁃ who gave the child a gun dammit

⁃ russell crowe javert singing usually: 😬😐

⁃ russell crowe javert singing while tied up at the barricade with a knife held to him by his long time nemesis: 🥴🤭

⁃ *cries in Drink With Me*

⁃ these boys want to hold out hope but they know there’s no getting out of here

⁃ Where Are The Barricade Ladies

⁃ WHERE IS GRANTAIRE VERSE FOCK U TOM

⁃ *guiltily skips bring him home*

⁃ you know what i was saying earlier about certain characters singing like they have a vibrate stuck in their throat? yeah

⁃ ah that shot that pans out to show that they’re all alone

⁃ gavroche singing won’t save you from dying i fwu tho 🥺

⁃ my little brother loves singing and acting out this song complete with delicate collapsing at the end

⁃ fucking courfeyrac, always gotta make me cry over gavroche more than i mean to

⁃ i have beef with everyone involved

⁃ HADLEY

⁃ combeferre holding back and then comforting courfeyrac 😭😭😭

⁃ let others rise to take our place until the earth is free. god damn. i fuck with that quote too hard.

⁃ CANNONS *queue that one post about the tumblr re-enacting les mis and nearly killing the window cleaner guy when she dramatically opened the windows to scream cannons*

⁃ And In That Moment They Knew. They Were Fucked.

⁃ i don’t need to see any more of my boys die explicitly but i wish we could have had prouvaire’s death scene from the brick, it was really powerful

⁃ THERES MORE MEN

⁃ let them in you HEARTLESS BASTSRDS

⁃ i could do with less time looking at pontmercy’s arse and more time watching the carnage, thanks

⁃ FEUILLY BOSSUET NO

⁃ oh god oh fuck the final four

⁃ *remembers that post i saw where people calculated how long it would have taken for them to die based on bullet angles and that joly and combeferre were both medical and had to watch each other and courfeyrac die and not be able to do anything about it *

⁃ oh god oh fuck permets-tu

⁃ if there’s one instance they could have kept the line from the book it ought to have been this one

⁃ *remembers the post that says that grantaire was not only staggering of drunkenness, but also because he was tripping over the corpses of his friends*

⁃ *remembers hadley is the guard*

⁃ god fukcign. fuck. that orchestral rendition of red & black as exr martyr theirselves for a doomed cause.

⁃ their deaths in the book are so poetic— enj pinned to the wall, crucified by the 8 bullets representing les amis and the cause being worth dying for, while grantaire died at his feet with one bullet representing that enjolras is worth dying for— but something about enjolras dangling out the window, wrapped in the flag... damn

⁃ did you see them, lying side by side...

⁃ *vivid flashbacks to behind the scenes and them singing a jazzy version of On My Own*

⁃ ok that’s enough for now *skips to finale*

⁃ like i love turning and empty chairs but i don’t have the emotional capacity for that rn

⁃ HERE. COMES THE HEAVENLY BARRICADE

⁃ nope i can’t

⁃ i love it too much

⁃ this is the version of DYHTPS that i listened to on repeat during Homework Time for the first several months of quarantine last year

⁃ i have too many feelings about it to put into text

⁃ goddamn i love this show fuck

⁃ *cries*